Recently, geologists in Southern Nevada discovered new deposits of naturally occurring asbestos and microscopic fibers in rocks and soil. The danger is that inhaling them can lead to mesothelioma. One problem is that this rare cancer often takes decades to manifest. This discovery abruptly stalled a highway project near Las Vegas. Due to this condition, management developed numerous protocols to keep workers safe. Using this case as a “thought model,” the author challenges an established way of categorizing kinds of technologies (...) as they relate to the concept of being. In turn, this thought model reveals that climate change alters the conditions for being, as recognized in the literature. Advancing this conversation requires that we must reclassify some technologies and develop a categorization for those that reflect a different way of thinking as it concerns being. (shrink)

A collaboration between Australian, French and Cambodian scholars is revealing the sprawling form of a ruined medieval metropolis through remote sensing technology, excavations and new theories. A clearer understanding of Angkor’s form and function may help contemporary planners and architects see the issues facing low-density cities of today and tomorrow. This article reviews the latest research on this vast metropolis in relation to contemporary urban planning concepts such as sprawl and low-density urbanism.

Urban sprawl and aggressive driving are two problems that afflict many of America’s major cities. The two affect Atlanta to a notoriously high degree. The two problems are connected. Aggressive driving is not so much a symptom of “road rage” as it is an attempt to communicate with slower drivers. The aggressive driver tailgates other drivers with the intention of letting them know that they are impeding the flow of faster traffic. Aggressive drivers are engaged in what “New (...) Chicago School” legal theory calls “norm seeding.” These drivers are trying to get others to conform to a different norm than what the posted speed limit dictates. The posted speed limit, which is the legal norm, reflects legislative judgments based on concerns of safety and fuel economy. The higher, informal, speed limit reflects something else: the impatience many drivers feel as they drive larger distances and spend correspondingly greater amounts of time in traffic. (shrink)

In the debate over urban sprawl in the United States, there is serious contention concerning its origins: Does sprawl exist because of or in spite of peoples' values and choices? As the debate plays out, it becomes clear that this question has only partly to do with the historical causes of sprawl and much more to do with questions of political legitimacy in decisions about the built environment. It also becomes clear that the debate as currently (...) framed is not very fruitful. One way of getting a better understanding of these issues is to reconsider what it means for people to make free choices in particular contexts. Doing so yields some perspective on the complexity of the causes of sprawl and on the scope and limits of reasoned deliberation in private and public decision making. (shrink)

Portland, Oregon enjoys a growing reputation as a beacon of urban sustainability. Its modern planning history has seen effectve efforts to curb urban sprawl and introduce a comprehensive mass transit system. More recently, the city has also become a hub for a “makers” movement involving a plethora of local, small-scale craft production. Within this context, Portland is also home to a thriving urban agriculture scene, featuring community gardens, community-assisted agriculture, farmers’ markets, food co-ops, and various farm-based (...) education and outreach programs. While recent case studies of Portland insist that the social sustainability case made for urban agriculture (UA) remains open, this position is arguably unwarranted and lacks an adequate grasp of the critical urban geography perspective developed in the work of David Harvey and Neil Smith. Following the lead of what Chiara Tornaghi calls “the critical geography of urban agriculture,” Portland’s urban agriculture should, on the whole, be seen as an adjunct to rather than a resistance movement against advanced neo­liberal urban governance. (shrink)

Urban communities in 21st century America are facing severe economic challenges, ones that suggest a mandate to contemplate serious changes in the way America does business. The middle class is diminishing in many parts of the country, with consequences for the economy as a whole. When faced with the loss of its economic base, any business community must make some difficult decisions about its proper role and responsibilities. Decisions to support the community must be balanced alongside and against responsibilities (...) to owners, shareholders and relevant “stakeholders” in a relatively new context. Corporations in urban communities “hollowed out” by white flight or urban sprawl must decide what level of support they can and should provide. This paper examines corporate decisions within the emerging urban prosperity initiatives, using the framework of integrative social contract theory proposed by Donaldson and Dunfee. We suggest that urban prosperity initiatives present a mandate on corporations sufficiently strong as to qualify as an authentic norm. Further, we argue that strict adherence to a corporate bottom line approach or “corporate isolationism” is not congruent with contemporary community standards. (shrink)

Over half of the world's population (3 billon people) now lives in urban environments. The combination of people, industry, and commerce enmeshed in environments over-determined by plans, designs, and configurations that continue to emphasize ease, efficiency, and spatial sprawl over ecological constraints and sustainability help to make urban environments the primary contributors to multiple types of ecological degradation. With this in mind, urban environments demand greater sustained theoretical and practical attention than has been and is the (...) norm under status quo approaches to urbanism that pay little regard to ecological constraints and under traditional models of environmentalism informed by an anti-urban bias. Fortunately, an emerging form of urban environmentalism exists that recognizes the central ecological role of urban environments. This emerging form of urban environmentalism also recognizes urban environments to be the places where environmental problems are often most severe and where environmental solutions are in most need of immediate implementation. The upshot of this dual recognition is that it is accompanied by a growing dual awareness of urban environmental problems and solutions. In this paper I argue that despite this dual recognition and awareness, a paradoxical form of inaction is the norm when it comes to implementing urban environmental solutions. I explain why this is the case by outlining what I call the paradox of urban environmentalism. I explain why the paradox should be considered one of the most significant problems of this new environmental century as well as that frame which opens the door to a new sense of what is possible in urban environments. In the process of considering what is possible, I arrive at some preliminary conclusions about a possible methodological role philosophers can play in helping to address this paradoxical inaction in the hopes of bringing about more sustainable urban environments. (shrink)

With the rapid development of urbanization, the urban expansion morphology has been changing with complex driving mechanisms behind the urban evolution process. This article simulates the results of urban land development contingent upon decision-makers’ risk preferences and reveals the inherent law of the effect of risk preferences on urban expansion morphology. Results show that cautious decision-makers lead to the urban expansion morphology being relatively compact, and the reckless decision-makers lead the urban expansion to (...) class='Hi'>sprawl. Moreover, there are obvious differences in strengths of planning constraints on the decision-makers with different risk preferences. The reckless decision-makers, driven by the economic interests, are more likely to break through the planning, especially when the planning is not reasonable. It is also found that enhancing executive ability of planning for the reckless decision-makers can promote compactness of the urban expansion morphology. However, the effect of enhancing executive ability of planning on the cautious decision-makers is limited. Thus, in the case of unreasonable planning, the executive ability of planning to the reckless decision-makers should be enhanced so as to avoid urban sprawl. (shrink)

A recurring theme in the history of the United States, beginning with the settlements of Europe's religious dissenters, has been a compulsion to start over. Whether this manifests itself in antipreservationist sentiments in older cities or in the postwar romanticization of suburban sprawl, Americans have long displayed a distinct optimism about newness and growth. In City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present, Alex Krieger, an urban design professor at Harvard and (...) a practicing urban planner, makes this spirit—indeed, a utopian sentiment, he believes—the unifying thread for a new account of urbanism in America. Even as the frontier has closed and Americans have little choice but to... (shrink)

Im Transit ist eine subjektorientierte Analyse von Transnationalisierungsprozessen in der Wissenschaft.In dieser exploariven Studie werden das Lehr- und Lernsetting eines außergewöhnlichen Rahmen-Experiments zur Transnationalisierung der ...

Context: Philosophical and - more recently - empirical approaches to the study of mind have recognized the research of lived experience as crucial for the understanding of their subject matter. Such research is faced with self-referentiality: every attempt at examining the experience seems to change the experience in question. This so-called “excavation fallacy” has been taken by many to undermine the possibility of first-person inquiry as a form of scientific practice. Problem: What is the epistemic character and value of reflectively (...) acquired phenomenological data? Can the study of experience, despite the excavation fallacy, rely on the act of reflection on lived experience and make sense and use of its results? Method: Through a philosophical discourse, informed by empirical first-person inquiry, we explore the experiential structure of the act of reflection and the formation of the corresponding belief about past experience. Results: We present a provisional first-person model of the experiential dynamics of retrospective reflection, in which the reflective act is characterized as enaction of belief about past experience that co-determines - rather than distorts - its results. From a constructivist perspective on the inevitable interdependence between the act of observing and the observed, the excavation “fallacy” is recognized as an intrinsic characteristic of reflection. Reflection is described as an iterative, self-referential process, guided by a context- and subject-specific horizon of expectations. Implications: Knowing the characteristics of the formation of beliefs about experience is essential for understanding first-person data and for the possibility of their acquisition and use in scientific practice, particularly in the context of second-person approaches to the study of experience. Constructivist content: We relate the proposed understanding of reflection to constructivist epistemology and argue that constructivism provides an epistemological foundation for the empirical study of experience more suitable than the traditional epistemological objectivism of cognitive science. We suggest that the constructive nature of the process of reflection calls for a collaboration between the fields of constructivism, phenomenology, and first-person research, and points towards the potential for their mutual enrichment. (shrink)

Background: Informal coercion, that is, situations where caregivers use subtle coercive measures to impose their will on patients, is common in adult psychiatric inpatient care. It has been described as ‘a necessary evil’, confronting nurses with an ethical dilemma where they need to balance between a wish to do good, and the risk of violating patients’ dignity and autonomy. Aim: To describe nurses’ experiences of being involved in informal coercion in adult psychiatric inpatient care. Research design: The study has a (...) qualitative, inductive design. Participants and research context: Semi-structured interviews with 10 Swedish psychiatric nurses were analysed with qualitative content analysis. Ethical considerations: The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. In line with the Swedish Ethical Review Act, it was also subject to ethical procedures at the university. Findings: Four domains comprise informal coercion as a process over time. These domains contain 11 categories focusing on different experiences involved in the process: Striving to connect, involving others, adjusting to the caring culture, dealing with laws, justifying coercion, waiting for the patient, persuading the patient, negotiating with the patient, using professional power, scrutinizing one’s actions and learning together. Discussion: Informal coercion is associated with moral stress as nurses might find themselves torn between a wish to do good for the patient, general practices and ‘house rules’ in the caring culture. In addition, nurses need to be aware of the asymmetry of the caring relationship, in order to avoid compliance becoming a consequence of patients subordinating to nurse power, rather than a result of mutual understanding. Reflections are thus necessary through the process to promote mutual learning and to avoid violations of patients’ dignity and autonomy. Conclusion: If there is a need for coercion, that is, if the coercion is found to be an ‘unpleasant good’, rather than ‘necessary evil’ considering the consequences for the patient, it should be subject to reflecting and learning together with the patient. (shrink)

The article critically responds to "A Planetary Health Pledge for Health Professionals in the Anthropocene" which was published by Wabnitz et al. in The Lancet in November 2020. It focuses on the different roles and responsibilities of a physician. The pledge is criticised because it neglects the different roles, gives no answers in case of conflicting goals, and contains numerous inconsistencies. The relationship between the Planetary Health Pledge and the Declaration of Geneva is examined. It is argued that the Planetary (...) Health Pledge should have supplemented the Declaration of Geneva instead of changing it. (shrink)

The Hippocratic Oath and the Declaration of Geneva of the World Medical Association are compared in terms of content and origin. Their relevance for current medical practice is investigated. The status which is ascribed to these documents will be shown and the status which they can reasonably claim to have will be explored. Arguments in favor of the Hippocratic Oath that rely on historical stability or historical origin are being examined. It is demonstrated that they get caught up in paradoxes. (...) Should doctors swear the Hippocratic Oath or the Declaration of Geneva? The Hippocratic Oath is a remarkable historic document, which contains important elements still relevant for medical ethics today. Its interpretation as a timeless, still valid medical code is unfounded. The historical arguments, that should justify its validity, are untenable. The Declaration of Geneva, and not the Hippocratic Oath, can legitimately claim to come close to representing the most important principles of professional medical conduct in today’s globalised world. (shrink)

Personalized medicine plays an important role in the development of current medicine. Among the numerous statements regarding the future of personalized medicine, some can be found that accord medicine a new scientific status. Medicine will be transformed from an art to a science due to personalized medicine. This prognosis is supported by references to models of historical developments. The article examines what is meant by this prognosis, what consequences it entails, and how feasible it is. It refers to the long (...) tradition of epistemological thinking in medicine and the use of historical models for the development of medicine. The possible answers to the question “art or science” are systematized with respect to the core question about the relationship between knowledge and action. The prediction for medicine to develop from an ‘empirical healing art’ to a ‘rational, molecular science’ is nonsensical from an epistemological point of view. The historical models employed to substantiate the development of personalized medicine are questionable. (shrink)

The article presents the judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court from 26 February 2020 on assisted suicide. The statements regarding human dignity, human rights and the relationship between citizens and the state are examined. Furthermore, the consequences resulting from this interpretation of human dignity for states that are pluralistic and based on human rights will be laid out. The court’s judgment limits the power of parliaments and poses a challenge to many laws in states that see themselves as pluralistic, (...) human rights-based states. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

The present article discusses shared epistemological characteristics of two distinct areas of research: the field of first-person inquiry and the field of quantum mechanics. We outline certain philosophical challenges that arise in each of the two lines of inquiry, and point towards the central similarity of their observational situation: the impossibility of disregarding the interrelatedness of the observed phenomena with the act of observation. We argue that this observational feature delineates a specific category of research that we call the non-trivial (...) domain. Unlike the trivial domain, non-trivial research cannot assume the view from nowhere on which the observed phenomena could be regarded as existing independently of the process of observation. Presenting first-person inquiry and quantum mechanics as two of its examples, we show that non-trivial research violates several fundamental observational presuppositions of the trivial domain, exemplified in the principles of classical physics. Drawing on Niels Bohr’s philosophy of quantum mechanics and the constructivist notion of enaction, we stress the constructive, participatory, and irreversible nature of observation in the non-trivial domain. We discuss the possibility of developing a non-representationalist epistemology of the non-trivial, and consider the implications of our discussion for research in the non-trivial domain, as well as for the general understanding of the scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Die Frage, ob sie eine Kunst oder eine Wissenschaft sei, begleitet die Medizin seit der Antike. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die Frage insbesondere im Hinblick auf den Einfluss Kants, Fichtes und Schellings auf das Selbstverstandnis der Medizin. Sie zeichnet die geschichtlichen Linien nach, die zum Verstandnis der gegenwartigen Situation fuhren und liefert wichtige Argumente zu einem zeitgemassen Selbstverstandnis der Medizin, das fur die wissenschaftstheoretische und ethische Diskussion in der Medizin von heute unverzichtbar ist. Since antiquity, the question has been whether (...) medicine is an art or a science. This work explores the question, in particular in view of Kants, Fichtes and Schellings influence on the self-conception of medicine. It traces the historical timelines which help to understand the current situation and provides important arguments for a timely self-conception of medicine which is indispensable for the discussion of scientific theory and ethics in todays medicine. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Artikel untersucht die Frage, ob es sinnvoll ist, Doping im Sport unter ärztlicher Kontrolle freizugeben. Dazu werden die Auswirkungen einer Freigabe untersucht, die stets nur eine begrenzte Freigabe wäre, allein wegen der Risiken. Die unangenehmen Begleiterscheinungen der Dopingkontrollen würden nicht entfallen. Die Auswirkungen einer Freigabe von Doping im Wettkampfsport wären entweder unsinnig oder aber mit Nachteilen behaftet. Es ist nicht notwendig, die Frage zu klären, was die „Idee des Sportes“ ausmacht und ob sie verändert werden darf. Allein unter praktischen (...) Aspekten zeigt sich, dass dem Sport mit einer Freigabe des Dopings keine Vorteile, aber viele Nachteile erwachsen. (shrink)

Fifteen original essays open up a novel area of inquiry: the distinctively ethical dimensions of women's experiences of and in aging. Contributors distinguished in the fields of feminist ethics and the ethics of aging explore assumptions, experiences, practices, and public policies that affect women's well-being and dignity in later life. The book brings to the study of women's aging a reflective dimension missing from the empirical work that has predominated to date. Ethical studies of aging have so far failed to (...) emphasize gender. And feminist ethics has neglected older women, even when emphasizing other dimensions of 'difference.' Finally work on aging in all fields has focused on the elderly, while this volume sees aging as an extended process of negotiating personal and social change. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die Forschungs- und Regulierungsebene bei datenintensiver Forschung in der Medizin liegen auseinander. Ein heterogenes Feld aus regulierenden Institutionen mit regional ungleichen Regelungen, sowohl hinsichtlich der Dichte als auch der Restriktivität von Regelungen, steht einer globalen Entwicklung der Technologien entgegen. Trotz oder gerade wegen mangelnder global-gültiger Regulierungen können auch unverbindliche oder nur bedingt verbindliche normative Vorgaben der Orientierung dienen. Doch wie soll eine solche normative Regulierung angesichts datenintensiver Forschung in der Medizin ausgestaltet werden und woran soll sie sich orientieren? Die (...) Frage, wie konkret und detailliert man eine solche Forschung regulieren sollte, lässt sich nur im Einzelfall für bestimmte Situationen und Institutionen beantworten. Ob dabei neue Normen oder Gewichtungen von Normen vorgenommen werden sollen, oder ob die Normen und deren Gewichtung weiterhin bestehen bleiben sollen, lässt sich nur mit Verweis auf starke normative Argumente beantworten. An zwingenden Argumenten für neue Normen angesichts der datenintensiven medizinischen Forschung mangelt es bisher. Dennoch ist eine Umsetzungsarbeit von Normen, egal ob neue oder alte, und deren Anwendung auf eine neue Methode oder Technologie allemal zu erbringen. Es bedarf daher – wie schon bisher – beider: sowohl etablierter und transparent kommunizierter Normen als auch des unabhängigen Urteils zur Anwendung dieser Normen. Angesichts der besonderen Eignung für diese Aufgabe sollten auch weiterhin Ethik-Kommissionen als prozedurale Instanz bei der Bewilligung von datenintensiver Forschung in der Medizin gefordert und befähigt werden, die als unabhängige Institution ein Urteil im Einzelfall anhand vorgegebener Normen fällen. Nichtsdestotrotz können sich die veränderten Praktiken datenintensiver Forschungsprojekte auch in neuen Anforderungen an Ethik-Kommissionen niederschlagen, denen mit Reformen der Arbeitsweise begegnet werden sollte. (shrink)

The article tries to clarify the relation between history of medicine and medical ethics. Therefore it distinguishes between the double meaning of the german word Geschichte , which means both: development of events and story . For the first option no systematic relation between history and ethics can be reconstructed. In the second sense historical knowledge can be a readable and worth reading text for the ethical debate. Therefore the methodological professionality of the historian is required.

Theranostics or theragnostics are new terms which start to appear occasionally in publications from 2001 onwards, with a marked increase in references from 2011. In the last few years more than 1100 articles using this term were published each year. In 2011 the journal Theranostics was founded. This paper addresses the question of whether this new term is appropriate. The etymology of the term is analysed. A literature search for definitions of “theranostics” is carried out and the definitions examined as (...) to whether they give grounds for justifying the use of a new term. The differences between diagnostics and therapy are explored. A broad and a narrow definition are found. According to the broad definition theranostics provides a closer relationship between diagnostics and therapy. According to the narrow definition diagnostics and therapy become a single intervention. On closer examination it turns out that in the narrow definition the diagnostics capacities are limited to monitoring. Neither the broad nor the narrow definition actually demonstrate a new concept in medicine. Rather, they describe the well-known practice of medical decision making. In this respect, the new term cannot be justified. The level of diagnostics is new but not the relationship between diagnostics and therapy. The term theranostics is misleading as it obscures the existing differences between diagnostics and therapy and wrongly insinuates that steps between diagnostics and therapy could be omitted. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a development of a variety of approaches for examining lived experience in the context of cognitive science. However, the field of first-person research has yet to develop a pragmatic epistemological framework that would enable researchers to compare and integrate – as well as understand the epistemic status of – different methods and their findings. In this article, we present the foundation of such a framework, grounded in an epistemological investigation of gestures involved in acquiring data on (...) experience. We examine the acts of turning towards one’s experiential field and attending to experience within the process of reflection. We describe what we call the _horizon of attending to experience_ by analogy to the “experimental arrangement” in quantum observation: this horizon, we argue, co-defines experiential phenomena that end up being observed and reported; at the same time, it itself forms an element of experience and is therefore amenable to phenomenological investigation. Drawing on the constructivist notion of enaction, we show that acknowledging the inherently constructive nature of attending to experience and accepting one’s lack of epistemic access to the “original”, observation-independent pre-reflective experience is not a dead end for first-person research when situated in a constructivist (but not relativist) understanding of the reflective act and its results. Expanding the notion of the horizon to encompass all epistemic acts involved in producing phenomenological data and final results of a first-person study (i.e., _horizon of the method_), we suggest some lines of inquiry that would allow researchers to identify and articulate horizons of particular methods, opening a way towards integrating past and future findings of different complementary first-person approaches into a comprehensive map of lived experience. (shrink)

The article examines the statements made by Immanuel Kant with reference to medicine as well as the impact of his philosophy on medicine. It describes the initial reaction of Kantian philosophy on medicine in the late 18th and early 19th century and its influence in the late 20th century.