I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The MRCT Center Post-trial Responsibilities: Continued Access to an Investigational Medicine Framework outlines a case-based, principled, stakeholder approach to evaluate and guide ethical responsibilities to provide continued access to an investigational medicine at the conclusion of a patient’s participation in a clinical trial. The Post-trial Responsibilities (PTR) Framework includes this Guidance Document as well as the accompanying Toolkit. A 41-member international multi-stakeholder Workgroup convened by the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women’s (...) Hospital and Harvard University (MRCT Center) developed this Guidance and Toolkit. Project Motivation A number of international organizations have discussed the responsibilities stakeholders have to provide continued access to investigational medicines. The World Medical Association, for example, addressed post-trial access to medicines in Paragraph 34 of the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA, 2013): “In advance of a clinical trial, sponsors, researchers and host country governments should make provisions for post-trial access for all participants who still need an intervention identified as beneficial in the trial. This information must also be disclosed to participants during the informed consent process.” This paragraph and other international guidance documents converge on several consensus points: • Post-trial access (hereafter referred to as “continued access” in this Framework [for terminology clarification – see definitions]) is the responsibility of sponsors, researchers, and host country governments; • The plan for continued access should be determined before the trial begins, and before any individual gives their informed consent; • The protocol should delineate continued access plans; and • The plan should be transparent to potential participants and explained during the informed consent process. -/- However, there is no guidance on how to fulfill these responsibilities (i.e., linking specific responsibilities with specific stakeholders, conditions, and duration). To fill this gap, the MRCT Center convened a working group in September of 2014 to develop a framework to guide stakeholders with identified responsibilities. This resultant Framework sets forth applicable principles, approaches, recommendations and ethical rationales for PTR regarding continued access to investigational medicines for research participants. (shrink)

The general aim of this article is to give a critical interpretation of post-trial obligations towards individual research participants in the Declaration of Helsinki 2013. Transitioning research participants to the appropriate health care when a research study ends is a global problem. The publication of a new version of the Declaration of Helsinki is a great opportunity to discuss it. In my view, the Declaration of Helsinki 2013 identifies at least two clearly different types of post-trial obligations, (...) specifically, access to care after research and access to information after research. The agents entitled to receive post-trial access are the individual participants in research studies. The Declaration identifies the sponsors, researchers and host country governments as the main agents responsible for complying with the post-trial obligations mentioned above. To justify this interpretation of post-trial obligations, I first introduce a classification of post-trial obligations and illustrate its application with examples from post-trial ethics literature. I then make a brief reconstruction of the formulations of post-trial obligations of the Declaration of Helsinki from 2000 to 2008 to correlate the changes with some of the most salient ethical arguments. Finally I advance a critical interpretation of the latest formulation of post-trial obligations. I defend the view that paragraph 34 of ‘Post-trial provisions’ is an improved formulation by comparison with earlier versions, especially for identifying responsible agents and abandoning ambiguous ‘fair benefit’ language. However, I criticize the disappearance of ‘access to other appropriate care’ present in the Declaration since 2004 and the narrow scope given to obligations of access to information after research. (shrink)

Translation from Spanish to English of ANMAT’s procedure for import of post-trial access provisions. This is a regulatory mechanisim to comply with post-trial provisions requirement in Declaration of Helsinki, paragraph 34. The translation it is based on a selection of the text of ANMAT’s Provision 12792/2016. -/- .

In the ever-changing landscape of education, the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping traditional teaching methods and enhancing learning experiences. This study delves into the complexities of ICT adoption in Nigerian higher education, focusing on post-secondary technical education programs or National Diploma and Higher National Diploma (ND/HND) awarding institutions. The significance of this study lies in addressing challenges faced by developing nations like Nigeria, where harnessing ICT-driven education could resolve (...) pressing issues in the educational sector. The study identifies multifaceted challenges hindering ICT adoption, such as inadequate funding, lack of infrastructure, and resistance from faculty members. It emphasizes the pivotal role of knowledge sharing in higher education, underlining its significance in fostering continuous learning, collaboration, critical thinking, and innovation. Integrating ICT tools, supported by a robust digital infrastructure and tailored training programs, can mitigate these challenges. The study explores prominent knowledge-sharing models and theories, comprehensively understanding knowledge dissemination within post-secondary technical institutions. It emphasizes collaborative learning environments, ICT integration, and supportive policies as critical factors in enhancing knowledge exchange. The findings underscore the urgent need for policies that empower, technologies that enable, and mindsets that inspire. By addressing these challenges comprehensively, policymakers, educators, and stakeholders can create an educational landscape where every student and educator can thrive in the digital age. The insights from this research guide the evolution of post-secondary technical institutions in Nigeria and offer universal principles for educational institutions worldwide. The vision of a future with equal access to quality education for all is attainable through collaborative efforts and a commitment to embracing the potential of technology in higher education. (shrink)

This article describes a case of a teenager with early complex trauma due to chronic domestic violence. Cannabis use triggered auditory hallucinations, after which the teenager was diagnosed with an acute schizophrenia-like psychotic disorder. Antipsychotic medication did not fully resolve symptoms. Eventually the teenager chose to self-medicate with LSD in order to resolve a suicidal condition. The teenager carried out six unsupervised LSD sessions, followed by an extended period of almost daily use of inhaled low-dose DMT. Psychotic symptoms were mostly (...) resolved after approximately one year. Subsequent cannabis use caused a transient relapse. -/- While his psychosis may have been due to cannabis use in the presence of a genetic predisposition, LSD and DMT did not promote psychotic symptoms in this case, and resolved the suicidal condition in one session. Additional high-dose LSD sessions and low-dose DMT sessions appeared to resolve the symptoms related to the early complex trauma. Alternatively, if psychosis is understood as a massive defense system resulting from early complex trauma, and if his psychotic symptoms were partially due to such trauma, psychedelics appeared to transcend this defense system, providing access to traumatic memories in order to allow for an integrative treatment effect. -/- Information was acquired from medical record excerpts provided by the patient, a semi-structured retrospective video interview, and follow-up interviews a year later. The present case suggests a need for further studies on the relationship between psychedelics and psychotic disorders, the feasibility of supervised vs unsupervised settings for various situations, and alternative therapeutic models for utilizing the hyperaware-hypersensitive state induced by psychedelics. With regard to self-treatment, a harm reduction approach should be adopted. Low-risk psycholytic self-treatment protocols could be developed for future use in public health care systems. (shrink)

This article addresses the general ethical issues of accessing online personal data for research purposes. The authors discuss the practical aspects of online research with a specific case study that illustrates the ethical challenges encountered when accessing data from Kooth, an online youth web-counselling service. This paper firstly highlights the relevance of a process-based approach to ethics when accessing highly sensitive data and then discusses the ethical considerations and potential challenges regarding the accessing of public data from Digital Mental (...) Health services. It presents solutions that aim to protect young DMH service users as well as the DMH providers and researchers mining such data. Special consideration is given to service users’ expectations of what their data might be used for, as well as their perceptions of whether the data they post is public, private or open. We provide recommendations for planning and designing online research in an ethical manner that includes vulnerable young people as research participants. We emphasise the distinction between public, private and open data, which is crucial to comprehend the ethical challenges in accessing DMH data. Among our key recommendations, we foreground the need to consider a collaborative approach with the DMH providers while respecting service users’ control over personal data, and we propose the implementation of digital solutions embedded within the platform for explicit opt-out/opt-in recruitment strategies and ‘read more’ options. (shrink)

Does perceptual consciousness require cognitive access? Ned Block argues that it does not. Central to his case are visual memory experiments that employ post-stimulus cueing—in particular, Sperling's classic partial report studies, change-detection work by Lamme and colleagues, and a recent paper by Bronfman and colleagues that exploits our perception of ‘gist’ properties. We argue contra Block that these experiments do not support his claim. Our reinterpretations differ from previous critics' in challenging as well a longstanding and common view (...) of visual memory as involving declining capacity across a series of stores. We conclude by discussing the relation of probabilistic perceptual representations and phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Philosophers of science turned to historical case studies in part in response to Thomas Kuhn's insistence that such studies can transform the philosophy of science. In this issue Joseph Pitt argues that the power of case studies to instruct us about scientific methodology and epistemology depends on prior philosophical commitments, without which case studies are not philosophically useful. Here I reply to Pitt, demonstrating that case studies, properly deployed, illustrate styles of scientific work and modes of argumentation that are not (...) well handled by currently standard philosophical analyses. I illustrate these claims with exemplary findings from case studies dealing with exploratory experimentation and with interdisciplinary cooperation across sciences to yield multiple independent means of access to theoretical entities. The latter cases provide examples of ways that scientists support claims about theoretical entities that are not available in work performed within a single discipline. They also illustrate means of correcting systematic biases that stem from the commitments of each discipline taken separately. These findings illustrate the transformative power of case study methods, allow us to escape from the horns of Pitt's "dilemma of case studies," and vindicate some of the post-Kuhn uses to which case studies have been put. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar la nueva formulación del principio de acceso posinvestigación en la más reciente (2008) revisión de la Declaración de Helsinki. Se identifican los artículos relevantes de la Declaración y se presentan dos interpretaciones posibles del principio de acceso posinvestigación: una interpretación robusta y otra permisiva, inspiradas cada una por modelos de justicia distintos. Luego, se hace una evaluación crítica de dichas interpretaciones y se intenta avanzar argumentos en contra de la interpretación permisiva. [The objective (...) of this study is to critically analyze the new formulation of the principle of post-trial access in the most recent (2008) revision of the Helsinki Declaration. The relevant articles of the declaration are identified and two possible interpretations of the principle of post-trial access are set out; one robust and one permissive, inspired by different models of distributive justice. A critical evaluation of both interpretations is presented and arguments against the permissive one advanced.]. (shrink)

Objective: The study seeks to provide a thorough description of the teachers' digital literacy (DL) and digital competence (DC) and shine a light on the variables that influence the development of their digital literacies and competence. Method: Comprehensive data collection and analysis from 274 participants were completed. Descriptive and inferential statistics were conducted to accomplish the objectives of this study. Results: It came to light that teachers with less than ten years of experience have higher levels of digital (...) literacy. Pre-service education, having access to ICT resources, and a favorable attitude about using ICT were all strongly associated with DL and DC. The research's essential contribution is its findings affirming the value of DL and DC, which can be utilized to approach new technologies critically and use them as a part of digital pedagogy. Novelty: The critical contribution of the research is the result claiming the positive status of DL and DC, which can be used to approach new tools from a critical pedagogical perspective and apply them as part of digital pedagogy. -/- . (shrink)

Russians and Westerners access, process and communicate information in different ways. Whilst Westerners favour detailed analysis of subject matter, Russians tend to focus on certain components that are, in their view, significant. This disparity makes it difficult to achieve constructive dialogues between Western and Russian stakeholders contributing to cross-cultural communication problems. The author claims that the difference in the ways Russians and Westerners negotiate information is a significant cultural difference between Russia and West rather than an irritating (and in (...) principle amenable) lack of analytical skills on the Russian partners’ part. Understanding the reasons behind the Russian-specific approaches to dealing with information would be a positive step towards a more effective cross-cultural communication, important in business situations and essential in diplomacy. (shrink)

The literature on the history of electricity production have studied the evolution of electricity in both developed and developing countries and its impact on their economies. Some have laid foundations upon which other works are carried out. A close examination of historiography and multidisciplinary research on electricity production in Ghana shows that more efforts are required to improve the electric power landscape in Ghana. From the colonial era, the increasing demand for electricity has been the biggest challenge plaguing the energy (...) sector. Respective governments have made significant strides in ensuring reliable and universal access to electricity throughout Ghana, yet such efforts have been accompanied by different levels of challenges. The study uses a qualitative and exploratory research approach to trace the activities that helped, in many other ways to the creation of a sustainable electric power provision to household and industry in Ghana, particularly in two of Ghana’s cities; Accra and Kumasi, within the period 1900 to the1960s. The work focused mainly on archival sources in its quest to arrive at how indigenous Ghanaians provided power for industrial activities and for household purposes. Results from the study show that local and cottage industries relied predominantly on wood, fuel, and biomass for their operations even before the introduction of the more sophisticated means of power generation. Also, the study revealed that in finding solutions to the challenges of electricity production, policymakers have focused more on current issues with little or no effort to trace the historical foundation of electricity production. This notwithstanding, the little efforts that have been made examined the history of energy production, with a limited focus on the immediate post-independence era. (shrink)

Care after research is for participants after they have finished the study. Often it is NHS-provided healthcare for the medical condition that the study addresses. Sometimes it includes the study intervention, whether funded and supplied by the study sponsor, NHS or other party. The NHS has the primary responsibility for care after research. However, researchers are responsible at least for explaining and justifying what will happen to participants once they have finished. RECs are responsible for considering (...) the arrangements. There are ethical and practical issues, in particular when participants may wish to continue on the study intervention after the study. There are also various guidelines and legislation. This document presents a framework of questions to help NHS RECs and their applicants. Information on this document’s development is here. (shrink)

As access to the internet continues to grow, so do concerns about its effects on individuals. This digital revolution is not without its religious implications, and it appears that opinions are divided on how religiosity is being affected. On the one hand, it is possible that the emergence of virtual Islam could lead to an increase in extremism. On the other hand, with more exposure to diverse perspectives, religious tolerance may be bolstered. This article examines the potential effects of (...) the internet and social media on religious thought, drawing upon insights from the contemporary philosophy of technology, specifically postphenomenology. In this framework, technology is seen as an active agent, influencing both the subject and the object. Additionally, this article seeks to explain the logic underlying the conflicting views in the literature. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many recent articles argue that participants who seroconvert during HIV prevention trials deserve treatment when they develop AIDS, and there is a general consensus that the participants in HIV/aids treatment trials should have continuing post‐trial access. As a result, the primary concern of many ethicists and activists has shifted from justifying an obligation to treat trial participants, to working out mechanisms through which treatment could be provided. In this paper I argue that this shift frequently conceals an (...) important assumption: that if there is an obligation to supply treatment, then any party who could provide it may be prevailed upon to discharge the obligation. This assumption is false. The reasons why trial participants should get ART affect who has the duty to provide it. We should not burden governments with the obligations of sponsors, nor researchers with the obligations of the international community. And we should not deprive a group of treatment because their need is less salient than that of research participants. Insisting otherwise may lead to people being wrongfully deprived of access to antiretrovirals. (shrink)

Todos los días se prueban nuevos psicofármacos, tratamientos para el VIH/SIDA o el cáncer, entre otras enfermedades. Algunos de esos tratamientos son lo suficientemente exitosos como para cronificar enfermedades antes consideradas mortales, como los antirretrovirales para el VIH/SIDA o el imatinib para la leucemia mieloide a principios del 2000. No obstante, antes de que puedan ser comercializados o estar disponibles en los sistemas de salud pública, deben pasar por una serie de rigurosas pruebas de calidad, seguridad y eficacia. Estas pruebas (...) implican el testeo de las drogas en animales y su estudio en seres humanos, sanos o enfermos. Estrictas normas de buenas prácticas científicas y éticas regulan todo el proceso de las investigaciones biomédicas. El problema de mi tesis se centra en el momento de la finalización de los estudios en seres humanos. Alguien podría preguntarse qué pasa con las personas si se benefician clínicamente del tratamiento experimental durante el estudio cuando este finaliza. La interrupción abrupta de un tratamiento beneficioso podría poner en peligro la salud de los sujetos. Y en el caso de sujetos de investigación afectados por enfermedades crónicas, es probable que deban continuar con el tratamiento beneficioso u otra atención adecuada por el resto de sus vidas. Un sujeto de investigación estadounidense sin seguro de salud que participó en un estudio de largo plazo de diabetes resume estas preocupaciones: "de repente cortan la cuerda, y uno está solo por su cuenta ... O conseguís trescientos o cuatrocientos dólares por mes para seguir con esto o simplemente seguís adelante y morís". Este tipo de casos me llevaron a preguntar si existe alguna obligación moral de proveer el tratamiento beneficioso a un sujeto de investigación que no puede pagárselo. Muchas personas podrían pensar que interrumpir el tratamiento beneficioso al sujeto de investigación que padece de diabetes y no tiene seguro para cubrir un tratamiento es incorrecto, porque nadie debería morir de una enfermedad o dedicar todos los recursos disponibles para sobrevivir, especialmente cuando se contribuyó a encontrar una cura o a obtener la evidencia científica necesaria para desarrollar un mejor tratamiento que el existente. Otras personas podrían pensar que lo correcto es ofrecer el tratamiento a un "precio justo", y si la persona no puede pagar por la continuidad de tratamiento es su responsabilidad. Mi intuición es que una sociedad democrática justa tiene una obligación moral de establecer un sistema de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso para los sujetos de investigación. En esta tesis intento justificar filosóficamente esta última intuición básica utilizando el marco teórico de la teoría de la justicia de Rawls. Elijo utilizar la teoría rawlsiana, porque esta teoría me permite ubicar los problemas morales con respecto a la continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso en su contexto social adecuado y en el contexto de la búsqueda general de una sociedad más justa. En particular, la encuentro especialmente adecuada para explicar fenómenos complejos de responsabilidad social como los que creo que subyacen en el problema de la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso hacia los sujetos de investigación. Como mostraré más adelante, es imposible tener en cuenta los aspectos morales de la continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso aislada de la sociedad en la que se realizan los estudios con seres humanos. En el capítulo 1 presento una introducción general al tema de la ética de la investigación y al problema de la continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso. En el capítulo 2 intento determinar el campo de estudio de la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso hacia los sujetos de investigación. Para eso, mi estrategia es la siguiente. Primero, busco identificar los casos de estudios clínicos donde se daría la obligación de continuidad beneficiosa hacia los sujetos de investigación. Segundo, presento el problema de la justificación moral de la obligación de continuidad y la necesidad de discutir las justificaciones basadas en la idea de justicia como reciprocidad. Para esto, en la sección 2, identifico la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento a través de una selección de sus casos paradigmáticos en la literatura. Comienzo con el caso de los estudios clínicos con antirretrovirales llevados a cabo en Sudáfrica en personas con VIH/SIDA. Luego, introduzco el concepto teórico de sistema de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso. Este concepto me permite evaluar y comparar teóricamente cómo diferentes sociedades hacen frente al problema de proveer la continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso a los sujetos de investigación. Por último, rastreo los casos ejemplares de obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso hacia los sujetos en países desarrollados, con énfasis especial en los Estados Unidos. En la sección 3, analizo algunos problemas de confusión o ambigüedad más importantes en torno a la obligación. Primero, analizo el nombre de la obligación. Luego, trato de distinguir la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento hacia los sujetos de investigación de la obligación de disponibilidad razonable, una confusión muy común en la literatura de la ética de la investigación. Finalmente, me detengo a analizar una posible ambigüedad en el concepto de "tratamiento beneficioso" y utilizo algunos de los casos paradigmáticos identificados para argumentar a favor de mi interpretación. Atacado el primer problema, en la sección 4 y 5 me vuelco a relevar el problema de la justificación moral de la obligación de continuidad. En la sección 4, reconstruyo lo que llamo la "versión simple" del concepto de obligación a partir de la discusión sobre las fuentes de la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso. Luego, planteo la necesidad de investigar las justificaciones basadas en la idea de justicia como reciprocidad debido a las ambigüedades y la falta de un marco teórico claro dentro del campo de la ética de la investigación en seres humanos. Finalmente, en la sección 5, introduzco algunas distinciones clásicas con el fin de complejizar el marco teórico de las obligaciones, el cual será utilizado en la discusión de los próximos dos capítulos. En el capítulo 3 discuto la justificación de la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento que da el modelo económico de Alan Wertheimer. En la sección 1 del capítulo, debido a lo específico del tema y lo poco conocido del autor, introduzco a la persona y el contexto institucional de su obra. En la sección 2 del capítulo, distingo tres interpretaciones del concepto de justicia como reciprocidad e intento mostrar que Wertheimer utiliza una interpretación caracterizada por el uso mutuo y el intercambio de beneficios, a la cual llamo "reciprocidad de mercado". En la sección 3, presento el marco teórico del modelo económico. La pregunta fundamental de Wertheimer es la siguiente: ¿tienen los investigadores o patrocinadores una obligación supercontractual de proporcionar la continuidad de tratamiento u otros beneficios a los sujetos de investigación? Según el autor, el consenso en ética de la investigación responde de manera afirmativa a esta pregunta y como fundamento de esta obligación se encontraría lo que Wertheimer llama "el principio de interacción". Analizo este principio y presento las críticas que hace Wertheimer al mismo. En la sección 4, presento la respuesta a la pregunta fundamental que da Wertheimer mediante su "argumento estratégico". En la sección 5 analizo la solución dada por Wertheimer e intento explicar algunos de los supuestos principales del modelo, a saber, (i) la lógica del argumento estratégico, (ii) la fuerza moral de los conceptos de Pareto y (iii) el compromiso del modelo económico con la restricción de la información. Por último, en la sección 6 presento mis críticas al modelo económico. En el capítulo 4 presento el modelo de reciprocidad democrática, inspirado en la teoría de la justicia de Rawls. Este modelo se presenta como un marco teórico y una interpretación de la justicia como reciprocidad alternativos al modelo económico presentado en el capítulo anterior. En la sección 2 del presente capítulo, explicito los problemas del marco teórico relacionados con el concepto de justicia como reciprocidad que subyacen a la discusión sobre la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso hacia los sujetos de investigación. Para esto, me centro en tres puntos: (i) la relación del principio de justicia como reciprocidad y el concepto de obligación; (ii) el problema del alcance del principio de reciprocidad, y (iii) la relación entre el principio de reciprocidad y el concepto de equidad, o lo que llamo "el problema de la medida de la reciprocidad". En la sección 3, defino con mayor claridad el enfoque rawlsiano de la justicia distributiva y expongo una crítica a los argumentos antirrawlsianos esgrimidos por los defensores del modelo económico que afirman que los principios de justicia política de Rawls no se aplican a los individuos. Si mi respuesta a los defensores del modelo económico es correcta, los principios de justicia política se aplican a los individuos de manera indirecta, mediante la asignación de obligaciones posicionales por parte de la estructura básica de instituciones de una sociedad democrática, y permiten garantizar igual justicia a todos los miembros de la sociedad. En la sección 4, presento mi propuesta original de cómo entender la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso hacia los sujetos de investigación. Esta sería una obligación posicional perfecta correlativa con el derecho a la salud en sociedades democráticas justas o moderadamente injustas. En la sección 5, muestro de manera detallada el mecanismo apropiado para extender los principios de justicia política al caso de la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso hacia los sujetos de investigación. Con este objetivo, introduzco la idea de secuencia en cuatro etapas, que permite evaluar y diseñar nuevos esquemas institucionales para dar contenido a la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento. Y presento los principios de obligaciones y deberes individuales, que cierran el sistema rawlsiano brindando razones morales a los individuos para extender los esquemas institucionales justos a nuevas situaciones, reformar los existentes y cumplir con las obligaciones posicionales asignadas por estos nuevos esquemas. Por último, en la sección 6, discuto las objeciones más importantes al modelo de justificación de reciprocidad democrática. Por último, en la conclusión general, hago un intento de aplicación del marco teórico del modelo de reciprocidad democrática al análisis de los sistemas de continuidad de tratamiento para países como Argentina o Brasil y presento las líneas más importantes para la investigación futura. (shrink)

El problema de la transición de los participantes desde una investigación hacia la atención de la salud apropiada es un problema global. La publicación de una nueva versión de la Declaración de Helsinki es una excelente oportunidad para repensar este problema. Según mi interpretación, la Declaración de Helsinki 2013 introduce dos tipos diferentes de obligaciones posinvestigación, a saber, (1) obligaciones de acceso a atención de la salud y (2) obligaciones de acceso a información. Los beneficiarios pretendidos de estas obligaciones son (...) los participantes individuales de estudios de investigación. Y la Declaración identifica a los patrocinadores, investigadores y gobiernos de los países anfitriones como los principales agentes responsables de cumplir con las obligaciones posinvestigación. Para justificar esta interpretación de los tipos, agentes y beneficiarios de las obligaciones posinvestigación, presento primero una clasificación tentativa de las obligaciones posinvestigación. Luego hago una breve reconstrucción conceptual de las formulaciones de las obligaciones posinvestigación en las versiones anteriores de la Declaración y reviso las principales críticas. Finalmente presento un análisis crítico de la nueva formulación de las obligaciones posinvestigación basándome en la discusión de las secciones anteriores. [ABSTRACT] The problem of transitioning research participants when the study is concluded to the appropriate health care is a global problem. The publication of a new version of the Declaration of Helsinki and its public discussion is a great opportunity to rethink this problem. According to my interpretation, the Declaration of Helsinki 2013 identifies two different types of post-trial obligations, namely, (1) obligations of access to health care and (2) the obligations of access to information. The intended beneficiaries of these obligations are individual participants of research studies. And the Declaration identifies the sponsors, researchers and host country governments as the main agents responsible for complying with the post-trial obligations mentioned above. To justify this interpretation of the types, agents and beneficiaries of post-trial obligations, I first introduce a tentative classification of post-trial obligations. Then I make a brief conceptual reconstruction of formulations of post-trial obligations in earlier versions of the Declaration and revise the main critiques. Finally I advance a critical analysis of the new formulation of post-trial obligations based on the discussion in the previous sections. (shrink)

Research has shown that the construction of visual representations may have a positive effect on cognitive skills, including argumentation. In this paper we present a study on learning argumentation through computer-supported argument diagramming. We specifically focus on whether students, when provided with an argument-diagramming tool, create better diagrams, are more motivated, and learn more when working with other students or on their own. We use learning analytics to evaluate a variety of student activities: pre and post questionnaires to (...) explore motivational changes; the argument diagrams created by students to evaluate richness, complexity and completion; and pre and post knowledge tests to evaluate learning gains. (shrink)

The foundations of research ethics are riven with fault lines emanating from a fear that if research is too closely connected to weighty social purposes an imperative to advance the common good through research will justify abrogating the rights and welfare of study participants. The result is an impoverished conception of the nature of research, an incomplete focus on actors who bear important moral responsibilities, and a system of ethics and oversight highly attuned to the dangers of research but (...) largely silent about threats of ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable medical practices and health systems. -/- In For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics, Alex John London defends a conception of the common good that grounds a moral imperative with two requirements. The first is to promote research that generates the information necessary to enable key social institutions to effectively, efficiently, and equitably safeguard the basic interests of individuals. The second is to ensure that research is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects its various contributors' moral claims to be treated as free and equal. Connecting research to the goals of a just social order grounds a framework for assessing and managing research risk that reconciles these requirements and justifies key oversight practices in non-paternalistic terms. Reconceiving research ethics as resolving coordination problems and providing credible assurance that these requirements are being met expands the issues and actors that fall within the purview of the field and provides the foundation for a more unified and coherent approach to domestic and international research. -/- This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. (shrink)

The paper Post-Trial Acces To Treatment (PTA) offers an insight into current corporate policies and corporate best practices relating to the provision of PTA in low and middle income countries based on company sources. In these countries there is a greater appeal for pharmaceutical companies to take responsibility for providing PTA. However, the practice of providing PTA is the exception rather than the rule.

Resumen Ésta es la primera traducción al español de las guías “Atención después de la investigación: un marco para los comités de ética de investigación del National Health Service (NHS) (borrador versión 8.0)”. El documento afirma que existe una fuerte obligación moral de garantizar que los participantes enfermos de un estudio clínico hagan una transición después del estudio hacia una atención de la salud apropiada. Con “atención de la salud apropiada” se hace referencia al acceso para los participantes a la (...) atención de la salud, proporcionada principalmente por el National Health Service (en adelante NHS), el sistema de salud del Reino Unido, y/o a la intervención en estudio, también llamada producto o tratamiento en investigación. Las guías “Atención después de la investigación” están dirigidas principalmente a los miembros de los 79 comités de ética de investigación del NHS y a quienes presentan sus estudios de investigación ante estos comités. Se trata de un documento borrador muy avanzado, trabajado en numerosas reuniones, durante más de 3 años, que ha sido discutido por participantes de estudios y miembros de la comunidad, miembros y presidentes de comités de ética de investigación del Reino Unido, especialistas internacionales en ética de la investigación, representantes de la industria y otras partes interesadas. La redacción de las guías es producto de la colaboración de Neema Sofaer y Penney Lewis, ambas investigadoras del King’s College London, en el Centre of Medical Law and Ethics del Dickson Poon School of Law, y Hugh Davies, Asesor en Ética de la Investigación de la Health Research Authority (HRA) del NHS. El traductor del presente documento, Ignacio Mastroleo, participó del workshop en la Fundación Brocher (Ginebra, Suiza, diciembre de 2011) donde se revisó el borrador versión 7.0 y contribuyó en la revisión del borrador de la versión 8.0 durante el 2012. -/- Abstract This is the first Spanish translation of the guidelines “Care after research: a framework for NHS RECs (8th draft)”. The document states that there is a strong moral obligation to ensure that participants in a clinical study who are ill transition after the study to appropriate healthcare. The terms "appropriate healthcare" refer to participants’ access to health care, mainly provided by the National Health Service (NHS), the health system in the UK, and/or to the intervention study also named investigational treatment or product. The guides "Care after research" are mainly directed to members of the 79 NHS committees of research ethics (RECs) and to those who submit their research to these committees. This is a very advanced draft document, worked in several meetings, for more than three years, that has been discussed with study participants and community members, members and chairs of RECs in the UK, international specialists in research ethics, industry representatives and other stakeholders. The drafting of the guidelines is the result of the collaboration of Neema Sofaer and Penney Lewis, both researchers at King's College London, at the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics of Dickson Poon School of Law, and Hugh Davies, Research Ethics Advisor of the Health Research Authority (HRA) of the NHS. The translator of this document, Ignacio Mastroleo, attended the workshop at the Brocher Foundation (Geneva, Switzerland, December 2011) where draft version 7.0 was revised and contributed in the revision of draft version 8.0 during 2012. (shrink)

This study examines the concept of "collateral damage" in the context of environmental and ecological impact. It focuses on the SpaceX Starship launch, a significant event in space exploration, and its repercussions on the local environment. While the launch was deemed a success in advancing space exploration, reports from U.S. wildlife officials highlight the severe damage inflicted on the local ecosystem. The analysis reveals the existence of a notion termed "protected zones," which diverges from the conservationist perspective, emphasizing the (...) safeguarding of corporate interests over environmental preservation. The study also explores the limited financial and regulatory resources allocated to ecological rehabilitation compared to those allocated to corporate interests. Furthermore, it sheds light on the restricted access granted to biologists for post-launch environmental assessment, emphasizing the need for a more comprehensive approach to ecological restoration. Drawing on ecological data spanning thousands of years, the study underscores the considerable time and effort required to restore tropical forests to pre-damage levels, emphasizing the challenges of relying solely on financial compensation for environmental "collateral damage.". (shrink)

Accessing reliable and accurate information is essential to the proliferation of information through various channels. This can help individuals make informed decisions and avoid misinformation or disinformation. In such a case, creating an online information system should be prioritized to provide available data and information for planning, budgeting, and allocating resources and operational targets. This study assessed the level of satisfaction with the usability of EBEIS/LIS data and school management by the Department of Education among public secondary schools of (...) the Division of Bohol during 2019-2020. This research employed a quantitative method using the revised perception questionnaire, which underwent pilot testing using Cronbach's coefficient alpha to check the reliability level. Findings revealed that administrators, classroom teachers, and coordinators were satisfied with using data in school management. Findings revealed that administrators, classroom teachers, and coordinators were satisfied with using data in school management, satisfied with the personnel involved in facilitating the data, the information literacy given, and the ICT facilities to be used in online access data. However, some schools need more internet connectivity and more availability of posted/printed manuals and guidelines on accessing the online system. A need arises to provide a streamlined copy of the manual, which can be used as guidelines for online access, and strengthen its support in acquiring internet connectivity for all its learning facilities by partnering with internet service providers to optimize the signal. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to highlight the underlying themes or motifs that recur in Russian war propaganda in the context of the war in Ukraine. Using the method of thematic analysis, I analyzed the messages about the war in Ukraine that Russian opinion leaders and media institutions disseminated through the lens of the "principles of war propaganda" presented and illustrated by Arthur Ponsonby and Anne Morelli. Due to the language barrier and restrictions on access to Russian (...) news sources, we limited our analysis to articles published on the TASS news agency website and Twitter posts, which reproduce and comment on the interventions of Vladimir Solovyov, considered by the United States State Department as "the Kremlin's most energetic propagandist." In total, I analyzed 58 articles from the website of the TASS news agency and 40 Twitter posts with excerpts from the show "Evening with Vladimir Solovyov" on the Russia-1 TV channel. The analysis highlights that the "principles" defined by Arthur Ponsonby and Anne Morelli govern Russian war propaganda, at least in part. Our analysis does not exclude the possibility that Russian propagandists may have used other leitmotifs or public communication themes. Their identification and presentation could be the subject of further research. (shrink)

This perspective paper analyzes the rising threat of retracted scientific works and the challenges of preventing the continued spreading and use of the retracted science; further, a framework is proposed for research and actions to effectively manage retractions in the information ecosystem. The precipitous increase in retractions of scientific publications is real and the complexity of retracting publications challenges current IR systems and people's information behaviors. Retracting published, especially peer-reviewed, papers in prestigious venues is a complex phenomenon involving various entities (...) through often time-consuming processes. These publications may be accessible from the original venues, digital archives, or free-access databases, but these systems differ in retrievability and output. Many systems do not identify the retractions or reasons for retractions; most systems do not treat the retracted paper and its related notices (retraction or correction) as an integrated entity. Studies found that many retracted publications continue to be cited post-retraction as valid science. A new threat is the widely spread of retracted publications on social media. Retracting invalid scientific publications has serious implications in the real world. Based on current findings, we propose (1) a framework for further research; (2) a DOI resolution to integrate the documents related to retraction/correction; (3) a structured facet taxonomy for representing and indexing the retracted, corrected, or republished publications in databases; (4) a retraction registry or database with personalized AI helper for researchers to tract retracted publications; (5) an approach for understanding how retracted publications are circulated on social media. (shrink)

The Anatomy of Economic Inequality in Wales (2011) provides quantitative evidence for the pervasive nature of class-based inequalities in education, demonstrating that an individual in social housing is approximately 10 times less likely to be a graduate compared to those in other types of accommodation. This article moves beyond the baseline figures and argues that for marginalised, mature mothers re-entering education, the emotional cost is often one that they are unable to pay, and that practitioners and policy makers need to (...) be aware of, and responsive to their situation so that retention and completion rates can be improved. The article presents case studies from two research projects, which aimed to explore and represent the educational experiences of working-class mature students in urban south Wales. The article focuses on the accounts of women who completed Access courses and gained places in post-1992 universities, focusing on their initial aspirations and later disappointments. The article examines the ways in which classed, gendered and relational positionings conflicted with their education trajectory and often contributed to their withdrawal from academia. (shrink)

This article intends to show the distance between work-life balance as a political and social issue at the EU and Romanian level, through the lens of the local gender equality policies following the process of EU accession. The article provides, in its first part, a brief presentation of the main theoretical axes structuring the available literature, followed up by the analysis of the occurrence of the work-life balance issue at the European level. Then the study examines the normative dimension (...) of work-life balance in post-communist Romania, seeking to understand to what extent work-life balance policies have been designed and implemented in the last 25 years. (shrink)

This thesis explores the party system and political parties in the post-communist Albania. The overarching question of the thesis is what kind of party system has developed and what is the structure and organization of the Albanian political parties. The study analyses the period 1991-2013, that is the period between the first and the last general elections. I argue and test that the Albanian party system is stable and that the Albanian political parties are mass clientelist parties with (...) deep territorial penetration. The members of the parties have ceased to paly their traditional roles of the era of mass party and their attachment tot he party is not ideological but aims to ensure material benefits in return for the support provided to the party in elections times. As parties don't have many tools at hand they use their organizational structure to stabilize electorate, which explains the low level of electoral volatility in Albania and as consequence the stability of the party system. The thesis ahs an institutional embedded and a historically structured framework according to which party strategies are shaped by both the institutional context and the historical setting in which parties are created and operate. Following this line of reasoning, the weak societal roots of parties do not allow for party identification or voter alignment; the early access to public funding reduces the incentives of parties to create strong links with the members and society to collect financial resources and; in line with the features of the patrimonial communism which is characterized by clientelism and nepotism, the Albanian political parties develop the same relationships between the higher echelons of the party and the lower strata of the party structure. On the other hand the lack of media access in the early phase of organization and the need to stabilize the electorate, encourage the Albanian political parties to seek a deep territorial penetration which results in the creation of mass clientelist parties. In order to test the hypothesis I have undertaken three steps: a) the analyses of the Effective Number of Parties and Electoral Volatility; b) the internal distribution of power, the role of the membership and the relationship of the organization with society and; c) the identification of financial resources of the political parties. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

J. N. (Jitendra Nath) Mohanty (1928–2023). -/- Professor J. N. Mohanty has characterized his life and philosophy as being both “inside” and “outside” East and West, i.e., inside and outside traditions of India and those of the West, living in both India and United States: geographically, culturally, and philosophically; while also traveling the world: Melbourne to Moscow. Most of his academic time was spent teaching at the University of Oklahoma, The New School Graduate Faculty, and finally Temple University. Yet his (...) preeminent work in Husserlian phenomenology developed alongside his eminent work in Indian philosophy: describing his interests as “a fusion of disparate horizons.” -/- J. N. Mohanty was born September 26, 1928, in Cuttack (Odisha, East India). After graduating from high school, he went on to study both Indian and Western philosophy in Calcutta, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. There he read Whitehead and Kant’s First Critique; although he wanted to include mathematics in his curriculum, he was led instead to include Indian philosophy and Sanskrit. On the shelves of his teacher, Ras Vihar Das, he came upon a copy of the English translation (Ideas I, 1931) of Edmund Husserl’s classic Ideen I (1913), which presented Husserl’s ground-breaking conception of phenomenology. In 1952–1954 he left India for the first time, reaching Göttingen to study mathematics and philosophy, which earned him a doctorate in mathematics and “philosophy of mathematical sciences” (in his own words). In Göttingen, Mohanty found the powerful mathematical world that Husserl himself had earlier interacted with, where several Husserl students had formed the Göttingen school of phenomenology. During these years Mohanty studied primarily mathematics, alongside Kant and also Vedic Sanskrit. From his friend Günter Patzig, interpreter of Aristotle and Frege, Mohanty was drawn to Frege in relation to mathematical logic. He attended lectures of Heidegger, intrigued by his ontological thinking. Yet, despite the Husserlian legacy, Mohanty was completely self-taught in his studies of Husserl (as he has reported). With a doctorate in mathematics, and ideas from Kant and Frege in his philosophical background, Mohanty set about crafting his own conception of philosophy grounded in phenomenology, drawing on Husserl’s extensive work, critically sifting through Husserl’s texts and their emerging concepts of intentionality, meaning, subject, intersubjectivity, and world. In between he wrote his first book-length study: on phenomenological insights in Nicolai Hartmann and A. N. Whitehead (1958). -/- Over many decades Mohanty formulated and argued, in analytical detail, for a conception of phenomenology and its place in philosophy, later presented in a clear and concise book titled Transcendental Phenomenology: An Analytic Account (1989). Over these very decades the same scholar explored classical and recent Indian philosophy, thinking through kindred ideas of consciousness, self, and knowledge drawn from the Indian philosophical contexts. While writing on Nyāya theory of truth, he also pondered whether the world and finite individual are illusory or real, and whether Marx, Arendt, Gandhi (whom he heard speak in Calcutta), or Vinoba Bhave (with whom he marched across India for the land-grant movement) could best navigate post-Independent India’s social and svarāj or self-rule reforms. The two Mohantys, thinking through a vision of self and world, turned out to be “non-different” or “non-dual” as they each practiced critical phenomenology from both inside and outside the respective philosophical and cultural traditions. Numerous students, fellows, and colleagues or collaborators have benefited immensely from this infusion and unified approach to diversity in philosophical thought. In the 2000s, moving into retirement, Mohanty wrote two long books devoted to his understanding of Husserl and phenomenology and the calling of philosophy itself. This two-volume study shows Mohanty himself thinking through Husserl, critically, in The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A Historical Introduction (2008), and Edmund Husserl’s Freiburg Years: 1916–1938. As Mohanty worked on Husserl, he carefully indicated where he agreed and where he rejected or changed ideas, all part of his practice in phenomenology of “description and interpretation.” It was the same pattern he used in addressing the thought of Husserl vis-à-vis Kant or Frege or even Quine. -/- As Mohanty developed his understanding of phenomenology over the years, he wrote books on theory of meaning and the concept of intentionality, developing a model of ideal meaning and its foundation in intentionality, drawing on Husserl’s results. He followed these with the book Husserl and Frege (1982), linking the thought of those foundational figures for the “continental” and “analytic” traditions, respectively, in twentieth-century Western philosophy. Over his long career Mohanty addressed both traditions in his clear and accessible writing style. While developing his views on phenomenology, Mohanty regularly looked to “Husserl and his others,” evaluating views in Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and then Derrida and others in the wake of Husserl. With his background in Kant, Mohanty also looked toward Heidegger and Hegel in relation to Husserl’s later work in the Crisis (1935–38). Similarly, he looked to contemporary analytic philosophers, adjudicating his own, oft-wise Husserlian views in relation to Frege, Nagel, and others. Amid his active scholarly career, Mohanty co-founded the journal Husserl Studies, and was editorial advisor to Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, Philosophy East & West, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Sophia, among others. -/- Yet all this while Mohanty was also thinking and writing about Indian philosophy and its relation to phenomenology. In his own retrospective, Indian philosophy is “the permanent background” of his Husserlian thinking, while Kant is the recurrent Western background of his Husserlian phenomenology. Mohanty’s form of “transcendental phenomenology” evolved, in his own perspective, against the background of his studies of Navya-Nyāya on logic and Vedānta on consciousness, in Indian philosophy, and against the background of Kant’s First Critique on the transcendental, in Western philosophy. Accordingly, Mohanty’s study of logical form and of the intentionality of consciousness seeks a fusion of East and West in the conception of transcendental phenomenology. (Cf. Mohanty’s apt response to critics in The Empirical and the Transcendental (2000).) Even in the context of North American Husserl scholarship, Mohanty has exercised an earnest fusion of East and West. For the so-called East Coast and West Coast interpretations of Husserl’s crucial notion of noema both find a sympathetic spirit in J. N. Mohanty’s careful and nuanced interpretation of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology. With Mohanty the two faces of the noema are the logical (Fregean) and the phenomenal (Kantian), and these views of intentional structure join in consciousness—in a way resonant with Indian thought. -/- - David Woodruff Smith (UC Irvine) and Purushottama Bilimoria (SFSU, San Francisco; University of Melbourne) -/- For photo of Prof Mohanty visit APA online memorial_minutes2023 Courtesy of APA Memorial Minutes (& Proceedings) 2023 . (shrink)

Examining the status of cacao production, challenges, and prospects of cacao farmersin Zamboanga del Norte province were done in this study. The investigation revealed that cacaofarming was practiced by males (244 or 65.10%) and female cacao farmers (34%) who areprimarily married with secondary educational backgrounds. Most cacao farmers were theirproductive age ranging from 50-59 years old (42.93%), 40-49 years old (34.4%). However,fewer young people engaged in cacao farming aged below 40 years old (7.46%). The primaryoccupation of the respondents was (...) farming (86.13%), tilling their owned land (84.53%), andwith an average annual income below 60,000 pesos (50.40%). The average farm size was at 1-3hectares (80.00%), having a plain (40.27%) to rolling topography (47.47%) planted with UF 18(50.13%) and BR 25 (49.87%) varieties of cacao. Intercropping was observed (99.20%) withcoconut (79.20%) and banana (14.67%) planted along with cacao. Pest infestation of stem borer(59.73%) and bugs (22.67%) were observed at a low level (79.20%) and controlled usingLamdacyhalothrin (86.40%) as a chemical spray. Moreover, cacao diseases in farms were at alow incidence level (74.13%), with vascular streak dieback (53.06%) as the most commondisease among farms, and the method of controlling the spread was using chemicals (53.60%)and synthetic pesticides (100%) as a spray. Farms established 2 years from sowing (90.13%)observed farm management practices such as weeding twice a year (45.33%), fertilizerapplication 4 times a year (88.00%) using 1-3 bags per hectare (85.06%). Cacao trees produced0.50-1.50 (50.00%) of seeds per tree. Cacao products are sold in dried form (60.98%) withprices ranging from 81-100/kilogram through cooperative (100%). Farmers faced numerouschallenges, the most significant of which were the high cost of routine maintenance (such ascleaning/brushing) and shortage of laborers. The accessibility from the farm to the market roadwas also seen as a challenge among them. The province's cacao agricultural stakeholdersextended to support services to farmers such as free planting materials, credit assistance, cacaoproduction seminars, and post-harvest facilities, which were all considered valuable to farmersin addressing the challenges they faced on cacao farming and production. (shrink)

The pandemic brought new norms and techniques of pedagogical strategies in formal education. The synchronous/ asynchronous video streaming brought an emphasis on virtual and augmented realities, which are rapidly replacing textbooks as the main medium for learning and teaching. This transformation requires more extensive online and interactive content with simpler user interfaces. The aim of this study is to report on the design, implementation, and testing of a game based on low-cost and user-friendly content for digital cultural heritage. In (...) this project, a game aimed at inclusive and equitable education was developed using 360° images of the targeted architectural heritage geographically distributed in a pilot site. We promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, following the SDG4, aiming for quality education with the easy-to-use online platform and easy access to immersive education through mobile platforms. Towards a post-carbon future without the need for travel, computational design methods such as using 360° videos and images in combination with virtual reality (VR) headsets allow a low-cost approach to remotely experiencing cultural heritage. We propose developing and testing a GIS-based educational game using a low-cost 360° virtual tour of architectural heritage, more specifically, caravanserais of Anatolia. (shrink)

Understanding, for Kant, does not intuit, and intuition—which involves empirical information, i.e., sense-data—does not entail thinking. What is crucial to Kant’s famous claim that intuitions without concepts are blind and concepts without intuitions are empty is the idea that we have no knowledge unless we combine concepts with intuition. Although concepts and intuition are radically separated mental powers, without a way of bringing them together (i.e., synthesis) there is no knowledge for Kant. Thus Kant’s metaphysical-scientific dualism: (scientific) knowledge is limited (...) to the world of phenomena—the world of appearance—while the thing-in-itself is unknowable because there is no intuition that can correspond to the it. This paper sets to cull Béatrice Longuenesse’s recent work on the first-person ‘I’ and put forth a novel Kantian approach to the first-person reference of mental states, working in the tradition of P.F. Strawson, Rudolf Carnap, and Wilfrid Sellars, while offering an empirical study of deafferentation to ground the thesis that the binding of representations is separate from phenomenal consciousness. Accordingly, we stake a kind of self-consciousness vis-à-vis the Fundamental Reference-Rule qua apperception that, while intimately connected to consciousness of one’s own body, apperception is nevertheless distinct from it and is, moreover, the condition for any use of ‘I’. We compliment neuroscientist Oliver Sacks’ research with Ned Block’s recent work on “no-post‐perceptual cognition” and attentional variation to couch Kant’s schema in perceptual psychology. We navigate Kant’s work on intuitions (viz. sensation, perception, and the empirical side of the cognitive faculties) and indirect realism/weak representationism first via Sellars’ naturalization of Kant’s inaccessible thing-in-itself, before challenging Sellars’ functionalist and inferentialist conception of perception and discursive intentionality. We ultimately endeavor to conceptualize the limit-conditions regarding our having reportable knowledge about our access to percepts and concepts. (shrink)

The book "Unnoticed Revolution. Richard Burthogge's Constructivist Idealism" focuses on the theory of cognition developed by Richard Burthogge, the seventeenth-century English philosopher and author, among other works, of the "Organum Vetus & Novum" (1678) and "An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits" (1694). Burthogge’s ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study. Nevertheless, his writings contain a highly original concept of constructivist idealism, which, (...) when seen from a historical perspective, turns out to have anticipated the crucial points of that proposed a century later by Kant. It is because at the core of Burthogge’s epistemological position lies the claim that the external object of cognition is never presented to the mind directly, but always under the 'modus concipiendi', a particular form of conceptualisation of the external reality, performed in the manner and with the means determined by the structural and functional properties of the human cognitive powers. As a result, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant in claiming that the external world is unknowable in itself, being accessible to the human mind only through the ‘phenomena’ that the mind itself co-produces. The need for deeper analysis of the works by the ‘forgotten’ philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been recognised for at least ninety years. The discussed book tries to meet these expectations. Its direct aim is to increase our knowledge of early modern British philosophy. At the same time, the restoration of the memory of the idealist doctrine, anticipating by almost a century that of Kant, should enable us to draw some new conclusions about the internal logic and immanent dynamic of the development of the whole post-Cartesian thought. (shrink)

A SECOND COMPLETELY REVISED EDITION OF THIS TEXTBOOK ON INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH WAS PUBLISHED WITH AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS IN 2022. Check out that version here and a PDF of its ToC and Introduction, as this first edition (AUP 2016) is no longer available. [This book (128 pp.) serves as an introduction and manual to guide students through the interdisciplinary research process. We are becoming increasingly aware that, as a result of technological developments and globalisation, problems are becoming so complex that they (...) can only be solved through cooperation between multiple disciplines. Healthcare, climate change, food security, energy, financial markets and quality of life are just a few examples of issues that require scientists and academics to work in a crossdisciplinary way. As a result of these developments, an interdisciplinary approach is becoming increasingly popular in higher education and must be considered an absolute necessity. Young academics are being called on to step beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines in order to contribute to addressing fundamental problems and solving challenges facing society. There is a need for people who are not afraid to ask critical questions, who can work together well and can look beyond the boundaries of their own field. This means students need to learn more about how they can integrate and apply knowledge, methods and skills from different fields. Interdisciplinary research projects and practical training courses offer students more than one perspective on the same subject. Comparing and contrasting, connecting, adding and adapting concepts, theories and methodologies from different disciplines ultimately results in new insights and better answers to complex problems.]. (shrink)

Individuals with high self-concept will likely have high life satisfaction, they easily get adjusted to life, and they communicate their feeling more appropriately. However, it was not certain whether self-concept would decline or improve as individuals age, or whether self-concept would vary between genders and ethnic groups. To prove, a study was carried out to compare the self-concept of college students in an Asian context. The inquiry utilized the cross-sectional design in finding out significant differences in the self-concept of (...) participants in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity. A 22-item questionnaire was adapted and administered to 222 Bachelor of Public Administration and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration students from the satellite campus of Bukidnon State University in the Philippines. Initially, a sample was randomly drawn from the population. During the actual data collection, the researchers had difficulty getting the responses from the randomly selected individuals due to internet connection and it was done amidst a pandemic. Instead, it took all responses from those who were available, have access to the internet, and could accomplish the google forms. The data were analyzed using Mean, Standard Deviation, T-test for independent sample, ANOVA and Post Hoc test. The results revealed that college students at the locale have a high level of self-concept in self-fulfilment, emotional adjustment, and honesty. Yet, they only had a moderate level of self-concept in autonomy. Further, there were significant differences in college students’ autonomy and honesty in terms of age and gender. Furthermore, there were significant differences in their emotional adjustment and self-fulfilment as to their ethnicity. The results have implications for instruction, administration, guidance services, and future research. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the epistemology developed by Richard Burthogge, the lesser-known seventeenth-century English philosopher, and author, among other works, of Organum Vetus & Novum (1678) and An Essay upon Reason and the Nature of Spirits (1694). Although his ideas had a minimal impact on the philosophy of his time, and have hitherto not been the subject of a detailed study, Burthogge’s writings contain a highly original concept of idealistic constructivism, anticipating (relatively speaking) Kant’s idealism. At the same time, (...) some interesting implications for the issue of self-interpretation and self-identity can be derived from his account of the mind. At the core of Burthogge’s epistemological position is a remarkable idea of structural and functional similarity between the three human cognitive faculties, that is between reasoning, sensation and imagination. Accordingly, every cognition, intellectual as well as sensuous, contains in its structure an object-directed operation of apprehending and thus can be viewed as an intentional act in a broad sense of the term. An immediate consequence of this claim for both mind and object is that they cannot be reduced to a pure stream of sense data, but on the contrary are to be considered ontologically independent from the content of a cognitive act. Furthermore, an object of cognition is never presented to the mind directly, as it is in itself, but always under the modus concipiendi, a particular form or manner of conceiving, specific to human cognitive powers due to their internal structure. As a result, Burthogge clearly anticipates Kant in claiming that it is impossible to know reality in itself, and in situating human consciousness as if in between two unknowable spheres: the external and internal one. Since these restrictions are imposed not only on external, but also on internal cognition, that is on self-knowledge, they lead to considerable difficulties regarding the mind’s identity. Basically, two principal strategies to address this issue are available in the post-Cartesian framework of seeing the mind as an ontologically independent entity, and both of them appear to be ineffective when employed in Burthogge’s epistemology. First, the mind identity can be grounded in some extra-mental factors, preferably in matter. However, with no access to the external world in itself, and with the scope of knowledge restricted to mental phenomena, the mind’s identity cannot be defined in terms of relationship with the reality of which it knows nothing except that it exits. The second option is to explain personal identity by referring it to the intrinsic properties of the mind. Nevertheless, this strategy also faces insuperable obstacles, and for the same reasons as the former does. Since self-knowledge is no exception to the structural-functional principles imposed on cognition, the mind can also be known only under the subjective conditions of conceiving. It is, therefore, just as unknowable in itself as the external things are. The main purpose of the paper is to explore this aspect of Burthogge’s philosophy. (shrink)

The literature is predominated by studies seeking to clarify the extent of the availability, functionality, accessibility and/or utilisation of library materials in schools at various levels. The extent of principals' management of library resources and their contribution to the lesson preparation activities of teachers seems to have been under-researched. In bridging the gap, the current study was designed to assess the extent and contribution of principals’ management of library resources to teachers’ lesson preparation practices. Six specific objectives were of (...) interest to the researchers. The quantitative research method, following the ex-post facto research design, was adopted. The stratified proportional random sampling technique was used to choose a sample of 743 respondents from a population of 1,857 secondary school teachers in Ikom Education Zone, Cross River State, Nigeria. An instrument named "Management of Library Resources and Teachers' Lesson Preparation Questionnaire" (MLRTLPQ) was used to gather data. The quantitative content validity method was used to assess the degree to which the items in the instrument were clear, relevant, and represented a wide range of the anticipated content based on the views of domain experts. One sample t-test and hierarchical regression analyses were used for data analyses. Four stepwise hierarchical linear models were specified and fitted accordingly. It was found that teachers’ lesson preparation practice is significantly low generally; there is a significantly low extent in principals’ management of textual, auditory, visual and audio-visual library resources; there is a significant composite contribution of principals’ management of library resources on teachers’ lesson preparation practices in public secondary schools in model 3 and model 4. Based on these findings, practical implications are discussed, with recommendations made for a better library management practice in secondary schools for quality lesson preparation practices. (shrink)

This essential reference text on the life, thought and writings of Plato uses over 160 short, accessible articles to cover a complete range of topics for both the first-time student and seasoned scholar of Plato and ancient philosophy. It is organized into five parts illuminating Plato’s life, the whole of the Dialogues attributed to him, the Dialogues’ literary features, the concepts and themes explored within them and Plato’s reception via his influence on subsequent philosophers and the various interpretations of his (...) work. This fully updated 2nd edition includes 19 newly commissioned entries on topics ranging across comedy, tragedy, Xenophon, metatheatre, gender, musical theory, animals, Orphism, political theory, religion, time, Hellenistic philosophy and post-Platonic ancient commentaries. It also features revisions to the majority of articles from the 1st edition, including 8 which have been completely re-written, and 12 which have had the references substantially revised. Reflecting the growing diversity of Plato scholarship across the world, this edition includes contributions from a wide range of scholars who enrich the field and provide students and scholars with a vital resource for study and reference. (shrink)

The idea of Europe has already a long history and beyond its ethical attractiveness it became victorious in the political praxis of the 2nd half of the 20th century first of all as a motive force serving the aim of a long-term restoration of peace in the post-war Western Europe and then as a unifying principle for the whole continent after the collapse (implosion) of “really existing socialism”. A little later, in the course of the expansion of the free (...) market economy towards the previously centralized economies of Eastern Europe it soon became obvious that the idea of Europe was not everywhere interpreted the same way and that in some cases it seemed to cause more problems than the ones it should have solved. Especially the current refugee crisis that has initially emerged in the so-called developing world outside of Europe but nevertheless significantly affects the Old Continent can be seen as a major theoretical and practical challenge around the fundamental sustaining (and in itself sustainable) concept of European openness: i.e. in order to remain open in its internal function the liberally organized Europe has to close its outer borders and to decisively limit the access of many humans to its single common market, thus imposing obstacles to the generalization of prosperity and liberty that once were felt as its core values. We will try to show that apart from the immediate cultural, ideological and strategic aspects of such phenomena and the often unavoidable pitfalls of short-term decision making it is important to study and explore the necessity of the current processes. The idea of Europe became, at least partly, synonymous with the overall economical and social globalization of our times whereas such a major process cannot unfold its inherent dynamic without the constitutive role of certain crises that eventually pose existential challenges or otherwise enable the stabilization of the newly emerging system(s). (shrink)

It is fair to say that in contemporary society there is a growing demand amongst consumers for instant gratification and for products and services that can be accessed 24-hours a day. This appears to be the case across numerous sectors of society including (but not limited to) business, education, retail, tourism, health, and recreation. Some examples that come to mind are the: (i) investor looking for a quick-win return on their outlay, (ii) patient demanding a same-day diagnosis and medicine for (...) their latest ailment, (iii) fast-food restaurant goer, (iv) all-inclusive package holiday-maker that can have food, drink, and entertainment any time of day and without having to leave the confines of their hotel, (v) student or professional undertaking an accelerated program of studies or training in order to be awarded the qualification/certificate in the shortest time possible, and (vi) individual using an online dating agency in order to be instantly matched with the “perfect partner”. In addition to the sectors and examples mentioned above, this trend towards wanting immediate reward also appears to be occurring in the spirituality and religion marketplace. For example, one only has to conduct a search on the internet or look at the spiritualty section of a bookshop and it is easy to be overwhelmed by the number of individuals purporting to be spiritual teachers and promising a quick-fix for alleviating suffering. In this post, we examine the benefits and risks of the ‘I want it all, I want it now’ mentality as they relate to the spiritual (and high-street) consumer, and discuss whether it is possible to embody the essence of the Buddha’s teachings whilst living in a “fast-food” society. (shrink)

Capital Redefined presents a unique perspective on the nature of “capital,” departing from the prevailing reductionist accounts. Hosseini and Gills offer an expanded perspective on Marxian value theory by addressing its main limitations and building their own integrative value theory. They argue that the current understanding of “value” must be re-examined and liberated from its subservient ties to capital while acknowledging the ways in which capital appropriates value. This is achieved by differentiating between “fetish value” created by capital and “true (...) value” generated through various commons-based forms of coexistence. The authors propose a defetishization of value by rejecting the commonly accepted idea of its objectivity. They introduce their “commonist value theory,” which redefines capital as both the product and process of perverting the fundamental commoning causes of true value into sources of fetish value. Capital is theorized through a “modular” framework, where multiple intersecting processes constitute a comprehensive power structure, a “value regime,” representing an unprecedented degree of the domination of capital over life. Their theory reconciles two apparently incompatible views on the notion of value. One view encompasses all inputs involved in capitalist value production and conflates intrinsic and commodity values. The other warns against this conflation as it treats capital as an entity tightly associated only with commodity production and wage labor. The authors believe that establishing alternative forms of value creation based on normative principles of living in commons is crucial as an analytical base for criticizing existing power structures and economic systems. The book offers a theoretical foundation for transforming our life worlds toward “post-capitalist” futures. It appeals to scholars and students in various fields, such as political economy, capitalism, and post-capitalist studies, economic and political sociology, globalization, development studies, social ecology, and ecological philosophy. The Open Access version of this book, available at taylorfrancis com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. (shrink)

The thesis examines political and economic transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and particularly in post-communist Ethiopia and Angola between 1989-2019 by applying the interpretative scheme of transition theory. The research question investigated how the economic liberalization of centrally planned political systems affects their political liberalization and vice versa. The main hypothesis attempted to answer whether transition theory can apply as an interpretative model in order to explain post-communist developments in the SSA context. Characteristic noteworthy country examples, which have (...) experienced communism for an extended period and are now under a hybrid developmental state form - with their impressive economic development being driven mainly by the state - are Ethiopia and Angola. Ethiopia and Angola belonged among the fastest-growing economies in the world among China, India and East Asian countries with astonishing high growth rates for extended periods. In turn, their political transition presented signs of liberalization. Yet, they seem to follow the stagnated path of developmental states and hybrid regimes. Ιn order to examine the political and socio-economic parameters of these transformations, the methodology uses also a combination of qualitative and quantitative research data through a twofold comparative approach. From the political perspective two similar political systems are compared. From the economic perspective, we compare a non-resource-rich economy such as Ethiopia with a resource-rich economy such as Angola. The degree of influence of socio-economic interventions by major external actors such as China, US and the EU to democratic consolidation, and vice versa, is examined as well as the repercussions of radical and gradual reforms. The findings of the study suggest that rapid economic transitions along with gradual political reforms in Ethiopia, Angola - and broadly in SSA - inevitably cause delays in socio-economic developments such as employment, inclusiveness and poverty alleviation. Structural external transition drivers in SSA such as debt, structural adjustment programs, subsidies, humanitarian aid and trade deficits seem to hamper its economic transitions than to facilitate its progress and non-dependency. These drivers lead to a vicious circle in most of the empirical examples of SSA. The strong hybrid developmental states of Ethiopia and Angola – despite their democratic progress - present more similarities to the developmental states of China or rest East Asia than to the Central Eastern European countries. In a certain degree, there are similarities also with cases of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which are still under Russia’s significant influence. The most context-specific parameters though, which concern Sub-Saharan Africa and diversify the states of Ethiopia and Angola from the existing interpretative scheme of transition theory are their high ethnic diversity and economic dependence from their external partners as well as their sui generis leadership. These parameters pose significant constraints to the diverse ethnic groups in their struggle for power and for their access to the natural resources. (shrink)

Este trabajo es un comentario sobre la primera traducción al español de las guías del Reino Unido “Atención después de la investigación: un marco para los comités de ética de investigación del NHS (borrador versión 8.0)”. El comentario se divide en tres partes. En la primera parte, se busca resumir la información básica necesaria para mejorar la lectura comprensiva de la traducción de las guías. En la segunda parte, se analiza una selección de la normativa argentina que trata sobre atención (...) después de la investigación. En la tercera parte, se presentan las principales limitaciones del borrador de las guías y su traducción. El propósito de este comentario es que los futuros lectores y lectoras puedan hacer un uso crítico y deliberado de las guías, en la evaluación de estudios clínicos o como base para la redacción de guías propias sobre atención después de la investigación. ***This work is a commentary on the first Spanish translation of the UK guidelines “Care after research: a framework for NHS research ethics committees (draft version 8.0)”. The commentary is divided into three parts. The first part seeks to summarize the basic information needed to improve reading comprehension of the translation of the guidelines. The second part analyzes a selection of Argentinean regulations dealing with care after research. The third part presents the main limitations of the guidelines draft and its translation. The purpose of this commentary is that future readers can make a critical and deliberate use of guidelines in the assessment of clinical studies or as a basis for drafting their own guidelines on care after research. (shrink)

The paper highlights the key perspectives on mysticism typical for Soviet and Post-Soviet religious studies. Recognizing the vagueness of the ”mystical’, Soviet scholars interpreted it as a belief in ”communication’ with ”supernatural powers’. Furthermore, ”mysticism’ was thought of as a multicomponent entity composed of mystical experiences, mystical beliefs, and ”mysticism’ as a ”false ideology’. Such an understanding resulted from their epistemological settings, i.e. the reflection theory of dialectical materialism. In this light, mystical experiences and beliefs were distorted ”reflections’ of (...) objective reality in the human mind caused by factors both of an individual and a social nature. This understanding still defines the academic interpretations of the ”mystical’ in Russia today. (shrink)

The objective of this case study concentrated on examining the learning gap, going through some components of the transformation process, and coming up with some ways for aiding students who were experiencing lost learning. A qualitative research design was utilized by the researchers to understand and solve the cases related to Mathematics learning difficulties. Creswell (2008) asserts that qualitative research can be used to discover and comprehend the significance that certain people or groups assign to social or human issues. (...) The researchers used purposive sampling to determine 15 student participants to understand the cases of learning loss and prescribe better interventions to the students. To solve the problems associated with loss of learning experienced by the learners after remote learning, a case study will be utilized as the strategy of inquiry since it fits the situation that is to focus the said key cases, discuss some transforming process, and develop interventions. After analyzing the interviews, researchers identified three common themes across the three cases which serve to clarify the learners' experiences after the post-remote learning: the learners' learning experiences during remote learning, factors that caused learning loss in Mathematics, and learners' coping strategies. In a deeper analysis, the impact of distance learning on students during the pandemic goes beyond just the difficulties in learning and understanding lessons which resulted in difficulty in learning math during in-person classes. The lack of in-person interaction with classmates and teachers also contributes to a sense of isolation and boredom, negatively affecting students' overall well-being and mental health. (shrink)

Enter Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything.Eschewing the verbose and often obscurantist tendencies of other philosopher-authors, Harman tackles what might otherwise be a complicated, controversial and counter-intuitive philosophical stance with accessible and easy-to-follow prose. OOO has never been so clear nor so convincingly presented as it is here. Covered in seven chapters, the book gives a genealogical account of OOO, chronicling the reason for its emergence, comparing it to both the past and current philosophical traditions and arguing for its (...) potency over the competing ontologies, almost all of which are post-Kantian. (shrink)

Accomplishing the sustainable development goal is challenging and requires the joint effort of the whole community, especially when humans are approaching the climate tipping point [1]. To contribute to promoting sustainable development, the AISDL Team has aggregated reliable and open-access scientific journals about environmental issues here as sources of knowledge for any interested researchers.

In 1597 Francisco Suárez published a comprehensive treatise on beings of reason (entia rationis) as part of his Disputationes metaphysicae. Subsequent scholastic philosophers vigorously debated various aspects of Suárez’s theory. The aim of this paper is to identify some of the most controversial points of these debates, as they developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. In particular, I focus on the intension and the extension of ‘ens rationis’, its division (into negations, privations and relations of reason) and (...) its causes. Additionally, I will discuss how Suárez’s views sparked a number of debates within the classical view, debates which ultimately led to the emergence of various alternative theories, especially among the Jesuits. These non-classical views radically revise the previous classical conception of beings of reason. (shrink)

Philosophy, starting from Kant, tries to delimit the limits and thus to finitize human consciousness, but then it fails in the task of assuming finiteness itself as finite, with a certain beginning and an end. In my essay I present different conceptualizations of the end which resist the logic of means, opened up by ecological thought, starting from the problem – central to the continental philosophy of the 20th century – of human finitude. In the first part of the essay, (...) the relationship between finitude and truth is problematized through a critical reading of Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, and Alain Badiou. In the second part I present some hypotheses on how this relationship is transformed by the category of extinction, understood as a non-human transformational capacity of human thought, a radical capacity of alienation which can, however, become an access to a dimension of thought in which «ecology» designates a new thinking of togetherness and of cooperation which drives contemporary thought into reformulation of political possibilities for the future. If, however, current ecological thought sometimes promotes the post-political scenario of an organic return to the earth, an extinction understood in the sense of the end of human life and an abrupt termination of the world, in my essay I rather try to maintain human’s ability of detachment as a political dimension, the capacity of thought to make a difference. (shrink)