BackgroundCommunity engagement within biomedical research is broadly defined as a collaborative relationship between a research team and a group of individuals targeted for research. A Community Advisory Board is one mechanism of engaging the community. Within genomics research CABs may be particularly relevant due to the potential implications of research findings drawn from individual participants on the larger communities they represent. Within such research, CABs seek to meet instrumental goals such as protecting research participants and their community from research-related risks, (...) as well as intrinsic goals such as promoting the respect of participants and their community. However, successful community engagement depends on the degree to which CABs legitimately represent and engage with communities targeted for research. Currently, there is little literature describing the use of CABs in genomics research taking place in developing countries, and even less in the field of genomics research relating to mental illness. The aim of this article is to describe and consider the contributions made by a researcher-driven, population-specific CAB in a genomics of schizophrenia research project taking place in South Africa, from the perspective of the research team.DiscussionFour broad discussion topics emerged during the CAB meetings namely: 1) informed consent procedures, 2) recruitment strategies, 3) patient illness beliefs and stigma experiences, and 4) specific ethical concerns relating to the project. The authors consider these discussions in terms of their contributions to instrumental and intrinsic goals of community engagement.SummaryThe CAB gave valuable input on the consent processes and materials, recruitment strategies and suggested ways of minimizing the potential for stigma and discrimination. All of these contributions were of an instrumental nature, and helped improve the way in which the research took place. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, the CAB made a unique and important contribution relating to intrinsic functions such as promoting the respect and dignity of research participants and their community. This was particularly evident in ensuring sensitivity and respect of the community’s traditional beliefs about schizophrenia and its treatment, and in this way promoting a respectful relationship between the research team and the participants. (shrink)

The 2014 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes that genetic information should not be commoditised”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, now in its sixth year, provided the starting point for arguments on the subject. The present article brings together and extends many of the arguments put forward during the debate. We explore the circumstances under which genetic material should be considered patentable, the possible effects of this on the (...) research and development of novel therapeutics, and the need for clear guidelines within this rapidly developing field. (shrink)

In recent months, pharmaceutical manufacturers have brought legal challenges to a provision of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) empowering the federal government to negotiate the prices Medicare pays for certain prescription medications. One key argument made in these filings is that price negotiation is a “taking” of property and violates the Takings Clause of the US Constitution. Through original case law and health policy analysis, we show that government price negotiation and even price regulation of goods and services, including (...) patented goods, are constitutional under the Takings Clause. Finding that the IRA violates the Takings Clause would radically upend settled constitutional law and jeopardize the US’s most important state and federal health care programs. (shrink)

The aim of this report is to present an example of a multidisciplinary Indian-Swedish co-operation on ethics in health care. It is based on a conference held in Asia Plateau, Panchgani, Maharasthra, India in 1998. The emphasis is on ethical values that are important for consumers of health care and professionals, and also for different cultures in developed and developing countries. The importance of human dignity is stressed. Sixteen recommendations are given in an appendix.

Sri Aurobindo dedicated his life to the transformation of humanity. His journey saw him traverse many paths, including that of poet, journalist, jailed revolutionary, philosopher, and radical mystic. Essays, translations, literary criticism, political articles, philosophical treatises, poetry, epics, plays and short stories-his writings encompass the depth and range of his extraordinary life. The modern sage commented on spiritual texts such as the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagwad Gita, authored an epic poem, Savitri, presented his integral vision in The Life (...) Divine, wrote on contemporary issues, all the while writing thousands of letters to guide his disciples, and even documenting his inner life in meticulous detail. The relevance of Sri Aurobindo's message has never been more urgent and compelling, yet, his Complete Works, thirty-six volumes in all, can be a daunting prospect even for those acquainted with his philosophy and practice. Reading Sri Aurobindo introduces each of these volumes through the perspectives of twenty-one contributors. The result is a book packed with insights inviting us to explore Sri Aurobindo's deep wisdom and vision for resolving the fundamental issues facing individuals, societies, and nations today. (shrink)

Journal of Human Values, Volume 28, Issue 2, Page 161-164, May 2022. Slavoj Žižek, Panic! Covid 19 Shakes the World. New York and London: OR Books, 2020, 146 pp., $15. ISBN: 978-1-68219-301-3.

Thirty-eight individuals (mean age: 34.8 years old) participating in a 3-month yoga and meditation retreat were assessed before and after the intervention for psychometric measures, brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), circadian salivary cortisol levels, and pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines. Participation in the retreat was found to be associated with decreases in self-reported anxiety and depression as well as increases in mindfulness. As hypothesized, increases in the plasma levels of BDNF and increases in the magnitude of the cortisol awakening response (CAR) (...) were also observed. The normalized change in BDNF levels was inversely correlated with BSI-18 anxiety scores at both the pre-retreat (r = 0.40, p < 0.05) and post-retreat (r = 0.52, p < 0.005) such that those with greater anxiety scores tended to exhibit smaller pre- to post-retreat increases in plasma BDNF levels. In line with a hypothesized decrease in inflammatory processes resulting from the yoga and meditation practices, we found that the plasma level of the anti-inflammatory cytokine Interleukin-10 was increased and the pro-inflammatory cytokine Interleukin-12 was reduced after the retreat. Contrary to our initial hypotheses, plasma levels of other pro-inflammatory cytokines, including Interferon Gamma (IFN-γ), Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF-α), Interleukin-1β (IL-1β), Interleukin-6 (IL-6), and Interleukin-8 (IL-8) were increased after the retreat. Given evidence from previous studies of the positive effects of meditative practices on mental fitness, autonomic homeostasis and inflammatory status, we hypothesize that these findings are related to the meditative practices throughout the retreat; however, some of the observed changes may also be related to other aspects of the retreat such as physical exercise-related components of the yoga practice and diet. We hypothesize that the patterns of change observed here reflect mind-body integration and well-being. The increased BDNF levels observed is a potential mediator between meditative practices and brain health, the increased CAR is likely a reflection of increased dynamic physiological arousal, and the relationship of the dual enhancement of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine changes to healthy immunologic functioning is discussed. (shrink)

Academic research studies examining the ethical attitudes and behaviors of salespeople have produced several frameworks that explore the ethical decision-making processes to which salespeople adhere when faced with ethical dilemmas. Past literature enriches our understanding; however, a critical review of the relevant literature suggests that an emotional route to salesperson ethical decision-making has yet to be explored. Given the fact that individuals’ emotional capacities play an important role in decision-making when faced with an ethical dilemma, there is a need for (...) empirical research in this area. We address this issue by outlining and testing an emotion-based model to study the ethical attitudes and behaviors of salespeople in a relational selling context. Building on the cognitive-affective model proposed by Gaudine and Thorne (J Bus Ethics 31:175–187, 2001 ), we outline a framework that incorporates higher order prosocial emotions: capacity for concern and capacity for guilt. We include salesperson’s role clarity within the organization as a moderator to examine person–situation interaction. (shrink)

As students progress towards their PhD degrees, they will become more independent and practitioner-like; for those moving into academia, it is often assumed the programs of their PhD mentors will serve as prototypes for their own successful research programs. However, the author's research program as an Assistant Professor led him in directions never considered as a graduate student. The author had to make significant decisions in choosing a primary audience, finding an overarching theme, defining the individual problems, and developing these (...) problems into researchable projects. Infrastructure-related issues associated with the author's research program were also considered. The details of his journey from the end of his doctoral degree to his current position as an Assistant Professor are described in this article. (shrink)

In the 1958 lecture, “Hegel and the Greeks,” how does Heidegger intimate a complex sense of historical temporalization when he suggests that the ‘whole of philosophy in its history’ is contained in the title: “Hegel and the Greeks?” Our hypothesis may appear contrarian to contemporary assumptions: a complex notion of origin as paradoxically ‘futural’— particularly in its metaphysical breadth in say the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic—is also at work in Heidegger’s thought. This is particularly acute when (...) Heidegger examines the origin of philosophy in ancient Greek thought as a space that opens a future horizon of Being to dawn—that is, some calling that comes from the unforeseeable future to transcend what Heidegger sees as the end, finality, and ‘collapse’ ofphilosophy after Hegel. (shrink)

Mody and Carey (2016) investigated children's capacity to reason by the disjunctive syllogism by hiding stickers within two pairs of cups (i.e., there is one sticker in cup A or B, and one in cup C or D) and then showing one cup to be empty. They found that children as young as 3 years of age chose the most likely cup (i.e., not A, therefore choose B; and disregard C and D) and suggested that these children were representing the (...) dependent relationship between A and B by applying the logical operator “or”. However, it is possible that children succeeded using simpler strategies, such as avoiding the empty cup and choosing within the manipulated pair. We devised a new version of the task in which a sticker was visibly removed from one of the four cups so that 2.5- to 5-year-old children (N = 100) would fail if they relied on such strategies. We also included a conceptual replication of Mody and Carey's (2016) original condition. Our results replicated their findings and showed that even younger children, 2.5 years of age, could pass above chance levels. Yet, 2.5-, 3- and 4-year-olds failed the new condition. Only 5-year-old children performed above chance in both conditions and so provided compelling evidence of deductive reasoning from the premise “A or B", where “or” is exclusive. We propose that younger children may instead conceive of the relationship between A and B as inclusive “or” across both versions of the task. (shrink)

Background: Maximum safe resection of infiltrative brain tumors in eloquent area is the primary objective in surgical neuro-oncology. This goal can be achieved with direct electrical stimulation to perform a functional mapping of the brain in patients awake intraoperatively. When awake surgery is not possible, we propose a pipeline procedure that combines advanced techniques aiming at performing a dissection that respects the anatomo-functional connectivity of the peritumoral region. This procedure can benefit from intraoperative monitoring with computerized tomography scan and brain (...) shift correction. Associated with this intraoperative monitoring, the additional value of preoperative investigation combining brain mapping by navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation with various neuroimaging modalities has not yet been reported.Case Report: A 42-year-old left-handed man had increased intracranial pressure, left hand muscle deficit, and dysarthria, related to an infiltrative tumor of the right frontal lobe with large mass effect and circumscribed contrast enhancement in motor and premotor cortical areas. Spectroscopy profile and intratumoral calcifications on CT-scan suggested an WHO grade III glioma, later confirmed by histology. The aforementioned surgical procedure was considered, since standard awake surgery was not appropriate for this patient. In preoperative time, nTMS mapping of motor function was performed, combined with magnetic resonance imaging -based tractography reconstruction of 6 neural tracts and resting-state functional MRI connectivity of sensorimotor and language networks. In intraoperative time, DES mapping was performed with motor evoked response recording and tumor resection was optimized using non-rigid image transformation of the preoperative data to iCT data. Image guidance was updated with correction for brain shift and tissue deformation using biomechanical modeling taking into account brain elastic properties. This correction was done at crucial surgical steps, i.e., when tumor bulged through the craniotomy after dura mater opening and when approaching the presumed eloquent brain regions. This procedure allowed a total resection of the tumor region with contrast enhancement as well as a complete regression of IICP and dysarthria. Hand paresis remained stable with no additional deficit. Postoperative nTMS mapping confirmed the good functional outcome.Conclusion: This case report and technical note highlights the value of preoperative functional evaluation by nTMS updated intraoperatively with correction of brain deformation by iCT. This multimodal approach may become the optimized technique of reference for patients with brain tumors in eloquent areas that are unsuitable for awake brain surgery. (shrink)

Samatavilasa, The Radiant Sameness, shows the way of finding our fallen condition itself as redemptive. We are not merely to accept our pain and our mortal condition but to live these and become these. In becoming that pain lies our bliss, in living our mortality immortality. That alone is the highest bliss and absolute, that alone is salvation the final, this our becoming one with our mortal and absolutely tragic lot. That is what the state of samata, sameness, is. Only (...) that man is a mukta, a liberated soul, who can look alike on Maya and Brahman, on reality and appearance, on bondage and liberation, on life and death, on misery and joy. Not that there is an actual state called the state of liberation, an actual bliss that is absolute and highest, for terms like absolute and highest turn out to be relative, and, therefore, mis-leading. Hypostati-zation of samata would not work, for all hypo-statization is rooted in our narcissistic passion. Yet Samatavilasa would not, in actual fact does not, encourage us to look alike on these opposites constitutive of our mortal being as long as we fight a desperate fight against our inevitable and destined fate, fate the mortal; a stern discipline we have to undergo before we can even think of samata, sameness, not to speak of living it. For, not before dying unto himself can a man look alike on these dualities, the stuff our mortal life and being are made of. (shrink)

The popularity of ‘food sovereignty’ to cover a range of positions, interventions, and struggles within the food system is testament, above all, to the term’s adaptability. Food sovereignty is centrally, though not exclusively, about groups of people making their own decisions about the food system—it is a way of talking about a theoretically-informed food systems practice. Since people are different, we should expect decisions about food sovereignty to be different in different contexts, albeit consonant with a core set of principles. (...) In this paper we look at the analytical points of friction in applying ideas of food sovereignty within the context of Indigenous struggles in North America. This, we argue, helps to clarify one of the central themes in food sovereignty: that it is a continuation of anti-colonial struggles, even in post-colonial contexts. Such an examination has dividends both for scholars of food sovereignty and for those of Indigenous politics: by helping to problematize notions of food sovereignty and postcoloniality, but also by posing pointed questions around gender for Indigenous struggles. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

Rationale: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the hippocampus is proposed for enhancement of memory impaired by injury or disease. Many pre-clinical DBS paradigms can be addressed in epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for seizure localization, since they already have electrodes implanted in brain areas of interest. Even though epilepsy is usually not a memory disorder targeted by DBS, the studies can nevertheless model other memory-impacting disorders, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Methods: Human patients undergoing Phase II invasive monitoring for (...) intractable epilepsy were implanted with depth electrodes capable of recording neurophysiological signals. Subjects performed a delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) memory task while hippocampal ensembles from CA1 and CA3 cell layers were recorded to estimate a multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) model of CA3-to-CA1 neural encoding and a memory decoding model (MDM) to decode memory information from CA3 and CA1 neuronal signals. After model estimation, subjects again performed the DMS task while either MIMO-based or MDM-based patterned stimulation was delivered to CA1 electrode sites during the encoding phase of the DMS trials. Each subject was sorted (post hoc) by prior experience of repeated and/or mild-to-moderate brain injury (RMBI), TBI, or no history (control) and scored for percentage successful delayed recognition (DR) recall on stimulated vs. non-stimulated DMS trials. The subject’s medical history was unknown to the experimenters until after individual subject memory retention results were scored. Results: When examined compared to control subjects, both TBI and RMBI subjects showed increased memory retention in response to both MIMO and MDM-based hippocampal stimulation. Furthermore, effects of stimulation were also greater in subjects who were evaluated as having pre-existing mild-to-moderate memory impairment. Conclusion: These results show that hippocampal stimulation for memory facilitation was more beneficial for subjects who had previously suffered a brain injury (other than epilepsy), compared to control (epilepsy) subjects who had not suffered a brain injury. This study demonstrates that the epilepsy/intracranial recording model can be extended to test the ability of DBS to restore memory function in subjects who previously suffered a brain injury other than epilepsy, and support further investigation into the beneficial effect of DBS in TBI patients. (shrink)

Business leadership increasingly requires a master’s degree in business and graduate management admission test scores continue to be an important component of applications for admission to such programs. Given the ubiquitous use of GMAT scores as gatekeepers for business leadership, GMAT scores are likely to influence organizational ethical behavior through gender, cultural, and other biases in the GMAT. There is little prior literature in this area and we contribute by empirically documenting that GMAT scores are negatively related to the cultural (...) dimensions of masculinity and power distance and are positively related to math literacy, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism. We estimate that cultural factors may account for as much as an 80-point difference in cross-national mean GMAT scores which are also related negatively to local language literacy, national educational spending, wealth per capita, wealth inequality, and gender development. Most interestingly, we also find a significant negative association of GMAT scores with ethical orientation. These findings have important implications for business schools and corporate ethics and leadership. (shrink)

We revisit a typological puzzle due to Horn (Doctoral Dissertation, UCLA, 1972) regarding the lexicalization of logical operators: in instantiations of the traditional square of opposition across categories and languages, the O corner, corresponding to ‘nand’ (= not and), ‘nevery’ (= not every), etc., is never lexicalized. We discuss Horn’s proposal, which involves the interaction of two economy conditions, one that relies on scalar implicatures and one that relies on markedness. We observe that in order to express markedness and to (...) account for a bigger typological puzzle, namely the absence of lexicalizations of ‘XOR’ (= exclusive or), ‘all-or-none’, and many other imaginable logical operators, one must restrict the basic lexicalizable elements to a small set of primitives. We suggest that an ordering based perspective, following Keenan and Faltz (Boolean semantics for natural language, 1985), makes the stipulated primitives that we arrive at more natural. We also propose a modification to Horn’s proposal, based on recent work on implicatures, in which only the implicature condition is operative and in which markedness is part of the definition of the alternatives for scalar implicatures rather than an independent condition. (shrink)

One cannot deny the fact that we all have some understanding of moral issues. Each one of us can be said to have some sense of what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what ought to be done, and what ought not to be done. This moral understanding can be in the form of some vague idea, notion, or simply a gut feeling. No matter who the person is, from which culture or community the person (...) belongs to, everybody faces a moral quandary sometime or other in one’s life. All of this presupposes that there is some fundamental sense or understanding of what is right and what is wrong. We all seem to have some understanding about actions that are right and those that are wrong. Some actions, for instance, torturing babies just for fun, killing an innocent person, raping, etc. are exemplars of morally wrong actions. Assisting a person in need, giving to famine relief, etc. on the other hand are examples of morally right actions. The present essay is an attempt to delve into the question of the source of moral knowledge. Three sources, experience, reason, and intuition have been identified. Views of philosophers like G.E Moore, WD Ross, Immanuel Kant, JS Mill, Plato, Samuel Clarke, Aristotle Hume, and Anthony Ashley Cooper have been discussed to gain clarity about the issue. (shrink)

Through ten case studies by international specialists, this book investigates the circulation and production of scientific knowledge between 1750 and 1945 in the fields of agriculture, astronomy, botany, cartography, medicine, statistics, and zoology. The book will interest scholars and undergraduate and graduate students concerned with the connections between the history of science, imperial history, and global history.

Peoples often question the relevance of spiritualism in their modern life. They want to know why they should know what they are within and why should they bother to change themselves. With rapid changes in the socio-economic aspects of life all over the world, peoples are under intense pressure, and are seeking something, which will help them to successfully deal with union with the universal and transcendent existence. Today many people are shifting to spiritual approach to life but relevant number (...) does not know how. We all desire a work experience that can fit neatly with our personal lives. We all seek balance. Too often however people’s work life overpowers the rest if their life. And when that happens, we can very easily find ourselves struggling to keep up in all areas of our lives. Life is not all-play –no –work. Neither it is all-work-no-play. It has its own course of mixed actions. Work culture also plays an important role in human life. It means work-related activities and the meanings attached to such activities in the framework of norms and values regarding work these activities, norms and values are generally conceptualized in an organization. Understanding this chemistry and accepting the facts as its, is the starting point of a better life. When this happens the discussion has developed into a full-fledged philosophical one. And we come to ethics or moral philosophy and spiritualism. In this chapter we will study the philosophical outlook of work as a moral ideal in the form of karma. (shrink)

The article seeks to highlight the relation between ontology and communication while considering the role of AI in society and environment. Bioinformationalism is the technical term that foregrounds this relationality. The study reveals instructive consequences for philosophy of technology in general and AI in particular. The first section introduces the bioinformational approach to AI, focusing on three critical features of the current AI debate: ontology of information, property-based vs. relational AI, and ontology vs. constitution of AI. When applied to the (...) themes of relationality and non-anthropocentric communications, bioinformational insights highlight an inclusive and meaningful groundwork for understanding AI by ‘relating’ it with society and the environment through an engagement with the ongoing critique of human supremacy. In the second section, we move from ‘relating’ AI to ‘rewilding’ AI by proposing taxonomical classification for certain technological entities. We situate our proposal in the broader personhood debate with the proposal of taxonomical ranking. In the last section, we show an instance of a relational approach steeped in substantialist ontology by introducing the fourth feature of the AI debate. A broad critique of Floridi’s philosophy of information introduces this fourth feature from the domain of philosophy and sociology to address various theoretical and ecological problems with current relational accounts. In doing so, we argue for ‘communication’ to be the replacement of ‘information’ as the moral unit. A bioinformational understanding of AI advocates taking ontological commitments seriously at all levels of informational and technological processes and products. (shrink)

Corporate environmental ethics has moved from a niche issue within business strategy to a potential source of competitive advantage. Firms, however, are comprised of individuals who vary in their personal beliefs regarding environmental responsibility. Environmental stewards are those employees whose attitudes and actions reflect environmental concern. Top management can convey similar environmental values through the creation of eco-capabilities. Applying logic from the natural resource-based view of the firm, we build a model to test how the alignment of environmental values impacts (...) multiple outcomes. We conduct a time-lagged examination using multi-level data from frontline employees, their managers, and their customers. We find that firms can ‘activate’ their corporate environmental ethics through eco-capabilities. Specifically, environmental stewards find more meaning in their work when managers perceive high levels of eco-capabilities within the firm. This meaningful work increases employee brand advocacy and customer satisfaction. Together, we demonstrate how corporate environmental ethics translates to the frontline and the customers they serve. (shrink)

Recent research has provided compelling evidence that children experience the negative counterfactual emotion of regret, by manipulating the presence of a counterfactual action that would have led to participants receiving a better outcome. However, it remains unclear if children similarly experience regret’s positive counterpart, relief. The current study examined children’s negative and positive counterfactual emotions in a novel gain-or-loss context. Four- to 9-year-old children (N = 136) were presented with two opaque boxes concealing information that would lead to a gain (...) or loss of stickers, respectively. Half of the children chose between two keys that matched each box, whereas the other half were compelled to select one box because only one of the two keys matched. After seeing inside the alternative, non-chosen box, children were significantly more likely to report a change in emotion when they could have opened that box than when they could not have. The effects were similar for children who lost stickers and won stickers, and neither effect varied with age. These findings suggest that children may become capable of experiencing regret and relief around the same time, although their expression of these counterfactual emotions may vary with actual and counterfactual gains and losses. (shrink)

Purpose The high rate of internet penetration has led to the proliferation of social media use, even at the workplace, including academia. This research attempts to develop a topology and thereby determine the dominant use motive for faculty’s use of SM. Design/methodology/approach In this two-part study, a two-stage research design has been adopted for topology development based on the application of Uses and Gratifications Theory. In the second part, the Technology Acceptance Model is applied to discern the dominant motive for (...) SM use in academia. Findings The work is able to develop a seven-item topology, conforming to the basic three use motives, namely, hedonic, utilitarian and social. The work shows faculty attach more value to the instrumental utility of SM, while the hedonic function is also significant. Practical implications Discerning dominant motive implies that SM use at the workplace should not be banned, rather effective regulated use will instil the faculty to enhance work outcomes. The conceptualisation of topology for SM use in academia at the workplace can aid in designing an effective organisation policy, and design of an internal SM platform. Originality/value The study is unique towards topology development for academic faculty and has many important implications for management and academia, especially towards policy design for SM use at the workplace. (shrink)

This essay uses Freudian–Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to interpret Hassan Blasim’s short story “The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes”. Blasim’s story depicts the psychological struggles of an Iraqi emigrant relating to his embattled sense of belonging in a Dutch society due to the recurrent nightmares of his “traumatic” past. It challenges his assimilationist fantasies. I develop Lacan’s idea of ontological lack as a structural susceptibility that is exacerbated by actual experiences of trauma to underline how racialized refugees from the war-torn global South (...) are doubly vulnerable to experiencing subjective dehiscence between their efforts to forget past war traumas and the challenges of assimilating into (white) host nations. This essay uses Blasim’s story to illustrate a serious psychological issue experienced by racialized minority subjects in white/European host countries. (shrink)

We present evidence that preschool children oftentimes understand disjunctive sentences as if they were conjunctive. The result holds for matrix disjunctions as well as disjunctions embedded under every. At the same time, there is evidence in the literature that children understand or as inclusive disjunction in downward-entailing contexts. We propose to explain this seemingly conflicting pattern of results by assuming that the child knows the inclusive disjunction semantics of or, and that the conjunctive inference is a scalar implicature. We make (...) two assumptions about implicature computation in the child: that children access only a proper subset of the adult alternatives, and that children possess the adult capacity to strengthen sentences with implicatures. As a consequence, children are expected to sometimes not compute any implicatures at all, but in other cases they are expected to compute an implicature that is different from the adult implicature. We argue that the child’s conjunctive strengthening of disjunctive sentences realizes the latter possibility: the adult infers that the conjunction is false but the child infers that the conjunction is true. This behaviour is predicted when our assumptions about child development are coupled with the assumption that a covert exhaustive operator is responsible for strengthening in both the child and the adult. Specifically, children’s conjunctive strengthening is predicted to follow from the same mechanism used by adults to compute conjunctive free choice implicatures in response to disjunctive permission sentences. We furthermore argue that this parallel between the child and the adult extends to disambiguation preferences. In particular, we present evidence that children prefer to strengthen disjunctions to conjunctions, in matrix and embedded positions ; this result mirrors previous findings that adults prefer to compute free choice, at the root and under every. We propose a disambiguation strategy that explains the preference for conjunctive strengthening – by both the child and the adult – even though there is no general preference for exhaustification. Specifically, we propose that the preference for a conjunctive strengthening follows from a pragmatic preference for a complete answer to the Question Under Discussion. (shrink)

For medical interventions there is a gap between what clinical scientific research has established as likely to carry clinical benefit and what the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has judged as cost-effective. This gap is the affordability gap. It is created by a value judgement made by NICE and affirmed by the Secretary of State for Health. This value judgement operates to affect other value judgements made in actual clinical situations where at least one choice of treatment falls into (...) the affordability gap. This paper considers how the creation of this affordability gap impacts upon actual clinical decisions. It explores these issues in the context of the choice between a drug-eluting stent and a bare metal stent for elective coronary angioplasty. It also argues that the option of an NHS procedure with a top-up fee to cover the cost of the affordability gap is a genuine one; that this option could improve clinical outcomes; that it is morally acceptable; and that the rules that prevent the utilization of this option should be relaxed. (shrink)

The Schrödinger’s cat paradox has troubled physicists for many years and many ways to solve it has been provided so far. In this paper I will try to provide a different method of solving the Paradox with the help of logical machine and it will look like a hybrid of Wigner’s no-go theorem and the machine of Gödel in his Incompleteness Theorems. And due to the machine the paradox will not require any human intervention to measure the state of the (...) cat, whether it is alive or dead, while the measurement will be made by humans with regard to the statement given out by the machine. (shrink)

Maximize Presupposition! is an economy condition that adjudicates between contextually equivalent competing structures. Building on data discovered by O. Percus, I will argue that the constraint is checked in the local contexts of embedded constituents. I will argue that this architecture leads to a general solution to the problem of antipresupposition projection, and also allows I. Heim’s ‘Novelty/Familiarity Condition’ to be eliminated as a constraint on operations of context change.

Computational visual perception, also known as computer vision, is a field of artificial intelligence that enables computers to process digital images and videos in a similar way as biological vision does. It involves methods to be developed to replicate the capabilities of biological vision. The computer vision’s goal is to surpass the capabilities of biological vision in extracting useful information from visual data. The massive data generated today is one of the driving factors for the tremendous growth of computer vision. (...) This survey incorporates an overview of existing applications of deep learning in computational visual perception. The survey explores various deep learning techniques adapted to solve computer vision problems using deep convolutional neural networks and deep generative adversarial networks. The pitfalls of deep learning and their solutions are briefly discussed. The solutions discussed were dropout and augmentation. The results show that there is a significant improvement in the accuracy using dropout and data augmentation. Deep convolutional neural networks’ applications, namely, image classification, localization and detection, document analysis, and speech recognition, are discussed in detail. In-depth analysis of deep generative adversarial network applications, namely, image-to-image translation, image denoising, face aging, and facial attribute editing, is done. The deep generative adversarial network is unsupervised learning, but adding a certain number of labels in practical applications can improve its generating ability. However, it is challenging to acquire many data labels, but a small number of data labels can be acquired. Therefore, combining semisupervised learning and generative adversarial networks is one of the future directions. This article surveys the recent developments in this direction and provides a critical review of the related significant aspects, investigates the current opportunities and future challenges in all the emerging domains, and discusses the current opportunities in many emerging fields such as handwriting recognition, semantic mapping, webcam-based eye trackers, lumen center detection, query-by-string word, intermittently closed and open lakes and lagoons, and landslides. (shrink)

India has a long, rich, and diverse tradition of philosophical thoughts, spanning some two and a half millennia and encompassing several major religious traditions. India’s democracy can be said to rest on the foundation of religious practice due to the practice of multi-religions and different sects in its continent. Religious practices ties among citizens that generate positive and democratic political outcomes if we see it from the ideals of any religious doctrine as per their written scripture. But in society religious (...) practices (not religious doctrine) do not show equality and usually go against their own religious doctrine as preached in their religious places. It is also evident that religious denomination (Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh etc.) comes as a barrier when we practice democratic ideals in society and make social situation worst. How these religious practices contribute for a society where we can discuss the ideals of freedom, equality and brotherhood for a Just Society and become mean of interreligious dialogue in multi-religious society? this is a big question to think . The objective of this paper is to study the dimensions of religious practices in Indian society and how these practices can contribute in interreligious dialogue to make atmosphere of peace, understanding and harmony in the society. (shrink)