Meaning holism says that the meaning of an expression depends on all of its inferential connections. This dissertation defends this view from the objections that its grounds are infirm and that any theory of meaning holism faces insuperable difficulties. I argue that there are indeed compelling Quinean grounds for holism . I explicate the debate between Quine and Carnap over the status of analyticity, concluding that Quine is right to deny the distinction between inferences that are constitutive of expression meanings (...) and inferences that are merely empirical. The upshot is that all inferences are constitutive of meaning. Coupled with confirmation holism---the claim that all statements in a system of beliefs are holistically inferentially connected---meaning holism follows. I then argue that holism allows for communication even though it entails that communicants do not share the meanings of their expressions . In Chapter 5, I demonstrate how holism is reconcilable with the compositionality of language, thus denying the criticism that their incompatibility presents a prima facie case against holism. After responding to criticisms of holism, I provide a model of the interdependent structure of meaning constituting inferential relations among sentences in terms of conditional subjective probabilities, and I explain how the theory accounts for the normativity of meaning . I then defend a crucial assumption that underlies the entire dissertation, namely, that the meaning of an expression is in fact constituted by the inferences in which it figures . I argue that transparent self-knowledge is an essential feature of meaning, and show how self-knowledge lends itself to inferential role semantics. Chapter 8 takes a critical look at other meaning theories. I argue that denotational views either neglect the significance of behavior explanation in the theory of meaning, or they face the same difficulties that holism encounters, in which case they offer no advantage over holism. Internalist accounts of meaning, on the other hand, unjustifiably invoke ordinary external objects as semantic values. But without this illicit appeal to external objects, they tell us little about the meanings of expressions. (shrink)

The number of homebound individuals in the United States is on the rise, causing health-care professionals to expand in-home health services to help meet the increased demand. Due to the prevalence of feelings of isolation and depression in this population, it is imperative that mental health professionals join this effort to increase access to mental health services. Delivering psychotherapy in clients’ homes presents many advantages to these homebound individuals, but there is a dearth of literature addressing how therapists should handle (...) unique ethical issues that arise in this type of setting. This article addresses ethical considerations and guidelines for in-home provision of mental health services. General ethical issues related to home-based psychotherapy include boundaries, confidentiality and privacy, competency, insurance coverage, and autonomy. Issues pertaining to different categories of homebound individuals, including persons with agoraphobia, chronic illnesses, and older adults, are then discussed in turn. Recommendations on how to best manage these issues by applying the American Psychological Association’s, the American Counseling Association’s, and the National Association of Social Workers’ Ethics Codes are provided. (shrink)

Healthcare trends, stressors, and workplace violence -- Patient privacy and exploitation -- Abuse and assault -- Fraud and theft -- Suspicious death and homicide -- Investigations, sanctions, and discipline -- Prevention strategies and the future of healthcare crime.

G. W. F. Hegel’s Elements of Philosophy of Right analogizes the unfolding of a people’s political self-consciousness to the unfolding of an education. Yet Hegel is somewhat unsystematic in accounting for how the process of political education unfolds in its differentiated moments. This paper pieces together a more systematic account of political education from Hegel’s scattered remarks on the subject in Philosophy of Right. I argue that, once we understand how political education fits into the holistic picture of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie, (...) we see that it exercises both a fortifying and a threatening influence on the state: fortifying the state insofar as it habituates individuality to universality in the form of ethical dispositions such as patriotism, threatening the state insofar as it represents a destabilizing tendency toward democratic judgment in the emergence of public opinion. I conclude by raising the possibility that political education poses an entropic, “democratic” threat to the modern state. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel’s Elements of Philosophy of Right analogizes the unfolding of a people’s political self-consciousness to the unfolding of an education. Yet Hegel is somewhat unsystematic in accounting for how the process of political education unfolds in its differentiated moments. This paper pieces together a more systematic account of political education from Hegel’s scattered remarks on the subject in Philosophy of Right. I argue that, once we understand how political education fits into the holistic picture of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie, (...) we see that it exercises both a fortifying and a threatening influence on the state: fortifying the state insofar as it habituates individuality to universality in the form of ethical dispositions such as patriotism, threatening the state insofar as it represents a destabilizing tendency toward democratic judgment in the emergence of public opinion. I conclude by raising the possibility that political education poses an entropic, “democratic” threat to the modern state. (shrink)

Treatise 2.3.6, “Of the influence of the imagination on the passions,” provides a magnified view into the relationship between motivation, morality, and politics in Hume’s philosophy. Here, Hume analyzes a “noted passage” from the history of antiquity in which the citizens of fifth-century Athens deliberated over whether to burn the ships of their neighboring Grecians after winning a decisive naval victory against the Persians. Hume finds the passage notable precisely because of a failure of the imagination to exert an influence (...) on the Athenians’ passions during their deliberations, leading them to abstain from further military action. This paper discusses how Hume’s analysis of this event reveals new connections between his passional, moral, and political theories in the Treatise. (shrink)

© 2019 The Author. Background: The phenomenon of being 'with woman' is fundamental to midwifery as it underpins its philosophy, relationships and practices. There is an identified gap in knowledge around the 'with woman' phenomenon from the perspective of midwives providing care in a variety of contexts. As such, the aim of this study was to explore the experiences of being 'with woman' during labour and birth from the perspective of midwives' working in a model where care is provided by (...) a known midwife. Methods: A descriptive phenomenological design was employed with ten midwives working in a 'known midwife' model who described their experiences of being 'with woman' during labour and birth. The method was informed by Husserlian philosophy which seeks to explore the same phenomenon through rich descriptions by individuals revealing commonalities of the experience. Results: Five themes emerged 1) Building relationships; 2) Woman centred care; 3) Impact on the midwife; 4) Impact on the woman; and 5) Challenges in the Known Midwife model. Midwives emphasised the importance of trusting relationships while being 'with woman', confirming that this relationship extends beyond the woman - midwife relationship to include the woman's support people and family. Being 'with woman' during labour and birth in the context of the relationship facilitates woman-centred care. Being 'with woman' influences midwives, and, it is noted, the women that midwives are working with. Finally, challenges that impact being 'with woman' in the known midwife model are shared by midwives. Conclusions: Findings offer valuable insight into midwives' experiences of being 'with woman' in the context of models that provide care by a known midwife. In this model, the trusting relationship is the conduit for being 'with woman' which influences the midwife, the profession of midwifery, as well as women and their families. Descriptions of challenges to being 'with woman' provide opportunities for professional development and service review. Rich descriptions from the unique voice of midwives, provided insight into the applied practices of being 'with woman' in a known midwife model which adds important knowledge concerning a phenomenon so deeply embedded in the philosophy and practices of the profession of midwifery. (shrink)

Concerted, timely action for mitigating climate change is of uttermost importance to keep global warming as close to 1.5°C as possible. Air traffic already plays a strong role in driving climate change and is projected to grow—with only limited technical potential for decarbonizing this means of transport. Therefore, it is desirable to minimize the expansion of air traffic or even facilitate a reduction in affluent countries. Effective policies and behavioral change, especially among frequent flyers, can help to lower greenhouse gas (...) emissions. For both, a positive evaluation and public support is indispensable. This study contributes to understanding air travel behavior and the perception of regulative policies. We examined the role of attitudes, perceived behavioral control, efficacy, global identity, and justice concerns for intentions to avoid flights and aviation-related environmental policy support. We conducted an online survey study with a quota sample of N = 2,530 participants in Germany. The strongest positive predictors of intentions to refrain from flying and policy support were perceived behavioral control to travel without flying, efficacy beliefs that avoiding air travel contributes to climate change mitigation, and intergenerational justice concerns; pro-travel attitude was a negative predictor. Moreover, we tested whether the provision of additional information on climate impact, global and intranational inequalities as well as subsidies affected the intention to avoid air travel and policy support. We found no effects of the different types of information. Nor did we find an interaction between the type of information provided and global or national identity. Our results highlight the need for a shift within the mobility sector that facilitates attractive and accessible transport alternatives in order to strengthen people’s behavioral control to choose other means than planes and their efficacy perceptions. Moreover, raising awareness of the impacts of climate change on future generations and developing strategies to promote people’s concern for intergenerational justice might motivate people to reduce air travel and thereby contribute to a livable future for new generations. (shrink)

Over the last century, and especially since the publication of the Belmont Report in 1978, respect for persons, as exemplified by respect for autonomous decision-making, has become a central tenet in the practice of medicine. The authority of cognitively competent adults to make their own healthcare decisions is enshrined in both law and practice in most advanced industrialized nations. The right to consent to or to refuse medical interventions is virtually absolute, but is contingent on the provision of materially relevant (...) information about the benefits and burdens or risks of the proposed treatment as well as the freedom from coercion by others, especially healthcare personnel. This power also extends to the kinds, amounts and details of the proposed intervention, including the option to decline to hear anything, if one so chooses, assuming that this is a rational choice. This respect transfers to other competent individuals who are authorized as surrogates to decide for those who have temporarily or permanently lost the capacity to make their own healthcare decisions. (shrink)

We demonstrate that the key components of cognitive architectures (declarative and procedural memory) and their key capabilities (learning, memory retrieval, probability judgment, and utility estimation) can be implemented as algebraic operations on vectors and tensors in a high‐dimensional space using a distributional semantics model. High‐dimensional vector spaces underlie the success of modern machine learning techniques based on deep learning. However, while neural networks have an impressive ability to process data to find patterns, they do not typically model high‐level cognition, and (...) it is often unclear how they work. Symbolic cognitive architectures can capture the complexities of high‐level cognition and provide human‐readable, explainable models, but scale poorly to naturalistic, non‐symbolic, or big data. Vector‐symbolic architectures, where symbols are represented as vectors, bridge the gap between the two approaches. We posit that cognitive architectures, if implemented in a vector‐space model, represent a useful, explanatory model of the internal representations of otherwise opaque neural architectures. Our proposed model, Holographic Declarative Memory (HDM), is a vector‐space model based on distributional semantics. HDM accounts for primacy and recency effects in free recall, the fan effect in recognition, probability judgments, and human performance on an iterated decision task. HDM provides a flexible, scalable alternative to symbolic cognitive architectures at a level of description that bridges symbolic, quantum, and neural models of cognition. (shrink)

In 2017, Partridge et al. published remarkable experimental results concerning the use of a new artificial womb technology (AWT) with lambs, developed at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, called...

In this article, I present a new Foucauldian reading of the international, via Foucault's concept of 'biopolitics'. I begin by surveying the existing Foucauldian perspectives on the international, which mostly take as their point of departure Foucault's concept of 'governmentality', and mostly diagnose a 'global governmentality' or 'global biopolitics' in the current era of globalisation. Against these majority positions, I argue that analysis of the contemporary international through the lens of Foucauldian biopolitics in fact shows us that our world system (...) is marked by a parasitic imperialism of rich sovereign states over poor ones, carried on at the level of populations. (shrink)

The anticipated social capabilities of robots may allow them to serve in authority roles as part of human-machine teams. To date, it is unclear if, and to what extent, human team members will comply with requests from their robotic teammates, and how such compliance compares to requests from human teammates. This research examined how the human-likeness and physical embodiment of a robot affect compliance to a robot's request to perseverate utilizing a novel task paradigm. Across a set of two studies, (...) participants performed a visual search task while receiving ambiguous performance feedback. Compliance was evaluated when the participant requested to stop the task and the coach urged the participant to keep practicing multiple times. In the first study, the coach was either physically co-located with the participant or located remotely via a live-video. Coach type varied in human-likeness and included either a real human, a Nao robot, or a modified Roomba robot. The second study expanded on the first by including a Baxter robot as a coach and replicated the findings in a different sample population with a strict chain of command culture. Results from both studies showed that participants comply with the requests of a robot for up to 11 min. Compliance is less than to a human and embodiment and human-likeness on had weak effects on compliance. (shrink)

This book sets out first to explain how two fairly recent developments in philosophy, externalism and modalism, provide the basis for a promising account of knowledge, and then works through the different modalized epistemologies extant in the literature, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the author proposes the theory that knowledge is reliably formed, sensitive true belief, and defends the theory against objections.

In an attempt to learn from COVID-19, this essay features six responses to the question: what did COVID-19 teach us, expose in us, or purge out of us when it comes to spiritual formation in Christ? Each response was written independently of the others by one of the coauthors. Diane J. Chandler focuses in on how COVID-19 exposed grievous inequities for ethnic groups in the American church and broader society. Kelly M. Kapic reminds us of the goodness of human (...) finitude and how COVID restrictions have forced many of us to embrace our limitations. Siang-Yang Tan reflects on eight lessons he has learned during this pandemic year in his role shepherding a local church. James C. Wilhoit calls us to consider the structures that are needed for local church leadership to make wise and godly decisions in times of crisis. Richard Peace draws our attention to what might be learned from the forced monasticism brought about by COVID-19 quarantines. Finally, Ruth Haley Barton pauses to consider the interdependence of human life that has been dramatically illustrated by this pandemic. While these six responses certainly do not exhaust all there is for the church to learn from COVID, we present them in the spirit of “O Lord, teach us what we do not see” and hope they will inspire your own reflections. (shrink)

Jonathan Vogel has recently argued that counterfactual reliabilism cannot account for higher‐level knowledge that one's belief is true, or not false. His particular argument for this claim is straightforward and valid. Interestingly, there is a parallel argument, based on an alternative but plausible reinterpretation of the main premise in Vogel's argument, which squares CR with higher‐level knowledge both that one's belief is true and that one's belief is not false. I argue that, while Vogel's argument reveals the incompatibility of CR (...) and knowledge of certain higher‐level propositions, it does not establish the general claim that CR is incompatible with knowledge that any of one's beliefs is true, or not false. (shrink)

Jonathan Vogel has recently argued that counterfactual reliabilism cannot account for higher‐level knowledge that one's belief is true, or not false. His particular argument for this claim is straightforward and valid. Interestingly, there is a parallel argument, based on an alternative but plausible reinterpretation of the main premise in Vogel's argument, which squares CR with higher‐level knowledge both that one's belief is true and that one's belief is not false. I argue that, while Vogel's argument reveals the incompatibility of CR (...) and knowledge of certain higher‐level propositions, it does not establish the general claim that CR is incompatible with knowledge that any of one's beliefs is true, or not false. (shrink)