It has been argued that we find zeno's paradoxes of motion persuasive because physical time is dense and continuous, While time as we experience it is discrete. But we do not experience time as a succession of distinct, Countable, Consecutively ordered mental "nows." nor is it common to attempt the futile mental task of traversing in thought the infinite number of spatial subintervals in zeno's paradoxes, As has also been suggested. Rather, We find the paradoxes persuasive because there are a (...) number of different conceptual and linguistic problems inherent in them. For instance, Understanding how it is possible for achilles to come to the end of an endless sequence of spatial intervals requires disambiguating different senses of the word "end.". (shrink)

In informal terms, abductive reasoning involves inferring the best or most plausible explanation from a given set of facts or data. It is a common occurrence in everyday life and crops up in such diverse places as medical diagnosis, scientific theory formation, accident investigation, language understanding, and jury deliberation. In recent years, it has become a popular and fruitful topic in artificial intelligence research. This volume breaks new ground in the scientific, philosophical, and technological study of abduction. It presents new (...) ideas about inferential and information-processing foundations for knowledge and certainty. The authors argue that knowledge arises from experience by processes of abductive inference, in contrast to the view that it arises non-inferentially, or that deduction and inductive generalization are enough to account for knowledge. Much AI research is hypothetical, so the importance of this book is that it reports key discoveries about abduction that have been made as a result of designing, building, testing, and analyzing actual working knowledge-based systems for medical diagnosis and other abductive tasks. The book tells the story of six generations of increasingly sophisticated generic abduction machines, RED-1, RED-2, PEIRCE, MDX2, TIPS, QUAWDS, and the discovery of reasoning strategies that make it computationally feasible to form well-justified composite explanatory hypotheses, despite the threat of combinatorial explosion. The final chapter argues that perception is logically abductive and presents a layered-abduction computational model of perceptual information processing. This book will be of great interest to researchers in AI, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. (shrink)

To promote so-called cultural competence in work of direct-care providers and other health professionals among diverse peoples, cross-cultural training is now widely advised. However, in ethically assessing aims and content of CCT, and surrounding issues and concerns, what should guide us? And if we can elaborate satisfactory moral touchstones, what do they imply for healthcare professionals, overarching structures, and bioethicists? Building on prior work, this paper tries to help answer these questions.

ABSTRACTThe latest draft of UNESCO's proposed Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights is a major disappointment. The committee of government ‘experts’ that produced it made sure that it would not introduce any new obligations for States, and so the document simply restates existing agreements and lists desirable goals without specifying how they can be achieved. This article focuses on the shortcomings of the document as it would apply to health care. These shortcomings are evident in the document's scope, aims (...) and principles. The conclusion is that if UNESCO still thinks that such a declaration is needed, it should produce either an ethical document addressed to individuals and groups, which would be primarily educational in nature, or a legal document addressed to States, which should not have the word ‘ethics’ in its title. (shrink)

The dramatic changes in contemporary European politics associated with the rise of the New Right has created a new political culture which is the subject of this fascinating and informative book. Contemporary Political Culture pioneers the application of the theory of postmodernism to Western political behaviour and political science. Underpinning the book is the observation that fundamental long-term changes in the contours of European political culture explain the rise of the new politics and recent political events. The authors offer a (...) critical analysis of traditional theories, models and accounts of political culture, and -- an evaluation of the two contending contemporary explanatory models, postmodernism and po. (shrink)

Postmodern theory is well placed to provide a useful resource in carrying forward the project of instituting cosmopolitan morality and justice at the local level. It is qualified to contribute because the central problematic of postmodern political theory is shared by cosmopolitanism, namely, how can a multiplicity of divergent autonomous groups, with few, or no shared cultural resources, negotiate and agree to share common spaces? How, can we have political and moral order when the preconditions, normally believed to accompany these, (...) are non existent or unstable. Postmodern thinking also brings to the debate about cosmopolitanism, the resources that will allow for the toleration, openness and ingenuity that build upon eclecticism, pluralism, the celebration of difference, and expressivism in a period experiencing alteration, vulnerability, irony and insecurity. In approach, postmodern thinking shares with cosmopolitanism: a preference for particular narrative over grand narrative; the local over the global; particular over universal; difference over generalisation; eclecticism over absolutism; synchrony over unity; and pluralism over monism. Both approaches are resources that can help us re-learn how neighbours can live together in strange times. (shrink)

What happens to politics in the postmodern condition? The Politics of Postmodernity is a political tour de force that addresses this key contemporary question. Politics in postmodernity is carefully contextualized by relating its specific sphere - the polity - to those of the economic, social, technological and cultural. The authors confront globalization and the notion of postmodernity as disorganized capitalism. They analyze the role of the mass media, the changing ways in which politics is used, the role of the state (...) and the progressive potential of politics in postmodern times. Closing with a postscript on the future of the discipline of political science, this book offers a profound yet highly accessible account. (shrink)

The traditional distinction between the angelic and human nature rests on the corpo­reality of the human nature. In light of this fact, I compare a paradigm case of pure substance dualism (PSD) and a paradigm case of compound substance dualism (CSD) to the standards of angelology. I argue that CSD provides an intuitive ground for the traditional distinction, whereas PSD fails to distinguish between angels and humans. Given these paradigm cases, angelology gives us a theological reason to prefer some version (...) of CSD to PSD. (shrink)

This book argues that the sin of the devil compels a view of moral responsibility that undermines concerns about luck. It surveys the biblical account of the primal sin, its major interpretation in the tradition, and navigates that interpretation through objections from the perspective of moral luck.

The calpactins are a novel group of proteins associated with the membrane skeleton. The two main forms, calpactin I and II, have been shown to bind to the cytoskeletal proteins actin and spectrin, as well as to anionic phospholipids, which may imply some sort of bridging role. By raising monoclonal antibodies to the heavy and light chains of calpactin I, and to calpactin II, the protein subunits were shown to be coordinately expressed, and the existence of separate calpactin pools hypothesized. (...) Calcium‐binding studies suggest that the calpactins may translate Ca2+ signals into cellular responses at the membrane. Structural studies have revealed two distinct domains and are beginning to throw light on heavy‐‐light chain interaction and cytoskeletal attachment. (shrink)

A selection of 14 papers from a March-April 2000 conference in Manchester, English explores themes related to the philosopher and theologian Anselm of Canterbury. The keynote address discusses Anselm and keeping order in the real world. Other topics include his spiritual metaphysics, dynamic form and content in Proslogion, his 13th-century interlocutors on divine Intelligere and Dicere, and Karl Barth's Anselmic rationality. Two of the presentations are by undergraduates. No index is provided. The text is double spaced. c. Book News Inc.

We describe a general problem solving mechanism that is especially suited for performing a particular form of abductive inference, or best-explanation finding. A problem solver embodying this mechanism synthesizes composite hypotheses. It does so by by combining hypothesis parts as a means to the satisfaction of explanatory goals. In this way it is able to arrive at complex, integrated conclusions which are not pre-stored.The intent is to present a computationally-feasible, task-specific problem solver for a particular information processing task which is (...) nevertheless of very great generality. The task is that of synthesizing coherent composite explanatory hypotheses based upon a prestored, and possibly vast collection of hypothesis-generating “concepts”. The authors’ claim is nothing less than to have shown, in a new sense, and surpassing all other work in this area, how it is computationally possible for an agent to come to “know”, based upon the evidence of the case. (shrink)

Among the greatest challenges to improving health is determining how cultural diversity should influence healthcare practices and organizations, public health measures, biomedical research, and community partnering. Important but seldom addressed are challenges for bioethicists.