In an increasingly interconnected global community, severe disasters or disease outbreaks in one country or region may rapidly impact global health security. As seen during the responses to the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, local response capacities can be rapidly overwhelmed and international assistance may be necessary to support the affected region to respond and recover and to protect other countries from the spread of disease. For example, (...) President Obama stated on September 16, 2014, that “if the [Ebola] outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected, with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us…. [T]his…is not just a threat to regional security — it’s a potential threat to global security if these countries break down…. And that’s why…I directed my team to make this a national security priority.”. (shrink)

Consumers have the power to influence the social performance of corporations, but in the United States this power has gone largely unused. And too little attention has been paid to consumer issues by IABS scholars. To better understand why and when consumer boycotts are either effective or successful, this paper studies the reaction to two oil industry incidents: the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the Shell Oil Brent Spar controversy. Five ingredients are identified as important to the (...) understanding of consumer activism: culture, context, cause, challenge, and charisma. (shrink)

Involuntary psychiatric commitment for suicide prevention and physician aid-in-dying (PAD) in terminal illness combine to create a moral dilemma. If PAD in terminal illness is permissible, it should also be permissible for some who suffer from nonterminal psychiatric illness: suffering provides much of the justification for PAD, and the suffering in mental illness can be as severe as in physical illness. But involuntary psychiatric commitment to prevent suicide suggests that the suffering of persons with mental illness does not justify ending (...) their own lives, ruling out PAD. Since both practices have compelling underlying justifications, the most reasonable accommodation might seem to be to allow PAD for persons with mental illness whose suffering is severe enough to justify self-killing, but prohibit PAD for persons whose suffering is less severe. This compromise, however, would require the articulation of standards by which persons’ mental as well as physical suffering could be evaluated. Doing so would present a serious philosophical challenge. (shrink)

Today, the ‘pluriverse’ is considered to be a radical new concept capable of decolonising political thought. However, it is not only decolonial scholarship that has taken up the concept of the pluriverse; far-right intellectuals, too, have been cultivating a decolonial imaginary based on the idea of the pluriverse. This article compares the way the concept of the pluriverse appears in certain strands of Latin American decolonial theory exemplified by Walter Mignolo, on the one hand, and the ethnopluralism of the European (...) New Right represented by Alain de Benoist and Alexander Dugin, on the other. Despite Mignolo’s pluriverse being an ‘open pluriverse’ of entanglement between peoples, while the European New Right’s is a ‘closed pluriverse’ of ethnic separation, I argue that these uses of the pluriverse are nevertheless underpinned by a shared analytical and normative framework. This framework is defined by a simple refrain: that what oppresses the world is ontological and epistemological sameness, and what will liberate it is ontological and epistemological difference. I argue that this schema, which misapprehends imperialism as a form of epistemic domination geared purely towards homogenisation, rather than as a set of material relationships that also produce (e.g. racial, sexual, and class) difference, does not provide a solid foundation for contesting colonial relations. (shrink)

June grass at sunset, Indian grass at sunrise, hawk moths and monarch butterflies nectaring on purple fringed orchids and rough blazing star, little bluestem and saw-tooth sunflowers and butterfly milkweed in hill prairies and sand prairies, and blue skies and one bright rainbow arching over them all. Bill Witt has been photographing Iowa’s wild places for more than thirty years, and the result is this collection of splendid images that reveal the glorious beauty and diversity of the state’s prairie remnants. (...) Witt gives us close-ups of pasque flower shoots covered with ice in spring, coneflowers dancing in a summer breeze, and prairie dropseed in its autumn colors as well as such prairie companions as sandhill cranes, northern harriers, and bison. His panoramic visions of prairie landscapes in all seasons focus on the personal pleasure and spiritual sustenance that connecting with prairies, even small and neglected ones, can bring us. Osha Davidson’s essay compares today’s prairie remnants with yesterday’s expanses and calls for us to restore balance to this damaged landscape. Altogether, Enchanted by Prairie celebrates today’s prairie landscape and encourages us, in Davidson’s words, to restore its “beauty and scents and textures and sounds.”. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Notes.

In this article I argue that governments are justified in addressing the potential for human induced climate damages on the basis of future generations' rights to bodily integrity and personal property. First, although future generations' entitlements to property originate in our present entitlements, the principle of self-ownership requires us to take 'reasonable care' of the products of future labour. Second, while Parfit's non-identity problem has as yet no satisfactory solution, the present absence of an equilibrium between theory and intuitions justifies (...) a precautionary approach, i.e. treating climate damage as a wrongful harm. In addition, a supplementary consideration is described as arising from transcendental needs. (shrink)

A birth strike is a collective refusal to have children for political ends. It has been deployed by a wide array of political movements, from the resistance of Black people to plantation slavery to contemporary campaigns around climate change. Despite this, the tactic has received little attention from political theorists. Drawing on a range of perspectives – including empirical accounts of the birth strike, broader scholarship on the politics of strikes and Black feminist work on reproductive justice – this article (...) addresses the challenges and potentialities of the birth strike as a mode of political resistance. To this end, I delineate three different forms of the birth strike: the Malthusian, which focuses on directly addressing overpopulation; the sacrificial, which emphasises the self-directed suffering of the strike to force a change in policy; and, the defiant, which involves refusing pronatalist demands to maintain or increase the population rate. The Malthusian and sacrificial forms should be avoided since the former undermines reproductive justice and the latter reinforces the patriarchal association between womanhood and motherhood. By contrast, I defend the defiant form because it forges a space where people can make autonomous decisions about childbirth. (shrink)

Appendix 1 was incomplete in the initial online publication. The original article has been corrected.

If you developed Alzheimer disease, would you want to go all the way to the end of what might be a decade‐long course? Some would; some wouldn't. Options open to those who choose to die sooner are often inadequate. Do‐not‐resuscitate orders and advance directives depend on others' cooperation. Preemptive suicide may mean giving up years of life one would count as good. Do‐it‐yourself methods can fail. What we now ask of family and clinicians caring for persons with dementia, and of (...) patients given no better option than to go on with lives they may not want, is unacceptable. To explore how one might better control one's own dying and avoid burdening others with overwhelming care and morally painful choices, we propose a thought experiment: an advance directive implant that would enable persons with early dementia, while competent, to arrange their own deaths without the subsequent intervention of anyone else. (shrink)

This book describes how understanding the structure of reality leads to the Theory of Everything Equation. The equation unifies the forces of nature and enables the merging of relativity with quantum theory. The book explains the big bang theory and everything else.

The author believes the attitude of the interpreter plays a crucial role in the theory of meaning. ‘Expressing Evaluation’ extends this strategy to evaluative judgements: just as the questions of belief and meaning are entwined, so are belief, meaning, and evaluation, where evaluating includes attitudes such as desires. This does not conflict with Davidson's claim that interpretation is a holistic act, in the sense that an interpreter weighs the attitudes of a subject against each other so as to render (...) them intelligible or rational by the interpreter's standards. Justifies the thesis that desire is the most basic attitude in this interpretive process and that understanding presumes a shared body of evaluations as well as desires. (shrink)

Spells out in more detail Davidson's Unified Theory of thought, meaning, and action the implications of which have been the focal point of the preceding chapters. The main task is to illuminate the conditions under which an understanding of the norms for our theories of intensional attribution is possible. What makes the task practicable at all, according to the author, is the structure the normative character of thought, desire, speech, and action imposes on correct attributions of attitudes to others, (...) and hence on interpretations of their speech and explanations of their actions. Improving our understanding of the understanding of such norms requires improvement of the grasp of the standards of rationality implicit in all interpretation of thought and action. (shrink)

Based on a series of lectures delivered in 1840, Thomas Carlyle’s_ On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History_ considers the creation of heroes and the ways they exert heroic leadership. From the divine and prophetic to the poetic to the religious to the political, Carlyle investigates the mysterious qualities that elevate humans to cultural significance. By situating the text in the context of six essays by distinguished scholars that reevaluate both Carlyle’s work and his ideas, David Sorensen and (...) class='Hi'>Brent Kinser argue that Carlyle's concept of heroism stresses the hero’s spiritual dimension. In Carlyle’s engagement with various heroic personalities, he dislodges religiosity from religion, myth from history, and truth from “quackery” as he describes the wondrous ways in which these “flowing light-fountains” unlock the heroic potential of ordinary human beings. (shrink)

A judgement analysis of people's social inferences of attitudes and ability was conducted. University students were asked to infer the liberalness ( N = 60; Study 1) or intelligence ( N = 40; Study 2) of targets seen in pictures. Multiple regression analyses revealed that attractiveness was the most important cue for predicting inferences of liberalness, while an ethnic cue (i.e., being Asian) was the most important cue for judgements about intelligence. Results also showed that a single-cue model was less (...) susceptible to overfitting, but significantly less accurate than a multiple-cue model in predicting participant's intelligence judgements. Although the multiple regression models suffered a degree of overfitting, cross validation showed that they continued to have significant predictive value when applied to new data. Furthermore, a “random partner” method (comparing each participant's own regression equation with that of another, randomly selected, participant) provided evidence of significant idiosyncratic variation in the way intelligence judgements were made. (shrink)

We show that from a supercompact cardinal $\kappa$, there is a forcing extension $V[G]$ that has a symmetric inner model $N$ in which $\mathrm {ZF}+\lnot\mathrm {AC}$ holds, $\kappa$ and $\kappa^{+}$ are both singular, and the continuum function at $\kappa$ can be precisely controlled, in the sense that the final model contains a sequence of distinct subsets of $\kappa$ of length equal to any predetermined ordinal. We also show that the above situation can be collapsed to obtain a model of $\mathrm (...) {ZF}+\lnot\mathrm {AC}_{\omega}$ in which either $\aleph_{1}$ and $\aleph_{2}$ are both singular and the continuum function at $\aleph_{1}$ can be precisely controlled, or $\aleph_{\omega}$ and $\aleph_{\omega+1}$ are both singular and the continuum function at $\aleph_{\omega}$ can be precisely controlled. Additionally, we discuss a result in which we separate the lengths of sequences of distinct subsets of consecutive singular cardinals $\kappa$ and $\kappa^{+}$ in a model of $\mathrm {ZF}$. Some open questions concerning the continuum function in models of $\mathrm {ZF}$ with consecutive singular cardinals are posed. (shrink)

L’idea che vi sia una netta dicotomia tra fatti e valori è uno dei dogmi dell’empirismo. Secondo questa concezione, i giudizi fattuali, in quanto verificabili o falsificabili empiricamente, riguardano le aree di razionalità «pura» e omogenea e sono ancorati naturalisticamente al mondo. Gli enunciati di valore, invece, sarebbero da relegare nella sfera di ciò che è semplicemente «soggettivo», emotivo, irrazionale. Questo assunto, che ha dominato per molto tempo le scienze e la filosofia, è stato messo in dubbio dai pragmatisti e (...) da alcuni dei più influenti pensatori contemporanei, che, intervenendo al dibattito sull’oggettività dell’etica, hanno mostrato come la presunta eterogeneità tra giudizi descrittivi e giudizi valutativi sia ormai insostenibile. Sulla scia della prospettiva inaugurata da questi pensatori, gli autori di questo libro mostrano come la dicotomia fatto/valore abbia corrotto il nostro pensiero, impedendoci di rivolgere l’attenzione alle intersezioni, le sinergie e le relazioni che esistono tra processi cognitivi e coefficienti valutativi, tra scienza e etica. Con saggi di S. Clough, D. Copp, D. Davidson, G. Marchetti, H. Putnam, R. A. Putnam B. Stroud, K. A. Taylor, V. Walsh. (shrink)

In this chapter, the authors aim to review what they take to be the primary philosophical claims or concerns of fat activism and introduce a framework for understanding a primary strategy of fat activism as public philosophy. Fat activism is a robust and important example of public philosophy. The authors also review the limited work done within mainstream philosophy on fat oppression. They use the theoretical apparatus of master narratives and counter‐stories to explore a primary strategy of fat activism as (...) public philosophy. Master narratives are pervasive and interlocking; the beliefs within the master narrative are knitted together to keep some people in power while others are subjugated under this power. The authors present the counter‐storytelling that seeks to undermine and disrupt the dominant narrative about fatness and fat people and highlight the organizations and public philosophers who both theorize and take action toward a fat‐liberated future. (shrink)

Jonathan A. Oler,1,4 Andrew S. Fox,2,5 Steven E. Shelton,1,4 Bradley T. Christian, 1,3,5 Dhanabalan Murali,3,5 Terrence R. Oakes,5 Richard J. Davidson,1,2,4,5 and Ned H. Kalin1,2,4,5..

The work reported in this monograph was begun in the winter of 1967 in a graduate seminar at Berkeley. Many of the basic data were gathered by members of the seminar and the theoretical framework presented here was initially developed in the context of the seminar discussions. Much has been discovered since1969, the date of original publication, regarding the psychophysical and neurophysical determinants of universal, cross-linguistic constraints on the shape of basic color lexicons, and something, albeit less, can now also (...) be said with some confidence regarding the constraining effects of these language-independent processes of color perception and conceptualization on the direction of evolution of basic color term lexicons. (shrink)

In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide, about how data should be interpreted and what actions should be taken as a result. More and more often, algorithms mediate social processes, business transactions, governmental decisions, and how we perceive, understand, and interact among ourselves and with the environment. Gaps between the design and operation of algorithms and our understanding of their ethical implications can have severe consequences (...) affecting individuals as well as groups and whole societies. This paper makes three contributions to clarify the ethical importance of algorithmic mediation. It provides a prescriptive map to organise the debate. It reviews the current discussion of ethical aspects of algorithms. And it assesses the available literature in order to identify areas requiring further work to develop the ethics of algorithms. (shrink)

Peoples’ perceptions of healthy eating are influenced by the cultural context in which they occur. Despite this general acceptance by health practitioners and social scientists, studies suggest that there remains a relative homogeneity around peoples’ perceptions that informs a hegemonic discourse around healthy eating. People often describe healthy eating in terms of learned information from sources that reflect societies’ norms and values, such as the Canada Food Guide and the ubiquitous phrase “fruits and vegetables”. Past research has examined how built (...) environments shape people’s access to healthy living options, such as distribution of grocers versus convenience stores and fast food restaurants. Often overlooked is an in-depth understanding of how social contexts interact with built environments, molding peoples’ perceptions of healthy eating. This paper reports on perceptions of healthy eating in four communities across Alberta, Canada. A photovoice methodology was employed to elicit perceptions of healthy eating with 35 participants. This study illustrates how participants’ photographs and their stories convey multiple meanings about healthy eating within their own lives and communities. Findings suggest that a ‘local’ context is an important part of the discourse centered around the promotion of healthy eating practices in these and potential other communities. (shrink)

Recent work on interpretability in machine learning and AI has focused on the building of simplified models that approximate the true criteria used to make decisions. These models are a useful pedagogical device for teaching trained professionals how to predict what decisions will be made by the complex system, and most importantly how the system might break. However, when considering any such model it’s important to remember Box’s maxim that "All models are wrong but some are useful." We focus on (...) the distinction between these models and explanations in philosophy and sociology. These models can be understood as a "do it yourself kit" for explanations, allowing a practitioner to directly answer "what if questions" or generate contrastive explanations without external assistance. Although a valuable ability, giving these models as explanations appears more difficult than necessary, and other forms of explanation may not have the same trade-offs. We contrast the different schools of thought on what makes an explanation, and suggest that machine learning might benefit from viewing the problem more broadly. (shrink)

A stunning collection of color photographs by Brent Nicastro showcasing the dynamic power and sheer beauty of the city of Madison, Wisconsin. Includes images of the Farmer's Market, the State Capitol building, Monona Terrace, and the University of Wisconsin campus in all seasons.

The Essential Davidson compiles the most celebrated papers of one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers. It distills Donald Davidson's seminal contributions to our understanding of ourselves, from three decades of essays, into one thematically organized collection. A new, specially written introduction by Ernie Lepore and Kirk Ludwig, two of the world's leading authorities on his work, offers a guide through the ideas and arguments, shows how they interconnect, and reveals the systematic coherence of Davidson's worldview. (...) class='Hi'>Davidson's philosophical program is organized around two connected projects. The first is that of understanding the nature of human agency. The second is that of understanding the nature and function of language, and its relation to the world. Accordingly, the first part of the book presents Davidson's investigation of reasons, causes, and intentions, which revolutionized the philosophy of action. This leads to his notable doctrine of anomalous monism, the view that all mental events are physical events, but that the mental cannot be reduced to the physical. The second part of the book presents the famous essays in which Davidson set out his highly original and influential philosophy of language, which founds the theory of meaning on the theory of truth. These fifteen classic essays will be invaluable for anyone interested in the study of mind and language. Fascinating though they are individually, it is only when drawn together that there emerges a compelling picture of man as a rational linguistic animal whose thoughts, though not reducible to the material, are part of the fabric of the world, and whose knowledge of his own mind, the minds of others, and the world around him is as fundamental to his nature as the power of thought and speech itself. (shrink)

Examining intrapersonal factors theorized to influence ethics reporting decisions, the relation of self-efficacy as a predictor of propensity for internal whistleblowing is investigated within a US and Canadian multi-regional context. Over 900 professionals from a total of nine regions in Canada and the US participated. Self-efficacy was found to influence participant reported propensity for internal whistleblowing consistently in both the US and Canada. Seasoned participants with greater management and work experience demonstrated higher levels of self-efficacy while gender was also found (...) to be influential to self-efficacy. These individual traits, although related to self-efficacy, did not directly relate to propensities for internal whistleblowing. The findings demonstrate that self-efficacy could represent an important individual trait for examining whistleblowing issues. Internal whistleblowing is becoming an important organizational consideration in many areas of North America, yet there is relatively little research on the topic. Organizations seeking effective internal reporting systems should consider the influence of self-efficacy along with its potential reporting influence. By empirically testing an under-examined component of theory related to internal whistleblowing, this effort contributes to management literature, extending the knowledge beyond a US context, and provides recommendation for managing individual bias with internal reporting systems. (shrink)

The Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Rennes has recently introduced a final year group‐taught compulsory course in Business Ethics. Its organisers here describe and discuss their aims, methods and results. Michael Brent is Head of the Human Resources Department at Groupe ESC Rennes, 2 rue Robert‐d’Arbrissel, 35065 Rennes, and has an MA in Philosophy and diplomas in business and marketing, as well as several years European consultancy experience. Susan Grinsted teaches production management and related subjects at Rennes, with a (...) first degree in Metallurgy and a PhD in Engineering as well as several years UK industrial experience and a previous appointment at Warwick University, England. (shrink)

Dr. Davidson is a William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has been at Wisconsin since 1984.

This article explores the place of complexity science within education and educational research. The discussion begins with the suggestion that educational research has a history of adopting interpretive frames from other domains with little adaptation. Complexity science is argued to compel a different sort of positioning, one that requires accommodation and participation rather than unproblematized assimilation and application. The argument is developed by considering the following simultaneities in education (and) research: knower and knowledge; transphenomenality; transdisciplinarity; interdiscursivity; descriptive and pragmatic insights; (...) representation and presentation; affect and effect; and education and research. (shrink)

A 90-year-old man is diagnosed with early dementia. There are concerns about whether he is still fit to drive his car safely, but he is determined to continue driving. In this case, the clinician finds that this decision on fitness to drive is essentially evaluative and normative. Given the conflict of interests involved, how should the clinician attempt to manage this challenging ethical dilemma? This increasingly common clinical ethics scenario warrants further attention. After presenting the case, this analysis will consider (...) the relevant issues in three dimensions: an ethical dilemma, a clinician–patient interaction, and a broader context. This analysis provides a potential framework for clinicians making decisions on fitness to drive in early dementia. (shrink)

We will examine economic and security policy initiatives under the Harper regime for evidence of departures from traditional foreign policy behaviour. This essay argues that Canada‟s foreign policy initiatives are markedly different under the Harper regime.