Public reason liberalism takes as its starting point the deep and irreconcilable diversity we find characterizing liberal societies. This deep and irreconcilable diversity creates problems for social order. One method for adjudicating these conflicts is through the use of rights. This paper is about the ability of such rights to adjudicate disputes when perspectival disagreements—or disagreements over how to categorize objects in the world—obtain. We present both formal possibility and impossibility results for rights structures under varying degrees of perspectival diversity. (...) We show that though perspectival diversity appears to be a troubling problem for the prospect of stable social order, if rights are defined properly then disagreements can likely be resolved in a consistent manner, achieving social cooperation rather than conflict. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 1-4.

Advances in medical technology inevitably bring about different kinds of ethical challenges for practising doctors. The following hypothetical case of assisted reproduction is presented as an example. A boy is born with Edward's syndrome following assisted reproduction. The parents suspect that there has been an error of embryo mix-up. They challenge the parenthood and request a genetic test to determine the biological parentage of the neonate. Should the attending paediatrician in this case accede to the request? We argue that the (...) paediatrician has no legal obligation to offer the test, although it might be lawful and ethical to provide the test subject to the outcome of our proposed three-step risk assessment. (shrink)

Online medical reference websites are utilized by health care providers to enhance their education and decision making. However, these resources may not adequately reveal pharmaceutical-author interactions and their potential conflicts of interest. This investigation: evaluates the correspondence of two well-utilized CoI databases: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments and ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs and quantifies CoIs among authors of a publicly available point of care clinical support website which is used to inform evidence-based medicine decisions. Two data (...) sources were used: the hundred most common drugs and the top fifty causes of death. These topics were entered into a freely available database. The authors were then input into CMSOP and PDD and compensation and number of payments were determined for 2013–2015. The subset of highly compensated authors that also reported “Nothing to disclose” were further examined. There was a high degree of similarity between CMSOP and PDD for compensation and payment number. The amount received was 1.4% higher in CMSOP than in PDD. The articles where the authors had received the greatest compensation were in neurology, oncology, and endocrinology. Two authors reporting “Nothing to disclose” received appreciable and potentially relevant compensation. CMSOP and PDD produced almost identical results. CoIs were common among authors but self-reporting may be an inadequate reporting mechanism. Recommendations are offered for improving the CoI transparency of pharmaceutical-author interactions in point-of-care electronic resources. (shrink)

Online medical reference websites are utilized by health care providers to enhance their education and decision making. However, these resources may not adequately reveal pharmaceutical-author interactions and their potential conflicts of interest. This investigation: evaluates the correspondence of two well-utilized CoI databases: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments and ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs and quantifies CoIs among authors of a publicly available point of care clinical support website which is used to inform evidence-based medicine decisions. Two data (...) sources were used: the hundred most common drugs and the top fifty causes of death. These topics were entered into a freely available database. The authors were then input into CMSOP and PDD and compensation and number of payments were determined for 2013–2015. The subset of highly compensated authors that also reported “Nothing to disclose” were further examined. There was a high degree of similarity between CMSOP and PDD for compensation and payment number. The amount received was 1.4% higher in CMSOP than in PDD. The articles where the authors had received the greatest compensation were in neurology, oncology, and endocrinology. Two authors reporting “Nothing to disclose” received appreciable and potentially relevant compensation. CMSOP and PDD produced almost identical results. CoIs were common among authors but self-reporting may be an inadequate reporting mechanism. Recommendations are offered for improving the CoI transparency of pharmaceutical-author interactions in point-of-care electronic resources. (shrink)

Online medical reference websites are utilized by health care providers to enhance their education and decision making. However, these resources may not adequately reveal pharmaceutical-author interactions and their potential conflicts of interest. This investigation: evaluates the correspondence of two well-utilized CoI databases: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments and ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs and quantifies CoIs among authors of a publicly available point of care clinical support website which is used to inform evidence-based medicine decisions. Two data (...) sources were used: the hundred most common drugs and the top fifty causes of death. These topics were entered into a freely available database. The authors were then input into CMSOP and PDD and compensation and number of payments were determined for 2013–2015. The subset of highly compensated authors that also reported “Nothing to disclose” were further examined. There was a high degree of similarity between CMSOP and PDD for compensation and payment number. The amount received was 1.4% higher in CMSOP than in PDD. The articles where the authors had received the greatest compensation were in neurology, oncology, and endocrinology. Two authors reporting “Nothing to disclose” received appreciable and potentially relevant compensation. CMSOP and PDD produced almost identical results. CoIs were common among authors but self-reporting may be an inadequate reporting mechanism. Recommendations are offered for improving the CoI transparency of pharmaceutical-author interactions in point-of-care electronic resources. (shrink)

During a period of political and social upheaval in China, the unconventional insights of the great Daoist Zhuangzi pointed to a way of living naturally. Inspired by his fascination with the wisdom of this sage, the immensely popular Taiwanese cartoonist Tsai Chih Chung created a bestselling Chinese comic book. Tsai had his cartoon characters enact the key parables of Zhuangzi, and he rendered Zhuangzi's most enlightening sayings into modern Chinese. Through Tsai's enthusiasm and skill, the earliest and core parts (...) of the Zhuangzi were thus made accessible to millions of Chinese-speaking people with no other real chance of appreciating this major Daoist text. Translated into English by Brian Bruya, the comic book is now available to a Western audience. The classical Chinese text of the selections of the Zhuangzi is reproduced in the margins throughout. Evoked by the translation and the playful cartoons is the spontaneity that Zhuangzi favors as an attitude toward life: abandon presuppositions, intellectual debates, and ambitions, he suggests, and listen to the "music of nature." With the writings attributed to Laozi, the Zhuangzi contributed to an alternative philosophical ideal that matched Confucianism in its impact on Chinese culture. Over the centuries this classical Daoism influenced many aspects of Chinese life, including painting, literature, and the martial arts. It had a particularly strong effect on Chan Buddhism. For this book, Donald Munro has written an afterword that places Daoism and the Zhuangzi in historical and cultural context. (shrink)

Authors have a lot of leeway with regard to what they can make true in their story. In general, if the author says that p is true in the fiction we’re reading, we believe that p is true in that fiction. And if we’re playing along with the fictional game, we imagine that, along with everything else in the story, p is true. But there are exceptions to these general principles. Many authors, most notably Kendall Walton and Tamar Szabó Gendler, (...) have discussed apparent counterexamples when p is “morally deviant”. Many other statements that are conceptually impossible also seem to be counterexamples. In this paper I do four things. I survey the range of counterexamples, or at least putative counterexamples, to the principles. Then I look to explanations of the counterexamples. I argue, following Gendler, that the explanation cannot simply be that morally deviant claims are impossible. I argue that the distinctive attitudes we have towards moral propositions cannot explain the counterexamples, since some of the examples don’t involve moral concepts. And I put forward a proposed explanation that turns on the role of ‘higher-level concepts’, concepts that if they are satisfied are satisfied in virtue of more fundamental facts about the world, in fiction, and in imagination. (shrink)

We provide a new interpretation of Zeno’s Paradox of Measure that begins by giving a substantive account, drawn from Aristotle’s text, of the fact that points lack magnitude. The main elements of this account are (1) the Axiom of Archimedes which states that there are no infinitesimal magnitudes, and (2) the principle that all assignments of magnitude, or lack thereof, must be grounded in the magnitude of line segments, the primary objects to which the notion of linear magnitude applies. Armed (...) with this account, we are ineluctably driven to introduce a highly constructive notion of (outer) measure based exclusively on the total magnitude of potentially infinite collections of line segments. The Paradox of Measure then consists in the proof that every finite or potentially infinite collection of points lacks magnitude with respect to this notion of measure. We observe that the Paradox of Measure, thus understood, troubled analysts into the 1880’s, despite their knowledge that the linear continuum is uncountable. The Paradox was ultimately resolved by Borel in his thesis of 1893, as a corollary to his celebrated result that every countable open cover of a closed line segment has a finite sub-cover, a result he later called the “First Fundamental Theorem of Measure Theory.” This achievement of Borel has not been sufficiently appreciated. We conclude with a metamathematical analysis of the resolution of the paradox made possible by recent results in reverse mathematics. (shrink)

Normative Externalism argues that it is not important that people live up to their own principles. What matters, in both ethics and epistemology, is that they live up to the correct principles: that they do the right thing, and that they believe rationally. This stance, that what matters are the correct principles, not one's own principles, has implications across ethics and epistemology. In ethics, it undermines the ideas that moral uncertainty should be treated just like factual uncertainty, that moral ignorance (...) frequently excuses moral wrongdoing, and that hypocrisy is a vice. In epistemology, it suggests we need new treatments of higher-order evidence, and of peer disagreement, and of circular reasoning, and the book suggests new approaches to each of these problems. Although the debates in ethics and in epistemology are often conducted separately, putting them in one place helps bring out their common themes. One common theme is that the view that one should live up to one's own principles looks less attractive when people have terrible principles, or when following their own principles would lead to riskier or more aggressive action than the correct principles. Another common theme is that asking people to live up to their principles leads to regresses. It can be hard to know what action or belief complies with one's principles. And now we can ask, in such a case should a person do what they think their principles require, or what their principles actually require? Both answers lead to problems, and the best way to avoid these problems is to simply say people should follow the correct principles. (shrink)

We introduce an expected-value theory of linguistic modality that makes reference to expected utility and a likelihood-based confirmation measure for deontics and epistemics, respectively. The account is a probabilistic semantics for deontics and epistemics, yet it proposes that deontics and epistemics share a common core modal semantics, as in traditional possible-worlds analysis of modality. We argue that this account is not only theoretically advantageous, but also has far-reaching empirical consequences. In particular, we predict modal versions of reasoning fallacies from the (...) heuristics and biases literature. Additionally, we derive the modal semantics in an entirely transparent manner, as it is based on the compositional semantics of Korean modal expressions that are morphosyntactically decomposed into a conditional and an evaluative predicate. (shrink)

This essay aims to show that republicanism does not necessarily preclude the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship. The first part challenges the belief that republican citizenship must be tied to a nationalist reading, therefore reducing its cosmopolitan extension to a mere metaphor. Having argued that the political attributes and philosophical account of the notion of citizenship evolve according to the historical transformation of political communities, our contemporary era renders the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship plausible. Far from being irreconcilable, liberal cosmopolitanism has (...) much to gain from republicanism since a thorough analysis of globalization reveals the limitations of the traditional liberal understanding of electoral and representative democracy. The second part of this article suggests that the republican theory of contestatory democracy enables us to better define the political attributes of cosmopolitan citizenship within a liberal conceptual framework. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of the unconscious (das Unbewusste) in terms of its nature and constitutive manifestations in consciousness. In contrast to the psychoanalytic formulation, the unconscious is conceptualized here distinctively as sedimentation (die Sedimentierung) within the Husserlian framework. All `experiences sediment and are “stored” in a darkened, affectless region of the psyche, which is nonetheless not in any sense separated from the sphere of consciousness. Rather, the sedimented experiences move dynamically between the unconscious and consciousness, constantly affecting and (...) manifesting in the upcoming conscious activities of the subject. Based on this conceptualization, I suggest a schematic understanding of the manifestations of the unconscious, or sedimentation, in consciousness. The conceptual division of consciousness into the sphere of understanding (Verstandessphäre), sphere of affect (Gemütssphäre) and sphere of volition (Willenssphäre) allows us to speak of the corresponding threefold manifestations of the unconscious in each of these spheres as type (Typus), mood (Stimmung) and habits (Habitus). Having their genetic “origin” in sedimented experiences, these structural moments play a constitutive role in upcoming conscious activities of the intentional subject. Furthermore, I demonstrate that each of these moments is characterized by a distinctive kind of horizonality, in light of which a deepened understanding of the genetic concept of horizon-consciousness (Horizontbewusstsein) is obtained. Despite the conceptual tripartition, I emphasize at the end the essential intertwinement of the three structural moments in such conscious performance as association. (shrink)

This paper investigates the concept of missio Dei at Willingen and beyond, and identifies its most remarkable feature which regards God as the initiator and subject of mission, thereby redefining missio ecclesiae with three striking characteristics: first, all places of the world including both the immediate neighborhood and the uttermost parts of the earths; second, all spheres of life such as society, politics, economy and culture; and finally, all events of the time such as catastrophes in the history.In so doing, (...) this paper clearly discovers that missio Dei is here approached primarily in a differentiation from or a sharp contrast to missio ecclesiae from the start, and that, for that reason, the concept of missio Dei at Willingen and beyond has not been fully trinitarian, though it often mentions the triune God. And it also discovers that it goes further either toward an emphasis on culture on the one hand, or toward that on the world on the other hand.Such being the case, this paper suggests that it is necessary to consider the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity for mission more fully to reconfigure the concept of missio Dei. Due to some limits, this paper does not deal with this issue full-fledgedly, but intends to suggest a couple of guidelines for doing so. First, we need to approach missio Dei quite differently, that is, primarily not in relation to missio ecclesiae but in relation to processio Dei, that is, the procession of the triune God. Second, noting that, since the early church, missio Dei has been understood primarily in relation to processio Dei, we need to keep in mind that we could not discuss missio more fully without dealing with processio, and vice versa. If we have these two guidelines in mind, the concept of missio Dei would be much more abundant and fruitful. Further studies on some particular implications of the doctrine of the Trinity for mission need to be done in missiology and also theology in general in the near future. (shrink)

Understanding students’ learned hopelessness and academic self-esteem is important because the sense of controllability and competence perception can predict deficits in achievement-oriented behaviours and achievement performance. A survey was conducted to examine the role of learned hopelessness and academic self-esteem in academic achievement. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the mediational roles of learned hopelessness and academic self-esteem in the academic achievement of 165 Hong Kong junior secondary students. The findings implied that learned hopelessness and academic self-esteem are distinct (...) constructs which play separate mediational roles between prior academic failure and academic achievement. However, the model comparisons indicated that there was no direct effect of learned hopelessness on academic self-esteem or vice versa. (shrink)

This book takes concepts developed by researchers in theoretical computer science and adapts and applies them to the study of natural language meaning. Summarizing over a decade of research, Chris Barker and Chung-chieh Shan put forward the Continuation Hypothesis: that the meaning of a natural language expression can depend on its own continuation.

This paper presents syntactic and semantic rules for a fragment of English with mixed quotation. The fragment shows that quotation has a recursive and compositional structure. Quoted expressions turn out to denote characters, so the semantics of quotation simulates the pragmatics of speech, including dependence on utterance contexts and reference to mental entities. The analysis also accommodates varieties of unquotation, pure quotation, and causal reference.

We present a general theory of scope and binding in which both crossover and superiority violations are ruled out by one key assumption: that natural language expressions are normally evaluated (processed) from left to right. Our theory is an extension of Shan’s (2002) account of multiple-wh questions, combining continuations (Barker, 2002) and dynamic type-shifting. Like other continuation-based analyses, but unlike most other treatments of crossover or superiority, our analysis is directly compositional (in the sense of, e.g., Jacobson, 1999). In particular, (...) it does not postulate a level of Logical Form or any other representation distinct from surface syntax. One advantage of using continuations is that they are the standard tool for modeling order-of-evaluation in programming languages. This provides us with a natural and independently motivated characterization of what it means to evaluate expressions from left to right. We give a combinatory categorial grammar that models the syntax and the semantics of quantifier scope and wh-question formation. It allows quantificational binding but not crossover, in-situ wh but not superiority violations. In addition, the analysis automatically accounts for a variety of sentence types involving binding in the presence of pied piping, including reconstruction cases such as Whose criticism of hisi mother did each personi resent? (shrink)

Mathematics is one of the core STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subject disciplines. Engaging students in learning mathematics helps retain students in STEM fields and thus contributes to the sustainable development of society. To increase student engagement, some mathematics instructors have redesigned their courses using the flipped classroom approach. In this review, we examined the results of comparative studies published between 2011 and 2020 to summarize the effects of this instructional approach (vs. traditional lecturing) on students’ behavioral, emotional, and (...) cognitive engagement with mathematics courses. Thirty-three articles in K–12 and higher education contexts were included for analysis. The results suggest that the use of the flipped classroom approach may increase some aspects of behavioral engagement (e.g., interaction and attention/participation), emotional engagement (e.g., course satisfaction), and cognitive engagement (e.g., understanding of mathematics). However, we discovered that several aspects (e.g., students’ attendance, mathematics anxiety, and self-regulation) of student engagement have not been thoroughly explored and are worthy of further study. The results of this review have important implications for future flipped classroom practice (e.g., engaging students in solving real-world problems), and for research on student engagement (e.g., using more objective measures, such as classroom observation) in mathematics education. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firms' financial performance (CSR-effect). Two competing hypotheses, social impact hypothesis and shift of focus hypothesis, are proposed to investigate this issue, where the former suggests that CSR has a positive relation with performance and the latter are opposite. In order to ensure the CSR-effect is not contaminated by other faeton or samples are randomly drawn, we employ four matching methods, Nearest, Caliper, Mahala and Mahala Caliper to match (...) the samples of CSR (CSR-firms) and without CSR (NonCSR-firms) with similar characteristics. Although four methods yield slightly different results, firms engaging in CSR activities tend to obtain significantly higher values on pretax income to net sales and profit margin, and adopting CSR at the very least not deteriorate the performance of firms, making our con clusion favors the social impact hypothesis and against shift of focus hypothesis in Taiwan. Thus, ambition and conscience are not conflicting with each other. (shrink)

Preposed negation yes/no (yn)-questions like Doesn''t Johndrink? necessarily carry the implicature that the speaker thinks Johndrinks, whereas non-preposed negation yn-questions like DoesJohn not drink? do not necessarily trigger this implicature. Furthermore,preposed negation yn-questions have a reading ``double-checking'''' pand a reading ``double-checking'''' p, as in Isn''t Jane comingtoo? and in Isn''t Jane coming either? respectively. We present otheryn-questions that raise parallel implicatures and argue that, in allthe cases, the presence of an epistemic conversational operator VERUMderives the existence and content of the (...) implicature as well as thep/ p-ambiguity. (shrink)

In English, a non-wh-question may have a disjunctive phrase explicitly providing the choices that the question ranges over. For example, in (1), the disjunction or not indicates that the the choice is between the positive and the negative polarity for the relevant proposition, as spelled out in the yes/no (yn)-question reading (2) and in the answers (2a,b). Another example is (3). The disjunction in (3) can be understood as providing the choices that the question ranges over, hence giving rise to (...) the alternative (alt-)reading in (4) and eliciting the answers in (4a,b). (Cf. Karttunen (1977) and Higginbotham (1993) for the semantics of yn/alt-questions). (shrink)

Background The Constitutional Court of South Korea declared that an abortion ban was unconstitutional on April 11, 2019. The National Health Care System will provide abortion care across the country as a formal medical service. Conscientious objection is an issue raised during the construction of legal reforms. Methods One hundred sixty-seven perioperative nurses responded to the survey questionnaire. Nurses’ perception about conscientious objection, support of legislation regarding conscientious objection, and intention to object were measured. Logistic regression was used to explore (...) the factors associated with support of the legislation and the intention to conscientiously object. Results Only 28.8% of the responding nurses were aware of health care professionals’ conscientious objection. The majority felt that patients’ rights should be prioritized over health care professionals’ conscientious objection. On the other hand, 45.8% supported the legislation on conscientious objection to abortion, and 42.5% indicated a willingness to refuse to participate in an abortion case if conscientious objection was permitted. Religion, awareness of conscientious objection, and prioritizing of nurses’ right to conscientious objection were significantly associated with supporting the legislation. Moreover, religion and prioritizing nurses' rights were significantly associated with the intention to conscientiously object. Conclusions This study provides information necessary for further discussion of nurses’ conscientious objection. Nursing leaders, researchers, and educators should appeal to nurses and involve them in making policies that balance a women's right to non-discrimination and to receiving appropriate care with nurses' rights to maintain their moral integrity without compromising their professional obligation. (shrink)

Abstract Kant claims that the basis of a judgment of taste is a merely subjective representation and that the only merely subjective representations are feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Commentators disagree over how to interpret this claim. Some take it to mean that judgments about the beauty of an object depend only on the state of the judging subject. Others argue instead that, for Kant, the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is best understood as a response to its (...) qualities, and that, accordingly, feelings of pleasure or displeasure are no different from other representations, such as colors or smells. While I agree that the judgment of taste is best understood as asserting a claim about an object's qualities, I argue that the distinction Kant makes between feelings of pleasure or displeasure and other representations should not be ignored. I show that one's liking or disliking for an object is merely subjective in the sense that its significance depends on what one has made of oneself through one's aesthetic education. The judgment of taste, then, is merely subjective because one must first become the kind of person whose feelings have the right significance at the right time before one can determine whether an object's qualities make it beautiful. (shrink)

A large number of studies have investigated achievement goals and their related antecedents and consequences above elementary school level. However, few studies have implemented achievement goal assessment to investigate achievement goals and their relevance for preschoolers. In particular, no valid measurement has been developed for preschoolers’ self-reporting of their achievement goals. The main purposes of this study were twofold: To develop an innovative achievement goal measurement for preschoolers, and to investigate the best theoretical model for understanding preschoolers’ achievement goal across (...) gender. To examine the effectiveness and efficiency of the pictorial and pure text measurement format and approaches. A total of 364 preschoolers aged 5 years participated in self-report activity, and 32 preschool teachers obtained consent to rate 193 out of 364 preschoolers. Results showed: the developed achievement goal measurement was a valid tool for understanding preschoolers’ achievement goals and was equally suitable for boys and girls. The 6-factor achievement goal model was the best theoretical perspective for understanding preschoolers’ achievement goals for both boys and girls. The pictorial measurement format for preschoolers’ self-reporting of achievement goals was a more effective but less efficient way to investigate preschoolers’ achievement goals, while the opposite was the case for the pure text measurement format for teachers’ ratings. Implications for achievement goal literature and future research are discussed. (shrink)

The relation between the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions is "the great problem" of Western philosophy, according to Emmanuel Levinas. In this book Brian Schroeder, Silvia Benso, and an international group of philosophers address the relationship between Levinas and the world of ancient thought. In addition to philosophy, themes touching on religion, mythology, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics are also explored. The volume as a whole provides a unified and extended discussion of how an engagement between Levinas and thinkers (...) from the ancient tradition works to enrich understandings of both. This book opens new pathways in ancient and modern philosophical studies as it illuminates new interpretations of Levinas' ethics and his social and political philosophy. (shrink)

This paper presents the observation that negative non-wh-questions with inverted negation do not have an alternative (alt-)question reading. In English, a simple question like (1) has two possible readings: a yes-no (yn-)question reading, paraphrased in (1a), and an alt-question reading, disambiguated in (1b). Under the yn-question reading, the question can be answered as in (2); under the alt-question reading, acceptable answers are (3).

A number of studies in the extant literature report findings that suggest asymmetry in the way reflexive and pronoun anaphors are interpreted in the early stages of processing: that pronouns are less sensitive to structural constraints, as formulated by Binding Theory, than reflexives, in the initial antecedent retrieval process. However, in previous visual world paradigm eye-tracking studies, these conclusions were based on sentences that placed the critical anaphors within picture noun phrases or prepositional phrases, which have independently been shown not (...) to neatly conform to the Binding Theory principles. We present results from a visual world paradigm eye-tracking experiment that show that when critical anaphors are placed in the indirect object position immediately following a verb as a recipient argument, pronoun and reflexive processing are equally sensitive to structural constraints. (shrink)