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Recent years' political debates have raised questions regarding how to understand individuals' responsibilities for repairing unjust structures they may perpetuate, but do not directly cause. Though Iris Marion Young's conceptualization of structural injustice has become widespread in political theory, disagreements persist due to divergent and narrow understandings of intentionality. Some deny that individuals intentionally reinforce unjust structures, while others attempt to trace causality sufficiently finely to attribute such responsibility. This paper offers a novel cognitive entanglement model to move forward these debates, drawing on insights from neo-pragmatism and enactivist philosophy of mind. This model demonstrates how, to the degree that individuals cognitively entangle themselves with unjust structures, offloading cognitive responsibilities to them and uncritically accepting their logics, we can attribute extended intentionality and, along with it, an attenuated form of moral responsibility to inform differential obligations in the context of collective action. This framework explains how individuals relate to unjust structures, while also clarifying methods for combatting structural injustice through cognitive disentanglement—regaining critical perspective and cognitive distance from unjust institutions. I illustrate this framework's utility via the complex case of the United Kingdom's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the structural injustice it perpetuated. After considering relevant mitigating circumstances, this model can help move forward tendentious political debates, including over individual responsibilities to pay reparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Birth of Ethics, Philip Pettit carefully argues that Erewhonians would develop concepts that closely resemble our normative concepts – including our moral concepts – and that this reveals a great deal about the nature of normativity in general and morality in particular. The purported revelations about morality include: Thesis #1: Moral concepts ascribe natural properties. Thesis #2 "Full-scale" moral realism is true. Thesis #3: There is a sufficiently good answer to the question, "Why be moral?" In this paper, I do not question Pettit's ingenious argument that the Erewhonians' conceptual repertoire would expand in the way described in his narrative. I instead question whether this narrative supports these metaethical theses. I argue that if our moral concepts were expressively equivalent to Erewhonian moral concepts, that would not ground a "full-scale" moral realism, nor would it give us a sufficiently compelling answer to the question "Why be moral?" Furthermore, I argue that our moral concepts are not expressively equivalent to Erewhonian moral concepts, which puts pressure on the argument that our moral concepts ascribe natural properties. Finally, contra Pettit, I argue that moral concepts do not play the same function in our lives as the analogous concepts play in Erewhonians' lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that a renewed focus on how dominant international practices produce ontological insecurity can help better orient ontological security studies (OSS) to injustice in world politics, particularly as it affects structurally marginalized political actors at multiple levels. It makes this case by bringing the work of Iris Marion Young to bear on OSS, particularly her theory of justice as the elimination of domination and oppression. Drawing on Young's "Five Faces of Oppression," this paper argues that multiple injustices endemic to the international system should be understood as key producers of ontological insecurity in the international system, both in their direct ability to destabilize identities and in their undermining of disadvantaged actors' ontological security-seeking practices. On international scales, these processes transcend levels of analysis, affecting individuals, social groups, and even states in differing ways. Incorporating Young's work into OSS not only helps build a vital bridge between the oft estranged sub-disciplines of political theory and IR, but also can provide scholars a means of better theorizing how ontological insecurity is so often a product of the international system's injustices. The paper thus concludes by proposing a normative turn within OSS, asking whether global justice should be understood as a precondition for ontological security-seeking among multiple co-existing actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suppose that, for reasons of animal welfare, it would be better if everyone stopped eating chicken. Does it follow that you should stop eating chicken? Proponents of the 'inefficacy objection' argue that, due to the scale and complexity of markets, the expected effects of your chicken purchases are negligible. So the expected effects of eating chicken do not make it wrong. We argue that this objection does not succeed, in two steps. First, empirical data about chicken production tells us that the expected effects of consuming many chickens are not negligible. Second, this implies that the expected effect of consuming one chicken is ordinarily not negligible. Parity between your purchase and other counterfactual purchases, and uncertainty about others' consumption behaviour, each tend to pull the expected effect of a single purchase toward the average large scale effect. While some purchases do have negligible expected effects, many do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractFor centuries, international reparations were commonly exacted as a form of victor’s justice after war. Following World War II, however, the bitter legacy of the Treaty of Versailles and West Germany’s compensation of Nazism’s victim shifted this practice, ushering in a novel moral economy of international reparations. Yet, while recent decades have seen increased transnational activism around reparations, as well as interstate aid payments and official apologies, international reparations remain infrequent, and agreements often fail to end financial claims. This paper argues that one explanation for this lackluster record is a central paradox relating to finality. Though international reparations are designed to settle accounts and provide a basis for deeper reconciliation, by opening issues of traumatic memory to public debate, they often achieve the opposite effect and inspire a cascade of further financial claims. As evidence, we examine three cases of international reparations’ occurrence and rejection: Germany’s reparations for Nazi-era crimes, the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) formation following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and reparations negotiated but removed from the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Employing process tracing methods on archival documents, we demonstrate in each case how this paradox helps explain international reparations’ limitations as a practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD.sup.+) extends longevity in experimental organisms, raising interest in its impact on human health. De novo NAD.sup.+ biosynthesis from tryptophan is evolutionarily conserved yet considered supplanted among higher species by biosynthesis from nicotinamide (NAM). Here we show that a bottleneck enzyme in de novo biosynthesis, quinolinate phosphoribosyltransferase (QPRT), defends renal NAD.sup.+ and mediates resistance to acute kidney injury (AKI). Following murine AKI, renal NAD.sup.+ fell, quinolinate rose, and QPRT declined. QPRT.sup.+/- mice exhibited higher quinolinate, lower NAD.sup.+, and higher AKI susceptibility. Metabolomics suggested an elevated urinary quinolinate/tryptophan ratio (uQ/T) as an indicator of reduced QPRT. Elevated uQ/T predicted AKI and other adverse outcomes in critically ill patients. A phase 1 placebo-controlled study of oral NAM demonstrated a dose-related increase in circulating NAD.sup.+ metabolites. NAM was well tolerated and was associated with less AKI. Therefore, impaired NAD.sup.+ biosynthesis may be a feature of high-risk hospitalizations for which NAD.sup.+ augmentation could be beneficial. Impaired NAD.sup.+ biosynthesis may be a common feature of high-risk hospitalizations for which NAD.sup.+ augmentation could improve therapeutic outcome., Author(s): Ali Poyan Mehr [sup.1] , Mei T. Tran [sup.1] , Kenneth M. Ralto [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , David E. Leaf [sup.4] , Vaughan Washco [sup.1] , Joseph Messmer [sup.1] [...]

This paper offers a theory of incremental theoretical evolution connecting the practice of international politics with disciplinary IR. It theorizes how international political actors engaged in strategic local decision-making exert productive power over dominant scientific ontologies of the international system. We refer to the narratives emerging from these processes as strategic ontologies, defined as gradual reformulations of the subjects, objects, and relational logics of the international system according to positionally determined priorities. As strategic ontologies gain acceptance, their innovations endure beyond the context of their utterance, leading to meso-level theoretical evolution. We substantiate this account with comparative case studies of contested strategic ontologies that have yet to become dominant in either the international arena or IR theory. Without strategic ontology as an analytical lens, scholarship might miss embryonic theoretical innovations in the process of gaining traction. First, we examine how Israel and West Germany engaged in strategic ontological contestation when negotiating a reparations agreement following the Holocaust. Second, we analyze how states have used vulnerability in climate negotiations in 2020–2021 to recast global policy priorities. Recognition of strategic ontologies across contexts illuminates theoretical innovations in real-time and opens a path for dynamic new bridges between the academy and policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though psychic trauma may be an essential part of the human condition, in recent decades its interpretation as PTSD has had important political consequences. I examine both the political roots of the PTSD diagnosis and the disorder's subsequent impacts on American foreign policy discourse. I draw on a mixed-methods approach, including historical analysis of PTSD's development and quantitative and qualitative analysis of presidential papers, presidential debates, and the Congressional Record from the last fifty years. My chief findings are twofold. First, even though PTSD was added to the DSM in 1980, American leaders only began commonly referencing the disorder around the 2008 presidential cycle, more than half a decade into the War on Terror. Second, critical discourse analysis reveals that increased attention to PTSD has contributed to a blurring of important spatiotemporal lines around the concept of war, extending its consequences into an unknown future and outside the war zone. This erosion has profound normative consequences, considering how it similarly blurs the pivotal ethical distinction between victim and perpetrator. These findings not only elucidate an evolution that has taken place in American foreign policy, but also speak to the more general conceptual challenges posed by war trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although often omitted from final texts, armchair speculation is vital to much politics research. This article argues that thought experiments are a powerful tool for harnessing scholarly imagination with enormous potential for international relations (IR). To provide guidance for thought experiments' incorporation into IR research, the article begins by clarifying thought experiments' epistemological foundations and expanding existing best practices criteria for minimal-rewrite counterfactuals. Doing so enables consideration of the diversity of thought experiments useful to the discipline, ranging from alien invasions to zombie apocalypses. Then, the article outlines five ways in which thought experiments prove particularly useful in researching international politics: probing modal consequences of macro-level theories; refining concepts; formulating hypotheses; speculating about rare events; and conveying theories' real-world implications. To facilitate thought experiments' incorporation into mixed- and multi-methods research, the article's final section offers a novel typology to guide scholars in not only formulating new thought experiments, but also adapting and comparing them, including in conjunction with empirical methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the intellectual history of nationalism in International Relations theory, asking how early generations of scholars understood the phenomenon and its relationship to chauvinism and violence. Despite substantial disagreements and varied intellectual influences, I argue that both interwar liberals and postwar realists shared several problematic assumptions about nationalism's pathological character that limited their imagination of its varied potential impacts. I trace these common assumptions back to the bigoted interdisciplinary field of crowd psychology, most prominently evangelized by Gustave le Bon. Le Bon's 1895 The crowd became a touchstone for subsequent generations of social and political theorists and spread ideas about nationalism that infused incipient international theory. Even as his popularity faded, his uniquely pessimistic, racist and sexist ideas about mass politics lingered in mainstream IR's narrow engagement with the phenomenon. By excavating this history, this article exposes a problematic thread that has been woven into the IR discipline, as well as a potential path to excising this bigoted thinking and nuancing discussions of the rise of nationalism in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typical philosophical discussions of physician-assisted death ("PAD") have focused on whether the practice can be permissible. We address a different question: assuming that PAD can be morally permissible, how far does that permission extend? We will argue that granting requests for PAD may be permissible even when the PAD recipient can no longer speak for themselves. In particular, we argue against the 'competency requirement' that constrains PAD-eligibility to presently-competent patients in most countries that have legalized PAD. We think PAD on terminally ill, incapacitated patients can be morally permissible in cases where advance directives or suitable surrogate decision-makers are available, and should be legally permissible in such cases as well. We argue that this view should be accepted on pain of inconsistency: by allowing surrogate decision-makers to request withdrawal of life-sustaining care on behalf of patients and by allowing patients to request PAD, we rule out any plausible justification for imposing a competency requirement on PAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gutzon Borglum depicts a woman's discovery of her pregnancy in the sculpture 'Conception.' In this work, the artist fused his interest in procreativity and immortality with his interest in the creative moment of conception. The sculpture represents Borglum's effort to make the fundamentally unseen moment of creation, which is conception, simultaneous with its visible product that is motherhood. In this manner, the artist attempted to manifest his vision of art itself and thereby make his own concept identical to its realization.

By rooting nationalism in social psychology, Powers's framework has the effect of both naturalizing and depoliticizing the concept (see Adam B. Lerner's 'Pathological nationalism? Nationalisms may appeal, in varied ways, to underlying psychological dispositions, but drawing a linear causal path from one to the other neglects the complex relationships between nationalism, the state and international politics. Over the past decade, the rise of nationalism has become a vital subject in International Relations (IR). [Extracted from the article]

Questions of consciousness pervade the social sciences. Yet, despite persistent tendencies to anthropomorphize states, most International Relations scholarship implicitly adopts the position that humans are conscious and states are not. Recognizing that scholarly disagreement over fundamental issues prevents answering definitively whether states are truly conscious, I instead demonstrate how scholars of multiple dispositions can incorporate a pragmatic notion of state consciousness into their theorizing. Drawing on recent work from Eric Schwitzgebel and original supplementary arguments, I demonstrate that states are not only complex informationally integrated systems with emergent properties, but they also exhibit seemingly genuine responses to qualia that are irreducible to individuals within them. Though knowing whether states possess an emergent 'stream' of consciousness indiscernible to their inhabitants may not yet be possible, I argue that a pragmatic notion of state consciousness can contribute to a more complete understanding of state personhood, as well as a revised model of the international system useful to multiple important theoretical debates. In the article's final section, I apply this model to debate over the levels of analysis at which scholarship applies ontological security theory. I suggest the possibility of emergent state-level ontological insecurity that need not be understood via problematic reduction to individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue on Trump and unpredictability in international relations. It analyses each of the contributions to the special issue in turn, as they appear in the running order, while also elaborating on the intellectual and political context for the special issue as a whole. Paralleling the special issue, this introduction begins by setting out the problem of understanding the very notion of unpredictability itself as a general concept; turns to unpacking that theoretical complexity in more empirical terms by questioning how we can understand unpredictability in relation to Trump's foreign policy; explores the contestation of that understanding by analysing alternative explanations for unpredictability and whether this constitutes doctrine; then delves more deeply into the specific notion of Madman theory, which comprises a critical and highly prominent sub-section of the unpredictability debate; and culminates in a more expansive focus on the impact of unpredictability as Trump's foreign policy approach, specifically in relation to China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the campaign trail, then-candidate Donald Trump expressed a desire to pioneer an unpredictable US foreign policy that would both deceive opponents and disrupt the status quo. Academic and media commentators readily labelled this Trump's 'Unpredictability Doctrine' and have since debated its merits and demerits. Beyond inevitable partisan divides, however, these responses also revealed enormous disagreement over conceptualizations of unpredictability and its impacts, raising fundamental questions for the IR discipline and the foreign policy analysis it informs. What are the ontological and epistemological roots of unpredictability in international politics? How can scholars simultaneously grapple with the conundrums posed by erratic actors and the larger, ever-changing systems they shape? This article unravels the philosophy of science (PoS) issues inherent in theorizing unpredictability, offering a novel, synthesized typology. Recognizing that PoS assumptions both frame accounts of unpredictability and represent a source of uncertainty, this article instead advocates epistemological humility, offering a new typology that transcends assumptions and facilitates dialogue between camps. This typology includes three 'buckets' of unpredictability – risk, uncertainty and complexity – that can be interpreted according to varying philosophy of science traditions. When applied empirically, this terminology helps contextualize analysis and expose oftentimes overlooked contours of US foreign policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: A subset of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients exhibit clinical features of cytokine storm. However, clinicopathologic features diagnostic of hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) have not been reported. We studied the reticuloendothelial organs of 4 consecutive patients who died of COVID-19 and correlated with clinical and laboratory parameters to detect HLH.Methods: Autopsies were performed on 4 patients who died of COVID-19. Routine H&E staining and immunohistochemical staining for CD163 were performed to detect hemophagocytosis. Clinical and laboratory results from premortem blood samples were used to calculate H-scores.Results: All 4 cases demonstrated diffuse alveolar damage within the lungs. Three of the 4 cases had histologic evidence of hemophagocytosis within pulmonary lymph nodes. One case showed hemophagocytosis in the spleen but none showed hemophagocytosis in liver or bone marrow. Lymphophagocytosis was the predominant form of hemophagocytosis observed. One patient showed diagnostic features of HLH with an H-score of 217, while a second patient likely had HLH with a partial H-score of 145 due to a missing triglyceride level. The remaining 2 patients had H-scores of 131 and 96.Conclusions: This is the first report of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2-associated HLH. Identification of HLH in a subset of patients with severe COVID-19 will inform clinical trials of therapeutic strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary populist movements have inspired political pundits in various contexts to opine on the resurgence of victimhood culture, in which groups demonstrate heightened sensitivity to slights and attempt to evoke sympathy from third parties to their conflicts. Although reference to victimhood's politics oftentimes surfaces examples of egregious microaggressions, when victimhood claims are scaled up to the realm of nationalisms, oftentimes so too are their consequences. Current literature on victimhood in international politics, though, lacks a unifying theorisation suitable for the comparative analysis of victimhood nationalisms as important identities in the international arena. This gap prevents scholarship from investigating how the severity of perceived or real suffering relates to the formation of victimhood, as well as how victimhood nationalisms legitimize the projection of grievances onto third parties, potentially sowing new conflicts. This article theorises victimhood nationalism as a powerful identity narrative with two key constitutive elements. First, drawing on the narrative identity approach, it outlines how victimhood nationalisms are constructed via narrations of perceived or real collective trauma. Second, it argues that victimhood nationalist narratives, unlike other narratives of collective trauma, break down the idealized victim–perpetrator relationship and project grievances onto otherwise uninvolved international actors, including other nation-states. The article concludes by offering comparative case studies of Slobodan Milošević's and David Ben-Gurion's respective invocations of victimhood nationalism to illustrate the empirical applicability of this theorization, as well as victimhood nationalism's importance in international politics across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]