Achieving space domain awareness requires the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Storing and leveraging associated space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and collision prediction and avoidance present further challenges. Space objects are characterized according to a variety of parameters including their identifiers, design specifications, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, processes, operational statuses, and associated persons, organizations, or nations. The Space Object Ontology provides a consensus-based realist framework (...) for formulating such characterizations in a computable fashion. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in the Space Object Ontology and stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space domain awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators. This paper presents the core of the Space Object Ontology, discusses its advantages over other approaches to space object classification, and demonstrates its ability to combine diverse sets of data from multiple sources within an expandable framework. Finally, we show how the ontology provides benefits for enhancing and maintaining longterm space domain awareness. (shrink)

Achieving space situational awareness requires, at a minimum, the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Leveraging the resultant space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and conjunction assessment presents major challenges. This is in part because in characterizing space objects we reference a variety of identifiers, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, operational processes, operational statuses, and so forth, which tend to be defined in highly heterogeneous and sometimes inconsistent (...) ways. The Space Domain Ontologies are designed to provide a consensus-based realist framework for formulating such characterizations in a way that is both consistent and computable. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in a suite of ontologies built around the existing Space Object Ontology. They are stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space situational awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators and analysts. This paper provides an overview of the Space Domain Ontologies and their development and use. It presents the motivation for and advantages of the Space Domain Ontologies, including the benefits they provide for enhancing and maintaining long-term space situational awareness. (shrink)

It is widely held that agent-neutral consequentialism is incompatible with deontic constraints. Recently, Kieran Setiya has challenged this orthodoxy by presenting a form of agent-neutral consequentialism that he claims can capture deontic constraints. In this reply, we argue against Setiya's proposal by pointing to features of deontic constraints that his account fails to capture.

For older workers, self-employment is an important alternative to waged employment. Drawing on social learning theory and social cognitive career theory we examine how attitudes toward one’s own aging, future time perspective (captured by perceived time left to live) and perceived support from referent individuals predict self-efficacy for entrepreneurship and outcome expectations, influencing self-employment interest. Findings from a sample of professional association members (n = 174, mean age 52.5 years), revealed that an open-ended time perspective relates positively to entrepreneurial self-efficacy, (...) while social support relates positively to outcome expectations. Consistent with social cognitive career theory, entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediated the relationship between future time perspective and interest in self-employment, and outcome expectations mediated the relationship between social support and interest in self-employment. This study extends current career and entrepreneurship theory in several ways. First, the inclusion of age-related psychosocial and sociocultural factors in the study model shed light on the intersection between older age, the contextual environment and development of self-employment interest. Second, the findings support earlier arguments that older entrepreneurship is a social process whereby the social context in which people work and live influences their interest in entrepreneurship, and that entrepreneurial behavior among older peop... (shrink)

Offers a comprehensive nonmathematical treatment regarding the design and analysis of experiments, focusing on basic concepts rather than calculation of technical details. Much of the discussion is in terms of examples drawn from numerous fields of applications. Subjects include the justification and practical difficulties of randomization, various factors occurring in factorial experiments, selecting the size of an experiments, different purposes for which observations may be made and much more.

The crisis in the meaning of freedom -- What is freedom? -- Limiting freedom -- Freedom and justice -- Why we should accept this view of freedom -- Conditions that make us more free -- Applying the theory to the real world --Conclusion -- Appendix for professional philosophers -- Notes.

An introduction to philosophy through film, _Thinking Through Film: Doing Philosophy, Watching Movies_ combines the exploration of fundamental philosophical issues with the experience of viewing films, and provides an engaging reading experience for undergraduate students, philosophy enthusiasts and film buffs alike. An in-depth yet accessible introduction to the philosophical issues raised by films, film spectatorship and film-making Provides 12 self-contained, close discussions of individual films from across genres Films discussed include Total Recall, Minority Report, La Promesse, Funny Games, Ikuru, The (...) Dark Knight, Memento, AI and more Explores concepts that span epistemology, metaphysics, fate, choice, robot love, time travel, personal identity, spectacle, ethics, luck, regret, consequentialism, deontology and the philosophy of film itself A uniquely flexible resource for courses in philosophy and film that encourages student reflection, as well as being an engaging read for the film enthusiast. (shrink)

We develop the theory of layered posets and use the notion of layering to prove a new iteration theorem is κ-cc, as long as direct limits are used sufficiently often. This iteration theorem simplifies and generalizes the various chain condition arguments for universal Kunen iterations in the literature on saturated ideals, especially in situations where finite support iterations are not possible. We also provide two applications:1 For any n≥1, a wide variety of <ωn−1-closed, ωn+1-cc posets of size ωn+1 can consistently (...) be absorbed by quotients of saturated ideals on ωn.2 For any n∈ω, the tree property at ωn+3 is consistent with Chang’s conjecture ↠. (shrink)

This paper argues that theories of truth which seek to specify the ontological ground of true statements by appealing to an ontology of truth‐makers face a severe and possibly insurmountable obstacle in the form of logically complex statements. I argue that there is no apparent way to develop an account of logically complex truth within the confines of a modest and plausible ontology of truth‐makers and to this end criticize independent attempts by Armstrong and Pendlebury to develop such an account.

Consciousness -- Freedom -- Bad faith -- Authenticity.

We have begun work on two separate but related ontologies for the study of neurological diseases. The first, the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND), is intended to provide a set of controlled, logically connected classes to describe the range of neurological diseases and their associated signs and symptoms, assessments, diagnoses, and interventions that are encountered in the course of clinical practice. ND is built as an extension of the Ontology for General Medical Sciences — a high-level candidate OBO Foundry ontology that (...) provides a set of general classes that can be used to describe general aspects of medical science. ND is being built with classes utilizing both textual and axiomatized definitions that describe and formalize the relations between instances of other classes within the ontology itself as well as to external ontologies such as the Gene Ontology, Cell Ontology, Protein Ontology, and Chemical Entities of Biological Interest. In addition, references to similar or associated terms in external ontologies, vocabularies and terminologies are included when possible. Initial work on ND is focused on the areas of Alzheimer’s and other diseases associated with dementia, multiple sclerosis, and stroke and cerebrovascular disease. Extensions to additional groups of neurological diseases are planned. The second ontology, the Neuro-Psychological Testing Ontology (NPT), is intended to provide a set of classes for the annotation of neuropsychological testing data. The intention of this ontology is to allow for the integration of results from a variety of neuropsychological tests that assay similar measures of cognitive functioning. Neuro-psychological testing is an important component in developing the clinical picture used in the diagnosis of patients with a range of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and following stroke or traumatic brain injury. NPT is being developed as an extension to the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations. (shrink)

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Relevance was one of the most important concerns in the philosophy of Alfred Schutz. In a sequence of articles dealing with a number ...

Disability activists' redefinition of “disability” as a social, rather than a medical, problem attempts to reassign causality. We explicate the untenable implications of this approach and argue this definition is maleficent, unjust, and inconsistent. Thus, redefining disability as a socially caused phenomenon is, from a moral point of view, ill-advised.

The year 2020 is facing one of the worst public health situations in decades. The world is experiencing a pandemic that has triggered significant challenges to healthcare systems in both high and low‐middle income countries (LMICs). Government policymakers and healthcare personnel are experiencing real‐life ethical dilemmas and are pressed to respond to these situations. Many possible treatments are being investigated, one of which is the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. These drugs are approved for use by patients with systemic lupus (...) erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis, and malaria. The demand for these products has increased, and the stocks are depleting for the patient population for whom the drugs are intended initially. Although both innovator and generic pharmaceutical manufacturers are making plans for increased production, there are challenges with global supply chains disruption and the retention of supplies for local markets. This may cause countries that rely on the importation of pharmaceuticals to be out of stock of supplies for an extended period. There are allegations of off‐label prescribing and hoarding. Pharmacists are the custodians and dispensers of medications and are faced with the task of assessing prescriptions and making decisions about the allocation of these products. This paper seeks to 1) highlight some of the ethical challenges of dispensing hydroxychloroquine by pharmacists during the COVID‐19 pandemic, 2) identify some of the responses to these issues from various regulatory authorities in the USA, and 3) recommend approaches to assist pharmacists in their decision‐making process, especially in LMICs. (shrink)

The year 2020 is facing one of the worst public health situations in decades. The world is experiencing a pandemic that has triggered significant challenges to healthcare systems in both high and low‐middle income countries (LMICs). Government policymakers and healthcare personnel are experiencing real‐life ethical dilemmas and are pressed to respond to these situations. Many possible treatments are being investigated, one of which is the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. These drugs are approved for use by patients with systemic lupus (...) erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis, and malaria. The demand for these products has increased, and the stocks are depleting for the patient population for whom the drugs are intended initially. Although both innovator and generic pharmaceutical manufacturers are making plans for increased production, there are challenges with global supply chains disruption and the retention of supplies for local markets. This may cause countries that rely on the importation of pharmaceuticals to be out of stock of supplies for an extended period. There are allegations of off‐label prescribing and hoarding. Pharmacists are the custodians and dispensers of medications and are faced with the task of assessing prescriptions and making decisions about the allocation of these products. This paper seeks to 1) highlight some of the ethical challenges of dispensing hydroxychloroquine by pharmacists during the COVID‐19 pandemic, 2) identify some of the responses to these issues from various regulatory authorities in the USA, and 3) recommend approaches to assist pharmacists in their decision‐making process, especially in LMICs. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 193-200, December 2021.

While some may argue that universities are in a state of crisis, others claim that we are living in a post-university era; a time after universities. If there was a battle for the survival of the institution it is over and done with. The buildings still stand. Students enrol and may attend lectures, though most do not. But virtually nothing real remains. What some mistakenly take to be a university is, in actuality, an “uncanny” spectral presence. The encompassing ethico-philosophical question (...) is this: what is it about spectral space and the feeling of absence with regard to the university that is important to understand? The Spectral University is characterized by the absence of what used to give the university its constitutive form and structure; of what is essential to the university as an important place of learning and growth. What is gone is the ability to pursue the academic virtues. (shrink)

This article sets out an argument from legitimacy for the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia. The article first sets out an understanding of political legitimacy and of legitimacy deficits and argues that the Australian Government faces a legitimacy deficit with respect to its exercise of political power and authority over Indigenous Australians. The deficit arises, it is argued, because Indigenous Australians face significant structural injustice and there is little hope of redressing this injustice within the prevailing governing conventions. (...) The article then argues that the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament ought to be seen as part of a package to address this legitimacy deficit by resetting the governing conventions of Australian society. The argument from legitimacy is then compared favorably with more familiar arguments from sovereignty and the right to self-determination. (shrink)

This paper explores the grounds upon which moral judgment of a person's beliefs is properly made. The beliefs in question are non-moral beliefs and the objects of moral judgment are individual instances of believing. We argue that instances of believing may be morally wrong on any of three distinct grounds: (i) by constituting a moral hazard, (ii) by being the result of immoral inquiry, or (iii) by arising from vicious inner processes of belief formation. On this way of articulating the (...) basis of moral judgment of belief it becomes clear that rational and epistemic norms do not exhaust the kinds of normative judgment properly made of a person's state of believing. We argue that there are instances of believing that are both rational and true and yet morally wrong. (shrink)

In literary works as in architecture, form follows function. There are clear differences among novels, epics, lyrics, and plays, and what the author wishes to say determines which genre works best. The Night of January 16th could only be written as a play; The Fountainhead could only be written as a novel; Anthem could only be written as a novella. Using the recent work by Frederick Turner, Epic: Form, Content, and History, the author attempts to demonstrate that Atlas Shrugged is (...) an epic in the tradition of The Iliad, Moby Dick, and Lord of the Rings. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with individualist arguments for and against anarchism. It analyzes the views of Ayn Rand, Isabel Paterson, and libertarian anarchists, with special emphasis on the concepts of consent, non-initiation of force, and non-self-sacrifice. The essay concludes with a critical assessment of individualist anarchist and limited-government theories, suggesting that while some are more useful than others, none can be considered complete, conclusive, or fully consistent.

In the nineteenth century, Nietzsche famously announced that God was dead. In the twentieth century, an increasing reliance on science and technology led to a widespread rejection of belief on the grounds of its irrationality. Yet for all the skepticism directed towards it, religion has not died. In fact, the opposite has occurred: it has persisted and proliferated. In this wide-ranging dialogue, two leading commentators on religion address - from their different but complementary traditions of Christianity and Buddhism - the (...) continuing appeal of spirituality to people eager to explore fundamental questions of meaning and identity. The authors indicate that science, for all the benefits it has conferred, has limits of explanation. It may be able to show how, but not necessarily why. --BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

This article considers how those subordinated for their gender and sexual orientation, but privileged for their race and class, may be better allies to people, especially women, of colour. Judith Butler’s Excitable Speech (1997) is a helpful aid. Butler offers us a strategy to think through — albeit by way of supplementary voices such as legal theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and philosopher George Yancy — how white women may find an ‘insurrectionary’ form of speech that is both (...) embodied and attentive to how we stand in the pecking order of public sphere expression and exchange. The article considers how white women’s ‘critical freedoms’ have helped shape the discursive preclusions faced by Black women. It analyses the conditions by which white women may assert their freedom of speech without this being to the detriment of women of colour. (shrink)

While some may argue that universities are in a state of crisis, others claim that we are living in a post-university era; a time after universities. If there was a battle for the survival of the institution it is over and done with. The buildings still stand. Students enrol and may attend lectures, though most do not. But virtually nothing real remains. What some mistakenly take to be a university is, in actuality, an “uncanny” spectral presence. The encompassing ethico-philosophical question (...) is this: what is it about spectral space and the feeling of absence with regard to the university that is important to understand? The Spectral University is characterized by the absence of what used to give the university its constitutive form and structure; of what is essential to the university as an important place of learning and growth. What is gone is the ability to pursue the academic virtues. (shrink)

The employment of au pairs to provide childcare, cleaning and other domestic services has been steadily increasing in the UK. This article provides an analysis of representations of au pairs in the British press and on the websites of agencies placing au pairs. This analysis seeks to understand how such imaginings of au pairs affect their life in Britain and how au pairs themselves respond to such imaginings. It argues that the competing portrayals of au pairs as both sexual sirens (...) and committed carers works with other ambivalences in the scheme to facilitate the growth of au pair employment in Britain while simultaneously denying their place as an important source of domestic labour for British families. (shrink)

One significant way in which place is represented is through books based on old photographs and postcards. Recontextualised in such books, historical photos can be used to create mesmeric myths about a locality. This paper explores the genre through four works about areas in Sheffield, a city in the north of England. The book for the well to do suburb, Crosspool, constructs a quaint rural past. Two representations of a working class district are perhaps a little more successful in recovering (...) a personally significant past. The history of a local steel firm avoids issues of social conflict and exploitation by adopting a documentary tone. Thegenre trades on the active interest of seeing familiar scenes as they were in the past, but fails to develop interpretative strategies, such as asking about the context of photos’ original creation or reflecting on how they have been reused. (shrink)

. Some problems and possibilities of caring. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 13, The Ethics of Care, pp. 113-130. doi: 10.1080/13668791003778800.

Many clinicians are experiencing consumer resistance to the prescription of equine HRT (that is hormone replacement therapy which has been manufactured from mare's urine). In this paper I consider the ethical implications of prescribing these preparations. I decide that patients should have a right to refuse such treatment but also ask whether a prescribing doctor should choose one preparation over another on moral grounds. I determine that there is prima facie evidence to suggest that mares may suffer and that prescription (...) of equine HRT (instead of synthetic oestrogen-oestriol) would therefore have to be justified in terms of either offering greater benefits to the women or offering greater value for money to the health service. I find that there is no substantial evidence to suggest that equine HRT offers unique advantages over and above oestriol. I conclude that it would be preferable for a doctor to recommend the synthetic oestrogen to women who want relief from the symptoms of the menopause and protection from osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. (shrink)

With the publication recently of two valuable studies on Attic demes, we are now more fully aware of what we know, and do not know, of the deme. With Osborne's work, we now have some idea of the tendency of Athenians to own and maintain property in the deme of origin, but the role of marriage in consolidating property in that deme is more difficult to assess. In contrast to Osborne's focus on the ancestral deme, this brief study will concentrate (...) on the deme into which the woman married; such a deme will be termed the deme of marriage or the marital deme. The study will focus particularly on the families who contracted more than one alliance for their kinswomen into the same outside deme and will emphasize the importance of siblings in securing and maintaining these alliances in the marital deme. (shrink)

This paper will be a limited attempt to make sense of divine causation in Leibniz. I will not be able to discuss whether divine causation is immanent causation, nor explore the metaphysics of creation, emanation, and miracles in detail. Rather, I will focus on adjudicating the degree to which Leibniz’s famous denial of the interaction of substances bears on his views of divine causation. (edited).

Recent research on the life of U Dhammaloka and other early western Buddhists in Asia has interesting implications in relation to class, ethnicity and politics. ‘Beachcomber Buddhists’ highlight the wider situation of ‘poor whites’ in Asia—needed by empire but prone to defect from elite standards of behaviour designed to maintain imperial and racial power. ‘Going native’, exemplified by the European bhikkhu, highlights the difficulties faced by empire in policing these racial boundaries and the role of Asian agency in early ‘western’ (...) Buddhism. Finally, such ‘dissident Orientalism’ has political implications, as with specifically Irish forms of solidarity with Asian anti-colonial movements. Within the limits imposed by the data, this article rethinks ‘early western Buddhism’ in Asia as a creative response to colonialism, shaped by Asian actors, marked by cross-racial solidarity and oriented to alternative possible futures beyond empire. (shrink)