Information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives at the university of fort hare: Cure or plague?

Conclusion This paper set out to provide a skeptical perspective to the view that IT has the potential to bring people into the global community. While not doubting the merits of IT’s capabilities it proposed that such claims be qualified in view of disparities in the distribution of wealth between nations and between peoples. It focused attention on the plight of students at the University of Fort Hare, in the Eastern Cape, which is the poorest of South Africa’s nine provinces. It argued instead that IT has the likelihood of accentuating instead of bridging existing inequalities in wealth between countries and between peoples. It contended that not‘everybody’ is predisposed to becoming a role player in the global agenda given that access to IT and online facilities is stratified by income. This, the paper posited, is most likely to exacerbate the "global digital divide"—the growing disparity in wealth between countries of the North and the South, and between peoples, the information "haves" and "have-nots". The U.S.’s 1999 expenditure on IT, which stood at $762 as opposed to South Africa’s expenditure in the same year, which was $10.6, illustrates the "divide". But while on the surface the University of Fort Hare’s situation seemed very gloomy, the paper outlined positive, but modest initiatives not only to provide access to IT and online facilities, but also to quip staff and students with requisite skills to enable them to be role players in the global agenda. He serves on the Editorial Committee of the South African Journal of Higher Education as Senior Consultant Editor, and is the Head of the Department of Foundations of Education at Fort Hare.     

Narratives of Mastery and Resistance: Lay Ethics of Nanotechnology

This paper contributes towards a lay ethics of nanotechnology through an analysis of talk from focus groups designed to examine how laypeople grapple with the meaning of a technology ‘in-the-making’. We describe the content of lay ethical concerns before suggesting that this content can be understood as being structured by five archetypal narratives which underpin talk. These we term: ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’; ‘kept in the dark’; ‘opening Pandora’s box’; ‘messing with nature’; and ‘be careful what you wish for’. We further suggest that these narratives can be understood as sharing an emphasis on the ‘giftedness’ of life, and that together they are used to resist dominant technoscientific and Enlightenment narratives of control and mastery which are encapsulated by nanotechnology.     

Autonomy,life as an intrinsic value,and the right to die in dignity

This paper examines two models of thinking relating to the issue of the right to die in dignity: one takes into consideration the rights and interests of the individual; the other supposes that human life is inherently valuable. I contend that preference should be given to the first model, and further assert that the second model may be justified in moral terms only as long as it does not resort to paternalism. The view that holds that certain patients are not able to comprehend their own interests in a fully rational manner, and therefore ‘we’ know what is good for these patients better than ‘they’ do, is morally unjustifiable. I proceed by refuting the ‘quality of life’ argument, asserting that each person is entitled to decide for herself when it is worth living and when it is not. In this connection, a caveat will be made regarding the role of the family. The author’s research interests include bioethics, free speech, tolerance and ethics in the media.     

The Laboratory Revisited

UK science policy now includes ‘upstream public engagement’ as an element in the responsible development of nanotechnology. This paper explores different understandings of the term upstream engagement before discussing in more detail a laboratory-based collaboration between social science and nanoscience aimed at exploring the social dimensions of nanotechnology. The paper concludes that concern with defining what counts as ‘upstream’ can obscure more critical questions about how to make public, and therefore accountable, deliberations about the interrelated social and technical aspects of nanoscience.     

Conquering the quarters: Religion and politics in Hinduism

Conclusion Our understanding of South Asian society and history is sometimes muddled by the rigid distinctions we make between ‘religion’ and ‘politics.’ The resurgent appeal of Hindu nationalism, the involvement of Hindu renouncers in contemporary Indian politics, and the continuing relevance of religious issues to political discourse throughout South Asia, show that such a distinction is of limited utility. In this essay, I have examined the notion of digvijaya in some detail, in an attempt to show that this ‘most important Indian concept with regard to sovereignty’ was always both a ‘religious’ and a ‘political’ phenomenon. When it was performed by Hindu kings in the classical period, the ‘political’ dimension of digvijaya was foregrounded, while in the medieval and modern periods, when it was associated primarily with Hindu renouncers, its ‘religious’ aspects were paramount. But neither ‘political’ nor ‘religious’ aspects were ever absent from any of the digvijayas discussed here because religion and politics were mutually entailed in the digvijaya at all times, just as kings and renouncers were—and still are—alter-egos of each other. I am tempted to conclude that the digvijaya melded religious and political domains. Yet perhaps even to speak of ‘melding’ religion and politics is a peculiarly modern kind of discourse. Perhaps we need to rethink our categories and recognize that politics always has a religious element, while religion is always a political force.     

Collaborative healthcare research: Some ethical considerations

This article reviews some of the ethical aspects of collaborative research. Scientific collaboration has known potential benefits but it’s a challenging task to successfully accomplish a collaborative venture on ethically sound grounds. Current trends in international healthcare research collaboration reflect limited benefits for the majority of world population. Research collaboration between scientists of academia and industry usually has financial considerations. Successful cross-cultural and international collaborations have to overcome many regional and global barriers. Despite these difficulties, many scientific collaborations usually begin with an informal meeting or contact. With advancement in global communications, scientists have greater responsibility towards the world community while considering the impact of their collaborative partnerships. I review the basic factors that are required for forging a collaborative partnership and responsible attitudes to sustain the relationship. Finally I conclude that scientists in healthcare research can play important roles beyond collaborations and contribute to bringing harmony, resolving differences across the nations and countries in today’s troubled world.     

Do new Ethical Issues Arise at Each Stage of Nanotechnological Development?

The literature concerning ethical issues associated with nanotechnologies has become prolific. However, it has been claimed that ethical problems are only at stake with rather sophisticated nanotechnologies such as active nanostructures, integrated nanosystems and heterogeneous molecular nanosystems, whereas more basic nanotechnologies such as passive nanostructures mainly pose technical difficulties. In this paper I argue that fundamental ethical issues are already at stake with this more basic kind of nanotechnologies and that ethics impacts every kind of nanotechnologies, already from the simplest kind of engineered nanoproducts. These ethical issues are mainly associated with the social desirability of nanotechnologies, with the difficulties to define nanotechnologies properly, with the important uncertainties surrounding nanotechnologies, with the threat of ‘nano-divide’, and with nanotechnology as ‘dual-use technology’.     

Analog and digital,continuous and discrete

Representation is central to contemporary theories regarding the mind/brain. But the nature of representation—both in the mind/brain and more generally—is a source of ongoing controversy. One way of categorizing representational types is to distinguish between the analog and the digital: the received view is that analog representations vary smoothly, while digital representations vary in a step-wise manner. In other words, ‘digital’ is synonymous with ‘discrete’, while ‘analog’ is synonymous with ‘continuous’. I argue that this characterization is inadequate to account for the ways in which representation is (and should be) used in cognitive science; in its place, I suggest an alternative taxonomy. I will defend and extend David Lewis’s account of analog and digital representation, distinguishing analog from continuous representation, as well as digital from discrete representation. I will argue that the distinctions available in this fourfold account better accord with representational features of interest in cognitive science than the received analog/digital dichotomy.     

What’s Different,Ethically, About Nanotechnology?: Foundational Questions and Answers

Whether nanotechnology is ethically unique and “nanoethics” should be treated as a field in its own right remain important, contested issues. This essay seeks to contribute to the debates on these issues by exploring several foundational questions about the relationship of ethics and nanotechnology. Ethical issues related to nanotechnology exist and adoption of a defeasible presumption that such issues amount to old ethical wine in new technological bottles appears justified. Such issues are not engendered solely by intrinsic features of the nanotechnology field, but also by contingent features of the social contexts in which work in the field unfolds. The sets of factors that engender ethical issues related to nanotechnology are combinations of social-contextual and technical elements. While there do not appear to be any qualitatively new nanotechnology-related ethical issues, nanotechnology is different, ethically, from other fields of technical inquiry in at least two ways. To avoid diluting ethical concern about nanotechnology and revival of the noxious notions of autonomous technology and technological determinism, thinking, writing, and speaking about ‘nanoethics’ should yield to thinking, writing, and speaking about ‘ethical issues related to nanotechnology in society.’ Finally, nanotechnology practitioners should become familiar with the ethical dimension of their work.     

Nature and Nationhood: Danish Perspectives

In this paper, I shall discuss Danish perspectives on nature, showing the interdependence of conceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘nationhood’ in the formations of a particular cultural community. Nature, thus construed, is never innocent of culture and cannot therefore simply be ‘restored’ to some pristine, pre-lapsarian state. On the other hand, invocations of nature are effectively calls to action, often of a sort that involves a degree of (limited) restoration and conservation.     

Just for Fun: The Playful Image of Nanotechnology

In 1959, Richard Feynman suggested that the most compelling reason to pursue nanoscale research might be ‘just for fun.’ This article traces a history of playful images and ludic practices in nanotechnology. Two case studies—nanocars and nanosoccer—exemplify the ways in which scientific research mobilizes speculative futures, less through engineering design or stepwise protocol than through the recreational dynamics of play. Although such molecular toys might appear frivolous, they index the increasingly widespread conditions of play labor, or ‘playbor’, shaping today’s technoculture. Exploring the processes of transmutation and transvaluation by which technological imaginaries are rendered operative, this article tells a story of how the nanoworld became an everyday reality by becoming a game.     

Green Dreams of Reason. Green Nanotechnology Between Visions of Excess and Control

Nanotechnology has recently been identified with principles of sustainability and with a ‘green’ agenda generally. Some maintain that this green dream of nanotechnology is a rather ephemeral societal phenomenon that owes its existence to the campaign ploys of politics and business. This paper argues that deeper lying societal and cognitive structures are at work here that complement or even substantiate in some sense the seemingly manipulative saying of a greening of nanotechnologies. Taking seriously the concept of ‘green nano’, this paper examines the common ground between sustainability discourse and the discourse of nanotechnology. Green nanotechnology is understood as a boundary concept in which disparate discourses and concepts join together. The primary concern of the paper is to show that nanodiscourse and ecodiscourse share visions of control and of excess. Both ecotechnology and nanotechnology accept and incorporate arguments about limited growth, and each develops strategies of control—be it through a new-found precision in the control of material flows or through greater efficiency in product design.     

‘The Catholic Church and Condoms’: His Eminence Alfonso Lopez Cardinal Trujilo appears on ‘BBC Panorama’ in 2003 and 2004

Conclusion The Theological Consequence is of a more scandalous nature for Catholic ‘insiders’—the literate laity etc.etc.—than is the ‘mere’ ‘Humanist’ one. The pair together can to ‘Evangalisation’ no good at all. The Eminence, who on the BBC programme looks slightly comic. is, when one reflects a very disquieting figure indeed. So: A squib is comic: a serious one is, serious. Note the ‘BBC Panorama’ presentations have been seen in Australia, and so, possibly, in other countries in which this Journal is read.     

‘Mutual Obligation’ and ‘New Deal’: Illegitimate and Unjustified?

It is now commonplace for governments in Western countries to require the unemployed to work in exchange for their unemployment benefits. In this article I raise some serious doubts about the most promising and philosophically interesting defence of this argument, which relies on the ‘principle of reciprocity’. I argue that it is seriously unclear whether the obligations imposed on welfare claimants by ‘workfare’ schemes are legitimate and justified according to the principle of reciprocity. I do this by reconstructing the arguments for the obligations of the unemployed put forward in both the United Kingdom and Australia.     

Supernatural Miracles and Religious Inclusiveness

In this paper I shall assess Clarke’s assertion that all definitions of miracles that purport to satisfy the criterion of religious inclusiveness should substitute the term ‘supernatural’ for ‘non-natural’. In addition, I shall attempt to strengthen Clarke’s conception of the supernatural by offering an analysis of what it means for something to be ‘above’ nature. Lastly, I shall offer a new argument as to why Clarke’s intention-based definition of miracles is necessarily less religiously inclusive than Mumford’s causation-based definition.

Environmental Refugees: What Rights? Which Duties?

It is estimated that there could be 200 million‘environmental refugees’ by the middle of this century. One major environmental cause of population displacement is likely to be global climate change. As the situation is likely to become more pressing, it is vital to consider now the rights of environmental refugees and the duties of the rest of the world. However, this is not an issue that has been addressed in mainstream theories of global justice. This paper considers the potential of two leading liberal theories of international justice to address the particular issues raised by the plight of potential and actual environmental refugees. I argue that neither John Rawls’s ‘Law of Peoples’ approach nor Charles Beitz’s `cosmopolitanism' is capable of providing an adequate account of justice in this context. Beitz’s theory does have some advantages over Rawls’s approach but it fails to take proper account of the attachment that some people have to their own ‘home’. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Tensions and Opportunities in Convergence: Shifting Concepts of Disease in Emerging Molecular Medicine

The convergence of biomedical sciences with nanotechnology as well as ICT has created a new wave of biomedical technologies, resulting in visions of a ‘molecular medicine’. Since novel technologies tend to shift concepts of disease and health, this paper investigates how the emerging field of molecular medicine may shift the meaning of ‘disease’ as well as the boundary between health and disease. It gives a brief overview of the development towards and the often very speculative visions of molecular medicine. Subsequently three views of disease often used in the philosophy of medicine are briefly discussed: the ontological or neo-ontological, the physiological and the normative/holistic concepts of disease. Against this background two tendencies in the field of molecular medicine are highlighted: (1) the use of a cascade model of disease and (2) the notion of disease as a deviation from an individual pattern of functioning. It becomes clear that molecular medicine pulls conceptualizations of disease and health in several, partly opposed directions. However, the resulting tensions may also offer opportunities to steer the future of medicine in more desirable directions.     

Wittgenstein’s ‘Non-Cognitivism’ – Explained and Vindicated

The later Wittgenstein advanced a revolutionary but puzzling conception of how philosophy ought to be practised: Philosophical problems are not to be coped with by establishing substantive claims or devising explanations or theories. Instead, philosophical questions ought to be treated ‘like an illness’. Even though this ‘non-cognitivism’ about philosophy has become a focus of debate, the specifically ‘therapeutic’ aims and ‘non-theoretical’ methods constitutive of it remain ill understood. They are motivated by Wittgenstein’s view that the problems he addresses result from misinterpretation, driven by ‘urges to misunderstand’. The present paper clarifies this neglected concept and analyses how such ‘urges’ give rise to pseudo-problems of one particular, hitherto little understood, kind. This will reveal ‘therapeutic’ aims reasonable and ‘non-theoretical’ methods necessary, in one clearly delineated and important part of philosophy. I.e.: By developing a novel account of nature and genesis of one important class of philosophical problems, the paper explains and vindicates a revolutionary reorientation of philosophical work, at the level of both aims and methods.     

Forms of emergent interaction in General Process Theory

General Process Theory (GPT) is a new (non-Whiteheadian) process ontology. According to GPT the domains of scientific inquiry and everyday practice consist of configurations of ‘goings-on’ or ‘dynamics’ that can be technically defined as concrete, dynamic, non-particular individuals called general processes. The paper offers a brief introduction to GPT in order to provide ontological foundations for research programs such as interactivism that centrally rely on the notions of ‘process,’ ‘interaction,’ and ‘emergence.’ I begin with an analysis of our common sense concept of activities, which plays a crucial heuristic role in the development of the notion of a general process. General processes are not individuated in terms of their location but in terms of ‘what they do,’ i.e., in terms of their dynamic relationships in the basic sense of one process being part of another. The formal framework of GPT is thus an extensional mereology, albeit a non-classical theory with a non-transitive part-relation. After a brief sketch of basic notions and strategies of the GPT-framework I show how the latter may be applied to distinguish between causal, mechanistic, functional, self-maintaining, and recursively self-maintaining interactions, all of which involve ‘emergent phenomena’ in various senses of the term.     

Research traditions and evolutionary explanations in medicine

In this article, I argue that distinguishing ‘evolutionary’ from ‘Darwinian’ medicine will help us assess the variety of roles that evolutionary explanations can play in a number of medical contexts. Because the boundaries of evolutionary and Darwinian medicine overlap to some extent, however, they are best described as distinct ‘research traditions’ rather than as competing paradigms. But while evolutionary medicine does not stand out as a new scientific field of its own, Darwinian medicine is united by a number of distinctive theoretical and methodological claims. For example, evolutionary medicine and Darwinian medicine can be distinguished with respect to the styles of evolutionary explanations they employ. While the former primarily involves ‘forward looking’ explanations, the latter depends mostly on ‘backward looking’ explanations. A forward looking explanation tries to predict the effects of ongoing evolutionary processes on human health and disease in contemporary environments (e.g., hospitals). In contrast, a backward looking explanation typically applies evolutionary principles from the vantage point of humans’ distant biological past in order to assess present states of health and disease. Both approaches, however, are concerned with the prevention and control of human diseases. In conclusion, I raise some concerns about the claim that ‘nothing in medicine makes sense except in the light of evolution’.