During the past few decades, engineering ethics has been oriented towards protecting the public from professional misconduct by engineers and from the harmful effects of technology. This “preventive ethics” project has been accomplished primarily by means of the promulgation of negative rules. However, some aspects of engineering professionalism, such as (1) sensitivity to risk (2) awareness of the social context of technology, (3) respect for nature, and (4) commitment to the public good, cannot be adequately accounted for in terms of (...) rules, certainly not negative rules. Virtue ethics is a more appropriate vehicle for expressing these aspects of engineering professionalism. Some of the unique features of virtue ethics are the greater place it gives for discretion and judgment and also for inner motivation and commitment. Four of the many professional virtues that are important for engineers correspond to the four aspects of engineering professionalism listed above. Finally, the importance of the humanities and social sciences in promoting these virtues suggests that these disciplines are crucial in the professional education of engineers. (shrink)

Increasing numbers of engineers from developed countries are employed during some part of their careers in lesser-developed nations (LDN’s), or they may design products for use in LDN’s. Yet determining the implications of professional engineering codes for engineers’ conduct in such settings can be difficult. Conditions are often substantially different from those in developed countries, where the codes were formulated. In this paper I explore the implications of what I call the “welfare requirement” in engineering codes for professional engineering conduct (...) in LDN’s. (shrink)

Ontology is one strategy for promoting interoperability of heterogeneous data through consistent tagging. An ontology is a controlled structured vocabulary consisting of general terms (such as “cell” or “image” or “tissue” or “microscope”) that form the basis for such tagging. These terms are designed to represent the types of entities in the domain of reality that the ontology has been devised to capture; the terms are provided with logical defi nitions thereby also supporting reasoning over the tagged data. Aim: This (...) paper provides a survey of the biomedical imaging ontologies that have been developed thus far. It outlines the challenges, particularly faced by ontologies in the fields of histopathological imaging and image analysis, and suggests a strategy for addressing these challenges in the example domain of quantitative histopathology imaging. The ultimate goal is to support the multiscale understanding of disease that comes from using interoperable ontologies to integrate imaging data with clinical and genomics data. (shrink)

This volume identifies, discusses and addresses the wide array of ethical issues that have emerged for engineers due to the rise of a global economy. To date, there has been no systematic treatment of the particular challenges globalization poses for engineering ethics standards and education. This volume concentrates on precisely this challenge. Scholars and practitioners from diverse national and professional backgrounds discuss the ethical issues emerging from the inherent symbiotic relationship between the engineering profession and globalization. Through their discussions a (...) deeper and more complete understanding of the precise ways in which globalization impacts the formulation and justification of ethical standards in engineering as well as the curriculum and pedagogy of engineering ethics education emerges. (shrink)

Engineers must deal with risks and uncertainties as a part of their professional work and, in particular, uncertainties are inherent to engineering models. Models play a central role in engineering. Models often represent an abstract and idealized version of the mathematical properties of a target. Using models, engineers can investigate and acquire understanding of how an object or phenomenon will perform under specified conditions. This paper defines the different stages of the modeling process in engineering, classifies the various sources of (...) uncertainty that arise in each stage, and discusses the categories into which these uncertainties fall. The paper then considers the way uncertainty and modeling are approached in science and the criteria for evaluating scientific hypotheses, in order to highlight the very different criteria appropriate for the development of models and the treatment of the inherent uncertainties in engineering. Finally, the paper puts forward nine guidelines for the treatment of uncertainty in engineering modeling. (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)

A set A is symmetric enumeration (se-) reducible to a set B (A ≤\sb se B) if A is enumeration reducible to B and \barA is enumeration reducible to \barB. This reducibility gives rise to a degree structure (D\sb se) whose least element is the class of computable sets. We give a classification of ≤\sb se in terms of other standard reducibilities and we show that the natural embedding of the Turing degrees (D\sb T) into the enumeration degrees (D\sb e) (...) translates to an embedding (ι\sb se) into D\sb se that preserves least element, suprema, and infima. We define a weak and a strong jump and we observe that ι\sb se preserves the jump operator relative to the latter definition. We prove various (global) results concerning branching, exact pairs, minimal covers, and diamond embeddings in D\sb se. We show that certain classes of se-degrees are first-order definable, in particular, the classes of semirecursive, Σ\sb n ⋃ Π\sb n, Δ\sb n (for any n \in ω), and embedded Turing degrees. This last result allows us to conclude that the theory of D\sb se has the same 1-degree as the theory of Second-Order Arithmetic. (shrink)

We investigate and extend the notion of a good approximation with respect to the enumeration ${({\mathcal D}_{\rm e})}$ and singleton ${({\mathcal D}_{\rm s})}$ degrees. We refine two results by Griffith, on the inversion of the jump of sets with a good approximation, and we consider the relation between the double jump and index sets, in the context of enumeration reducibility. We study partial order embeddings ${\iota_s}$ and ${\hat{\iota}_s}$ of, respectively, ${{\mathcal D}_{\rm e}}$ and ${{\mathcal D}_{\rm T}}$ (the Turing degrees) into (...) ${{\mathcal D}_{\rm s}}$ , and we show that the image of ${{\mathcal D}_{\rm T}}$ under ${\hat{\iota}_s}$ is precisely the class of retraceable singleton degrees. We define the notion of a good enumeration, or singleton, degree to be the property of containing the set of good stages of some good approximation, and we show that ${\iota_s}$ preserves the latter, as also other naturally arising properties such as that of totality or of being ${\Gamma^0_n}$ , for ${\Gamma \in \{\Sigma,\Pi,\Delta\}}$ and n > 0. We prove that the good enumeration and singleton degrees are immune and that the good ${\Sigma^0_2}$ singleton degrees are hyperimmune. Finally we show that, for singleton degrees a s < b s such that b s is good, any countable partial order can be embedded in the interval (a s, b s). (shrink)

We prove that for every ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{2}^{0}$ enumeration degree b there exists a noncuppable ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{2}^{0}$ degree a > 0 e such that b′ ≤ e a′ and a″ ≤ e b″. This allows us to deduce, from results on the high/low jump hierarchy in the local Turing degrees and the jump preserving properties of the standard embedding l: D T → D e , that there exist ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{2}^{0}$ noncuppable enumeration degrees at every possible—i.e., above low₁—level of the high/low (...) jump hierarchy in the context of D e. (shrink)

Defining a class of sets to be uniform Δ02 if it is derived from a binary {0,1}{0,1}-valued function f≤TKf≤TK, we show that, for any C⊆DeC⊆De induced by such a class, there exists a high Δ02 degree c which is incomparable with every degree b ϵ Ce \ {0e, 0'e}. We show how this result can be applied to quite general subclasses of the Ershov Hierarchy and we also prove, as a direct corollary, that every nonzero low degree caps with both (...) a high and a nonzero low Δ02 degree. (shrink)

This paper continues the investigation into the relationship between good approximations and jump inversion initiated by Griffith. Firstly it is shown that there is a \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Pi^{0}_{2}}$$\end{document} set A whose enumeration degree a is bad—i.e. such that no set \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${X \in a}$$\end{document} is good approximable—and whose complement \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\overline{A}}$$\end{document} has lowest possible jump, in other words (...) is low2. This also ensures that the degrees y ≤ a only contain \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Delta^{0}_{3}}$$\end{document} sets and thus yields a tight lower bound for the complexity of both a set of bad enumeration degree, and of its complement, in terms of the high/low jump hierarchy. Extending the author’s previous characterisation of the double jump of good approximable sets, the triple jump of a \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Sigma^{0}_{2}}$$\end{document} set A is characterised in terms of the index set of coinfinite sets enumeration reducible to A. The paper concludes by using Griffith’s jump interpolation technique to show that there exists a high quasiminimal \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Delta^{0}_{2}}$$\end{document} enumeration degree. (shrink)

This is a review of the book Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wŏnhyo's Exposition of the Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, by Robert E. Buswell, Jr., published by the Univeristy of Hawaii Press. This volume, the first to be published in the Collected Works of Wŏnhyo series, contains the translation of a single text by Wŏnhyo, the Kŭmgang Sammaegyŏng Non.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 561-562 [Access article in PDF] Gianni Paganini, Miguel Benítez, and James Dybikowski, editors. Scepticisme, Clandestinité et Libre Pensée. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002. Pp. 382. Cloth, €60.00. This book consists of papers from two Tables rondes held in Dublin in 1999 on the occasion of the Tenth International Congress on the Enlightenment. The contributors are: Paganini, Benítez, Dybikowski, Alan Charles Kors, (...) Winfried Schröder, José R. Maia Neto, Adam Sutcliffe, Justin Champion, Antony McKenna, Lorenzo Bianchi, Christine Berkvens-Stevelinck, Pierre Lurbe, Stephen David Snobelen, Nigel Aston, and Stuart Brown. There is remarkably little overlap among the papers and Paganini has clearly insisted on very [End Page 561] high standards. Because of space limitations, I shall focus on several of the general themes which run through the book rather than on individual contributions.Despite the phenomenal success Richard Popkin and collaborators like the late Charles B. Schmitt, Giorgio Tonelli, and Ezequiel de Olaso have had in documenting the amazing impact of skepticism in the Renaissance and in the years up to the Enlightenment, this volume demonstrates that skepticism, that many-faceted force, continued throughout the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. After Bayle, and the application of his special forms of skepticism to theological topics—forms which were often employed, contrary to Bayle's probable intentions, in defense of atheism—skepticism went "underground." A large variety of literature was circulated in manuscript form, the clandestine literature of the period. The lesson which this conference celebrates is that skepticism did not cease being a major cultural force. Thus there is, thanks to the philosophical dimension of the clandestine literature in the eighteenth century, a transition from Christian rationalism to an anti-Christian rationalism.Major figures of the Enlightenment were, of course, well-acquainted with skepticism, e.g., Berkeley, Voltaire, Hume, Crousaz, Condillac, Reid, and Kant. Not surprisingly, the major topics discussed in these papers center around skepticism, fideism and atheism, proofs for the existence of God, and the status of the "preambles" to the faith. These all receive careful attention. The tension between the arguments for Christian Pyrrhonism versus anti-Christian rationalism runs through many of these papers. And of course Bayle's points of view on both sides of the Christian debate appear in much of the clandestine literature. The matter of the immortality of the soul is carefully discussed. What is the status of this doctrine? Is it a question of Church dogma or is it another belief to be discarded in the light of reason?The connection perceived to hold between atheism and political legitimacy are explored in several papers. In the seventeenth century, Locke would exclude atheists from the body politic, in part because they were unable to truthfully swear an oath. Atheists were perceived as a danger for many eighteenth-century figures and the political need to suppress atheism was widely understood and accepted by those in the various religious establishments. Bayle's two-century-old attempt to break the putative logical tie between morality and religion failed in his own day, and despite the efforts of the authors of clandestine philosophical literature, the intimate link Bayle tried to break seems to be stronger than ever in much of the world today. It is interesting that the United States is virtually the only industrial and democratic society in which atheists are virtually precluded from being political candidates in federal, and probably most local, elections. Among other things, the papers in this volume help one to understand just how difficult breaking free from theological constraints in the interest of political freedom has proved to be. Harry McFarland Bracken Arizona State University, Tempe... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME ON THE 'DISTINCTION OF REASON1* In a 1959 paper, Richard H. Popkin1 propounded what was then taken to be a most extraordinary thesis: Hume may never have read Berkeley. Popkin's paper marks the end of one of the stranger stories in the history of philosophy, the relationship of the British Empiricists — Locke, Berkeley, Hume — to one another. The thesis was hardly news either to Berkeley or (...) Hume scholars because for several decades in careful studies of the historical contexts and sources they had relied less and less on any theory about significant common themes. In this paper I rehearse the arguments against the "partnership" doctrine and then turn to some ways in which Berkeley and Hume differ over abstractionism and the 'distinction of reason'. Finally, I discuss George Davie's suggestion that this 'distinction' may belong to a very different side of Hume's thought. The linking of Locke with Berkeley is not a feature of early commentary on Berkeley. Berkeley was seen by his contemporaries as a product of Pierre Bayle's scepticism or of Malebranche's immaterialism.2 The work of A.A. Luce, and to a lesser extent, of T. E. Jessop, seeks to restore Berkeley to a place in those traditions and to reduce his indebtedness to Locke. The work of Hume scholars from Kemp Smith to Ardal, Davie, Norton, and Popkin all places Hume outside the direct Berkeley line. So far as the traditional epistemological picture was concerned, there was not enough internal evidence to support a Hume-Berkeley connection. The argument took a different turn when a new Hume letter came to light. Hume's letter to Michael Ramsay from Orleans is dated August 31, 1737. I desire of you, if you have Leizure, to read over La Recherche de la Vérité of Pere Malebranche, the Principles of 90 Human Knowledge by Dr Berkeley, some of the more metaphysical Articles of Bailes Dictionary; such as those /...of/ Zeno, & Spinoza. Des-Cartes Meditations wou'd also be useful....5 In 1973, Michael Morrisroe, Jr., surveyed the contributions of Wiener, Popkin, Mossner, Hall, Flew, and Conroy to the debate. Morrisroe takes the several Hume references to Berkeley as internal evidence that Hume read Berkeley. He then prints a new Hume letter to Michael Ramsay, dated "Rheims. Sepfc. 29 1734. N. S." A ten sentence letter, the eighth reads: "It is my Pleasure to read over again today Locke's Essays and the Principles of Human Knowledge by Dr. Berkeley which are printed in their original state and in French copy." Morrisroe explains in a footnote that he was granted permission to make a typescript of the letter, that it was sold at auction, and that its "present location... is unknown." In addition, he thanks six graduate students: "without their attention to bibliogaphical detail this letter might not have been made ready for publication until much later." But the bibliographical detail does not include telling us whether he saw the original or how the Hume authorship was established; nor does it include speculation on what Hume means in that eighth sentence. Did Hume find one book containing Locke and Berkeley in French and in English which he then read in one day? A bilingual Locke plus a bilingual Berkeley? Or can he mean an edition of Locke's Essay in French and an edition of Berkeley's Principles in English? That seems to be the least likely interpretation, unless the reference to Berkeley is a mere parenthetical afterthought, and Hume had his hands on Locke in English and French plus an English edition of Berkeley. Whatever this letter means, we know that Locke's Essay was available in Pierre Coste's translation. Berkeley is another story. The "Principles appeared in 1710. A revised edition, together with the Three Dialogues (also revised) was published in 1734. The first French edition appears to have been in 1889. The Three Dialogues first appeared in 1713 and the first French translation in 1750. The New Theory of Vision, first published in 1709, appeared together with the first edition of Alciphron in 1732. French translations appeared together in 1734. In any case, it can be granted, if only on... (shrink)

This chronological collection of Moore's most compelling and dramatic images, taken as the movement progressed through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia, highlights activity from 1958 to 1965. Included are the iconic scenes of black protestors huddled in a doorway to escape the crippling blasts of fire hoses in Birmingham; a white bigot swinging a baseball bat seconds before cracking it on the head of a black woman during the desegregation of the Capitol Cafeteria in Montgomery; a young and stunned Dr. (...) Martin Luther King Jr. pinned to the counter of a police precinct, his arm twisted behind his back; the devastating aftermath of "Bloody Sunday" on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma; and Bull Connor's police dogs tearing mercilessly at the legs of a protestor in downtown Birmingham. Celebrity protestors--comedian Dick Gregory, poet Galway Kinnell, singers Joan Baez, Mary Travers, Pete Seeger, and Harry Bellafonte, actor Pernell Roberts, and writer James Baldwin--are featured alongside the many nameless but committed participants and the recognized major leaders of the movement. (shrink)

Coping with uncertainty is a necessary part of ordinary life and is crucial to an understanding of how the mind works. For example, it is a vital element in developing artificial intelligence that will not be undermined by its own rigidities. There have been many approaches to the problem of uncertain inference, ranging from probability to inductive logic to nonmonotonic logic. Thisbook seeks to provide a clear exposition of these approaches within a unified framework. The principal market for the book (...) will be students and professionals in philosophy, computer science, and AI. Among the special features of the book are a chapter on evidential probability, which has not received a basic exposition before; chapters on nonmonotonic reasoning and theory replacement, matters rarely addressed in standard philosophical texts; and chapters on Mill's methods and statistical inference that cover material sorely lacking in the usual treatments of AI and computer science. (shrink)

Uses interviews with one hundred twenty-five leading male executives to determine how companies can be managed both profitably and ethically.

Thomas E. Hill, Jr., interprets and extends Kant's moral theory in a series of essays that highlight its relevance to contemporary ethics. He introduces the major themes of Kantian ethics and explores its practical application to questions about revolution, prison reform, and forcible interventions in other countries for humanitarian purposes.

The moral significance of preserving natural environments is not entirely an issue of rights and social utility, for a person’s attitude toward nature may be importantly connected with virtues or human excellences. The question is, “What sort of person would destroy the natural environment--or even see its value solely in cost/benefit terms?” The answer I suggest is that willingness to do so may well reveal the absence of traits which are a natural basis for a proper humility, self-acceptance, gratitude, and (...) appreciation of the good in others. (shrink)

Larmore aims to recover three forms of moral complexity that have often been neglected by moral and political philosophers. First, he argues that virtue is not simply the conscientious adherence to principle. Rather, the exercise of virtue apply. He argues - and this is the second pattern of complexity - that recognizing the value of constitutive ties with shared forms of life does not undermine the liberal ideal of political neutrality toward differing ideals of the good life. Finally Larmore agrues (...) for what he calls the heterogeneity of morality. Moral thinking need not be exclusively deontological or consequentialist, and we should recognize that the ultimate sources of moral value are diverse. The arguments presented here do not attack the possibility of moral theory. But in addressing some of the central issues of moral and political thinking today thay attempt to restore to that thinking greater flexibility and a necessary sensitivity to our common experience. (shrink)