Micro-\u3cem\u3eMeso\u3c/em\u3e-Macro Comparative Law: An Essay on the Methodology of Comparative Law

There are strong analogies between the quest for a methodology of comparative law and the broader debate on the epistemology of social and natural sciences. In this vein, after having explored the dispute between holists and reductionists, I argue that the dichotomy between micro and macro comparative law ought to be abandoned. Building on the insights of social theory, I introduce a specific framework to bridge the two levels of enquiry through a meso analysis. This framework is applied to investigate the robustness of the findings of the legal origin theory

ON COMMON GOOD, MONEY AND CREDIT

As Kosick maintained, homo oeconomicus is not only a theoretical aberration, it is an aberration of reality. The idea of human beings that Neo-classical Economics portrays is, without a doubt, a degeneration, and does little as the explicative axis of current society and even less in relation to the structural crisis in which we are living

The Problem of Causal/Explanatory Exclusion

The problem of mental causation, at least in one of its most basic forms, is how to reconcile two plausible but potentially incompatible intuitions. The first intuition is that the mind makes a difference in the world. For example, I am writing this paragraph for certain reasons, and before long I will stop to eat something because of certain desires for food. Seemingly, these reasons and desires play a role in what happens. The second intuition is that the physical world is causally complete, so everything that happens is the result of the movement of physical particles. For example, the neural turbulence in my head seems to be the actual cause of my hands fluttering across the keyboard in certain ways, whilst certain muscle contractions in my arms cause the food to enter my mouth. What room is there for the mind to play a causal role when everything seems to happen because of the movement of physical particles? For some time reductive physicalism was the prevailing solution to the problem of mental causation (Place, 1956; Feigl, 1958; Smart, 1959). Reductive physicalism posits a reductive identity of the mental to the physical. In so doing, it endorses physical causal completeness, but achieves mental causation as well, since the mental is identical with the causally efficacious physical. In the nineteen seventies, nonreductive physicalism replaced reductive physicalism as the predominant solution to the problem of mental causation in the nineteen seventies. Nonreductive physicalism solves the problem of mental causation by agreeing that the physical is causally complete, but achieves mental causation as well by supposing that the mental supervenes upon the physical, and thus inherits the causal power of the physical. In recent years this nonreductive consensus has been threatened. This is partially due to an argument that has been distilled from Jaegwon Kim’s principle of causal/explanatory exclusion. One part of this compound principle is the principle of causal exclusion, which states that there can be no more than a single sufficient cause for any given event (Kim, 2005, p. 42). This principle of causal exclusion creates the following problem: the nonreductive physicalist endorses the causal completeness of the physical, and so she agrees that there is a sufficient physical cause for any given event. The nonreductive physicalist also avoids making a reductive identity between the mental and the physical, so she agrees that the mental is distinct from the physical. Therefore, if a given event has a complete physical cause, and the mental cause is distinct from this complete physical cause, then this supervening mental cause must be excluded. The physical cause does all of the work, so there is no work left over for the mental cause. In this dissertation I consider and respond to Jaegwon Kim’s principle of causal/explanatory exclusion. I conclude that the most promising response to the problem generated from causal exclusion is to endorse what I call structuralism. Structuralism construes mental states as mereological structures, or configurations, of parts. Macro structure plays a role in determining which micro properties its parts will and will not instantiate, so there is a genuine role for the mental to play. The micro properties that are instantiated, however, do all of the causal work, so causal completeness is secured as well. This is a nonreductive position, since the mereological structure of the parts is not identical with the parts themselves. This model avoids the causal exclusion problem by noting that mereological relations are non-causal determinative relations, so mental states can play an important determinative role without contributing any causal power beyond what the causally sufficient micro properties of the parts contribute. This solution to the problem of causal exclusion affords a solution to the parallel problem generated from the principle of explanatory exclusion as well. The principle of explanatory exclusion states that “there can be no more than a single complete and independent explanation for any one event” (Kim, 1988, p. 233). I resolve this difficulty by adopting a nuanced form of what is called the dual-explananda reply. Since the above reasoning suggests that mental states are distinct from physical events, we can conclude that mental explanations and physiological explanations do not refer to the same thing, so there is no exclusion pressure between the two explanations

Arts-Based Research in the Social and Health Sciences: Pushing for Change with an Interdisciplinary Global Arts-Based Research Initiative

The impact of current trends in technology, digitalization and mass media on our global culture raises questions regarding the responsibility and ethics of research decisions in contemporary social and health sciences. Embedded in the dominant paradigms, these trends subtly affect our worldviews, our valuation of the human condition, and the nature of socio-political discourse. In such critical post normal times (SARDAR, 2009) radical imagination (HAIVEN & KHASNABISH, 2014) and epistemic activism, embracing non-dominant modes of knowledge production in the social and health sciences, becomes a necessity. Arts-based research (ABR) is resonant with the onto-epistemological perspectives and methodologies necessary to challenge and disrupt current unilateral and hegemonic paradigms underlying decaying societal and geo-political constructs. In this article, we advocate for the development of a global network of ABR scholars and stakeholders invoking a radical imaginative philosophy and arts-based research methodologies as an approach to social activism and epistemological change.Die Wichtigkeit aktueller Trends in Technologie, Digitalisierung und Massenmedien für die globale Kultur führt zu Fragen nach der Verantwortlichkeit und Ethik forscherischer Entscheidungen in den Sozial- und Gesundheitswissenschaften. Eingebettet in die jeweils dominanten Paradigmen affizieren diese Trends subtil unsere Weltsicht, unsere Werte und den Charakter sozio-politischer Diskurse. In diesen kritischen post-normalen Zeiten (SARDAR 2009) werden radikale Imagination (HAIVEN & KHASNABISH 2014) und epistemischer Aktivismus, verbunden mit nicht-dominanten Weisen der Wissensproduktion, zu einer Notwendigkeit. Kunstbasierte Forschung (KBF) beinhaltet onto-epistemologische Perspektiven und Methodologien, die erforderlich sind, um die gegenwärtigen unilateralen und hegemonialen Paradigmen herauszufordern und zu stören, die den überkommenen gesellschaftlichen und geo-politischen Konstrukten unterliegen. In diesem Beitrag vertreten wir die Etablierung eines globalen Netzwerks von KBF-Wissenschaftler*innen und Stakeholdern und die Nutzung einer radikal-imaginativen Philosophie und von kunstbasierten Verfahren als Ausgangspunkte für sozialen Aktivismus und einen epistemologischen Wechsel

SYSTEMIC FEATURES OF IMMUNE RECOGNITION

The gut is home to a great number of microbes. The immune system, to protect the body, must discriminate between the pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes and respond to them in different ways. How the mucosal immune system manages to make this distinction is poorly understood. Here, we explore whether the decision to respond in a certain way to a microorganism is made by single types of cells and molecules or by the collective activity of various kinds of cells and molecules in a given anatomical compartment. We show here that the distinction between pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes is made by an integrated system rather than by single types of cells or single types of receptors. Since immune recognition is constituted by a complex network of molecular and cellular level interactions, complete understanding of this process requires knowledge of these interactions. However, is it possible to explain immune recognition in molecular and cellular terms if this process is multiple realizable? Indeed, given the number and dynamics of elements involved in the recognition, it is hardly possible that their exact configuration could ever be reproduced even in the same individual. We argue that it is practically impossible to reduce immune recognition to its actual molecular and cellular realization. (This would require making reference to an infinitely long disjunction of lower level processes and each disjunct would be endlessly complex). Instead, the recognition is reducible to the approximation of molecular and cellular level processes. We suggest that the same strategy that was used by us to explain immune recognition in terms of lower level approximations is commonly applied by molecular biologists and systems biologists to explain complex biological processes