In the face of a perceived lack of widespread understanding of the theoretical issues underlying the development, dissemination and implementation of clinical guidelines, the Royal College of General Practitioners Guidelines Group developed a 2-day course aimed at teaching the theory in these areas. The course was targeted at potential opinion formers and ran on six occasions. Postal questionnaire assessment of the course revealed high levels of satisfaction with all aspects of the course and high levels of reported use of the (...) knowledge gained. Further developments of the course are discussed. (shrink)

SummaryThe dichotomy between ‘scientific’ and ‘practical’ approaches to guideline development is false and divisive. Instead we should concentrate on developing mechanisms to develop and implement valid guidelines to improve patient care. The development of valid guidelines requires considerable expertise and is time consuming and expensive. It is most efficiently done at a regional or national level. The implementation of valid guidelines requires local action including the identification and modification of valid guidelines and a coordinated evidence-based implementation strategy (Grimshaw & (...) Eccles 1998). (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze, arguably the best-known theorist of virtuality, describes the virtual as part of an ontology of becoming and multiplicity: he sees the virtual as a characteristic of being which is directly opposed to, but simultaneously constitutive of the actual aspect of reality, as a force that works mostly invisibly, but powerfully within the interstices of the material world, introducing constant flux into reality through its negotiations with the actual.1 This conception of the virtual represents something of a leitmotif for (...) the forty-four essays collected in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. The collection offers a wide range of approaches to virtuality as a philosophical and aesthetic concept as well as a... (shrink)

In my discussion of Bordo's paper I leave aside the particulars of her detailed critique of Grimshaw and the issue of the "maleness" of philosophy and focus instead on some questions raised by her analysis of heterogeneity and generality. I find this analysis very persuasive, particularly her counterarguments to the "theoretics of heterogeneity." However, I am less persuaded by her concluding points and suggestions for future directions.

In this paper I will discuss certain cases in Japanese and Korean morphosyntax where forms compete to express the same semantic and grammatical information, and attempt to show that in each instance the most economical form is chosen. Presenting an account in terms of Optimality Theory (OT; see Prince and Smolensky (1993), Grimshaw (1995)), I will argue that constraints such as ‘Avoid Word’ and ‘Avoid Affix’ (as in (1)) are motivated as the forces behind the economization. (1) Avoid Word, (...) Avoid Affix. In OT, constraints are violable and ranked. For a given input—in this paper, abstract grammatical and semantic information—the optimal output is the morpho-syntactic expression which best satisfies the constraints in their ranking, even if some constraints are violated. If the constraints in (1) were the only forces on grammatical expression, the optimal output would be silence; but such an output would fail to express any of the information in the input. Hence, there are constraints on what is called ‘Faithfulness’ in OT, constraints which require linguistic material to faithfully express the abstract input information. In the next section of the paper, I discuss cases where a single word competes with a syntactic formation to express the same input information, illustrating a case where ‘Blocking’ extends from morphology into syntax. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments SARTRE AND SEXISM by Hazel E. Barnes Insofar as is possible, I want to consider here not Sartre the man but Sartre the philosopher—or, more precisely, the philosophy of Sartre. To askwhether Sartre's long association with Simone de Beauvoir was a model of human relations at their best or an example ofbad faith on both sides is not to my present purpose. Nor are his numerous, (...) sometimes rather unsavory affairs with other women. Of course, the man and his work cannot be separated entirely. Sartre himselfadmitted that despite his wholehearted support of women's liberation, there remained in him vestiges of ingrained male chauvinism which he found difficult to eradicate.1 We should expect to find echoes of these in his writing, and we do—not in the ideas but in the imagery and rhetoric, and these not only in the fiction but in the philosophical works. The grossest example is the well-known passage in which Sartre discusses the "existential meanings" ofslime and holes.2 Slime, the great "Antivalue," is "a moist and feminine sucking" and "a sickly-sweet feminine revenge." Moreover—and this is even worse—Sartre allows his meditation on holes to lead by a process of his own associations to the idea ofa woman's sex as "a voracious mouth" evoking the male castration complex. This is not the only place where Sartre links female with notions of a treacherous receptivity. Furthermore, such passages are complemented by others where Sartre employs male sexual imagery to describe the activity of consciousness. Knowledge is portrayed as penetration and conquest. He points out, without objecting, that banal metaphors of everyday language suggest that "knowing" has overtones of carnal knowing and sexual violation: "What is seen is possessed; to see is to deflower.... The unknown object is given as immaculate, as Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 340-347 Hazel E. Barnes341 virgin, comparable to a whiteness.... Man has not yet 'snatched' its secret away from it.... Figures of speech... like that of the 'unviolated depths of nature' suggest the idea ofsexual intercourse more plainly."3 There can be no doubt that a full investigation ofthe linguistic codes in Sartre's writing would reveal him to be a man comfortably ensconced in a world of male dominance. Yet Collins and Pierce in their excellent article, "Holes and Slime: Sexism in Sartre's Psychoanalysis," even as diey deplore Sartre's sexist language and his failure to depict any fictional female characters as embodiments of existential authenticity, admit that these weaknesses are at variance with the central philosophy ofBeing and Nothingness and not derived logically from it.4 I agree, and diat is why I hold that the sexism is there but is contingent, relevant to our appraisal of die writer but not essential to ourjudgment on the philosophy and its potential value as a support to feminism. In saying this I am partially making the sort of distinction employed by Jean Grimshaw, who points out that a philosophy built on male assumptions may exclude women essentially as with Kant, inconsistendy as with Aristode, or inadvertendy as with Descartes.5 The difference with Sartre is that in spite of the occasional lapse into traditional male linguistic tropes, the work, like its author, is notjust theoretically egalitarian but concerned explicidy with forms of oppression and the problems of disfavored groups. More than that of any other male writer, Sartre's philosophy seems to me to demand feminism as one of its natural consequences. That diis has been historically true is shown, ofcourse, by the fact that Simone de Beauvoir used Sartrean existentialism as the foundation for her own original analysis of women's situation in TL· Second Sex. The irony is diat this book, which played a key role in launching the movement for women's liberation throughout the world, has been adversely criticized by later feminists precisely on the grounds of its Sartrean orientation, along with Beauvoir's emphasis on women's right to share the things men value rather than to challenge those values. Beauvoir herself later recognized that the book did not go far enough, but she never renounced what she had written there. My claim... (shrink)

Cet article présente une étude sur corpus de patrons morpho-syntaxiques associés à des hypothèses interprétatives sur les noms déverbaux événementiels. Il confronte notamment certaines propositions de Grimshaw (1990) avec des usages attestés repérés en corpus et suggère de nouvelles hypothèses descriptives. L’extraction des usages attestés est réalisée à l’aide du concordancier « Corpus Workbench » sur 3 années du quotidien régional L’Est Républicain telles que mises à disposition sur le site du centre de ressources du CNRTL.

Cet article présente une étude sur corpus de patrons morpho-syntaxiques associés à des hypothèses interprétatives sur les noms déverbaux événementiels. Il confronte notamment certaines propositions de Grimshaw (1990) avec des usages attestés repérés en corpus et suggère de nouvelles hypothèses descriptives. L'extraction des usages attestés est réalisée à l'aide du concordancier ' Corpus Workbench ' sur 3 années du quotidien régional ' L'Est Républicain ' telles que mises.

Cet article présente une étude sur corpus de patrons morpho-syntaxiques associés à des hypothèses interprétatives sur les noms déverbaux événementiels. Il confronte notamment certaines propositions de Grimshaw (1990) avec des usages attestés repérés en corpus et suggère de nouvelles hypothèses descriptives. L’extraction des usages attestés est réalisée à l’aide du concordancier « Corpus Workbench » sur 3 années du quotidien régional L’Est Républicain telles que mises à disposition sur le site du centre de ressources du CNRTL.