For many decades, access to human biological samples, such as cells, tissues, organs, blood, and sub-cellular materials such as DNA, for use in biomedical research, has been central in understanding the nature and transmission of diseases across the globe. However, the limitations of current ethical and regulatory frameworks in sub-Saharan Africa to govern the collection, export, storage and reuse of these samples have resulted in inconsistencies in practice and a number of ethical concerns for sample donors, researchers and research ethics (...) committees. This paper examines stakeholders’ perspectives of and responses to the ethical issues arising from these research practices. (shrink)

This paper questions an exclusively state-centred framing of global health justice and proposes a multilateral alternative. Using the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to illustrate, we bring to light a broad range of global actors up and down the chain of vaccine development who contribute to global vaccine inequities. Section 1 (Background) presents an overview of moments in which diverse global actors, each with their own priorities and aims, shaped subsequent vaccine distribution. Section 2 (Collective action failures) characterises collective action failures (...) at each phase of vaccine development that contributed to global vaccine disparities. It identifies as critical the task of establishing upstream strategies to coordinate collective action at multiple stages across a range of actors. Section 3 (A Multilateral model of global health governance) takes up this task, identifying a convergence of interests among a range of stakeholders and proposing ways to realise them. Appealing to a responsibility to protect (R2P), a doctrine developed in response to human rights atrocities during the 1990s, we show how to operationalise R2P through a principle of subsidiarity and present ethical arguments in support of this approach. (shrink)

This book explores the idea that all of logic can be reduced to two very simple rules that are sensitive to logical polarity. The authors show that this idea has profound consequences for our understanding of the nature of human inferential capacities, and for some of the key issues in contemporary linguistics.

Peter Ludlow presents the first book on the philosophy of generative linguistics, including both Chomsky's government and binding theory and his minimalist ...

Background:Less sedated and more awake patients in the intensive care unit may cause ethical challenges.Research objectives:The purpose of this study is to describe ethical challenges registered nurses experience when patients refuse care and treatment.Research design:Narrative individual open interviews were conducted, and data were analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutic method developed for researching life experiences.Participants and research context:Three intensive care registered nurses from an intensive care unit at a university hospital in Norway were included.Ethical considerations:Norwegian Social Science Data Services approved the (...) study. Permission was obtained from the intensive care unit leader. The participants’ informed and voluntary consent was obtained in writing.Findings:Registered nurses experienced ethical challenges in the balance between situations of deciding on behalf of the patient, persuading the patient and letting the patient decide. Ethical challenges were related to patients being harmful to themselves, not keeping up personal hygiene and care or hindering critical treatment.Discussion:It is made apparent how professional ethics may be threatened by more pragmatic arguments. In recent years, registered nurses are faced with increasing ethical challenges to do no harm and maintain dignity.Conclusion:Ethically challenging situations are emerging, due to new targets including conscious and aware critical care patients, leaving an altered responsibility on the registered nurses. Reflection is required to adjust the course when personal and professional ideals no longer are in harmony with the reality in the clinical practice. RNs must maintain a strong integrity as authentic human beings to provide holistic nursing care. (shrink)

In this chapter Nathalie Bulle and Francesco Di Iorio present critical realism’s take on methodological individualism, their affinities and differences relating to notions of structure and agency in interpreting social reality, and challenge Margaret Archer’s criticisms of MI, which seem to combat a “straw man.”.

Seeking consent for genetic and genomic research can be challenging, particularly in populations with low literacy levels, and in emergency situations. All of these factors were relevant to the MalariaGEN study of genetic factors influencing immune responses to malaria in northern rural Ghana. This study sought to identify issues arising in practice during the enrolment of paediatric cases with severe malaria and matched healthy controls into the MalariaGEN study.

The arguments presented in this comprehensive collection have important implications for the philosophy of mind and the study of consciousness.

Historically the words representation and symbol have had overlapping meanings, meanings that usually disregard the role played by the interpreter. Peirce’s theory of signs accounts for these meanings and also for the role of the interpreter. His theory draws attention to the static and dynamic nature of signs. Sign interpretation can be viewed as a continuous dynamic and evolving process. The static and dynamic nature of signs helps us understand the teaching–learning activity as a process of interpretation on the part (...) of teacher and students. The paper attempts to explain the classroom interpretation process on the part of the actors involved using the Peircean theory of signs. (shrink)

In a number of membrane-bound viruses, ion channels are formed by integral membrane proteins. These channel proteins include M2 from influenza A, NB from influenza B, and, possibly, Vpu from HIV-1. M2 is important in facilitating uncoating of the influenza A viral genome and is the target of amantadine, an anti-influenza drug. The biological roles of NB and Vpu are less certain. In all cases, the protein contains a single transmembrane α-helix close to its N-terminus. Channels can be formed by (...) homo-oligomerization of these proteins, yielding bundles of transmembrane helices that span the membrane and surround a central ion-permeable pore. Molecular modeling may be used to integrate and interpret available experimental data concerning the structure of such transmembrane pores. This has proved successful for the M2 channel domain, where two independently derived models are in agreement with one another, and with solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data. Simulations based on channel models may yield insights into possible ion conduction and selectivity mechanisms. BioEssays 20:992–1000, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Manzo (2023/2020, this volume) objects to Nathalie Bulle's article with Denis Phan “Can Analytical Sociology Do Without Methodological Individualism?” (Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2018) that the rationality associated with the understanding interpretation of MI cannot be taken to be trans-situational. This reply argues that either (1) this is a misunderstanding resulting from a confusion between the general rational capacity of human beings, to which Bulle and Phan refer, and the specific behavioral patterns associated with given situations and models or (...) (2) this objection supports a structural reductionism in which the structural level tends to “reduce” the individual level, so that the behavioral patterns are directly implied by the structures. (shrink)

It appears that indexicals must have fine-grained senses for us to explain things involving human action and emotions, and we typically identify these different senses with different modes of expression. On the other hand, we also express the very same thought in very different ways. The first problem is the problem of cognitive significance. The second problem is what Branquinho (1999) has called the problem of cognitive dynamics. The question is how we can solve both of those problems at the (...) same time. Vojislav Božičković (2021) offers one solution in which the cognitive dynamics runs through the objects of the attitudes. I discuss this solution and offer an alternative in which the theory of cognitive dynamics has no use for the objects of the attitudes to unify expressions of attitudes. When we say or believe “the same thing” using different modes of expressions, it is by virtue of our deploying a dynamic theory of attitude expression. Like Lewis Carrol’s Red Queen, we must run to stay in place. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Tensism is the view that tense is not merely a property of language and the mind, but of the world itself. Perspectivalism extends this idea to all perspectival properties be they person or locational. One challenge that perspectivalism faces is the problem of expressing the contents of the beliefs and utterances of persons that are in other perspectival positions. One proposed solution to this problem is to allow for semantic theories that "realign" the expression of contents so that the (...) contents expressed by persons in other perspectival positions can be re-expressed from one's own perspectival position. In this paper I argue that a similar semantic realignment strategy could be deployed in helping perspectivalists generally come to grips with a puzzle raised by the Special Theory of Relativity. In short, the strategy is to realign the expression of contents in another inertial frame so that they are expressed from within your inertial frame. As we will see, the strategy is not puzzle free. (shrink)

Kenneth Taylor's book, Referring to the World: An Opinionated Introduction to the Theory of Reference, is an exploration of the cognitive resources required to refer to things in the external world. According to Taylor, there is a lot going on. One needs the appropriate internal syntactic objects (which are, on Taylor's view, the product of discursive activity), plus the appropriate internal conceptions, plus of course, the things in the external world that are causally related to our sense organs. His project (...) then is to direct this symphony of moving parts. (shrink)

Malcolm Bull offers a detailed analysis of nihilism in Nietzsche's works. Along with accompanying commentaries by Cascardi and Clark, he explores the significance of Nietzscheís views given the fact that a wide range of readers have come to embrace his ideas as new orthodoxy. There seem to be no anti-Nietzscheans today, but Bull demonstrates that this wide embrace of Nietzsche runs counter to the very meaning of nihilism as Nietzsche understood it.

Each year, The Philosopher's Annual presents the ten best articles published in the field of philosophy during the previous twelve months—with the absence of limits on the articles' sources, subject matter, or modes of treatment making for a very diverse collection of engaging, high-caliber work. This year's volume includes papers by Katalin Balog, Tyler Burge, Cheshire Calhoun, Sally Haslanger, Thomas Hofweber, Philip Kitcher, Charles G. Morgan, Thomas W. Pogge, James Pryor, and Elliott Sober.

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Some Important Distinctions Are Referential Semantics for I‐languages Possible? Language/World Isomorphism Chomsky's Arguments against LWI Aspects of the World Conclusion.

Each year, _The Philosopher's Annual_ presents the ten best articles published in the field of philosophy during the previous twelve months—with the absence of limits on the articles' sources, subject matter, or modes of treatment making for a very diverse collection of engaging, high-caliber work. This year's volume includes papers by Katalin Balog, Tyler Burge, Cheshire Calhoun, Sally Haslanger, Thomas Hofweber, Philip Kitcher, Charles G. Morgan, Thomas W. Pogge, James Pryor, and Elliott Sober.

This latest volume of _The Philosopher's Annual_ presents the ten best articles published in the field during 2001. No limitations are placed on the articles' sources, subject matter or mode of treatment, providing for a diverse collection of engaging, high-caliber work that stands as a valuable sample of contemporary philosophy. This year's volume includes papers by Robert Bernasconi, Hans Halvorson, Christopher Hitchcock, Ignacio Jane, Brian Leiter, Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, Joel Pust, Alison Simmons, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson, and (...) Crispin Wright. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Theory of Descriptions Motivating the Theory of Descriptions Attributive and Referential Three Ambiguity Arguments Synthesis Three More Ambiguity Arguments Indefinite Descriptions Indefinites as Logically Basic? Conclusion.

According to a number of authors it is possible to give tenseless (B-series) truth conditions for tensed sentences by utilizing token indexicals in something like the following fashion. (1a) An utterance u of 'Past S' is true iff at some time earlier than u, S is true (1b) An utterance u of 'Pres S' is true iff at some time overlapping u, S is true This strategy has been challenged on the grounds that it will break down in cases like (...) (2). (2) There was no spoken language A number of strategies have been attempted to circumvent this difficult, including the introduction of possible utterances, etc. In this paper I argue that such moves are unnecessary — that the problem turns on scope interactions with hidden modals in the theorems of the T-theory. (shrink)

The standard view on discourse pronoun resolution is that determining the antecedents of discourse pronouns is typically a function of extralinguistic reasoning. In contrast, Stojnić (2021) argues that pronoun resolution is a function of linguistic facts. In this article we offer what we take to be a friendly amendment to the technical aspects of Stojnić’s proposal. Our point of departure will be with our idea that prominence is not determined by the position of the candidate antecedent within a stack, but (...) rather by its position within standard syntactic tree structures, extended to include discourse-level trees. Our proposal leans on the notion of p-scope, a proof-theoretic accessibility relation among tree nodes which we develop in Ludlow and Živanović (2022), and the notion of closeness built on standard accounts of syntactic locality. The key idea is that a pronoun’s antecedent resolves to its closest p-scoper; specifically, p-scope determines the potential antecedents, and the closeness relation orders these by prominence. Coherence relations, which we provisionally represent as syntactic heads, can be then seen as affecting accessibility and prominence indirectly, in virtue of their position in traditional LF tree structures. (shrink)

Humble leadership can be described as a positive psychological feature that allows leaders to admit their limitations, be open to new ideas, and give a voice to others while also recognizing their merits. The present study (n = 268 participants) explored the persuasive effects of a female politician communicating a humble stance by considering the role emotional displays at play (joy, calmness, sadness, and anger) when discussing a moral issue (hosting immigrants). The results revealed that the politician elicited positive emotions (...) and evaluations of her competence and benevolence, especially when exhibiting a sad facial display, by contributing to the intention to accept the moral gist of her persuasive message. Overall, these ‘gendered’ effects are discussed in relation to the ‘political authenticity’, which can be perceived as high especially when the humble message is connected with several social reasons, as is the case with gender or social status. (shrink)

While methodological individualism is a fundamental approach within the social sciences, it is often misunderstood. This highlights the need for a discursive and up-to-date reference work analyzing this approach’s classic arguments and assumptions in the light of contemporary issues in sociology, economics and philosophy. This two-volume handbook presents the first comprehensive overview of methodological individualism. Chapters discuss historical and contemporary debates surrounding this central approach within the social sciences, as well as cutting edge developments related to the individualist tradition with (...) philosophical and scientific implications. Bringing together multiple contributions from the world’s leading experts on this important tradition of theorizing, this collective endeavor provides teachers, researchers and students in sociology, economics, and philosophy with a reliable and critical understanding of the founding principles, key thinkers and intellectual development of MI since the late 19th century. ​. (shrink)

Referring to the mainstream studies based on the personalization’s hypothesis, which positively evaluates signals of dominance shown by leaders, the analysis of Obama’s rhetoric stays a relevant exception. His risky recall, during his political talks, of his social difficulties as a child of a mixed couple was in fact one of the more surprising aspects of his success. Nevertheless, reactions to his autobiographical sharing were scarcely explored. Based on the idea that these self-disclosures signal his responsivity toward the audience of (...) low social condition and can, therefore, be defined as a sign of humility, this research aims to test if coherence between Obama’s words and his facial expressions of contempt, due to the seriousness of social injustices endured in his childhood, may influence the receivers’ perception of such unexpected communication. Before reading a brief autobiographical sharing taken from a “Back-to-school” speech, a highly ritualized monolog the US President addresses each year to students, 175 Italian participants were presented with a photo of Obama displaying either an expression of contempt or a neutral expression. Comparisons between self-assessments of perceptions and reactions of participants assigned to the two experimental conditions show that a facial expression of contempt, coherent with words describing his school difficulties, has been crucial for perceiving this humble political discourse as authentic and not as a simple socially desirable posturing. More studies seem to be needed, however, to understand how humble speech could enhance the positive face of leaders or backfire against them. (shrink)

Machiavelli's continuing fascination arises not just from his hard‐headed maxims but at a deeper level from his willingness to face up to agonising moral choices. The author is a former editor of The Director, a Renaissance scholar, and currently edits International Minds.

Machiavelli's continuing fascination arises not just from his hard‐headed maxims but at a deeper level from his willingness to face up to agonising moral choices. The author is a former editor of The Director, a Renaissance scholar, and currently edits International Minds.

The author's motivation for constructing the calculi of this paper\nis so that time and tense can be "discussed together in the same\nlanguage" (p. 282). Two types of enriched propositional caluli for\ntense logic are considered, both containing ordinary propositional\nvariables for which any proposition may be substituted. One type\nalso contains "clock-propositional" variables, a,b,c, etc., for\nwhich only clock-propositional variables may be substituted and that\ncorrespond to instants or moments in the semantics. The other type\nalso contains "history-propositional" variables, u,v,w, etc., for\nwhich only history-propositional variables may (...) be substituted and\nthat correspond to maximally linearly ordered subsets of instants.\nThis second type is for tense logics in which time is not linear\nand where at any moment there may exist alternative future courses\nof events. Quantifiers are included in both types but only for clock-\nand history-propositional variables. However, these quantifiers are\ngiven an essentially substitutional interpretation. In addition,\nbesides each clock-propositional variable being true at exactly one\ninstant, the semantics requires that for each instant there be at\nleast one clock-propositional variable true at that instant, which\nin effect amounts to having each instant of the model "denoted" in\nthe formalism by some clock-propositional variable. Thus it is not\nsurprising that quantification over clock-propositional variables\nturns out to have a "well behaved first-order semantics" (p. 284).\n{One axiom relating history- with clock-propositions seems to need\nrevision: CKTauTbuAUabUba. Since the clock-propositional variables\nmight be true at the same instant the consequent should include an\nalternative, namely, LCab.} Besides the standard truth-functional\nand tense operators G,H,F,P, the author includes L for "it is\nalways the case that". The model-theoretic earlier-than relation\nordering instants and the semantic truth-at (an instant) relation\nare formalized by Uab and Taα (for a wff α) which\nare defined respectively as LCbPa (whenever the clock-proposition\nb is the case the clock-proposition a was the case) and LCaα\n(α is the case whenever the clock-proposition a is the case).\nBecause the future tense operators are definable in terms of U\nand T and the latter are definable in terms of L and P, the\ndual of H, the author notes that his completeness proofs can be\nrestricted to L and H as primitive and with the future tense\noperators used for other interpretations, especially Prior, A.'s\nindeterminist "it will be the case that", where time is not linear.\nThe author concludes with some rather technical observations showing\nthat "in ordinary tense logics the instants are nonstandard elements\nof the models. This provides", according to the author, "a semantic\npressure to build the instants into tense logic, so that they will\nappear as standard elements in the models" (p. 283). (shrink)

Is mercy more important than justice? Since antiquity, mercy has been regarded as a virtue. The power of monarchs was legitimated by their acts of clemency, their mercy demonstrating their divine nature. Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, mercy had become “an injustice committed against society... a manifest vice.” Mercy was exiled from political life. How did this happen? In this book, Malcolm Bull analyses and challenges the Enlightenment’s rejection of mercy. A society operating on principles of (...) rational self-interest had no place for something so arbitrary and contingent, and having been excluded from Hobbes’s theory of the state and Hume’s theory of justice, mercy disappeared from the lexicon of political theory. But, Bull argues, these idealised conceptions have proved too limiting. Political realism demands recognition of the foundational role of mercy in society. If we are vulnerable to harm from others, we are in need of their mercy. By restoring the primacy of mercy over justice, we may constrain the powerful and release the agency of the powerless. And if arguments for capitalism are arguments against mercy, might the case for mercy challenge the very basis of our thinking about society and the state? An important contribution to contemporary political philosophy from an inventive thinker, On Mercy makes a persuasive case for returning this neglected virtue to the heart of political thought. (shrink)

This paper focuses much-needed attention on the ethical nature of customer relationship management (CRM) strategies in organisations. The research uses an in-depth case study to reflect on the design, implementation and use of ‘best practice’ associated with CRM. We argue that conventional CRM philosophy is based on a fairly narrow construct that fails to consider ethical issues appropriately. We highlight why ethical considerations are important when organisations use CRM and how a more holistic approach incorporating some of Alasdair MacIntyre's ideas (...) on virtue ethics could be relevant. (shrink)

This paper focuses much‐needed attention on the ethical nature of customer relationship management (CRM) strategies in organisations. The research uses an in‐depth case study to reflect on the design, implementation and use of ‘best practice’ associated with CRM. We argue that conventional CRM philosophy is based on a fairly narrow construct that fails to consider ethical issues appropriately. We highlight why ethical considerations are important when organisations use CRM and how a more holistic approach incorporating some of Alasdair MacIntyre's ideas (...) on virtue ethics could be relevant. (shrink)