Commercial lawyers working across borders know that globalization has changed commercial law. To think of commercial law as only the law of states is to have an inadequate understanding of the norms governing commercial transactions. Some have argued for a transnational conception of commercial law, but their grounds of justification have been unpersuasive, often grounded on claims about the common content among national legal systems. Legal positivism is a rich literature on the concept of a (...) legal system and the validity conditions for rules in legal systems, but it has not been used to understand legal order outside or beyond the state. This article aims to use legal positivism to conceptualize a transnational commercial law order. Prevailing positivist accounts at least implicitly condition legal order on state sovereignty. The article offers a cosmopolitan conception of legal positivism, in which the state is no longer an enabling condition for law. The cosmopolitan conception provides the means by which to adequately describe a transnational commercial law order. There are limits to the conceptual analysis this article provides, one of which is that it does not purport to evaluate the justice or morality of transnational legal order. But the cosmopolitan conception of legal positivism elucidated in this article stands on its own as a way of understanding a number of transnational legal orders other than commercial law. The attractiveness of the account is that it describes law as a human social practice even when it is not solely the product of the state, so that we do not have to rely on natural law theories to understand legal rules that states do not maintain. (shrink)

Any foreign manufacturer desiring to market its products in Jordan has several courses open to it. The foreign manufacturer could establish a branch or wholly-owned subsidiary in Jordan or enter into a licensing or joint venture agreement with a company doing business in Jordan. If it wants a less significant presence, however, it is left with the alternative of having a local commercial agent market and sells its products. -/- The purpose of this article is to study certain aspects-exclusivity (...) and termination- of commercial agency according to the Jordanian law. The article is divided into four sections. Section two explains the general rules governing commercial agency in Jordan. Section three analyzes exclusivity of commercial agents. This section introduces the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the basic instrument covering trade in services, and analyses the current commercial agencies regulation in Jordan and its relation to articles VIII and IX of GATS. Also, section two explores Jordan schedule of specific commitments under the GATS in order to shed light on the extent and limit of its obligations with regard to commercial agents. Section four discusses agency termination. Finally, the article concludes by summarizing the main. (shrink)

Since the 1970s, there has been rapid and wide ranging development in the field of new reproductive technologies (NRT). With donor insemination (DI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF), previously infertile couples have been given new hope and the chance to have children. A more recent addition to these new methods of reproduction has been the combination of DI and IVF with surrogate mother arrangements.[1] This technique has subtly changed the realm of reproduction, for with the addition of a third party (...) (the surrogate) to the reproductive environment, the nature of motherhood, fatherhood, and the allocation of parental rights and duties has come into question.... In other words, has commercial surrogacy changed the traditional Western understanding of motherhood and does it do an injustice to the surrogate, the contracting mother, and/or women in general? I will argue that the fragmentation of the legal concept of ‘mother’ has created a range of social and ethical problems that need to be addressed; nevertheless, the basic societal definition of ‘motherhood’ remains substantially unchanged. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to examine key provisions in the UAE company law.

Ongoing research in the fields of genetics and biotechnology hold the promise of improved diagnosis and treatment of genetic diseases, and potentially the development of individually tailored pharmaceuticals and gene therapies. Difficulty, however, arises in determining how these services are to be evaluated and integrated equitably into public health care systems such as Canada's. The current context is one of increasing fiscal restraint on the part of governments, limited financial resources being dedicated to health care, and rising costs for new (...) health care services and technologies. This has led to increasing public debate in the last few years about how to reform public health care, and whether we should prohibit, permit or perhaps even encourage private purchase of health care services. ;In Canada, some of these concerns have crystallized around the issue of gene patents and commercial genetic testing, in particular as illustrated by the case of Myriad Genetics' patented BRACAnalysis test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. While most Canadians who currently access genetic services do so through the public health care system, for those with the means, private purchase is becoming an option. This situation raises serious concerns---about justice in access to health care; about continued access to safe and reliable genetic testing supported by unbiased patient information; and about the broader effects of commercialization for ongoing research and the Canadian public health care system. Commercial genetic testing presents a challenge to health care professionals, policy analysts, and academics concerned with the social, ethical and policy implications of new genetic technologies. Using the Myriad case as an exemplar, tools from moral philosophy, the social sciences, and health policy and law will be brought to bear on the larger issues of how as a society we should regulate commercial research and product development, and more coherently decide which services to cover under public health insurance and which to leave to private purchase. Generally, the thesis is concerned with the question of "how best to bring capital, morality, and knowledge into a productive and ethical relationship". (shrink)

The Middle East Review (MER) is a regular publication with articles from students, academics and practitioners on legal developments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The contributors have written intellectually stimulating and informative articles, and we are grateful for their patience with us in the extended process of getting Issue 3 to publication.

The paper aims at rethinking the traditional understanding of commercial law, and tentatively provides its cosmopolitan concept under the backdrop of extended commercial exchange and corresponding development of the transnational trade laws. Given the influence of legal positivism over the source of law debate, the commercial law would be defined in a relatively narrower focus, which principally presumes the sovereign nature of legal community. The phenomenon and interactive reality in this global sphere through the mid-20th century and (...) new millennium have driven us to experience new ways of dealings, sometimes blurring or otherwise encroaching upon a conventional discourse about the true nature of laws. In one way of efforts to accommodate such new phenomena, the author likes to present a possibility of more systemic, comprehensive, reality-oriented construction of commercial law concept concerning the current wave of legal pluralism. It became increasingly pervasive in our daily experiences that the norms of various nature have a potential to govern the commercial relationship. These norms, unlike the traditional state laws, are observed to poses a distinctive feature requiring a coherent understanding among another. This conceptual work also could mater with the traditional concept of sovereignty-driven commercial law. The paper will begin with the theoretical essence of legal positivism propounded by Hart and Raz. Particularly, the five strands of legal system would provide the basis of analysis, and could be compared to the narrative of legal positivists. For the purpose of this thesis, they would be contested to favor the strengths of cosmopolitan concept of commercial law. For an illustration,the author would argue that the shared agency element as well as recognition process of norms can give us more genuine understanding of the commercial law and practices. In this way, the author discuses and proposes a new concept focusing on the contemporary commercial law. Finally, he pointed out the critical needs of this kind of definitional work notwithstanding the legal plane or global diversity. In many ways, the paper would be found tentative, epitomizing, less exhaustive as trade-offs for a comprehensive build-up. The author also regrets to curtail much potentials of opposing arguments against the cosmopolitan understanding of commercial law. It is hoped that this work would later be developed, which could be realized by the complimentary as well as critical followers. (shrink)

The republican tradition has long been ambivalent about markets and commercial society more generally: from the contrasting positions of Rousseau and Smith in the eighteenth century to recent neorepublican debates about capitalism, republicans have staked out diverse positions on fundamental issues of political economy. Rather than offering a systematic historical survey of these discussions, this chapter will instead focus on the leading neo-republican theory—that of Philip Pettit—and consider its implications for market society. As I will argue, Pettit’s theory is (...) even friendlier to markets than most have believed: far from condemning commercial society, his theory recognizes that competitive markets and their institutional preconditions are an alternative means to limit arbitrary power across the domestic, economic, and even political spheres. While most republican theorists have focused on political means to limit such power—including both constitutional means (e.g., separation of powers, judicial review, the rule of law, federalism) and participatory ones (democratic elections and oversight)—I will examine here an economic model of republicanism that can complement, substitute for, and at times displace the standard political model. Whether we look at spousal markets, labor markets, or residential markets within federal systems, state policies that heighten competition among their participants and resource exit from abusive relationships within them can advance freedom as non-domination as effectively or even more effectively than social-democratic approaches that have recently gained enthusiasts among republicans. These conclusions suggest that democracy, be it social or political, is just one means among others for restraining arbitrary power and is consequently less central to (certain versions of) republicanism than we may have expected. So long as they counteract domination, economic inroads into notionally democratic territory are no more worrisome than constitutional ones. (shrink)

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to explore the "resource curse" problem as a counter-example of creative performance and innovation by examining reliance on capital and physical resources, showing the gap between expectations and ex-post actual performance that became clearer under conditions of economic turmoil. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The analysis uses logistic regressions with dichotomous response and predictor variables on structured tables of count data, representing firm performance as an outcome of capital resources, physical resources and innovation where appropriate. (...) Findings ‐ Key findings relevant to economic and business practice follow. First, a typical characteristic of successful Vietnamese firms in the transition period is their reliance on either capital resources or physical asset endowments. Second, poor performers exhibit evidence of over-reliance on both capital and physical assets. Third, firms that relied on both types of resources tended to downplay creative performance. Some evidence suggests that firms face more acute problem caused by the law of diminishing returns in troubled times. Fourth, the "innovation factor" has not been tapped as a source of economic growth. Research limitations/implications ‐ This study has some limitations. The size of the survey sample is approximately 150 firms, while the potential sample of > 300 should be possible in the future. When the size increases, the research could be expanded to include further variables that will help investigate more deeply into the related issues and business implications. With regard to the implications of the study, the absence of innovations has made the notion of "resource curse" identical to "destructive creation" implemented by ex-ante resource-rich firms, and worsened the problem of resource misallocation in transition turmoil. The Vietnamese corporate sector's addiction to resources may contribute to economic deterioration, through a downward spiral of lower efficiency leading to consumption of more resources. Practical implications ‐ Insights obtained from this study could save transition economies' resources which have almost always been considered sine qua non before any critical major policymaking, while this is not necessarily true, and in many cases, even counterproductive. Originality/value ‐ Original data set on Vietnam stock market are collected, processed, prepared and used by the authors. Original design by the authors for regression equations with dichotomous predictor variables: dependence on endowed physical assets, reliance on capital resources and significant signs of creative performance/innovations. Original idea of viewing "resource curse" as absence of innovation and due to uncreative "destructive creation" of poor-performing commercial operations by resource-rich firms is used in the paper. We have searched the literature in business research and found that the empirical results have not been previously reported. (shrink)

Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, distress or harm, broadly understood, have a special significance for animal welfare law. Drawing on over 300 scientific studies, we evaluate the evidence of sentience in two groups of invertebrate animals: the cephalopod molluscs or, for short, cephalopods (including octopods, squid and cuttlefish) and the decapod crustaceans or, (...) for short, decapods (including crabs, lobsters and crayfish). We also evaluate the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices involving these animals. (shrink)

The UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS) has played a central role in the development of standards for the sustainable exploration of the Moon. The standards, in particular, are being shaped through consultations with the major space actors namely, states, international organizations, and commercial enterprises. The Moon Village Association, for instance, was created to foster the implementation of a vision of peaceful international cooperation of governmental and non-governmental actors in the exploration of the Moon. In (...) 2021, the MVA, in its Report on the Global Expert Group on Sustainable Lunar Activities, proposed the creation of a neutral multi-stakeholder platform and framework to ensure the conduct of sustainable lunar missions in the future. According to the MVA, there is a need to consider approaches that promote future lunar sustainability or recommend practices for upcoming lunar activities. In light of the above-mentioned report and MVA’s Report on Best Practices for Sustainable Lunar Activities (2020), this article sheds light on some of the major contributions toward the development of standards for sustainable exploration of the Moon, including the recognition of its legal personhood. (shrink)

This essay investigates the tensions between traditional music and its modern codification as intellectual property. It will begin by considering the myths concerning the divine source of music. In traditional music and in folk music, music is closely connected to religious ritual. In these rituals the source of the music is recognized and attributed to certain deities. For instance, in Thai traditional music, the Wai Khru ceremony venerates the Duriyathep or devatas drawn from Indian mythology: Phra Visawakarm, Phra Panjasinghkorn, and (...) Phra Parakhonthap (Narot). Much of modern and contemporary music has long been disengaged from ritual and its traditional forms of transmission. Especially since the nineteenth century with the growth of popularity of music printing, it has been subject to copyright law. With these restrictions in transmission, the more fluid routes of transmission have become broken and the ritualistic and religious identifications have been transferred to the cult of performers, to legal codification, to the control of corporations, and the construction of new mythologies through marketing. This essay will use Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the loss of “aura” in the reproduced work of art to try to understand the consequences of this transition in the function of music. And it will consider the situation in Thailand where traditional music and mythology stands side by side with marketed music, and traditional performance stands side by side with commercial performance. It will demonstrate that these conflicts cannot be resolved. But it is precisely in the appreciation and preservation of these conflicts, that traditional culture can itself be recognized and preserved. (shrink)

"All-and-Nought" is the 2nd Edition of a series of books that study the nature of Reality and Being. The first edition of the book, "The Metaphysics of All-and-None", was published by Edwin Mellen Press in January 2022; since then the book has been under severe investigations and reviews by many scholars and pundits worldwide. The 2nd edition of the book contains the original text plus a foreword by Professor Richard Howells from King’s College London and some reports by Physicists, Biologists, (...) and others. Journal of Mind, one the most important journals in Philosophy, paid attention to the book and in its critical review article October 2022, encourages all philosophers and pundits to study the book. -/- The book's core concept is a Scientific/Mathematical, a-priori/synthetic theory called All'n'None Theory. It studies the Symmetry and Asymmetry in Reality and points to a state that indicates the deep Symmetry between "All Beings" and "Nothingness". It deeply studies the relationships between being and non-being from the perspective of Symmetry and symmetry failure and offers a measurement tool and a new method of studding phenomena. -/- It seems All`n`None Theory is a scientific breakthrough and discovery. The book methodologically applies Physics, Conceptual philosophy, Mathematics, and jurisprudence analysis both inductively and deductively to prove its theory. It is the first and the only Theory for Explaining the nature of Existence (being) and provides a technique to measure the amount of existence in each being. -/- Through understanding Existence, the book explains Creation, Cosmos, Consciousness, Mind, Spirit, and Soul scientifically. It is deep enough to initially encompass and then merge all modern Sciences (Physics, Philosophy, Complexity, System Theory, Information Theory, Psychology, Biology, Humanities, Economy, and Management) with Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Theology) and makes the image of Reality clearer for readers. -/- The book proves chaos management in the depth of creation and shows how people can use the only law of creation for their own success and salvation. Therefore the book is an inspirational one too. Readers by reading the book and understanding it not only gain scientific knowledge but also find profound wisdom that heals them. They feel they are enlightened and motivated to construct their meaning of life. Readers can recognize their self/ego structure of being and enjoy the passion to improve. -/- The book tries to explain the mechanism of Thinking with respect to Symmetry and the failure of Symmetry as the foundation of Categorization, Mentalization, and Cognition. By understanding the mechanism of cognition it can study Epistemology and explain the Believing Mechanism and the nature of Beliefs as a kind of being. The theory claims no matter the beliefs originated from Science or Religion the mechanisms that govern both of them are the same. Based on the theory, “Knower or Observer”, “Known or Observed”, and “knowing or observation” are rooted in Symmetry and its failure. The tone, language, and structure of the book are unique to itself. It is not an entertainment or commercial book. The book is written for readers who plan to spend enough time to think about its content. (shrink)

A drone industry has emerged in the US, initially funded almost exclusively for military applications. There are now also other uses both governmental and commercial. Many military drones are still being made, however, especially for surveillance and targeted killings. Regarding the latter, this essay calls into question their legality and morality. It recognizes that the issues are complex and controversial, but less so as to the killing of non-combatant civilians. The government using drones for targeted killings maintains secrecy and (...) appeals to non-traditional justifications. Most scholars who assess these killer drone practices support citizen immunity, either by favoring a modified just war theory that prioritizes civilians’ right to life or by challenging official deviations from applicable laws. They accordingly declare such killing immoral if not a war crime. The manufacturers of these killer drones are not themselves the killers, but they are abetters, i.e., sine qua non facilitators. So, I argue that any company concerned about its corporate social responsibility should cease manufacturing them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 453-471 [Access article in PDF] Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke's Idea of Empire Richard Bourke When Edmund Burke first embarked upon a parliamentary career, British political life was in the process of adapting to a series of critical reorientations in both the dynamics of party affiliation and the direction of imperial policy. During the period of the Seven Years' War, (...) a reconstituted militia became a focus for patriotic enthusiasm, uniting national sentiment against France and effectively eradicating the remnants of Jacobite rhetoric and aspiration. Traditional opposition between Tory and Whig became irrelevant, while Court and Country jointly came to the support of the Pitt-Newcastle ministry. However, in due course the Old Corps disintegrated as George III succeeded to the throne with the promise of an end to factional strife and the beginning of a patriotic alliance in government. But while competing ideologies and interests on the domestic political scene were undergoing comprehensive realignment, the pursuit of a blue-water policy in tandem with strategic continental campaigns brought Britain's struggle against France into North America, the Caribbean, and India. Trade continued to expand into Asia and West Africa, but the principles of commercial advantage were continually brought into open conflict with the exigencies of war. The division of power in Europe became embroiled in a substantial redivision of empire, and by 1763 British territorial expansion had reached its zenith.When Burke was appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, with the national debt standing at an all time high and the demands of imperial defense unlikely to diminish, the politics of empire called for urgent attention from all sections of the political establishment. In particular the Rockinghamites, adopting a posture of aloofness from venality and petty interest, were obliged to advance policies for imperial government on the solid basis of political principle. 1 Coming into parliament as a member for Wendover in the wake of [End Page 453] Grenville's Stamp Act, at a time when the East India Company was assuming control of the revenue in Bengal, Burke set about formulating a doctrine of imperial sovereignty which would be serviceable to the party either in power or in opposition and which would be adequate to the complex reality of detached and extensive empire. The immediate reception of that inquiry, both in Britain and on the Continent, into the fraught world of post-Revolutionary political debate has had the long-term effect of distorting the order of emphasis in terms of which his career as a whole ought properly to be understood.The vigorous elaboration, in opposition to the Jacobin experiment in France, of the conditions under which moderate government could be exercised within the context of an absolute sovereignty was expressed in terms which had originally been invoked as part of a sustained attempt to reconcile civility with empire. As we shall see, that attempt involved a process of delicate coordination by means of which the interests of freedom would be brought into harmony with the demands of public power. In that sense the effort to make liberty and authority mutually responsible can be said to constitute the core ambition of Burke's political rhetoric. In this context responsibility defines the optimally beneficial relation between government and people on the one hand and national sovereignty and the extended empire on the other. This article outlines the practical and theoretical exploration of those relations within the frame of Burke's intervention in the world of eighteenth-century political discourse.Burke was of course well placed in 1765 to evolve a theory of imperial government that was at once ideologically compelling and politically viable. In his capacity as secretary to William Gerard Hamilton in the early 1760s he had already examined the corruption of legitimate empire as represented by the introduction of penal legislation into Ireland after 1694. The Tracts Relating to Popery Laws set out to convict the Irish Parliament in Dublin of flagrant misrule. A subordinate legislature within the empire is charged with having employed... (shrink)

Aristotle divided arguments that persuade into the rhetorical (which happen to persuade), the dialectical (which are strong so ought to persuade to some degree) and the demonstrative (which must persuade if rightly understood). Dialectical arguments were long neglected, partly because Aristotle did not write a book about them. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth century late scholastic authors such as Medina, Cano and Soto developed a sound theory of probable arguments, those that have logical and not merely psychological force but (...) fall short of demonstration. Informed by late medieval treatments of the law of evidence and problems in moral theology and aleatory contracts, they considered the reasons that could render legal, moral, theological, commercial and historical arguments strong though not demonstrative. At the same time, demonstrative arguments became better understood as Galileo and other figures of the Scientific Revolution used mathematical proof in arguments in physics. Galileo moved both dialectical and demonstrative arguments into mathematical territory. (shrink)

The paper explores Burke’s twofold solution to the paradox of negative emotions. His Philosophical Enquiry (1757/59) employs two models that stand on different anthropological principles: the Exercise Argument borrowed from authors like the Abbé Du Bos, guided by the principle of self-preservation, and the Sympathy Argument, propageted by notable men of lettres such as Lord Kames, ruled by the principle of sociability. Burke interlocks these two arguments through a teleologically-ordered physiology, in which the natural laws of the human body and (...) mind, secretly working in the depth of the nerve fibres, ensure both self-preservation and sociability. Utilizing both efficient and final causes throughout his Enquiry, Burke argues that the experiences of pain and terror – under certain conditions – are made agreeable (delight) by providence,so that the physiological mechanisms underlying these experiences could ensure the health and strenuousness of the nerve fibres amidst the corrupting pleasures of commercial society (Exercise Argument). Furthermore, due to the ambiguous character of this delight annexed to such experiences, they also function as exercises for our social passions (Sympathy Argument). Te 'egoistic' anthropological drive to remove the visceral uneasiness that dominates these experiences facilitates moral action when it is needed the most: when others in pain need our help. In accordance with the anthropocentric providentialism of the moderate Enlightenment, it is the design of the human frame that ensures the activities essential to our health (self-preservation) and moral conduct (sociability), a design that not only guarantees that pleasure, if exclusive and excessive, is 'inconvenient', and pain, if mitigated and harmless, is aesthetically agreeable, but also that our 'egoistic' drive to self-preservation ultimately improves sociability. (shrink)

This paper examines whether American parents legally violate their children’s privacy rights when they share embarrassing images of their children on social media without their children’s consent. My inquiry is motivated by recent reports that French authorities have warned French parents that they could face fines and imprisonment for such conduct, if their children sue them once their children turn 18. Where French privacy law is grounded in respect for dignity, thereby explaining the French concerns for parental “over-sharing,” I show (...) that there are three major legal roadblocks for such a case to succeed in US law. First, US privacy tort law largely only protects a person’s image where the person has a commercial interest in his or her image. Secondly, privacy tort laws are subject to constitutional constraints respecting the freedom of speech and press. Third, American courts are reluctant to erode parental authority, except in cases where extraordinary threats to children’s welfare exist. I argue that while existing privacy law in the US is inadequate to offer children legal remedy if their parents share their embarrassing images of them without their consent, the dignity-based concerns of the French should not be neglected. I consider a recent proposal to protect children’s privacy by extending to them the “right to be forgotten” online, but I identify problems in this proposal, and argue it is not a panacea to the over-sharing problem. I conclude by emphasizing our shared social responsibilities to protect children by teaching them about the importance of respecting one another’s privacy and dignity in the online context, and by setting examples as responsible users of internet technologies. (shrink)

New developments in biotechnology radically alter our relationship with our bodies. Body tissues can now be used for commercial purposes, while external objects, such as pacemakers, can become part of the body. Property in the Body: Feminist Perspectives transcends the everyday responses to such developments, suggesting that what we most fear is the feminisation of the body. We fear our bodies are becoming objects of property, turning us into things rather than persons. This book evaluates how well-grounded this fear (...) is, and suggests innovative models of regulating what has been called 'the new Gold Rush' in human tissue. This is an up-to-date and wide-ranging synthesis of market developments in body tissue, bringing together bioethics, feminist theory and lessons from countries that have resisted commercialisation of the body, in a theoretically sophisticated and practically significant approach. (shrink)

The paper aims to briefly look into the civil law remedies of CISG from the perspective of economic efficiency. It mainly illustrates the basic tools of remedies in CISG, and discusses its strengths and flaws from the standpoint of economic deals normally present in most of commercial transactions. As many literature have long contributed to the legal economic discourse, our discussion, as a matter of course, largely depends on the current stronghold, or prospect that those theories espouse. Generally, the (...) remedies in CISG have two basic pathways addressing or penalizing the breach of contract from one party, namely specific performance and damages award. Other instruments to deal with the breach of contract cover a cure of defect, repudiation to perform a contract, additional period to perform a contractual duty, avoidance of contract and etc. This group of instruments can be classed as a privately administered remedies for our purpose of analysis. On this assumption, we can find many aspects of strengths in economic terms, but some paucity that the prescribed approach cannot properly address the best of economics between the contracting parties. This paucity comes mainly because the lawmakers normally could not pre-consider all circumstances among the individual contracting parties. For this reason, this paper argues in favor of privately administered remedies to fill the paucity of two typical remedies. Moreover, the contractual negotiation or design of contract is considered very important as the contracting parties are most informed about their best of economics besides the official lawmakers. The paper concludes with a short discussion of the electronic commerce in comparison with the traditional domestic and international commerce. (shrink)

Introduction: Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and action research of a city in lockdown. As we write this chapter, most cities across the world are subject to a similar set of measures due to the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus, which is now a global pandemic. Independent of city size, location, or history, an observer would note that almost all cities have now ground to a halt, with their citizens being confined to their private dwellings, social and public gatherings being almost entirely forbidden, and (...) commercial areas being nearly devoid of visitors. Striking as these apparent similarities are, closer scrutiny would reveal important differences between cities and within cities – differences that can be highly relevant to consider when scholars are assessing the responses of cities to this pandemic or trying to predict the consequences of those responses. For example, the public health systems in some cities are better prepared than in others for coping with the increasing number of patients in life threatening conditions. Multigenerational households, which are associated with a greater risk for elderly members, are not equally common in all cities. Tourist destinations have taken a more severe economic hit from the lockdown than those cities which are economically less dependent upon this particular source of income. Communal celebrations in one city will result in a higher number of contagions and perhaps even deaths in this situation, whereas that same social fabric generally does contribute to a population’s health. The pandemic has also had unprecedented effects on differences and inequalities within cities. In cities in the United States, neighborhoods primarily inhabited by African Americans have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 due to living and health conditions, yet also due to the fact they disproportionately perform vital jobs. Parks and green spaces are crowded, while city centers like Amsterdam’s Red Light District have suddenly lost the bustle of tourism, providing opportunities for citizens to reoccupy scarce public spaces and reclaim ownership. Clearly, such differences between cities are in many cases only discernible to the eye of an expert, possessing the necessary background knowledge to interpret the perceptible local changes caused by the global pandemic. Typically, drawing upon his or her disciplinary training, the expert also knows how to further probe the impact of the pandemic in an appropriate way. However, compared to the usual application of expertise, this crisis situation might, in an unusual way, test even experts. For the pandemic has created a unique situation, imposing unfamiliar constraints on the health, economic, social, and other conditions of cities, constraints that interact in sometimes unexpected ways with each other. Such interactions in turn force experts to collaborate across the boundaries commonly associated with disciplines, their concepts, theories, methods, and assumptions (Klein, 1996). These brief observations of how a virus pandemic can have differential impacts upon various cities, and what this exceptional situation might mean for the application of city methods, allow us to draw a few consequences for the current context of this chapter on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. First, whenever we are investigating a complex and dynamic phenomenon it is by no means easy to determine which disciplinary perspectives are required to do justice to it. Indeed, the choice of useful disciplines can only be made after an initial overview of the situation and a preliminary selection of what appear to be the most important features of the situation. Relevance is key in guiding this selection process and scholars must remain open to the possibility that they may need to revise their earlier assessments of what is relevant and what is not. Second, if scholars from different disciplines were to study different features of a city in isolation, their ‘multidisciplinary’ account would miss important dynamic and complex interactions, such as those between a city’s demographics and geographical situation, its governance and economy. In other words, it is the integration of the perspectives of different disciplines that is crucial, as only then are such interactions taken into account. Indeed, this integration between disciplinary perspectives is what distinguishes an interdisciplinary from a multidisciplinary account. Thirdly, in addition to checking the relevance of disciplines and aiming for their integration, the outcome of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research has typically limited generalizability. Since a city is sensitive to a multitude of internal and external dynamical factors, in ways that partly rest upon its socio-cultural history, its investigation will often have the nature of a case study rather than be capable of leading to law-like insights (Krohn, 2010; Menken & Keestra, 2016). As can be seen from these three characteristics of ascertaining the relevance of different disciplinary contributions, the challenge of their integration, and the limited generalizability of their results owing to the specificity of interdisciplinary (ID) and transdisciplinary (TD) research, such research into ‘real world problems’ is clearly distinct from most monodisciplinary research. A consequence of this distinction is the absence of a general ID/TD methodology that can guide specific case studies. By contrast, the collaboration implied in such research requires researchers – and stakeholders, if they are involved – to reflect upon their potential contribution and the implicit assumptions associated with that. We will elaborate on this in the next section. Next, we offer several typologies of integration that urban scholars could employ for their research projects, after which we will offer a few brief analyses of initial collaborations of urban research. Finally, we discuss in more detail the process of the interdisciplinary research project. This will include a brief reflection upon the decision-making process that is implied in such projects. In sum, we aim to provide some guidance in conducting an ID/TD project, albeit not in the form of a definite methodology. (shrink)

In this article I evaluate a resurrected French resistance movement--to biotechnological commodification. The official French view that ‘the body is the person’ has been dismissed as a ‘taboo’ by the French political scientist Dominique Memmi . Yet France has indeed resisted the models of globalised commodification adopted in US bioechnology, as, for example, when the government blocked a research collaboration between the American firm Millennium Pharmaceuticals and a leading genomics laboratory, le Centre d’Etude du Polymorphisme Humain, on the grounds the (...) ‘French DNA’ should not be given away. -/- This example, however, itself suggests why the ‘new French Resistance’ is not altogether liberating. The absolutist conception of all bodies as belonging to the French state—indeed, as constituting the body politic —is so potentially invasive that a counter-ideology of inviolability of the body is maintained assiduously. This inviolability is defended particularly strongly against commercialisation, but only at the moment when tissue is taken from the individual subject, who is not to be paid or compensated-- although commercial enterprises who subsequently use the tissue are not similarly constrained. -/- . (shrink)

Copyright is at the centre of both popular and academic debate. That emotions are running high is hardly surprising – copyright influences who contributes what to culture, how culture is used, and even the kind of persons we are and come to be. Consequentialist, Lockean, and personality interest accounts are generally advanced in the literature to morally justify copyright law. I argue that these approaches fail to ground extensive authorial rights in intellectual creations and that only a small subset of (...) the rights accorded by copyright law is justified. The pared-down version of copyright that I defend consists of the right to attribution, the right to have one’s non-endorsement of modifications or uses of one’s work explicitly noted, and the right to a share of the profit resulting from the commercial uses of one’s work. I also cursorily explore whether contribution to another person’s work gives rise to moral interests. (shrink)

Religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems and world view that relate humanity to spirituality and sometimes also with moral values. It may be said that it is a belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe. Many religions have narratives, symbols and sacred history and traditions that are intended to give a meaning of life or to explain the origin of the life and the universe. They tend (...) to drive morality, ethics, faith and religious laws and or preferred a lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature. But in the present world religious faiths are treated like a brand. The process of branding involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers' mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers. In a society overrun by commercial clutter, religion has become yet another product sold in the consumer marketplace, and faiths of all kinds must compete with a myriad of more entertaining and more convenient leisure activities. (shrink)

This paper was read at the University of Virginia at the XXXVIII ALDEEU conference of June 2018. -/- The phrase ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’ was Thomas Jefferson’s rewriting of Locke’s dictum, ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Property.’ Locke’s political philosophy speaks of a coming liberal age, engendering the Declaration of Independence. Anglo-Saxon historiography seemed to assure that Locke’s ideas were the autochthonous result of a historical process centered on the Reformation, Cromwellian parliamentary supremacy, and English (...) class='Hi'>commercial practices. Some continental philosophers look instead to the theologians of the School of Salamanca for the European origins of liberty. In this paper I will examine the recent scholarship about the impressive contribution of this School which led Jefferson to ground the Declaration of Independence in scholastic thought. These scholastics provided the philosophical, legal, and economic framework for modern Europe, as it transitioned from its medieval concepts of social organization to the more liberal and individualistic one now. They were influential for a simple reason. The scholastic program used reason to develop its concepts of free will, popular sovereignty, and property rights – which well correspond to Locke’s phrase – and placed them in a congruent philosophical system derived from first principles using natural law. It was this coherent, logical framework that appealed most to the later thinkers Jefferson relied on when searching for a sound philosophical basis for the Declaration. The Hispanic neo-scholastics applied natural law to prior Conciliarist parliamentary ideas to establish a new relationship between the individual, the community, and the state. This framework emphasized a greater separation of church and state, popular sovereignty, deposition of kings, and checks on monarchical power. Others, including Protestants and Enlightenment thinkers, were later drawn to this system due to its sound basing in an essentialist, classical, natural law drawn from first principles. It was this foundational coherence which attracted others, including Jefferson, who tended to mistrust the basis of the resistance theorists that also relied on historicism or scripture, such as George Buchanan, the authors of Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, or Locke himself. -/- . (shrink)

How are fundamental constants, such as c for the speed of light, related to particular technological environments? Our understanding of the constant c and Einstein’s relativistic cosmology depended on key experiences and lessons learned in connection to new forms of telecommunications, first used by the military and later adapted for commercial purposes. Many of Einstein’s contemporaries understood his theory of relativity by reference to telecommunications, some referring to it as “signal-theory” and “message theory.” Prominent physicists who contributed to it (...) (Hans Reichenbach, Max Born, Paul Langevin, Louis de Broglie, and Léon Brillouin, among others) worked in radio units during WWI. At the time of its development, the old Newtonian mechanics was retrospectively rebranded as based on the belief in a means of “instantaneous signaling at a distance.” Even our thinking about lengths and solid bodies, argued Einstein and his interlocutors, needed to be overhauled in light of a new understanding of signaling possibilities. Pulling a rod from one side will not make the other end move at once, since relativity had shown that “this would be a signal that moves with infinite speed.” Einstein’s universe, where time and space dilated, where the shortest path between two points was often curved and which broke the laws of Euclidean geometry, functioned according to the rules of electromagnetic signal transmission. For some critics, the new understanding of the speed of light as an unsurpassable velocity—a fundamental tenet of Einstein’s theory—was a mere technological effect related to current limitations in communication technologies. (shrink)

Palawan is a land of promise, and of paradox. On maps, it appears on the edge of the Philippines, isolated. Indeed, it is a kind of last frontier. Its population remained tiny for centuries, the government offering homestead land in the 1950s practically for free to attract migrants from outside. The Palawan State University was established by law in 1965, but did not become operational until 1972. A commercial airport did not exist until the 1980s, and for many years, (...) flights were limited. Yet Palawan is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in the Philippines with the famous Tabon Cave human fossils. The oldest bone fragment here has been dated to be about 47,000 years. We know, too, that trade with China goes back several centuries. Today, Palawan seems to be making up for lost time with new commercial investments pouring in at breakneck speed. In particular, outsiders have rediscovered its potentials around logging, mining, fisheries, and tourism. This has caused concern among individuals and civil society organizations who want sustainable development, and see the commercial developments mainly as extractive, not just of natural resources but of the human. There’s very cheap labor available. And when potential investors marvel about cheap land, they’re actually talking about displacing earlier settlers, including indigenous people, from their lands. A subtle but still insidious aspect of the exploitation of human resources is a transformation of the very concept of human development. Using the rhetoric of modernity, residents in Palawan are reorienting the way they view themselves as well as their families and friends. The value of a human being now hinges on how they look, and the desired appearance is defined from the outside, as we see in this anthology of research reports coming from the Chemical Youth project of the University of Amsterdam and the University of the Philippines Diliman. We read about the importance of fair skin as a projection of cleanliness, of high social status (meaning someone not engaged in manual labor and therefore not exposed to the sun). We read of how “femininity” is defined around body contours, and cosmetics, and how hormones are used by male-to-female transgenders. We go beyond the visual, reading about the importance of controlling or enhancing body odors among tour guides, who interestingly are especially concerned about the bad odor management of their foreign customers, using car perfumes to keep their work manageable and we learn how difficult it is for security guards to stay alert during their long shifts. Energy drinks and cigarettes help them perform their duties. All these transformations through what the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault has called “technologies of the self” are as paradoxical as Palawan. On the surface, the products—which are technologies—seem to be mainly in the realm of the self but are, in reality, pushed, through marketing, from the outside, in contexts of inequality and exploitative labour relations. Personal aspirations are not personal but are for predefined standards of modernity, related to work-related demands and expectations. The self must be made presentable to the tourist, to the customers in malls, and to those who may threaten the properties that young people protect. It is not surprising that these transformations become problematic for the “self.” The skin whiteners, the hormones, the body deodorants, and the energy drinks are expensive and can distort budgetary priorities. The money for tonic drinks, for example, could well go into more nutritious food. The tragedy, too, many of the products used are of doubtful safety and efficacy. Even the energy drinks have much too high levels of caffeine that can cause cardiac palpitations. Cosmetics and the skin whiteners imported from China and unregistered with the Food and Drug Administration may contain toxic chemicals like mercury. But even registered skin whiteners can be problematic, their so-called “skin-whitening effect” coming about because they take away the upper layers of the skin, leaving behind a red glow (seen as “whitening”) which is actually inflammation. The whitened skin fails to protect against the sun, leading to adverse effects such as black spots. Ultimately though, the problems come with the very definition of the self. As the reports show, young people use the chemicals with some ambivalence, knowing how expensive they are and experiencing some of the undesirable side effects. There is, too, doubt about whether what they’re doing is indeed “good,” captured by how IP women will put on cosmetics only when they’re away from home and about to go to work. The cosmetics have to be removed before they return home because they are not socially acceptable. The research reports are not for Palawan alone. It must make us more critical and discerning as we revisit concepts of development and exploitation, modernity and tradition, self and community. The chemicals, in many ways, are like the products used in precolonial barter trade. For the Chinese, the beeswax and the sea cucumbers, for the inhabitants of Palawan the ceramics, represented faraway lands. To have those products gave prestige. Today, the skin whiteners and tonic drinks and other chemicals described in this anthology represent modernity with promises of not just of a more attractive self, but of better jobs, a better life. We are proud to have worked with the Palawan State University, and the people of Palawan, to gather powerful narratives that will now challenge the outside, the purveyors of modernity, to be more critical and discerning, the chemicals now to be seen not just as stuff applied to the biological body, but as powerful shapers of social bodies. (shrink)

In the sea trade, the traditional paper-based bill of lading has played an important role across the globe for centuries, but with the advent of advanced commercial modes of transportation and communication, the central position of this document is under threat. The importance of the bill of lading still prevails as does the need of the functions that this document served in the past, although in a changed format. In the recent past, the world has witnessed a lot of (...) debate about replacing this traditional paper-based document with an electronic equivalent that exhibits all of its functions and characteristics, both commercial and legal. More specifically, unlike many rival travel documents, such as the Sea Waybill, a bill of lading has two prominent features, that is to say, its negotiability and its acceptability as a document of title in certain legal jurisdictions that are required to be retained in an electronic bill of lading so as to also retain the prominence of this document in the future landscape. This thesis is, however, more concerned about the legal aspects of adopting the electronic bill of lading as a traditional paper-based legal document as well as an effective legal document in the present age. However, the scope of this debate remains primarily focused on the USA and UK jurisdictions. In the course of this thesis, it is observed that, in the past, the bill of lading has been subject to a variety of international regimes, such as The Hague Rules and The Hague-Visby Rules, and presently efforts are being made to arrive at a universal agreement under the umbrella of The Rotterdam Rules, but such an agreement is yet to arrive among the comity of nations. On the other hand, efforts made by the business community to introduce an electronic bill of lading are much louder and more evident. The private efforts, such as the SeaDocs System, CMI Rules, and the BOLERO Project, etc., were, however, received by the fellow business community with both applause as well as suspicion. At the same time, there are a number of concerns voiced by the international business community on the legislative adoptability in national and international jurisdictions and the courts’ approach in adjudicating cases involving electronic transactions and these are making the task of adoption of electronic bill of lading in the sea-based transactions a difficult task. Therefore, in the absence of any formal legal backing from national and international legislations, these attempts could not achieve the desired results. In this thesis, the present situation of the acceptability of electronic transactions in general, and of the electronic bill of lading specifically, has also been discussed with reference to certain national jurisdictions, such as Australia, India, South Korea and China, in order to present comparative perspectives on the preparedness of these nations. On the regional level, the efforts made by the European Union have also been discussed to promote electronic transactions within its jurisdiction. All the discussion, however, leads to the situation where the level of acceptability of electronic bill of lading in the near future is found to be dependent upon the official efforts from the national governments and putting these efforts towards arriving at an agreement on Rotterdam Rules as early as possible. The other area of importance revealed in this thesis is the need for change in juristic approach by the courts while interpreting and adjudicating upon cases involving electronic transactions. On the whole, this thesis has provided a cohesive and systematic review, synthesis and analysis of the history of the bill of lading, its importance as a document of title, and attempts to incorporate its important functions within the fast-paced electronic shipping commerce of today. In such a way it has provided a valuable contribution to the literature by providing a comprehensive resource for jurists, policy-makers and the business community alike, as they work towards adapting the bill of lading so that it might be successfully applied in electronic form. (shrink)

Jordan agreed to extensive liberalization undertakings under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (“GATS”) that would open some sectors that were previously closed or restricted to foreign suppliers and investors. It undertook horizontal commitments in cross-border movement of individuals and commercial presence covering all types of services.

The dependence solution claims that God’s foreknowledge is no threat to our freedom because God’s foreknowledge depends (in a relevant sense) on our actions. The assumption here is that those parts of the world which depend on our actions are no threat to the freedom of those actions. Recently, Taylor Cyr has presented a case which challenges this assumption. Moreover, since the case is analogous to the case of God’s foreknowledge, it would seem to establish that, even if God’s foreknowledge (...) somehow depends on our actions, our freedom is still threatened. This paper defends the dependence solution, first, by offering an error theory for the intuitions that drive Cyr’s case and, second, by pointing out some arguably mysterious implications of accepting those intuitions. These points taken in conjunction show that Cyr’s case, although quite fascinating, is not as challenging as it might at first seem. (shrink)

There is an old and powerful argument for the claim that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A recent response to this argument, sometimes called the “dependence response,” centers around the claim that God’s relevant past beliefs depend on the relevant agent’s current or future behavior in a certain way. This paper offers a new argument for the dependence response, one that revolves around different cases of time travel. Somewhat serendipitously, the argument also paves the way (...) for a new reply to a compelling objection to the dependence response, the challenge from prepunishment. But perhaps not so serendipitously, the argument also renders the dependence response incompatible with certain views of providence. (shrink)

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the laws (...) of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom. (shrink)

Suppose Molinism is true and God placed Adam in the garden because God knew Adam would freely eat of the fruit. Suppose further that, had it not been true that Adam would freely eat of the fruit, were he placed in the garden, God would have placed someone else there instead. When Adam freely eats of the fruit, is he free to do otherwise? This paper argues that there is a strong case for both a positive and a negative answer. (...) Assuming such cases are possible under Molinism, we are left with a puzzling question: if Molinism is true, what can you do? (shrink)

Is the virtue of the good citizen the same as the virtue of the good man? Aristotle addresses this in Politics 3.4. His answer is twofold. On the one hand, (the account for Difference) they are not the same both because what the citizen’s virtue is depends on the constitution, on what preserves it, and on the role the citizen plays in it, and because the good citizens in the best constitution cannot all be good men, whereas the good man’s (...) virtue is uniform. On the other hand, (the account for Identity) the two virtues are identical in the good men in the best constitution, in which all are good citizens, each possessing the ability for ruling and for being ruled. This nuanced answer can be seen as Aristotle’s synthesis of a Periclean view (contribution to state blots out personal wrongs) and a Socratic view (no good citizen is without justice). Its nuances reflect the extent to which Aristotle’s conceptions of good citizenship and the best constitution accommodate deviations of what is probable from the human ideal set out in his ethical writings. In the present chapter, I will first address three puzzles regarding the nuances of Aristotle’s answer. Second, I will consider one question about its implication: Does Aristotle’s account for Difference turn out to entail something ultra-Periclean: that no one can simultaneously be a good man and a good citizen in any constitution other than the best? I shall argue the negative. (shrink)

Libertarian views of freedom claim that, although determinism would rule out our freedom, we are nevertheless free on some occasions. An odd implication of such views (to put it mildly) seems to be that indeterminism somehow enhances or contributes to our agency. But how could that be? What does indeterminism have to offer agency? This paper develops a novel answer, one that is centred around the notion of explanation. In short, it is argued that, if indeterminism holds in the right (...) places, then the best explanation of the history of the world necessarily cites facts about our agency. Along the way, alternative proposals regarding the significance of indeterminism are considered and, ultimately, rejected in favour of the one developed in this paper. (shrink)

Recently, several authors have utilized the notion of dependence to respond to the traditional argument for the incompatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge. However, proponents of this response have not always been so clear in specifying where the incompatibility argument goes wrong, which has led to some unfounded objections to the response. We remedy this dialectical confusion by clarifying both the dependence response itself and its interaction with the standard incompatibility argument. Once these clarifications are made, it becomes clear both (...) (1.) that the dependence response does not beg the question against the proponent of the incompatibility argument and (2.) that the dependence response advances the dialectic whether it is developed as a version of Ockhamism or as a version of multiple-pasts compatibilism. (shrink)

Review of Causation and Free Will by Carolina Sartorio, Oxford University Press, 2016. viii + 188 pp. £35.00.

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts about mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called commonsense metaphysics. This includes a number of areas that figure in virtually every domain of discourse, such as granularity, (...) scales, time, space, material, physical objects, shape, causality, functionality, and force. Our effort has been to construct core theories of each of these areas, and then to define, or at least characterize, a large number of lexical items in terms provided by the core theories. In this paper we discuss our methodological principles and describe the key ideas in the various domains we are investigating. (shrink)

The growing commercialization of scientific research has raised important concerns about industry bias. According to some evidence, so-called industry bias can affect the integrity of the science as well as the direction of the research agenda. I argue that conceptualizing industry’s influence in scientific research in terms of bias is unhelpful. Insofar as industry sponsorship negatively affects the integrity of the research, it does so through biasing mechanisms that can affect any research independently of the source of funding. Talk about (...) industry bias thus offers no insight into the particular epistemic shortcomings at stake. If the concern is with the negative effects that industry funding can have on the research agenda, conceptualizing this influence as bias obscures the ways in which such impact is problematic and limits our ability to offer solutions that can successfully address the concerns raised by the growing role of private funding in science. (shrink)

Critics of commercial societies complain that the free-market system of property rights and freedom of contract tends to commodify relationships, thus eroding the bonds of personal and civic friendship. I argue that this thesis rests on a misunderstanding of both markets and friendship. As voluntary, reciprocal relationships, market relationships and friendship share important properties. Like all relations and activities that exercise important human capacities and play an important role in a meaningful life, market relations and activities are essentially structured (...) and supported by ethical norms and, in turn, support these norms. The so-called norms of the market, such as instrumentality and fungibility, come in varying degrees and characterize not only market, but also nonmarket, relationships, including friendship. Furthermore, although market relationships are primarily instrumental, the individuals involved are not. The virtues of markets have their counterparts in friendship, as do their vices. For these and other reasons, market societies are not only not inimical to friendship, they create a more secure matrix for civic and personal friendship, as well as for other important values such as art, science, or philosophy, than any other developed form of society. Key Words: commercial societies • friendship • moral norms • virtues • vices. (shrink)

Abstract. In this article we developed scientific and applied foundations of commercialization of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects, on the example of exhausted mines. It is determined that the category of “anthropogenic object” can be considered in a narrow-applied sense, as specific anthropogenic objects to ensure the target needs, and in a broad theoretical sense, meaning everything that is created and changed by human influence, that is the objects of both artificial and natural origin. It was determined that problems (...) of commercialization of the natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects are most often considered by researchers for specific objects, without having complex methodological coverage from the point of view of combining environmental, technical, economic and managerial components. When studying the substantiation of the scientific base, the authors confirmed the feasibility of the commercialization of natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects on the example of a number of theoretical scientific studies in reclamation, reconstruction, recreation, remediation, restoration of biological productivity and economic value of land disturbed by economic activity. The considered examples of exhausted mines in the 21st century in the USA, Canada, Germany, Romania, and Poland indicate a wide range of opportunities for their commercialization. The study of the potential for commercialization of exhausted mines in the post-Soviet countries testified to the underused reserves for the commercialization of their nature-resource potential and their high potential for further development. The authors proposed the identification of anthropogenic objects on the basic livelihood spheres of society. There were identified the main system (natural, biological, technical, economic, social, managerial) and structural (subjects, trends, threats, risks, problems, challenges) factors of diagnosing the state of an anthropogenic object. A set of measures has been developed for commercialization of an anthropogenic object in functional and production activities, product policy, financial and investment spheres, pricing and sales policies, promotion, management and determination of property rights. Recommendations were provided on optimizing the management decision-making process based on a set of positivistic development principles, methods, and management functions. The study allows international organizations, state and local authorities, territorial communities, owners and potential investors to see new opportunities and make mutually beneficial decisions on the rational use of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects. (shrink)

Commercial republicanism is the idea that a properly-structured commercial society can serve the republican end of minimizing the domination of citizens by states (imperium) and of citizens by other citizens (dominium). Much has been written about this idea in the last half-century, including analyses of individual commercial republicans (e.g., Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant) as well as discussions of national traditions of the same (e.g., in America, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Italy). In this chapter, I review (...) five kinds of arguments that have been historically offered for how commercial society so understood advances the republican ideal of non-domination: first, by simply realizing non-dominating relationships in the marketplace itself (Instantiation); second, by encouraging the growth of a wide middle class that can offer a counterweight to other, dominating classes (Internal Check-and-Balance); third, by increasing the wealth and power of republics vis-à-vis other, dominating states in the international arena (External Check-and-Balance); fourth, by helpfully nurturing bourgeois-civic virtues in republican citizens (Cultivating Virtue); and finally, by transforming dangerous passions into more readily regulable, even socially beneficial material interests (Sublimating Vice). I end the chapter by briefly considering commercial republicanism’s prospects as a continuing research program. (shrink)

KEY POINTS In Canada, commercial data brokers collect deidentified patient data from pharmacies, private drug insurers, the federal government and medical clinics without patient consent. Although pharmaceutical companies are the data brokers’ primary customers, academics and nonprofit and public entities also use commercial data sets, given the absence of a coordinated public approach to collecting these data across Canada. Risks of commercialized patient data include loss of anonymity, surveillance and marketing, discrimination and violation of Indigenous data sovereignty. Coordinated (...) infrastructure for the collection and coordination of health data across Canada and updated privacy legislation would protect individuals and communities and enable appropriate data uses. (shrink)

Laws can be evaluated as better or worse relative to different normative standards. But the standard set by the Rule of Law defines a kind-relative standard of evaluation: features like generality, publicity, and non-retroactivity make the law better as law. This fact about legal evaluation invites a comparison between law and other “goodness-fixing kinds,” where a kind is goodness-fixing if what it is to be a member of the kind fixes a standard for evaluating instances as better or worse. Indeed, (...) for any goodness-fixing kind, K, that sets a standard, S, for evaluating Ks as Ks, we can ask: (1) How does the nature of Ks explain S? (2) Does being a K depend on meeting a minimum threshold of S-relative goodness? In the case of law and its kind-relative standard defined by the Rule-of-Law virtues, these questions lack settled answers. Although Raz (1979, 2019) offers some discussion, I argue that his answers have the surprising upshot of rendering law sui generis relative to other goodness-fixing kinds, and that preserving continuity with other such kinds involves revising the general picture. On the revised picture, law construed as a system of rules is subject to kind-relative evaluation because it is (a) a functional artifact, (b) with an essential function of realizing a limited normative ideal, and (c) its being minimally good at that function—that is, its realization of the relevant normative ideal to some degree—is a condition and ground of law’s existence, since all functional artifacts appear to be subject to such threshold conditions. (shrink)

In this paper we propose an Ontology of Commercial Exchange (OCE) based on Basic Formal Ontology. OCE is designed for re-use in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) and in other ontologies addressing different aspects of human social behavior involving purchasing, selling, marketing, and so forth. We first evaluate some of the design patterns used in the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO) and Product Types Ontology (PTO). We then propose terms and definitions that we believe will improve the representation of (...) contractual obligations, sales processes, and their associated documents. A commercial exchange, for instance, involves mutual agreement to reciprocate actions, such as transferring money, performing a service, or transferring goods. (shrink)

Language suggestive of natural law ethics, similar to the Catholic understanding of ethical foundations, is prevalent in a number of disciplines. But it does not always issue in a full-blooded commitment to objective ethics, being undermined by relativist ethical currents. In law and politics, there is a robust conception of "human rights", but it has become somewhat detached from both the worth of persons in themselves and from duties. In education, talk of "values" imports ethical considerations but hints at a (...) subjectivist view of them. In the psychology and sociology of drug use, ethically thin concepts of "harm minimisation" and "selfimage" dominate discussion and distract attention from the virtue of temperance and the training of character. A more forceful assertion of an ethics based on the worth of persons in these cases would be most desirable. Arguments against objectivity in the fundamentals may be replied to by examining the parallel between ethics and the discipline whose objectivity has been least challenged by relativist arguments, mathematics. (shrink)

Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on (...) how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment. (shrink)

Non-Humean accounts of the metaphysics of nature posit either laws or powers in order to account for natural necessity and world-order. We argue that such monistic views face fundamental problems. On the one hand, neo-Aristotelians cannot give unproblematic power-based accounts of the functional laws among quantities offered by physical theories, as well as of the place of conservation laws and symmetries in a lawless ontology; in order to capture these characteristics, commitment to governing laws is indispensable. On the other hand, (...) ontologies that entirely exclude some kind of power ascription to worldly entities face what we call the Governing Problem: such ontologies do not have the resources to give an adequate account of how laws play their governing role. We propose a novel dualist model, which, we argue, has the resources to solve the difficulties encountered by its two dominant competitors, without inheriting the problems of either view. According to the dualist model, both laws and powers are equally fundamental and irreducible to each other, and both are needed in order to give a satisfactory account of the nomological structure of the world. The dualist model constitutes thus a promising alternative to current monistic views in the metaphysics of science. (shrink)

Any explanation of one fact in terms of another will appeal to some sort of connection between the two. In a causal explanation, the connection might be a causal mechanism or law. But not all explanations are causal, and neither are all explanatory connections. For example, in explaining the fact that a given barn is red in terms of the fact that it is crimson, we might appeal to a non-causal connection between things’ being crimson and their being red. Many (...) such connections, like this one, are general rather than particular. I call these general non-causal explanatory connections 'laws of metaphysics'. In this paper I argue that some of these laws are to be found in the world at its most fundamental level, forming a bridge between fundamental reality and everything else. It is only by admitting fundamental laws, I suggest, that we can do justice to the explanatory relationship between what is fundamental and what is not. And once these laws are admitted, we are able to provide a nice resolution of the puzzle of why there are any non-fundamental facts in the first place. (shrink)

One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humean laws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role of laws in scientific practice. The worry is roughly that if the laws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises if we fail to (...) distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanations. However, Lange (2013, 2018) has argued that scientific and metaphysical explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which would undercut Loewer's defense and re-ignite the circularity worry for the Humean. I argue here that the Humean has antecedent reasons to doubt that there are any systematic connections between scientific and metaphysical explanations. The reason is that the Humean should think that scientific and metaphysical explanation have disparate aims, and therefore that neither form of explanation is beholden to the other in its pronouncements about what explains what. Consequently, the Humean has every reason to doubt that Lange's transitivity principle obtains. (shrink)