A bioethics of biotechnology -- Biotechnology and bioethics -- The global regulatory pathways of biologies -- Biotechnology in the court of law -- Bioengineering and the idea of precision medicine -- Policy, bioethics and bioengineering.

Behaving in an ethical manner is part of the social responsibility of a business. How employees perceive the business operates often drives how they will treat customers. If employees think their organization is ethical they are more likely to behave in an ethical manner themselves. The study focuses on the ethics of banking organizations in Nigeria using a multidimensional framework developed from prior research. The data were analyzed to test the robustness of the dimensions and evaluate whether the framework applies (...) to an African business setting. The results support the dimensional structure and the hypothesized relationships between the dimensions. (shrink)

an has been the concern of various philosophical schools of thought and can be said as the center of philosophical inquiry. However, not all of the concerns of philosophy points to defend man in his external and internal dimensions. In Karol Wojtyla’s philosophy of the Human Person, he interprets man as not being solely as a “rational animal.” He offers instead an understanding of man viewing his innerness as a person manifested not only by his existence, but more importantly through (...) his actions. In this paper, the fundamental concepts of Wojtyla’s Human Person are precisely enumerated for a clear understanding of who a Human Person is. This paper aims to interpret man in his two-fold character, as a Person and as a Subject using Karol Wojtyla’s Personalism. In this task, one must be noted that Wojtyla employs Thomism and Phenomenology in his thought. In the discussion, I will lay down the primary distinction between these two concepts for a better understanding of the anthropological structure of man, his innerness and exteriority. The discussion has three divisions, the first part discusses the two different ways of understanding Human Being; the second part discusses the concept of Person; and the third part discusses the Human Subject. (shrink)

We assessed how synchronous speech listening and lipreading affects speech recognition in acoustic noise. In simple audiovisual perceptual tasks, inverse effectiveness is often observed, which holds that the weaker the unimodal stimuli, or the poorer their signal-to-noise ratio, the stronger the audiovisual benefit. So far, however, inverse effectiveness has not been demonstrated for complex audiovisual speech stimuli. Here we assess whether this multisensory integration effect can also be observed for the recognizability of spoken words. To that end, we presented audiovisual (...) sentences to 18 native-Dutch normal-hearing participants, who had to identify the spoken words from a finite list. Speech-recognition performance was determined for auditory-only, visual-only (lipreading) and auditory-visual conditions. To modulate acoustic task difficulty, we systematically varied the auditory signal-to-noise ratio. In line with a commonly-observed multisensory enhancement on speech recognition, audiovisual words were more easily recognized than auditory-only words (recognition thresholds of -15 dB and -12 dB, respectively). We here show that the difficulty of recognizing a particular word, either acoustically or visually, determines the occurrence of inverse effectiveness in audiovisual word integration. Thus, words that are better heard or recognized through lipreading, benefit less from bimodal presentation. Audiovisual performance at the lowest acoustic signal-to-noise ratios (45%) fell below the visual recognition rates (60%), reflecting an actual deterioration of lipreading in the presence of excessive acoustic noise. This suggests that the brain may adopt a strategy in which attention has to be divided between listening and lipreading. (shrink)

Background Speech understanding may rely not only on auditory, but also on visual information. Non-invasive functional neuroimaging techniques can expose the neural processes underlying the integration of multisensory processes required for speech understanding in humans. Nevertheless, noise (from fMRI) limits the usefulness in auditory experiments, and electromagnetic artefacts caused by electronic implants worn by subjects can severely distort the scans (EEG, fMRI). Therefore, we assessed audio-visual activation of temporal cortex with a silent, optical neuroimaging technique: functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Methods (...) We studied temporal cortical activation as represented by concentration changes of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin in four, easy-to-apply fNIRS optical channels of 33 normal-hearing adult subjects and 5 post-lingually deaf cochlear implant (CI) users in response to supra-threshold unisensory auditory and visual, as well as to congruent auditory-visual speech stimuli. Results Activation effects were not visible from single fNIRS channels. However, by discounting physiological noise through reference channel subtraction, auditory, visual and audiovisual speech stimuli evoked concentration changes for all sensory modalities in both cohorts (p<0.001). Auditory stimulation evoked larger concentration changes than visual stimuli (p<0.001). A saturation effect was observed for the audiovisual condition. Conclusions Physiological, systemic noise can be removed from fNIRS signals by reference channel subtraction. The observed multisensory enhancement of an auditory cortical channel can be plausibly described by a simple addition of the auditory and visual signals with saturation. (shrink)

The extant literature on comparative Corporate Social Responsibility often assumes functioning and enabling institutional arrangements, such as strong government, market and civil society, as a necessary condition for responsible business practices. Setting aside this dominant assumption and drawing insights from a case study of Fidelity Bank, Nigeria, we explore why and how firms still pursue and enact responsible business practices in what could be described as challenging and non-enabling institutional contexts for CSR. Our findings suggest that responsible business practices in (...) such contexts are often anchored on some CSR adaptive mechanisms. These mechanisms uniquely complement themselves and inform CSR strategies. The CSR adaptive mechanisms and strategies, in combination and in complementarity, then act as an institutional buffer, which enables firms to successfully engage in responsible practices irrespective of their weak institutional settings. We leverage this understanding to contribute to CSR in developing economies, often characterised by challenging and non-enabling institutional contexts. The research, policy and practice implications are also discussed. (shrink)

Levinas on the possibility and need for humanist ethics In Humanism of the Other, Emmanuel Levinas argues that it is not only possible but of the highest exigency to understand one's humanity through the humanity of others. In paperback for the first time, Levinas's work here is based in a new appreciation for ethics and takes new distances from phenomenology, idealism, and skepticism to rehabilitate humanism and restore its promises. Painfully aware of the long history of dehumanization that reached (...) its apotheosis in Hitler and Nazism, Levinas does not underestimate the difficulty of reconciling oneself with another. The humanity of the human, Levinas argues, is not discoverable through mathematics, rational metaphysics, or introspection. Rather, it is found in the recognition that the other person comes first, that the suffering and mortality of others are the obligations and morality of the self. (shrink)

BackgroundCommunity Advisory Boards (CAB) have become essential organs of involving communities in HIV clinical trials especially in developing countries. However, limited empirical evidence exists on the role of CABs in low and middle-income countries including Tanzania. This study aims at exploring the role of CABs in community-based HIV clinical trials conducted in Tanzania.MethodologyWe adopted a phenomenological approach to purposefully select HIV clinical trial stakeholders. These included CAB members, researchers and Institutional Review Board (IRB) members in Tanzania. We conducted In-depth Interviews (...) (IDIs) with ten participants and three Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with eighteen participants. The data were thematically analyzed with the aid of MAXQDA software version 20.2.1.ResultsThe findings indicate that at every stage of implementation of a community-based HIV clinical trial, a functioning CAB is important for its success. This importance is based on contextualization of the informed consent process and protocol, managing rumours in the community, weighing trial risks and benefits, sensitizing the community, assisting participant recruitment, tracing and retention. However, being perceived as financial beneficiaries than community representatives emerged as a challenge to CAB members. ConclusionThe study empirically indicates the need for functioning CABs in every stage of implementation of community-based HIV clinical trials. The roles of which are interwoven in serving research goals and protecting the interests of the community and that of trial participants. (shrink)

When the Matrix trilogy was published in the mid-1980s, it introduced to mass culture a number of post-human tropes about the conscious machines that have haunted our collective imaginaries ever since. This volume explores the social representations and significance of technological developments - especially AI and human enhancement - that have started to transform our human agency. It uses these developments to revisit theories of the human mind and its essential characteristics: a first person perspective, concerns and reflexivity. It looks (...) at how the smart machines are used as agents of change in the basic institutions and organisations that hold contemporary societies together: for example in the family and the household, in commercial corporations, in health institutions, or in the military. Its main purpose it to enrich the ongoing public discussion of the social and political implications of the smart machines by looking at the extent to which they further digitalize and bureaucratize the world, in particular by asking whether they are used to develop techno-totalitarian societies that corrode normativity and solidarity. talize and bureaucratize the world, in particular by asking whether they are used to develop techno-totalitarian societies that corrode normativity and solidarity. (shrink)

Qui connaît aujourd'hui le philosophe français Emmanuel Mounier et sa révolution personnaliste? Les pages de cet ouvrage lui rendent hommage et donnent le goût de découvrir son extraordinaire aventure en faveur de l'homme. Visionnaire et engagé, sa brève et intense existence (1905-1950) fut consacrée à remettre la Personne au centre de la pensée et de l'agir dans une crise historique sans précédent. L'écriture vive et sensible d'Emannuel Pic et l'étonnante recherche graphique de Fred Bourguignon accompagnent le fondateur de la (...) revue Esprit dans la contemplation et la traversée d'un surprenant mur blanc. "J'ai souhaité à travers ce bref récit rendre aimable Emmanuel Mounier à une nouvelle génération d'hommes et de femmes confrontés à des questions anthropologiques inédites. Pour y parvenir, je n'ai pas voulu faire une nouvelle étude biographique car d'autres l'ont fait de merveilleuses manières avant moi (Domenach, Lurol). Il s'agit davantage d'un récit où défilent les moments clés de la vie du philosophe personnaliste et la progression de sa pensée sur la personne. Ainsi progressivement émerge sa vision de la personne en relation à travers les multiples visages qui l'ont poussé à se libérer et à s'engager contre tout ce qui peut réduire et contraindre la sublime vocation des êtres humains à expérimenter de vraies communions. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1996) has exerted a profound influence on 20th-century continental philosophy. This anthology, including Levinas's key philosophical texts over a period of more than forty years, provides an ideal introduction to his thought and offers insights into his most innovative ideas. Five of the ten essays presented here appear in English for the first time. An introduction by Adriaan Peperzak outlines Levinas's philosophical development and the basic themes of his writings. Each essay is accompanied by a brief introduction (...) and notes. This collection is an ideal text for students of philosophy concerned with understanding and assessing the work of this major philosopher. (shrink)

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model.Empirical studies show (...) that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences.Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians’ behaviors. (shrink)

Despite the proliferation of studies on corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is a lack of consensus and a cardinal methodological base for research on the quality of CSR communication. Over the decades, studies in this space have remained conflicting, unintegrated, and sometimes overlapping. Drawing on semiotics—a linguistic-based theoretical and analytical tool, our article explores an alternative perspective to evaluating the quality and reliability of sustainability reports. Our article advances CSR communication research by introducing a theoretical-cum-methodological perspective which provides unique insights (...) into how to evaluate the quality of CSR communication. Particularly, we illustrate the application of our proposed methodology on selected U.K. FTSE 100 companies. Our two-phased analysis employed the Greimas Canonical Narrative Schema and the Semiotic Square of Veridiction in drawing meanings from selected sustainability/csr reports. In addition, we present a distinctive CSR report quality model capable of guiding policy makers and firms in designing sustainability/csr reporting standards. (shrink)

The ecology of fear has become a common rhetoric in efforts to support climate mitigation. The thesis of the collapse is an extreme version, asserting the inevitable collapse of the world. Fear, then, becomes the ultimate emotion for spurring action. In this article, drawing on the work of the pragmatist John Dewey, we show that fear is an ambiguous emotion. Dewey stressed the quality of an emotion. Following his reasoning, this article draws a distinction between intense and moderate fear. Intense (...) fear annihilates action, while moderate fear fulfils the conditions for an emotion of quality (in the Deweyan sense), which enables action. For this reason, the thesis of the collapse must be rejected, while an ecology of fear, drawing on moderate fear, may be maintained. (shrink)

The history of women has been defined by a world enmeshed in woes, frustration, oppression, maltreatment and inequalities. Feminism as a philosophy of change sought to fight, end and change this woeful scenario of women that denied their self respect, dignity and led to a loss of self confidence. Fundamentally, feminist philosophy sought for explanations and justifications why women were denied a voice and why they were historically not treated as coequals of men. The basis of inequality is historically rooted (...) in cultural and philosophical falsities that were not evidenced based but were used to justify oppression against women. The Universal Declaration of human rights gave women and the world the platform that empowered them with rights and led to fresh processes that sought to end oppression and their underdevelopment inspired by inequality, iniquities, denial of opportunities for growth and empowerment. The millennium development goal of ending inequality and oppression against women should achieve equality and women’s empowerment in Africa. Since the declaration of the MDGS, considerable gains had been made inAfricabut challenges and problems are still identified in the areas of cultural inequality complicated by the weakness of the major governance institutions and corruption. Other challenges centre on women’s lack of genuine empowerment, violence against women, trafficking in women, denial of human rights, lack of participation in policy and governance. Since empowerment is the key to achieving mainstreaming and gender equality, this paper seeks to redefine the concept of empowering women as the platform to ending inequality, social injustice and achieving equality in the context of the unique challenges of underdevelopment facingAfrica. It will identify the policy implications of establishing empowerment structures that address multiple challenges facing gender inequality and how these structures will assist in building the necessary feminine human resources that will make women as partners of sustainable growth and development after 2015. (shrink)

This study investigates the pivotal policy question of whether a firm’s corporate governance influences its political spending disclosures. Using a sample of S&P 500 firms from 2011 to 2019, we find empirical evidence that a board of directors’ monitoring and resource provision roles affect a firm’s political spending disclosure. Extending agency theory-driven expectations, we provide evidence that measures of a board’s monitoring role such as female monitoring directors, shorter board tenure, audit committee size, audit committee meetings, and audit committee education (...) enhance a firm’s political spending disclosures. Second, drawing from resource dependence theory and examining a board’s resource provisions, we find evidence that female advisory directors, CEO duality, additional directorships, and audit committee characteristics (i.e., size, number of meetings, age, and education) promote political spending disclosures. The study contributes to corporate governance and corporate political activity literatures by outlining different types of governance that may drive a firm’s political spending disclosures, a key component of a firm’s political responsibility. (shrink)

Quantum cognition research applies abstract, mathematical principles of quantum theory to inquiries in cognitive science. It differs fundamentally from alternative speculations about quantum brain processes. This topic presents new developments within this research program. In the introduction to this topic, we try to answer three questions: Why apply quantum concepts to human cognition? How is quantum cognitive modeling different from traditional cognitive modeling? What cognitive processes have been modeled using a quantum account? In addition, a brief introduction to quantum probability (...) theory and a concrete example is provided to illustrate how a quantum cognitive model can be developed to explain paradoxical empirical findings in psychological literature. (shrink)

Psychological assessment has long been reported as a key component of clinical psychology. This paper examined and shed light on the complexities surrounding the clinical significance of therapeutic approach to treatment Planning. To achieve this objective, the paper searched and used the PsycINFO and PubMed databases and the reference sections of chapters and journal articles to analysed the underlying themes: 1) a strong basis for the usage of therapeutic approach to psychological assessment in treatment plans, 2) explained the conceptual meaning (...) of clinical significant change in therapeutic assessment, 3) used initial theory to explain the therapeutic mechanisms of change in clinical practice, 4) analysed the empirically documenting clinically significant change in therapeutic assessment. Finally, the study suggested that though therapeutic assessment is not sufficient for the systematic study of psychotherapy outcome and process, it is still consistent with both the lay-man and professional expectations regarding treatment outcome and also provides a precise method for classifying clients as “changed” or “unchanged” on the basis of clinical significance criteria. (shrink)

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model. Empirical studies (...) show that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences. Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians' behaviors. (shrink)

The combination of increased availability of large amounts of fine-grained human behavioral data and advances in machine learning is presiding over a growing reliance on algorithms to address complex societal problems. Algorithmic decision-making processes might lead to more objective and thus potentially fairer decisions than those made by humans who may be influenced by greed, prejudice, fatigue, or hunger. However, algorithmic decision-making has been criticized for its potential to enhance discrimination, information and power asymmetry, and opacity. In this paper, we (...) provide an overview of available technical solutions to enhance fairness, accountability, and transparency in algorithmic decision-making. We also highlight the criticality and urgency to engage multi-disciplinary teams of researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, and citizens to co-develop, deploy, and evaluate in the real-world algorithmic decision-making processes designed to maximize fairness and transparency. In doing so, we describe the Open Algortihms project as a step towards realizing the vision of a world where data and algorithms are used as lenses and levers in support of democracy and development. (shrink)

This volume includes a target paper, taking up the challenge to revive, within a modern (formal) framework, a medieval solution to the Liar Paradox which did ...

We propose that corporations should be subject to a legal obligation to identify and internalise their social costs or negative externalities. Our proposal reframes corporate social responsibility as obligated internalisation of social costs, and relies on reflexive governance through mandated hybrid fora. We argue that our approach advances theory, as well as practice and policy, by building on and going beyond prior attempts to address social costs, such as prescriptive government regulation, Coasian bargaining and political CSR.

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

Présentation Le dossier de la soutenance de thèse d’Emmanuel Levinas tel qu’il se trouve dans les archives déposées à l’IMEC contient des textes préparés à l’avance, notamment l’intervention initiale d’Emmanuel Levinas pour la présentation de son travail, mais également des réponses à partir du rapport de Gabriel Marcel reçu avant la soutenance. Il y a sans doute également des textes écrits au moment même de la soutenance. Tels qu’il...

The dissociation Block provides between phenomenal and access consciousness (P-consciousness and A-consciousness) captures much of our intuition about conscious experience. However, it raises a major methodological puzzle, and is not uniquely supported by the empirical evidence. We provide an alternative interpretation based on the notion of levels of representation and partial awareness.

We argue that formal linguistic theory, properly extended, can provide a unifying framework for diverse phenomena beyond traditional linguistic objects. We display applications to pictorial meanings, visual narratives, music, dance, animal communication, and, more abstractly, to logical and non-logical concepts in the ‘language of thought’ and reasoning. In many of these cases, a careful analysis reveals that classic linguistic notions are pervasive across these domains, such as for instance the constituency (or grouping) core principle of syntax, the use of logical (...) variables (for object tracking), or the variety of inference types investigated in semantics/pragmatics. The aim of this overview is to show how the application of formal linguistic concepts and methodology to non-linguistic objects yields non-trivial insights, thus opening the possibility of a general, precise theory of signs. (An appendix, found in the online supplements to this article, surveys applications of Super Linguistics to animal communication.). (shrink)

We present in this article a new logical system inspired from linear logic. This system is designed in order to express causality and dynamism. The cut elimination theorem holds for this logic. Examples of applications are given.

In this paper, we discuss challenges associated with implementing a policy for Ancillary Care (AC) for related and unrelated (serious) adverse events during an Ebola vaccine trial conducted in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Conducting clinical trials in resourceconstrained settings can raise context-related challenges that have implications for study participants’ health and wellbeing. During the Ebola vaccine study, three participants were injured in road traffic accidents, but there were unexpected difficulties when trying to apply the (...) AC policy. First, because of the nature of the adverse events, the insurer refused to cover the costs. Second, the AC policy did not address treatments by traditional medicine, even though traditional medicines are frequently used and highly trusted in the study community. This highlighted a contrast between the researchers’ well-intentioned AC approach and the participants’ legitimate preferences. The way in which researchers should address their responsibility to provide AC is not straightforward; it requires contextualization. Our experience highlights the importance of involving community representatives and the local ethics committee to ensure development of an AC policy that is culturally and ethically appropriate. Additionally, the insurance contract should clearly stipulate which adverse events are linked to the trial participation, and thus eligible for coverage, to avoid controversies when claims are made. (shrink)

Things we can say, and the ways in which we can say them, compete with one another. And this has consequences: words we decide not to pronounce have critical effects on the messages we end up conveying. For instance, in saying Chris is a good teacher, we may convey that Chris is not an amazing teacher. How this happens is an unsolvable problem, unless a theory of alternatives indicates what counts, among all the things that have not been pronounced. It (...) is sometimes assumed, explicitly or implicitly, that any word counts, as long as that word could have replaced one that was actually pronounced. We review arguments for going beyond this powerful idea. In doing so, we argue that the level of words is not the right level of analysis for alternatives. Instead, we capitalize on recent conceptual and associated methodological advances within the study of the so-called “language of thought” to reopen the problem from a new perspective. Specifically, we provide theoretical and experimental arguments that the relation between alternatives and words may be indirect, and that alternatives are not merely linguistic objects in the traditional sense. Rather, we propose that competition in language is significantly determined by general reasoning preferences, or thought preferences. We propose that such non-linguistic preferences can be measured and that these measures can be used to explain linguistic competition, non-linguistically, and more in depth. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

Levinas seamlessly unites philosophy and religion via ethics. By doing so he satisfies philosophy's quest for justification by finding it neither in epistemology nor aesthetics (nor in an escapist "fundamentalism") but in the responsibility of each person for each other and for all others. That is to say, the "ground" of meaning emerges neither in intellect nor imagination but in the moral responsibilities one person has for another and, beyond these already infinite obligations, in the justice - law and equality (...) - that such responsibilities require and engender. All of this is at the same time a consistent expression, indeed a profoundly mature expression of the ethical monotheist vision of traditional rabbinic Judaism and of non-mythological religious consciousness more generally. /// O pensamento de Emmanuel Levinas induz uma união perfeita entre Filosofia e Religião mediante a Ética. Nesta medida, o filósofo dá resposta à pergunta da Filosofia pela sua própria justificação, justificação essa que ele não encontra nem na epistemologia nem na estética (nem em qualquer forma de escapismo fundamentalista), mas na responsabilidade de cada pessoa por cada um e por todos. Or a isto equivale a dizerque o "fundamento" para o sentido não emerge nem do intelecto nem da imaginação, mas sim da responsabilidade moral que nos obriga a cada um diante dos outros e, para lá destas obrigações infinitas, nos compromete com a justiça - representada no princípio da legalidade e da equidade - requerida e engendrada por essas mesmas responsabilidades. Tudo isto, para o autor, é ao mesmo tempo expressão consistente, de facto, uma expressão profundamente madura da visão ética monoteísta do Judaísmo rabínico e, de uma forma mais geral, de toda a forma de consciência religiosa não mitológica. (shrink)

Research on the influence of industry on chemical regulation has mostly been conducted within the framework of the production of ignorance. This special issue extends this research by looking at how industry asserts its interests––not just in the scientific sphere but also at other stages of policy-making and regulatory process––with a specific focus on the types of tools or instruments industry has used. Bringing together sociologists and historians specialized in Science and Technology Studies, the articles of the special issue study (...) the arenas in which instruments and practical guidelines for public policy are negotiated or used. The aim is to observe the devices in the making or in action, from the selection of actors to the production of thresholds, criteria, and other technical regulations. The introduction highlights how industry influence on expertise and regulation is undoubtedly far more pervasive and multifarious than has been conceptualized to date by social scientists. Putting this issue back at the heart of both the STS and social sciences research agendas is increasingly urgent and could lead to new inquiries able to highlight these logics even more widely, using fresh empirical examples. (shrink)

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

We employ a frequency-dependent asymmetric and causality analysis to investigate the connectedness between gold and cryptocurrencies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, the variational mode decomposition-based quantile regression is utilised. Findings from the study divulge that the variational mode functions at the lower quantiles are mostly significant and negative indicating that gold acts as a safe haven, a diversifier at most market conditions with insignificant coefficients, and a hedge at normal market conditions for most cryptocurrencies at various investment horizons. Particularly, hedging (...) benefits mostly occur in the short- and medium-term for Bitcoin and Ripple, as well as Bitcoin and Dogecoin in the long-term with gold. This implies that there is high persistence in the hedging properties of gold with Bitcoin, followed by Ripple. We notice more significant relationship between gold and some cryptocurrencies in the long-term of the COVID-19 pandemic relative to the medium-term emphasising the delayed responses of prices to information. Investors are recommended to be observant and mindful of investing in these markets due to the different dynamics. (shrink)

The Covid‐19 pandemic has sparked rapid and voluminous production of bioethics commentary in popular media and academic publications. Many of the discussions are new twists on an old theme: how to fairly allocate scarce medical resources, such as ventilators and intensive care unit beds. In this essay, we do not add another allocation scheme to the growing pile, partly out of appreciation that such schemes should be products of inclusive and transparent community engagement and partly out of recognition of their (...) limited utility for physicians working in the field. Instead, we make the more modest claim that context matters when making such decisions and, more specifically, that recommendations from high‐income countries about fair allocation during Covid‐19 should not be cut and pasted into low‐income settings. We offer a few examples of why seemingly universal, well‐intentioned ethical recommendations could have adverse consequences if unreflectively applied in sub‐Saharan Africa. (shrink)

In recent years, the methods of formal semantics and pragmatics have been fruitfully applied to the analysis of primate communication systems. Most analyses therein appeal to a division of labor between semantics and pragmatics which has the following three features: calls are given referential meanings, some calls have a general meaning, and the meanings of calls in context are enriched by competition with more informative calls, along the lines of scalar implicatures. In this paper, we develop highly simplified models to (...) independently assess the conditions under which such features would emerge. After identifying a sufficient condition for, we find a range of conditions under which and are not evolutionarily stable, and discuss the consequences for both modeling and empirical work. (shrink)