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This paper introduces conditional logic, that is, a variant of free logic where the existence condition of a function is defined by a formula of the formal language. Syntax and semantics are developed. A completeness theorem is given.

Biologically motivated computing seeks to transfer ideas from the biosciences to computer science. In seeking to make transfers it is helpful to be able to appreciate the metaphors which people use. This is because metaphors provide the context through which analogies and similes are made and by which many scientific models are constructed. As such, it is important for any rapidly evolving domain of knowledge to have developments accounted for in these terms. This paper seeks to provide one overview of (...) the process of modelling and shows how it can be used to account for a variety of biologically motivated computational models. Certain key ideas are identified in the subsequent analysis of biological sources, notably, systemic metaphors. Three important aspects of biological thinking are then considered in the light of computer science applications: biological organization, the cell, and models of evolution. The analysis throughout the paper is descriptive rather than formalized so that a large variety of potential applications may be considered. (shrink)

Recognising and responding appropriately to emotions is critical to adaptive psychological functioning. Psychopathic traits (e.g. callous, manipulative, impulsive, antisocial) are related to differences in recognition and response when emotion is conveyed through facial expressions and language. Use of emotional music stimuli represents a promising approach to improve our understanding of the specific emotion processing difficulties underlying psychopathic traits because it decouples recognition of emotion from cues directly conveyed by other people (e.g. facial signals). In Experiment 1, participants listened to clips (...) of emotional music and identified the emotional content (Sample 1, N = 196) or reported on their feelings elicited by the music (Sample 2, N = 197). Participants accurately recognised (t(195) = 32.78, p <.001, d = 4.69) and reported feelings consistent with (t(196) = 7.84, p <.001, d = 1.12) the emotion conveyed in the music. However, psychopathic traits were associated with reduced emotion recognition accuracy (F(1, 191) = 19.39, p <.001) and reduced likelihood of feeling the emotion (F(1, 193) = 35.45, p <.001), particularly for fearful music. In Experiment 2, we replicated findings for broad difficulties with emotion recognition (Sample 3, N = 179) and emotional resonance (Sample 4, N = 199) associated with psychopathic traits. Results offer new insight into emotion recognition and response difficulties that are associated with psychopathic traits. (shrink)

We suggest that the cerebellum generates sensory or estimates based on outgoing motor commands and sensory feedback. Thus, it is not a motor pattern generator (HOUK et al.) but a predictive system which is intimately involved in motor behavior. This theory may explain the sensitivity of the climbing fibers to both unexpected external events and motor errors (SIMPSON et al.), and we speculate that unusual biophysical properties of the inferior olive might allow the cerebellum to develop multiple asynchronous sensory estimates, (...) [HOUK et al.; SIMPSON et al.; THACH]. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to test red - green dichromats' ability to discriminate between illuminant and surface-reflectance changes in natural scenes. Stimuli were simulations of natural scenes presented on a colour monitor with 10-bit resolution per gun. The natural scenes were obtained with a fast hyperspectral imaging system. Six different scenes (including rocks, foliage, and buildings) were tested. In each trial, two images were presented in sequence, each for 1 s, with no interval. The images differed in the (...) phase of daylight on the scene: first with correlated colour temperature 25 000 K, then 6 700 K. The spectral reflectance of a region in the second image was changed randomly, consistent with a local change in daylight. The observer's task was to decide whether a particular surface in the successive images was the same (pure illuminant change) or different (illuminant change with a surface-reflectance change). The performance of four deuteranopes and five protanopes varied considerably across the scenes tested, with mean colour constancy indices (± 1 SEM) of 0.48 (± 0.13) and 0.19 (± 0.10), respectively (1.0 representing ideal performance). Deuteranopes seemed less disadvantaged than protanopes, performing close to normal with some scenes. (shrink)

Knowledge of the ethical and legal basis of medicine is as essential to clinical practice as an understanding of basic medical sciences. In the UK, the General Medical Council requires that medical graduates behave according to ethical and legal principles and must know about and comply with the GMC’s ethical guidance and standards. We suggest that these standards can only be achieved when the teaching and learning of medical ethics, law and professionalism are fundamental to, and thoroughly integrated both vertically (...) and horizontally throughout, the curricula of all medical schools as a shared obligation of all teachers. The GMC also requires that each medical school provides adequate teaching time and resources to achieve the above. We reiterate that the adequate provision and coordination of teaching and learning of ethics and law requires at least one full-time senior academic in ethics and law with relevant professional and academic expertise. In this paper we set out an updated indicative core content of learning for medical ethics and law in UK medical schools and describe its origins and the consultative process by which it was achieved. (shrink)

Ethics support staff help others to deal with moral challenges. However, they themselves can also experience moral challenges such as issues regarding (breaching) confidentiality when practicing ethics support. Currently there is no insight in these confidentiality issues and also no professional guidance for dealing with them. To gain insight into moral challenges related to Moral Case Deliberation (MCD), we studied a) beliefs and experiences of MCD facilitators regarding breaching confidentiality, b) considerations for (not) breaching confidentiality, and c) needs for an (...) ethics support tool. Data collection consisted of qualitative research methods: six semi-structured interviews; analyses of a) two recorded MCD sessions, and b) a focus group with MCD facilitators. Findings: MCD facilitators mention different conceptions and interpretations of confidentiality and various moral challenges. Questions concerning confidentiality ultimately cause reflections on roles and responsibilities of facilitators. Needs for ethics support vary from seeking advice to procedural and sometimes normative guidance for MCD facilitators. Education for MCD facilitators should focus on developing a concrete tool that stimulates awareness and reflection(skills). (shrink)

Next SectionIn an online study conducted separately in the UK and the US, participants rated the acceptability and fairness of four interventions: two types of financial incentives and two types of medical interventions. These were stated to be equally effective in improving outcomes in five contexts: weight loss and smoking cessation programmes, and adherence in treatment programmes for drug addiction, serious mental illness and physiotherapy after surgery. Financial incentives were judged less acceptable and to be less fair than medical interventions (...) across all five contexts. Context moderated the relative preference between rewards and penalties: participants from both countries favoured rewards over penalties in weight loss and treatment for serious mental illness. Only among US participants was this relative preference moderated by perceived responsibility of the target group. Overall, participants supported funding more strongly for interventions when they judged members of the target group to be less responsible for their condition, and vice versa. These results reveal a striking similarity in negative attitudes towards the use of financial incentives, rewards as well as penalties, in improving outcomes across a range of contexts, in the UK and the USA. The basis for such negative attitudes awaits further study. (shrink)

The Modern Library, which used for its 1941 monolingual edition of the combined Pensées and Provincial Letters the Trotter translation of the former work, has chosen for this bilingual edition of the Pensées the artful translation of H. F. Stewart. The work is divided by Stewart into a major Apology and chronologically arranged Adversaria which he considers to lie outside the scope of the original work. Stewart's scholarly introduction surveys both the incredibly confused situation of existing manuscripts and the evolution (...) of Pascal's thought. Stewart has arranged the material in accordance with Pascal's own plan, which was reconstructed by Filleau de la Chaise and by Pascal's nephew the abbé Périer. One could argue, as does Brunschvicg, whose own arrangement reveals a prime consideration of accessibility to the modern reader rather than historical accuracy, that the authority of Filleau de la Chaise and the abbé Périer is indeed questionable. For their reconstruction of the plan was made some eight years after Pascal had announced it in a lecture at Port Royal in 1658. Moreover, this initial arrangement could not take into account modifications made while writing during the last four years of the author's life. Stewart has nevertheless relied on both the Brunschvicg facsimile of the autographed manuscript and the Tourneur reading of the First Copy, and has consulted several editions of the Pensées. The result is certainly the best edition in English of this momentous work. Stewart's translation is superb, reproducing eloquently Pascal's paradoxical, contrapuntal phrases without losing any of his delightfully subtle wit.—C. M. R. (shrink)

Background. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated drastic changes to undergraduate medical training at the University of Botswana (UB). To save the academic year when campus was locked down, the Department of Medical Education conducted a needs assessment to determine the readiness for emergency remote teaching (ERT) of the Faculty of Medicine, UB. Objectives. To report on the findings of needs assessment surveys to assess learner and teaching staff preparedness for fair and just ERT, as defined by philosopher John Rawls. Methods. Needs (...) assessment surveys were conducted using Office 365 Forms distributed via WhatsApp, targeting medical students and teaching staff during the 5 undergraduate years. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results. Ninety-two percent (266/289) of students and 73.5% (62/84) of teaching staff responded. Surveys revealed a high penetration of smartphones among students, but poor internet accessibility and affordability in homes. Some teaching staff also reported internet and device insufficiencies. Only WhatsApp was accessible to students and teaching staff. Conclusions. For equitable access to ERT in the future, the surveys revealed infrastructural improvement needs, including wider, stronger, affordable WiFi coverage within Botswana and enhanced digital infrastructures in educational institutions, with increased support for students. (shrink)

This paper examines the challenges that climate change raises for animal agriculture and discusses the contributions that may come from a virtue ethics based approach. Two scenarios of the future role of animals in farming are set forth and discussed in terms of their ethical implications. The paper argues that when trying to tackle both climate and animal welfare issues in farming, proposals that call for a reorientation of our ethics and technology must first and foremost consider the values that (...) drive current livestock production. This paper sets forth and discusses the broader societal values implicit in livestock production. We suggest that a virtues approach would improve our thinking and practice regarding animal agriculture, facilitating a move from livestock production to animal husbandry. This change in animal agriculture in a time of climate change would stress virtues such as attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness as central elements in any mitigation or adaptation program. (shrink)

Background: The Directive 2001/20/EC was an important first step towards consistency in the requirements and processes for clinical trials across Europe. However, by applying the same rules to all types of drug trials and transposing the Directive’s principles into pre-existing national legislations, the Directive somewhat failed to meet its facilitation and harmonisation targets. In the field of ethics, the Directive 2001/20/EC conditioned the way of understanding and transposing the “single opinion” process in each country. This led to a situation in (...) which two models of research ethics committees organisation systems exist, being the model in which the “single opinion” is considered to be the decision made by a single ethics committee more effective and simpler in terms of administrative and logistic workload. Method: A survey was conducted in 10 European countries. Members of the European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network working party number 1, with expertise in the field of ethics, responded. Results: There is a major heterogeneity in the composition of ethics committees among the surveyed countries based on the number of members, proportion of experts versus lay members and expertise of the scientific members. A harmonised education of the ethics committees’ membership based in common curricula is recommended by the majority of countries. Conclusions: Despite the efforts for harmonisation of the European Clinical Trial Directive, from an ethical point of view, there remains a plurality of ethics committees' systems in Europe. It is important to comprehend the individual national systems to understand the problems they are facing. (shrink)

Objectives: The mental health legislation of most developed countries includes either a dangerousness criterion or an obligatory dangerousness criterion (ODC). A dangerousness criterion holds that mentally ill people may be given treatment without consent if they are deemed to be a risk to themselves or others. An ODC holds that mentally ill people may be given treatment without consent only if they are deemed to be a risk to themselves or others. This paper argues that the dangerousness criterion is unnecessary, (...) unethical and, in the case of the ODC, potentially harmful to mentally ill people and to the rest of the community. Methods: We examine the history of the dangerousness criterion, and provide reasoned argument and empirical evidence in support of our position. Results: Dangerousness criteria are not required to balance the perceived loss of autonomy arising from mental health legislation. Dangerousness criteria unfairly discriminate against the mentally ill, as they represent an unreasonable barrier to treatment without consent, and they spread the burden of risk that any mentally ill person might become violent across large numbers of mentally ill people who will never become violent. Mental health legislation that includes an ODC is associated with a longer duration of untreated psychosis, and probably contributes to a poorer prognosis and an increase risk of suicide and violence in patients in their first episode of psychosis. Conclusions: Dangerousness criteria should be removed from mental health legislation and be replaced by criteria that focus on a patient’s capacity to refuse treatment. (shrink)

These two books are among the most recently published tomes of a projected twenty comprising the first French edition of the Complete Works of Kierkegaard. Such a work represents the life-long dedication of Paul Tisseau, Kierkegaard's principal French translator. Many of Tisseau's translations have already been published in various other places, and it is generally known that he undertook to publish on his own several of the less commercially appealing religious works. After his death in 1964, his daughter completed his (...) work by correcting published and unpublished manuscripts and by translating the few works her father had not been able to do. The present edition was indeed worth waiting for; it is at once an artful translation and an excellent scholarly tool, complete with marginal pagination of the definitive Danish edition, the Drachmann, Heiberg, Lange of 1920-1926, plus location of each separate work in the first and third Danish editions. Jean Brun provides to-the-point introductions containing a wealth of historical material and ample footnotes referring to significant textual variations, subtleties of translation, and related passages in other works. Volume thirteen contains the Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, The Lilies and the Birds, and The Gospel of Sufferings; volume eighteen, Two Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, The Woman that Was a Sinner, The Unchangeableness of God, For Self-Examination, and Judge for Yourselves.--C. M. R. (shrink)

In this source study of the hermetic and prophetic poetry of William Blake, Kathleen Raine adds strength to the theory that it takes a poet to explain one. The present volumes, expanded from the 1962 Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, are the result of twenty years' research; in scholarship and in style, they well might serve as a model for all source studies to come. Raine traces Blake's borrowings from Neoplatonism, from alchemy, from classical and hermetic sources, from gnosticism (...) and Christianity. Her development avoids the rigid chronological installment method so often used and moves along lyrically in chapter divisions sometimes source inspired, more often determined by particular characters created by Blake himself. Two very complete indexes, both of Blake's works and of general subjects, allow for immediate reference within the author's rather fluid organization. Mention must be made also of the beautiful plate reproductions which encourage a more integrated appreciation of Blake's two media of expression. Raine communicates the universal nature of visionary poetry, the basic sources of which have not changed significantly throughout the centuries. She thus opens up for the reader the possibility of understanding a whole tradition of the most awesome and most inaccessible literature.--C. M. R. (shrink)

Pomeau has condensed a lot of material for this pocket-size introduction to the life and works of Diderot, which he has attempted to simplify by providing parallel classifications of the excerpts from Diderot's works with his own presentation of Diderot's philosophy. These divisions are entitled: the Adventure of Diderot's thought, On Nature, On Man, Morality, Aesthetics, Politics, and the Contemporary Import of Diderot's Philosophie. Pomeau, a Voltaire scholar, displays a knowledge of the intellectual history of the period and a wide (...) acquaintance with his immediate material. His selections are beautifully chosen, for they provide a generous survey of Diderot's work, including even a short passage from the most recently published marginalia of Hemsterhuis. This sort of presentation cannot but entice the beginner to further examination, for the passages range from the most poignant to the most witty Yet there is matter to frustrate the serious beginner; the passages are not dated, nor are they identified by work in the index. Pomeau engages in gratuitous psychologizing in his exposition of Diderot's life, and has made a blatant error in attributing to Diderot the authorship of the article "Encyclopédie." These shortcomings unfortunately mar a text which contains excellent analyses of the evolution of Diderot's religious and biological thought.—C. M. R. (shrink)

This edition, providing the only available English language access to Collin de Plancy's long-forgotten Dictionnaire infernal, is directed to the reader who likes the reinforcement of being able to get through a whole book in an hour or so, whizzing through clean pages at incredible speeds. Perhaps the most misleading aspect of this flashy volume is the fact that the publishers never mention that it is abbreviated at all; it contains 177 truncated versions of Collin de Plancy's 2,400 plus entries, (...) which filled in the 1825-1826 edition of four volumes of text and one of plates. Wade Baskin, a master of condensation, does cover a lot of ground in his two and one-half page introduction. This, unfortunately, serves as little but a teaser to the reader interested in more than a mere mention of Collin de Plancy's colorful, success-oriented career, his filiations with spiritual brothers like Nodier, and his influence on other writers of the Romantic period. One can begrudge this sort of holding back with good reason, for Collin de Plancy is a name unfamiliar today even to French scholars. Baskin's translation is, as usual, excellent.—C. M. R. (shrink)

A second, corrected edition of the 1948 original, plus preface and a third appendix on the import of Pascal for the present day. The work consists of a number of brief considerations centered around the theme of "common sense," essential to a study of history as sacred. Castelli writes in a climate interpreted as threatening to lead us to a state of "second innocence". Against this threat, Castelli lays the groundwork for a theological existentialism, based on a "sense of revelation," (...) a personal "common sense" commitment arising from the realization of one's own insufficiency. In an age where Catholic theologians are developing a political basis for their thought, Castelli's book appears perhaps even more apropos than in the late 1940's. It opposes modern solipsism resulting from subjectivist tendencies in philosophy since Descartes, as well as analogues in the political sphere--monologue and violence--and proposes as an alternative a theologically based human solidarity.--C. M. R. (shrink)

Part of the Philosophes series, this very useful introduction to Locke opens with a little ceremony which really does seem necessary in order to assure French readers of the relevance of foreign thinkers. It takes the form here of Voltaire's praise of Locke in his thirteenth Lettre philosophique. Voltaire's consecration however does serve to cast some eighteenth century light on Locke, which is an excellent way to begin the subject. There follows an outline of Locke's life and philosophy, with brief (...) considerations of the Letter on Tolerance and Two Treatises on Government, and an extended treatment of the four books of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Leroy uses a method of paraphrase with very limited commentary, a good device for getting inside a subject but one which involves a sacrifice in perspective. Some sixty pages of excerpts from the Essay are well chosen, indexed, and provided with topic headings. A minimal bibliography follows.--C. M. R. (shrink)