BackgroundInnovations in technology have contributed to rapid changes in the way that modern biomedical research is carried out. Researchers are increasingly required to endorse adaptive and flexible approaches to accommodate these innovations and comply with ethical, legal and regulatory requirements. This paper explores how Dynamic Consent may provide solutions to address challenges encountered when researchers invite individuals to participate in research and follow them up over time in a continuously changing environment.MethodsAn interdisciplinary workshop jointly organised by the University of Oxford (...) and the COST Action CHIP ME gathered clinicians, researchers, ethicists, lawyers, research participants and patient representatives to discuss experiences of using Dynamic Consent, and how such use may facilitate the conduct of specific research tasks. The data collected during the workshop were analysed using a content analysis approach.ResultsDynamic Consent can provide practical, sustainable and future-proof solutions to challenges related to participant recruitment, the attainment of informed consent, participant retention and consent management, and may bring economic efficiencies.ConclusionsDynamic Consent offers opportunities for ongoing communication between researchers and research participants that can positively impact research. Dynamic Consent supports inter-sector, cross-border approaches and large scale data-sharing. Whilst it is relatively easy to set up and maintain, its implementation will require that researchers re-consider their relationship with research participants and adopt new procedures. (shrink)

Personalized medicine aims to tailor disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to individuals on the basis of their genes, lifestyle and environments. Patient and interest organizations may potentially play an important role in the realization of PM. This paper investigates the views and perspectives on PM of a variety of PIOs. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted among leading representatives of 13 PIOs located in Europe and North-America. The data collected were analysed using a conventional content analysis approach. The PIO representatives supported (...) the realization of PM but feared that many financial, structural and organizational challenges may delay its realization. They encouraged strategies to modernize drug licencing mechanisms, develop research and data sharing infrastructures, and educate patients and health care professionals in PM. Notably, they emphasized the importance of developing PM in an equitable way and taking into consideration the patients’ needs, values and personal situation. Despite varying levels of awareness regarding PM, the PIO representatives expressed willingness to engage in the PM agenda and recommended that PIOs work closely with policy-makers to design PM in a way that truly addresses the needs and concerns of patients. PIOs have the potential to become central drivers of the PM agenda. Collaborations should be further developed between PIOs, researchers, drug developers and health care authorities. (shrink)

Individual research results from population-based genetic and genomic research are traditionally not disclosed to research participants. Current practices of non-disclosure are, however, being challenged by an increasing number of scientists, ethicists and policy-makers who make arguments in favour of disclosing at least individual results of potential health or lifestyle significance to research participants. Simultaneously, research participants are expressing greater interest in accessing their results. This article first provides an overview of main arguments for and against the disclosure of individual research (...) results to research participants. Next, it discusses the need for a move from the current ethical framework under which researchers operate, which is rather protective of research participants and does not encourage disclosure, to a new ethical framework that would better cope with current developments within the field. Comparative analysis of existing and potential ethical frameworks favours implementation of an ethical framework aimed at enhancing the autonomy of research participants through the disclosure of individual research results. Finally, this article explores practical models of disclosure that could be used under such a new framework. A model of disclosure that takes into account the two key criteria of communicability of research results and the research participant’s preferences to determine which results to disclose is found to comply best with the selected ethical framework. (shrink)

Dans ce livre, l’auteur élabore une critique de la notion de « banalité du mal » forgée par Hannah Arendt à partir du procès Eichmann en vue d’expliquer les crimes de masse. En reconnaissant, certes, que la banalité du mal est une formule qui a le mérite d’affirmer la dimension humaine du mal extrême « par opposition à l’idée de l’indicible d’un mal absolu et transcendant » (p. 117), Isabelle Delpla la qualifie néanmoins de « faux concept ». Del..

Este libro es un homenaje a la trayectoria intelectual y académica de la profesora María Teresa López de la Vieja, Catedrática emérita de la Universidad de Salamanca. En él se trazan algunos de los caminos que, con su obra, nos invita a transitar. El volumen recoge contribuciones de colegas de varias nacionalidades y procedentes de diversos ámbitos de reflexión que le son afines: la filosofía moral y política, la literatura, la teoría de la argumentación, los estudios feministas, las éticas aplicadas, (...) la bioética. Los capítulos que componen este libro dan voz a varias generaciones de investigadoras e investigadores que han acompañado y acompañan su andadura académica y que aquí dialogan con ella haciendo propias sus preocupaciones intelectuales. Con su participación contribuyen al justo reconocimiento de su dedicación a la labor docente e investigadora. (shrink)

Based on a consumer survey conducted in France, Germany, and the U.S., the study investigates consumers'' readiness to support socially responsible organizations and examines their evaluations of the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of the firm. French and German consumers appear more willing to actively support responsible businesses than their U.S. counterparts. While U.S. consumers value highly corporate eco-nomic responsibilities, French and German consumers are most concerned about businesses conforming with legal and ethical standards. These findings provide useful guidance (...) for the efficient management of social responsibility initiatives across borders and for further academic inquiries. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the relationship among classical logic, intuitionistic logic, and quantum logic . These logics are related in an interesting way and are not far apart from each other, as is widely believed. The results in this paper show how they are related with each other through a dual intuitionistic logic . Our study is completely syntactical.

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz --.

It is a well-known fact that the Śaiva nondualistic philosopher Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–975) adopted the Sāṃkhya principle according to which the effect must exist in some way before the operation of its cause (satkāryavāda). Johannes Bronkhorst has highlighted the paradox inherent in this appropriation: Utpaladeva is a staunch supporter of the satkāryavāda, but whereas Sāṃkhya authors consider it as a means of proving the existence of an unconscious matter, the Śaiva exploits it so as to establish his monistic idealism, (...) in perfect contradiction with the Sāṃkhya dualism of matter and consciousness. How does Utpaladeva achieve this complete reversal of meaning of the satkāryavāda? The present article argues that the elliptical verses of the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā dealing with this issue have been partly misunderstood so far due to the loss of Utpaladeva’s own detailed commentary (Vivr̥ti) on this passage: Abhinavagupta’s two commentaries, however terse in this respect, clearly show that a crucial part of Utpaladeva’s reasoning remains implicit in the verses. The article therefore attempts to reconstruct the gist of Utpaladeva’s strategy by having recourse to various other Śaiva sources, including Somānanda’s Śivadr̥ṣṭi and Utpaladeva’s own commentary thereon. This examination shows that Utpaladeva’s appropriation of the satkāryavāda rests on a profound transformation of the Sāṃkhya notions of manifestation (abhivyakti) and potentiality (śakti), and that his criticism of the Sāṃkhya understanding of causality might target the Śaiva dualists as well as Sāṃkhya authors. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the Isabelle proof assistant aimed at philosophers and their students.

Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. (...) Reading the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

The Goddess People of Avalon, a young and flourishing religious community in Glastonbury (South-England), have been defining themselvesprincipally as a revitalization of the prehistoric worship of the Great Goddess. Based on fieldwork data of the author, the article offers an introduction into the religious tradition and ritual praxis of the contemporary Goddess People. Specifically, the analysis focuses on the ritual genre of Sacred Drama with its interpretationof the general and local history of religions. The variety of recursivity (as a reference (...) to the past), which this ritual genre expresses, is examined within an analytical frame that has been developed for different forms of ritual dynamics. Particularly, the analytical concepts ritual transfer, adaptation, invention and ritual design are discussed. Within the lastyears, a change in the self-image and legitimizing strategies of the Goddess People has occurred: Whereas in their nascent years, they understood themselves as a reactualization of primordial spirituality, they tend to see themselvescurrently more as a newreligious tradition, inventing their rituals creatively and confidently. The article argues for the use of the analytical concept ritual design to describe this aspect of ritual dynamics. Thus, instead of evaluating the degree of originality of rituals from an academic point of view, the legitimizing strategiesof religious agents come to the fore. (shrink)

The Īśvarapratyabhijñā treatise—an important philosophical text composed in Kashmir in the 10th century CE by the Śaiva nondualist Utpaladeva—remains partly unavailable to date: a crucial component of this work, namely the detailed commentary (Vivṛti or Ṭīkā) in which Utpaladeva explained his own verses, is considered as almost entirely lost, since only a small part of it has been preserved in a single, very incomplete manuscript remarkably edited and translated by Raffaele Torella. However, our knowledge of the Vivṛti is quickly expanding: (...) many additional fragments have recently come to light. The article gives an overview of these new findings while highlighting the most interesting of them, i.e. the discovery of the lengthiest Vivṛti fragment known to date in the margins of a manuscript containing Abhinavagupta’s Vivṛtivimarśinī. It also provides an edition and translation of the beginning of this fragment. (shrink)

Concerned with the interplay between science, society, and power, Isabelle Stengers offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa. 9 diagrams.

Based on an extensive review of the literature and field surveys, the paper proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of corporate citizenship meaningful in two countries: the United States and France. A survey of 210 American and 120 French managers provides support for the proposed definition of corporate citizenship as a construct including the four correlated factors of economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary citizenship. The managerial implications of the research and directions for future research are discussed.

Originally published in French in seven volumes, Cosmopolitics investigates the role and authority of the sciences in modern societies and challenges their claims to objectivity, rationality, and truth. Cosmopolitics II includes the first English-language translations of the last four books: Quantum Mechanics: The End of the Dream, In the Name of the Arrow of Time: Prigogine’s Challenge, Life and Artifice: The Faces of Emergence, and The Curse of Tolerance. Arguing for an “ecology of practices” in the sciences, Isabelle Stengers (...) explores the discordant landscape of knowledge derived from modern science, seeking intellectual consistency among contradictory, confrontational, and mutually exclusive philosophical ambitions and approaches. For Stengers, science is a constructive enterprise, a diverse, interdependent, and highly contingent system that does not simply discover preexisting truths but, through specific practices and processes, helps shape them.Stengers concludes this philosophical inquiry with a forceful critique of tolerance; it is a fundamentally condescending attitude, she contends, that prevents those worldviews that challenge dominant explanatory systems from being taken seriously. Instead of tolerance, she proposes a “cosmopolitics” that rejects politics as a universal category and allows modern scientific practices to peacefully coexist with other forms of knowledge. (shrink)

This book promotes the research of present-day women working in ancient and medieval philosophy, with more than 60 women having contributed in some way to the volume in a fruitful collaboration. It contains 22 papers organized into ten distinct parts spanning the sixth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE. Each part has the same structure: it features, first, a paper which sets up the discussion, and then, one or two responses that open new perspectives and engage in further reflections. (...) Our authors’ contributions address pivotal moments and players in the history of philosophy: women philosophers in antiquity, Cleobulina of Rhodes, Plato, Lucretius, Bardaisan of Edessa, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Porphyry, Peter Abelard, Robert Kilwardby, William Ockham, John Buridan, and Isotta Nogarola. The result is a thought-provoking collection of papers that will be of interest to historians of philosophy from all horizons. Far from being an isolated effort, this book is a contribution to the ever-growing number of initiatives which endeavour to showcase the work of women in philosophy. (shrink)

Virginia Woolf, to whom university admittance had been forbidden, watched the universities open their doors. Though she was happy that her sisters could study in university libraries, she cautioned women against joining the procession of educated men and being co-opted into protecting a “civilization” with values alien to women. Now, as Woolf's disloyal daughters, who have professional positions in Belgian universities, Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret, along with a collective of women scholars in Belgium and France, question their academic (...) careers and reexamine the place of women and their role in thinking, both inside and outside the university. They urge women to heed Woolf's cry—Think We Must—and to always make a fuss about injustice, cruelty, and arrogance. (shrink)