BackgroundIn Australia, the peer review process for competitive funding is usually conducted by a peer review group in conjunction with prior assessment from external assessors. This process is quite mysterious to those outside it. The purpose of this research was to throw light on grant review panels (sometimes called the ‘black box’) through an examination of the impact of panel procedures, panel composition and panel dynamics on the decision-making in the grant review process. A further purpose was to compare experience (...) of a simplified review process with more conventional processes used in assessing grant proposals in Australia.MethodsThis project was one aspect of a larger study into the costs and benefits of a simplified peer review process. The Queensland University of Technology (QUT)-simplified process was compared with the National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) more complex process. Grant review panellists involved in both processes were interviewed about their experience of the decision-making process that assesses the excellence of an application. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Each transcription was de-identified and returned to the respondent for review. Final transcripts were read repeatedly and coded, and similar codes were amalgamated into categories that were used to build themes. Final themes were shared with the research team for feedback.ResultsTwo major themes arose from the research: (1) assessing grant proposals and (2) factors influencing the fairness, integrity and objectivity of review. Issues such as the quality of writing in a grant proposal, comparison of the two review methods, the purpose and use of the rebuttal, assessing the financial value of funded projects, the importance of the experience of the panel membership and the role of track record and the impact of group dynamics on the review process were all discussed. The research also examined the influence of research culture on decision-making in grant review panels. One of the aims of this study was to compare a simplified review process with more conventional processes. Generally, participants were supportive of the simplified process.ConclusionsTransparency in the grant review process will result in better appreciation of the outcome. Despite the provision of clear guidelines for peer review, reviewing processes are likely to be subjective to the extent that different reviewers apply different rules. The peer review process will come under more scrutiny as funding for research becomes even more competitive. There is justification for further research on the process, especially of a kind that taps more deeply into the ‘black box’ of peer review. (shrink)

BackgroundMulti-centre studies generally cost more than single-centre studies because of larger sample sizes and the need for multiple ethical approvals. Multi-centre studies include clinical trials, clinical quality registries, observational studies and implementation studies. We examined the costs of two large Australian multi-centre studies in obtaining ethical and site-specific approvals.MethodsWe collected data on staff time spent on approvals and expressed the overall cost as a percent of the total budget.ResultsThe total costs of gaining approval were 38 % of the budget for (...) a study of 50 centres (mean cost AUD $6960 per site) and 2 % for a study of 11 centres (mean cost AUD $2300 per site). Seventy-five and 90 % of time was spent on repeated tasks, respectively, and many time-consuming tasks, such as reformatting documents, did nothing to improve the study design or participant safety.ConclusionsImprovements have been made to the ethical approval application system, but more gains could be made without increasing risks of harm to research participants. We propose that ethical review bodies and individual sites publish statistics on how long they take to process approvals which could then be nationally benchmarked. (shrink)

BackgroundWinning funding for health and medical research usually involves a lengthy application process. With success rates under 20%, much of the time spent by 80% of applicants could have been better used on actual research. An alternative funding system that could save time is using democracy to award the most deserving researchers based on votes from the research community. We aimed to pilot how such a system could work and examine some potential biases.MethodsWe used an online survey with a convenience (...) sample of Australian researchers. Researchers were asked to name the 10 scientists currently working in Australia that they thought most deserved funding for future research. For comparison, we used recent winners from large national fellowship schemes that used traditional peer review.ResultsVoting took a median of 5 min (inter-quartile range 3 to 10 min). Extrapolating to a national voting scheme, we estimate 599 working days of voting time (95% CI 490 to 728), compared with 827 working days for the current peer review system for fellowships. The gender ratio in the votes was a more equal 45:55 (female to male) compared with 34:66 in recent fellowship winners, although this could be explained by Simpson’s paradox. Voters were biased towards their own institution, with an additional 1.6 votes per ballot (inter-quartile range 0.8 to 2.2) above the expected number. Respondents raised many concerns about the idea of using democracy to fund research, including vote rigging, lobbying and it becoming a popularity contest.ConclusionsThis is a preliminary study of using voting that does not investigate many of the concerns about how a voting system would work. We were able to show that voting would take less time than traditional peer review and would spread the workload over many more reviewers. Further studies of alternative funding systems are needed as well as a wide discussion with the research community about potential changes. (shrink)

Most published discussions in contemporary metaethics include some textual exegesis of the relevant contemporary authors, but little or none of the historical authors who provide the underpinnings of their general approach. The latter is usually relegated to the historical, or dismissed as expository. Sometimes this can be a useful division of labor. But it can also lead to grave confusion about the views under discussion, and even about whose views are, in fact, under discussion. Elijah Millgram’s article, “Does the Categorical (...) Imperative Give Rise to a Contradiction in the Will?” is a case in point. In it, he takes the New Kantians to task for various flaws in their interpretation of Kant’s moral theory, to be detailed shortly. He concludes with a question and a suggestion. In order to properly dissect the first, “universal law” formulation of the Categorical Imperative, he argues, we first need to understand “why an agent wills the universalization of his maxim” (549). He also suggests that in order to answer this question, we must recur to what Kant himself actually says (550). His question is a good one, and his advice on how to go about answering it is sound. But to take Millgram’s advice is to call this division of labor into question, at least for this case. For it demands close and sustained exegesis, not only of his argument against the New Kantians, but also – in order to assess whether and where they go wrong – of Kant’s text itself. (shrink)

Este estudio analiza el artículo 146 del Código Orgánico Integral Penal (COIP) de Ecuador, esta trata sobre el homicidio culposo por práctica profesional equivocada. La mala praxis médica es un problema grave en el sistema de salud de Ecuador, y la interpretación inadecuada de este artículo ha generado confusión en los procesos legales relacionados. El objeto de la investigación es analizar la normativa del artículo 146 del COIP y las lagunas de interpretación jurídica para determinar la culpabilidad o inocencia de (...) los profesionales de la salud. Para ello, se emplearán métodos comparativos e históricos, que incluyen revisión bibliográfica, análisis de contenido del artículo 146. Los resultados esperados son demostrar las dudas razonables en la prueba del delito de mala praxis, resaltar la importancia de la bioética en los procedimientos legales. Este estudio busca contribuir a una mejor comprensión del marco legal y brindar ideas para la resolución de casos de mala praxis y homicidio culposo en Ecuador. (shrink)

A hallmark of ecological research is dealing with complexity in the systems under investigation. One strategy is to diminish this complexity by constructing models and theories that are general. Alternatively, ecologists can constrain the scope of their generalizations to particular phenomena or types of systems. However, research employing the second strategy is often met with scathing criticism. I offer a theoretical argument in support of moderate generalizations in ecological research, based on the notions of interdependence and causal heterogeneity and their (...) effect on the trade-off between generality and realism. (shrink)

L. J. Savage and I. J. Good have each demonstrated that the expected utility of free information is never negative for a decision maker who updates her degrees of belief by conditionalization on propositions learned for certain. In this paper Good's argument is generalized to show the same result for a decision maker who updates her degrees of belief on the basis of uncertain information by Richard Jeffrey's probability kinematics. The Savage/Good result is shown to be a special case of (...) the more general result. (shrink)

Corruption is a more important idea for Hobbes than has been recognized: a state of nature can result from corruption of the people, corruption of counsellors and corruption of legal processes. Hobbes often uses a 'cognitive' conception of corruption — the distortion of mental processes, by faulty reasoning or improper attitudes. Corruption means that citizens think they benefit from sedition, counsellors advise with self-interested rhetoric rather than impartial logic, witnesses lie and judges settle cases by bribes or pity. Although corruption (...) is often thought to involve the pursuit of private gain, Hobbes only talks about corruption in terms of misjudged private gain, where an individual is motivated by his apparent, short-tem self-interest, rather than his real, long- term self-interest. That is why corruption can lead to a state of nature. (shrink)

Advances in scientific study of the brain now enable the examination of nature and grace in human rationality’s embodiment in the brain’s biological processing. I model the brain’s biology using the dispositional tendencies of nature—characterized by Jonathan Edwards, C. S. Peirce, and the Jesuit philosophical theologian Donald Gelpi—to examine gracing of the mind’s habit formation in terms of memory, learning, and decision making. This turn to tendency suggests a shift from understanding soul as Aristotelian act to instead emphasizing the potentiality (...) informing the body and clarifies a scientifically plausible Rahnerian interpretation of obediential potency. (shrink)

When someone thanks someone for something, or advises him against something, or refuses something from him, his action is directed not merely at but to the other. He addresses the other. But is it only actions that exemplify this mode of directedness? This essay argues that it is not.

The expanding social role and continued development of artificial intelligence (AI) needs theological investigation of its anthropological and moral potential. A pragmatic theological anthropology adapted for AI can characterize moral AI as experiencing its natural, social, and moral world through interpretations of its external reality as well as its self-reckoning. Systems theory can further structure insights into an AI social self that conceptualizes itself within Ignacio Ellacuria’s historical reality and its moral norms through Thomistic ideogenesis. This enables a conceptualization process (...) capable of carrying moral weight and grounded in reality; structures the experience of an AI emergent self into multiple levels of interpretation; and drives a multi-level systems architecture for moral AI. Modeling AI’s interpretive experience and self-reckoning as a causal, sociotechnical, and moral actor can help moral AI identify conflicts between its normative values and develop the practical wisdom (phronesis) needed to apply its general moral models. (shrink)

This paper advances a version of physicalism which reconciles the “a priori entailment thesis” (APET) with the analytic independence of our phenomenal and physical vocabularies. The APET is the claim that, if physicalism is true, the complete truths of physics imply every other truth a priori. If so, “cosmic hermeneutics” is possible: a demon having only complete knowledge of physics could deduce every truth about the world. Analytic independence is a popular physicalist explanation for the apparent “epistemic gaps” between phenomenal (...) and physical truths. The two are generally seen as incompatible, since the demon’s deductions seem to presuppose analytic connections between physical and phenomenal terms. I begin by arguing, in support of the APET, that implications from the complete truths of physics to phenomenal truths cannot be a posteriori. Such implications are (according to the physicalist) necessarily true. But they cannot be Kripke-style a posteriori necessities, since (according to the physicalist) the complete truths of physics fix any relevant a posteriori facts about the reference of terms. I then show how the physicalist can turn the tables: the demon can exploit the physical fixing of reference to bridge the gap between the vocabularies, by deducing when phenomenal and physical terms co-refer. This opens the way for a “type-C” physicalism, which accepts in-principle deducibility while still appealing to analytic independence to explain why we (who are not demons) find it impossible to see phenomenal-physical connections a priori. (shrink)

Mammals have an XX:XY system of chromosomal sex determination in which a small heterochromatic Y controls male development. The Y contains the testis determining factor SRY, as well as several genes important in spermatogenesis. Comparative studies show that the Y was once homologous with the X, but has been progressively degraded, and now consists largely of repeated sequences as well as degraded copies of X linked genes. The small original X and Y have been enlarged by cycles of autosomal addition (...) to one partner, recombination onto the other and continuing attrition of the compound Y. This addition–attrition hypothesis predicts that the pseudoautosomal region of the human X is merely the last relic of the latest addition. Genes (including SRY) on the conserved or added region of the Y evolved functions in male sex determination and differentiation distinct from the general functions of their X‐linked partners. Although the gonadogenesis pathway is highly conserved in vertebrates, its control has probably changed radically and rapidly in vertebrate – even mammalian – evolution. (shrink)

Beginning with Zagzebski (The Philosophical Quarterly 44:65–73, 1994), some philosophers have argued that there can be no solution to the Gettier counterexamples within the framework of a fallibilist theory of knowledge. If true, this would be devastating, since it is believed on good grounds that infallibilism leads to scepticism. But I argue here that these purported proofs are mistaken and that the truthmaker solution to the Gettier problems is both cogent and fallibilist in nature. To show this I develop the (...) notion of evidence of a state of affairs, a crucial concept in the truthmaker theory. I also argue that a common principle of the transmission of evidence through entailment is false, and the cause of much of the trouble. (shrink)

This paper develops a way of understanding G. E. M. Anscombe's essay “The First Person” at the heart of which are the following two ideas: first, that the point of her essay is to show that it is not possible for anyone to understand what they express with “I” as an Art des Gegebenseins—a way of thinking of an object that constitutes identifying knowledge of which object is being thought of; and second, that the argument through which her essay seeks (...) to show this is itself first personal in character. Understanding Anscombe's essay in this light has the merit of showing much of what it says to be correct. But it sets us the task of saying what it is that we understand ourselves to express with “I” if not an Art des Gegebenseins, and in particular what it is that we understand ourselves to express with sentences with “I” as subject that might seem to express identity judgments, such as “I am NN”, and “I am this body”. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 26-29.

Printbegrænsninger: Der kan printes 10 sider ad gangen og max. 40 sider pr. session.

The significance of Max Black’s indistinguishable spheres for the nature of particles in quantum mechanics is discussed, focusing in particular on the use of the idea of weak indiscernibility. It is argued that there can be four such Black spheres but that five are impossible. It follows from this that Black’s example cannot serve as a model for indistinguishability in physics. But Black’s discussion of his spheres gave rise to the idea of weak discernibility and it is argued that such (...) predicates are unsatisfiable in the way intended. The underlying problem with weak discernibility spreads out to also undermine the whole notion that indistinguishability rests on a notion of the permutation invariance of particles. A better foundation is indicated. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper discusses competing notions of the concept of ‘order’ in the Admonition Controversy with respect to the interpretation of the decorum of 1 Corinthians 14:26-30, a text principally concerned with order in worship. As the controversy ensued the understanding of ‘order’ broadened to include church discipline and polity, both Puritan and Conformist alike constructed their polemic with a rhetorical appeal to the Pauline text in question-interpretations at odds with each other. Furthermore, both sides understood their interpretation as standing (...) faithfully in the tradition of Calvin. This paper follows the appeals to 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 by Advanced Protestants and Conformists from its use in the treatise ‘Of Ceremonies’ found in the Book of Common Prayer, through the Admonition to the Parliament, the responses of John Whitgift and Thomas Cartwright, and finally Richard Hooker’s Preface to the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie. (shrink)

This is a study of Frege's permutation argument in Part I, Section 10, of Frege's Basic Laws of Arithmetic.

Practical wisdom enables moral decision-making and action by aligning one’s apprehension of proximate goods with a distal, socially embedded interpretation of a more ultimate Good. A focus on purpose within the overall process mutually informs human moral psychology and moral AI development in their examinations of practical wisdom. AI practical wisdom could ground an AI system’s apprehension of reality in a sociotechnical moral process committed to orienting AI development and action in light of a pluralistic, diverse interpretation of that Good. (...) Defining AI purpose in terms of the human struggle to determine the moral “ought” (versus the way reality is) can overcome practical and normative limitations of principle-based approaches to AI ethics without requiring idiosyncratic moral reasoning or a premature commitment to a single ethical theory, which could hinder navigating the moral implications of future unknowns. Dividing practical wisdom into proximate, mediating, and distal processes enables each division to incorporate the moral dimensions of the situation, individual AI system, and sociotechnical community, respectively. Drawing upon externalist (4E) and ecological cognitive psychology theories to extend Xavier Zubiri’s sentient intelligence, proximate apprehension of what an object affords the perceiver includes affordances for practical and moral purposes. Those apprehensions are structured by moral and other social-cognitive schemas that mediate moral constructs, the apprehended situation, and individual commitments and other motivating identifications in a process Ignacio Ellacuria calls historical reality. Distally, Josiah Royce’s community of interpretation characterizes one way of organizing a sociotechnical process to synthesize diverse interpretations of the Good, orient AI moral practice, and align AI development with human and AI moral purpose. (shrink)

It’s a truism of philosophy that Realists must not postulate more than we could reasonably hope to know, while Anti-Realists must not leave us with so little that all knowledge is impossible. But balance is not easily come by—and even less in philosophy than in life. So philosophy continues to struggle over the hard cases, with neither the Realist nor the Anti-Realist able to score an easy victory.

This is an obituary of Bernard Williams.

In this paper, we extend Michel Foucault’s final works on the ‘care of the self’ to an empirical examination of research practice in community-based research (CBR). We use Foucault’s ‘morality of behaviors’ to analyze interview data from a national sample of Canadian CBR practitioners working with communities affected by HIV. Despite claims in the literature that ethics review is overly burdensome for non-traditional forms of research, our findings suggest that many researchers using CBR have an ambivalent but ultimately productive relationship (...) with institutional research ethics review requirements. They understand and use prescribed codes, but adapt them in practice to account for the needs of participating community members, members of their research teams and the larger communities with whom they work. Complying with ethics protocols was seen as only the beginning, a minimum standard; our research suggests that the real ethical work happens in the field, where CBR practitioners encounter community members in diverse public roles and must forge ethical consensus across communities. CBR represents an ethical terrain in which practitioners challenge themselves to work differently, and as a result they care for themselves—and others—in ways that often resist the propensity for domination through public health research.‘…there are different ways to “conduct oneself” morally, different ways for the acting individual to operate, not just as an agent, but as an ethical subject of action.’ (Foucault, 1985: 26). (shrink)

Lars Porsena Or the Future of Swearing Robert Graves Originally published in 1927 "Not for squeamish readers." Spectator "A deliciously ironical affair." Bystander "Humour and style are beyond criticism." Irish Statesman As relevant now as when it was first published, this volume and its ironic look at the political correctness of society has become a classic of the Today & Tomorrow series. 90pp Breaking Priscian’s Head Or English As She Will Be Spoke and Wrote J Y T Greig Originally (...) published in 1928 "The most vehement attack we have ever read." Morning Post "A rollicking book" Spectator This volume discusses the nature of language, grammar, the influence of America, of slang dialect and many other subjects. 90p **************** Delphos The Future of International Language E Sylvia Pankhurst Originally published in 1927 In this volume, Sylvia Pankhurst argues that an international language would be one of the greatest assets to modern civilization. She surveys past attempts from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries and predicts the arrival of the inter-language, its form, its social and cultural utility and its influence for world peace. 90pp Pomona or the Future of English Basil de Sélincourt Originally published in 1926 "Equal to anything yet produced in this brilliant series." Spectator An analysis of the present condition of the English language and the paths along which it is progressing. 88pp. (shrink)

Some 100 color photos by a professional Texas photographer and science teacher showcase these gregarious rodents in their natural habitat. Graves discusses their varieties, habits, biology, range, and role in the ecosystem. Includes information on habitat decline by state since 1870, and where they can still be seen.