Developing countries face numerous barriers to conducting effective and efficient ethics reviews of international collaborative research. In addition to potentially overlooking important scientific and ethical considerations, inadequate or insufficiently trained ethics committees may insist on unwarranted changes to protocols that can impair a study's scientific or ethical validity. Moreover, poorly functioning review systems can impose substantial delays on the commencement of research, which needlessly undermine the development of new interventions for urgent medical needs. In response to these concerns, the Drugs (...) for Neglected Diseases Initiative, an independent nonprofit organization founded by a coalition of public sector and international organizations, developed a mechanism to facilitate more effective and efficient host country ethics review for a study of the use of fexinidazole for the treatment of late stage African Trypanosomiasis. The project involved the implementation of a novel ‘pre-review’ process of ethical oversight, conducted by an ad hoc committee of ethics committee representatives from African and European countries, in collaboration with internationally recognized scientific experts. This article examines the process and outcomes of this collaborative process. (shrink)

This article examines two interrelated aspects of Mexican regional music response to the coronavirus crisis in the música huasteca community: the growth of interactive huapango livestreams as a preexisting but newly significant space for informal community gathering and cultural participation at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and the composition of original verses by son huasteco performers addressing the pandemic. Both the livestreams and the newly created coronavirus disease verses reflect critical improvisatory approaches to the pandemic in música huasteca. The (...) interactive livestreams signaled an ad hoc community infrastructure facilitated by social media and an emerging community space fostered by Do-It-Yourself activists. Improvised COVID-related verses presented resonant local and regional themes as a community response to a global crisis. Digital ethnography conducted since March 2020 revealed a regional burst of musical creativity coupled with DIY intentionality, a leveling of access to virtual community spaces, and enhanced digital intimacies established across a wide cultural diaspora in Mexico and the USA. These responses were musically, poetically, and organizationally improvisational, as was the overall outpouring of the son huasteco music inspired by the coronavirus outbreak. Son huasteco is a folk music tradition from the Huasteca, a geo-cultural region spanning the intersection of six states in central Mexico. This study examines a selection of musical responses by discussing improvisational examples in both Spanish and the indigenous language Nahuatl, and in the virtual musical communities of the Huasteca migrant diaspora in digital events such as “Encuentro Virtual de Tríos Huastecos,” the “Huapangos Sin Fronteras” festival and competition, and in the nightly gatherings on social media platforms developed during the pandemic to sustain the Huastecan cultural expression. These phenomena have served as vibrant points of transnational connection and identity in a time where physical gatherings were untenable. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Intentionalität aus semiotischer Sicht. Peirceanische PerspektivenChristian StrubStefan Kappner Intentionalität aus semiotischer Sicht. Peirceanische Perspektiven. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter2004, ISBN 3–11-018288–2, 432 pp.1. Problem focusKappner intended only partially a Peirce-interpretation; he attempts to think further along with Peirce, and he succeeds as well. The first chapter serves as a sketch of the problem of intentionality from a historical perspective, starting from Brentano. Kappner formulates the problem correctly by stating (...) that from the contemporary standpoint on the one hand every sort of methodological mind—body dualism is obsolete, because the mainstream of research has adopted a methodological physicalism along with an anti-foundationalistic epistemology; yet on the other hand our common sense view of psychic and thus also of intentional phenomena, which is inclined towards just such a dualism, must be taken into consideration. The systematic task thus consists in describing the particular quality of psychic phenomena in such a manner that this description "is compatible with methodological naturalism" (47). Kappner's main concern is thus the attempt to anchor the intentionality of thoughts and of human consciousness in more primitive forms of intentionality which are already exhibited by non-psychic goal-oriented natural processes. The solution to this task must accomplish two things: firstly, Kappner must justify the distinction between three types of "carriers" of "intentionality": concrete objects which intentionally contain an object in themselves, i.e. signs (381f.): Ch. 7; organisms which are capable of producing "inner signs for the simulation of external processes" (cf. 320–326: insightful behavior) (382f): Ch. 8; organisms which are capable of understanding this production as their own (self-consciousness) (383): Ch. 9. I will call this distinction the "internal differentiation thesis" (IDT). Secondly, Kappner must demonstrate that these three types of carriers are founded in one another. Over and above this, Kappner asserts that sign-intentionality is founded in something which he (with Arno Ros, 263, cf. 144) calls "quasi-intentionality" (Ch. 6). I will call this the "founding thesis" (FT). Obviously FT presupposes IDT, but not vice versa. Kappner claims to have successfully concluded such an ambitious naturalization program (342). Even when one [End Page 439] does not always agree with the partial solutions of Kappner, reading the book is definitely rewarding, as it shows in what a precisely differentiated manner one can reflect on a central problem of the "philosophy of mind" using Peirce's array of semiotic instruments.The reader is, naturally, astonished to hear the name Peirce in the context of a program for the naturalization of intentionality, for Peirce himself never used the concepts of "intention" and "intentionality" in the sense in which Brentano used them (47, 66), and himself clearly espoused an antifoundationalism and a methodological monism—but never a methodological naturalism; rather its opposite, namely a methodological idealism which can only conceive of physical properties as derived from psychic properties (synechism; 50–54). The reader is all the more eager to see how Kappner will prove his thesis to the effect that Peirce nevertheless has made a systematic contribution to the solution of the problem of intentionality under contemporary conditions. The decisive methodological step of Kappner (60) in Ch. 2 consists in declaring Peirce's metaphysics to be independent of his epistemic realism, which holds reality to be independent of the subject's mode of access to this reality. It is first at the end of the work that Kappner can precisely formulate what he means by Peircean naturalism: "For [Peirce], it is not primarily a question of how in (mere) thought relations to real things can be produced [as it is for Brentano and Husserl], but rather the opposite, namely how the progressive distancing of humans from the linguistic or mentally denoted object was and is possible [ellipsis]. In my opinion Peirce's approach can above all for this reason be characterized as 'naturalistic'" (376). This is plausible—of course, only under the assumption (not acknowledged as such by Kappner) that something like a "protodistancing" from the world can already be ascertained in the realm of quasi-intentionality. Nevertheless, Kappner employs two different concepts of "naturalistic": a naturalistic theory of intentionality means (1... (shrink)

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias,1 Abelard distinguishes the form of an expression2 (oratio) from what it says, that is, its content. The content of an expression is its understanding (intellectus). This distinction is surely the most well-known and central idea in Abelard’s commentary. It provides him with the opportunity to distinguish statements (enuntiationes) from other kinds of expressions without implying a diference in their content, since the ability of a statement to signify something true or false (verum vel (...) falsum)3 cannot be found in its content. More precisely, Abelard distinguishes statements both from complete expressions (orationes perfectae) that are not statements but rather questions, requests, commands, etc. and from incomplete expressions, that is, mere word strings (orationes imperfectae), such as homo albus. These kinds of expressions, according to Abelard, do not differ in the understanding they present but in the way they present it. (shrink)

Pazifismus polarisiert: Während die einen ihn für unverantwortlich und gefährlich halten, sehen andere in ihm den Schlüssel zu einer friedlichen Welt. 16 Originalbeiträge namhafter Autor/innen aus Philosophie, Theologie und Friedenspolitik beleuchten im vorliegenden Sammelband die pazifistische Position im Detail: Ist der Pazifismus heute noch plausibel? Darf militärische Gewalt aus moralischer Sicht kategorisch abgelehnt werden? Kann eine pazifistische Position legitimiert werden?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Intentionalität aus semiotischer Sicht. Peirceanische PerspektivenChristian StrubStefan Kappner Intentionalität aus semiotischer Sicht. Peirceanische Perspektiven. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter2004, ISBN 3–11-018288–2, 432 pp.1. Problem focusKappner intended only partially a Peirce-interpretation; he attempts to think further along with Peirce, and he succeeds as well. The first chapter serves as a sketch of the problem of intentionality from a historical perspective, starting from Brentano. Kappner formulates the problem correctly by stating (...) that from the contemporary standpoint on the one hand every sort of methodological mind—body dualism is obsolete, because the mainstream of research has adopted a methodological physicalism along with an anti-foundationalistic epistemology; yet on the other hand our common sense view of psychic and thus also of intentional phenomena, which is inclined towards just such a dualism, must be taken into consideration. The systematic task thus consists in describing the particular quality of psychic phenomena in such a manner that this description "is compatible with methodological naturalism" (47). Kappner's main concern is thus the attempt to anchor the intentionality of thoughts and of human consciousness in more primitive forms of intentionality which are already exhibited by non-psychic goal-oriented natural processes. The solution to this task must accomplish two things: firstly, Kappner must justify the distinction between three types of "carriers" of "intentionality": concrete objects which intentionally contain an object in themselves, i.e. signs (381f.): Ch. 7; organisms which are capable of producing "inner signs for the simulation of external processes" (cf. 320–326: insightful behavior) (382f): Ch. 8; organisms which are capable of understanding this production as their own (self-consciousness) (383): Ch. 9. I will call this distinction the "internal differentiation thesis" (IDT). Secondly, Kappner must demonstrate that these three types of carriers are founded in one another. Over and above this, Kappner asserts that sign-intentionality is founded in something which he (with Arno Ros, 263, cf. 144) calls "quasi-intentionality" (Ch. 6). I will call this the "founding thesis" (FT). Obviously FT presupposes IDT, but not vice versa. Kappner claims to have successfully concluded such an ambitious naturalization program (342). Even when one [End Page 439] does not always agree with the partial solutions of Kappner, reading the book is definitely rewarding, as it shows in what a precisely differentiated manner one can reflect on a central problem of the "philosophy of mind" using Peirce's array of semiotic instruments.The reader is, naturally, astonished to hear the name Peirce in the context of a program for the naturalization of intentionality, for Peirce himself never used the concepts of "intention" and "intentionality" in the sense in which Brentano used them (47, 66), and himself clearly espoused an antifoundationalism and a methodological monism—but never a methodological naturalism; rather its opposite, namely a methodological idealism which can only conceive of physical properties as derived from psychic properties (synechism; 50–54). The reader is all the more eager to see how Kappner will prove his thesis to the effect that Peirce nevertheless has made a systematic contribution to the solution of the problem of intentionality under contemporary conditions. The decisive methodological step of Kappner (60) in Ch. 2 consists in declaring Peirce's metaphysics to be independent of his epistemic realism, which holds reality to be independent of the subject's mode of access to this reality. It is first at the end of the work that Kappner can precisely formulate what he means by Peircean naturalism: "For [Peirce], it is not primarily a question of how in (mere) thought relations to real things can be produced [as it is for Brentano and Husserl], but rather the opposite, namely how the progressive distancing of humans from the linguistic or mentally denoted object was and is possible [ellipsis]. In my opinion Peirce's approach can above all for this reason be characterized as 'naturalistic'" (376). This is plausible—of course, only under the assumption (not acknowledged as such by Kappner) that something like a "protodistancing" from the world can already be ascertained in the realm of quasi-intentionality. Nevertheless, Kappner employs two different concepts of "naturalistic": a naturalistic theory of intentionality means (1... (shrink)

"First published by Oxford University Press, 1916."--Title page verso.

This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi articulates a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton’s translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than ever (...) before. Named for its purported author, the Xunzi has long been neglected compared to works such as the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. Yet interest in the Xunzi has grown in recent decades, and the text presents a much more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius. In one famous, explicit contrast to them, the Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. However, it also allows that people can become good through rituals and institutions established by earlier sages. Indeed, the main purpose of the Xunzi is to urge people to become as good as possible, both for their own sakes and for the sake of peace and order in the world. In this edition, key terms are consistently translated to aid understanding and line numbers are provided for easy reference. Other features include a concise introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, brief explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

This incisive book deals with the use of the criminal law to enforce morality, in particular sexual morality, a subject of particular interest and importance since the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957. Professor Hart first considers John Stuart Mill's famous declaration: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community is to prevent harm to others." During the last hundred years this doctrine has twice been sharply challenged by two great (...) lawyers: Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the great Victorian judge and historian of the common law, and Lord Devlin, who both argue that the use of the criminal law to enforce morality is justified. The author examines their arguments in some detail, and sets out to demonstrate that they fail to recognize distinction of vital importance for legal and political theory, and that they espouse a conception of the function of legal punishment that few would now share. (shrink)

A classic exposition of Kant's ethical thought.

Engelhardt invites readers to understand what it means to live in a world after God, where questions of sin and virtue have been replaced with life-and-death-style choices. After God provides a dark prophetic vision. But there is still hope. As Engelhardt argues, In this culture, children now grow up apart from and defended against a recognition of the God Who lives. They are nurtured in a social fabric that is structured so as to avoid a recognition of, much less an (...) encounter with, God. Nevertheless... a traditional Christianity has endured, even though its morality and bioethics have become ever more strongly counter-cultural. The source of this traditional Christian otherness over against the surrounding post-theistic culture lies in the origins of Christianity itself, in the Christianity of the Apostles and the Fathers, namely, in Orthodox Christianity. Against the tenor of the times, disregarding the animus to set traditional Christianity aside, and despite heretics prominent within its fold, Orthodox Christianity remains a light in a world after God. --! From back cover. (shrink)

The paper defends the position that phenomenological interviews can provide a rich source of knowledge and that they are in no principled way less reliable or less valid than quantitative or experimental methods in general. It responds to several skeptic objections such as those raised against introspection, those targeting the unreliability of episodic memory, and those claiming that interviews cannot address the psychological, cognitive and biological correlates of experience. It argues that the skeptic must either heed the methodological and epistemological (...) justification of the phenomenological interview provided, or embrace a more fundamental skepticism, a “deep mistrust”, in which scientific discourse can have no recourse to conscious processes as explananda, with ensuing dire consequences for our conception of science. (shrink)