As the sustained and devastating extent of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic becomes apparent, a key focus of public scrutiny in the UK has centred on the novel legal and regulatory measures introduced in response to the virus. When those measures were first implemented in March 2020 by the UK Government, it was thought that human rights obligations would limit excesses of governmental action and that the public had more to fear from unwarranted intrusion into civil liberties. However, within the (...) first year of the pandemic’s devastation in the UK, a different picture has emerged: rather than through action, it is governmentalinactionthat has given rise to greater human rights concerns. The UK Government has been roundly criticized for its inadequate response, including missteps in decision-making, delayed implementation and poor enforcement of lockdown measures, abandonment of testing, shortages of critical resources and inadequate test and trace methods. In this article, we analyse the UK Government’s missteps and compare them with published international guidance; we also contrast the UK’s decisions with those taken by several other countries to understand how its actions and inactions have contributed to unfavourable outcomes. Using an analytical perspective that demonstrates how human rights are both a protection from the power of the state and a requirement that governmental powers are used to protect the lives, health and wellbeing of citizens, we argue that the UK Government’s failure to exercise their powers competently allowed the virus to spread without ensuring the country had the means to manage a high case load. This abject failure has led to one of the highest rates of deaths per capita worldwide. We offer several lessons that can be learnt from this unfortunate, but preventable, situation. (shrink)

Promoting plant-based diets as a response to climate crisis has clear implications for producers of animal derived foods, but surprisingly little research considers their perspectives on this. Our exploration focused on farming strongly associated with meat production in Wales, UK. Mindful of polarised debates around plant-based diets, we considered dietary transition as an opportunity to produce for new markets. The first aim was to identify whether transition towards plant-based diets might trigger transformation of livestock agriculture. Findings indicate a potential trigger (...) event once livestock farmers are certain that consumer trends and climate mitigation require change. Livestock farmers who regard their meat as climate-friendly might resist transitions felt to unfairly disadvantage them. We then considered livestock farmers’ likely capacity to produce plant crops, and how this transformational capacity might be enhanced. Participants highlighted forms of financial and environmental inflexibility, plus social norms regarding “good” Welsh farmers, combining to make transformation risky. Transformational capacity might be enhanced through levering occupational and place attachments by portraying plant crops as a revival of historic practices from traditional farming landscapes. Improved linking capacity will also be beneficial, as producing for new markets requires connections to new supply chains, and learning across divisions within rural communities. We present these preliminary insights to livestock farmers’ attitudes and transformational capacity to inform future research with them to advance just agricultural transitions. Our study indicates potential to avoid confrontational discussion of dietary transition and we hope that others will pursue its focus on opportunities for farmers. (shrink)

Author Rizwaan Sabir, as a then-MA student at Nottingham University, became known as one-half of the “Nottingham Two” following his arrest along with Hicham Yezza in May 2008. They were detained for six days without charge on suspicion of terrorism for the possession of a document titled the Al Qaeda Training Manual, which was freely available on the internet and from bookstores. Sabir had downloaded it from a US government website for use as primary source material in his proposed PhD (...) research on armed Muslim groups. But Sabir’s arrest, detention, interrogation, and release without charge takes up only about one-fifth of the pages; the remainder covers subsequent events revealing the extent of the surveillance to... Read More. (shrink)

Model validation in computational cognitive psychology often relies on methods drawn from the testing of theories in experimental physics. However, applications of these methods to computational models in typical cognitive experiments can hide multiple, plausible sources of variation arising from human participants and from stochastic cognitive theories, encouraging a “model fixed, data variable” paradigm that makes it difficult to interpret model predictions and to account for individual differences. This article proposes a likelihood‐based, “data fixed, model variable” paradigm in which models (...) are treated as stochastic processes in experiments with participant‐to‐participant variation that can be applied to a broad range of mechanistic cognitive architectures. This article discusses the implementation and implications of this view in model validation, with a concrete focus on a simple class of ACT‐R models of cognition. This article is not intended as a recipe for broad application of these preliminary, proof‐of‐concept methods, but as a framework for communication between statisticians searching for interesting problems in the cognitive modeling sphere, and cognitive modelers interested in generalizing from deterministic to stochastic model validation, in the face of random variation in human experimental data. (shrink)

Intelligence operations overwhelmingly focus on obtaining secrets (espionage) and the unauthorized disclosure of secrets by a public official in one political community to another (treason). It is generally understood that the principal responsibility of spies is to successfully procure secrets about the enemy. Yet, in this essay, I ask: Are spies and traitors ethically justified in using cyber operations not merely to acquire secrets (cyber espionage) but also to covertly manipulate or falsify information (cyber manipulation) to prevent atrocities? I suggest (...) that using cyber manipulation operations to parry atrocities is pro tanto morally permissible and, on occasion, required. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article considers some analogies for religion which are so common in our ordinary language that they might pass without notice. I explore five in detail to show how each in different ways limits what we can say, and indeed think, about religion. By using multiple religious belonging as an example, I am able to compare the things we ordinarily say about religion with the complexities of real, lived religion and illustrate some of the ways in which our analogies for (...) religion fall short. Many of these analogies are so ‘natural’ – so deeply embedded in the ways ordinary language works – that without this specific attention, they can shape what can be said about religion without the speaker noticing. Often, this makes things which the sociological evidence shows people are getting on and doing, like practising multiple religious belonging, seem ‘impossible’ when we try to describe them. By paying attention to the analogies which underlie this sensation, I am able to show that a wider variety of analogies, used with more conscious attention, can be employed to allow us to think more clearly about complex lived religion, including multiple religious belonging. (shrink)

Recently, a new method of considering successful intentional thought suppression has emerged. This method, the think/no-think paradigm has been utilized over a multitude of settings and has fairly robustly demonstrated the ability to interfere with memory recall. The following experiment examined the effect of intentional thought suppression on recognition memory of nonverbalizeable shapes. In this experiment, participants learned word–shape targets. For some of the pairs, they rehearsed the shape when presented with the word; for others, they suppressed the shape when (...) presented with the word. Finally, participants were shown multiple shapes, one at a time, and asked to identify which they had previously seen as paired with a word. Results of the experiment indicated that, similar to results involving words, participants were less accurate in identifying suppressed shapes, as compared to rehearsed shapes. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Seeking new language for the Divine has encouraged Christian and Jewish feminists to explore other religious traditions which are richer in feminine language for God, and in some cases to borrow parts of what they find for their own use. However, these other religious traditions are often socially and politically less powerful, and borrowing their language and practice has ethical implications. Especially because the ethical dimensions of liturgy are bound up with theological issues, religious feminists have a moral duty to (...) consider these questions in which there are rarely if ever any easy answers. (shrink)

Delving deeper into LEGO's products and marketing provides an important perspective on the development of the Research Institute set and LEGO's attempt to engage women in science. LEGO's own research shows that boys tend to build in a more linear fashion by replicating what is inside the box whereas girls prefer a more personal approach, to create their own story and to imagine themselves living inside the things they build. Sociologists have looked at every stage of children's development, and found (...) that parents treat babies differently as soon as the sex of the child is known. Language‐focused skills such as reading and writing are gendered feminine and thought of as girls' subjects, whereas science and physical education are considered masculine and treated as boys' subjects. Encouraging women to take up science and science‐related careers might not just be morally good, or good for women, but also important for the progress of science itself. (shrink)

Influenced by Sachs’ ‘activist identity’ I propose that pre-service teacher education or initial teacher education, as I will refer to it, could, and indeed should, encourage a new form of teacher; the ‘teacher-agent.’ This teacher-agent would be aware of the pressures and dictates of the neo-liberal educational culture and its ensuing performative discourse, and choose to resist it, in favour of a more holistic view of education. This view of education encourages inclusive, creative and democratic forms of education concerned with (...) encouraging a social conscience in children and young people, as well as seeing education as concerned with the whole child. These more holistic approaches to education could include pedagogical approaches such as Philosophy for Children, Rights’ Respecting Education and Slow Pedagogy, which can not only provide a more balanced understanding and deeper experience of education for both teachers and pupils, but can also help teachers to resist the debilitating impact of the neo-liberal performative discourse, potentially also thus impacting on their wellbeing and ability to retain their integrity as professionals. This may also have the potential to halt the rapid exodus of new teachers from the profession. It is my contention, that engaging with pedagogies such as P4C in this new iteration of ITE could help not only to encourage the Student Teacher-Agent, but also, as a consequence, develop the Citizen-Agent in the children they are teaching. In this paper I consider four key areas where I propose P4C could play a role in this alternative model of Initial Teacher Education; Democracy in action, the teacher as Teacher-Facilitator, a space for co-construction of knowledge, and encouraging Social Justice. (shrink)

The introduction of the new National Curriculum in England, was initially viewed with suspicion by practitioners, uneasy about the radical departure from the previous National Curriculum, in both breadth and scope of the content. However, this paper will suggest that upon further reflection the brevity of the content could lend itself to a total re-evaluation of the approach to curriculum planning in individual schools. This paper will explore how, far from creating a burden of extra curriculum content, Philosophy for Children (...) can in fact be a driver for the whole primary curriculum. With the renewed focus on Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development in England, it will investigate the potential for P4C to engage and enhance these areas, which often are neglected or side-lined in the primary curriculum. It will consider the benefits to a class, and indeed school, of creating communities of enquiry and how they can influence school ethos, values and vision. The paper will also share reflections on my own practice as a new trainer with SAPERE over the past two years of training student teachers, colleagues at the university as well as local primary school teachers and head teachers. In addition it will share examples of good practice from three schools where Philosophy for Children has been successfully integrated in a variety of models across the whole school curriculum. (shrink)

Marketers use autobiographical advertising as a means to create nostalgia for their products. This research explores whether such referencing can cause people to believe that they had experiences as children that are mentioned in the ads. In Experiment 1, participants viewed an ad for Disney that suggested that they shook hands with Mickey Mouse as a child. Relative to controls, the ad increased their confidence that they personally had shaken hands with Mickey as a child at a Disney resort. The (...) increased confidence could be due to a revival of a true memory or the creation of a new, false one. In Experiment 2, participants viewed an ad for Disney that suggested that they shook hands with an impossible character (e.g., Bugs Bunny). Again, relative to controls, the ad increased confidence that they personally had shaken hands with the impossible character as a child at a Disney resort. The increased confidence is consistent with the notion that autobiographical referencing can lead to the creation of false or distorted memory. ᭧ 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Some of the dialogue in the Star Wars films has become deservedly iconic, instantly recognizable even to people unfamiliar with the series. Several human characters speak two or more languages. This chapter examines whether Chewbacca's noises work like a language. It considers a typical exchange between Chewbacca and Han Solo. The conclusion that these noises are not real language is so obvious as to be unnecessary: Chewbacca does not speak. The Star Wars films and Expanded Universe materials teem with processes, (...) objects, and entities that are unique to their fictional setting, are without counterparts in real life, and would need to be learned by someone encountering them for the first time. Conversely, if more and more people do start to use a word in a new way, eventually the newer usage will become its accepted meaning, either coexisting with an older meaning or superseding it. (shrink)

The Aristotelian dictum that desire is the starting point of practical reasoning that ends in action can of course be denied. Its denial is a commonplace of moral theory in the tradition of Kant. But in this essay I am concerned with that issue only indirectly. I shall not contend that rational action always or necessarily does involve desire as its starting point; nor shall I deny it. My question concerns instead the possibility of its ever beginning in desire. For (...) there is a question whether it is even possible for reasoning to begin in desire, a question arising from the nature of desire and its objects, which to my knowledge has not been articulated. If we can see how desire can provide the arche of action, then we can consider later, and from that vantage point, whether it is necessary that it should do so. It will, I think, be possible eventually to argue that if practical reasoning has the character it must have, if it can begin in desire, then its starting point can be nothing but desire. (shrink)

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this essay (...) examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force “short of war” in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. (shrink)

Within the narrative fora.d.32, Tacitus recreates a spirited speech delivered before the Senate by theequesMarcus Terentius (Ann. 6.8), defending himself retrospectively for having been a ‘friend’ of Sejanus. This speech, the only extended speech inoratio rectato feature inAnnalsBook 6, is historiographically rich and suggestive.This article first analyses the speech as a compelling piece of oratory in its own right. It then explores the provocative mirroring of another important speech in Curtius Rufus (7.1.19–40). This is where the general Amyntas, defending himself (...) before Alexander the Great against charges of participation in an alleged conspiracy, refuses to deny his friendship with the conspirator Philotas (now dead). Scholars have rightly acknowledged the significant intertextuality of these two speeches in Curtius Rufus and Tacitus. Yet the interest in this mirroring between Amyntas and Terentius has overshadowed another important intertext. This article demonstrates how Tacitus also engages with a programmatic moment from the opening of Virgil'sAeneidwhen Aeolus is cajoled by Juno to unleash a devastating storm. Terentius wittily casts Tiberius as a powerful divinity whose whims had to be obeyed and himself as a helpless Aeolus doing his will.This article demonstrates that the two passages from Virgil and Curtius Rufus underpinning Terentius’ speech work together powerfully, challenging Tacitus’ readers to reflect on the difficulties of ‘speaking to power’ and on the compromises involved for men like Terentius in negotiating the complex political realities of the imperial system. (shrink)

Pliny’s letters generally seem designed to portray an image of Pliny himself as kind and altruistic, fulfilling the obligations of a Roman aristocrat. But in one group of his letters—those about the infamous delator Marcus Aquilius Regulus—the author’s voice instead appears malignant and hostile. If, as seems certain, Pliny carefully planned his letters with the aim of portraying himself in a certain way, why the discrepancy? This chapter argues that these letters serve a deliberate purpose in constructing part of the (...) overall persona Pliny wishes to project—a neo-Ciceronian persona of eloquence, moralizing, and memorializing. (shrink)

Caregivers’ language input supports children’s language development, and it is often tuned to the child’s current level of skill. Evidence suggests that parental input is tuned to accommodate children’s expressive language levels, but accommodation to receptive language abilities is less understood. In particular, little is known about parental sensitivity to children’s abilities to process language in real time. Compared to nonspectrum children, children on the spectrum are slower to process language. In this study, we ask: Do parents of autistic children (...) and those of nonspectrum children tune their language input to accommodate children’s different language processing abilities? Children with and without a diagnosis of autism and their parents viewed a display of six images, one of which was the target. The parent labeled the target to direct the child’s attention to it. We first examined children’s language processing abilities by assessing their latencies to shift gaze to the labeled referent; from this, we found slower latencies in the autistic group than in the nonspectrum group, in line with previous findings. We then examined features of parents’ language and found that parents in both groups produced similar language, suggesting that parents may not adjust their language input according to children’s speed of language processing. This finding suggests that capturing parental sensitivity to children’s receptive language, and specifically language processing, may enrich our models of individual differences in language input, and future work should investigate if supporting caregivers in tuning their language use according to children’s language processing can improve children’s language outcomes. (shrink)

This article argues that the concept and practice of ‘self-organized learning’, as pioneered by Sugata Mitra (and his team) in the ‘Hole-in-the-Wall’ experiments (1999–2005) that inspired the novel Q & A (2006) and the resulting movie, Slumdog millionaire (2008) bear direct, but not uncritical comparison with Jacques Rancière’s account of ‘universal teaching’ discovered by maverick nineteenth century French pedagogue Joseph Jacotot. In both cases, it is argued, there is a deliberate dissociation of two functions of ‘teaching’ that are often conflated: (...) knowledge and mastery. Mitra’s development of computer-mediated learning among the supposedly ‘ignorant’ of India’s slums, and Rancière’s insistence on equality as a presupposition rather than a goal, both emphasize the agency of the student at the centre of learning, but in ways that displace both established pedagogical methods of ‘explication’ and the neoliberal ideology of ‘schooling’ as the harmonizing of individual and social functions of education. (shrink)

The final persistence of democracy depends upon whether its right decisions outweigh the wrong ones in number and value, though conceivably one really bad decision might ruin the structure built on all the right ones. It is passing from the stage where a few reasoning leaders govern the masses through their emotions, to the next perilous stage in which every man's thoughts matter. Right decisions depend upon access to relevant facts and doing the right thinking about them. It is of (...) the essence of Nazi philosophy that general liberty of thought is self-destructive, the common man not being rational; it is of the essence of Nazi practice to flatter the many by the pretence that their thinking does matter, but to control and modify the whole supply of factual material upon which they must reason. One declared to me once that he favoured freedom of thought and was not afraid of it, for if he was allowed to supply the “facts” any ordinary rational mind could come to only one conclusion, viz. the one he intended. And in the process the ordinary man might remain proud of his reasoning power, so long as he could be sheltered from seeing the falsity of his conclusions. Control of facts must be perpetual, and cats must never be allowed to get out of bags. But in a democracy, where facts are all born free , it is the thinking about them that really matters. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the dogmatic challenges involved in developing a distinctively evangelical account of the doctrine of theosis, that is, humanity’s participation in the life of God. After offering some preliminary clarifications regarding the terminology of theosis, the paper sketches in broad strokes how an account of theosis might take shape within the structures of evangelical theology. David Bebbington’s famous evangelical quadrilateral— biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism—serves as the basic framework (Bebbington 1989: 1-19). It will be argued that (...) evangelical theology can accommodate a version of theosis within this structure, but that evangelicals’ understanding of these categories may require some ‘flexing’ in order to make room for a more Christocentric and participatory conceptualization of redemption, one that culminates in the beatific vision of the redeemed when ‘God will be all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28). The final section of the paper points to a pair of important figures who may serve as resources for an evangelical retrieval of theosis. (shrink)

The title I first chose for my remarks was “The Socialization of the Hedonic Impulse,” but I concluded that I had better indicate my real objective rather than the process of getting to it.

Peer review is a topic of considerable concern to many researchers, and there is a correspondingly large body of research on the topic. This issue of Science and Engineering Ethics presents recent work on peer review that is both grounded in empirical science and is applicable to policy decisions. This research raises two basic questions; (a) how does current peer review operate, and (b) how can it be improved? Topics addressed include descriptions of how peer review is used in Federal (...) agencies. whether peer review leads to better manuscripts, demographic characteristics of authors or reviewers (status or institutional affiliation), blinding of reviewers, authors, or results, reliability and consistency of reviews, accepting a paper before the study is done, simultaneous submission, and use of dispute resolution procedures such as scientific dialectical and pleading protocols. (shrink)

This paper presents a framework that editors, peer reviewers, and authors can use to identify and resolve efficiently disputes that arise during peer review in scientific journals. The framework is called a scientific dialectical brief. In this framework, differences among authors and reviewers are formatted into specific assertions and the support each party provides for its position. A literature review suggests that scientists use five main types of support; empirical data, reasoning, speculation, feelings, and status. It is suggested that the (...) scientific dialectical brief format can streamline the review process by facilitating rapid differentiation between stronger and weaker support, so that valuable time can be focused on the better-substantiated claims. The paper concludes with some suggestions for implementation. (shrink)

In Unthinking Modernity, Judith Stamps reinterprets the communications theory of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan as a Canadian variant of the critical theory associated with the early Frankfurt school. Stamps argues that Innis and McLuhan used their studies of media to develop a critique of the thoughts and habits that characterize the West. Like their European contemporaries, Innis and McLuhan worked toward a theory of how westerners have developed classifications through which they perceive the world. Moreover, Stamps shows that they (...) used insights derived from their North American experience to add a new, media-based perspective to such a theory. Unthinking Modernity offers unique perspectives on the ways in which economics, politics, and media intertwine to create personal and social consciousness. (shrink)