In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning to BreatheFive Fragments Against RacismB. Venkat Mani (bio)For Dr. JLW, for all Black academics and students1. Air HungerI know you, Derek Chauvin. You may think that we first met on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis. I was called George Perry Floyd. For you, I was just another Black man, a potential criminal. For me, you were not a police officer, but the knee that stands for (...) racism. You kneeled on my windpipe for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Those were neither my first nor my last memories.You may choose not to recognize me, as you always have. But I do. I recognize every bone, muscle, tendon, pointy curve of the cap, every contour of your strong, heavy, determined, calculating, conniving knee that presses on my windpipe with a false sense of racist superiority. 9 minutes and 29 seconds. As often as you can.We have a history. You have never missed the opportunity of kneeling on my windpipe. You hauled me into your slave ships from various African ports along the Atlantic, then you kneeled on my windpipe all over your cotton and tobacco plantations in the Americas. We met again on schooners from Indian shores journeying across the Indian and Pacific oceans. With slavery banned in the British empire, you turned me into an indentured laborer. You made me put my thumb imprint on a document you created, in a script I could not read, of a language I could not speak. Then you threw me thousands of miles away in Mauritius, Fiji, and numerous Caribbean islands, pressing on my windpipe on sugarcane plantations. My wife, children, sisters, mothers, aunts, brothers, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, we all have lived through those fatal 9 minutes and 29 seconds: on water and land. Repeatedly. Consistently. Incessantly.You want specific dates? April 8, 1857, Barrackpore, Northern India. My name was Mangal Pandey, you called me a Sepoy. You hanged me for standing up against my subjugation by your British East India Company. Against your rule over my land and my people. With your many titles [End Page 41] and names: Major-General Sir Henry Havelock, Lieutenant-General Sir Colin Campbell, Brigadier-General Charles Windham, you rampaged through the streets of Delhi, Meerut, Lucknow, killing anyone in your way so I could be a jewel in Victoria's crown. January 29, 1863, Bear River, Idaho. I was one among the Shoshone of Bia Ogoi, you were Colonel Patrick Connor. You came to us on a frigid morning and killed us by the hundreds. November 15, 1884, the Congo Conference, Berlin. You were called Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and were acting at the behest of sharecropping interests of King Leopold the Second. Your name for me was a "savage." You set up a society to civilize me while you plundered my bounty. You started drawing lines through land, rivers, mountains, deserts. For you, it was the Scramble for Africa. For me, bloody murder. You knelt on my windpipe, smoking a pipe with tobacco my people had grown. April 13, 1919, Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar. You were called Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer. For you, I was just a troublemaking native disrupting the civilized business of the Empire. You surrounded our peaceful gathering in Amritsar and opened fire. Your Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling claimed that "you did your duty as you saw fit." By killing us in thousands until the bullets ran out. Rikki Tikki Tavi. May 31, 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Inspired by Jim Crow, your knees came running to us in mobs to massacre us. October 19, 1926, Imperial Conference, London. Your name was Field Marshall the Right Honorable Jan Christian Smuts. For you, I was one among the many "colored" subjects from the Cape Colony. You spoke vehemently against mixing my people with your people. Eloquently, I was told, in favor of apartheid.You know very well, Chauvin, that our acquaintance neither begins in 1857 nor ends in 1926. I could take you on a grand tour of the world and give you all the dates when you appeared in different forms. Your self-induced conviction of racial supremacy over me remained the same... (shrink)

With the improvements in medical care and resultant increase in life expectancy of the intellectually disabled, it will become more common for healthcare providers to be confronted by ethical dilemmas in the care of this patient population. Many of the dilemmas will focus on what is in the best interest of patients who have never been able to express their wishes with regard to medical and end-of-life care and who should be empowered to exercise surrogate medical decision-making authority on their (...) behalf. A case is presented that exemplifies the ethical and legal tensions surrounding surrogate medical decision making for acutely ill, never-competent, profoundly intellectually disabled patients. (shrink)

This new edition of Introduction to Lattices and Order presents a radical reorganization and updating, though its primary aim is unchanged. The explosive development of theoretical computer science in recent years has, in particular, influenced the book's evolution: a fresh treatment of fixpoints testifies to this and Galois connections now feature prominently. An early presentation of concept analysis gives both a concrete foundation for the subsequent theory of complete lattices and a glimpse of a methodology for data analysis that is (...) of commercial value in social science. Classroom experience has led to numerous pedagogical improvements and many new exercises have been added. As before, exposure to elementary abstract algebra and the notation of set theory are the only prerequisites, making the book suitable for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. It will also be a valuable resource for anyone who meets ordered structures. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

Fifty adults who had made monetary contributions to political campaigns were interviewed to determine differences between liberals and conservatives in terms of personality, child-rearing attitudes, and birth order/sex variables. Study 1 found liberals to favor nonrestrictive controls both on self and on children, while conservatives tended to favor the opposite. Women were more likely than men to be liberals, and all first-born females were liberals. In Study 2, the sample as a whole was high in self-esteem and autonomy, and there (...) were no significant differences between liberals and conservatives. Although saying that liberals are Democrats and conservatives are Republicans is accurate to some extent, it misses the fact that many do not identify with either party but consider themselves to be independents. (shrink)

Iyengar Yoga Wisdom & Practice" is a practical and an inspiring anthology of Iyengar's insights into yoga, life and the path to peace and happiness. Yoga practice lies at the heart of the book, and it is illustrated with over 60 new step-by-step sequences of yoga postures specially shot in India and accompanied by Iyengar's illuminating observations on technique, their significance, and their benefits. This book not only presents Iyengar's practical advice on how to perform key yoga postures, but also (...) draws on a wide range of other material taken from interviews and world lecture tours, to the many texts Iyengar has written about yoga and about his own life's journey. (shrink)

In this text, a variety of modal logics at the sentential, first-order, and second-order levels are developed with clarity, precision and philosophical insight. All of the S1-S5 modal logics of Lewis and Langford, among others, are constructed. A matrix, or many-valued semantics, for sentential modal logic is formalized, and an important result that no finite matrix can characterize any of the standard modal logics is proven. Exercises, some of which show independence results, help to develop logical skills. A separate sentential (...) modal logic of logical necessity in logical atomism is also constructed and shown to be complete and decidable. On the first-order level of the logic of logical necessity, the modal thesis of anti-essentialism is valid and every de re sentence is provably equivalent to a de dicto sentence. An elegant extension of the standard sentential modal logics into several first-order modal logics is developed. Both a first-order modal logic for possibilism containing actualism as a proper part as well as a separate modal logic for actualism alone are constructed for a variety of modal systems. Exercises on this level show the connections between modal laws and quantifier logic regarding generalization into, or out of, modal contexts and the conditions required for the necessity of identity and non-identity. Two types of second-order modal logics, one possibilist and the other actualist, are developed based on a distinction between existence-entailing concepts and concepts in general. The result is a deeper second-order analysis of possibilism and actualism as ontological frameworks. Exercises regarding second-order predicate quantifiers clarify the distinction between existence-entailing concepts and concepts in general. Modal Logic is ideally suited as a core text for graduate and undergraduate courses in modal logic, and as supplementary reading in courses on mathematical logic, formal ontology, and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The first book to be devoted to the logic behind the application of ethical theories, this collection of essays explores the question of how many different moral traditions (utilitarianism, natural rights theory, Marxism, Christian moral theology, and Kantianism among others) view the relation between theory and concrete judgments. By considering many applications of moral theory in medical ethics the authors illustrate their point.

Cosmological ideas influenced every aspect of traditional Chinese culture, from science and medicine to art, philosophy, and religion. Although other premodern societies developed similar conceptions, in no other major civilization were such ideas so pervasive or powerful. In The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology, John Henderson traces the evolution of Chinese thought on cosmic order from the classical era to the nineteenth century. Unlike many standard studies of premodern cosmologies, this book analyzes the origins, development, and rejection of these (...) models, not just their structure. Moreover, while historians often limit their studies of cosmic order to specialized fields like the history of science, Henderson examines how the cosmological ideas formulated in late classical times permeated various facets of Chinese life, from high philosophy to popular culture. (shrink)

In this book, Yaqub describes a simple conception of truth and shows that it yields a semantical theory that accommodates the whole range of our seemingly conflicting intuitions about truth. This conception takes the Tarskian biconditionals as correctly and completely defining the notion of truth. The semantical theory, which is called the revision theory, that emerges from this conception paints a metaphysical picture of truth as a property whose applicability is given by a revision process rather than by a fixed (...) extension. The main advantage of this revision process is its ability to explain why truth seems in many cases almost redundant, in others substantial, and yet in others paradoxical. Yaub offers a comprehensive defense of the revision theory of truth by developing consistent and adequate formal semantics for languages in which all sorts of problematic sentences can be constructed. Yaqub concludes by introducing a logic of truth that further demonstrates the adequacy of the revision theory. (shrink)

Even after multiple cycles of ABET accreditation, many engineering programs are unsure of how much curriculum content is needed to meet the requirements of ABET’s Criterion 3.f (an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility). This study represents the first scholarly attempt to assess the impact of curriculum reform following the introduction of ABET Criterion 3.f. This study sought to determine how much professional and ethical responsibility curriculum content was used between 1995 and 2005, as well as how, when, why, and (...) to what effect changes in the amount of content occurred. Subsequently, the study sought to evaluate if different amounts of curriculum content generated differing student outcomes. The amount of curriculum content used by each of the participating programs was identified during semi-structured interviews with program administrators and a review of ABET Self-Study documents. Quantitative methods were applied to determine if a relationship existed between the curriculum content and performance on a nationally administered, engineering-specific standardized examination. The findings indicate a statistical relationship, but a lack of structure between the amount of required content in the curriculum and performance on the examination. Additional findings were also generated regarding the way that programs interpret the Criterion 3.f feedback generated during accreditation visits. The primary impact of this study is that it dispels the myth that more courses or course time on professionalism and ethics will necessarily lead to positive engineering education outcomes. Much of the impetus to add more curriculum content results from a lack of conclusive feedback during ABET accreditation visits. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a variety of objections against the covering-law model of scientific explanation, show that Aristotle was already aware of them and had solutions for them, and argue that these solutions are correct. These solutions involve the notions of nonHumean causality and of essential properties. There are a great many familiar objections, both methodological and epistemological, to introducing these concepts into the methodology of science, but I show that these objections are based upon misunderstandings of these concepts.

Although the predominant view is that vagueness is due to our language being imprecise, the alternative idea that objects themselves do not have determinate borders has received an occasional hearing. But what has failed to be appreciated is how this idea can avoid a puzzle Peter Unger named “The Problem of the Many.”[i].

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Recovering One's Self from PsychosisA Philosophical AnalysisThe author reports no conflicts of interest.Rosanna Wannberg (2024) has given us a dense but helpful introduction to certain philosophical questions raised by the fact that many patients recovering from psychotic illnesses describe their recovery in terms of gaining or regaining a 'sense of self' and a 'sense of agency,' which often involves acceptance of the 'fact' of being mentally ill, for example, (...) of 'having schizophrenia.' She raises two important questions: How should we understand what is going on in these accounts? and What are the implications of these reports for our understanding of what it is to have a 'sense of self' or a 'sense of agency'—of 'subjectivity' generally—which might have, both, clinical and nonclinical implications?What does it mean to have a self or a sense of having one, agency or a sense of having it? One might think these are the possession or experience of something 'inner' such as feelings of confidence or assurance, perhaps having a kind of inner structure or a set of deeply held ideas which give us coherence, motivate us and justify our actions, and which we can know by 'looking inward,' in an introspective act which provides direct, privileged acquaintance.Yet Wittgenstein called this a dangerously misleading 'picture' which 'held us captive,' and needed always to be 'gotten rid of' (Wittgenstein, 1958). One way of seeing the problem is to consider that no inner 'object,' no thing inside us, can be, or give us a sense of having, a self or agency, because no mere thing (whether an experience of confidence, or having an inner structure) can have any meaning or provide any explanation. A thing (like a word on a page) is just a thing—inert, dead— and must be interpreted, that is used, before it can play a role in our 'forms of life' (Wittgenstein, 1958) including explaining our sense of self or agency.Semantic externalists (Burge, 1979; Putnam, 1975), have argued that even what is internal to our minds—like thoughts—have contents which are determined by experiences in the 'outside' world in which we have lived and learned: if our experiences in the world, they have shown, were different, then so, also, would be the contents of our thoughts. It has even been argued that internal mental experiences which appear to be purely phenomenological (such as an image or a thought-token, so-called narrow content) can only [End Page 67] be identified and thought about using concepts having references in the external world: there is, so it is claimed, no narrow content (Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne, 2018); or, if there is, it is of no explanatory use in psychology (Fodor, 1994).If this is the philosophical background from which Wannberg confronts first-person accounts of recovery from psychosis which include (re)gaining a sense of self or agency, and if this philosophy is right, what becomes of the accounts? How are they to be understood?To meet this challenge, Wannberg invokes an alternative account of self-possession and firstperson authority provided by Richard Moran (2001). Moran's position is that we find or possess ourselves when we find or hold beliefs about the world which we do not merely believe but endorse or avow, where to endorse or avow a belief about the world is to find and endorse reasons in the world, which support that belief. Thus, I can avow that it's raining if I can look outside and see that it is raining. This Moran calls the transparency condition. Endorsing or avowing both a belief and the external reasons for it gives the self what Moran refers to as authenticity and which also might be said to provide cohesion, consistency and intelligibility—plausibly, a 'sense of self.'The transparency condition also applies to beliefs that justify actions. We act intentionally when we can give good reasons for what we do (Anscombe, 1957; Moran, 2001) and we can give good reasons for what we do when we can identify facts in the world that support those reasons. Thus, the transparency condition can explain both a sense of self and a sense... (shrink)

Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts (...) to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals -German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists- have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish culture and a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day."--Jacket. (shrink)

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180 A.D., is renowned for his just rule and long frontier wars. But his lasting fame rests on his Meditations, a bedside book of reflections and self-admonitions written during his last years, that provide unique insights into the mind of an ancient ruler and contain many passages of pungent epigram and poetic imagery. This study is designed to make the Meditations more accessible to the modern reader. Rutherford carefully explains the historical and philosophical (...) background, charts the main themes and tendencies of Marcus's thought, and relates stylistic detail to the intellectual and moral outlook of the author. His goal is to define Marcus's aims, attitudes, and styles more precisely and restore his work to the position it held in the past, that of a spiritual classic which can be read and enjoyed by people who are not professional scholars. (shrink)

Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) helps researchers understand how cognitive skills and strategies make it possible for people to act effectively and get things done. CTA can yield information people needemployers faced with personnel issues, market researchers who want to understand the thought processes of consumers, trainers and others who design instructional systems, health care professionals who want to apply lessons learned from errors and accidents, systems analysts developing user specifications, and many other professionals. CTA can show what makes the workplace (...) workand what keeps it from working as well as it might.Working Minds is a true handbook, offering a set of tools for doing CTA: methods for collecting data about cognitive processes and events, analyzing them, and communicating them effectively. It covers both the "why" and the "how" of CTA methods, providing examples, guidance, and stories from the authors' own experiences as CTA practitioners. Because effective use of CTA depends on some conceptual grounding in cognitive theory and researchon knowing what a cognitive perspective can offerthe book also offers an overview of current research on cognition.The book provides detailed guidance for planning and carrying out CTA, with chapters on capturing knowledge and capturing the way people reason. It discusses studying cognition in real-world settings and the challenges of rapidly changing technology. And it describes key issues in applying CTA findings in a variety of fields. Working Minds makes the methodology of CTA accessible and the skills involved attainable. (shrink)

This volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. Its design is premised on two important insights. First, interreligious dialogue offers to comparative religious ethics a new, more persuasive rationale, agenda of issues, and practical orientation. Second, comparative religious ethics offers to interreligious dialogue an arsenal of critical tools and methods which will enhance the sophistication of its practical work. In this way, both theory (a dominant (...) concern and strength of comparative religious ethics) and praxis (a dominant concern and strength of interreligious moral dialogue) are joined together in mutual effort, each contributing to the benefit of the other.The volume’s contributors share this vision of collaboration, drawing explicitly from both communities of discourse in a manner that crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries to deal creatively and constructively with important methodological and global moral issue. Although theory and practice cannot easily be separated in such a collaborative project, for the purpose of clarity, the volume is divided into two main parts. The first specifically engages questions of method, theory, and the social role of the public intellectual; the second, on substantive moral themes and issues, many of which were raised at the 1993 Parliament. Taken together, the volume’s essays articulate and illustrate new ways of approaching contemporary moral concerns cross-culturally yet with a rigor appropriate to our complex and pluralistic world. (shrink)

Transformations in the biological, medical and legal processes of infertility, substantial modifications in family structure and the advancement of methods and techniques of reproductive technology will affect the next step in both legal and medical terms to address the regulation of bioethics and law in Kosovo. There is a need to establish perspectives in both ethical and professional terms, since the Republic of Kosovo is in the process of drafting a Civil Code. Many of these issues have been raised and (...) addressed during the review and evaluation of family law in the context of harmonisation and inclusion of this law in the Civil Code of the Republic of Kosovo. During the several meetings of official members with different interest groups regarding family law, the need has been raised to regulate family law to be included in the Civil Code for motherhood and fatherhood in the case of reproduction with biomedical assistance, as well as for the birth contract as a donation for another person (so-called surrogate motherhood). These bioethical and legal issues indicate the urgent need for legal harmonisation of a multidimensional platform specifically based on the principles of public health and universal human rights Conclusion. These bio-ethical and legal interferences indicate the urgent need for legal harmonization of a multidimensional platform specifically designed based on the principles of public health and universal human rights. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers have grown increasingly skeptical toward both morality and moral theory. Some argue that moral theory is a radically misguided enterprise that does not illuminate moral practice, while others simply deny the value of morality in human life. In this important new book, Louden responds to the arguments of both "anti-morality" and "anti-theory" skeptics. In Part One, he develops and defends an alternative conception of morality, which, he argues, captures more of the central features of both Aristotelian and Kantian (...) ethics than do other contemporary models, and enables the central importance of morality to be convincingly reaffirmed. In Louden's model, morality is primarily a matter of what one does to oneself, rather than what one does or does not do to others. This model eliminates the gulf that many anti-morality critics say exists between morality's demands and the personal point of view. Louden further argues that morality's primary focus should be on agents and their lives, rather than on right actions, and that it is always better to be morally better--i.e. it is impossible to be "too moral." Part Two presents Louden's alternative conception of moral theory. Here again he draws on the work of Aristotle and Kant, showing that their moral theories have far more in common than is usually thought, and that those features that they share can be the basis for a viable moral theory that is immune to the standard anti-theory objections. Louden reaffirms the necessity and importance of moral theory in human life, and shows that moral theories fulfill a variety of genuine and indispensable human needs. (shrink)

Psychoactive drugs are being prescribed to millions of Americans at an increasing rate. In many cases these drugs are necessary in order to overcome debilitating emotional problems. Yet in other instances, these drugs are used to supplant, not supplement, interpersonal therapy. The process of overcoming emotional obstacles by introspection and the attainment of self knowledge is gradually being eroded via the gratuitous use of psychoactive medication in order to rapidly attain a release from the common problems that life inevitably presents (...) us with. In this paper, I argue that Kant’s formula of humanity, which maintains that persons ought never to treat others or themselves soley as a means to an end, proscribes this. Moreover, Kant argues that we have an imperfect duty of self development, and I argue that we fail to adhere to such a duty whenever we seek to evade the process of introspection and self knowledge in favour of the expedient results that drugs may provide us with as we attempt to overcome the emotional hurdles in our lives. (shrink)

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was a giant among men. He made major contributions to genetics, population biology, and evolutionary theory. He was at once comfortable in mathematics, chemistry, microbiology and animal physiology. But it was his belief in education that led to his preparing his popular essays for publication. In his own words: "Many scientific workers believe that they should confine their publications to learned journals. I think that the public has a right to know what is going on inside (...) the laboratories, for some of which it pays." So begins Haldane's collection of essays, perhaps the most public intellectual communicating science before the writings of Stephen Jay Gould. The first part of the volume emphasizes the important developments in biology and natural science in the first quarter of the century. As such, it provides a benchmark for studies of the next three quarters of the century. In an unusual introduction, Price takes the readers through their paces, discussing the situation then and now in vitamins, oxygen want, disease controls, and the rewards of science as such. This is followed by Haldane's views on society, art, religion and economy as seen through the eyes of a politically alert major scientist. The editor provides readers unfamiliar with Haldane with a carefully rendered chronology of a life that began in 1892 and that spanned much of the present century. Despite ideas on race, class and politics that have seen better times, Haldane was truly exceptional in translating the science of his time into ideas that "everyman" could readily grasp. His predictions on what science would achieve were on target far more often than not. But even his failed predictions are perhaps the most interesting of all. They throw into sharp relief the truly novel and revolutionary developments in science over the past 75 years. J.B.S. Haldane held many positions and received many honors during his lifetime. But for most of the period covered in this volume, he was the William Dunn Reader in Biochemistry at Cambridge University. He simultaneously served as Fellow of New College, in Oxford University's Horticultural Institute. Carl A. Price served until 1999 as professor IIof plant molecular biology in the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He also served as the editor of Plant Molecular Biology Reporter from 1983 until 1997. This is the first volume in a new series on the history and theory of science. (shrink)

David Lewis‘s Parts of Classes is a great book, in all respects. But one of its most interesting thesis, in my mind, is not its core thesis that standard set theory — ZFC — reduces to classical mereology + plural quantification + a primitive singleton-relation, but rather its sub-thesis of how to understand classical mereology, what Lewis calls the thesis of Composition as Identity: (CAI): a whole is the same portion of reality as its many parts taken together; it is (...) them collectively, they collectively are it. CAI is needed as an assumption for the core thesis of Parts of Classes — the reduction of ZFC — on pain of it being unmotivated.1 But CAI is the most interesting in its own right. It is also as such it is presented by Lewis, and received in the literature. In what follows, I critically assess CAI as Lewis presents it in Parts of Classes. I first argue that Lewis‘s presentation of CAI has been misunderstood in the literature (section 1). I then argue that the best (if not the only) way to understand it entails a slightly revisionary semantics for a certain form of predication (section 2). I finally end by showing that this might create more trouble than it solves for Lewis (section 3). (shrink)

Many terminally ill patients perceive themselves to be a burden to loved ones who care for them. The self-perception of being a burden can play a significant role in terminal patients’ decisions to take courses of action, such as ceasing life-sustaining treatment or requesting physician-assisted suicide, that hasten death. I will use the term ‘burden-based decision’ as a shorthand for cases in which a terminal patient’s perception that she is a burden to her loved ones influences her decision to hasten (...) death. When should we view a terminal patient’s inclination to make a burden-based decision to be an ethical problem or a failure of treatment? And when should we view it to be an acceptable response rather than a problem or failure? I argue here that such decisions are acceptable more often than many who write on this topic imply. (shrink)

Georgians' acquaintance with Islam was with the first Arab raids. From the first Muslim Arab domination, Georgians started to become Muslims with cultural interaction. Islam spread especially in Eastern Georgia during the time of Muslim Arabs, Seljuks and Mongols. The spread of Islam in Western Georgia started with the Ottomans. The Ottoman Empire's contact with Georgia begins with the conquest of Trabzon by Fatih Sultan Mehmed. When the Ottomans contacted the region, the geography of Georgia was divided into small kingdoms. (...) With the conquest of Trabzon, the Georgian border was reached and in 1479, Acaristan, Borcka and Maçahel surroundings joined the Ottoman lands. On the one hand, Sukhumi was captured from the north. Then, continuing to advance in the region, Yavuz Sultan Selim paid tribute to the Kingdom of Güryel and Imeret (Açıkbaş) in 1508 during his governorship of Trabzon. Thus, the Ottoman borders had reached beyond the Black Sea coast into Western Georgia. As a result of the increasing relations around Adjaria, which came under Ottoman rule, Islamization began to spread rapidly among the people. Contrary to what is claimed, the spread of Islam in the region did not spread from the ruling strata to the lower, but from the popular strata to the ruling strata. This process was surprisingly fast. In the process of Islamization, many mosques, masjids and schools were built in Adjara, especially with the help of the people. The foundations operating in the region and the mosques and masjids serving under them show that, contrary to the claims of Russian and Georgian historians, Islamization took place rapidly at the beginning of the 17th century in Adjara. In this process, many mosques, masjids and schools were built in the region. In this research, based on the numerous Hurufat records belonging to Adjara, Batumi, Gönye, Çürüksu and Maçahel, the Islamization process will be evaluated by making a social reading with the data obtained from the religious structures established in the rural settlements of the Adjara geography and their officials. Evaluations were made on the Islamization process in Adjara by making a social reading. (shrink)

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable (...) editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history. Collected in one volume for the first time, The World and Africa and Color and Democracy are two of W E. B. Du Bois's most powerful essays on race. He explores how to tell the story of those left out of recorded history, the evils of colonialism worldwide, and Africa's and African's contributions to, and neglect from, world history. More than six decades after W. E. B. Du Bois wrote The World and Africa and Color and Democracy, they remain worthy guides for the twenty-first century. With a series introduction by editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and two introductions by top African scholars, this edition is essential for anyone interested in world history. (shrink)

It is widely believed that, if human behaviour is subject to universal causation, people cannot be responsible for their actions. However, the excuses that are normally accepted do not invoke causation, so they would still be limited in scope even if all action had causal antecedents. Diminished responsibility due to (temporary or permanent) mental defect does involve reference to causation, but not to the fact of causation — rather, to the kind of causation. Again, therefore, universal causation does not threatenresponsibility (...) in the cases in which we currently hold people responsible. Nevertheless, the fact that human beings are not radically self-determining does have implications.For it means that people cannot be held responsible for not doing things that are beyond their powers. If we combine this with the ethical principle that people should not suffer as a result of things for which they are not responsible, we can derive the conclusion that many existing inequalities cannot be justified. (shrink)

Entrepreneurs generally lack the marketing capabilities necessary to bring their new product to market. To engage the resources required to do this, they must somehow place a value on the enterprise. However, all of the methods of valuation currently available are based on the use of historical or current revenues, and therefore are not applicable to an entrepreneurial enterprise with a first-time product. In Valuing an Entrepreneurial Enterprise, Audretsch and Link present a valuation method uniquely tailored to emerging technology-based ventures (...) that have no revenue history to lean on. Unlike many traditional methods, theirs does not take into account the track record of companies and products similar to that being valuated. Instead, it draws on economic theory to formulate a solution to the problem. The book develops conceptual ground, including trends in entrepreneurship, models of innovation, and the economics of standards and entrepreneurship policy. The authors review the traditional valuation methods and illustrate them numerically with case studies to show how the traditional approach produces an incorrect valuation. The core of the book presents the new methodology and demonstrates how it avoids the pitfalls of past approaches. The authors also show how public policy on technology and infrastructure changes valuations of start-up firms in areas such as stem-cell products and renewable fuels projects. Valuing an Entrepreneurial Enterprise will serve as a valuable resource for advanced students, economists, financial planners, and valuators interested in new valuation methods and the theory behind them, as well as those interested in entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Sex is a fundamentally important biological variable. Recent years have seen significant progress in the integration of sex in many aspects of basic and clinical research, including analyses of sex differences in brain function. Significant advances in the technology available for studying the endocrine and nervous systems are now coupled with a more sophisticated awareness of the interconnections of these two communication systems of the body. A thorough understanding of the current knowledge, conceptual approaches, methodological capabilities, and challenges is a (...) prerequisite to continued progress in research and therapeutics in this interdisciplinary area. Sex Differences in the Brain provides scientists with the basic tools for investigating sex differences in brain and behavior and insight into areas where important progress in understanding physiologically relevant sex differences has already been made. This book was edited and co-authored by members of the Isis Fund Network on Sex, Gender, Drugs and the Brain, sponsored by the Society for Womens Health Research. The book is arranged in three parts. The first part of the book introduces the study of sex differences in the brain, with an overview of how the brain, stress systems, and pharmacogenetics differ in males and females and how this information is important for the study of behavior and neurobiology of both genders. The second part presents examples of sex differences in neurobiology and behavior from both basic and clinical research perspectives, covering both humans and nonhuman animals. The final part discusses sex differences in the neurobiology of disease and neurological disorders. For interested individuals as well as those who are considering conducting research at the intersections of endocrinology, neuroscience, and other areas of biomedicine, the study of sex differences offers exciting and challenging questions and perspectives. This book is intended as a guide and resource for clinicians, scientists, and students. (shrink)

Bradford C Bemiss, Chad A WittDepartment of Internal Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA: Chronic rejection is a major cause of death after the first year following lung transplantation. Bronchiolitis obliterans is the most common pathologic finding on biopsy, characterized by fibrous granulation tissue, which obliterates the lumen of the bronchiole. Clinically, in the absence of tissue for pathology, BO syndrome refers to a progressive irreversible drop in the forced (...) expiratory volume in 1 second. Recently, a broader definition of chronic rejection, termed "chronic lung allograft dysfunction", has been used to encompass a more inclusive definition of posttransplant dysfunction. Recently, the lung transplant community has come to realize that chronic rejection may be the final common result after repetitive epithelial insults. Acute rejection, infection, and alloreactivity to mismatched HLA antigens are a few of these insults that damage the surface of the bronchioles. Recent evidence of autoimmunity to the normally hidden structural proteins collagen V and K-α1 tubulin have been correlated with a BO phenotype as well, perhaps correlating the epithelial damage with a mechanism for developing BO lesions. Many immunomodulatory medications and treatments have been studied for effectiveness for the treatment of chronic lung allograft dysfunction. New drugs, which more precisely target the immune system, are being developed and tested. Further study is required, but recent advances have improved our understanding of the pathogenesis and potential intervention for this common and deadly complication of lung transplantation.Keywords: lung transplant, bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome, rejection. (shrink)

I share Kulagin's bewilderment over the term "work-situation theme." There is something unnatural in dividing literature - the study of human beings - into topics and headings. How many kinds of prose we have heard of in recent years: working class, rural, urban, youth, military, intellectual, personal, industrial. The eruptions and outbursts occurring in literary life tend largely to eliminate these lines of demarcation, and then the arguments rage not so much upon themes as about language, creative style, characters, and (...) the degree to which the writer was successful in depicting the full richness and variety of life. (shrink)

How can naïve realism defend itself in face of the illusion of the penny which looks elliptical when it is seen obliquely? Of late many philosophers have tried to deny that a penny looks elliptical when viewed obliquely: they have claimed that it still looks round. It may be true to say this of a small object like a penny, but it cannot be denied that the surfaces of objects in general do look different in shape when viewed from different (...) angles: a large circular object, like a round table, does not look round but elliptical when viewed obliquely. Nevertheless, for convenience, I shall use the example of the penny. The reader may suppose, if he wishes, that the penny is viewed from a considerable distance, say ten feet. (shrink)

Individuals’ propensity not to override the first answer that comes to mind is thought to be a crucial cause behind many failures in reasoning. In the present study, we aimed to explore the strategies used and the abilities employed when individuals solve the cognitive reflection test, the most widely used measure of this tendency. Alongside individual differences measures, protocol analysis was employed to unfold the steps of the reasoning process in solving the CRT. This exploration revealed that there are several (...) ways people solve or fail the test. Importantly, 77% of the cases in which reasoners gave the correct final answer in our protocol analysis, they started their response with the correct answer or with a line of thought which led to the correct answer. We also found that 39% of the incorrect responders reflected on their first response. The findings indicate that the suppression of the first answer may not be the only crucial feature of reflectivity in the CRT and that the lack of relevant knowledge is a prominent cause of the reasoning errors. Additionally, we confirmed that the CRT is a multi-faceted construct: both numeracy and reflectivity account for performance. The results can help to better apprehend the “whys and whens” of the decision errors in heuristics and biases tasks and to further refine existing explanatory models. (shrink)

A thorough account of Africa's history and its lasting influence on Western culture told from the perspective of the disparate descendants who inherited its legacy. W.E.B. Du Bois highlights the hidden stories that connect these varied communities. Originally published in 1915, The Negro presents an expansive analysis of the African diaspora over the course of history. W.E.B. Du Bois uses a critical eye to survey the early depictions of the continent, debunking stereotypical myths about its social structure. He addresses the (...) generational impact of slavery as well as the capitalistic system that made it possible. It's an honest look at the effects of white supremacy, classism and its place in modern society. From Ethiopia and Egypt to the West Indies and Latin America, Africa's influence is undeniable. The Negro sheds light on the ignored history of the continent and its many descendants. It's a vital piece of literature that acknowledges and celebrates its cultural power. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Negro is both modern and readable. (shrink)

Objective: To explore the ways in which health care practitioners working within the morally contested area of prenatal screening balance their professional and private moral values.Design: Qualitative study incorporating semistructured interviews with health practitioners followed by multidisciplinary discussion groups led by a health care ethicist.Setting: Inner city teaching hospital and district general hospital situated in South East England.Participants: Seventy practitioners whose work relates directly or indirectly to perinatal care.Results: Practitioners managed the interface between their professional and private moral values in (...) a variety of ways. Two key categories emerged: “tolerators”, and “facilitators”. The majority of practitioners fell into the “facilitator” category. Many “facilitators” felt comfortable with the prevailing ethos within their unit, and appeared unlikely to feel challenged unless the ethos was radically challenged. For others, the separation of personal and professional moral values was a daily struggle. In the “tolerator” group, some practitioners sought to influence the service offered directly, whereas others placed limits on how they themselves would contribute to practices they considered immoral.Conclusions: The “official” commitment to non-directiveness does not encourage open debate between professionals working in morally contested fields. It is important that practical means can be found to support practitioners and encourage debate. Otherwise, it is argued, these fields may come to be staffed by people with homogeneous moral views. This lack of diversity could lead to a lack of critical analysis and debate among staff about the ethos and standards of care within their unit. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: I have great respect for efforts by Francisco Varela, Jonathan Shear and company to create a systematic phenomenology. In support of their efforts it should be noted that there is no need to start from scratch. We already have a systematic study of human conscious experience, and it is called ‘psychology'. True, many academic psychologists deny this rather obvious fact, but if we look at what they do rather than what they say, we find that they are always (...) studying the things people can report with accuracy. But the things we humans can report accurately are the same things we experience as conscious! Reportability is the generally accepted index of consciousness. In point of fact, therefore, psychologists are always asking people about their conscious experiences. (shrink)

Epistemic internalism, by stressing the indispensability of the subject’s perspective, strikes many as plausible at first blush. However, many people have tended to reject the position because certain kinds of beliefs have been thought to pose special problems for epistemic internalism. For example, internalists tend to hold that so long as a justifier is available to the subject either immediately or upon introspection, it can serve to justify beliefs. Many have thought it obvious that no such view can be correct, (...) as it has been alleged that internalism cannot account for the possibility of the justification of beliefs stored in memory. -/- My aim in this paper is to offer a response that explains how memory justification is possible in a way that is consistent with epistemic internalism and an awareness condition on justification. Specifically, I will explore the plausibility of various options open to internalists, including both foundationalist and non-foundationalist approaches to the structure of justification. I intend to show that despite other difficult challenges that epistemic internalism might face, memory belief poses no special problems that the resources of internalism cannot adequately address. (shrink)

'Why did the window break when it was hit by the stone? Because the window is brittle and the stone is hard; hardness and brittleness are powers, dispositional properties or dispositions.' Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. This book is a record of the debate on the nature of dispositions between three distinguished philosophers - D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin and U. T. Place - who have been thinking about dispositions all their working lives. Their distinctive (...) accounts cover many of the issues surrounding dispositions such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation. Dispositions illuminates this central topic in analytic philosophy and at the same time highlights deeper concerns of metaphysics. (shrink)

Both fairness and efficiency are important considerations in market design and regulation, yet many regulators have neither defined nor measured these concepts. We develop an evidencebased policy framework in which these are both defined and measured using a series of empirical proxies. We then build a systems estimation model to examine the 2003–2011 explosive growth in algorithmic trading on the London Stock Exchange and NYSE Euronext Paris. Our results show that greater AT is associated with increased transactional efficiency and reduced (...) information leakage in top quintile stocks. For less liquid stocks, manipulation at the close declines. We also document the tradeoff between reduced spreads and increased manipulation or information leakage following the introduction of MiFID1. (shrink)

Much of the opinion scandalized by recent reports of kidneys being sold for transplant is significantly inconsistent. The sale of kidneys is not substantially different from practices espoused, and indeed endorsed, by many of those who condemn the former. Our moral concern, I suggest, needs to focus on the customer's actions rather than the seller's; and on the implications for larger questions of the considerations to which this gives rise.

In the early 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to concerted advocacy-group lobbying, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of "hate crime" laws requiring the collection of statistics on, and enhancing the punishment for, crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places the evolution of the hate crime concept in socio-legal perspective. James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter adopt a skeptical if not critical stance, maintaining that legal definitions of hate (...) crime are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. No matter how hate crime is defined, and despite an apparent media consensus to the contrary, the authors find no evidence to support the claim that the United States is experiencing a hate crime epidemic--instead, they cast doubt on whether the number of hate crimes is even increasing. The authors further assert that, while the federal effort to establish a reliable hate crime accounting system has failed, data collected for this purpose have led to widespread misinterpretation of the state of intergroup relations in this country. The book contends that hate crime as a socio-legal category represents the elaboration of an identity politics now manifesting itself in many areas of the law. But the attempt to apply the anti-discrimination paradigm to criminal law generates problems and anomalies. For one thing, members of minority groups are frequently hate crime perpetrators. Moreover, the underlying conduct prohibited by hate crime law is already subject to criminal punishment. Jacobs and Potter question whether hate crimes are worse or more serious than similar crimes attributable to other anti-social motivations. They also argue that the effort to single out hate crime for greater punishment is, in effect, an effort to punish some offenders more seriously simply because of their beliefs, opinions, or values, thus implicating the First Amendment. Advancing a provocative argument in clear and persuasive terms, Jacobs and Potter show how the recriminalization of hate crime has little value with respect to law enforcement or criminal justice. Indeed, enforcement of such laws may exacerbate intergroup tensions rather than eradicate prejudice. (shrink)

A dominant strand of philosophical thought holds that natural kinds are clusters of objects with shared properties. Cluster theories of natural kinds are often taken to be a late twentieth-century development, prompted by dissatisfaction with essentialism in philosophy of biology. I will argue here, however, that a cluster theory of kinds had actually been formulated by William Whewell (1794-1866) more than a century earlier. Cluster theories of kinds can be characterized in terms of three central commitments, all of which are (...) present in Whewell’s work on classification. Like contemporary cluster theorists, Whewell claims that kinds are united by similarity, that many kinds do not have essences, and that there are “gaps” between kinds. Moreover, Whewell advises taxonomists to look for consilience (roughly, convergence) between different classificatory schemes, a recommendation that reinforces the identification of natural classes with property clusters. Thus Whewell was not only an early cluster theorist, but one with important insights into what a cluster theory of kinds means for the practice of classification. (shrink)

Context: As one of the major approaches within the philosophy of mathematics, constructivism is to be contrasted with realist approaches such as Platonism in that it takes human mental activity as the basis of mathematical content. Problem: Mathematical constructivism is mostly identified as one of the so-called foundationalist accounts internal to mathematics. Other perspectives are possible, however. Results: The notion of “meaning finitism” is exploited to tie together internal and external directions within mathematical constructivism. The various contributions to this issue (...) support our case in different ways. Constructivist content: Further contributions from a multitude of constructivist directions are needed for the puzzle of an integrative, overarching theory of mathematical practice to be solved. (shrink)

Insults are part of the fabric of daily life. But why do we insult each other? Why do insults cause us such pain? Can we do anything to prevent or lessen this pain? Most importantly, how can we overcome our inclination to insult others? In A Slap in the Face, William Irvine undertakes a wide-ranging investigation of insults, their history, the role they play in social relationships, and the science behind them. He examines not just memorable zingers, such as Elizabeth (...) Bowen's description of Aldous Huxley as "The stupid person's idea of a clever person," but subtle insults as well, such as when someone insults us by reporting the insulting things others have said about us: "I never read bad reviews about myself," wrote entertainer Oscar Levant, "because my best friends invariably tell me about them." Irvine also considers the role insults play in our society: they can be used to cement relations, as when a woman playfully teases her husband, or to enforce a social hierarchy, as when a boss publicly berates an employee. He goes on to investigate the many ways society has tried to deal with insults-by adopting codes of politeness, for example, and outlawing hate speech-but concludes that the best way to deal with insults is to immunize ourselves against them: We need to transform ourselves in the manner recommended by Stoic philosophers. We should, more precisely, become insult pacifists, trying hard not to insult others and laughing off their attempts to insult us.A rousing follow-up to A Guide to the Good Life, A Slap in the Face will interest anyone who's ever delivered an insult or felt the sting of one--in other words, everyone. (shrink)

Early in the 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to what was said to be an epidemic of prejudice-motivated violence, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of 'hate crime' laws that required the collection of statistics and enhanced the punishment of crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places in socio-legal perspective both the hate crime problem and society's response to it. From the outset, Jacobs and Potter adopt a skeptical (...) if not critical stance. They argue that hate crime is a hopelessly muddled concept and that legal definitions of the term are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. Moreover, no matter how hate crime is defined, the authors find no evidence to support the claim that the US is experiencing a hate crime epidemic—nor that the number or rate of hate crimes is at an historic zenith. (shrink)

Professor Kemp Smith in providing a new edition of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , embodying all the author’s additions and corrections, has given expression to the perennial interest and fascination which this work has possessed for many minds during the odd one hundred and fifty years since it was first published by Hume’s nephew. The editor himself has performed a great service by contributing an Introduction and a clear and concise summary of the Dialogues , in both of which (...) he expounds his own view as to how Hume’s discussion is to be interpreted. Hume employs three characters—Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes; and. (shrink)

The topic of â oeConflict and Harmonyâ exists across many cultures. As a collection of essays from comparative philosophers around the world, this volume represents the latest research on cross-cultural approaches to issues of conflict and the possibilities of harmony. Composed of papers presented at the 2013 Joint Meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the Australasian Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, the book offers contributions from both early career academics and long-standing researchers, with topics spanning (...) various historical times and places. Subjects explored here include approaches to classical understandings of harmony and conflict from different contexts, the connection embodied experience has with conflict and harmony, and political approaches to harmony and conflict. Through discussions of Indian, Chinese, Greek, and contemporary philosophy, these papers represent the cutting edge of comparative work and its overlaps with history, religious studies, and political science. (shrink)

Maddy's notion of restrictiveness has many problematic aspects, one of them being that it is almost impossible to show that a theory is not restrictive. In this note the author addresses a crucial question of Martin Goldstern (Vienna) and points to some directions of future research.