The occurrence of a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 cannot be ruled out. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate the possible effects of a hypothetical imperfect anti-COVID-19 vaccine on the control of not only the first variant of SARS-CoV-2 but also the second variant of SARS-CoV-2. We further examine the rates and a, escape of quarantined infectious individuals from isolation centers. The control R c and basic reproduction numbers R 0 are computed which gives assess to obtain asymptotic stability of disease-free (...) equilibrium point globally and the existence of a unique persistent equilibrium solution. Numerical results reveal that people infected with the second strain who are vaccinated with an imperfect vaccine are under control but the prevalence of the second variant enhances the prevalence of the first variant. Thus, discovering a vaccine that is effective for the prevention of variant 2 is necessary for the control of COVID-19. Numerical results also reveal that increase in the rate at which individuals infected with the first variant escape the isolation center gives rise to the population infected with the first variant and lowers the peak of the population infected with the second variant. This is probably because individuals infected with the second variant appear to be more careful with their lives and get vaccinated more than individuals infected with the first variant. (shrink)

Sounds and Perception brings together original essays on auditory perception and the nature of sounds - an emerging area of interest in the philosophy of mind and perception, and in the metaphysics of sensible qualities. The essays discuss a wide range of issues, including the nature of sound, the spatial aspects of auditory experience, hearing silence, musical experience, and the perception of speech; a substantial introduction by the editors serves to contextualise the essays and make connections between them. The collection (...) serves both as an introduction to the nature of auditory perception and as the definitive resource for coverage of the main questions that constitute the philosophy of sounds and audition. (shrink)

Background: The objective of this research was to review reporting of ethical concerns and community involvement in peer-reviewed systematic reviews or meta-analyses concerning American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian (AI/AN/NH) health. Methods: Text words and indexed vocabulary terms were used to query PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and the Native Health Database for systematic reviews or meta-analyses concerning AI/AN/NH health published in peer-reviewed journals, followed by a search through reference lists. Each article was abstracted by two independent reviewers; results were (...) discussed until consensus was reached. Results: We identified 107 papers published from 1986 through 2012 that were primarily about AI/AN/NH health or presented findings separately for AI/AN/NH communities. Two reported seeking indigenous reviewer feedback; none reported seeking input from tribes and communities. Approximately 7% reported on institutional review board (IRB) approval of included studies, 5% reported on tribal approval, and 4% referenced the sovereignty of AI/AN tribes. Approximately 63% used evidence from more than one AI/AN/NH population study, and 28% discussed potential benefits to communities from the synthesis research. Conclusions: Reporting of ethics and community involvement are not prominent. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses making community-level inferences may pose risks to communities. Future systematic reviews and meta-analyses should consider ethical and participatory dimensions of research. (shrink)

The law and policy applicable to the not-for-profit sector is of growing importance around the world. In this book, legal experts address fundamental questions about not-for-profit law from a range of theoretical and comparative perspectives. The essays provide scholarly analysis of not-for-profit law, organised around four themes: Politics, in the broader sense of living as a community, and the narrower sense of political power; Charity, how it is defined and changes in its meaning over time; Taxation, including the rationale for (...) government support of the sector through the tax system; Regulation, which is of increasing significance as governments establish increasingly complex forms of regulation of not-for-profit activity. The fundamental aim of the book is to deepen our understanding of not-for-profit law and of the rationales and modes of government support for the not-for-profit sector. (shrink)

Bioethics is the study of ethical issues arising out of advances in the life sciences and medicine. Historically, bioethics has been associated with issues in research ethics and clinical ethics as a result of research scandals such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and public debates about the definition of death, medical paternalism, health care rationing, and abortion. As biomedical technologies have advanced, challenging new questions have arisen for bioethics and new sub-disciplines such as neuroethics and public health ethics have entered (...) the scene. This volume features ten original essays on five cutting-edge controversies in bioethics written by leading philosophers. I. Research Ethics: How Should We Justify Ancillary Care Duties? II. Clinical Ethics: Are Psychopaths Morally Accountable? III. Reproductive Ethics: Is There A Solution to the Non-Identity Problem? IV. Neuroethics: What is Addiction and Does It Excuse? V. Public Health Ethics: Is Luck Egalitarianism Implausibly Harsh? S. Matthew Liao and Collin O’Neil’s concise introduction to the essays in the volume, the annotated bibliographies and study questions for each controversy, and the supplemental guide to additional current controversies in bioethics give the reader a broad grasp of the different kinds of challenges in bioethics. (shrink)

Salient landmarks enhance route learning. We hypothesised that semantically salient nostalgic landmarks would improve route learning compared to non-nostalgic landmarks. In two experiments, participants learned a route through a computer-generated maze using directional arrows and wall-mounted pictures. On the test trial, the arrows were removed, and participants completed the maze using only the pictures. In the nostalgia condition, pictures were of popular music artists and TV characters from 5 to 10 years ago. In the control condition, they were recent pictures (...) of these same artists and characters. In Experiment 1, in the test trial, participants in the nostalgia condition completed the maze faster than controls. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated these findings and extended them by exploring boundary conditions. Participants had to learn two mazes sequentially. In Maze 1, we placed nostalgic/control landmarks only at non-decision points (whereas we placed them at decision points in Experiment 1). In Maze 2, we placed nostalgic/control landmarks at decision points during acquisition but removed them in the test trial (whereas they were present in the test trial in Experiment 1). In both mazes, participants in the nostalgia (compared to control) condition completed the test trial faster. (shrink)

The twelve specially written essays in this volume investigate the neglected topic of mental action, and show its importance for the metaphysics, epistemology, and phenomenology of mind. The essays investigate what mental actions are, how we are aware of them, and what is the relationship between mental and physical action.

Are there natural kinds of things around which our theories cut? The essays in this volume offer reflections by a distinguished group of philosophers on a series of intertwined issues in the metaphysics and epistemology of classification.

TRAGICALLY, ETHNIC CONFLICTS HAVE BECOME ONE OF THE HALLMARKS of the post-Cold War era. In response to this, two distinct traditions appear to be emerging.The first continues the classical just war tradition while the second represents a new "reconciliation tradition," built largely around questions of restorative justice in areas of social division. Our goal in this essay is to begin a rapprochement of these divergent traditions by asking the question, what does a restorative justice perspective offer to the just war (...) tradition? We proceed in three stages: first, we survey the current state of the just war tradition; second, we introduce the reconciliation tradition, drawing on both reconciliation thinkers and the practical experience of experiments in social reconciliation in South Africa and Rwanda; and third, we draw these two traditions together with a series of constructive proposals for how the reconciliation tradition can enrich the just war tradition. (shrink)

This book explores the role of Aristotelian concepts, principles, and themes in Thomas Aquinas's theology. Each of the ten essays investigates the significance of Aquinas's theological reception of Aristotle in a central theological domain: the Trinity, the angels, soul and body, the Mosaic law, grace, charity, justice, contemplation and action, Christ, and the sacraments. In general, the essays focus on the Summa theologiae, but some range more widely in Aquinas's corpus. Readers will become acquainted with Aquinas's theological uses of the (...) great Aristotelian themes, such as act and potency, God as pure act, substance and accidents, power and generation, change and motion, fourfold causality, form and matter, hylomorphic anthropology, the structure of intellection, the relationship between knowledge and will, happiness and friendship, habits and virtues, contemplation and action, politics and justice, the best form of government, and private property and the common good. (shrink)

The “New Natural Law” Theory (NNL) of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and their collaborators offers a distinctive account of intentional action, which underlies a moral theory that aims to justify many aspects of traditional morality and Catholic doctrine. -/- In fact, we show that the NNL is committed to premises that entail the permissibility of many actions that are irreconcilable with traditional morality and Catholic doctrine, such as elective abortions. These consequences follow principally from two aspects of the (...) NNL. The first aspect is its distinctive version of the planning theory of intention, in which adopting the 'first-person perspective' of an agent is a sufficient, and not merely necessary, condition for determining the nature of his intentional action; this planning theory rests upon an implicitly Cartesian conception of human behavior, in which behavior chosen by an agent has no intrinsic “intentionalness” apart from what he confers upon it as part of his plan. The second aspect is the NNL's distinctive account of basic human goods' incommensurability, according to which there is no common factor shared by basic human goods that allows them to be comparatively ranked in any way that directs practical deliberation. -/- The entailments of these two aspects of the NNL, we argue, amount to a reductio ad absurdum. Pace the proponents of the NNL account, we sketch an alternative hylomorphic conception of intentional action that avoids untoward moral implications by grounding human agency in the exercise of basic powers that are either (a) essential constituents of human nature or (b) acquired through participation in social practices. This conception of intentional action provides a stronger foundation for natural law theory. (shrink)

In Intention and her subsequent essays that addressed human action, Elizabeth Anscombe made signal contributions to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, and to western philosophy more broadly. The new natural law theory of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and their collaborators mistakenly claims to be consonant with Anscombe’s work. A central reason for this misappropriation lies in the failure to understand the ways in which Anscombe does and does not deploy a “first-person perspective” in analyzing intentional action. Far from supporting the (...) new natural law, Anscombe’s work, rightly understood, provides arguments for rejecting it. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.1 : 47–56. (shrink)

Originally published in 1954, this volume describes and analyses the course of short-period fluctuations in the British economy between 1833 and 1842. Through concentrating on a relatively short space of time, the text is able to provide a rigorous examination of the evidence and also avoids the over-simplification inherent in comparing the history of fluctuations in different periods. A variety of sources are put under scrutiny, both 'literary' and statistical, reflecting a relative lack of surviving economic material from the period. (...) This, in turn, reflects a generally broad approach which is described by the author as 'quantitative-historical'. Concise and highly informative, this book will remain of value to anyone with an interest in nineteenth century and economic history. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

John Rawls’s political liberalism and its ideal of public reason are tremendously influential in contemporary political philosophy and in constitutional law as well. Many, perhaps even most, liberals are Rawlsians of one stripe or another. This is problematic, because most liberals also support the redefinition of civil marriage to include same-sex unions, and as I show, Rawls’s political liberalism actually prohibits same- sex marriage. Recently in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, however, California’s northern federal district court reinterpreted the traditional rational basis review (...) in terms of liberal neutrality akin to Rawls’s “public reason,” and overturned Proposition 8 and established same-sex marriage. (This reinterpretation was amplified in the 9th Circuit Court’s decision upholding the district court on appeal in Perry v. Brown.) But on its own grounds Perry should have drawn the opposite conclusion. This is because all the available arguments for recognizing same-sex unions as civil marriages stem from controversial comprehensive doctrines about the good, and this violates the ideal of public reason; yet there remains a publicly reasonable argument for traditional marriage, which I sketch here. In the course of my argument I develop Rawls’s politically liberal account of the family by drawing upon work by J. David Velleman and H. L. A. Hart, and discuss the implications of this account for political theory and constitutional law. (shrink)

The technological singularity is popularly envisioned as a point in time when (a) an explosion of growth in artificial intelligence (AI) leads to machines becoming smarter than humans in every capacity, even gaining consciousness in the process; or (b) humans become so integrated with AI that we could no longer be called human in the traditional sense. This article argues that the technological singularity does not represent a point in time but a process in the ongoing construction of a collective (...) consciousness. Innovations from the earliest graphic representations to the present reduced the time it took to transmit information, reducing the cognitive space between individuals. The steady pace of innovations ultimately led to the communications satellite, fast-tracking this collective consciousness. The development of AI in the late 1960s has been the latest innovation in this process, increasing the speed of information while allowing individuals to shape events as they happen. (shrink)

The invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago has been called the worst mistake in human history. Alongside the social, political, and technological innovations that stemmed from it, there came a litany of drawbacks ranging from social inequality, a decline in human health, to the concentration of power in the hands of a few. Millennia after the invention of agriculture, another revolution—the digital revolution—is having a similar impact on humanity, albeit at a scale and speed measured in decades. Despite the tremendous (...) advances brought about by this revolution, there is today a rapidly expanding gulf within and between societies along technological lines; alarming effects on sociality and cognition due to a persistent online presence; and a concentration of power in the form of wealth and data within a handful of tech companies, the likes of which has never been seen before. While the effects of agriculture can now be discerned with thousands of years of hindsight, those of the digital revolution can be witnessed in real time. Is the digital revolution paving the way for a more equitable and stable world, or is it leading humanity down a road that will prove to be more detrimental the more ensconced in technology we become? (shrink)

David Hume has described his theory of causation as the ‘chief argument’ of his Treatise of Human Nature. The broad lines of that argument are well known, and need not be detailed here. Hume’s conclusion is that causation is not a ‘power’ in the cause but a ‘felt compulsion’ in the mind—an expectation that a certain event will be followed by a certain other event of the type habitually associated with the first in our experience. Both events are perceptions; the (...) first is an impression, the second a believed idea: and causation is the association of the two. Furthermore, Hume not only expresses his notion of causation in terms of the theory of impressions and ideas; he also argues to it by means o/this theory. (shrink)

The “New Natural Law” Theory (NNL) of Grisez, Finnis, Boyle, and their collaborators offers a distinctive account of intentional action, which underlies a moral theory that aims to justify many aspects of traditional morality and Catholic doctrine. In fact, we show that the NNL is committed to premises that entail the permissibility of many actions that are irreconcilable with traditional morality and Catholic doctrine, such as elective abortions. These consequences follow principally from the NNL’s planning theory of intention coupled with (...) an implicitly Cartesian conception of human behavior, in which behavior chosen by an agent has no intrinsic “intentionalness” apart from what he confers upon it as part of his plan. Pace the NNL collaborators, we sketch an alternative hylomorphic conception of intentional action that avoids untoward moral implications by grounding human agency in the exercise of basic powers that are either essential to human nature or acquired through participation in social practices. (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

The execution of the prophet Mani by the Sasanian king Bahram I received sharply different treatments in the historiography of three of the confessional groups of the Sasanian empire. Variously a persecuted prophet, a blasphemous lunatic or a sinister heresiarch the representations of this moment sought to establish its meaning in the context of communal narratives predicated on the claims of sacred history. Despite this, it is notable that Manichean, Christian and Perso-Arabic accounts clearly share features. This indicates not only (...) that Mani’s death became a site of competition between the constituent groups of the Sasanian empire, but that the internal historiographies of these groups were in some sense entwined, or at least sensitive to the historical claims made by their opponents. This is particularly relevant in the case of the Perso-Arabic narrative. This version, which almost certainly descends from a priestly Zoroastrian source, presents a picture of a confident priesthood stiffening the spine of a wavering king. It is contended that the source of this story was composed as a counterstrike in a historical debate in which Christian and Manichean authors had successfully propagated an image of Bahram’s court as religiously tepid and his priests as slanderers or non-entities. That such an intervention was required signals a disjuncture between early and late forms of Sasanian ideology. Moreover, it presents more evidence in support of theories of a late and deliberate construction of Zoroastrian “orthodoxy”. (shrink)

Literature on consumer ethics tends to focus on issues within the public sphere, such as the environment, and treats other drivers of consumption decisions, such as family, as non-moral concerns. Consequently, an attitude–behaviour gap is viewed as a straightforward failure by consumers to act ethically. We argue that this is based upon a view of consumer behaviour as linear and unproblematic, and an approach to moral reasoning, arising from a stereotypically masculine understanding of morality, which foregrounds abstract principles. By demonstrating (...) the importance of context to consumption decisions and articulating the impact of caring relationships, we highlight how such decisions are both complex and situated. This is particularly evident for decisions involving the needs of others, as occurs in family life. We argue that the incorporation of care ethics provides both theoretical insights and a more complete account of consumer ethics. This is explored empirically through an investigation of the ethical dilemmas arising from consumption decisions made by mothers of young children. Such decisions juxtapose an ethical consumption orientation with care for one’s child. Therefore, what has been previously considered a failure to act ethically may in fact be the outcome of complex decision making, which involves competing ethical considerations. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and how this approach to consumer ethics could be applied more widely. (shrink)