Horsten and Roelants have raised a number of important questions about my analysis of effective procedures and my evaluation of the Church-Turing thesis. They suggest that, on my account, effective procedures cannot enter the mathematical world because they have a built-in component of causality, and, hence, that my arguments against the Church-Turing thesis miss the mark. Unfortunately, however, their reasoning is based upon a number of misunderstandings. Effective mundane procedures do not, on my view, provide an analysis of ourgeneral concept (...) of an effective procedure; mundane procedures and Turing machine procedures are different kinds of procedure. Moreover, the same sequence ofparticular physical action can realize both a mundane procedure and a Turing machine procedure; it is sequences of particular physical actions, not mundane procedures, which enter the world of mathematics. I conclude by discussing whether genuinely continuous physical processes can enter the world of real numbers and compute real-valued functions. I argue that the same kind of correspondence assumptions that are made between non-numerical structures and the natural numbers, in the case of Turing machines and personal computers, can be made in the case of genuinely continuous, physical processes and the real numbers. (shrink)

The "Feminist Theory Reader" provides a revolutionary new approach to anthologizing the important works in feminist theory by incorporating the voices of women ...

Recent technical improvements, such as 3D microscopy imaging, have shown the necessity of studying 3D biological tissue architecture during carcinogenesis. In the present paper a computer simulation model is developed allowing the visualization of the microscopic biological tissue architecture during the development of metaplastic and dysplastic lesions.The static part of the model allows the simulation of the normal, metaplastic and dysplastic architecture of an external epithelium. This model is associated to a knowledge base which contains only data on the nasal (...) epithelium. The latter has been well studied by numerous authors and its lesional states are well known. An inference engine allows the initialization of the static model parameters. A statistical comparison between simulated epithelia and real epithelia is achieved by adjusting the parameter values during the simulation. (shrink)

If the focus of interest is democratization, including women’s freedom, a basic income is preferable to stakeholding. Prevailing theoretical approaches and conceptions of individual freedom, free-riding seen as a problem of men’s employment, and neglect of feminist insights obscure the democratic potential of a basic income. An argument in terms of individual freedom as self-government, a basic income as a democratic right, and the importance of the opportunity not to be employed shows how a basic income can help break both (...) the link between income and employment and the mutual reinforcement of the institutions of marriage, employment, and citizenship. (shrink)

In his discussion of morals in the Third Book of the Treatise, Hume claims that the taking of what I shall call a general point of view is a necessary condition of the arousal of moral feelings. This aspect of Hume's theory has not received much attention from his commentators before now, although its implications for the theory as a whole might be regarded as significant.

Relationships are central to enacting person‐centred care of the older person with cognitive impairment. A fuller understanding of relationships and the role they play facilitating wellness and preserving personhood is critical if we are to unleash the productive potential of nursing research and person‐centred care. In this article, we target the acute care setting because much of the work about relationships and older people with cognitive impairment has tended to focus on relationships in long‐term care. The acute care setting is (...) characterized by archetypal constraints which differentiate it from long‐term care, in terms of acuity and haste, task‐orientated work patterns and influence from “the rule of medicine,” all of which can privilege particular types of relating. In this article, we drew on existing conceptualizations of relationships from theory and practice by tapping in to the intellectual resources provided by nurse researchers, the philosophy of Martin Buber and ANT scholars. This involved recounting two examples of dyadic and networked relationships which were re‐interpreted using two complementary theoretical approaches to provide deeper and more comprehensive conceptualizations of these relationships. By re‐presenting key tenets from the work of key scholars on the topic relationships, we hope to hasten socialization of these ideas into nursing into the acute care setting. First, by enabling nurses to reflect on how they might work toward cultivating relationships that are more salutogenic and consistent with the preservation of personhood. Second, by stimulating two distinct but related lines of research enquiry which focus on dyadic and networked relationships with the older person with cognitive impairment in the acute care setting. We also hope to reconcile the schism that has emerged in the literature between preferred approaches to care of the older person with cognitive impairment, that is person‐centred care versus relationship‐centred care by arguing that these are complementary rather than mutually exclusive and can be brought together in one theoretical framework acknowledging personhood as relational in essence. (shrink)

Key commentators on person‐centred care have described it as a “new ethic of care” which they link inextricably to notions of individual autonomy, action, change and improvement. Two key points are addressed in this article. The first is that few discussions about ethics and person‐centred are underscored by any particular ethical theory. The second point is that despite the espoused benefits of person‐centred care, delivery within the acute care setting remains largely aspirational. Choices nurses make about their practice tend to (...) comply more often with prevailing norms than those championed by person‐centred care. We draw on elements of work by moral philosopher Løgstrup and Foucault to provide insight into nurses’ ethical conduct and ask why nurses would want to act otherwise, when what they think and do is viewed as normal, or think and act otherwise if doing so is seen within the organization as transgressive? To address these more specific questions, we discuss them in relation to the following constructs: the ethical demand, sovereign expressions of life and parrhêsia. We conclude by arguing that a ethical theoretical framework enables nurses to increase their perceptibility and appreciation of the ethical demand particularly those emanating from incommensurability between organizational norms and the norms invoked by person‐centred care. We argue that nurses’ responses to the ethical demand by way of parrhêsia can be an important feature of intra‐organizational reflexivity and its transformation towards the delivery care that is more person‐centred, particularly for older people with cognitive impairment. We conclude the article by highlighting the implications of this for nursing education and research. (shrink)

The aim of this analysis was to examine the concept of time to rejuvenate and extend existing narratives of time within the nursing literature. In particular, we hope to promote a new trajectory in nursing research and practice which focuses on time and person‐centred care, specifically of older people with cognitive impairment hospitalized in the acute care setting. We consider the explanatory power of concepts such as clock time, process time, fast care, slow care and time debt for elucidating the (...) relationship between ‘good care’ and ‘time use’. We conclude by offering two additional concepts of time, plurotemporality and person‐centred time (PCT) which we propose will help advance of nursing knowledge and practice. Nurse clinicians and researchers can use these alternative concepts of time to explore and describe different temporal structures that honour the patient's values and preferences using experiential, observation‐based nursing research approaches. (shrink)

Scholars belong to multiple communities of credit simultaneously. When these communities disagree about a scholarly achievement’s credit assignment, this raises a puzzle for decision and game theor...

C’est le rapport entre romanisation et constructions religieuses dans les cités de la province romaine de Bétique qui est analysé ici. L’archéologie, l’épigraphie et les oeuvres littéraires sont nos principales sources dans ce travail. Elles permettent de dégager une typologie des temples de la conquête romaine à la chute de l’empire. A partir de cette typologie, deux catégories de constructions apparaissent lorsque que l’on associe romanisation et édifices religieux : les temples sont à la fois un moyen d’ancrer la romanisation (...) sur un territoire nouvellement conquis et un résultat de ce phénomène dans l’ancienne province romaine de Bétique. (shrink)

Notre travail porte sur la métaphysique et la psychologie de Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841). Ancien élève de Fichte, Herbart a rompu très tôt avec le courant idéaliste de son époque. Sa philosophie de la connaissance propose une lecture de Kant à contre-courant, réaliste et empiriste, qui rejette l’invention du transcendantal. Refusant une critique de la raison et de nos pouvoirs de connaître, Herbart prétend poursuivre l’héritage critique en élaborant une métaphysique de l’être et une psychologie tout à fait originale, à (...) laquelle il donne le statut d’une science, appuyée sur les mathématiques. L’ontologie réaliste reprend le principe kantien qui fait de l’être une position, ce qui nous oblige à sortir du concept pour l’expérience, mais veut combler la séparation entre le phénomène et la chose en soi, ce qui implique une redéfinition de la substance. Sa psychologie dénonce la psychologie des facultés, admise par Kant – qui ne critique pas nos prétendus pouvoirs de connaître – et engage ainsi une redéfinition de la représentation. (shrink)

This paper argues for more randomised controlled trials in educational research. Educational researchers have largely abandoned the methodology they helped to pioneer. This gold-standard methodology should be more widely used as it is an appropriate and robust research technique. Without subjecting curriculum innovations to a RCT then potentially harmful educational initiatives could be visited upon the nation's children.

Although a large body of literature exists propounding the importance of space in aged care and care of the older person with dementia, there is, however, only limited exploration of the ‘acute care space’ as a particular type of space with archetypal constraints that maybe unfavourable to older people with cognitive impairment and nurses wanting to provide care that is person‐centred. In this article, we explore concepts of space and examine the implications of these for the delivery of care to (...) older people who are cognitively impaired. Our exploration is grounded in theorisations of space offered by key geographers and phenomenologists, but also draws on how space has been constructed within the nursing literature that refers specifically to acute care. We argue that space, once created, can be created and that nursing has a significant role to play in the process of its recreation in the pursuit of care that is person‐centred. We conclude by introducing an alternative logic of space aimed at promoting the creation of more salutogenic spaces that invokes a sense of sanctuary, safeness, and inclusion, all of which are essential if the care provided to the older person with cognitive impairment is apposite to their needs. The concept of ‘person‐centred space’ helps to crystallize the relationship between space and person‐centred care and implies more intentional manipulation of space that is more conducive to caring and healing. Significantly, it marks a return to Nightingale's wisdom, that is, to put the person in the best possible conditions for nature to act upon them. (shrink)

In this article, we sought reconciliation between the “body‐as‐representation” and the “body‐as‐experience,” that is, how the body is represented in discourse and how the body of older people with cognitive impairment is experienced. We identified four contemporary “technologies” and gave examples of these to show how they influence how older people with cognitive impairment are often represented in acute care settings. We argued that these technologies may be mediated further by discourses of ageism and ableism which can potentiate either the (...) repressive or productive tendencies of these technologies resulting in either positive or negative care experiences for the older person and/or their carer, including nurses. We then provided examples from research of embodied experiences of older people with dementia and of how nurses and other professionals utilized their inter‐bodily experiences to inform acts of caring. The specificity and individuality of these experiences were more conducive to positive care experiences. We conclude the article by proposing that the act of caring is one way nurses seek to reconcile the “body‐as‐representation” with the “body‐as‐experience” to mitigate the repressive effects of negative ageism and ableism. The act of caring, we argue, is the essence of caring enacted through the provision of person‐centred care which evokes nurses to respond appropriately to the older person's “otherness,” their “variation of being” while enabling them to enact a continuation of themselves and their own version of normality. (shrink)

Les approches classiques de l'engagement se sont principalement intéressées à ses déterminants, rapportés à des variables sociodémographiques, des dispositions, des vertus ou des rétributions, comme à autant de motifs déjà constitués en amont et extrinsèques à l'expérience de l'engagement. Or, les intérêts des personnes - et leur puissance d'agir elle-même - peuvent s'analyser comme des produits de l'engagement, pour peu qu'on le saisisse dans sa dimension temporelle, itérative et située. Envisagé comme expérience, il paraît indissociable d'une enquête menée à la (...) fois sur soi et sur le monde, où les personnes interrogent autant leurs propres désirs et possibilités d'agir, que la vie commune qu'elles souhaitent cultiver ou voir advenir. Ce volume rassemble une série de contributions théoriques et empiriques qui explorent des façons d'articuler souci de soi et souci du monde. Elles documentent la façon dont les engagements circulent entre différentes sphères de la vie et entre moments biographiques, en suivant les formes d'expérimentation auxquelles ils donnent lieu. Notre compréhension du rapport au politique s'en trouve enrichie, ressaisie depuis la trame des expériences de la vie commune faites en personne"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

introduction Rhetoric/Memory/Place Carole Blair, Greg Dickinson, and Brian L. Ott The story is told of the poet Simonides of Ceos who, after chanting a poem ...

The Abbé de Saint-Pierre sought to develop a science regarding morals that aimed at “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” In his system, heroic morality and Christian asceticism give way to merit, the service of the nation, and values devoid of any charismatic dimension. Against an intention-based approach inspired by Augustinianism and against Mandeville’s abandonment of self-interest, Saint-Pierre devised political institutions and collective educational programs that guided the desire of distinction toward public utility. Properly channelled, the pleasure of being (...) distinguished becomes a dynamic principle that has the potential to produce a prosperous, harmonious, and benevolent society. (shrink)

Sally Gadow's tenure as professor of nursing at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center during my doctoral studies radically changed my view on science, nursing, relationships, and most importantly, the world. In this paper, I use ideas stimulated by Gadow's classes to argue that recognizing ambiguity through an attitude of metaphysical revolt can free nurses to form relationships with patients who are complex subjects rather than objects to be treated. I will first discuss Camus’ ideas of absurdity from the (...) Myth of Sisyphus, comparing the awake passions of Don Juan and the maniacal (and fatal) love of Romeo and Juliet (1955). Merleau‐Ponty's (1962) work on the dialectic of human sexuality sheds light on the intrinsic bodily ambiguity of human existence as seen through sexual attraction. de Beauvoir (1948) further lends insight into ideas of ambiguity, relationship, and freedom. Finally, I will argue that recognition of the intrinsic ambiguity of existence coupled with an attitude of metaphysical revolt may free nurses and patients from external frameworks that limit experience, impose meaning, and in the process, sever human relationship. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the limitations of four major critiques of the work of Leavis made by Kevin Harris. It is argued that (1) Leavis's procedure of working with the concrete and particular and (2) the context within which he worked, dominated by the exponents of modernism, are glossed over by Harris so that Leavis's insights are not given due weight. Furthermore, Harris overlooks the significance of an Aristotelian perspective to Leavis's concern for value and thus underestimates literature's role (...) in furthering our understanding of what it is to flourish. (shrink)

Computational models of relevance in case-based legal reasoning have traditionallybeen based on algorithms for comparing the facts and substantive legal issues of aprior case to those of a new case. In this paper we argue that robust models ofcase-based legal reasoning must also consider the broader social and jurisprudentialcontext in which legal precedents are decided. We analyze three aspects of legalcontext: the teleological relations that connect legal precedents to the socialvalues and policies they serve, the temporal relations between prior andsubsequent (...) cases in a legal domain, and the procedural posture of legal cases,which defines the scope of their precedential relevance. Using real examples drawnfrom appellate courts of New York and Massachusetts, we show with the courts' ownarguments that the doctrine of stare decisis (i.e., similar facts should lead to similar results) is subject to contextual constraints and influences. For each of the three aspects of legal context, we outline an expanded computational framework for case-based legal reasoning that encompasses the reasoning of the examples, and provides a foundation for generating a more robust set of legal arguments. (shrink)

In a recently published article, R. N. McLaughlin argues for what he calls an “open form” of bill of rights, in preference to the standard closed form. Such an open form would consist of a directive to the courts “to invalidate laws which offend fundamental morals by depriving citizens of basic rights, or by forcing them to deprive others of basic rights.” A standard form consists, of course, of a list of rights which are not to be violated. His reason (...) for making this proposal is that he does not think the standard form is capable of keeping pace with the changing moral codes which such a bill is supposed to reflect, whereas the open form would by its very nature do so. I should like, in what follows, to argue that the open form presents a number of serious problems which the standard form does not, and that a standard form is in the end to be preferred, both because it does not present these new problems and because it need not be as inflexible in the face of changing moral standards as McLaughlin thinks. (shrink)

SummaryTwo paintings by Charles Piazzi Smyth have recently been given by the family to the National Maritime Museum, London. They are of the Great Comet 1843 I, and provide superb examples of the artistic skill of astronomers of that time and of one of the methods used to record astronomical subjects before the days of photography.

SummaryTwo paintings by Charles Piazzi Smyth have recently been given by the family to the National Maritime Museum, London. They are of the Great Comet 1843 I, and provide superb examples of the artistic skill of astronomers of that time and of one of the methods used to record astronomical subjects before the days of photography.

The aim of unpaid volunteer classroom assistants is to give extra support to children learning to read. The impact of using volunteers to improve children's acquisition of reading skills is unknown. To assess whether volunteers are effective in improving children's reading, we undertook a systematic review of all relevant randomised controlled trials (RCTs). An exhaustive search of all the main electronic databases was carried out (i.e. BEI, PsycInfo, ASSIA, PAIS, SSCI, ERIC, SPECTR, SIGLE). We identified eight experimental studies, of which (...) seven were RCTs. One of the RCTs was excluded because it did not meet the inclusion criteria. One RCT randomised intact classes and the other six studies randomised individual children and could therefore be included in a meta-analysis. All of the trials were fairly small, with the largest including 99 pupils. Four of the trials showed a positive outcome, while three showed a negative effect and the remaining study was equivocal. We pooled the four most homogeneous trials. The pooled data indicated an effect size of 0.19, which was not statistically significant ( p = 0.54, 95% confidence interval = -0.31 to 0.68). Overall, volunteering appeared to have a small effect on reading outcomes. However, the confidence intervals were wide, which could conceal a potentially large benefit or a harmful effect. Thus, more good quality RCTs are required in order to provide more conclusive evidence. (shrink)