What is astro-culture? In The Babylonian Planet it is unfolded as an aesthetic, an idea, a field of study, a position, and a practice. It helps to engineer the shift from a world view that is segregated to one that is integrated - from global to planetary; from distance to intimacy and where closeness and cosmic distance live side-by-side. In this tour de force, Sonja Neef takes her cue from Edouard Glissant's vision of multilingualism and reignites the myth of (...) the Tower of Babel to anticipate new forms of cultural encounter. For her, Babel is an organic construction site at which she fuses theoretical analysis and case studies of artists, writers and thinkers like William Kentridge, Orhan Pamuk and Immanuel Kant. Her skilful interrogations then allow her to paint a portrait of art and culture that abolishes the horizon as a barrier to vision and reclaims it as a place of contact and relation. By combining the Babylonian concept of the encounter and the planetary concept of the whole-earth, Neef creates a space - an astro-culture - in which she can examine topics as varied as language, translation, media, modernity, migration and the moon. In doing so, she instigates a renewed cultural understanding receptive to the kinder forms of cultural encounter and globalisation she hopes will come. (shrink)

This article investigates the anthropology of Spinoza as a strategy for happiness, political, as well as individual. Inspired by the readings, comments, and perspectives of Matheron, Deleuze, and Balibar, I will analyze Spinoza’s theory of the affects as the basis for this strategic anthropology. These authors all share an ontological and political vision organized around the concepts of multitude and the transindividual which result directly from Spinoza’s analysis of the human affects in books III and IV of the Ethics, and (...) his theory of political dynamics developed in the Political treatise. They consider Spinoza a contemporary and share with him the idea of a relational ontology and an inextricable and mutual interdependence of the individual and the community which is captured in the concept of the transindividual. With Matheron/Spinoza I will focus on the question of anthropology and the structure of thought, with Deleuze/Spinoza on the kinds of knowledge in relation to the human mind and body, and with Balibar/Spinoza on the transindividual, productive, active, and thus strategic nature of our thinking. These three analyses of human thought and affects all proceed from the hypothesis of conatus/desire as human essence and aim not just at theoretical knowledge but rather at the effective improvement of our well-being and lives, that is, at happiness. (shrink)

Population-level biomedical research offers new opportunities to improve population health, but also raises new challenges to traditional systems of research governance and ethical oversight. Partly in response to these challenges, various models of public involvement in research are being introduced. Yet, the ways in which public involvement should meet governance challenges are not well understood. We conducted a qualitative study with 36 experts and stakeholders using the World Café method to identify key governance challenges and explore how public involvement can (...) meet these challenges. This brief report discusses four cross-cutting themes from the study: the need to move beyond individual consent; issues in benefit and data sharing; the challenge of delineating and understanding publics; and the goal of clarifying justifications for public involvement. The report aims to provide a starting point for making sense of the relationship between public involvement and the governance of population-level biomedical research, showing connections, potential solutions and issues arising at their intersection. We suggest that, in population-level biomedical research, there is a pressing need for a shift away from conventional governance frameworks focused on the individual and towards a focus on collectives, as well as to foreground ethical issues around social justice and develop ways to address cultural diversity, value pluralism and competing stakeholder interests. There are many unresolved questions around how this shift could be realised, but these unresolved questions should form the basis for developing justificatory accounts and frameworks for suitable collective models of public involvement in population-level biomedical research governance. (shrink)

This is a collection of sixteen essays by a diverse group of international scholars that offers a wide-ranging and contemporary perspective on the major aspects of Christian Wolff’s ethics. The volume focuses on Wolff’s German Ethics, arguably his most important and influential text on moral philosophy, but many of the chapters also consider the development of the basic tenets of Wolff’s moral theory in his later Latin writings. The contributions cover a range of topics, including the systematic structure of the (...) text itself and the relation between Wolff’s ethics and the preceding natural law tradition. Many chapters pay special attention to the core concepts of Wolff’s moral philosophy, such as obligation, perfection, the highest good, and happiness. Other notable topics include Wolff’s conception of moral judgment and moral education, as well as the role of psychology and anthropology in his ethical thought. The volume also contains discussion of the influence of Wolff’s ethics on subsequent figures such as C.A. Crusius, G.F. Meier, and Kant. As a whole, the volume seeks to establish the importance of Wolff’s German Ethics within the history of ethics as well as inspire others to engage with his thought. (shrink)

Literature on the subject of the menopause, primarily from the past three decades, is selectively reviewed in the form of an annotated bibliography. In order to highlight particular methodological problems, the review is presented in three sections, each preceded by a brief discussion, as follows: the general report of clinical observation or experience, the survey, and the clinical trial. Several recommendations are also made for further research in this field.

Prior research has identified age 9–11 as a critical period for the development of the control-of-variables strategy (CVS). We examine the stability of interindividual differences in children's CVS skills with regard to their precursor skills during this critical developmental period. To this end, we relate two precursor skills of CVS at age 9 to four skills constituting fully developed CVS more than 2 years later, controlling for children's more general cognitive development. Note thatN= 170 second- to fourth-graders worked on multiple (...) choice-assessments of their understanding of indeterminacy of evidence and of confounding. We find relations between these two precursor skills and children's CVS skills 2 years later at age 11 inplanning, identifying, andinterpretingcontrolled experiments, and in recognizing the inconclusiveness of confounded comparisons (understanding). In accordance with the perspective that both indeterminacy and confounding constitute critical, related yet distinct elements of CVS, both precursor skills contribute to the prediction of later CVS. Together, the two precursor skills can explain 39% of students' later CVS mastery. Overall, the understanding of indeterminacy is a stronger predictor of fully developed CVS than that of confounding. The understanding of confounding, however, is a better predictor of the more difficult CVS sub-skills of understanding the inconclusiveness of confounded comparisons, and of planning a correctly controlled experiment. Importantly, both precursor skills maintain interactive predictive strength when controlling for children's general cognitive abilities and reading comprehension, showing that the developmental dynamics of CVS and its precursor skills cannot be fully ascribed to general cognitive development. We discuss implications of these findings for theories about the development of CVS and broader scientific reasoning. (shrink)

Die Anforderungen an das ethisch-professionelle Handeln Pflegender und somit auch die Forderungen an die professionelle Ethikkompetenz Pflegender im praktischen Berufsfeld wandeln sich sowohl qualitativ als auch quantitativ. Dies wird auch in den veränderten normativen Rahmungen der Pflegebildung deutlich. Der Lernort Praxis als ein zentraler Ort pflegebezogener Bildungsprozesse rückt somit nochmals stärker in den Fokus der Ethikkompetenzentwicklung professionell Pflegender. Der Beitrag konturiert zentrale Anforderungen und veränderte Bezüglichkeiten für die Ethikbildung im beruflichen Handlungsfeld professioneller Pflege und formuliert davon ausgehend zentrale Prämissen an (...) organisationsethische Rahmenbedingungen mit dem Ziel, eine ethisch fundierte professionelle pflegerische Handlungspraxis zu unterstützen. (shrink)

Die Anforderungen an das ethisch-professionelle Handeln Pflegender und somit auch die Forderungen an die professionelle Ethikkompetenz Pflegender im praktischen Berufsfeld wandeln sich sowohl qualitativ als auch quantitativ. Dies wird auch in den veränderten normativen Rahmungen der Pflegebildung deutlich. Der Lernort Praxis als ein zentraler Ort pflegebezogener (Aus‑)Bildungsprozesse rückt somit nochmals stärker in den Fokus der Ethikkompetenzentwicklung professionell Pflegender. Der Beitrag konturiert zentrale Anforderungen und veränderte Bezüglichkeiten für die Ethikbildung im beruflichen Handlungsfeld professioneller Pflege und formuliert davon ausgehend zentrale Prämissen an (...) organisationsethische Rahmenbedingungen mit dem Ziel, eine ethisch fundierte professionelle pflegerische Handlungspraxis zu unterstützen. (shrink)

In recent years, discourses around “personalized,” “stratified,” and “precision” medicine have proliferated. These concepts broadly refer to the translational potential carried by new data-intensive biomedical research modes. Each describes expectations about the future of medicine and healthcare that data-intensive innovation promises to bring forth. The definitions and uses of the concepts are, however, plural, contested and characterized by diverse ideas about the kinds of futures that are desired and desirable. In this paper, we unpack key disputes around the “personalized,” “stratified,” (...) and “precision” terms, and map the epistemic, political and economic contexts that structure them as well as the different roles attributed to patients and citizens in competing future imaginaries. We show the ethical and value baggage embedded within the promises that are manufactured through terminological choices and argue that the context and future-oriented nature of these choices helps to understanding how data-intensive biomedical innovations are made socially meaningful. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Christian Wolff’s conception of motivating and normative reasons. My aim is to show that in the discussion of error cases, Wolff pursues a strategy that is strikingly similar to the strategy of contemporary defenders of nicht-psychologist accounts of motivating reasons. According to many nicht-psychologist views, motivating reasons are facts. My aim is to show that Wolff’s motivation in pursuing this strategy is very different. The point is that due to his commitment to the Principle of (...) Sufficient Reason, Wolff has to show that error cases are compatible with the PSR. The issue is worth discussing because it is not yet sufficiently explored what motivating reasons are, according to Wolff, and how they relate, in substance, to normative reasons. Methodologically, my approach can be characterized as one of “mutual illumination”: I think it is possible to highlight some crucial ambiguities of Wolff’s conception against the backdrop of the contemporary conception of motivating reasons, but also to question the importance and role of the ontological question of what motivating reasons are in contemporary discussions against the backdrop of Wolff’s position. (shrink)

This volume aimed to highlight narrative identities of European cities or city neighbourhoods that have been overlooked, such as mid-sized cities. These cities are neither small towns nor metropolises, cities that are now unveiling their appeal or specificity. The present special issue thus covers a range of representations of cities. The articles investigate more systematically how different texts deal with various cities from different experiential and fictional perspectives. The issue covers the geographical scope across Europe, from east to west or (...) vice versa, as well as a range of different works of national literature(s), but with a clear emphasis on mid-sized European cities that have until now been deemed as lesser-known, secondary, peripheral, ‘other’ cities that are in the focus of the research of the COST project Writing Urban Places. New Narratives of the European City, within which this journal issue is being published. (shrink)

This paper investigates the affiliation of Book I of the Latin translation of Euclid's Elements attributed to Hermann of Carinthia with the Arabic transmission of the Greek mathematical work. It argues that it is a translation of a text of the Arabic secondary transmission, that is, of an Arabic edition mixed with comments. Two methodological claims are made in the paper. The first insists that the determination of a text whose transmission was as multifaceted and complex as the Euclidean Elements (...) needs to be based on a systematic investigation of entire books rather than on selected theorems or diagrams of global, mostly structural relevance. The second claim starts from the experience that almost all results regarding the place of a particular document in a chain of transmission are conjectural. It acknowledges that individual results are more or less persuasive, depending upon the qualitative status of the argument. It suggests that the quantitative accumulation of similarities, differences, errors, regularities, or peculiarities allows one to recognize patterns and thus improves the reliability of judgment. (shrink)

People with post-stroke motor aphasia know what they would like to say but cannot express it through motor pathways due to disruption of cortical circuits. We present a theoretical background for our hypothesized connection between attention and aphasia rehabilitation and suggest why in this context, Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) use might be beneficial for patients diagnosed with aphasia. Not only could BCI technology provide a communication tool, it might support neuronal plasticity by activating language circuits and thereby boost aphasia recovery. However, (...) stroke may lead to heterogeneous symptoms that might hinder BCI use which is why the feasibility of this approach needed to be investigated first. In this pilot study, we included five participants diagnosed with post-stroke aphasia. Four participants were initially unable to use the visual P300 speller paradigm. By adjusting the paradigm to their needs, all participants could successfully learn to use the speller for communication with accuracies up to 100%. We describe necessary adjustments to the paradigm and present future steps to further investigate the here presented approach. (shrink)

The thesis addresses the question of human consciousness in its oscillation between conditioning and transcendence: the impact of cultural worldviews on the individual's lifeworld and their gradual transcendence as a form of spiritual practice. At the centre of attention is a group of individuals and their unfolding life-stories as they move through a journey of transformation, seeking to explore and understand the complexity of their own consciousness. The emphasis is on the embodiment of belief systems and the individuals' inherent existential (...) power to transcend cultural precepts. Methodologically, the study is based in phenomenological anthropology. It thus employs the first-person perspective and includes subjective personal experience as primary data. (shrink)

(1994). Serbia. World Futures: Vol. 39, The Evolution of European Identity: Surveys of the Growing Edge A Report by the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON), pp. 143-148.

Research within the operational approach to the logical foundations of physics has recently pointed out a new perspective in which quantum logic can be viewed as an intuitionistic logic with an additional operator to capture its essential, i.e., non-distributive, properties. In this paper we will offer an introduction to this approach. We will focus further on why quantum logic has an inherent dynamic nature which is captured in the meaning of "orthomodularity" and on how it motivates physically the introduction of (...) dynamic implication operators, each for which a deduction theorem holds with respect to a dynamic conjunction. As such we can offer a positive answer to the many who pondered about whether quantum logic should really be called a logic. Doubts to answer the question positively were in first instance due to the former lack of an implication connective which satisfies the deduction theorem within quantum logic. (shrink)

Just as burnout is manifested through changes in behavioural and communication patterns, it is important to examine whether certain aspects of communication can affect student burnout development. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between communication and academic burnout. To achieve this, the study proposes an integrated model examining the effects of three communication dimensions – support from academic staff, support from colleagues, and participation in decision-making – on four different dimensions of academic burnout, as well as students’ overall (...) burnout. The model is tested using structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis. High coefficients of determination regarding particular burnout dimensions validate the strength of the proposed model. The results show that support from academic staff and support from fellow students significantly and negatively influence academic burnout, and might be instrumental in its reduction. Unexpectedly, participation in decision-making is shown to be positively related to academic burnout. (shrink)

In Ockham's Assumption of Mental Speech: Thinking in a World of Particulars, Sonja Schierbaum offers a detailed philosophical reconstruction of William Ockham's (1287-1349) conception of mental speech. Ockham's conception provides a rich account of cognition and semantics that binds together various philosophical issues and forms a point of departure for many later and even contemporary debates. The book analyses the role of mental speech for the semantics and the use of linguistic expressions as well as its function within Ockham's (...) cognitive theory and epistemology. Carefully balancing Ockham's position against contemporary appropriations in the light of Fodor's LOTH, it allows us to understand better Ockham's view on human thought and its relation to language. (shrink)

My general aim in commenting on Băltuță’s paper is to elucidate the metaphor of a dialogue she uses to characterize the general, methodological framework of her undertaking. For this purpose, I turn to a certain strand of the contemporary discussion of the role of the historian of philosophy. According to Băltuță, the determination of the limits of such a dialogue is a matter of degree, not of principle. I agree with her. My concern is that the determination of the limits (...) of the dialogue is thwarted if the central, contemporary notion that is taken to be applicable to the historical account in question is used equivocally. In my view, there is a serious concern that Băltuță’s account equivocates on the term “intentional,” making it difficult to determine the limits of the dialogue between contemporary and medieval views on the intentionality of pain. My specific aim in this comment is to show that although Băltuță equivocates on the term “intentional,” her analysis of Kilwardby’s account can be adjusted such that her argument succeeds in showing that pain is in fact an intentional state for Kilwardby. (shrink)

The article discusses the relation between the concepts of unfair trade, exploitation, and below-subsistence wages with regard to individual economic transactions. Starting from the common notion that exploitation involves some kind of unfair advantage taking, it asks how “unfair” is to be understood, and what it is that is taken advantage of in exploitative exchanges. On this basis it then explores a line of argument for grounding the claim that below-subsistence wages are exploitative, focusing on the condition of morally transformative (...) voluntary consent to transactions. By analyzing the structure of coercion with regard to threats, offers, and circumstances it comes to the conclusion that consent to an offer is morally non-transformative with regard to legitimizing the outcome of a transaction if the person giving the “consent” has only unacceptable options in absolute terms to choose from, since this reduces “consent” to a mere act of rationality devoid of any normative content. Accordingly, it argues that insofar as below-subsistence wages are unacceptable options in absolute terms, they are to be considered exploitative and an instance of unfair trade. (shrink)

In this article I use conceptual frames drawn from autobiography studies and feminist theory to examine the relationships between bodily experience and the social construction of sex, gender and class as they play themselves out in a selection of womens medical consultation letters written to the eminent Swiss physician, Samuel-Auguste Tissot, during the second half of the eighteenth century. My analysis of a selection of consultation letters - all of which are situated and read in the context of a rich (...) archival collection of some 1,200 letters - considers the role that bodily experience plays in the construction of self and suggests that not only the experience, but also the textual articulation of the body, were imagined both through and against accepted understandings of sex, gender and class during this period. (shrink)

On the basis of a reconstruction of legal theory in the tradition of Marx - a current that has been more or less silenced since the end of the 1970s - Subjectivation and Cohesion develops a critical counter-pole to the theories of law that predominate in social theory today. To this end, the works of Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Evgeny Pashukanis, Oskar Negt, Isaac D. Balbus, the so-called 'State-derivation School', Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas and Michel Foucault are first analysed for (...) their strengths and weaknesses, and then combined to form a new construction: a materialist legal theory that is up to date and can avoid the shortcomings of existing theories - above all their disregard for gender relations and the reductive consequences of functionalist, economic or politicist approaches to law. (shrink)

Was ist Wahnsinn und was ist Kunst? In dem Buch wirft die Autorin einen neuen Blick auf Kunstwerke aus der weltberühmten Sammlung Prinzhorn in Heidelberg. Die Werke, die um das Jahr 1900 von Patienten in psychiatrischen Einrichtungen geschaffen wurden, werden erstmals aus einer phänomenologischen Perspektive heraus betrachtet. Ausgangspunkt ist die Phänomenologie des Philosophen Maurice Merleau-Ponty und seines Konzepts von Leiblichkeit. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Werke von Elisabeth Faulhaber, Carl Lange und Edmund Träger. Die Autorin befragt die Werke der drei Art-Brut-Künstler (...) nach den darin zum Ausdruck kommenden Zeit- und Raumordnungen, nach dem Verhältnis der Künstler zu sich selbst und zur Welt. Diese Bildbetrachtungen ermöglichen es Lesern, sich den Künstlern anzunähern und ihr „Zur-Welt-Sein“ nachzuvollziehen. Das vermeintlich Kranke wird durch die Analyse der Bildsprache als existenzielle und momentane Balancefindung verstehbar. Was auf den ersten Blick fremd erscheint, wird auf Ordnungsstrukturen und Metaphernbildungen im schöpferischen Prozess zurückgeführt. So entwickelt die Autorin ein neues Verständnis von Kunst, geschaffen von Menschen in Phasen existenzieller seelischer Krisen. Sie geht damit weit über kunsthistorische Analysen auf der einen und psychiatrische Diagnosen auf der anderen Seite hinaus und stellt gängige Definitionen von Kunst und Krankheit in Frage. Die Autorin erweitert die wissenschaftliche Debatte zu Phänomenologie und Bildsprache und bringt dafür erstmals alle verfügbaren Quellen und Erkenntnisse zu den drei Vertretern der Outsider Art zusammen. Ein Buch für Phänomenologen, Kunsthistoriker, Psychiater und Psychotherapeuten, das auch interessierten Laien eine Kunstbetrachtung aus phänomenologischer Perspektive bietet. (shrink)

_The Dutch Legacy_ investigates the political philosophy and philosophy of religion of Franciscus van den Enden, Lodewijk Meyer, the brothers De la Court, and Adriaan Koerbagh in order to assess their contributions to the development of radical movements in the Enlightenment.

In this paper, I consider the relevance of judgment for practical considerations by discussing Christian August Crusius’s conception of rational desire. According to my interpretation of Crusius’s distinction between rational and non-rational desire, we are responsible at least for our rational desires insofar as we can control them. And we can control our rational desires by judging whether what we want complies with our human nature. It should become clear that Crusius’s conception of rational desire is normative in that we (...) necessarily desire things that are compatible with our nature, such as our own perfection. Therefore, a desire is rational if the desired object is apt to satisfy the desires compatible with our nature. From a contemporary perspective, such a normative conception of rational desire might not appear very attractive; it is apt, however, to stimulate a debate on the normative criteria and the role of judgment for rational desire, which is the ultimate aim of this paper. (shrink)

International treaties, conventions and declarations have been developed in an attempt to establish a world in which people s basic rights and needs are provided for. An increasing number of states have ratified and incorporated them into their national legislations. But are such norms and values truly universal? And with states no longer being the only actors that shape global developments, what can be said about the role of social contracts between state and society for shaping the agenda of international (...) cooperation? And how do these social contracts develop in heterogeneous societies? If people themselves are the main drivers behind development, what does this imply for foreign aid?These and other questions are addressed in "Global Values in a Changing World," the 2010-2011 lecture series organized by the Netherlands Chapter of the Society for International Development. This volume combines views and recommendations by international experts, academics, and activists, and analyzes the connection between internationally agreed norms, standards, goals, and common goods, and the way they can be realized in a world that is both globalized and localized.". (shrink)

Michael Peters, Sonja Arndt & Marek TesarThis is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, asking questions of the Philosophy of Education in a New Key. Co...

Following up on earlier investigations, the present research aims at validating the construct impostor phenomenon by taking other personality correlates into account and to examine whether the impostor phenomenon is a construct in its own right. In addition, gender effects as well as associations with dispositional working styles and strain are examined. In an online study we surveyed a sample of N = 242 individuals occupying leadership positions in different sectors. Confirmatory factor analyses provide empirical evidence for the discriminant validity (...) of the impostor phenomenon. In accord with earlier studies we show that the impostor phenomenon is accompanied by higher levels of anxiety, dysphoric moods, emotional instability, a generally negative self-evaluation, and perfectionism. The study does not reveal any gender differences concerning the impostor phenomenon. With respect to working styles, persons with an impostor self-concept tend to show perfectionist as well as procrastinating behaviors. Moreover, they report being more stressed and strained by their work. In sum, the findings show that the impostor phenomenon constitutes a dysfunctional personality style. Practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Over evolutionary time, humans have developed a selective sensitivity to features in the human face that convey information on sex, age, emotions, and intentions. This ability might not only be applied to our conspecifics nowadays, but also to other living objects (i.e., animals) and even to artificial structures, such as cars. To investigate this possibility, we asked people to report the characteristics, emotions, personality traits, and attitudes they attribute to car fronts, and we used geometric morphometrics (GM) and multivariate statistical (...) methods to determine and visualize the corresponding shape information. Automotive features and proportions are found to covary with trait perception in a manner similar to that found with human faces. Emerging analogies are discussed. This study should have implications for both our understanding of our prehistoric psyche and its interrelation with the modern world. (shrink)

While questions about the environmental sustainability of contemporary farming practices and the socioeconomic viability of rural communities are attracting increasing attention throughout the US, these two issues are rarely considered together. This paper explores the current and potential connections between these two aspects of sustainability, using data on community members’ and farmers’ views of agricultural issues in California’s Central Valley. These views were collected from a series of individual and group interviews with biologically oriented and conventional farmers as well as (...) community stakeholders. Local marketing, farmland preservation, and perceptions of sustainable agriculture comprised the primary topics of discussion. The mixed results indicate that, while many farmers and community members have a strong interest in these topics, sustainable community development and the use of sustainable farming practices are seldom explicitly linked. On the other hand, many separate efforts around the Valley to increase local marketing and agritourism, improve public education about agriculture, and organize grassroots farmland preservation initiatives were documented. We conclude that linking these efforts more explicitly to sustainable agriculture and promoting more engagement between ecologically oriented farmers and their communities could engender more economic and political support for these farmers, helping them and their communities to achieve greater sustainability in the long run. (shrink)

In this paper, I proceed from the assumption that Ockham’s account of self-awareness can be correctly described as a kind of higher-order approach, because just like modern higher-order theorists, Ockham accounts for a mental act being conscious in terms of a higher-order act that takes the act as its object. I aim to defend Ockham’s approach against the objection that it fails to provide an explanation of how self-awareness comes about because any such explanation would be circular. Part of the (...) critique, in light of recent findings in Ockham scholarship, is that the ontological identity of the subject does not suffice to explain – in a non-circular way – the psychological identity and unity of the subject of awareness. Here, I argue that Ockham can respond to this objection by highlighting the power of will. Roughly speaking, the idea is that he can account for the limits of the psychological subject in terms of what the subject can want or will with respect to her own acts and these acts alone. It is along these lines that Ockham can account for the asymmetry between first-person and third-person perspective in a non-circular way, with reference to the exotic case of angelic mind-reading and the comparatively less exotic case of human memory. (shrink)

Although many people seem to share the intuition that multinational companies carry a responsibility for the working conditions in their supply chains, the justification offered for this assumption is usually rather unclear. This article explores a promising strategy for grounding the relevant intuition and for rendering its content more precise. It applies the criteria of David Miller's connection theory of remedial responsibility to different forms of supply chain governance as characterized by the Global Value Chains framework. The analysis suggests that (...) the criteria for identifying MNEs as remedially responsible for bad working conditions in their direct suppliers are fulfilled in many cases, even though differentiations are required with regard to the different supply chain governance structures. MNEs thus have a duty to make sure currently bad working conditions in their suppliers are changed for the better. Moreover, since production in supply chains for structural reasons continuously generates remedial responsibility of MNEs for bad working conditions in their suppliers, it puts the prospective responsibility on them to make sure that their suppliers offer acceptable working conditions. Further, it is suggested that the remedial responsibility of MNEs might require them to make financial compensation to victims of bad working conditions and in grave cases initiate or support programs to mitigate disastrous effects suffered by them. (shrink)