Open peer commentary on the article “What Can the Global Observer Know?” by Diana Gasparyan. Upshot: I consider the possibility of replacing the global observer with a collective observer and ask whether the insights generated by such a collective observer would have to be considered subject to non-linear interactions.

This study examines how one student teaching seminar employed collective critical observation and reflection of an experienced high school social studies teacher's pedagogy using a multimedia representation of teaching. Pre-service teachers watched this teacher implement two full class lessons and reflections on teaching about freedom of speech. This study's pre-service social studies teachers exhibited a developing ability, through collective observation, to critically reflect on their individual methodological and philosophical goals, social studies teaching and learning, and professional (...) and curricular visions in relation to their student teaching experiences and future practice. The study's findings offer implications for how pre-service social studies teachers critically reflect on their practice, while also developing knowledge of learners, subject matter, and teaching social studies. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been adapted for use in qualitative health research, where it’s often used as a method for conducting interviews and analyzing interview data. But how can phenomenologists study subjects who cannot accurately reflect upon or report their own experiences, for instance, because of a psychiatric or neurological disorder? For conditions like these, qualitative researchers may gain more insight by conducting observational studies in lieu of, or in conjunction with, interviews. In this article, we introduce a phenomenological approach to conducting (...) this kind of observational research. The approach relies on conceptual grounding to focus a study on specific aspects of the participants’ experiences. Moreover, the approach maintains the openness to novel discoveries that qualitative research requires while also providing a structured framework for data collection and analysis. To illustrate its practical application, we use examples of hemispatial neglect—a neurologic disorder in which patients characteristically lack awareness of their own illness and bodily capacities. However, the approach that we describe can be applied more broadly to the study of complex illness experiences and other experiential alterations. (shrink)

What is to be gained by studying visual observation in Mass Observation's COVID-19 collections? What can we see of the pandemic through diarists’ images and words? Visual methods were part of the plural research strategies of social research organisation Mass Observation (MO) in its first phase, when it was established in 1937, but remained marginal in relation to textual research methods. This continues with the post-1981 revival of the Mass Observation Project (MOP), with its emphasis on (...) life writing. With wider shifts in technology and accessibility, however, even when they are not solicited, photographs now accompany MOP correspondents’ submissions. In MO’s substantial COVID-19 collections, images appear in or as diary entries across a range of forms, including hand-drawn illustrations, correspondent-generated photographs, creative photomontages, and screengrabs of memes. In addition, diarists offer textual reflections on COVID-19's image cultures, such as the role of photographs in pandemic news media, as well as considering how the pandemic is intersecting with the visual in more abstract ways, from themes of surveillance and ‘Staying Alert’ in public health messaging to internal pictorial imaginaries produced as a result of isolation and contemplation. Positioning these materials in relation to wider patterns in pandemic visual culture, including public photographic collecting projects that make explicit reference to MO as their inspiration, this article considers the contribution of the visual submissions and image-rich writing in MO's COVID-19 collections to the depiction of a virus commonly characterised as invisible. (shrink)

This special issue considers the significance of film to the establishment and development of scientific approaches to the mind. Bonnie Evans explores how the origins of film technologies in 1895 in France encouraged a series of innovative collaborations, influencing both psychological theorisation, and new filming techniques. Jeremy Blatter explains how Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg created early films specifically designed to engage audiences using psychological tactics. Scott Curtis’ article examines how Yale psychologist Arnold Gesell was able to extract scientific data from (...) a film. Felix Rietmann’s article explores a collection of infant observation films from the 1930s and 1960s and how they developed unique narratives of mothers’ engagement with their children that did not necessarily match up with dominant scientific theories. Janet Harbord's article considers how a trilogy of films made at the Maudsley Hospital in the 1950s engaged with innovative film-making techniques that captured behaviour as discrete units. Seth Watter further examines how William S. Condon's use of the unique technology of the Bell and Howell 173BD projector in the 1960s created new understandings of human behaviour that could not have been predicted in advance, and which were highly influenced by the technology itself. Finally, Des O’Rawe explores how radical approaches in both anti-psychiatry, and documentary film-making in the 1960s created new opportunities for audiences to engage with different psychological states. All of these developments in film and psychology continue to influence understandings in both these fields to the present day. (shrink)

Collective migration is a key process that is critical during development, as well as in physiological and pathophysiological processes including tissue repair, wound healing and cancer. Studies in genetic model organisms have made important contributions to our current understanding of the mechanisms that shape cells into different tissues during morphogenesis. Recent advances in high‐resolution and live‐cell‐imaging techniques provided new insights into the social behavior of cells based on careful visual observations within the context of a living tissue. In this (...) review, we will compare Drosophila testis nascent myotube migration with established in vivo model systems, elucidate similarities, new features and principles in collective cell migration. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Observations on Collective Action Approaches to Collective Action The Personal Intentions Approach The ‘We ‐ Intentions’ Approach The Joint Commitment Approach Concluding Remarks Further reading.

We seem to ascribe mental states and agency to groups. We say ‘Google knows such-and-such,’ or ‘Amazon intends to do such-and-such.’ This observation of ordinary parlance also found its way into philosophical accounts of social groups and collective intentionality. However, these discussions are usually quiet about how groups self-ascribe their own beliefs and intentions. Apple might explain to its shareholders that it intends to bring a new iPhone to the market next year. But how does Apple know what (...) it intends? How do groups get to know their own mental states? This is the question of collective self-knowledge. I argue that collective self-knowledge is a distinct phenomenon that deserves our attention. In particular I suggest: that we should be interested in collective self-knowledge, because our behaviour indicates that we already engage with collective self-knowledge in practice; that groups can collectively avow, which indicates that they have privileged and peculiar access to their own intentional states; and that collective self-knowledge is not reducible to intentional states of individuals and therefore is an independent explanandum. (shrink)

Westworld portrays a world where humans and human‐like machines coexist. When systems of observation are referred, Nolan's predilection is considered for adding computational science subjects to his storylines. According to the theorist Katherine Hayles, they present a geometrical pattern of the relationship between the observer and the observed worlds. Westworld is a posthuman narrative that develops essential characteristic from Nolan's productions, which is the bidirectional line between science and fiction. The storytelling mythologies result in the design of the backstories (...) of some characters being integrated within the collective imaginary of Westworld and its visitors. The characters from Westworld are placed in the blurred borderline between memory and imagination. The blurred borderline between memory and imagination is seen in the creation of an internal otherness in the form of a collective bicameral mind, considered as a split personality or doppelganger, and as a new manifestation of the semiosis of virtuality. (shrink)

This collection of five essays by Germany’s most prominent and influential social thinker both links Luhmann’s social theory to the question “What is modern about modernity?” and shows the origins and context of his theory. In the introductory essay, “Modernity in Contemporary Society,” Luhmann develops the thesis that the modern epistemological situation can be seen as the consequence of a radical change in social macrostructures that he calls “social differentiation,” thereby designating the juxtaposition of and interaction between a growing number (...) of social subsystems without any hierarchical structure. “European Rationality” defines rationality as the capacity to see the difference between systems and their environment as a unity. Luhmann argues that, in a world characterized by contingency, rationality tends to become coextensive with imagination, a view that challenges their classical binary opposition and opens up the possibility of seeing modern rationality as a paradox. In the third essay, “Contingency as Modern Society’s Defining Attribute,” Luhmann develops a further and probably even more important paradox: that the generalization of contingency or cognitive uncertainty is precisely what provides stability within modern societies. In the process, he argues that medieval and early modern theology can be seen as a “preadaptive advance” through which Western thinking prepared itself for the modern epistemological situation. In “Describing the Future,” Luhmann claims that neither the traditional hope of learning from history nor the complementary hope of cognitively anticipating the future can be maintained, and that the classical concept of the future should be replaced by the notion of risk, defined as juxtaposing the expectation of realizing certain projects and the awareness that such projects might fail. The book concludes with “The Ecology of Ignorance,” in which Luhmann outlines prospective research areas “for sponsors who have yet to be identified.”. (shrink)

Informed consent may be unobtainable in online contexts. This article examines the difficulties of obtaining informed consent online through a Facebook case study. It is proposed that there are at least two ways informed consent could be waived in research: first, if the data are public, and second, if the data are textual. Accordingly, the publicness of the Facebook News Feed is considered. Taking account of the wide availability of Facebook users’ data, and reflecting on how public those users perceive (...) their information to be, this paper argues that some Facebook data are properly viewed as public to semi-public in nature. A second issue is whether the Facebook News Feed data collection ought to be classified as document-based or human subjects research. Since the Facebook News Feed involves social interaction that may elicit ‘ethically important moments’, this paper proposes that observing it may constitute human subjects research. While informed consent is desirable for human subjects research, it is suggested that Facebook News Feed observations are comparable to observational research in a public space, and thus waiving informed consent in this online setting could be justifiable. (shrink)

Kant's Observations of 1764 and Remarks of 1764–5 document a crucial turning point in his life and thought. Both reveal the growing importance for him of ethics, anthropology and politics, but with an important difference. The Observations attempts to observe human nature directly. The Remarks, by contrast, reveals a revolution in Kant's thinking, largely inspired by Rousseau, who 'turned him around' by disclosing to Kant the idea of a 'state of freedom' as a touchstone for his thinking. This and related (...) thoughts anticipate such famous later doctrines as the categorical imperative. This collection of essays by leading Kant scholars illuminates the many and varied topics within these two rich works, including the emerging relations between theory and practice, ethics and anthropology, men and women, philosophy, history and the 'rights of man'. (shrink)

Collective consciousness and egoless consciousness can be regarded as realistic alternatives or complements to individual consciousness. This contention is supported by evidence from the literature and by personal observations and interpretations. It contradicts the idea that a philosophy which regards reality as consisting only of conscious experiences must inevitably lead to solipsism.

Informed consent may be unobtainable in online contexts. This article examines the difficulties of obtaining informed consent online through a Facebook case study. It is proposed that there are at least two ways informed consent could be waived in research: first, if the data are public, and second, if the data are textual. Accordingly, the publicness of the Facebook News Feed is considered. Taking account of the wide availability of Facebook users’ data, and reflecting on how public those users perceive (...) their information to be, this paper argues that some Facebook data are properly viewed as public to semi-public in nature. A second issue is whether the Facebook News Feed data collection ought to be classified as document-based or human subjects research. Since the Facebook News Feed involves social interaction that may elicit ‘ethically important moments’, this paper proposes that observing it may constitute human subjects research. While informed consent is desirable for human subjects research, it is... (shrink)

This article presents a new framework for unobtrusive observation analytics of knowledge and skills-in-action through continuous collection of data from individuals while they interact with digital assets either as individuals or on problem-solving teams. The framework includes measures of the skill and knowledge areas of collaboration, creativity, personal learning, problem solving, and global sustainability, which are observed during natural production and use of communications, intentional artifacts, and resources in a digital learning space designed for self-directed and team-based learning challenges. (...) The article describes the digital context for data collection and shows some example data and analyses. (shrink)

For much of the last forty years, certain shared epistemological concerns have guided research in both the history and the philosophy of science: the testing of theory , the assessment of evidence, the bearing of theoretical and metaphysical assumptions on the reality of scientific objects, and, above all, the interaction of subjective and objective factors in scientific inquiry. This essay proposes a turn toward ontology—more specifically, toward the ontologies created and sustained by scientific observation. Such a shift in focus (...) would invite a rethinking of the neo‐Kantian distinctions that have, implicitly or explicitly, informed much of late twentieth‐century history and philosophy of science. In particular, the current gap between psychology and epistemology might be bridged, if the psychology in question were collective rather than individual and the epistemology oriented toward discovery rather than warranting and testing. (shrink)

How large the non-observed economy (NOE) is and what determines its size in different countries and regions of the world is a question that has been and continues to be much studied by many observers (Schneider and Enste, 2000, 2002).[1] The size of this sector in an economy has important ramifications. One is that it negatively affects the ability of a nation to collect taxes to support its public sector. The inability to provide public services can in turn lead more (...) economic agents to move into the non-observed sector (Johnson, Kaufmann, and Shleifer, 1997). When such a sector is associated with criminal or corrupt activities it may undermine social capital and broader social cohesion (Putnam, 1993), which in turn may damage economic growth (Knack and Keefer, 1997; Zak and Knack, 2001). Furthermore, as international aid programs are tied to official measures of the size of economies, these can be distorted by wide variations in the relative sizes of the NOE across different countries, especially among the developing economies. (shrink)

This paper describes the scientific practices of the anatomists from the Société Anatomique de Paris (1803–1873) who were collecting anatomical and pathological specimens in Nineteenth-Century Paris and which led to the building of the anatomy and pathology Musée Dupuytren (1835–2016). The framework introduced by Robert Kohler to describe collecting sciences (2007) is useful as a tool to identify the set of diverse practices within pathological anatomy in nineteenth-century Paris. However, I will argue that anatomy and pathology collecting had specific features (...) compared to most collecting sciences. Two main collecting practices could be distinguished: first, “finding” anatomical specimens and second, keeping these specimens. The first kind of practices were at least rhetorically and explicitly motivated by Auguste Comte’s positive philosophy. But “finding” an anatomy or pathology specimen could not be completely compared to finding an object or making a simple observation, as dissecting as well as some experimental practices were also involved. Heterogeneous practices thus coexisted within collecting in anatomy and pathology. Epistemological as well as pragmatic tensions arose. On top of Kohler’s framework, I introduce Sabina Leonelli’s concept of “data journey” to offer a narrative of the diversity of collecting practices involved in the Société Anatomique de Paris and the Musée Dupuytren. I use the concept to analyse how this diversity of practices impacted knowledge production. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead, one of America’s most important and influential philosophers, a founder of pragmatism, social psychology, and symbolic interactionism, was also a keen observer of American culture and early modernism. In the period from the 1870s to 1895, Henry Northrup Castle maintained a correspondence with family members and with Mead—his best friend at Oberlin College and brother-in-law—that reveals many of the intellectual, economic, and cultural forces that shaped American thought in that complex era. Close friends of John Dewey, Jane (...) Addams, and other leading Chicago Progressives, the author of these often intimate letters comments frankly on pivotal events affecting higher education, developments at Oberlin College, Hawaii, progressivism, and the general angst that many young intellectuals were experiencing in early modern America. The letters, drawn from the Mead-Castle collection at the University of Chicago, were collected and edited by Mead after the tragic death of Henry Castle in a shipping accident in the North Sea. Working with his wife Helen Castle, he privately published fifty copies of the letters to record an important relationship and as an intellectual history of two progressive thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century. American historians, such as Robert Crunden and Gary Cook, have noted the importance of the letters to historians of the late nineteenth century. The letters are made available here using the basic Mead text of 1902. Additional insights into the connection between Mead, John Dewey, Henry and Harriet Castle, and Hawaii’s progressive kindergarten system are provided by the foundation’s executive director Alfred L. Castle. Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, has added additional comments on the importance of the letters to understanding the intellectual relationship that flourished at Oberlin College. Published with the support of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper examines the earthquake monitoring and prediction program, called “collective monitoring, collective defense,” in communist China during the Cultural Revolution, a period of political upheavals and natural disasters. Guided by their scientific and political ideas, the Chinese developed approaches to earthquake monitoring and prediction that emphasized mass participation, everyday knowledge, and observations of macro-seismic phenomena. The paper explains the ideas, practices, and epistemology of the program within the political context of the Cultural Revolution. It also suggests possibilities (...) for comparative analysis of science, state, and natural disasters. The paper redefines the concept of “citizen science” and argues that the concept provides a useful comparative perspective on the intimate relationship between science and the macropolitics of modern state and society. (shrink)

Originally published in 1971. The three contributions collected in this volume deal with different aspects of a single theme—the logical status of scientific theories in their relation to observation. These lectures, authored by different thinkers, treat this theme in connection with some controversies in the philosophy of science. A nonspecialist who reads these lectures should realize that the theme itself is a perennial one with an ancient lineage. It has concerned philosophers from the earliest era of philosophy on down (...) through the centuries. A central philosophical issue at stake in the lectures is the question of whether scientific theories are testable in terms of our observations such that we can know whether some theories are true and others false. Although differing in their emphases, all three contributors seek a more plausible and nonskeptical philosophical account of the status of scientific theories in relation to observation. (shrink)

This volume collects Kant's most important ethical and anthropological writings from the 1760s, before he developed his critical philosophy. The materials presented here range from the Observations, one of Kant's most elegantly written and immediately popular texts, to the accompanying Remarks which Kant wrote in his personal copy of the Observations and which are translated here in their entirety for the first time. This edition also includes little-known essays as well as personal notes and fragments that reveal the emergence of (...) Kant's complex philosophical ideas. Those familiar with Kant's later works will discover a Kant interested in the 'beauty' as well as the 'dignity' of humanity, in human diversity as well as the universality of morals, and in practical concerns rather than abstract philosophizing. Readers will be able to see Kant's development from the Observations through the Remarks towards the moral philosophy that eventually made him famous. (shrink)

One of us [Gilbert, M.. “Collective Belief and Scientific Change.” Sociality and Responsibility. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 37-49.] has proposed that ascriptions of beliefs to scientific communities generally involve a common notion of collective belief described by her in numerous places. A given collective belief involves a joint commitment of the parties, who thereby constitute what Gilbert refers to as a plural subject. Assuming that this interpretive hypothesis is correct, and that some of the belief ascriptions (...) in question are true, then the members of some scientific communities have obligations that may act as barriers both to the generation and, hence, the fair evaluation of new ideas and to changes in their community’s beliefs. We argue that this may help to explain Thomas Kuhn’s observations on “normal science”, and go on to develop the relationship between Gilbert's proposal and several features of a group of physicists working on a fundamental physical theory called “string theory”, as described by physicist Lee Smolin [Smolin, L.. The Trouble with Physics. Mariner Books: New York.]. We argue that the features of the string theory community that Smolin cites are well explained by the hypothesis that the community is a plural subject of belief. (shrink)

The essays in this collection provide an unusually intense portrait of a society and an age.

Many epistemologists have argued that there is some degree of independence between individual and collective reliability (e.g., Kitcher 1990; Mayo-Wilson, Zollman, and Danks 2011; Dunn 2018). The question, then, is: To what extent are the two independent of each other? And in which contexts do they come apart? In this paper, I present a new case confirming the independence between individual and collective reliability optimization. I argue that, in voting groups, optimizing individual reliability can conflict with optimizing (...) class='Hi'>collective reliability. This can happen even if various conditions are held constant, such as: the evidence jurors have access to, the voting system, the number of jurors, some independence conditions between voters, and so forth. This observation matters in many active debates on, e.g., epistemic dilemmas, the wisdom of crowds, independence theses, epistemic democracy, and the division of epistemic labour. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the mechanisms of empirical data collection in medicine and psychology in the early Enlightenment by means of experiment, observation and self-observation, while associating them with their discursive forms of representation; namely, the case narrative. The combination of empirical and discursive anthropo-techniques leads to explanations on the anthropoietics of the Enlightenment; i.e., the question of how the habitus of man was shaped around 1750. Texts of four German ‘reasonable physicians’ will be considered: Friedrich Hoffmann, (...) Johann Gottlieb Krüger, Andreas Elias Büchner and Johann August Unzer. (shrink)

This paper is a set of comments on papers from the Third Shanghai International Conference on Business Ethics, October 29–30, 2010, Shanghai, China. I would like to thank the organizers of this conference for the opportunity to share some of my observations on some of the papers presented. As a result of some serious health problems, I could not make the conference and engage in the discussions. However, I am glad to be able to make some comments on a subset (...) of the papers that the adjudication committee thought should go into this collection. Some excellent papers were not included in the collection because they did not fit the scope of the Asian Journal of Business Ethics . So nothing in my comments should be regarded as any kind of comment on papers not mentioned here. I hope I can add some value to the good work already displayed in these papers. My comments are presented in the order in which I read the papers. (shrink)

Gynaecological self-help, a well-known and historical feminist practice from the Second Wave movements which aims at embodying a radical alternative to traditional reproductive politics, is resurging today in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Drawing on empirical observations and interviews, this article questions the links between feminist memory of self-help, the shaping of nostalgia and the production of a political feminist ‘we’. Born at the end of the 1960s in the United States, feminist self-help travelled internationally and was appropriated differently depending on (...) national contexts. This ‘glorious’ history of self-help and, more importantly, its narrated memory, is central to contemporary European self-help activism, as observed in the three national contexts. Drawing on this insight, this article reveals the active memory-oriented emotional work of self-help activists. It examines the ways in which nostalgia for an imagined and lost past is actively and practically produced and encouraged in social movement practices, and highlights the specificity of the kind of collective feminist identity that it shapes and promotes in contemporary self-help politics. (shrink)

Towards the end of her seminal work on the notion of representation Hanna Pitkin makes the following observation:At the end of the Second World War and during the Nuremberg trials there was much speculation about the war guilt of the German people. [...] Many people might argue the responsibility of the German people even though a Nazi government was not representative. We might agree, however, that in the case of a representative government the responsibility would be more clear-cut.2As Pitkin (...) suggests in this quotation, there is a common underlying assumption, both in academic writings and in popular perceptions of democracy, that a people living under a democratic government is ultimately responsible for that .. (shrink)

This is an important volume of seventeen essays that historicizes observation as a practice, concept and ideal. It belongs to the historiographical tradition of scrutinizing central aspects of the scientific enterprise such as experiments and objectivity that once appeared too self-evident to be probed. The challenge of historicizing such a significant idea is that it has to be a collective enterprise.The volume starts with three essays that provide a chronological survey of the period from 500 to 1800. Katherine (...) Park, covering the period from 500 to 1500, explains how observation for Cicero and Pliny had nothing to do with experiment or systematic investigation, but rather was a collective and largely anonymous process, associated with originary phrases of natural knowledge of a distant past and intelligible even by the illiterate. It was the basis for conjectural knowledge that lacked causal explanation. Observation of celestial events occurred from time to time, but in the context o .. (shrink)

This new translation is the first to be published in a twenty-volume English-language edition of _The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche_, the first complete, critical, and annotated translation of all of Nietzsche's work. The Stanford edition is based on the Colli-Montinari edition, which has received universal praise: "It has revolutionized our understanding of one of the greatest German thinkers"; "Scholars can be confident for the first time of having a trustworthy text." Under the title _Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_, Nietzsche collected four essays (...) published separately between 1873 and 1876: "David Strauss the Confessor and the Writer," "On the Utility and Liability of History for Life," "Schopenhauer as Educator," and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth." The title, newly translated as _Unfashionable Observations_, spells out the common impulse linking these essays: Nietzsche's inimical attitude toward his "time," understood broadly as all the mainstream and popular movements that constituted contemporary European, but especially German, "culture" in the wake of the Prussian military victory over the French in 1871. The _Unfashionable Observations_ are foundational works for Nietzsche's entire philosophy, prefiguring both his characteristic philosophical style and many of the major ideas he would develop in his later writings. This is the first English translation to include Nietzsche's variants to the published text. (shrink)

Dans la Chine de la fin du XVIIe siècle, les missionnaires jésuites français ont importé de Paris à Pékin une méthode de recherche scientifique typiquement française et aussi typiquement académique. Ce début prometteur a subi un infléchissement négatif dans le développement ultérieur des ambitions de la mission dans le champ des activités scientifiques del' Ancien Régime. On analyse ici les différences substantielles qui caractérisent la mission scientifique française jésuite à la fin du XVIIe siècle et au siècle suivant. À travers (...) une étude des éditions parisiennes de la production scientifique française jésuite en provenance de Chine, les Observations (1688, 1692, 1729), est expliqué le déclin de la mission scientifique française jésuite par la dissolution de ses liens avec l'Académie des sciences et par ses difficultés à construire et à maintenir une vision collective et une identité de corps dans l'analyse des phénomènes naturels. (shrink)

Towards the end of her seminal work on the notion of representation Hanna Pitkin makes the following observation:At the end of the Second World War and during the Nuremberg trials there was much speculation about the war guilt of the German people. […] Many people might argue the responsibility of the German people even though a Nazi government was not representative. We might agree, however, that in the case of a representative government the responsibility would be more clear-cut.

In the last few decades, increasing attention has been given to gender issues in urban design. However, research on the urban environment continues to show large gender inequalities, which are especially evident when studying the use and enjoyment of the public space. This study aims to identify predominant patterns of use in public places and to explore the possible existence of traditional gender roles in the urban space. The study uses, three public spaces in the city of Barcelona as a (...) case study, an innovative combination of systematic observation techniques and network analysis procedures. Variables collected by EXOdES, a dedicated software analysis tool for systematic observation, are represented as nodes of a network system and analyzed using network analysis tools. Findings confirmed that, in spite of the progressive consolidation of feminist urbanism, uses in the public realm resulting from traditional gender roles remained explicitly recognizable. Whereas women’s occupation of space was related to playground and resting areas, generally involving care activities concerned with children or elderly people, men were primarily located in resting and sports areas, practicing sports, or participating in leisure activities. These patterns of use were more prone to emerge when users were part of a group than when they were alone. From a gender perspective, a contribution of the study is that it informed about main aspects of the analyzed public spaces reconfirming the existence of traditional roles in society, and the significance of exploring the public space as a key scenario where social features are explicitly exposed. From a methodological perspective, the processing of observational data with network analysis tools proved to be relevant and suitable for dealing with the intricacies of urban place analysis. Compared to more classical approaches and systems, these techniques allowed to identify and interpret complex systems composed of many variables and relationships in a relatively straightforward manner, which turns it into a useful aid for urban designers and architects. (shrink)

Background Clients are invited to play a role in decisions about their care. Collaborative deliberation comprises constructive engagement, recognition of alternative actions, comparative learning, construction and elicitation of preferences and preference integration. Collaborative deliberation between clients and professionals is a process that requires an interest in each other, sharing of views on alternatives and preferences and integrating into decisions. The aim is to gain insight into collaborative deliberation in consultations and the clients’ perception of arranging long-term care. Design A descriptive (...) qualitative study to explore collaborative deliberation in consultations between clients and professionals. Six organisations providing long-term care were included. Data collection of nine clients involved observations of consultation with field notes and audio-records, interviews with clients and professionals shortly and 3–6 months after the consultation and questionnaires to collect background information. The data were analysed by deductive content analysis. Findings Constructive engagement was visible in all consultations. Clients and professionals showed respect, empathy and curiosity towards each other. In most consultations, two or more alternative actions are recognised and discussed. Comparative learning appears to be two sided, the client and the professional learn from each other's knowledge and experiences. Construction and elicitation of preference, and preference integration, seems to be present, but difficult to recognise in all consultations. Discussion/conclusion Although all propositions could be identified, there seems room for improvement in preference elicitation and integration of these preferences in the discussions on courses of action. Assistance seems needed with preference elicitation, both for the clients and for the professional. (shrink)

Most previous works on responsible conduct of research have focused on good practices in laboratory experiments. Because computation now rivals experimentation as a mode of scientific research, we sought to identify the responsibilities of researchers who develop or use computational modeling and simulation. We interviewed nineteen experts to collect examples of ethical issues from their experiences in conducting research with computational models. We gathered their recommendations for guidelines for computational research. Informed by these interviews, we describe the respective professional responsibilities (...) of developers and users of computational models in research. In particular, we examine whether developers should disclose the full computational codes, and we explain how developers and users should minimize harms from improper uses of models. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the practice of anamnesis—the taking of a patient history in preparation for making a diagnosis, as well as the related form of investigation, historia—offers a way to understand the role of medical collections in generating medical knowledge. Anamnesis derives from ancient Greek “recollecting” or “opening of memory,” and “taking a history” from historia, an ancient and early modern epistemic practice of gathering empirical observations from the past and present. Doctors and medical researchers perform, this paper argues, (...) a form of anamnesis when they access collections—of pathological organs, experimental animals, diagnostic slides, samples, and data—and the collections may in turn be seen as constituting institutional and disciplinary memories. It moreover shows that doctors and medical researchers in their work with collections negotiate two ways of organizing observations that are also present in an anamnesis. One way clusters and classifies observations, while the other traces developments and requires significant past observations to understand the present. This double nature plays out in different ways in different historical collections. Last, the paper itself may also be seen as performing an anamnesis: looking for patterns and tracing a development in medical history. It “opens the memory” of medical collection practices, and shows that medicine is past-heavy and that the past plays a central role in modern biomedicine. Anamnesis is thus used as a historiographical stance that seeks to understand present practices of generating knowledge about diseases through an inquiry into the past. (shrink)

Scientists obtain a great deal of the evidence they use by observingnatural and experimentally generated objects and effects. Much of thestandard philosophical literature on this subject comes from20th century logical positivists and empiricists, theirfollowers, and critics who embraced their issues and accepted some oftheir assumptions even as they objected to specific views. Theirdiscussions of observational evidence tend to focus on epistemologicalquestions about its role in theory testing. This entry follows theirlead even though observational evidence also plays important andphilosophically interesting roles (...) in other areas including scientificdiscovery and the application of scientific theories to practicalproblems. (shrink)

In the context of the growing popularity of the ethical consumer movement and the appearance of different types of ethical collective communities, the current article explores the meanings drawn from the participation in Responsible Consumption Cooperatives. In existing research, the overriding focus has been on examining individual ethical consumer behaviour at the expense of advancing our understanding of how ethical consumers behave collectively. Hence, this article examines the meanings derived from participating in ethical consumer groups. A qualitative multi-method approach (...) is adopted to increase the validity of findings. This includes focus groups, in-depth interviews, observation and document analysis. Results show that ethical consumption in a group project offers a greater sense of effectiveness and control when compared to individual actions. Furthermore, these groups facilitate the creation of a social circle and encourage new learning as a result of the social interaction that takes place in the ethical community of the cooperative. (shrink)

We address the problem of observables in generally invariant spacetime theories such as Einstein’s general relativity. Using the refined notion of an event as a “point-coincidence” between scalar fields that completely characterise a spacetime model, we propose a generalisation of the relational local observables that does not require the existence of four everywhere invertible scalar fields. The collection of all point-coincidences forms in generic situations a four-dimensional manifold, that is naturally identified with the physical spacetime.

AimsThis study aimed to investigate barriers in the observation of professional ethics during clinical care from a nursing viewpoint. Also, it examined the association between these barriers and nurse demographic variables.MethodsA descriptive-analytic design was carried out on 207 nurses working in selected hospitals within an urban area of Iran in 2019. Data were collected using a standard questionnaire containing 33 questions that measured barriers to observation of professional ethics. The questionnaire measures three domains of management, environment and individual (...) care.ResultsIn the management dimension, the most important barrier preventing observation of professional ethics was the shortage of personnel. For the environmental dimension, biological changes due to working on the nightshift, and for the individual care dimension, a lack of time were the most important barriers preventing observation of clinical ethics. Findings additionally highlighted a significantly inverse association between barriers to observing professional ethics and the male gender, participating in the ethics workshop and high work-level experiences.ConclusionsIt is suggested that nursing managers in hospitals correct and remove obstacles with careful planning and emphasis on principles and standards of care including environmental and managerial factors and training professional ethics to nurses. (shrink)

Honoring Russell Hardin’s seminal contributions to the study of collective action, this paper describes several collective action problems faced by the citizens of American colonies and states in the years leading up to 1787, and demonstrates how they occasionally and temporarily managed to overcome them. In particular, the paper considers the cooperative or non-cooperative behavior of colonies and states in three arenas: contributions of soldiers and money in wars; participation in the non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption movements directed against (...) Great Britain; and trade relations among the states after independence. I observe that whereas farmers, planters, and artisans were willing to forsake their self-interest, under the influence of quasi-moral or social norms, merchants and politicians were not. Finally, I conclude that cooperation was rooted in the anger and enthusiasm of the first movers, who triggered the conditional cooperation of other citizens, and could easily unravel. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe eyes reveal important social messages, such as emotions and whether a person is aroused and interested or bored and fatigued. A growing body of research has also shown that individuals with large pupils are generally evaluated positively by observers, while those with small pupils are perceived negatively. Here, we examined whether observed pupil size influences approach-avoidance tendencies. Participants performed an Approach-Avoidance Task using faces with large and small pupil sizes. Results showed that pupil size influences the accuracy of arm (...) movements. Specifically, individuals were less prone to approach a face with small pupils than a face with large pupils. Conversely, participants were less prone to avoid a face with large pupils than a face with small pupils. Collectively, these findings suggest that perceivers attend to a facial cue – pupil size – when interacting with others. (shrink)