Gender inequity is prevalent in the workplace. It violates the principle of equal treatment for all employees, and often leads to problems with retention, morale, and performance. Individuals, however, may have different perceptions of gender inequity. In this study, we examined the relationship between individual and organizational level variables and perceived gender inequity for a sample of church workers. Regression analysis was used to test several hypotheses informed by social psychological theories. The results showed that (1) individuals perceived gender inequity (...) in the workplace; (2) organizational level variables had more effect on perceived gender inequity than individual level variables; and (3) compared to men, women perceived greater gender inequity favoring males. Discussion, limitations, and suggestions for future research are provided. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show that animal rights are not necessarily at odds with the use of animals for research. If animals hold basic moral rights similar to those of humans, then we should consequently extend the ethical requirements guiding research with humans to research with animals. The article spells out how this can be done in practice by applying the seven requirements for ethical research with humans proposed by Ezekiel Emanuel, David Wendler and Christine Grady to (...) animal research. These requirements are i) social value, ii) scientific validity, iii) independent review, iv) fair subject selection, v) favorable risk-benefit ratio, vi) informed consent, and vii) respect for research subjects. In practice, this means that we must reform the practice of animal research to make it more similar to research with humans, rather than completely abolish the former. Indeed, if we banned animal research altogether, then we would also deprive animals of its potential benefits – which would be ethically problematic. (shrink)

The predominant view is that a study using health data is observational research and should require individual consent unless it can be shown that gaining consent is impractical. But recent arguments have been made that citizens have an ethical obligation to share their health information for research purposes. In our view, this obligation is sufficient ground to expand the circumstances where secondary use research with identifiable health information is permitted without explicit subject consent. As such, for some studies the Institutional (...) Review Board/Research Ethics Committee review process should not assess the practicality of gaining consent for data use. Instead the review process should focus on assessing the public good of the research, public engagement and transparency. (shrink)

Expert opinions have yielded a wide and controversial assortment of conceptions of free will, but laypersons seem to associate free will more simply with making choices. We found that the more strongly people believed in free will, the more they liked making choices, the higher they rated their ability to make decisions (Study 1), the less difficult they perceived making decisions, and the more satisfied they were with their decisions (Study 2). High free will belief was also associated with more (...) spontaneous associating of choice with freedom, and with the perception of actions as choices. Recalling choices (Study 3) and making choices (Study 4) led to a stronger endorsement of the belief in free will, with an additional effect for the level of choice involved. These findings suggest that the everyday social reality of beliefs about free will is a matter of how people think and feel about choice. (shrink)

In this essay we provide (1) an argument for why ethics should be naturalized, (2) an analysis of why it is not yet naturalized, (3) a defense of ethical naturalism against two fallacies—Hume’s and Moore’s—that ethical naturalism allegedly commits, and (4) a proposal that normative ethics is best conceived as part of human ecology committed to pluralistic relativism. We explain why naturalizing ethics both entails relativism and also constrains it, and why nihilism about value is not an especially worrisome for (...) ethical naturalists. The substantive view we put forth constitutes the essence of Duke Naturalism. (shrink)

Recent findings support the idea that the belief in free will serves as the basis for moral responsibility, thus promoting the punishment of immoral agents. We theorized that free will extends beyond morality to serve as the basis for accountability and the capacity for change more broadly, not only for others but also for the self. Five experiments showed that people attributed higher freedom of will to negative than to positive valence, regardless of morality or intent, for both self and (...) others. In recalling everyday life situations and in classical decision making paradigms, negative actions, negatives outcomes, and negative framing were attributed higher free will than positive ones. Free will attributions were mainly driven by action or outcome valence, but not intent. These findings show consistent support for the idea that free will underlies laypersons’ sense-making for accountability and change under negative circumstances. (shrink)

International research, sponsored by for-profit companies, is regularly criticised as unethical on the grounds that it exploits research subjects in developing countries. Many commentators agree that exploitation occurs when the benefits of cooperative activity are unfairly distributed between the parties. To determine whether international research is exploitative we therefore need an account of fair distribution. Procedural accounts of fair bargaining have been popular solutions to this problem, but I argue that they are insufficient to protect against exploitation. I argue instead (...) that a maximin principle of fair distribution provides a more compelling normative account of fairness in relationships characterised by extreme vulnerability and inequality of bargaining potential between the parties. A global tax on international research would provide a mechanism for implementing the maximin account of fair benefits. This model has the capacity to ensure fair benefits and thereby prevent exploitation in international research. (shrink)

The concept of ‘ownership’ is increasingly central to debates, in the media, health policy and bioethics, about the appropriate management of clinical data. I argue that the language of ownership acts as a metaphor and reflects multiple concerns about current data use and the disenfranchisement of citizens and collectives in the existing data ecosystem. But exactly which core interests and concerns ownership claims allude to remains opaque. Too often, we jump straight from ‘ownership’ to ‘private property’ and conclude ‘the data (...) belongs to the patient’. I will argue here that private property is only one type of relevant relationship between people, communities and data. There are several reasons to doubt that conceptualising data as private property presents a compelling response to concerns about clinical data ownership. In particular I argue that clinical data are co-constructed, so a property account would fail to confer exclusive rights to the patient. A non-property account of ownership acknowledges that the data are ‘about the patient’, and therefore the patient has relevant interests, without jumping to the conclusion that the data ‘belongs to the patient’. On this broader account of ownership, the relevant harm is the severing of the connection between the patient and their data, and the solution is to re-engage and re-connect patients to the data research enterprise. (shrink)

Public-private partnerships are established to specifically harness the potential of Big Data in healthcare and can include partners working across the data chain—producing health data, analysing data, using research results or creating value from data. This domain paper will illustrate the challenges that arise when partners from the public and private sector collaborate to share, analyse and use biomedical Big Data. We discuss three specific challenges for PPPs: working within the social licence, public antipathy to the commercialisation of public sector (...) health data, and questions of ownership, both of the data and any resulting intellectual property or products. As a specific example we consider the case of the UK National Health Service providing patient data to Google’s DeepMind AI program to develop a diagnostic app for kidney disease. This article is an application of the framework presented in this issue of ABR. Please refer to that article for more information on how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end. We use four specific values to help analysis these issues: public benefit, stewardship, transparency and engagement. We demonstrate how the Deliberative Framework can support ethical governance of PPPs involving biomedical big data. (shrink)

This paper contends that a research ethics approach to the regulation of health data research is unhelpful in the era of population‐level research and big data because it results in a primary focus on consent (meta‐, broad, dynamic and/or specific consent). Two recent guidelines – the 2016 WMA Declaration of Taipei on ethical considerations regarding health databases and biobanks and the revised CIOMS International ethical guidelines for health‐related research involving humans – both focus on the growing reliance on health data (...) for research. But as research ethics documents, they remain (to varying degrees) focused on consent and individual control of data use. Many current and future uses of health data make individual consent impractical, if not impossible. Many of the risks of secondary data use apply to communities and stakeholders rather than individual data subjects. Shifting from a research ethics perspective to a public health lens brings a different set of issues into view: how are the benefits and burdens of data use distributed, how can data research empower communities, who has legitimate decision‐making capacity? I propose that a public health ethics framework – based on public benefit, proportionality, equity, trust and accountability – provides more appropriate tools for assessing the ethical uses of health data. The main advantage of a public health approach for data research is that it is more likely to foster debate about power, justice and equity and to highlight the complexity of deciding when data use is in the public interest. (shrink)

An integrative explanation proposes that culture and gender interact to produce fundamentally different patterns of association between positive and negative emotions. People in independent-based cultures (e.g. the United States) experience emotions in oppositional (i.e. bipolar) ways, whereas people in interdependent-based cultures (e.g. China) experience emotions in dialectic ways. These patterns are stronger for women than men in both cultures. In support of the theory, Study 1 showed that positive and negative emotions are strongly correlated inversely for American women and weakly (...) correlated inversely for American men, but strongly correlated positively for Chinese women and weakly correlated positively for Chinese men. In Study 2, findings for Koreans, although mixed, were closer to the results for Chinese. (shrink)

There is an alleged tension between undue inducement and exploitation in research trials. This paper considers claims that increasing the benefits to research subjects enrolled in international, externally-sponsored clinical trials should be avoided on the grounds that it may result in the undue inducement of research subjects. This article contributes to the debate about exploitation versus undue inducement by introducing an analysis of the available empirical research into research participants' motivations and the influence of payments on research subjects' behaviour and (...) risk assessment. Admittedly, the available research in this field is limited, but the research that has been conducted suggests that financial rewards do not distort research subjects' behaviour or blind them to the risks involved with research. Therefore, I conclude that research sponsors should prioritise the prevention of exploitation in international research by providing greater benefits to research participants. (edited). (shrink)

Throughout March and April 2020, debate raged about how best to allocate limited intensive care unit resources in the face of a growing COVID-19 pandemic. The debate was dominated by utility-based arguments for saving the most lives or life-years. These arguments were tempered by equity-based concerns that triage based solely on prognosis would exacerbate existing health inequities, leaving disadvantaged patients worse off. Central to this debate was the assumption that ICU admission is a valuable but scarce resource in the pandemic (...) context.In this paper, we argue that the concern about achieving equity in ICU triage is problematic for two reasons. First, ICU can be futile and prolong or exacerbate suffering rather than ameliorate it. This may be especially true in patients with COVID-19 with emerging data showing that most who receive access to a ventilator will still die. There is no value in admitting patients with poor prognostic indicators to ICU to meet an equity target when intensive critical care is contrary to their best interests. Second, the focus on ICU admission shifts focus away from important aspects of COVID-19 care where there is greater opportunity for mitigating suffering and enhancing equitable care.We propose that the focus on equity concerns during the pandemic should broaden to include providing all people who need it with access to the highest possible standard of end-of-life care. This requires attention to culturally safe care in the following interlinked areas: palliative care, communication and decision support and advanced care planning. (shrink)

In 2004 Emanuel et al. published an influential account of exploitation in international research, which has become known as the 'fair benefits account'. In this paper I argue that the thin definition of fairness presented by Emanuel et al, and subsequently endorsed by Gbadegesin and Wendler, does not provide a notion of fairness that is adequately robust to support a fair benefits account of exploitation. The authors present a procedural notion of fairness – the fair distribution of the benefits of (...) research is to be determined on a case-by-case basis by the parties involved in each study. The fairness of the distribution of benefits is not assessed against an independent normative standard. Emanuel et al.'s account of fairness provides a framework for objecting only to transactions that occur without the fully informed consent of the weaker party. As a result, a debate about exploitation collapses into a debate about consent. This is problematic because, as the proponents of the fair benefits framework acknowledge, neither the trial participants' consent nor the host community's consent preclude exploitation. Attempts to stipulate normative standards of fairness to protect research subjects in developing countries have been controversial and divisive, and it is therefore understandable that bioethicists would be tempted to develop accounts of exploitation that are independent of such prescriptive principles. I conclude, however, that the utility of the fair benefits model of exploitation as a policy tool will ultimately depend on whether a substantive principle of fairness can be developed to underpin it. (shrink)

Using professional accountants as respondents in Hong Kong, this study strives to develop a model to depict the effect of ethical reasoning on the relationships between guanxi and auditors; behaviour in an audit conflict situation. The results of the study found that (1) there is a significant relationship between an auditor's ethical judgement and one's moral cognitive development; (2) there is a relationship between an auditor's ethical judgement and the existence of guanxi; and (3) the impact of guanxi on an (...) auditor's judgement is depending on the level of ethical reasoning. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that to reduce the level of exploitation present in (some) international clinical trials, research sponsors must aim to provide both an ex-ante expected gain in utility and a fair ex-post distribution of benefits for research subjects. I suggest the following principles of fair risk distribution in international research as the basis of a normative definition of fairness: (a) Persons should not be forced (by circumstance) to gamble in order to achieve or protect basic goods; (b) (...) In cases where one party is gambling with basic goods and the other party is not, the distribution of benefits and burdens must be arranged so that they are of greatest benefit to the worst off; (c) In relationships where one party is gambling for basic goods and the other party is not, the party gambling for basic goods must be assured of some guaranteed benefits in addition to the chance of gaining some potential benefits.These principles are applied to the case of HIV international research. I conclude that the research (as described) is mutually advantageous but still exploitative because the distribution of surplus benefits is unfair. It is unfair because research subjects are gambling with and for basic goods but they are not assured of a fair ex-post distribution of benefits. Principles (b) and (c) are not satisfied. Research participants are not accorded enough guaranteed benefits to outweigh the risks they undertake. (shrink)

Sound and complete axiomatizations are provided for a number of different logics involving modalities for the knowledge of multiple agents and operators for branching time, extending previous work of Halpern, van der Meyden and Vardi [to appear, SIAM Journal on Computing] for logics of knowledge and linear time. The paper considers the system constraints of synchrony, perfect recall and unique initial states, which give rise to interaction axioms. The language is based on the temporal logic CTL*, interpreted with respect to (...) a version of the bundle semantics. (shrink)

This target article considers the ethical implications of providing prenatal diagnosis (PND) and antenatal screening services to detect fetal abnormalities in jurisdictions that prohibit abortion for these conditions. This unusual health policy context is common in the Latin American region. Congenital conditions are often untreated or under-treated in developing countries due to limited health resources, leading many women/couples to prefer termination of affected pregnancies. Three potential harms derive from the provision of PND in the absence of legal and safe abortion (...) for these conditions: psychological distress, unjust distribution of burdens between socio-economic classes, and financial burdens for families and society. We present Iran as a comparative case study where recognition of these ethical issues has led to the liberalization of abortion laws for fetuses with thalassemia. We argue that physicians, geneticists and policymakers have an ethical and professional duty of care to advocate for change in order to ameliorate these harms. (shrink)

Social capital has as its key element the value of social relationships to generate positive outcomes, both for the key parties involved and for wider society. Some authors have noted that social capital nevertheless has a dark side. There is a moral element to such a conceptualisation, yet there is scarce discussion of ethics within the social capital literature. In this paper ethical theory is applied to four traditions or approaches to economic social capital: neo-capitalism; network/reputation; neo-Tocquevellian; and development. Each (...) is considered in detail and subject to ethical analysis by the application of utilitarianism, Kantianism, justice and rights, and ethic of care. Accordingly, the assumption that social capital is either value-neutral or a force for good is critiqued, and a framework for understanding social capital from an ethics perspective is presented. (shrink)

The question which this paper examines is that of the correct scope of the claim that extra-linguistic factors (such as gender and social status) can block the proper workings of natural language. The claim that this is possible has been put forward under the apt label of silencing in the context of Austinian speech act theory. The ‘silencing’ label is apt insofar as when one’s ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is ‘blocked’ by one’s gender or social status (...) then one might justly be said to be silenced. The notion that factors independent of any person’s linguistic competence might block her ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is of considerable social as well as theoretical significance. I shall defend the claim that factors independent of a person’s linguistic competence can indeed block her ability to do things with words but I will show that the cases that have been previously considered to be cases of illocutionary failure are instances of rhetic or locutionary act failure instead. I shall refine the silencing claim as previously advanced in the debate in at least one fundamental respect. I also show that considering the metaphysics of speech acts clarifies many of the issues previously appearing as thorny bones of contention between those who hold that the only notion of silencing that is coherent is that of physically preventing someone from speaking or writing and those who hold the opposite sort of claim sketched above. (shrink)

The recent historiography of molecular biology features key technologies, instruments and materials, which offer a different view of the field and its turning points than preceding intellectual and institutional histories. Radioisotopes, in this vein, became essential tools in postwar life science research, including molecular biology, and are here analyzed through their use in experiments on bacteriophage. Isotopes were especially well suited for studying the dynamics of chemical transformation over time, through metabolic pathways or life cycles. Scientists labeled phage with phosphorus-32 (...) in order to trace the transfer of genetic material between parent and progeny in virus reproduction. Initial studies of this type did not resolve the mechanism of generational transfer but unexpectedly gave rise to a new style of molecular radiobiology based on the inactivation of phage by the radioactive decay of incorporated phosphorus-32. These ‘suicide experiments’, a preoccupation of phage researchers in the mid-1950s, reveal how molecular biologists interacted with the traditions and practices of radiation geneticists as well as those of biochemists as they were seeking to demarcate a new field. The routine use of radiolabels to visualize nucleic acids emerged as an enduring feature of molecular biological experimentation. (shrink)

What leads people to believe in conspiracy theories? In this paper, we explore the possibility that people might be drawn towards conspiracy theories because believing in them might satisfy certain existential needs and help people find meaning in their life. Through two studies (N = 289 and 287 after exclusion), we found that par­ ticipants higher in the need and search for meaning were more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. This relationship was not moderated by participants' feelings of control. (...) We also found that believing in conspiracy theories was associated with more presence of meaning (Study 1), and more precisely with a heightened feeling of mattering in the grand scheme of things (Study 2). Additionally, we found that participants were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories that left them more agency and allowed them the possibility to make a difference. Overall, we argue that our results suggest that people might sometimes be drawn towards conspiracy theories because they allow them to feel as if they can make a difference and have a positive impact on the world, and thus that conspiracy theories can be used as tools to satisfy existential needs. (shrink)

In their response to ‘Public interest in health data research: laying out the conceptual groundwork’, Grewal and Newson critique us for inattention to the law and putting forward an impracticably broad conceptual understanding of public interest. While we agree more work is needed to generate a workable framework for Institutional Review Boards/Research Ethics Committees, we would contend that this should be grounded on a broad conception of public interest. This broadness facilitates regulatory agility, and is already reflected by some current (...) frameworks such as that found in the guidelines approved under Australia’s Privacy Act. It remains unclear which elements of our broad account Grewal and Newson would reject, or indeed where the substantive disagreement with our position lies. (shrink)

An integrative explanation proposes that culture and gender interact to produce fundamentally different patterns of association between positive and negative emotions. People in independent-based cultures (e.g. the United States) experience emotions in oppositional (i.e. bipolar) ways, whereas people in interdependent-based cultures (e.g. China) experience emotions in dialectic ways. These patterns are stronger for women than men in both cultures. In support of the theory, Study 1 showed that positive and negative emotions are strongly correlated inversely for American women and weakly (...) correlated inversely for American men, but strongly correlated positively for Chinese women and weakly correlated positively for Chinese men. In Study 2, findings for Koreans, although mixed, were closer to the results for Chinese. (shrink)

We investigate the regulatory sanctions imposed on independent directors for their firms’ financial frauds in China. These regulatory sanctions are prima-facie evidence of significant lapses in business ethics. During the period 2003–2010, 302-person-time independent directors were penalized by the regulator, and the two stock exchanges. We find that the independent directors with accounting experiences are more likely to be penalized by the CSRC, though they do not suffer more severe penalties than do the other sanctioned independent directors. We also find (...) that independent directors suffer less severe penalties than do the insider directors. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the sanctions on independent directors are tied to their assumed ethical and legal responsibilities. Following a regulatory sanction, penalized independent directors experience a significant decline in the number of other board seats held. However, they can gain board seats in better quality firms. We find that interlocked firms that share penalized independent directors with the fraud firm do not suffer from a valuation decline. Overall, our results suggest that regulatory sanctions have not triggered further sanctions on the penalized directors in the labor market but they have, instead, created a disincentive for these directors to serve on the company boards of high-risk firms. (shrink)

As the demand for human eggs for stem cell research increases, debate about appropriate standards for recruitment and compensation of women intensifies. In the majority of cases, the source of eggs for research is women undergoing fertility treatment requiring ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval. The principle of "just participant selection" requires that research subjects be selected from the population that stands to benefit from the research. Based on this principle, infertile women should be actively recruited to donate eggs for fertility-related (...) research only. It is unethical to exclusively or predominantly recruit infertile women to donate eggs for stem cell research that concerns general medical conditions. It is preferable to recruit women from the general population to donate eggs for such research, and these women should be viewed as healthy volunteers. To avoid exploitation, these donors should receive compensation for both the direct and indirect costs associated with their donation. (shrink)

As the demand for human eggs for stem cell research increases, debate about appropriate standards for recruitment and compensation of women intensifies. In the majority of cases, the source of eggs for research is women undergoing fertility treatment requiring ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval. The principle of "just participant selection" requires that research subjects be selected from the population that stands to benefit from the research. Based on this principle, infertile women should be actively recruited to donate eggs for fertility-related (...) research only. It is unethical to exclusively or predominantly recruit infertile women to donate eggs for stem cell research that concerns general medical conditions. It is preferable to recruit women from the general population to donate eggs for such research, and these women should be viewed as healthy volunteers. To avoid exploitation, these donors should receive compensation for both the direct and indirect costs associated with their donation. (shrink)

As the demand for human eggs for stem cell research increases, debate about appropriate standards for recruitment and compensation of women intensifies. In the majority of cases, the source of eggs for research is women undergoing fertility treatment requiring ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval. The principle of “just participant selection” requires that research subjects be selected from the population that stands to benefit from the research. Based on this principle, infertile women should be actively recruited to donate eggs for fertility-related (...) research only. It is unethical to exclusively or predominantly recruit infertile women to donate eggs for stem cell research that concerns general medical conditions. It is preferable to recruit women from the general population to donate eggs for such research, and these women should be viewed as healthy volunteers. To avoid exploitation, these donors should receive compensation for both the direct and indirect costs associated with their donation. (shrink)

In December 1984 Angela Weir and Elizabeth Wilson, two founding members of Feminist Review, published an article assessing contemporary British feminism and its relationship to the left and to class struggle. They suggested that the women's movement in general, and socialist-feminism in particular, had lost its former political sharpness. The academic focus of socialist-feminism has proved more interested in theorizing the ideological basis of sexual difference than the economic contradictions of capitalism. Meanwhile the conditions of working-class and black women (...) have been deteriorating. In this situation, they argue, feminists can only serve the general interests of women through alliance with working-class movements and class struggle. Weir and Wilson represent a minority position within the British Communist Party (the CP), which argues that ‘feminism’ is now being used by sections of the left, in particular the dominant ‘Eurocommunist’ left in the CP, to justify their moves to the right, with an accompanying attack on traditional forms of trade union militancy. Beatrix Campbell, who is aligned to the dominant position within the CP, has been one target of Weir and Wilson's criticisms. In several articles from 1978 onwards, and in her book Wigan Pier Revisited, Beatrix Campbell has presented a very different analysis of women and the labour movement. She has criticized the trade union movement as a ‘men's movement’, in the sense that it has always represented the interests of men at the expense of women. And she has described the current split within the CP as one extending throughout the left between the politics of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’: traditional labour movement politics as against the politics of those who have rethought their socialism to take into account the analysis and importance of popular social movements – in particular feminism, the peace and anti-racist movements. In reply to this debate, Anne Phillips has argued that while women's position today must be analysed in the context of the capitalist crisis, it is not reducible to the dichotomy ‘class politics’ versus ‘popular alliance’. Michèle Barrett, in another reply to Weir and Wilson, has argued that they have presented a reductionist and economistic approach to women's oppression, which caricatures rather than clarifies much of the work in which socialist-feminists have been engaged. To air these differences between socialist-feminists over the question of feminism and class politics, and to see their implications for the women's movement and the left, Feminist Review has decided to bring together the main protagonists of this debate for a fuller, more open discussion. For this discussion Feminist Review drew up a number of questions which were put to the participants by Clara Connolly and Lynne Segal. (Michèle Barrett was present in a personal capacity.) They cover the recent background to socialist-feminist politics, the relationship of feminism to Marxism, the role of feminists in le ft political parties and the labour movement, the issue of racism and the prospects for the immediate future. The discussion was lengthy and what follows is an edited version of the transcript. (shrink)

Chez Aristophane, le public est impliqué dans le jeu comique, grâce à la disposition physique de l’espace théâtral. Il est raisonnable de penser que les femmes faisaient partie du public. Ce travail analyse les vv. 42 ss. de Lysistrata, où il semble que Cléonice s’adresse aux femmes assises dans la cavea.

Il brano del "Fedro" (269el-270c5) in cui è menzionato Ippocrate e il suo metodo è uno dei più controversi dell'opera platonica. Alcuni studiosi si sono serviti degli scolî antichi al dialogo, tramandati sotto il nome del neoplatonico Ermia (V sec. d. C.), per sostenere che il metodo in questione non implica un'indagine preliminare dell'universo. È tuttavia utile (oltreché finora intentato) ripercorrere quanto l'esegeta neoplatonico dice a proposito dell'intero brano in questione per constatare come egli, al contrario, ne fornisca un'interpretazione cosmologica, (...) sulla base della significazione tecnica di ἡ ὅλη ψυχή come "anima dell'universo". In ogni caso l'esegesi di Ermia risulta essere non una semplice parafrasi grammaticale del testo platonico, ma anche una sua riformulazione filosofica nei termini della dottrina neoplatonica, la quale è estremamente complessa anche nel caso dell'anima umana. (shrink)