Attitudes toward sow husbandry differ between citizens and conventional pig farmers. Research showed that moral values could only predict the judgment of people in case of culling healthy animals in the course of a disease epidemic to a certain extent. Therefore, we hypothesized that attitudes of citizens and pig farmers cannot be predicted one-on-one by moral values. Furthermore, we were interested in getting insight in whether moral values can be useful in bridging the gap between attitudes toward sow husbandry of (...) citizens and pig farmers. Based on a questionnaire, it was found that pig farmers and citizens, when considered as one group, shared the valuation of most moral values. However, when studying the four clusters of citizens with different attitudes toward sow husbandry, determined in a previous study, a variation in valuation of the moral values between the clusters of citizens and farmers came to the fore. This means that moral values are interpreted differently by groups of people when forming attitudes toward sow husbandry. The results of our study give an indication of which moral values are weighed differently between clusters of citizens and pig farmers. This information can be useful in future research on attitudes toward animal husbandry in order to understand why attitudes differ between groups of people. Besides, our results can be useful for the pig sector and citizens to learn to understand each other’s attitudes. With this understanding it is possible to invest in a husbandry system that can build on societal support. (shrink)

It is shown that for each computably enumerable set P of n-element subsets of ω there is an infinite Π 0 n set $A \subseteq \omega$ such that either all n-element subsets of A are in P or no n-element subsets of A are in P. An analogous result is obtained with the requirement that A be Π 0 n replaced by the requirement that the jump of A be computable from 0 (n) . These results are best possible in (...) various senses. (shrink)

For $X \subseteq \omega$ , let $\lbrack X \rbrack^n$ denote the class of all n-element subsets of X. An infinite set $A \subseteq \omega$ is called n-r-cohesive if for each computable function $f: \lbrack \omega \rbrack^n \rightarrow \lbrace 0, 1 \rbrace$ there is a finite set F such that f is constant on $\lbrack A - F \rbrack^n$ . We show that for each n ≥ 2 there is no $\prod_n^0$ set $A \subseteq \omega$ which is n-r-cohesive. For n = (...) 2 this refutes a result previously claimed by the authors, and for n ≥ 3 it answers a question raised by the authors. (shrink)

The pig sector is struggling with negative attitudes of citizens. This may be the result of conflicting attitudes toward pig husbandry between citizens and other stakeholders. To obtain knowledge about these attitudes, the objectives of this study were to determine and compare attitudes of various stakeholders toward animals, humans and the environment in the context of pig husbandry and to determine and compare the acceptability of publically discussed issues related to pig husbandry of various stakeholders. A questionnaire was distributed to (...) citizens, conventional pig farmers, organic pig farmers, pig husbandry advisors and pig veterinarians. Respondents could indicate their attitude toward aspects related to animals, humans and the environment in the context of pig husbandry and they could indicate their opinion about the acceptability of issues of pig husbandry, e.g. piglet mortality and inside pig housing. Based on measured attitudes and the acceptability of issues, the studied stakeholders could be divided into three distinctive groups. The group of citizens and organic pig farmers showed negative attitudes toward all aspects of pig husbandry, the group of conventional pig farmers and pig husbandry advisors only showed negative attitudes toward aspects related to economics and the group of pig veterinarians showed negative attitudes to specific aspects of pig husbandry. This indicates that stakeholders have different interests and different perspectives with regard to pig husbandry. The pig sector should learn to understand citizens’ perspectives and take these into account in their line of work, the implementation of animal welfare measures and in their communication. (shrink)

Despite their centrality and importance to both science and philosophy, relatively little has been written about thought experiments. This volume brings together a series of extremely interesting studies of the history, mechanics, and applications of this important intellectual resource. A distinguished list of philosophers and scientists consider the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines, and argue that an examination of thought experimentation goes to the heart of both science and philosophy.

We formulate a polarized version of Ramsey’s theorem for trees. For those exponents greater than 2, both the reverse mathematics and the computability theory associated with this theorem parallel that of its linear analog. For pairs, the situation is more complex. In particular, there are many reasonable notions of stability in the tree setting, complicating the analysis of the related results.

Currently there is little guidance given to teachers in selecting focal issues for socio-scientific issues -based teaching and learning. As a majority of teachers regularly collaborate with other teachers, understanding what factors influence collaborative SSI-based curriculum design is critical. We invited 18 secondary science teachers to participate in a professional development on SSI-based instruction and curriculum design. Through intentional design, we studied how these teachers formed curriculum design teams and how they selected focal issues for SSI-based curriculum units. We developed (...) substantiative grounded theory to explain these processes. Key findings include how teachers’ tensions and agential moves worked in tandem in the development of a safe and shared place to share discontentment and generate opportunities to form design teams and select issues. Teacher passion and existing resources are factors as influential as considerations for issue relevance. Implications for teacher professional development and research are included. (shrink)

Individuals with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) display diverse deficits in social, cognitive and behavioral functioning. To date, there has been mixed findings on the profile of executive function deficits for high-functioning adults (IQ >70) with ASD. A conceptual distinction is commonly made between “cold” and “hot” executive functions. Cold executive functions refer to mechanistic higher-order cognitive operations (e.g., working memory), whereas hot executive functions entail cognitive abilities supported by emotional awareness and social perception (e.g., social cognition). This study aimed to (...) determine the independence of deficits in hot and cold executive functions for high-functioning adults with ASD. Forty-two adults with ASD (64% male, aged 18-66 years) and 40 age and gender matched controls were administered The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT; emotion recognition and social inference), Letter Number Sequencing (working memory) and Hayling Sentence Completion Test (response initiation and suppression). Between-group analyses identified that the ASD group performed significantly worse than matched controls on all measures of cold and hot executive functions (d =.54-1.5). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that the ASD sample performed more poorly on emotion recognition and social inference tasks than matched controls after controlling for cold executive functions and employment status. The findings also indicated that the ability to recognise emotions and make social inferences was supported by working memory and response initiation and suppression processes. Overall, this study supports the distinction between hot and cold executive function impairments for adults with ASD. Moreover, it advances understanding of higher-order impairments underlying social interaction difficulties for this population which, in turn, may assist with diagnosis and inform intervention programs. (shrink)

Richard Levins (1930-2016) was an outstanding ecologist, population geneticist, biomathematician, philosopher of science, complexity theorist, and Marxist. Key to all aspects of his work was a dialectical logic of process and change. His work provides a framework for the understanding of crises in environment and society and their analytic relationship with capitalism and imperialism, as well as the tools for the critique of biological determinist justifications for the existing structures of power. This anthology pays tribute to Levins by carrying forward (...) his work in the development of the understanding of the dialectics of nature and society. -/- The contributions are organized into four sections--Dialectics in Wholistic Research; Political Ecology and Health; Complex Systems; and Reminiscences and Tributes. The authors are as almost as hard to label as Levins; the fields they draw from range from biomathematics to NGO activism; environmental policy to island and aquatic ecology; eco-justice podcasting to biogeochemistry; reflective practice to science-in-society, agroecology to public health. (shrink)

Background Inadequate knowledge among health care providers (HCPs) and parents of affected children limits the understanding and utility of secondary genetic findings (SFs) in under-represented populations in genomics research. SFs arise from deep DNA sequencing done for research or diagnostic purposes and may burden patients and their families despite their potential health importance. This study aims to evaluate the perspective of both groups regarding SFs and their choices in the return of results from genetic testing in the context of orofacial (...) clefts.Methods Using an online survey, we evaluated the experiences of 252 HCPs and 197 parents across participating cleft clinics in Ghana and Nigeria toward the return of SFs across several domains.Results Only 1.6% of the HCPs felt they had an expert understanding of when and how to incorporate genomic medicine into practice, while 50.0% agreed that all SFs should be returned to patients. About 95.4% of parents were willing to receive all the information from genetic testing (including SFs), while the majority cited physicians as their primary information source (64%).Conclusions Overall, parents and providers were aware that genetic testing could help in the clinical management of diseases. However, they cited a lack of knowledge about genomic medicine, uncertain clinical utility, and lack of available learning resources as barriers. The knowledge gained from this study will assist with developing guidelines and policies to guide providers on the return of SFs in sub-Saharan Africa and across the continent. (shrink)

The progression of research and scholarly inquiry does not occur in isolation and is wholly dependent on accurate reporting of methods and results, and successful replication of prior work. Without mechanisms to correct the literature, much time and money is wasted on research based on a crumbling foundation. These guidelines serve to outline the respective responsibilities of researchers, institutions, agencies, and publishers or editors in maintaining the integrity of the research record. Delineating these complementary roles and proposing solutions for common (...) barriers provide a foundation for best practices. (shrink)

Religion and spirituality (R/S) serve as coping mechanisms for circumstances that threaten people’s psychological well-being. However, using R/S inappropriately to deal with difficulties and problems in daily life may include the practice of Spiritual Bypass (SB). SB refers to avoiding addressing emotional problems and trauma, rather than healing and learning from them. On the other hand, coping strategies may be determined by the cultural context. This study aims to describe the presence of SB in individuals who may have experienced stressful (...) situations and to understand the influence of culture on SB by comparing SB in two culturally different groups. The sample consists of a total of 435 people, 262 of Honduran nationality and 173 of Spanish nationality. Both groups are approximately equivalent in age and gender. The degree of SB, stressful events, perception of social support and spiritual well-being are examined, respectively, through the Spiritual Bypass Scale, and specific items and subscales from the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - Spiritual Wellbeing. The results showed a higher spiritual well-being and use of SB in the Honduran sample as compared to the Spanish sample, but similar social support and stressful events. Furthermore, some of the factors predicting SB were different between the two samples. While age and a greater number of R/S practices were important in both samples, for the Honduran sample the variables that best explained SB were being a Christian, having greater social support, fewer stressful events, and greater attendance at church or temple. For the Spanish sample, however, the variable that best explained SB was studying R/S texts. Therefore, SB must be understood within the culture in which it develops, since in different cultural contexts it appears to relate to differing factors. Thus, SB becomes a possible functional or dysfunctional coping strategy depending on the social context. (shrink)

Patient report of functioning is one component of the neurocognitive exam following traumatic brain injury, and standardized patient-reported outcomes measures are useful to track outcomes during rehabilitation. The Traumatic Brain Injury Quality of Life measurement system is a TBI-specific extension of the PROMIS and Neuro-QoL measurement systems that includes 20 item banks across physical, emotional, social, and cognitive domains. Previous research has evaluated the responsiveness of the TBI-QOL measures in community-dwelling individuals and found clinically important change over a 6-month assessment (...) interval in a sample of individuals who were on average 5 years post-injury. In the present study, we report on the responsiveness of the TBI-QOL Cognition–General Concerns and Executive Function item bank scores and the Cognitive Health Composite scores in a recently injured sample over a 1-year study period. Data from 128 participants with complicated mild, moderate, or severe TBI within the previous 6 months were evaluated. The majority of the sample was male, white, and non-Hispanic. The participants were 18–92 years of age and were first evaluated from 0 to 5 months post-injury. Eighty participants completed the 1-year follow-up assessment. Results show acceptable standard response mean values for all measures and minimal detectable change values ranging from 8.2 to 8.8 T-score points for Cognition–General Concerns and Executive Functioning measures. Anchor rating analysis revealed that changes in scores on the Executive Function item bank and the Cognitive Health Composite were meaningfully associated with participant-reported changes in the areas of attention, multitasking, and memory. Evaluation of change score differences by a variety of clinical indicators demonstrated a small but significant difference in the three TBI-QOL change scores by TBI injury severity grouping. These results support the responsiveness of the TBI-QOL cognition measures in newly injured individuals and provides information on the minimal important differences for the TBI-QOL cognition measures, which can be used for score interpretation by clinicians and researchers seeking patient-reported outcome measures of self-reported cognitive QOL after TBI. (shrink)

INDUS-EM is India’s only level one conference imparting and exchanging quality knowledge in acute care. Specifically, in general and specialized emergency care and training in trauma, burns, cardiac, stroke, environmental and disaster medicine. It provides a series of exchanges regarding academic development and implementation of training tools related to developing future academic faculty and residents in Emergency Medicine in India. The INDUS-EM leadership and board of directors invited scholars from multiple institutions to participate in this advanced educational symposium that was (...) held in Thrissur, Kerala in October 2013. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

La parroquia constituía un componente clave de la identidad en los siglos XVIII y XIX, ya que constituía la unidad de residencia principal y se fraguó como el principal marco de sociabilidad. El estudio de los conflictos por los cambios en las parroquias revela una cosmovisión identitaria densa y estable. De tal forma que pertenecer a un aparroquia no estaba condicionado exclusivamente por factores residenciales y devocionales, sino que la población se basó en múltiples elementos para argumentar y defender el (...) territorio parroquial propio, tales como factores económicos o patrimoniales. (shrink)

What reason does one have to resist oppression? The reasons that most easily come to mind are those having to do with justice—reasons that arise from commitments to human equality and the common good. In this paper, I argue that there are also reasons of love—reasons that arise from personal attachments to specific people, projects, or activities. I defend a distinctive form of resistance that is characteristically undertaken for reasons of love, which I call Quiet Resistance. Contrary to theories that (...) build reasons of justice into the definition of resistance, I argue that we have strong reason to consider Quiet Resistance a genuine form of resistance. Finally, I argue that the reasons in favor of engaging in Quiet Resistance help to explain its distinctive value. In short, when one engages in Quiet Resistance, one’s actions are valuable in large part because they allow one to maintain respect for one’s personal values and meaning in life under oppressive conditions. (shrink)

In an era before the invention of photography, fine art prints based on famous paintings dominated the eighteenth-century art market, inviting a common comparison between engravers and translators. At a time when writers and scholars placed much value on the closeness of translations to their original texts, such comparisons reflected a subordination of the skills of technical engravers to the assumed genius of painters. However, careful examination of the copy-prints reveals that loyalty to originals was not the primary interest of (...) these visual translators. Instead, these translators saw themselves as active mediators. This essay reconsiders acts of eighteenth-century visual translation to reframe the practice of engraving during the period and to establish a new understanding of the movement from one visual artistic language to another. The case study of Nicolas de Launay, one the most successful engravers in eighteenth-century France, is selected for scrutiny and contextualized within historical debates around translation. The final aim is to illuminate important tensions between the disciplines of painting and engraving, as well as the complex process by which engravers strove to remain simultaneously loyal to the painters, to their audience, and to their own artistic identity. (shrink)

This article focuses on the follow question: Are human enhancement technologies likely to be justice impairing or justice promoting? We argue that human enhancement technologies may not be inherently just or unjust, but when situated within obtaining social contexts they are likely to exacerbate rather than alleviate social injustices.

To what extent can philosophical thought experiments reveal norms? Some ethicists have argued that certain thought experiments reveal that people draw a morally significant distinction between "doing" and "allowing". I examine one such thought experiment in detail and argue that the intuitions it elicits can be explained by "prospect theory", a psychological theory about the way people reason. The extent to which such alternative explanations of the results of thought experiments in philosophy are generally available is an empirical question.

Interview of Vsevolod Khoma with Professor Tamara Yashchuk within the framework of the research program “Ukrainian Philosophy of the 60s-80s of the 20th Century” of the Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy.

In this paper I propose a partition semantics for sentences containing objective predicates that takes into account the phenomenon of occasion-sensitivity associated with so-called Travis cases. The key idea is that the set of worlds in which a sentence is true has a more complex structure as a result of different ways in which it is made true. Different ways may have different capacities to support the attainment of a contextually salient domain goal. I suggest that goal-conduciveness decides whether some (...) utterance of a sentence is accepted as true on a particular occasion at a given world. The utterance will not be accepted as true at a world which belongs to a truth-maker which is less conducive to a contextually salient goal than other truth-makers. Finally, the proposed occasion-sensitive semantics is applied to some cases of disagreement and cancellability. (shrink)

The generalized second law of thermodynamics states that entropy always increases when all event horizons are attributed with an entropy proportional to their area. We test the generalized second law by investigating the change in entropy when dust, radiation and black holes cross a cosmological event horizon. We generalize for flat, open and closed Friedmann–Robertson–Walker universes by using numerical calculations to determine the cosmological horizon evolution. In most cases, the loss of entropy from within the cosmological horizon is more than (...) balanced by an increase in cosmological event horizon entropy, maintaining the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics. However, an intriguing set of open universe models shows an apparent entropy decrease when black holes disappear over the cosmological event horizon. We anticipate that this apparent violation of the generalized second law will disappear when solutions are available for black holes embedded in arbitrary backgrounds. (shrink)

How is the concept of patient care adapting in response to rapid changes in healthcare delivery and advances in medical technology? How are questions of ethical responsibility and social diversity shaping the definitions of healthcare? In this topical study, scholars in anthropology, nursing theory, law and ethics explore questions involving the changing relationship between patient care and medical ethics. Contributors address issues that challenge the boundaries of patient care, such as: · HIV-related care and research · the impact of new (...) reproductive technologies · preventative healthcare · technological breakthroughs that are changing personal-caring relationships. Chapters range from a consideration of the practicalities of nursing and family healthcare to a debate about ‘universal human needs’ and patients’ rights. This book is a provocative exploration of the ways in which healthcare models are socially constructed. It will be of interest to policy-makers, medical practitioners and administrators, as well as students of sociology, anthropology and social policy. (shrink)

The book discusses citizenship in the contemporary world; as a concept, as an ideal, as a policy and as a goal to be achieved from the perspective of different academic disciplines.

Building on Wittgenstein’s ideas, I defend a brand of pluralism that associates words with conceptual families and appeals to this notion in the course of philosophical problem solving. I argue that certain problems that the received view of conceptual engineering (‘improvement by replacement’) faces can be more easily overcome if we adopt a pluralist perspective. I show that the proposed approach can circumvent the problem of topic discontinuity, whilst also avoiding the threat of trivialisation, since it can easily accommodate both (...) coarse-grained and fine-grained topics. Finally, I argue that my variant of pluralism is compatible with de novo conceptual engineering insofar as it allows that the paradigm associated with a word may shift overtime thus creating an opportunity for new candidate members to join a conceptual family. (shrink)

What reasons stand in favor of (or against) violent resistance to oppression? I distinguish two kinds of normative reasons that bear relevantly in such a practical deliberation. I argue that in addition to reasons of impartial morality, victims’ personal projects and relationships may also provide reasons for (or against) violent resistance. Moreover, there is no guarantee that conflicts will not occur between such reasons. Thus, some acts of violent resistance may arise from situations of radical choice in which impartial moral (...) reasons and personal reasons pull the agent in opposite directions. Regardless of what we ultimately think agents facing such decisions ought to do all things considered, recognizing such conflicts is crucial for understanding the circumstances that give rise to violence and for better sympathizing with victims who are pushed to such extreme modes of resistance. (shrink)