It has become increasingly difficult for individuals to exercise meaningful control over the personal data they disclose to companies or to understand and track the ways in which that data is exchanged and used. These developments have led to an emerging consensus that existing privacy and data protection laws offer individuals insufficient protections against harms stemming from current data practices. However, an effective and ethically justified way forward remains elusive. To inform policy in this area, we propose the Ethical Data (...) Practices framework. The framework outlines six principles relevant to the collection and use of personal data—minimizing harm, fairly distributing benefits and burdens, respecting autonomy, transparency, accountability, and inclusion—and translates these principles into action-guiding practical imperatives for companies that process personal data. In addition to informing policy, the practical imperatives can be voluntarily adopted by companies to promote ethical data practices. (shrink)

Jnanasrimitra (975-1025) was regarded by both Buddhists and non-Buddhists as the most important Indian philosopher of his generation. His theory of exclusion combined a philosophy of language with a theory of conceptual content to explore the nature of words and thought. Jnanasrimitra's theory informed much of the work accomplished at Vikramasila, a monastic and educational complex instrumental to the growth of Buddhism. His ideas were also passionately debated among successive Hindu and Jain philosophers. This volume marks the first English translation (...) of Jnanasrimitra's Monograph on Exclusion, a careful, critical investigation into language, perception, and conceptual awareness. Featuring the rival arguments of Buddhist and Hindu intellectuals, among other thinkers, the Monograph reflects more than half a millennium of competing claims while providing an invaluable introduction to a crucial philosopher. Lawrence J. McCrea and Parimal G. Patil familiarize the reader with the author, themes, and topics of the text and situate Jnanasrimitra's findings within his larger intellectual milieu. Their clear, accessible, and accurate translation proves the influence of Jnanasrimitra on the foundations of Buddhist and Indian philosophy. (shrink)

Thomas J.J. Altizer is one of the most important theologians of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and all radical theology must pass through and be conversant with his work and the historical significance of his earlier contributions. This chapter presents Altizer’s essential ideas in a straightforward and accessible manner and provides a guide for the beginning reader.

Multiple -conclusion logic extends formal logic by allowing arguments to have a set of conclusions instead of a single one, the truth lying somewhere among the conclusions if all the premises are true. The extension opens up interesting possibilities based on the symmetry between premises and conclusions, and can also be used to throw fresh light on the conventional logic and its limitations. This is a sustained study of the subject and is certain to stimulate further research. Part I reworks (...) the fundamental ideas of logic to take account of multiple conclusions, and investigates the connections between multiple - and single - conclusion calculi. Part II draws on graph theory to discuss the form and validity of arguments independently of particular logical systems. Part III contrasts the multiple - and the single - conclusion treatment of one and the same subject, using many-valued logic as the example; and Part IV shows how the methods of 'natural deduction' can be matched by direct proofs using multiple conclusions. (shrink)

" Waldie speculates on the meanings and implications of the snapshots in this book and of snapshots generally, which he sees as expressions of "the hunger of memory.".

Some tradition historical perspectives on Psalm 83 Psalm 83 forms a poetical unit and is the well constructed poem of an artist. It could be divided into two stanzas which contains a cry for help (2), lament (3-9) and several petitions (10-19). This work reflects different tradition historical allusions. The use of prophetic language is immanent, while the faces of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel are elusively present. Two episodes from the history of the Judges (Judges 4-5; 7-8) are (...) utilised to expose its independent function in this psalm. The occurence of a well known Canaanite tradition is further obvious, while the question into the psalm's apocalyptic relationships is negatively assessed. Single motives like the upliftment of the head (3) and the shepherd/flock image (13) fulfil a definite Junction within the psalm’s context. The poet clearly applied historical traditions, motives and images to express an independent function within its context. (shrink)

Issues of resource allocationResource allocation, triageTriage, and rationingRationing decisions are common in the context of disasters and public healthPublic health emergencies, such as pandemics. However, to date, the majorityMajority of the literature focuses on an adult population with very little attention given to a pediatric population or to a population that may be mixed: adults and children. Furthermore, decisions of rationingRationing scarce resources do not only occur during disasters and other wide-scale emergencies. Such decisions are commonplace in pediatric organ transplantation (...) and can creep into areas of experimental medicine, such as xenotransplantation. This chapter explicates differences between pediatric and adult triageTriage decisions by first looking at the trifold issues of resource allocationResource allocation, triageTriage, and rationingRationing decisions mainly in the context of a disaster situation or public healthPublic health emergency. However, the issues of pediatric organ transplantation, health disparitiesHealth disparities, and experimental medicine will also be covered. (shrink)

The author, a regional health authority administrator, argues that `ownership' is a side issue in legal and moral arguments over confidentiality of medical records. Nor is it practicable, he argues, for doctors alone to control all access to the medical records. He proposes the principle of `custodianship' of confidential information, to be accepted by an institution as a whole, as a possible way of resolving the problem. In commentaries on this and the following article an academic lawyer and a practising (...) physician respond. (shrink)

I present an annotated development of the basic ideas of the Geneva School approach to the foundations of physics and the structures which emerge as mathematical representations of the physically dual notions of state and property.

That both parts of the sentence refer to the same person is now generally agreed; it is not so much that a change of subject would be, as the commentators are wont to say, ‘un-Sophoclean’, but simply that it would be awkward and clumsy. But to whom do the lines refer?D. B. Gregor argues for Clytaemnestra, but despite the apparent force of some of his arguments I cannot agree. He adds too that the reference to echoes the motif of Electra's (...) speech, but it is just as much the motif of Clytaemnestra's speech, in fact more so. Finally, the first part of the sentence, it is true, could be asserted by the chorus on the strength of some such gesture as the heaving of the bosom, but I cannot see how they could then deduce that Clytaemnestra ‘no longer cares whether justice is on her side’. (shrink)

D. J. Allan; XV—Aristotle's Criticism of Platonic Doctrine Concerning Goodness and The Good, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 64, Issue 1, 1 June.

Full text of erratum: "In the article by D.J. Buller, on p. 278, the y-axis label to Fig. IIb was incorrect. Instead of 'Percentage choosing "Eats cassava root" and "Tattoo," it should have read: 'Percentage choosing "Eats cassava root" and "No tattoo."' We apologise to readers for this error.".

Deformation quantisation is applied to ordinary Quantum Mechanics by introducing the star product in a configuration space combining a Riemannian structure with a Poisson one. A Hilbert space compatible with such a configuration space is designed. The dynamics is expressed by a Hermitian Hamiltonian containing a scalar potential and a one-form potential. As a simple illustration, it is shown how a particular type of non-commutativity of the star product is interpretable as generating the Zeeman effect of ordinary Quantum Mechanics.

Open peer commentary on the target article “From Objects to Processes: A Proposal to Rewrite Radical Constructivism” by Siegfried J. Schmidt. Upshot: The critique of Western metaphysics, the definition of the sign as an inseparable unity of signified and signifier, the insight that language is a form of life, the deconstruction of the subject, the banning of human beings from the social system, and the appearance of non-human actors have made the traditional distinctions between real/unreal, subject /object, society/nature, and thought/action (...) obsolete. The global map of meaning has to be redrawn. Siegfried J. Schmidt takes on this task in the name of a rewriting of radical constructivism. But is rewriting enough? Do the new differences introduced in place of the old ones “really” make a difference? (shrink)

Humans think and communicate in very flexible and schematic ways, and a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the Amazon and associated information system ontologies should reflect this flexibility and the adaptive nature of human cognition in order to achieve semantic interoperability. In this paper I offer a conceptual investigation of SDI and explore the nature of cultural schemas as expressions of indigenous ontologies and the challenges of semantic interoperability across cultures. Cultural schemas are, in essence, our ontologies, but they are (...) markedly different than classical formal ontologies. They shape our ontological commitments to what exists in the world as well as the ways in which we approach and engage the world. And while they help structure our understanding of the world in which we are embedded, they are associative and flexible. They help to focus our attention to particular details of our experiences and give them salience, yet they cannot be simply reduced to a series of extracted features. They allow us to make meaning of the contextualized, cultural experience in which we are always immersed. An SDI is a shared social-technological-informational structure that, if it is to be useful and successful for sustainability in the Amazon, must incorporate and use indigenous cultural schemas. Indigenous communities must have the ability to contribute to the collection of geospatial data and their contributions recognized as legitimate forms of knowledge. In order for the SDI to work, it must recognize the larger cultural landscape to which cultural schemas can connect to the ready-to-hand elements of salient cultural experiences. (shrink)