North America is in the grips of an epidemic of opioid-related poisonings. Overdose education and naloxone distribution programmes emerged as an option for structurally vulnerable populations who could not or would not access mainstream emergency medical services in the event of an overdose. These task shifting programmes utilize lay persons to deliver opioid resuscitation in the context of longstanding stigmatization and marginalization from mainstream healthcare services. OEND programmes exist at the intersection of harm reduction and emergency services. One goal of (...) OEND programmes is to help redress the health-related inequities common among people who use drugs, which include minimizing the gap between people who use drugs and the formal healthcare system. However, if this goal is not achieved these inequities may be entrenched. In this article, we consider the ethical promises and perils associated with OEND as task shifting. We argue that public health practitioners must consider the ethical aspects of task shifting programmes that may inadvertently harm already structurally vulnerable populations. We believe that even if OEND programmes reduce opioid-related deaths, we nevertheless question if, by virtue of its existence, OEND programmes might also unintentionally disenfranchise structurally vulnerable populations from comprehensive healthcare services, including mainstream emergency care. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

In spite of a powerful tradition, more than two thousand years old, that in a valid argument the premises must be relevant to the conclusion, twentieth-century logicians neglected the concept of relevance until the publication of Volume I of this monumental work. Since that time relevance logic has achieved an important place in the field of philosophy: Volume II of Entailment brings to a conclusion a powerful and authoritative presentation of the subject by most of the top people working in (...) the area. Originally the aim of Volume II was simply to cover certain topics not treated in the first volume--quantification, for example--or to extend the coverage of certain topics, such as semantics. However, because of the technical progress that has occurred since the publication of the first volume, Volume II now includes other material. The book contains the work of Alasdair Urquhart, who has shown that the principal sentential systems of relevance logic are undecidable, and of Kit Fine, who has demonstrated that, although the first-order systems are incomplete with respect to the conjectured constant domain semantics, they are still complete with respect to a semantics based on "arbitrary objects." Also presented is important work by the other contributing authors, who are Daniel Cohen, Steven Giambrone, Dorothy L. Grover, Anil Gupta, Glen Helman, Errol P. Martin, Michael A. McRobbie, and Stuart Shapiro. Robert G. Wolf's bibliography of 3000 items is a valuable addition to the volume. (shrink)

Many philosophers of the last century thought all moral judgments can be expressed using a few basic concepts — what are today called ‘thin’ moral concepts such as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘right,’ and ‘wrong.’ This was the view, fi rst, of the non-naturalists whose work dominated the early part of the century, including Henry Sidgwick, G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, and C.D. Broad. Some of them recognized only one basic concept, usually either ‘ought’ or ‘good’; others thought there were two. But (...) they all assumed that other moral concepts, including such ‘thick’ ones as the virtue-concepts ‘courageous’ and ‘kindly,’ can be reductively analyzed using one or more thin concepts and some more or less determinate.. (shrink)

In spite of a powerful tradition, more than two thousand years old, that in a valid argument the premises must be relevant to the conclusion, twentieth-century logicians neglected the concept of relevance until the publication of Volume I of this monumental work. Since that time relevance logic has achieved an important place in the field of philosophy: Volume II of Entailment brings to a conclusion a powerful and authoritative presentation of the subject by most of the top people working in (...) the area. Originally the aim of Volume II was simply to cover certain topics not treated in the first volume--quantification, for example--or to extend the coverage of certain topics, such as semantics. However, because of the technical progress that has occurred since the publication of the first volume, Volume II now includes other material. The book contains the work of Alasdair Urquhart, who has shown that the principal sentential systems of relevance logic are undecidable, and of Kit Fine, who has demonstrated that, although the first-order systems are incomplete with respect to the conjectured constant domain semantics, they are still complete with respect to a semantics based on "arbitrary objects." Also presented is important work by the other contributing authors, who are Daniel Cohen, Steven Giambrone, Dorothy L. Grover, Anil Gupta, Glen Helman, Errol P. Martin, Michael A. McRobbie, and Stuart Shapiro. Robert G. Wolf's bibliography of 3000 items is a valuable addition to the volume. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 109 of Psychological Review. Due to circumstances that were beyond the control of the authors, the studies reported in "Models of Ecological Rationality: The Recognition Heuristic," by Daniel G. Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer overlap with studies reported in "The Recognition Heuristic: How Ignorance Makes Us Smart," by the same authors and with studies reported in "Inference From Ignorance: The Recognition Heuristic". In addition, Figure 3 in the Psychological Review (...) article was originally published in the book chapter and should have carried a note saying that it was used by permission of Oxford University Press.] One view of heuristics is that they are imperfect versions of optimal statistical procedures considered too complicated for ordinary minds to carry out. In contrast, the authors consider heuristics to be adaptive strategies that evolved in tandem with fundamental psychological mechanisms. The recognition heuristic, arguably the most frugal of all heuristics, makes inferences from patterns of missing knowledge. This heuristic exploits a fundamental adaptation of many organisms: the vast, sensitive, and reliable capacity for recognition. The authors specify the conditions under which the recognition heuristic is successful and when it leads to the counter-intuitive less-is-more effect in which less knowledge is better than more for making accurate inferences. (shrink)

I argue against the tendency in the philosophy of science literature to link abduction to the inference to the best explanation (IBE), and in particular, to claim that Peireean abduction is a conceptual predecessor to IBE. This is not to discount either abduction or IBE. Rather the purpose of this paper is to clarify the relation between Peireean abduction and IBE in accounting for ampliative inference in science. This paper aims at a proper classification—not justification—of types of scientific reasoning. In (...) particular, I claim that Peireean abduction is an in-depth account of the process of generating explanatory hypotheses, while IBE, at least in Peter Lipton's thorough treatment, is a more encompassing account of the processes both of generating and of evaluating scientific hypotheses. There is then a two-fold problem with the claim that abduction is IBE. On the one hand, it conflates abduction and induction, which are two distinct forms of logical inference, with two distinct aims, as shown by Charles S. Peirce; on the other hand it lacks a clear sense of the full scope of IBE as an account of scientific inference. (shrink)

We have synthesized a 582,970-base pair Mycoplasma genitalium genome. This synthetic genome, named M. genitalium JCVI-1.0, contains all the genes of wild-type M. genitalium G37 except MG408, which was disrupted by an antibiotic marker to block pathogenicity and to allow for selection. To identify the genome as synthetic, we inserted "watermarks" at intergenic sites known to tolerate transposon insertions. Overlapping "cassettes" of 5 to 7 kilobases (kb), assembled from chemically synthesized oligonucleotides, were joined by in vitro recombination to produce intermediate (...) assemblies of approximately 24 kb, 72 kb ("1/8 genome"), and 144 kb ("1/4 genome"), which were all cloned as bacterial artificial chromosomes in Escherichia coli. Most of these intermediate clones were sequenced, and clones of all four 1/4 genomes with the correct sequence were identified. The complete synthetic genome was assembled by transformation-associated recombination cloning in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, then isolated and sequenced. A clone with the correct sequence was identified. The methods described here will be generally useful for constructing large DNA molecules from chemically synthesized pieces and also from combinations of natural and synthetic DNA segments. 10.1126/science.1151721. (shrink)

The Giving Voice to Values pedagogy and curriculum is described as an example of a powerful leverage point in the integration of business ethics and values-driven leadership across the business curriculum. GVV is post-decision-making in that it identifies an ethical course of action and asks practitioners to identify who are the parties involved and what’s at stake for them; what are the main arguments to be countered; and what levers that can be used to influence those who are in disagreement. (...) The internalization of GVV’s constructs allows faculty to comfortably raise and endorse ethics as part of the natural order of business decision-making because the stakes of doing so have been normalized. Methods for introducing and using GVV in undergraduate through MBA courses are given. An illustration is given for economics courses. (shrink)

This paper describes KRL, a Knowledge Representation Language designed for use in understander systems. It outlines both the general concepts which underlie our research and the details of KRL‐0, an experimental implementation of some of these concepts. KRL is an attempt to integrate procedural knowledge with a broad base of declarative forms. These forms provide a variety of ways to express the logical structure of the knowledge, in order to give flexibility in associating procedures (for memory and reasoning) with specific (...) pieces of knowledge, and to control the relative accessibility of different facts and descriptions. The formalism for declarative knowledge is based on structured conceptual objects with associated descriptions. These objects form a network of memory units with several different sorts of linkages, each having well‐specified implications for the retrieval process. Procedures can be associated directly with the internal structure of a conceptual object. This procedurul attachment allows the steps for a particular operation to be determined by characteristics of the specific entities involved.The control structure of KRL is based on the belief that the next generation of intelligent programs will integrate data‐directed and goal‐directed processing by using multiprocessing. It provides for a priority‐ordered multiprocess agenda with explicit (user‐provided) strategies for scheduling and resource allocation. It provides procedure directories which operate along with process frameworks to allow procedural parameterization of the fundamental system processes for building, comparing, and retrieving memory structures. Future development of KRL will include integrating procedure definition with the descriptive formalism. (shrink)

This study examines the deliberations of professional MBA students when presented with a dilemma that weighs the difference between commitments to profit-maximization against concerns for fired workers who would need to seek a new job during a recession. Using content analysis, accounting, economic, and ethically based rationales that differ from the profit-maximizing recommendation are categorized. Results also show that those who make non-profit-maximizing recommendations consider, but ultimately reject the profit-maximizing approach to layoffs.

Giving Voice To Values (GVV) serves as a framework to teach individuals methods to speak up when they witness actions that are contrary to their professional and personal values. This essay illustrates how GVV serves as a catalyst to advance both research and teaching activities.

This paper aims to position the birth of the Medical Humanities movement in a greater historical context of twentieth century American medical education and to paint a picture of the current landscape of the Medical Humanities in medical training. It first sheds light on the model of medical education put forth by Abraham Flexner through the publishing of the 1910 Flexner Report, which set the stage for defining physicians as experimentalists and rooting the profession in research institutions. While this paved (...) the way for medical advancements, it came at the cost of producing a patriarchal approach to medical practice. By the late 1960s, the public persona of the profession was thus devoid of humanism. This catalyzed the birth of the Medical Humanities movement that helped lay the framework for what has perpetuated as the ongoing incorporation of humanistic subjects into medical training. As we enter a time in medicine in which rates of burnout are ever-increasing and there are growing concerns about a concomitant reduction in empathy among trainees, the need for instilling humanism remains important. We must consequently continue to consider how to ensure the place of the Medical Humanities in medical education moving forward. (shrink)

Two institutions that are often implicit or overlooked in noncooperative games are the assumption of Nash behavior to solve a game, and the ability to correlate strategies. We consider two behavioral paradoxes; one in which maximin behavior rules out all Nash equilibria (‘Chicken’), and another in which minimax supergame behavior leads to an ‘inefficient’ outcome in comparison to the unique stage game equilibrium (asymmetric ‘Deadlock’). Nash outcomes are achieved in both paradoxes by allowing for correlated strategies, even when individual behavior (...) remains minimax or maximin. However, the interpretation of correlation as a public institution differs for each case. (shrink)

Two institutions that are often implicit or overlooked in noncooperative games are the assumption of Nash behavior to solve a game, and the ability to correlate strategies. We consider two behavioral paradoxes; one in which maximin behavior rules out all Nash equilibria (‘Chicken’), and another in which minimax supergame behavior leads to an ‘inefficient’ outcome in comparison to the unique stage game equilibrium (asymmetric ‘Deadlock’). Nash outcomes are achieved in both paradoxes by allowing for correlated strategies, even when individual behavior (...) remains minimax or maximin. However, the interpretation of correlation as a public institution differs for each case. (shrink)

We experimentally assess the ethics of the U.S. government’s indirect bailout of the bank counterparties of American International Group during the 2008 financial crisis. When the indirect bailout is jointly compared with a counterfactual where the government directly bails out the banks, subjects judge the indirect bailout to be far more unethical. On the other hand, when the two scenarios are judged separately, subjects consider a direct bailout of banks to be more unethical. This suggests that ethical judgments of indirect (...) versus direct action exhibit a type of preference reversal that is dependent upon whether the evaluation mode is joint or separate. The pedagogical and policy implications of this preference reversal are discussed. (shrink)

I articulate Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of mathematical education as related to his conception of mathematics, the nature of its method of inquiry, and especially, the reasoning abilities required for mathematical inquiry. The main thesis is that Peirce’s philosophy of mathematical education primarily aims at fostering the development of the students’ semeiotic abilities of imagination, concentration, and generalization required for conducting mathematical inquiry by way of experimentation upon diagrams. This involves an emphasis on the relation between theory and practice and (...) between mathematics and other fields including the arts and sciences. For achieving its goals, the article is divided in three sections. First, I expound Peirce’s philosophical account of mathematical reasoning. Second, I illustrate this account by way of a geometrical example, placing special emphasis on its relation to mathematical education. Finally, I put forth some Peircean philosophical principles for mathematical education. (shrink)

The 1980s witnessed a dramatic increase in hostile takeovers in the United States. Proponents argue that well- planned mergers enhance the value of the firm and the value of the firm to society. Critics typically argue that undesired takeovers ultimately harm society due to external costs not borne by the acquiring firm. To be socially responsible, the manager must consider the effects of the merger/acquisition on all stakeholders. Different traditional ethical frameworks for decision making are proposed and reviewed. A model (...) is proposed. (shrink)

This article discusses the issue of migration from various vantage points: political, economic, linguistic, legal, philosophical, and ethical. It is shown that although migration touches upon many areas of human life, it is in reality a straightforward issue. It is basically about human beings in search for a more dignified life. The author critiques the operative dualisms that characterize the migration debate, in doing so undermining the dehumanizing thinking that gives birth to such rhetoric, and suggests an approach to the (...) issue that fosters a transformation rooted in authentic human and spiritual development. (shrink)

: C.S. Peirce defines mathematics in two ways: first as "the science which draws necessary conclusions," and second as "the study of what is true of hypothetical states of things" (CP 4.227–244). Given the dual definition, Peirce notes, a question arises: Should we exclude the work of poietic hypothesis-making from the domain of pure mathematical reasoning? (CP 4.238). This paper examines Peirce's answer to the question. Some commentators hold that for Peirce the framing of mathematical hypotheses requires poietic genius but (...) is not scientific work. I propose, to the contrary, that although Peirce occasionally seems to exclude the poietic creation of hypotheses altogether from pure mathematical reasoning, Peirce's position is rather that the creation of mathematical hypotheses is poietic, but it is not merely poietic, and accordingly, that hypothesis-framing is part of mathematical reasoning that involves an element of poiesis but is not merely poietic either. Scientific considerations also inhere in the process of hypothesis-making, without excluding the poietic element. In the end, I propose that hypothesis-making in mathematics stands between artistic and scientific poietic creativity with respect to imaginative freedom from logical and actual constraints upon reasoning. (shrink)

There is a fairly long-standing distinction between what are called the ideographic as opposed to nomothetic sciences. The nomothetic sciences, such as physics, offer explanations in terms of the laws and regular operations of nature. The ideographic sciences, such as natural history, cast explanations in terms of narratives. This article offers an account of what is involved in offering an explanatory narrative in the historical sciences. I argue that narrative explanations involve two chief components: a possibility space and an explanatory (...) causal mechanism. (shrink)

Used appropriately, reliance on science distinguishes public health from policymaking driven more by theory and opinion and enhances trust in public health interventions. Evidence-based vaccine policymaking aims to control communicable disease by urging decision makers to base policies on the best available evidence rather than politics or personal views. The results of this approach, such as smallpox eradication, have been dramatic. Historically, mandatory childhood vaccination has been perhaps the most successful evidence-based tool in combating many epidemics. Philosophically, vaccination mandates correspond (...) to the legal system’s dual role in codifying what society deems undesirable behavior and declaring beneficial social norms and values consistent with understandings of the social contract. Despite their effectiveness and philosophical grounding, vaccination mandates present serious legal and ethical questions. Public health policymakers have a continuing responsibility to rely on evidence not only as a basis for generating policy, but also for evaluating and improving elements of its legal design. (shrink)

in two letters concerning the Spanish-American War of 1898, Charles Sanders Peirce openly expresses some egregious prejudices against several groups of people, including Hispanics—people of at least partly Spanish origin in the Iberian Peninsula or the Americas (L 254 and L 339; reprint, translation to Spanish, and commentary in Nubiola and Zalamea 76–811). In an undated letter to his cousin Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts politician, Peirce writes regarding the war: “I don’t believe the Spaniards will make a good fight; (...) for as I have studied them in Spain, the whole people has been corrupted with the centuries of cruelty, injustice and rapine they have indulged in, and have little real manhood left” (L 254; .. (shrink)

Henry David Thoreau’s discussion of the highest value of wild apples and my own reflection upon my experience, interacting with the sea and enjoying its products during my Central American upbringing, motivate this discussion of how human beings may apprehend nature’s highest worth. I propose that in order to apprehend nature’s highest value it is necessary to understand the complete transaction between human beings and nature—an active transaction that requires from the human being a continuous movement along experience, reflection, and (...) responsible action. I argue that the economic valuation of natural products—via the contemporary economic concepts of utility, use-value, existence-value, and willingness-to-pay—is insufficient to comprehend the full worth of nature because it reduces the human being-nature transaction to mere economic terms. Hence, a reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature provides insight into the services—commodity, beauty, language, and discipline—that the human being receives, as part of the transaction, from nature. In turn, a reading of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac complements the Emersonian position by considering the human being’s position as a member of a natural community. Finally, I propose that in order to apprehend the worth of nature, it is further necessary to move from the reflective understanding of the human being-nature transaction into necessary action, that is, into the assumption of responsibility towards nature. (shrink)

This paper gives prescriptions for introducing ethical concerns into the economic theory of the firm. Topics include social responsibility, corporate governance, profit maximization, competition barriers, collusion, the market system, and welfare economics. The need for such prescriptions is based on a content analysis of 21 managerial economics texts for their coverage of ethics. My analysis finds that substantive discussions of ethics are conspicuous by their absence. As ethical breaches can involve significant monetary damages to a firm - particularly through adverse (...) market reactions - moral-reasoning abilities can complement analytical skills. Consequently, my analysis demonstrates how ethics figure into the opportunity costs of managerial decision making, which is central to the economic definition of profit. (shrink)