Although convergence in emotion expressions within small groups is well documented, the motives that explain why members converge are rarely explicated. We approach expressive convergence from a conformity perspective and introduce the Emotional Conformity Framework, in which we posit that members match their groupmates’ emotion expressions because they are motivated to gain an accurate understanding of reality (informational conformity motive) or to form and maintain social relationships (normative conformity motive). These motives determine members’ standards for correctness, social responses, and plausible (...) convergence mechanisms, while members’ personalities and situational properties shape the relative strength of the two motives. By explicating these motivational underpinnings, the Framework improves our capacity to understand, predict, and regulate expressive convergence and emphasizes its functionality. (shrink)

This paper draws on ideas about policy innovation and adaptation to assess the extent to which ‘payments for ecosystem services’ can be seen as a challenge to traditionally more bureaucratic, state-centered ways of paying for the provisioning of environmental goods from agricultural landscapes through agri environmental policy. Focussing on recent experience in the United States and the UK, the paper documents the extent to which PES is now an established term of reference in AEP research and debate in both countries (...) and postulates that this may usher in a new discourse of environmental provisioning in agriculture. The PES landscape is, however, currently highly fragmented and largely experimental, with ‘PES-like’ approaches being piloted in the field through partnerships between state agencies and localized private and charitable interests. State-supported AEP programs remain substantially intact, and rather than any displacement of state action, there appears to be a more gradual insertion of PES approaches and metrics into standard AEP operating procedures. This institutional stickiness is partly due to the continuing difficulty of agreeing the metrics necessary for measuring outcomes but may also be due to the politically well defended nature of traditional AEP entitlements and associated policy networks. We conclude by suggesting a need for further research to better understand these specifically political constraints and sources of resistance to PES and the ambiguous consequences for institutions, policy networks, rural communities and environment. (shrink)

Applying Jewish Ethics: Beyond the Rabbinic Tradition is a groundbreaking collection that introduces the reader to applied ethics and examines various social issues from contemporary and largely under-represented, Jewish ethical perspectives.

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has proposed substantial changes to the current regulatory system governing human subjects research in its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, entitled “Human Subjects Research Protections: Enhancing Protections for Research Subjects and Reducing Burden, Delay, and Ambiguity for Investigators.” Some of the most significant proposed changes concern the use of biospecimens in research. Because research involving biological materials begins with an initial interaction with an individual, such research falls squarely within the human subjects (...) research regulatory framework known as the “Common Rule,” which applies to research conducted or funded by the HHS and the other signatory agencies and departments. However, as described in detail below, much biospecimen research may fall within exemptions and exceptions under the Common Rule and, thus, may be conducted without consent. The ANPRM proposes requiring written consent for research use of biospecimens, even if the biospecimens were initially collected for a purpose other than research or have been stripped of identifiers. (shrink)

This article reviews recent developments in health care law, focusing on controversy at the intersection of health care law and culture. The article addresses: emerging issues in federal regulatory oversight of the rapidly developing market in direct-to-consumer genetic testing, including questions about the role of government oversight and professional mediation of consumer choice; continuing controversies surrounding stem cell research and therapies and the implications of these controversies for healthcare institutions; a controversy in India arising at the intersection of abortion law (...) and the rights of the disabled but implicating a broader set of cross-cultural issues; and the education of U.S. health care providers and lawyers in the theory and practice of cultural competency. (shrink)

February 21st will mark the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the death of Spinoza, which occurred on February 21st, 1677. The visitor to the Hague may still see, in the Paviljoensgragt, the small two-storied house in the top rooms of which Spinoza spent the last six years of his short life. A tablet placed under the top windows commemorates the fact. It was in these rooms that Spinoza completed his Ethica, which may perhaps be regarded as the greatest masterpiece in the history (...) of Metaphysics. The house is in danger of being pulled down, and the Spinoza Society is endeavouring to secure it as a memorial to Spinoza, and a centre of philosophic studies. It is not so long since the house-breakers I had their way with the home of Erasmus in Rotterdam. It would be sad indeed if the abode of another of the greatest Humanists were to meet with a like fate. It is to be hoped that the revived I interest in Spinoza which we are witnessing now may take the I practical form of saving this precious relic, which may well serve to promote the peace and goodwill among men which Spinoza had so much at heart. (shrink)

A System of philosophy, a comprehensive world-view, is a work of art, although it is also more than that. Already Plato described the philosopher as a poet, and Plato himself was a great poet as well as a great philosopher. In recent years Professor Alexander has explained, on various occasions, that there is artistry involved in all scientific and philosophic thought. They demand creative intellectual construction of a high order. In so far as this is true, as I believe it (...) is, it should be possible, sometimes at least, to contemplate a great system of philosophy as a work of art, to enjoy it in a spirit of detachment, above the noise and the tumult of conflicting personal convictions.It is more or less in this spirit that I propose on this occasion to deal with some of the fundamental ideas of Spinoza. That, I believe, is in accordance with his own wishes. He wanted his works to be published anonymously, so that his philosophy might be considered impersonally, entirely on its own merits. Such a method of treatment may in any case be most suitable on this occasion when, in spite of probably great divergences in our individual views, we have come together to do honour to his memory. This kind of personal tribute may be contrary to his own wishes. But we owe it to ourselves, and to mankind at large, to keep alive the remembrance of one of the greatest masters of the art of high thinking and plain living. (shrink)

The Library of the Royal Society of London contains a large collection of manuscript material relating to Henry Oldenburg and his correspondents. Oldenburg was one of the two Secretaries of the Royal Society when it was founded in 1662. For many years he acted as intermediary between British and Continental philosophers: and scientists. He also edited the early volumes of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions . His contacts were accordingly very extensive. Nearly all the seventeenth-century pioneers of science were among (...) his correspondents. In his role of intermediary he was in the habit of sending extracts from some of his foreign letters to. (shrink)

Arthur James Balfour was born at Whittinghame, East Lothian, on July 25, 1848. He was barely ten years old when his father died, and he succeeded to the estate. He entered Eton in 1862, and there met Lord Rosebery. In 1866 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied philosophy under Henry Sidgwick. In 1869 he obtained a second-class in the Moral Sciences Tripos. In an autobiographical note, written long afterwards, Lord Balfour made the following reference to his mental (...) attitude as an undergraduate: “I went to Cambridge with a very small equipment of either philosophy or science, but a very keen desire to discover what I ought to think, and why . For the history of speculation I cared not a jot. Dead systems seemed to me of no more interest than abandoned fashions. My business was with the groundwork of living beliefs: in particular with the groundwork of that scientific knowledge whose recent developments had so profoundly moved the world.” Considering his attachment to the past in matters of Church and State, Lord Balfour's contempt for the history of philosophy seems to betray a curious limitation. Unfortunately for him, the history of philosophy was not an important feature in the Cambridge philosophical curriculum, and the defect avenged itself by marring his subsequent philosophy in various ways. No doubt Sidgwick did all he could to encourage and develop Balfour's critical powers. Cambridge philosophy, under the influence of Sidgwick, was critical rather than imaginative, just as Oxford philosophy, under the influence of Green, was imaginative rather than critical. (shrink)

In this review, I discuss Balibar’s ‘proposition of equaliberty’ with regard to its theoretical status and contribution, its relationship to other contemporary theories of radical democracy as well as to the problematic of bourgeois versus communist emancipation in Marx. The primary interest of this essay is to develop a detailed understanding of Balibar’s analytical schema, which draws a complex picture of our contemporary ‘human condition’, and to place it within his own theoretical development since his contribution toReading Capitalin the 60s. (...) On that basis, it will be possible to assess his contribution to thinking politics with and after Marx and place it more concretely within the generalised radical-democratic turn in post-Marxist theory. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Habermas’s method of rational reconstruction faces limitations when it comes to analysing newly emerging and contested political practices. As rational reconstruction aims to criticize existing practices by determining their normative meaning as reflected in the participants’ idealizing presuppositions, it reaches its limits where emerging and contested practices make it impossible to identify a shared self-understanding and a single participants’ perspective. Using the example of membership politics, I argue that this is often the case where (...) nationally constituted forms of politics become controversial or are fundamentally questioned. Building on the work of Benhabib and Fraser, I develop an alternative reconstructive method of plural reconstruction, which modifies the basic premises of rational reconstruction, adjusting it to emerging and contested political contexts. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 5, Page 703-725, June 2022. In this article, I argue that Habermas’s method of rational reconstruction faces limitations when it comes to analysing newly emerging and contested political practices. As rational reconstruction aims to criticize existing practices by determining their normative meaning as reflected in the participants’ idealizing presuppositions, it reaches its limits where emerging and contested practices make it impossible to identify a shared self-understanding and a single participants’ perspective. Using the example (...) of membership politics, I argue that this is often the case where nationally constituted forms of politics become controversial or are fundamentally questioned. Building on the work of Benhabib and Fraser, I develop an alternative reconstructive method of plural reconstruction, which modifies the basic premises of rational reconstruction, adjusting it to emerging and contested political contexts. (shrink)

This paper examines the influence of service learning as a pragmatic skills-based teaching intervention. Conceptually, it builds on literature, legitimizing servicelearning in terms of four educational logics– civic engagement, practical relevance, skill development, and responsibility. We investigate whether service learning can always achieve this broad range of educational objectives, in view of students being increasingly exposed to a logic of ‘educational performance’, which they may perceive to be in conflict with the logics of 'civic engagement' and ‘responsibility’. The theoretical part (...) of this paper reviews the evolution of service learning literature and summarizes insights from experiential learning literature. We also report findings from a controlled field experiment with postgraduate management students. We find that service learning influences students’ self-assessment of management skills and awareness stakeholder needs. Surprisingly, our findings provide no evidence for its influence on attitudes to responsibility. (shrink)

It is worthwhile to search for forms of coding, processing, and learning common to various cortical regions and cognitive functions. Local cortical processors may coordinate their activity by maximizing the transmission of information coherently related to the context in which it occurs, thus forming synchronized population codes. This coordination involves contextual field (CF) connections that link processors within and between cortical regions. The effects of CF connections are distinguished from those mediating receptive field (RF) input; it is shown how CFs (...) can guide both learning and processing without becoming confused with the transmission of RF information. Simulations explore the capabilities of networks built from local processors with both RF and CF connections. Physiological evidence for synchronization, CFs, and plasticity of the RF and CF connections is described. Coordination via CFs is related to perceptual grouping, the effects of context on contrast sensitivity, amblyopia, implicit influences of color in achromotopsia, object and word perception, and the discovery of distal environmental variables and their interactions through self-organization. Cortical computation could thus involve the flexible evaluation of relations between input signals by locally specialized but adaptive processors whose activity is dynamically associated and coordinated within and between regions through specialized contextual connections. Key Words: cell assemblies; cerebral cortex; context; coordination; dynamic binding; epistemology; functional specialization; learning; neural coding; neural computation; neuropsychology; object recognition; perception; reading; self-organization; synaptic plasticity; synchronization. (shrink)

While Specific Informed Consent has been the established standard for obtaining consent for medical research for many years, it does not appear suitable for large-scale biobank and health data research. Thus, alternative forms of consent have been suggested, based on a variety of ethical background assumptions. This article identifies five main ethical perspectives at stake. Even though Tiered Consent, Dynamic Consent and Meta Consent are designed to the demands of the self-determination perspective as well as the perspective of research as (...) a public good, they are still also criticized from both perspectives. In addition, criticisms based on concerns of justice, participation and democratic deliberation, and relational concerns have been levelled at each of the models. As all of these perspectives have valid points to make, the task at hand lies in balancing these ethical perspectives. What constitutes an adequate balancing depends on contextual factors. These factors include digital infrastructure and digital literacy, data safety regulation, good scientific and clinical practice, transparent debates on ethically relevant features of research, social inequalities, anti-discrimination laws and practices, trust in health care institutions and recognition of patient preferences, and consensus on unethical research. We argue that the role of context in determining acceptable models of consent puts the ethical importance of models of consent into perspective. Since altering contextual factors can help to live up to the ethical concerns at stake in debates about models of consent, opting for such a shift of focus comes without ethical loss. (shrink)

The paper addresses the highly controversial subject of the nature of law. It attempts to present a post-modern positivist concept of law that rejects objectivism and the postulation of a unified legal order entirely and merges elements of system and discourse theory.

No consensus yet exists on how to handle incidental fnd-ings in human subjects research. Yet empirical studies document IFs in a wide range of research studies, where IFs are fndings beyond the aims of the study that are of potential health or reproductive importance to the individual research participant. This paper reports recommendations of a two-year project group funded by NIH to study how to manage IFs in genetic and genomic research, as well as imaging research. We conclude that researchers (...) have an obligation to address the possibility of discovering IFs in their protocol and communications with the IRB, and in their consent forms and communications with research participants. Researchers should establish a pathway for handling IFs and communicate that to the IRB and research participants. We recommend a pathway and categorize IFs into those that must be disclosed to research participants, those that may be disclosed, and those that should not be disclosed. (shrink)

Over the last years several European patents were opposed for protecting technology violating the morality requirement under Article 53(a) EPC. Attempts have been made by the Appeal Boards of the European Patent Office (EPO), as well as by amendments introduced into the Implementing Regulations of the European Patent Convention (EPC), to address this sensitive patentability requirement more precisely. The most recent hot topic coming up in this context is the patentability of stem cells. It is to be expected that this (...) discussion will still go on in the field of biotechnological inventions for the next several years. (shrink)

Genomic research results and incidental findings with health implications for a research participant are of potential interest not only to the participant, but also to the participant's family. Yet investigators lack guidance on return of results to relatives, including after the participant's death. In this paper, a national working group offers consensus analysis and recommendations, including an ethical framework to guide investigators in managing this challenging issue, before and after the participant's death.

The Tongan language has honorific registers, called a ‘language of respect’ (Churchward 1953). These are two limited sets of lexemes used to refer to people of chiefly and kingly rank and thus honour the societal stratification. Anthropological-linguistic research reveals that these honorifics are atapu-motivated linguistic practice. The Polynesian concept oftapu(source of the loanwordtaboo) means that entities with moremana(‘supernatural power’) such as persons of higher rank and their personal belongings are ‘sacred’, and it is ‘forbidden’ to get in physical touch with (...) them. The respectful terminology (hou‘eikiandtu‘i) is restricted to suchtapuentities (signifiers), and its generic character shows that direct verbal contact with the commonkakaisignifier is avoided. Thus, the honorific registers function as a verbal taboo in its emic sense. (shrink)

In Probabilistic Knowledge Sarah Moss proposes that our credences and subjective probability judgments (SPJs) can constitute knowledge. Mossean probabilistic knowledge is grounded in probabilistic beliefs that are justified, true, and unGettiered. In this paper I aim to address and solve two challenges that arise in the vicinity of the factivity condition for probabilistic knowledge: the factivity challenge and the challenge from probabilistic arguments from ignorance (probabilistic AIs). I argue that while Moss's deflationary solution to the factivity challenge formally works, it (...) leaves us ill-equipped to handle probabilistic AIs. An account of probabilistic knowledge that cannot overcome probabilistic AIs makes knowledge of thoroughly probabilistic contents a rare and unstable phenomenon, at best, or, at worst, impossible. I hold that establishing a metaphysically enriched account of probabilistic truth is therefore mandatory. I go on to develop a truth-conditional approach on probabilistic factivity that is relativistic in its nature and centers on objective chances. I show that while the approach is still compatible with Moss's overall semantics for probabilistic knowledge, it provides us with a simple but forceful answer to probabilistic AIs. (shrink)

If we are to better understand and negotiate current and future problems in the food supply chain, it will be essential to pay more attention to the role and position of professionals involved. 'Professionals in food chains' addresses questions as: What are the main ethical challenges for professionals in the food supply chain? Who within this complex field holds responsibility for what? What does it mean for the food-related professions to operate in an atmosphere of immense social tension and high (...) expectations? Which virtues are required to do a 'good' job? In brief: What can be said about the roles, responsibilities, and ethics of professionals across this dynamic field? Topics covered include general issues on professional roles and responsibility, sustainable food supply chains, novel approaches in food production systems, current food politics, the ethics of consumption, veterinary ethics, pedagogical/educational and research ethics, as well as aquacultural, agricultural, animal, and food ethics. (shrink)

-/- Policy regulations of ethically controversial genetic technologies should, on the one hand, be based on ethical principles. On the other hand, they should be socially acceptable to ensure implementation. In addition, they should align with ethical theory. Yet to date we lack a reliable and valid scale to measure the relevant ethical judgements in laypeople. We target this lacuna. -/- We developed a scale based on ethical principles to elicit lay judgments: the Genetic Technologies Questionnaire (GTQ). In two pilot (...) studies and a pre-registered main study, we validated the scale in a representative sample of the US population. -/- The final version of the scale contains 20 items but remains highly reliable even when reduced to five. It also predicts behaviour; for example, ethical judgments as measured by the GTQ predicted hypothetical donations and grocery shopping. In addition, the GTQ may be of interest to policymakers and ethicists because it reveals coherent and ethically justified judgments in laypeople. For instance, the GTQ indicates that ethical judgments are sensitive to possible benefits and harms (in line with utilitarian ethics), but also to ethical principles such as the value of consent-autonomy. -/- In conclusion, the GTQ can be recommended for research in both experimental psychology and applied ethics, as well as a tool for ethically and empirically informed policymaking. (shrink)

Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and combination products that are designed to function in the body in ways unachievable at larger scales. (...) Nanotherapeutics andin vivonanodiagnostics incorporate materials that are engineered at the nanoscale to express novel properties that are medicinally useful. These nanomedicine applications can also contain nanomaterials that are biologically active, producing interactions that depend on biological triggers. Examples include nanoscale formulations of insoluble drugs to improve bioavailability and pharmacokinetics, drugs encapsulated in hollow nanoparticles with the ability to target and cross cellular and tissue membranes and to release their payload at a specific time or location, imaging agents that demonstrate novel optical properties to aid in locating micrometastases, and antimicrobial and drug-eluting components or coatings of implantable medical devices such as stents. (shrink)

Industrial agriculture has extensive environmental and social costs, and efforts to create alternative farming systems are widespread if not yet widely successful. This study explored how a set of grain farmers and rotational graziers in Iowa transitioned to agroecological management practices. Our focus on the resources and strategies that farmers mobilized to develop opportunities for, and overcome barriers to, transitioning to alternative practices allows us to go beyond the existing literature focused on why farmers transition. We attend to both the (...) ecological and socioeconomic context of innovation by comparing processes of technical change in two contrasting regions of Iowa. Farmers cultivated farm-level biodiversity and enterprise diversity, developed new cognitive and psychological competencies, and overcame barriers to innovation by developing external network linkages with peers, knowledge organizations, and federal policies. Our research provides insights into how biophysical, cognitive, structural and market considerations can be integrated into research efforts that aim to make sense of innovation toward sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

A secondary analysis was performed on preliminary data from an ongoing cross-cultural study on assortative pairing. Independently sampled pairs of opposite-sex romantic partners and of same-sex friends rated themselves and each other on Life History (LH) strategy and mate value. Data were collected in local bars, clubs, coffeehouses, and other public places from three different cultures: Tucson, Arizona; Hermosillo, Sonora; and San José, Costa Rica. The present analysis found that slow LH individuals assortatively pair with both sexual and social partners (...) more strongly than fast LH individuals. We interpret this phenomenon as representing (1) an adaptation for preserving coadapted genomes in slow LH strategists to maintain high copying fidelity genetic replication while producing a lower number of offspring in stable, predictable, and controllable environments and (2) a bet-hedging adaptation in fast LH strategists, favoring the genetic diversification of a higher number of offspring in unstable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable environments. (shrink)