Normative Nature Research Articles

Imprisonment and Human Rights in Israel: Uncertainty and Volatility

This article provides an overview of the key issues in international and Israeli human rights standards related to incarceration from a legal and sociological perspective. We argue that the Israeli imprisonment system is currently undergoing uncertain changes, showing high volatility due to its historical development and normative nature. Our account of the tensions between punishment and human rights in Israel over recent decades suggests that this field is highly volatile, making it difficult to predict future developments. Although Israel’s constitutional and human rights-oriented reforms seemed to indicate progress, Israel also experienced a series of harsh and regressive statutory and penological reforms.

The Permissibility of Biased AI in a Biased World: An Ethical Analysis of AI for Screening and Referrals for Diabetic Retinopathy in Singapore

AbstractA significant and important ethical tension in resource allocation and public health ethics is between utility and equity. We explore this tension between utility and equity in the context of health AI through an examination of a diagnostic AI screening tool for diabetic retinopathy developed by a team of researchers at Duke-NUS in Singapore. While this tool was found to be effective, it was not equally effective across every ethnic group in Singapore, being less effective for the minority Malay population than for the Chinese majority. We discuss the problematic normative nature of bias in health AI and explore the ways in which bias can interact with various forms of social inequalities. From there, we examine the specifics of the diabetic retinopathy case and weigh up specific trade-offs between utility and equity. Ultimately, we conclude that it is ethically permissible to prioritise utility over equity where certain criteria hold. Given that any medical AI is more likely than not to have lingering bias due to bias in the training data that may reflect other social inequalities, we argue that it is permissible to implement an AI tool with residual bias where: (1) its introduction reduces the influence of biases (even if overall inequality is worsened), and/or (2) where the utility gained is significant enough and shared across groups (even if unevenly).

Scalarity and divided consent: analysing rape

In this essay, it is submitted that consent comes in degrees and the wrongfulness and harmfulness of conduct is contingent on the degree of voluntariness underwriting the particular consent decision. A fully free decision to consent changes the normative nature of the act: genuine gift-giving is not theft. Lovemaking is not rape. Partially free decisions to consent can change the nature of the act if it makes the act less harmful and thus less wrongful. Partial consent is not about claiming that the conduct was partially justified, but rather about demonstrating the particular act was less harmful and thus deserving of a less serious crime label than is found in the label rape simpliciter. A second theme picked up in this essay is the issue of conditional consent. It is submitted that breaching a condition (conditions such as D is rich, D is a pacifist, D does not have HIV and so on) of consent to sexual intercourse will not change otherwise consensual nature of the sexual intercourse itself, but it may give rise to criminal liability for the collateral harm caused such as HIV infection.

Is Epistemic Autonomy Technologically Possible Within Social Media? A Socio-Epistemological Investigation of the Epistemic Opacity of Social Media Platforms

AbstractThis article aims to provide a coherent and comprehensive theoretical framework of the main socio-epistemic features of social media. The first part consists of a concise discussion of the main epistemic consequences of personalised information filtering, with a focus on echo chambers and their many different implications. The middle section instead hosts an analytical investigation of the cognitive and epistemic environments of these platforms aimed at establishing whether, and to what extent, they allow their users to be epistemically vigilant with respect to their sources and the content recommended to them. Finally, in the last part, of a more exquisitely normative nature, some strategies are proposed and discussed that, by reducing the epistemic opacity of social media, could contribute to greater epistemic justice within social media and, concurrently, to augmenting the epistemic autonomy of users.

Ultimate Fantasy. Subwersyjne strategie queerowania Sztucznej Inteligencji w projektach transliterackich

This article describes artistic examples of queering Artificial Intelligence (AI), which can be understood as a practice that challenges the (hetero)normative nature of neural networks by implementing a queer perspective. The evaluation of ways in which AI reflects societal norms is conducted by addressing biases that disproportionately affect marginalized communities. On this basis, the author highlights the need for inclusive practices that make it possible for queer experiences to be represented by technology while also discussing why AI cannot be neutral. The in-depth study of Ultimate Fantasy, a collection of literary texts generated by a Queer AI, reveals how artists use language models in novel, subversive, and possibly liberating ways. The author aims to frame this practice as an example of a queer utopian aesthetic project in accordance with José Muñoz’s understanding of queerness. The various motifs evident in the short story collection – such as queer modes of love or trauma – are analyzed as reflections of themes present in the corpus of queer texts used to train the language model.

A corpus-based study on the “ungrammatical” aren't I

Abstract Concerning the “ungrammatical” interrogative form aren't I, many scholars have made their points. However, these scholars’ arguments are based on their personal observations and few studies have examined this phenomenon against large corpora. This study aimed at investigating the widespread usage of “ungrammatical” contraction form aren't I in question tags from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Based on large corpora, this study showed a clear picture of the current frequency of use of the question tags aren't I and other alternatives (amn't I, ain't I, am I not and an't I) in modern English. From a qualitative perspective, this study found that the reason why aren't I has taken hold as a recognized standard form around the globe lies in that the use of aren't I appears to be a smart coincidence to imply the potential double roles of “I” as both the addresser and the addressee in a monologue. In addition, the fact of the matter that amn't I is difficult to pronounce, am I not is bookish, an't I is old-fashioned and ain't I can only be used in informal situations, increases the popularity of aren't I. The findings of this study can justify the usage of “ungrammatical” aren't I as a natural norm in both British English and American English. These findings open new research avenues alongside pedagogical and sociolinguistic implications for other similar “ungrammatical” language phenomenon.

Is ‘Remembering’ a Normative Concept?

ABSTRACT There is a substantial disagreement in the literature over whether ‘remembering’ is a normative concept. Some philosophers have attempted to defend the normativity of ‘remembering’ by highlighting its normative importance or its conceptual affinities with ‘knowing’ or ‘duties’. This paper will first reveal defects of these existing normativist arguments. After that, I will propose and defend a new normativist argument, according to which the concept ‘remembering’ is partly constituted by a paradigmatically normative concept, namely ‘rational’. To be more specific, I argue that full possession of the concept of ‘remembering’ requires having an inclination to believe that ‘if S remembers that p, then S would be (at least defeasibly) rational in holding a memory-based belief that p’. This, according to a persuasive constitutive account of normative concepts, suffices to demonstrate the normative nature of remembering.

Science as public service

The problem this paper addresses is that scientists have to take normatively charged decisions which can have a significant impact on individual members of the public or the public as a whole. And yet mechanisms to exercise democratic control over them are often absent. Given the normative nature of these choices, this is often perceived to be at odds with basic democratic principles. I show that this problem applies in similar ways to civil service institutions and draw on political philosophy literature on the civil service (e.g. Rosanvallon, 2011; Heath, 2022) to discuss when such normative judgements can nevertheless be said to be democratically legitimate. Concretely, I seek to show that normative judgements in research need not be democratically legitimated in order for science to be democratically legitimate. Indeed, it can be democratically legitimate for scientists to go against the expressed views of the public or political representatives if this is justified in light of, firstly, the role science has been asked to fulfil and, secondly, when it is in line with public institutions’ key principles. This is a counter-position to views currently held in the values in science debate (e.g. by Kitcher, 2011; Intemann, 2015; Schroeder, 2021; Lusk, 2021) which argue that value-laden judgements in science are legitimate if they are aligned with the public’s views or directly decided by public.

Exploring the Traditional Foodways for Nutritional Well-Being Amongst Vulnerable Communities: Insights from Ho Indigenous Community of Jharkhand, India

Nutritional well-being of Indigenous Peoples is shaped by foodways through their relationship with culturally vital indigenous foods. An exploratory mixed-methods study was conducted among Ho community of Jharkhand to get an insight into their traditional foodways. Study sites included ten randomly selected villages from three geographically distant blocks of West Singhbhum, including Sonua, Khuntpani and Chakradharpur. Qualitative enquiries included focus group discussions and village transect walk interviews which captured diverse information including food access from natural sources, market access, livelihood sources, social and cultural norms around foods, environmental factors, hygiene and sanitation conditions, and community health. Seasonal market surveys (monsoon and winter) in ten local markets provided information on food diversity and local prices. The findings revealed that foodways of Ho community are based on foraging, hunting, and traditional farming through use of available ecosystem resources. However, their traditional foodways are under threats due to livelihood and nutrition transitions. They have unique food traditions and cultures, yet their meals lack variety in terms of the foods consumed. Their smallholder farming systems are not profitable, pushing them towards rural-to-urban migration. Thus, it is crucial to promote traditional foodways of Hos to support bio-cultural knowledge, food justice and nutrition in this community. Keywords: foodways, Indigenous Populations, food beliefs, lifeways, smallholder farmers

Global synthesis indicates widespread occurrence of shifting baseline syndrome.

As environmental degradation continues at local, regional, and global levels, people's accepted norms for natural environmental conditions are likely to decline. This phenomenon, known as shifting baseline syndrome (SBS), is increasingly recognized as a likely major obstacle to addressing global environmental challenges. However, the prevalence of SBS remains uncertain. We conducted an extensive systematic review, synthesizing existing research on people's perceived environmental baselines. Our analysis, based on 73 case studies, suggests that SBS is a widespread global phenomenon, occurring across diverse socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural settings. We observed that younger individuals tend to hold lower environmental baselines across various environmental contexts, including climate change, natural resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and pollution. An upward shift in perceived environmental baselines among younger generations was rarely observed. These results underscore the challenge that SBS poses when policy and management responses to environmental degradation are influenced by perceived natural environmental norms.

School climate from a figurational perspective: a case study of Chilean education policies and laws

ABSTRACT School climate policies have, broadly speaking, been analysed in terms of their effectiveness against violence in schools, or from critical perspectives that question the normative nature of their discursive ‘truths’. In this paper I propose a complementary approach, inspired by Norbert Elias’s processual sociology to address the long-term and unintended directions that school climate policies and laws have taken. Drawing on historical secondary sources from the nineteenth century up the present I demonstrate the spurts of civilizing tendencies that have brought about greater sensitivity to dialogue-based approaches to conflict in schools. I propose that although these policy turns do not occur outside power relations and specific interests (what Elias calls power ratios), the complexity of how they have developed over time cannot be reduced to disciplining or regulatory governance. In this regard, figurational perspectives have a lot to contribute to analyses of school climate specifically, and education policies in general.

The role of emotions in collective responses to in-group norm violations: the case of university’s sensitivity to the natural environment norm

The primary objective of this study was to examine the influence of perceptions of environmental in-group norm violations and the associated emotions on the level of support for environmental social movements. Particularly, we examined the association between collective action intentions and the emotions of anger, disgust, guilt, and pride elicited in response to the violation of in-group pro-environmental norms. There were 221 undergraduate participants (154 females, 62 males, 5 non-binary) studying at a Turkish state university, where preserving on-campus environment is perceived as the norm. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions in which on-campus environmental norms were violated or adopted by their peers (i.e., in-group members). Then, their perceptions of norm-violation, emotions about their peers’ on-campus environmental behaviors, and collective action intentions in improving campus’s environmental circumstances were measured. We used structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized links between the study variables. Our findings revealed that participants exhibited high levels of norm violation anger, guilt, and disgust and low levels of pride when their peers were presented as polluters. Only anger and pride were found to be influential in motivating intentions for collective actions. Norm violation perception by itself was not instrumental in mobilizing individuals for the sake of the environment. When coupled with feelings of anger and pride, its association with endorsing intentions for environmental collective action became significant. The current findings shed light on the emotions associated with norm violation and their potential to foster pro-environmental collective action.

Административные акты нормативного характера

This article makes an attempt to characterize one of the types of administrative acts within the framework of the general typology of normative acts, which are important both in the doctrinal concept and in the practical activities of government bodies. The author sets himself the task of distinguishing between acts of delegated lawmaking (legislation) issued by executive authorities and administrative acts of a normative nature, which are not included in the concept of “by-laws” and belong to the type of administrative act. The article determines that acts that are not related to acts of delegated rule-making, but contain mandatory rules of conduct and act as acts of interpretation, have normative properties and are administrative regulations, the purpose of which is to organize law enforcement activities.

The Religious Basis of Contemporary Law

Religion and law intermingled and influenced each other both in the early stages of the formation of society and in the subsequent processes of its development. It is impossible to say unequivocally which of the two developed earlier or which had a greater influence on the modern form of the other. Today, questions concerning the relationship between law and religion are rarely the subject of research. The prevailing view that proclaims the secularisation of law, while undoubtedly justified, seems to overlook the religious origins of many modern secular institutions of law, such as, equality before the law, social policy, parental authority or the posthumous protection of human corpses and graves. As it seems, the move away from religious justification of legal institutions is a valid solution, prompting legal scholarship to seek explanations for the functioning of the legal system. The purpose of this article is to point out that law and religion intermingled in the creation of their final forms, resulting in the spread of legal institutions derived from norms of a religious nature. This encourages the creation (or denotation) of legally protected values and the search for their scientific (non-religious) basis.

Природно-правове регулювання суспільних відносин в період соціальної аномії

It was found that the transitional state of the development of society is always characterized by instability in all spheres of people’s life. Social changes can be both negative and positive, because society is a living organism that must update, develop, and change. It is important that anomic, crisistransitional states turn into stable, updated socio-legal relations between members of society within the state field, and not go into crisis decline. It is emphasized that under the conditions of an anomic state of development of society, the norms of natural law acquire special importance, which do not allow society to move to the level of illegal development, until legal norms that can fully regulate social relations are formed and updated. Every society at a certain stage of its development experiences crisis periods characterized not only by social instability, but also by the decline and destruction of moral and legal guidelines and value standards. It is noted that social anomie is a rather dangerous state that can develop into mass riots, strikes, rallies and revolutions, when the norms and prescriptions of the state are ignored, and in the worst case, they are violated due to what citizens consider ineffective. This can lead to the spread of conformist behavior. In the context of the regulation of human behavior in society, it is impossible, and it is not necessary, to strictly distinguish the norms of morality, ethics, spiritual, canonical and natural law norms, because these norms are interconnected and recognize the inadmissibility of violating the norms of positive law. Attention is focused on the fact that anomic states are characteristic of any society at a certain stage of its development, mostly as crisis-transitional states. Natural law norms support the lawful functioning of society through the recognition by a person of the value of moral, spiritual and ethical norms, which allows avoiding a deformed worldview and improper behavior. Natural law regulation of social relations in the period of social anomie can act as a stimulator of lawful human behavior, activating the value orientations of a person.

Disasters and gender in Japanese anime films: Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name and Weathering with You

PurposeThis article focuses on the representations of natural hazards, disasters, gender roles and norms in Makoto Shinkai’s disaster-themed anime films Your Name (2016) and Weathering with You (2019).Design/methodology/approachThis article commences with a literature review on disasters, disaster films, gender in disasters and gender in disaster films; then, this article thoroughly investigates the portrayal of disasters and gender in the two films, drawing data from their narratives and plots.FindingsThis article finds that the two films’ depictions of disasters and gender adhere to the traditional patterns observed in Hollywood and Japanese disaster films. The natural hazards and disasters in the two films reflect real-world disasters that occurred in Japan’s recent decades, especially the 3.11 Tohoku earthquake in 2011. Traditional gender figures and prevalent heterosexual expectations in Japanese culture and society deeply influence the two films’ portrayal of gender roles and norms.Originality/valueNumerous academic works explored Hollywood disaster films, their representations of gender roles and norms in disaster themes. However, few focus on recent Japanese anime films such as Your Name and Weathering with You. This article aims to fill this gap.

Charakter prawny wniosku o świadczenie emerytalno- rentowe powszechnego systemu ubezpieczeń

The legislator assumed that an application should be submitted for retirement and disability benefits from the general insurance system. When determining the form and content of the application, the legislator did not directly specify its legal nature, which is important for both the applicant and the pension authority. The specific nature of the benefit application implies legal consequences in terms of legal, factual and technical actions undertaken by the pension authority after submitting the benefit application. By analyzing the existing legal norms of a procedural nature, it is possible to determine these effects and, through their prism, determine the nature of an application for a pension benefit as an important element of a legal transaction.

Examining the Impact of Six Pro-Vaccination Messages on MMR Vaccine Hesitancy Among Mothers in Ukraine

The Ukrainian government began delivering mandatory MMR vaccination letters to parents across the country in 2019. In this two-phase online RCT, we aimed to test the effectiveness of this national mandatory vaccination letter against five behavioural science-informed letters, in terms of their effects on the vaccination attitudes, intentions and behaviours of Ukrainian mothers (N = 738). One letter was focused on the simplicity and accessibility of vaccination procedures; one contained a testimonial from a family doctor; two letters contained pro-vaccination social norm statements (one signed by a family doctor and one by a school director); and one contained a loss-framed message underlining the risks of non-vaccination. The results showed no difference between the conditions in terms of change in vaccination attitudes and intentions but there was an effect on behaviour (measured through clicking a link to schedule a vaccination). The letters signed by a family doctor, outlining how vaccination is a social norm, were most effective in encouraging positive vaccination behaviours. We conclude that the national template used by Ukrainian public health authorities is unlikely to reduce vaccine hesitancy or increase vaccination rates, and that letters emphasising the normative nature of vaccination could increase uptake in the Ukrainian context.

Stokes problem with slip boundary conditions using stabilized finite elements combined with Nitsche

We discuss how slip conditions for the Stokes equation can be handled using Nitsche method, for a stabilized finite element discretization. Emphasis is made on the interplay between stabilization and Nitsche terms. Well-posedness of the discrete problem and optimal convergence rates, in natural norm for the velocity and the pressure, are established, and illustrated with various numerical experiments. The proposed method fits naturally in the context of a finite element implementation while being accurate, and allows an increased flexibility in the choice of the finite element pairs.

Appeal to Aggregators of Market Information in the Field of Medical Services and Protection of Honor, Dignity and Business Reputation

The development of digitalization spheres increases the value of such a resource as information. Legal regulation of aggregator sites, where information is collected and provided to a wide range of users with the ability to evaluate and rank marketable information (description of services/goods, establishment of rating indicators) is insufficient. The analysis of judicial practice and the identified problems of protection of honor, dignity and business reputation when referring to aggregators of market information require special attention in the issues of medical services. The aim and objectives of the study are to analyze the possibilities of protection of honor, dignity and business reputation of professionals providing medical services when applying to aggregators of market information – specialized websites of service consumers. Research methods: general scientific methods of cognition (comparison, description, analysis, synthesis, etc.), special-legal (legal-dogmatic, legal modeling). It should be emphasized that the process of digitalization has a significant impact on most spheres of life of society, in this regard, it was necessary to turn to communicative and anthropological approaches to analyze the impact of digital technologies on the process of development of communications in society. As a result, the conclusions were made about the recognition of the complexity of legislation, which combines norms of public and private legal nature regulating the public relations under study, the need to improve the tools of interaction between subjects in the field of digital reality (owners, operators of sites-aggregators of conjectural information and consumers of services, professionals and organizations providing medical services), the introduction of changes in the norms of legislation in order to eliminate different interpretations and possible conflicts of law.