Gender differences have been observed regarding many political and social issues, yet we lack comprehensive evidence on differences in perceptions on a wide range of security issues increasingly important to voters: military threats, criminality, and terrorism. Previous research suggests that when women are highly politically mobilized, as they are in Sweden, gender differences in political opinion are large. On the other hand, Swedish politicians have worked hard to reduce gender stereotypical thinking. This prompts the question: Are there gender differences in (...) attitudes on security issues in Sweden, and if so, in what ways do the attitudes differ? This study is based on comprehensive data from focus groups and a large-scale survey. The results show that women were more prone to respond with an “ethic of care,” across security issues. Women were more inclined to understand security problems as structural, explained by macho culture, segregation, and injustice. Women tend to support preventive measures that provide individuals with opportunities to choose “the right path,” such as education and economic investment in deprived areas. When asked about national security, women believe more in diplomacy and dialogue. In general, women are less inclined to support various repressive solutions. (shrink)

The urgency of the ecological crisis, described as a ‘code red for humanity’, is also a call to the business ethics community to work even harder for a safe space for humanity. This commentary suggests two specific domains of engagement, with the aim of having more impact in mitigating the ecological crisis: (1) the empirical fact of non-negotiable biophysical thresholds to convey the status and severity of the crisis, and (2) the need for strong laws and regulations—and compliance with these—to (...) guide the aggregated economic activity away from further transgressing biophysical thresholds. Traditionally, business ethics focusses on why and how business can contribute beyond compliance with laws and regulations. By engaging more explicitly with the other two domains, our business ethics community can contribute to distinguish between which are value discussions and which are not, and to the necessity and legitimacy of laws and regulations. This text is a proposal on how we can use business ethics, hence the form of a commentary. (shrink)

Newcomb’s paradox is still debated despite its deceptively simple setup. Here we introduce a two-stage policy framework parametrized by pre-entry and in-room 1-boxing propensities (α,β), predictor error rate ε, and uncertainty about the predictor’s timing (λ). An expected utility analysis shows that 1-boxing dominates across the joint uncertainty space of these parameters (except at the extremes), even under high risk aversion. Thus, we argue that the paradox is fundamentally epistemic: the rational response depends on the agent’s beliefs about predictor accuracy (...) and about which stage of deliberation the predictor targets. We suggest that 2-boxers either believe that the predictor Omega is unreliable, or that the choice in-room is completely uncaused (i.e. unpredictable). If such a belief is due to a valuation of one’s own free will equivalent to or above $1,000, then we argue that even under maximin reasoning, 1-boxing is optimal as being wrong about one’s own deterministic nature is far more costly for 2-boxers than 1-boxers. (shrink)

In Adivasis and the State, Alf Gunvald Nilsen presents a major study of how subalternity is both constituted and contested through state-society relations in the Bhil heartland of western India. The book unravels the historical processes that subordinated Bhil Adivasi communities to the everyday tyranny of the state and investigates how social movements have mobilised to reclaim citizenship. In doing so, the book also reveals how collective action from below transform the meanings of governmental categories, legal frameworks, and universalising (...) vocabularies of democracy. At the core of the book lies a concern with understanding the dialectics of power and resistance that give form and direction to the political economy of democracy and development in contemporary India. Towards this end, Adivasis and the State contributes a sustained and nuanced Gramscian analysis of hegemony in order to interrogate the possibilities and limits of subaltern political engagement with state structures. (shrink)

Much of today's communication is carried out through various kinds of humor, and we therefore need to be able to understand its many aspects. Here, two of the world's leading pioneers in humor studies, Alleen and Don Nilsen, explore how humor can be explained across the numerous sub-disciplines of linguistics. Drawing on examples from language play and jokes in a range of real-life contexts, such as art, business, marketing, comedy, creative writing, science, journalism and politics, the authors use their (...) own theory of 'Features, functions and subjects of Humor' to analyze humor across all disciplines. Each highly accessible chapter uses a rich array of examples to stimulate discussion and interaction even in large classes. Supplemental PowerPoints to accompany each of the 25 chapters are available online, taking many of the insights from the chapters for further interactional discussions with students. (shrink)

_Sustainable development, as explained through the three pillars of environment, society and economy, is a well-known concept and has been used extensively in recent decades. There is finally a growing acknowledgement that environmental sustainability is the prerequisite for achieving the other two pillars of societal and economic sustainability. Nevertheless, there is a tendency to not explicate the negative interactions between the pillars of sustainability, as in the interlinkages between the UN’s sustainable development goals. In this paper, we draw attention to (...) a method for explicating both reinforcing and counteracting goals. This is a conceptual paper but with short, illustrative examples from different levels of the R&D sphere on how this method can be used: one example is at the project level, two are from financiers of R&D projects, and the other is at the UN level. Finally, a longer discussion on relevant ethical guidelines is presented. This paper addresses the responsibility to recognize when and how sustainability goals counteract each other through two key actions. The first action is to identify transgressions of global ecological system boundaries and the resulting serious consequences for trading on environmental sustainability. The second involves bringing to the fore relevant ethical guidelines from the Norwegian National Research Ethics Committee. An update of these guidelines is suggested to reflect recent research on the transgression of planetary boundaries and the consequences for a safe operating space for humans on Earth_. _Keywords:_ Environmental sustainability, ethical guidelines for research, UN sustainable development goals, counteracting goals. (shrink)

The primary transcripts, pre‐mRNAs, of almost all protein‐coding genes in higher eukaryotes contain multiple non‐coding intervening sequences, introns, which must be precisely removed to yield translatable mRNAs. The process of intron excision, splicing, takes place in a massive ribonucleoprotein complex known as the spliceosome. Extensive studies, both genetic and biochemical, in a variety of systems have revealed that essential components of the spliceosome include five small RNAs–U1, U2, U4, U5 and U6, each of which functions as a RNA, protein complex (...) called an snRNP (small nuclear ribonucleoprotein). In addition to snRNPs, splicing requires many non‐snRNP protein factors, the exact nature and number of which has been unclear. Technical advances, including new affinity purification methods and improved mass spectrometry techniques, coupled with the completion of many genome sequences, have now permitted a number of proteomic analyses of purified spliceosomes. These studies, recently reviewed by Jurica and Moore,1 reveal that the spliceosome is composed of as many as 300 distinct proteins and five RNAs, making it among the most complex macromolecular machines known. BioEssays 25:1147–1149, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Our language system is ambiguous in that the same utterance can be interpreted in different ways depending on the intention of the speaker. For example, the phrase, “Nice job!” can be interpreted a...

According to Martin Heidegger language is the “house of Being”. It is the language that allows us to be in the world, and at the same time it is the language which throws light upon how we are there. The air of Being is called with the ancient Greek Rhythmos as a first measurement of time, and thus the articulation of our speech points out the articulation of time. With reference to the musicologist Thrasybulos Georgiades the two formations of language (...) will be shown as articulations of time that are most decisive for the Occident: the archaic rhythm of quantity which originates from a “filled time”, and the rhythm of accentuation that belongs to the arythmic principle of counting. The counting-principle of “empty time” is the allincluding reality of the present world. Heidegger calls it the “Gestell”. In this connection we have to repeat the question about the Rhythmos. The problem of Being in an epoch of an all dragging away processuality means nothing else than the question about the historical dimension of Rhythmos as a first measure of time. (shrink)

Genomic-based testing in reproduction is expanding, with more tests offered to more people for more indications. These tests are offered in the name of reproductive autonomy. However, ‘reproductive autonomy’ is often interpreted to over-emphasize maximal choice and information, overlooking the role of relationships and structural influences. In this paper, we consider how reproductive autonomy can be conceptualized to be useful for challenges presented by expanded prenatal genomics. After critically examining the epistemological assumptions connecting (genomic) information and autonomy, as well as (...) the ideological pressures these tests potentially intensify, we present and defend a more fitting approach to reproductive autonomy. Our account is characterized by relationality, substantivism, the fulfillment of certain institutional conditions, and the provision of adequate options. By providing deeper philosophical context to the way we understand reproductive autonomy in expanded prenatal genomic testing, our approach nuances how the offer and uptake of prenatal genomic testing should progress. (shrink)

Science-fiction (SF) has become a reference point in the discourse on the ethics and risks surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). Thus, AI in SF—science-fictional AI—is considered part of a larger corpus of ‘AI narratives’ that are analysed as shaping the fears and hopes of the technology. SF, however, is not a foresight or technology assessment, but tells dramas for a human audience. To make the drama work, AI is often portrayed as human-like or autonomous, regardless of the actual technological limitations. Taking (...) science-fictional AI too literally, and even applying it to science communication, paints a distorted image of the technology's current potential and distracts from the real-world implications and risks of AI. These risks are not about humanoid robots or conscious machines, but about the scoring, nudging, discrimination, exploitation, and surveillance of humans by AI technologies through governments and corporations. AI in SF, on the other hand, is a trope as part of a genre-specific mega-text that is better understood as a dramatic means and metaphor to reflect on the human condition and socio-political issues beyond technology. (shrink)

A central issue in conceptual engineering is the “implementation challenge”: the problem of how—or whether—conceptual revisions can be brought about, given our lack of control over the factors that determine meaning. Social externalism, which holds that semantic meaning is determined by the usage of experts within a linguistic community, seems to offer a path to controlled implementation. This paper argues that this route encounters serious obstacles in politically and socially significant cases. Drawing on Ball's (2020) distinction between Power Metasemantics and (...) Virtue Metasemantics, the paper presents challenges for both perspectives. Power Metasemantics makes it very difficult for marginalized groups to bring about meaning change, as it is sensitive to how structural inequalities affect distributions of credibility and authority—though implementation remains possible. Virtue Metasemantics, on the other hand, faces epistemic and structural problems that may lend support to Cappelen's (2018) skepticism about implementation. (shrink)

I show that it is not possible to uniquely characterize classical logic when working within classical set theory. By building on recent work by Eduardo Barrio, Federico Pailos, and Damian Szmuc, I show that for every inferential level (finite and transfinite), either classical logic is not unique at that level or there exist intuitively valid inferences of that level that are not definable in modern classical set theory. The classical logician is thereby faced with a three-horned dilemma: Give up uniqueness (...) but preserve characterizability, give up characterizability and preserve uniqueness, or (potentially) preserve both but give up modern classical set theory. After proving the main result, I briefly explore this third option by developing an account of classical logic within a paraconsistent set theory. This account of classical logic ensures unique characterizability in some sense, but the non-classical set theory also produces highly non-classical meta-results about classical logic. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform our relationships with animals. Yet as Isabella Logothetis, Spencer Jury and Jonathan Birch explain, more must be done to make sure technological change works for – rather than against – the interests of other species.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most critical health crises in recent history, resulted in nearly 7 million deaths worldwide. The ensuing infodemic, characterized by the proliferation of information about the virus and vaccines, persisted beyond the cessation of the international public health emergency. In Brazil, this infodemic had collateral effects, including increase and structuring of anti-vaccine groups, reduced overall vaccine coverage, and a crisis of public trust, exacerbated by government dissemination of disinformation through official channels. This paper examines the (...) interplay between government authorities and disinformation in Brazil, identifying key pitfalls and actors instrumental in maintaining public trust. Given that trustworthy sources of information are foundational to effective infodemic management, the collaboration of medical scientific societies, government entities, and national and international agencies is essential for a robust response. Necessary investments include (1) implementing epidemiological surveillance through social listening; (2) establishing a transparent, efficient, and agile communication strategy from public health authorities; and (3) enforcing stringent regulations and accountability measures for online disinformation. (shrink)

Recruitment challenges in clinical research are widespread, particularly for traditionally under-represented groups. Referral relationships—in which research partners and clinical partners agree to collaborate on selected research studies or programmes, with the expectation that the clinical partners refer appropriate patients as potential participants—may help alleviate these challenges. Referral relationships allow research partners access to expanded and more diverse pools of participants by increasing the engagement of medical providers, leveraging providers’ connections with patients and providing structural support for study participation. Clinical partners (...) can also benefit from the resources offered by research involvement, and patients may benefit from improved access to studies. Yet despite their potential, referral relationships can raise ethical concerns. Here, we discuss ethical considerations for referral relationships in clinical research to address these concerns. When establishing relationships, fair participant selection should guide the sites and studies involved. When defining the terms of a relationship, partners should build trust and respect, collaborating so that health centres or hospitals and communities benefit from their research involvement with the mitigation of associated burdens. When implemented, referral relationships should continue to honour fair participant selection, reduce misunderstanding or miscommunication about research and protect patients’ privacy and confidentiality. Overall, when conducted ethically, referral relationships can help address study recruitment challenges and promote fair access to research opportunities. (shrink)