The COVID-19 pandemic represents the most significant global challenge in a generation. Based on extant data from previous pandemics, demographic, occupational, and psychological factors have been linked to distress and for some vulnerable members of society. COVID-19 has added to the layers of grief and distress of existing trauma. Evidence-based frameworks exist to guide our individual and collective response to reduce the trauma associated with the experience of a pandemic. Pandemic and post-pandemic measures to ameliorate impacts require a multi-disciplined approach, (...) central to which is community connectedness, resilience, and access to support. We advocate for the acceptance and broader application of Dadirri, a healing practice held by the Ngan'gikurunggurr and Ngen'giwumirri Aboriginal people of the Daly River region in the Northern Territory, Australia. This modality engages therapeutic phases that are comparable with other practiced trauma therapies. The demonstrated therapeutic outcomes from Dadirri can be attained through an individualistic or in a relational engagement context. This practice is accessible to all ages, is non-specific to gender and is suitable for people constrained in their mobility or limited by resources, pertinent in pandemic affected settings. (shrink)

Eells and Sober proved in 1983 that screening off is a sufficient condition for the transitivity of probabilistic causality, and in 2003 Shogenji noted that the same goes for probabilistic support. We start this paper by conjecturing that Hans Reichenbach may have been aware of this fact. Then we consider the work of Suppes and Roche, who demonstrated in 1986 and 2012 respectively that screening off can be generalized, while still being sufficient for transitivity. We point out an interesting difference (...) between Reichenbach’s screening off and the generalized version, which we illustrate with an example about haemophilia among the descendants of Queen Victoria. Finally, we embark on a further generalization: we develop a still weaker condition, one that can be made as weak as one wishes. (shrink)

In this paper we apply a general account of practical reasoning to arguing about legal cases. In particular, we provide a reconstruction of the reasoning of the majority and dissenting opinions for a particular well-known case from property law. This is done through the use of Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents to replicate the contrasting views involved in the actual decision. This reconstruction suggests that the reasoning involved can be separated into three distinct levels: factual and normative levels and a level connecting (...) the two, with conclusions at one level forming premises at the next. We begin by summarising our general approach, which uses instantiations of an argumentation scheme to provide presumptive justifications for actions, and critical questions to identify arguments which attack these justifications. These arguments and attacks are organised into argumentation frameworks to identify the status of individual arguments. We then discuss the levels of reasoning that occur in this reconstruction and the properties and significance of each of these levels. We illustrate the different levels with short examples and also include a discussion of the role of precedents within these levels of reasoning. (shrink)

Luc Boltanski’s programme of pragmatic sociology, now gaining substantial attention among English-speaking sociologists, was forged in opposition to the supposed excesses and blind spots of Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘critical sociology’. After outlining the main lines of development of Boltanski’s project and emphasizing the major points of difference with Bourdieu, the article offers a critical Bourdieusian response to pragmatic sociology. It highlights a number of ways in which Boltanski’s position is based on a misreading or distortion of Bourdieu’s ideas, is less unlike (...) Bourdieu’s position than he claims and suffers from analytical shortcomings. This is not to say there is nothing of value in Boltanski’s work, but overall it offers useful pointers to be accommodated rather than a thoroughgoing conceptual revolution. (shrink)

Quantum electrodynamics is a time-symmetric theory that is part of the electroweak interaction, which is invariant under a generalized form of this symmetry, the PCT transformation. The thesis is defended that the arrow of time in electrodynamics is a consequence of the assumption of an initial state of high order, together with the quantum version of the equiprobability postulate.

An actual infinity of colliding balls can be in a configuration in which the laws of mechanics lead to logical inconsistency. It is argued that one should therefore limit the domain of these laws to a finite, or only a potentially infinite number of elements. With this restriction indeterminism, energy nonconservation and creatio ex nihilo no longer occur. A numerical analysis of finite systems of colliding balls is given, and the asymptotic behaviour that corresponds to the potentially infinite system is (...) inferred. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that when one has an epiphany of the form ‘God is F’ upon having a sublime experience one can be accurately described as being acquainted with the fact that God is F as opposed to inferring that God is F from the experience at hand. To argue for this, I will, first, outline what a sublime experience is, in general, before outlining what a theistic sublime experience is in particular. Second, I will outline two ways (...) of understanding theistic sublime experiences. First, I will outline a model that I will call the ‘inference model’ which, put simply, says that when one has an epiphany of the form ‘God is F’, upon having a theistic sublime experience, one is drawing this conclusion via a process of ‘inference-to-the-best-explanation’ The sublime: From antiquity to the present, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012, p. 426). Second, I will outline an alternative model that I call the ‘acquaintance model’ which, put simply, says that no inferential process occurs when one has an epiphany of the form ‘God is F’ upon having a theistic sublime experience, but one is made directly aware of the fact that God is F. Third, and finally, I will respond to some objections to the acquaintance model. (shrink)

This text develops a novel methodology for social investigation into the Flint (Michigan, USA) water crisis by using classical Husserlian phenomenology as its point of departure. To develop a proper method in a case like this, the author uses as primary data the experiences of the affected community. The text investigates philosophically how a water crisis happens as well as the structures of power responsible. This book grounds contemporary theories of power in a phenomenology of social experience. Key to that (...) grounding is the careful elaboration of subject positions in power structures as partially constitutive of lifeworlds (lebensumwelten) for consciousness. The applied phenomenological tools unravel the central enigma of how a community’s concerns and the dictates of power can become so disastrously estranged. This text appeals to researchers and students working not just in phenomenology and philosophy but also to those working in the field of environmental humanities and on social justice issues. (shrink)

Caroline Franks Davis provides a clear, sensitive, and carefully argued assessment of the value of religious experiences as evidence for religious beliefs. Much more than an 'argument from religious experience', the inquiry systematically addresses underlying philosophical issues such as the role of interpretation in experience, the function of models and metaphors in religious language, and the way perceptual experiences in general are used as evidence for claims about the world. The author examines several arguments from religious experience and, using (...) contemporary and classic sources from the world religions, gives an account of the different types of experience. To meet sceptical challenges to religious experience, she draws extenisvely on psychological and sociological as well as philosophical and religious literature, probing deeply into the questions whether religious experiences are merely a matter of interpretation, whether there is irreducible conflict among religious experiences, and whether psychological and other reductionist explanations of religious experience are satisfactory. She concludes that religious experiences, like most experiences, are most effective as evidence within a cumulative style of argument which combines evidence from a wide range of sources. (shrink)

Theo Kuipers describes four kinds of research programs and the question is raised here as to whether string theory could be accommodated by one of them, or whether it should be classified in a new, fifth kind of research program.

This work exposes the practices that are controlling education and reducing it to little more than skills development in preparation for work. It questions the strategy of mentoring to show how its dynamic requires docility from the learner and thus perpetuates inequality.

Research only alluded to by Preston & de Waal (P&deW) indicates the disproportionate involvement of some brain regions in the perception and experience of certain emotions. This suggests that the neural substrate of primitive emotional contagion has some emotion-specific aspects, even if cognitively sophisticated forms of empathy do not. Goals for future research include determining the ways in which empathy is emotion-specific and dependent on overt or covert perception.

Phase-shift analysis is a commonly used technique to extract the scattering amplitudes of a two-body strong-interaction scattering process from the experimentally measured quantities | total cross-section, di erential cross-section, polarization and spin-correlation parameters. However, at a xed energy, all the scattering amplitudes can be multiplied by an arbitrary angle-dep phase-factor without a ecting the measurables. It would seem then that the phase of the..

quantum electrodynamics. In quasilinear approximation, the integral equation is solved by Mellin transformation, followed by the calculation of the Muskhelishvili index of the resultant singular integral operator.

The following article explores the use of creative writing techniques to teach research ethics, breathe life into case study preparation, and train students to think of their settings as complex organizational environments with multiple actors and stakeholders.

''As a text in developmental psychology the book is excellent, and this lower-priced paperback version will be snapped up by psychology students.'' -European NeurologyOne of the most dramatic areas of development in early human life is that of vision. Whereas vision plays a relatively minor role in the world of the newborn infant, by 6 months it has assumed the position as a dominant sense and forms the basis of later perceptual, cognitive, and social development. From a world leader in (...) the study of visual development in human infants comes a major new work, condensing a lifetime of work in this area - The developing visual brain. Drawing on over 20 years of cutting edge research in the Visual Develoment Units in Cambridge and University College London, the book provides the definitive account of what we know about the developing visual system, and the problems that can occur during development. The book reviews, evaluates, and sets in context the exciting progress being made in this area, and additionally suggests new areas for research. Written to be accessible for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in psychology, the neurosciences, optometry, and visual science, The developing visual brain represents an important new addition to the literature on vision. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethical dimensions of the closure process of an English large long-stay institution for people with learning difficulties during the last quarter of the twentieth century. It does this primarily through an analysis of oral historical interview data stemming from those managers who implemented rundown. The paper illustrates the ways in which their testimonies indicate the presence of a morally infused dominant rhetoric, which was based upon the therapeutic benefits of closure, informed by the ideas of normalisation (...) and social role valorisation. However, the paper argues that this principled managerial perspective had unfortunate ethical consequences, in that it under-acknowledged, marginalised and discredited staff viewpoints which raised pertinent issues relating to the downsizing of this particular hospital. (shrink)

We address two points in this commentary. First, we question the extent to which O'Brien & Opie have established that the classical approach is unable to support a viable vehicle theory of consciousness. Second, assuming that connectionism does have the resources to support a vehicle theory, we explore how the activity of the units of a PDP network might sum together to form phenomenal experience (PE).

Drawing on rich cross-cultural perspectives from Pakistan, Israel, Canada, the US and the UK, the authors challenge readers to envision new ways of thinking for education: ways which draw on imagination, the arts and the collective ...

This book is a call to educators everywhere to recognize and resist the global forces which are driving educational policy deeper and deeper into narrow discourses of performance, accountability and e~certaintiese(tm) about what works.

Abstract:This article provides a novel interpretation of the so-called transition to self-consciousness in The Phenomenology of Spirit, where Hegel argues that the failure of the protagonist consciousness to formulate an understanding of the world in terms of forces and laws necessitates the shift to an investigation of its own self-conscious subjectivity. The author argues that we can make sense of the transition by attending to Hegel's account of the metaphysical structure of forces and laws, on the one hand, and the (...) structure of self-consciousness, on the other. Following this approach, she argues that the transition represents the realization by the protagonist consciousness that the object of phenomenological inquiry must be metaphysically self-determining (or "infinite," in Hegel's terminology). The standpoint of self-consciousness accordingly emerges because the protagonist consciousness takes itself qua subject to exhibit the requisite self-determining structure. In addition to making sense of the transition to self-consciousness, this line of argumentation illuminates Hegel's subsequent focus on the activity of "desire.". (shrink)

This minicourse on quantum mechanics is intended for students who have already been rather well exposed to the subject at an elementary level. It is assumed that they have surmounted the first conceptual hurdles and also have struggled with the Schrödinger equation in one dimension.

This paper engages with Manuel DeLanda’s Deleuze-inspired ‘assemblage theory’ from a perspective sympathetic to Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. It first outlines DeLanda’s proposed new ‘philosophy of society’, focusing on his major works in this vein, and registers some scepticism as to its originality for sociology. It then introduces and responds to DeLanda’s critique of Bourdieu. Rather than simply reject assemblage theory outright, however, I draw on selected insights from DeLanda to push field theory in new directions. More specifically, I conceptualise (...) the interplay of fields and assemblages and use notions of ‘exteriority’ and ‘possibility space’ to help conceive individual plurality of social positioning and its effects for subjectivity and practice. (shrink)

Zika virus infection in a pregnant woman may cause severe brain malformations and other birth defects in her child, and women living in or traveling to areas where it is endemic are urged to postpone pregnancy. Do the dangers posed by microcephaly justify the use of contraceptives under the principle of double effect? The author discusses ambiguities in Humanae vitae n. 14 and the claim that the use of contraceptives was approved by Pope Paul VI for nuns at risk of (...) rape, and uses the principle of double effect to show that the answer to this question is no: the use of the anovulant pill by married couples for the purpose of preventing conception of a microcephalic child cannot be licit. (shrink)

The resistance between two arbitrary nodes in an infinite square lattice of identical resistors is calculated. The method is generalized to infinite triangular and hexagonal lattices in two dimensions, and also to infinite cubic and hypercubic lattices in three and more dimensions. © 1999..

An eight parameter family of the most general nonnegative quadruple probabilities is constructed for EPR-Bohm-Aharonov experiments when only 3 pairs of analyser settings are used. It is a simultaneous representation of 3 Bohr-incompatible experimental configurations valid for arbitrary quantum states.