In this article, we explore the learning of newcomers in a religious community through a micro-sociological approach, making use of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s (1991) notion of “legitimate peripheral participation” to conceptualize initial stages of inclusion and involvement in social practice. Our case study concerns Orthodox Christianity and is based on material gathered through fieldwork in a course targeting potential new members organized by a Finnish Orthodox parish. In the analysis, we inquire into how beginners learn skilful participation in (...) Orthodox liturgical life, and specifically embodied ritual conduct. This learning takes place primarily through participation in real-life divine services. The article highlights challenges faced by beginners in acquiring the embodied repertoire of Orthodox ritual, including adapting to the artistic use of ritual gestures, and negotiating the meanings produced through them. Furthermore, it also illustrates how nuanced dynamics between newcomers and old-timers influence the learning process. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, I propose a deconstructive reading of Gutmann and Thompson’s theory of deliberative democracy. The deconstructive reading starts from their concept of provisionality, and I argue that provisionality has consequences beyond those admitted by Gutmann and Thompson. While provisionality is an essential part of Gutmann and Thompson’s theory of deliberative democracy, it also dislocates the principles and distinctions on which their theory rests. Although Gutmann and Thompson try to control the effects of provisionality – (...) for instance, through a distinction between deliberative and non-deliberative disagreements – ultimately this is only possible by suppressing contingency and disagreement, which are otherwise part of the motivation for introducing provisionality. Thus, Gutmann and Thompson’s deliberative democ- racy is marked by a tension between their affirmation of provisionality and their attempts to limit the effects provisionality. Out of the deconstructive reading emerges an alternative deconstructive conception of democracy and provisionality in terms of Derrida’s concept of democracy to-come. (shrink)

It is a common socio-moral practice to appeal to reasons as a guiding force for one’s actions. However, it is an intriguing possibility that this practice is based on fiction: reasons cannot or do not motivate the majority of actions—especially moral ones. Rather, pre-reflective evaluative processes are likely responsible for moral actions. Such a view faces two major challenges: i.) pre-reflective judgements are commonly thought of as inflexible in nature, and thus they cannot be the cause of the varied judgements (...) people rely on in everyday life, and ii.) if reflective reason-based judgements do not play a strong causative role in judgement, why do people rely on the articulation of reasons in their moral practices? We argue that the pre-reflective judgements motivating moral actions are embodied in nature. The experience of the rightness of an action that drives a person to act depends on the sensorimotor interactions that have cultivated an agent’s perspective on the world. These interactions are embedded in relational contexts, relative to which judgements are individuated. Because of this relational embeddedness they are more flexible than they are commonly thought to be, enabling us to explain the variety of human behavior by appealing to them. The Anglo-European practice of appealing to reason as if they were propositional belief-statements motivating actions can be accounted for as nothing more than an idiosyncratic way of constructing narratives to clarify and express the relational context of intentional actions. (shrink)

Visual attention evolved as an adaptive mechanism allowing us to cope with a rapidly changing environment. It enables the facilitated processing of relevant information, often automatically and governed by implicit motives. However, despite recent advances in understanding the relationship between consciousness and visual attention, the functional scope of unconscious attentional control is still under debate. Here, we present a novel masking paradigm in which volunteers were to distinguish between varying orientations of a briefly presented, masked grating stimulus. Combining signal detection (...) theory and subjective measures of awareness, we show that performance on unaware trials was consistent with visual selection being weighted towards repeated orientations of Gabor patches and reallocated in response to a novel unconsciously processed orientation. This was particularly present in trials in which the prior feature was strongly weighted and only if the novel feature was invisible. Thus, our results provide evidence that invisible orientation stimuli can trigger the reallocation of history-guided visual selection weights. (shrink)

: Moral cognition research has in part been taken to be a problem for moral sentimentalists, who claim that emotions are sensitive to moral information. In particular, Joshua Greene can be understood to provide an argument against moral sentimentalism on the basis of neuropsychological evidence. In his argument he claims that emotions are an unreliable source of moral insight. However, the argument boils down to circular claims: Rationalistic factors are assumed to be the only morally relevant factors; Emotions are not (...) sensitive to these factors; Thus, Moral Sentimentalism is false, because only rationalistic factors are justified. While this circularity makes so-called sourcing-arguments fallacious if applied against moral sentimentalism, moral cognition research has much to contribute. Indeed, moral cognition research will be instrumental for clarifying the sentimentalist position, shedding light on the mental mechanics underlying emotional moral processing. After all, evidence from moral cognition points to substantial involvement of affective processes in human moral cognizing and their embodied nature; thus, challenging long held beliefs about morality. Keywords : Moral Cognition; Moral Sentimentalism; Emotions; Embodied Cognition; Moral Brain Emozioni, Esperimenti e il cervello morale. L’errore degli argomenti basati sulla cognizione morale contro il sentimentalismo morale Riassunto: Si è spesso ritenuto che la ricerca nell’ambito della cognizione morale costituisse, almeno in parte, un problema per il sentimentalismo morale, il quale sostiene che le emozioni sono sensibili all’informazione morale. In particolare, si può pensare che Joshua Greene abbia portato un argomento contro il sentimentalismo morale basato su evidenza neuropsicologica. Secondo il suo argomento le emozioni non costituiscono una fonte affidabile di comprensione morale. E tuttavia questo argomento fa leva su una circolarità: gli unici fattori qualificati come moralmente rilevanti sono quelli razionali; le emozioni non sono sensibili a questi fattori; pertanto, considerato che solo i fattori razionali sono giustificati, il sentimentalismo morale è falso. Tale circolarità rende fallaci i cosiddetti argomenti sorgente, laddove questi siano applicati al sentimentalismo morale. Al contempo, la ricerca sulla cognizione morale ha molto da dire su questo argomento perché può contribuire a chiarire la posizione sentimentalista, gettando luce sulla meccanica mentale sottostante i processi morali che fanno leva su emozioni. Anzi questa prospettiva di ricerca evidenzia che i processi di carattere affettivo sono coinvolti in maniera sostanziale nella cognizione morale umana e hanno una natura incarnata; in questo modo essa mette in discussione convinzioni di vecchia data sulla morale. Parole chiave : Cognizione morale; Sentimentalismo morale; Emozioni; Cognizione incarnata; Cervello morale. (shrink)

Prioritarianism pertains to the generic idea that it matters more to benefit people, the worse off they are, and while prioritarianism is not uncontroversial, it is considered a generally plausible and widely shared distributive principle often applied to healthcare prioritisation. In this paper, I identify social justice prioritarianism, severity prioritarianism and age-weighted prioritarianism as three different interpretations of the general prioritarian idea and discuss them in light of the effect of pandemic consequences on healthcare priority setting. On this analysis, the (...) paper arrives at the following three conclusions: that we have strong prioritarian reasons for special concern about the vulnerable and socially disadvantaged in reference to pandemic effects, that severity of illness is an important factor in identifying the worse off in priority setting but that this must not over-ride the special priority to the socially disadvantaged and that the maximisation rationale of the age-weighted view runs against the core prioritarian idea, and the age-weighted prioritarianism is thus unfitting as a prioritarian response to the COVID-19 case. (shrink)

Provability, Computability and Reflection.

The concepts of adaptation and fitness have such an appeal that they have been used in other scientific domains, including the social sciences. One particular aspect of this theory transfer concerns the so-called fitness landscape models. At first sight, fitness landscapes visualize how an agent, of any kind, relates to its environment, how its position is conditional because of the mutual interaction with other agents, and the potential routes towards improved fitness. The allure of fitness landscapes is first and foremost (...) that it represents a complex story about adaptation and fitness in one coherent image. Different accounts of fitness landscapes in different domains in the social sciences suggest that the properties and functions of fitness landscapes are attributed rather freely. These differences are testimony of the model’s versatility. At the same time, one will notice that the different approaches can also create ambiguity about the exact meaning and role of fitness landscapes in the social sciences. This article presents an extensive literature survey of the diverging interpretations and uses of fitness landscapes in the social sciences and discusses the implications in terms of how these models inform scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu is arguably one of the twentieth century’s greatest socio-philosophical thinkers and his writings have much to offer anyone interested in the ways that people value, consume and produce architecture. Bourdieu spent much of his life attempting to understand cultural consumption and production through detailed empirical research that included studies of dwellings, art, museums, photography and aesthetics. This book introduces the architectural reader to Bourdieu’s key writings on culture and outlines the ways in which they offer powerful practical tools (...) and novel conceptual frameworks for understanding architectural value, taste, and practice. (shrink)

Skillfully deploring a large cast of characters, Sheehan retraces the development of Marxist philosophy of science through detailed and highly readable accounts of the debates that have characterized it. The opening chapter discussed the ideas of Marx and Engels, and the second, Marxist theoreticians of the Second International. In the third chapter Sheehan covers Russian Marxism up to World War II. Sheehan concludes with a close analysis of the development of the debate among non-Soviet Marxists, placing particular emphasis on the (...) contributions of leading British in the 1930s. (shrink)

This book addresses the European Court of Human Rights’ fairness standards in criminal appeal, filling a gap in this less researched area of studies. Based on a fair trial immediacy requirement, the Court has found several violations of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights at the appellate level by at least eighteen States of the Council of Europe in a vast array of cases, particularly in contexts of first instance acquittals overturning and of sentences increasing on appeal. (...) -/- On the one hand, the book critically engages this case-law with the law revisions it has recently inspired in European countries, as well as with the critiques and difficulties that it continues to raise. On the other hand, it interweaves insight from criminal procedure theory with new discoveries in the field of cognitive sciences (neuroscience of memory, philosophy of knowledge, AI), shedding an interdisciplinary light on the (in)adequacy and limits of the Strasbourg Court’s jurisprudence. (shrink)

The social construction of space -- The anatomy of taste -- Towards a theory of cultural practice --Fields of cultural production -- Cultural practice, reflexivity and political action.

Many methods are used in research on complexity. One of these is qualitative comparative analysis. Although many authors allude to the relationships between complexity and QCA, these links are rarely made explicit. We propose that one way of doing so is by using critical realism as a meta-framework. This article discusses the viability of this approach by examining the extent to which QCA is a complexity-informed method. This question is answered in three steps. First, we discuss the nature of complexity (...) and its epistemological implications. Second, we focus on Bhaskar’s perspective on critical realism and show how it can be used as a framework for understanding social complexity. Third, we examine the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying QCA and synthesize these with our critical realist approach to complexity. We argue that complex reality is non-decomposable, contingent, non-compressible and time-asymmetric. We conclude that, although QCA is inevitably reductive and partial, its core premises are built upon the notions of contingency and time-asymmetry. Therefore, it is not only a powerful method for doing complexity-informed research, but is also a complexity-informed method by itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 303-321 [Access article in PDF] "The Peak on Which Abraham Stands": The Pregnant Moment of Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling Lasse Horne Kjaeldgaard When Søren Kierkegaard in the 1840s began his one-man crusade against the predominant philosophy of his time and place—the right Hegelianism that was en vogue among his contemporaries in Copenhagen—he chose his weapons with great circumspection. The indirect (...) form of communication, which he later advocated in more direct terms in his "Point of View," 1 was not only a maieutic means that helped the reader conceive of the latent and strictly private messages of the texts; it was also a strategy for Kierkegaard's undercover assaults on the Hegelian turn of the Geistesleben around him. By interweaving many of the Hegelian platitudes and self-confident pronouncements that circulated in the intellectual life of the day into the pseudonymous writings, Kierkegaard contested them with parody rather than argumentation. This is the local background against which these texts are structured and to which they are addressed in multiple and very subtle ways. That also goes for that of the pseudonymous writings which has become the best known but which may also be regarded as the most private and most secretive of them all, Fear and Trembling, published pseudonymously in 1843.Secrecy, silence, and unspeakable messages are abundantly thematized in Fear and Trembling, as one could expect from the name of the narrator, Johannes de Silentio. Silentio is a prominent member of the choir of pseudonymous figures Kierkegaard invented to communicate indirectly with his audience and in [End Page 303] the name of which he published his most celebrated works. The silence that Silentio speaks of is that of Abraham of the Old Testament, who was commanded by God to sacrifice his only son on Mount Moriah. Although Genesis 22 includes fragments of the dialogue between Abraham and Isaac on their way to the mountain, Silentio insists that Abraham remained silent on the essential issue: the command he acts upon. The unmediated message Abraham had received from God could not be conveyed, and he was therefore barred from communication and bereft of his community as he journeyed to the Mountain. Yet Silentio's discourse upon this silence in Fear and Trembling has given impetus to innumerable pages of commentary. The questions and answers he poses in his reflections upon Abraham's ordeal have called for critical attention and controversy since the time of its publication. His obsession with the biblical narrative certainly seems to have been passed on to many readers of Fear and Trembling, which, a recent commentator has remarked, "continues to haunt us like no other of [Kierkegaard's] writings." 2 So far, it would seem, then, that Kierkegaard was right when he predicted, in an undated journal entry, that "Fear and Trembling will be enough to immortalise my name." It has indeed been "read and translated into foreign languages," as he foresaw it would. 3Even so, what has passed unnoticed in its long history of reception is the significance of the titles that the manuscript text bore before it came to be called Fear and Trembling. On the title page the definitive appellation is placed together with two alternatives with less suggestion of pathos: "Movements and Postures" (Bevægelser og Stillinger) and "Between-each-other" (Mellemhver-andre). 4 Not much can be discerned from these unpeculiar phrases in isolation. However, tracing their history and significance through Kierkegaard's writings and beyond, will make it clear that Fear and Trembling was also dispatched to the narrow Hegelian community in Copenhagen for the purpose of questioning their literary and visual aesthetics and philosophy of history. Into the guerrilla warfare against them Fear and Trembling introduces a weapon of such sophistication that it has remained undetected so far: the power of the "pregnant moment." My aim here will be to demonstrate the way in which Fear and Trembling appropriates a principle of selection intended for the... (shrink)

This essay aims at clarifying our understanding of human participation in sustainability transitions from the pragmatist aesthetics perspective. By sustainability transitions, I refer to processual changes that move towards enhanced environmental and/or social sustainability. At the risk of inappropriateness, I argue that the cultivation of aesthetic sensibility manifests in experiencing sustainability. To understand those ordinary experiences that convey vistas for sustainability transition management, I return to John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934). I first show that Dewey’s conception of sensibility is (...) two-sided, marking both adaptation and expression. Second, by building on the two sides of sensibility together with the contemporary pragmatist aesthetics discussion, I propose that aesthetic sensibility means a shared practice of attuning to transformation. My analysis suggests that acknowledging aesthetic sensibility in experiencing sustainability stands for a transition towards an enhanced conception of the human being as one whose ameliorative practices evolve in collaboration with other beings, living and non-living. For the fruition of sustainability transitions and subsequent expected transformations, aesthetic sensibility should then be acknowledged as a significant dimension of the sensory approach. (shrink)

This paper examines the reception of Reinhart Koselleck’s Kritik und Krise by the intellectual historian István Hont. Relying on hitherto unpublished manuscripts, it argues that the later work of Hont can be seen as a critical response to Koselleck and his characterisation of the crisis of modern politics as a crisis of political authority.

In this paper, I ask what is wrong with sufficiency. I formulate a generic sufficiency principle in relation to which I discuss possible problems for sufficientarianism. I argue against the arbitrariness–concern, that sufficiency theory need only to identify a possible space for determining a plausible threshold, and I argue against the high–low threshold dilemma concern, that multiple-threshold views can solve this dilemma. I then distinguish between currency-pluralist and currency-monist multiple-threshold views and test them against two different versions of the widely (...) shared ‘ignorance of inequality objection’ to sufficientarianism—a benefit-driven and a burden-driven version. I argue that currency-pluralist sufficiency views are better capable of responding to the former than currency-monist views. However, I show that no existing sufficiency view can provide a plausible response to the burden-driven version. Hence, I conclude that the problem of unequal distribution of burdens above the thresholds represents an overlooked threat to the sufficiency view, in any version. (shrink)

What, if anything, do the ‘square’ protests and ‘occupy’ movements of 2011 bring to contemporary democratic theory? And how can we, as political theorists, analyse their discourse and do justice to it? We address these questions through an analysis of the Greek and Spanish protest movements of the spring and summer of 2011, the so-called aganaktismenoi and indignados. We trace the centrality of the critique of representation and politics as usual as well as the ideas about horizontality and autonomy in (...) the protesters’ discourse. These ideas are not only important to their critique of the contemporary liberal democratic regimes in the two countries, but also important to the way in which the protesters organise themselves. Nonetheless, as we shall argue, the protesters are caught within a tension between horizontality and verticality, between autonomy and hegemony, or between moving beyond representation and accepting representational structures. Given this tension, we examine how the protesters negotiate it in three key areas: politics, representation and organisation. Drawing on Jacques Rancière, we further argue that the protesters can be seen as making a claim to equal voice. This is what Rancière refers to as politics proper, and the question is then whether such a politics is possible without falling back into traditional forms of politics. (shrink)

This article advances a tentative theory of skill in relation to eSports. This conjectural theory of skill rests on hypothesizes informed by assumptions from watching 100+ hours of eSport events on Twitch, YouTube, and AfreecaTV and is supported by discussions, reflections and evaluations with eSport players. The case material of this article includes the games Clash Royale (CR), StarCraft 2 (SC2), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), and online battle arenas (mobas) such as League of Legends (LOL) and Defense of the Ancient (...) 2 (DOTA2). This inferred theory of skill is conjoined and composed of seven strands, which provide a framework for explaining how to understand skill in eSport. These seven strands are presented under the headings: (1) knowledge about game objects, (2) insights into game systems, (3) understanding metagaming, (4), yomi: ‘reading’ the opponent, (5) ability to execute, (6) emotional discipline, and finally (7) team coherency (depending upon whether the skill is associated with a one-versus-one or team-versus-team game). In conclusion, the proposed theory of skill will expose its explanatory power and reach by providing an example of how it can both be implemented to create profiles of players’ skill, and how these profiles in turn can serve as guides to help players improve their skill levels in eSport. (shrink)

This article advances a tentative theory of skill in relation to eSports. This conjectural theory of skill rests on hypothesizes informed by assumptions from watching 100+ hours of eSport events on Twitch, YouTube, and AfreecaTV and is supported by discussions, reflections and evaluations with eSport players. The case material of this article includes the games Clash Royale (CR), StarCraft 2 (SC2), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), and online battle arenas (mobas) such as League of Legends (LOL) and Defense of the Ancient (...) 2 (DOTA2). This inferred theory of skill is conjoined and composed of seven strands, which provide a framework for explaining how to understand skill in eSport. These seven strands are presented under the headings: (1) knowledge about game objects, (2) insights into game systems, (3) understanding metagaming, (4), yomi: ‘reading’ the opponent, (5) ability to execute, (6) emotional discipline, and finally (7) team coherency (depending upon whether the skill is associated with a one-versus-one or team-versus-team game). In conclusion, the proposed theory of skill will expose its explanatory power and reach by providing an example of how it can both be implemented to create profiles of players’ skill, and how these profiles in turn can serve as guides to help players improve their skill levels in eSport. (shrink)

The unquestionable achievement of J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment was to describe the retention of pre-modern values in a modern society. Pocock was notoriously accused of decentring Locke and side-lining the Liberal Tradition. A more pertinent critique had it that he failed to articulate how civic humanism in the context of increasingly commercial societies produced more than Jeremiahs or Cassandras. This article explains how Pocock responded to his various critics by inventing the term “commercial humanism” in an effort (...) to clarify the way in which classical virtue was modified in modern commercial contexts, especially by natural jurists and republicans. Commercial humanism proved controversial but stimulated one of the most original scholars working in the history of political thought, István Hont, to undertake a prolonged engagement with Pocock's revisionist ideas, which ultimately allowed him to answer Pocock's critics better than Pocock, whose voice remained too in tune with those whose view of modern political thought he had rejected. For Hont, Pocock's labours in the history of political thought remained less relevant to present politics than they might become, once the depth of eighteenth-century analyses of the relationship between wealth and virtue was recovered. (shrink)

Relational egalitarianism is a theory of justice according to which people must relate as equals. In this article, we develop relational sufficientarianism – a view of justice according to which people must relate as sufficients. We distinguish between three versions of this ideal, one that is incompatible with relational egalitarianism and two that are not. Building on this, we argue that relational theorists have good reason to support a pluralist view that is both egalitarian and sufficientarian.

_“Ludvig Holberg’s angry comedies”_ This article contributes to research on anger and neo-classicist comedy drama. Facilitating a dialogue between state-of-the-art theory on anger as a complicated, ambiguous and broad-spectrum emotion and Aristotelian drama theory, especially the concept of anagnorisis, it is argued that neo-classicist comedies are scenes of social interaction that are replete with angry feelings and reactions. Characters are constantly provoking each other and reacting to provocations. The main case is Ludvig Holberg’s comedies. Anger is investigated both from a (...) quantitative perspective employing corpus-linguistic approaches (searching for concordance and clusters in all 36 comedies) and through a close reading of _ Den Stundesløse _. (shrink)

A key question in the art debate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was whether color should be used for sculpture. Recent archaeological research had shown that the sculpture in ancient Greece was polychrome, but skepticism about applying paint to one’s own work was widespread among modern sculptors. Some scholars explain this reluctance as a consequence of racial prejudice: the Greek athlete was an image of white Europeans. This article will try to show that a re-reading of Johann Gottfried Herder’s (...) book on sculpture can give us a different and more probable explanation. Herder shared Roger de Piles’s view that the essence of sculpture was form, while color was most characteristic of painting. What set Herder apart from his predecessor, however, was his attempt to give the theory a scientific rationale. He found this in contemporary accounts of visually impaired persons’ relationship to the sensory world and not least in empiricist philosophy’s distinction between primary and secondary sensory properties. (shrink)

The taste for classical art that induced museums in the West to acquire masterpieces from ancient Greece and Rome for their collections was stimulated largely by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. In the past decade, a number of articles have claimed that Winckelmann’s glorification of marble statues representing the white, male body promotes notions of white supremacy. The present article challenges this view by examining theories prevalent in the eighteenth century that affected Winckelmann’s views on race. Through an examination (...) of different types of classicism, the article also seeks to demonstrate that Winckelmann’s aesthetics were opposed to the eclectic use of ancient models typical of the fascist regimes of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This article identifies value‐satiability sufficientarianism as a distinctive version of the sufficiency view, which has been ignored in the literature on distributive justice. This is unfortunate because value‐satiability sufficientarianism is much better equipped than alternative sufficiency views to cope with the standard objections against sufficiency. Most often, sufficientarianism refers to satiability as a feature of moral principles and reasons. But value‐satiability sufficientarianism also invokes satiability in the space of value‐theory, as it determines the sufficiency threshold at the point where justice‐relevant (...) values have been completely fulfilled. The article gives examples of how this view is widely apparent in the literature, and it provides some reasons in its favour. It then presents the two standard objections against sufficientarianism – the threshold objection and the indifference objection – and argues that these critiques do not apply to value‐satiability sufficientarianism. The general argument of the article therefore proves sufficientarianism more difficult to refute than is commonly credited. (shrink)

This paper discusses limitarianism in light of three popular objections to the redistribution of extreme wealth: (i) that such redistribution legitimizes envy, which is a morally objectionable attitude; (ii) that it disincentivizes the wealthy to invest and work, leading to a diminished social product, and, thereby, making everyone worse-off; and (iii) that it undercuts the pursuit and achievement of human excellence by depriving successful people of resources through which they may otherwise excel. We argue that these objections fail to undermine (...) limitarianism. An elaborated defence against them, rather, reveals how the Standard Defence of limitarianism may be expanded and strengthened by relying explicitly on the importance of preventing a society of envy, avoiding harm to non-rich citizens, and ensuring that humans are given the opportunities to excel in ways that go beyond those that allow for the amassment of wealth. (shrink)

This article addresses the role of application programming interfaces for integrating data sources in the context of smart cities and communities. On top of the built infrastructures in cities, application programming interfaces allow to weave new kinds of seams from static and dynamic data sources into the urban fabric. Contributing to debates about “urban informatics” and the governance of urban information infrastructures, this article provides a technically informed and critically grounded approach to evaluating APIs as crucial but often overlooked elements (...) within these infrastructures. The conceptualization of what we term City APIs is informed by three perspectives: In the first part, we review established criticisms of proprietary social media APIs and their crucial function in current web architectures. In the second part, we discuss how the design process of APIs defines conventions of data exchanges that also reflect negotiations between API producers and API consumers about affordances and mental models of the underlying computer systems involved. In the third part, we present recent urban data innovation initiatives, especially CitySDK and OrganiCity, to underline the centrality of API design and governance for new kinds of civic and commercial services developed within and for cities. By bridging the fields of criticism, design, and implementation, we argue that City APIs as elements of infrastructures reveal how urban renewal processes become crucial sites of socio-political contestation between data science, technological development, urban management, and civic participation. (shrink)

Age rationing is a central issue in the health care priority‐setting literature, but it has become ever more salient in the light of the Covid‐19 outbreak, where health authorities in several countries have given higher priority to younger over older patients. But how is age rationing different under outbreak circumstances than under normal circumstances, and what does this difference imply for ethical theories? This is the topic of this paper. The paper argues that outbreaks such as that of Covid‐19 involve (...) special circumstances that change how age should influence our prioritization decisions, and that while this shift in circumstances poses a problem for consequentialist views such as utilitarianism and age‐weighted consequentialism, contractualism is better equipped to cope with it. The paper then offers a contractualist prudential account of age rationing under outbreak circumstances. (shrink)

Telic sufficientarianism is the view that it is better, other things equal, if people are lifted above some sufficiency threshold of special moral importance. In a recent contribution, Shlomi Segall has raised the following objection to this position: The telic ideal of sufficiency can neither be grounded on any personal value, nor any impersonal value. Consequently, sufficientarianism is groundless. This article contains a rejoinder to this critique. Its main claim is that the value of autonomy holds strong potential for grounding (...) sufficiency. It argues, firstly, that autonomy carries both personal value for its recipient as well as impersonal value, and that both of these values are suitable for grounding sufficiency. It thus follows that we should reject both and. Secondly, although autonomy is presumably the strongest candidate for grounding sufficiency, the article provides some counterargument to Segall's rejection of the other candidates — the impersonal value of virtue; the personal value for the allocator; and the personal value for others. If the arguments are sound, they show that we need not worry about sufficientarianism being groundless. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on empirical work conducted to open up algorithmic interpretability and transparency. In recent years, significant concerns have arisen regarding the increasing pervasiveness of algorithms and the impact of automated decision-making in our lives. Particularly problematic is the lack of transparency surrounding the development of these algorithmic systems and their use. It is often suggested that to make algorithms more fair, they should be made more transparent, but exactly how this can be (...) achieved remains unclear. Design/methodology/approach An empirical study was conducted to begin unpacking issues around algorithmic interpretability and transparency. The study involved discussion-based experiments centred around a limited resource allocation scenario which required participants to select their most and least preferred algorithms in a particular context. In addition to collecting quantitative data about preferences, qualitative data captured participants’ expressed reasoning behind their selections. Findings Even when provided with the same information about the scenario, participants made different algorithm preference selections and rationalised their selections differently. The study results revealed diversity in participant responses but consistency in the emphasis they placed on normative concerns and the importance of context when accounting for their selections. The issues raised by participants as important to their selections resonate closely with values that have come to the fore in current debates over algorithm prevalence. Originality/value This work developed a novel empirical approach that demonstrates the value in pursuing algorithmic interpretability and transparency while also highlighting the complexities surrounding their accomplishment. (shrink)

Research ethics -- The ethical perspective -- The 3rs and good scientific practice -- Applying ethical thinking and social relevance -- Regulation and legislation : overview and background -- Public involvement : how and why? -- The future of animal research : guesstimates on technical and ethical developments -- New refine.

The European Commission has recently proposed the introduction of legally binding quotas for women on corporate boards of European companies. This proposal has put the spotlight on the question of whether increasing female representation on the board brings economic benefits to the firm. In order to shed light on the issue, this study investigates the direct and indirect effects of women on the board on firm value. We use a simultaneous equation model to estimate the effects of women on the (...) board on firm value, financial performance, and compliance with ethical and social principles adopted by the firm. We find no evidence that a higher female representation on the board directly affects firm’s value. However, we find indirect effects. Women on the board are positively related with financial performance (measured in terms of return on assets and return on sales) and with ethical and social compliance, which in turn are positively related with firm value. The findings in this study suggest that greater female representation on corporate boards of large European firms can increase firm value indirectly. Further, part of the indirect effect comes from stronger compliance with ethical principles, something that is not captured by accounting-based financial performance. (shrink)

In recent works, Shlomi Segall suggests and defends a luck egalitarian approach to justice in health. Concurring with G. A. Cohen’s mature position he defends the idea that people should be compensated for “brute luck”, i.e. the outcome of actions that it would be unreasonable to expect them to avoid. In his defense of the luck egalitarian approach he seeks to rebut the criticism raised by Norman Daniels that luck egalitarianism is in some way too narrow and in another too (...) wide to uphold justice in health and health care distribution. He points out that a pluralistic outline of luck egalitarianism taking into account the moral requirement of meeting everyone’s basic needs can avoid this line of criticism. In this article I argue against the application of such pluralistic luck egalitarianism in matters of health distribution. First of all, Segall has not shown that luck egalitarianism handles well health distributions above a threshold of basic needs. Secondly, his way of avoiding Elizabeth Anderson’s abandonment objection is theoretically problematic. Finally, I argue that luck egalitarianism in general fails to acknowledge the moral foundation of health and health care as a basic human entitlement. Thus I conclude that luck egalitarianism fails to take health needs seriously and that it cannot therefore uphold justice in health. (shrink)

Servant leadership offers a compelling ideal of self-sacrificing individuals who put the needs of others before their own and cultivate a culture of growth in their organisations. Although the theory’s attempts to emphasise the moral, emotional and relational dimensions of leadership are laudable, it has primarily assumed a decontextualised view of leadership untouched by power. This article aims to problematise servant leadership by undertaking an intersectional analysis of an Asian cis-male heterosexual senior manager in Australia. Through in-depth interviews with the (...) manager and his staff, the article shows how his attempts to practice servant leadership were informed by intersecting power dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, age and class that subordinated him to white power. The findings demonstrate the ways servant leadership is necessarily embedded in wider power structures that shape who gets to be a “servant leader” and who remains merely a “servant”. (shrink)

Storchak, Ehlis, and Fallgatter provide an extensive literature review on electrophysiological measurements, which indicate that general predictive deficits in self‐monitoring are associated with various positive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia.

Decision-making capacity is the gatekeeping element for a patient’s right to self-determination with regard to medical decisions. A DMC evaluation is not only conducted on descriptive grounds but is an inherently normative task including ethical reasoning. Therefore, it is dependent to a considerable extent on the values held by the clinicians involved in the DMC evaluation. Dealing with the question of how to reasonably support clinicians in arriving at a DMC judgment, a new tool is presented that fundamentally differs from (...) existing ones: the U-Doc. By putting greater emphasis on the judgmental process rather than on the measurement of mental abilities, the clinician as a decision-maker is brought into focus, rendering the tool more of an evaluation guide than a test instrument. In a qualitative study, the perceived benefits of and difficulties with the tool have been explored. The findings show on the one hand that the evaluation aid provides basic orientation, supports a holistic perspective on the patient, sensitizes for ethical considerations and personal biases, and helps to think through the decision, to argue, and to justify one’s judgment. On the other hand, the room for interpretation due to absent operationalisations, related ambiguities, and the confrontation with one’s own subjectivity may be experienced as unsettling. (shrink)