We consider the desirability, or otherwise, of various forms of induction in the light of certain principles and inductive methods within predicate uncertain reasoning. Our general conclusion is that there remain conflicts within the area whose resolution will require a deeper understanding of the fundamental relationship between individuals and properties.

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

The relation between theory and practice is the object of a central debate in the history of science. In a recent contribution to the issue, L. E. Sandelands equates practice with G. Ryle's "knowing how" and theory with Ryle's "knowing that," arguing that practice and theory are incommensurate forms of knowing such that theory cannot be translated into practice. R. T. Craig took issue with Sandelands' position, pointing out that it reflects an academic approach removed from everyday social behavior in (...) which problem solving is always both practical and theoretical. The authors agree and take this blurring of the theory/practice dichotomy as a cue to deconstruct the conception of two ways of knowing. J. Shotter's concepts of "joint action" and "knowing from within" suggest a third type of knowing which develops between knowers in particular contexts or circumstances. This third way of knowing has important implications for psychological training and inquiry. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The late Sir George Hill in the first volume of his monumental History of Cyprus remarks that the Cypriot syllabary is found in use until the third century B.C. This, it may be noted, is the traditional opinion which for some sixty years has stood the test of time. I read therefore with interest on p. 330 of the same volume, among the addenda, that ‘pottery with incised inscriptions, discovered in 1939 in an excavation four miles from Nicosia, shows (...) that the syllabary continued to be used as late as the first century B.C.’ Sir George Hill in effect is here accepting the claim of Mrs. E. H. Dohan and Professor R. G. Kent, which he has hitherto ignored, that the syllabary survived until 50 B.C. Now this is an important claim, partly because it would add from two to three centuries to the life-span of a script already in possession of a long and reputable lineage; more particularly because, if true, it will convict the ancient Cypriot, admittedly a conservative individual, of a degree of conservatism with which I find it hard to credit even him. That there should still have been men in the hinterland of the island under the governorship of Cicero so little affected by the impact of the whole Hellenistic age that they were prepared to write Greek in a manner so uncouth and preserve, incidentally, certain elements of their old Arcadian tongue, is to my thinking highly improbable. A fresh examination of the evidence on which Mrs. Dohan and Professor Kent based their claim is clearly called for. (shrink)

Objectives: To explore how subjects in a placebo-controlled vitamin A supplementation trial among Ghanaian women aged 15–45 years perceive the trial and whether they know that not all trial capsules are the same, and to identify factors associated with this knowledge.Methods: 60 semistructured interviews and 12 focus groups were conducted to explore subjects’ perceptions of the trial. Steps were taken to address areas of low comprehension, including retraining fieldworkers. 1971 trial subjects were randomly selected for a survey measuring their knowledge (...) that not all trial capsules are the same. The subjects’ fieldworkers were also interviewed about their characteristics and trial knowledge. Factors associated with knowledge were explored using multi-level modeling.Results: Although subjects knew they were taking part in research, most thought they were receiving an active and beneficial medication. Variables associated with knowledge were education and district of residence. Radio broadcasts benefited those with some schooling. Fieldworkers’ characteristics were not associated with subjects’ knowledge.Conclusions: Research and debate on new or improved consent procedures are urgently required, particularly for subjects with little education. (shrink)

For twenty years, the renowned philosopher of science Sandra Harding has argued that science and technology studies, postcolonial studies, and feminist critique must inform one another. In The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader, Harding puts those fields in critical conversation, assembling the anthology that she has long wanted for classroom use. In classic and recent essays, international scholars from a range of disciplines think through a broad array of science and technology philosophies and practices. The contributors reevaluate conventional accounts (...) of the West’s scientific and technological projects in the past and present, rethink the strengths and limitations of non-Western societies’ knowledge traditions, and assess the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. The collection concludes with forward-looking essays, which explore strategies for cultivating new visions of a multicultural, democratic world of sciences and for turning those visions into realities. Feminist science and technology concerns run throughout the reader and are the focus of several essays. Harding provides helpful background for each essay in her introductions to the reader’s four sections. Contributors Helen Appleton Karen Bäckstrand Lucille H. Brockway Stephen B. Brush Judith Carney Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment Arturo Escobar Maria E. Fernandez Ward H. Goodenough Susantha Goonatilake Sandra Harding Steven J. Harris Betsy Hartmann Cori Hayden Catherine L. M. Hill John M. Hobson Peter Mühlhäusler Catherine A. Odora Hoppers Consuelo Quiroz Jenny Reardon Ella Reitsma Ziauddin Sardar Daniel Sarewitz Londa Schiebinger Catherine V. Scott Colin Scott Mary Terrall D. Michael Warren. (shrink)

This Handbook documents the main trends in current research between logic and language, including its broader influence in computer science, linguistic theory and cognitive science. The history of the combined study of Logic and Linguistics goes back a long way, at least to the work of the scholastic philosophers in the Middle Ages. At the beginning of this century, the subject was revitalized through the pioneering efforts of Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Polish philosophical logicians such as Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. Around (...) 1970, the landmark achievements of Richard Montague established a junction between state-of-the-art mathematical logic and generative linguistic theory. Over the subsequent decades, this enterprise of Montague Grammar has flourished and diversified into a number of research programs with empirical and theoretical substance. This appears to be the first Handbook to bring logic-language interface to the fore. Both aspects of the interaction between logic and language are demonstrated in the book i.e. firstly, how logical systems are designed and modified in response to linguistic needs and secondly, how mathematical theory arises in this process and how it affects subsequent linguistic theory. The Handbook presents concise, impartial accounts of the topics covered. Where possible, an author and a commentator have cooperated to ensure the proper breadth and technical content of the papers. The Handbook is self-contained, and individual articles are of the highest quality. (shrink)

The results of the first randomized controlled trial of a medical treatment were reported in 1947. The antibiotic streptomycin was demonstrated to be dramatically superior to bed rest alone in treating tuberculosis. Looking back on this trial in 1990, A. B. Hill, the distinguished medical statistician who played a prominent role in the use of randomization in this study, made a telling statement about the moral climate of clinical research at the time: "Of course, there were no ethical problems (...) in those days: we did not ask the patient’s permission or anybody’s permission. We did not tell them they were in a trial—we just did it" (1990, 78). From our perspective today it is obvious that it is not true that there .. (shrink)

Validity of dynamic temporal reasoning is semantically characterized for English and Dutch aspectual adverbs in Discourse Representation Theory. This dynamic perspective determines how the content needs to be revised and what information is preserved across updates, when the order of premises is considered relevant. Resetting contextual parameters relies on modelling the basic aspectual polarity transitions and temporal reasoning extensionally. For intensional aspectual adverbials the speaker’s attitudes regarding past alternatives to and possible continuations of the current state come into play. Additional (...) considerations are offered for generalizing this system to the full logical space for linguistic universals, lexicalized quite differently in Dutch and English. (shrink)

The socioeconomic and ethnic characteristics of parents are some of the most important correlates of adverse health outcomes in childhood. However, the relationships between ethnic, economic, and behavioral factors and the health outcomes responsible for this pervasive finding have not been specified in child health epidemiology. The general objective of this paper is to propose a theoretical approach to the study of maternal behaviors and child health in diverse ethnic and socioeconomic environments. The specific aims are: (a) to describe a (...) causal pathway between the utility that women obtain through work outside the home and through child care and disease hazard rates in childhood using an optimization model; (b) to specify the influence of ethnic and socioeconomic factors on model constraints; (c) to use the model as a tool to learn about how different combinations of maternal wage labor and child care time might influence child health outcomes in diverse social contexts; (d) to identify parameters that will require measurement in future research; (e) to discuss research strategies that will enable us to obtain these measurements; and (f) to discuss the implications of the model for biostatistical modeling and public health intervention. Optimization models are powerful heuristic tools for understanding how ethnic, environmental, family, and personal characteristics can place important constraints on both the quality and quantity of care that women can provide to their children. They provide a quantitative appreciation for the difficult trade-offs that most women face between working in order to purchase basic goods that children cannot do without (e.g., food, clothing, shelter, health insurance), and increasing offspring well-being through child care (e.g., training in social skills, affection, protection from environmental hazards, help with homework). (shrink)

Summary A study of the metallurgy and manufacturing techniques of a group of eight astrolabes (seven from Lahore, one attributed to India) using non-destructive methods has produced the earliest evidence for systematic use of high-zinc (α?+??) brass. To produce this alloy, the brass industry supplying the Lahore instrument makers must have co-melted metallic copper and zinc. This brass-making technology was previously believed to have been developed on an industrial scale in the nineteenth century in Europe. This work hypothesizes that this (...) technology was used in Lahore on an industrial scale as early as ad 1601. In addition, this work hypothesizes that the α?+?? brass alloy was used specifically for its ease in manufacturing the thin sheet brass required for astrolabe-component manufacture. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

Jelson Roberto de Oliveira, autor de “Compreender Hans Jonas”, é graduado em Filosofia pela Universidade Federal do Paraná, com especialização em Sociologia Política e mestrado em História da Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea pela mesma universidade. Atualmente é professor da pós-graduação em Filosofia na PUC-PR, e coordenador do GT Hans Jonas, da Anpof, que reúne vários pesquisadores de nível nacional na área. Ética para a civilização tecnológica e A solidão como virtude moral em Nietzsche são alguns dos diversos títulos que compõem (...) o acervo de obras do autor. (shrink)

This paper attempts to delineate some of the principal features and tasks of a politics of postmodernity. An attempt is made in the first part of the paper to reflect on the democratic revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe and to discern what lessons they might have to offer. What is called for, it is maintained, is a renewed theory of democracy and, more particularly, a reformulation of traditional liberalism. In the second part of the paper the author seeks to (...) suggest how such traditional liberal concepts as the individual, reason, universality, and freedom can be reformulated in a genuinely postmetaphysical, postmodern fashion. (shrink)

The practice of paternalism has changed along with developments in medicine, philosophy, law, sociology and psychology. Physicians have learned that a patient's values are a factor in determining what is best for that patient. Modern paternalism continues to be guided by the principle that the physician decides what is best for the patient and pursues that course of action, taking into account the values and interests of the patient. In the autonomy model of the doctor-patient relationship, patient values are decisive. (...) In the paternalistic model, they are but one among several factors the physician must consider in making a medical decision. Although difficult to practise because of limitations in empathising with another person, modern paternalism remains a way to achieve maximum patient benefit. (shrink)

Among classical Latin poets, Juvenal is unusually richly provided with ancient scholia; at the same time, the scholia exhibit an unusual degree of ignorance and sheer stupidity. What is perhaps most surprising, however, is the extent to which these commentators appear to have been worse informed than we are today concerning the identity of individuals who appear in the satires.

Professor W. B. Anderson'S paper ‘Livy and the Lexica’ in C.Q. XXV., 1931, pp. 38–48, prompts me to put together from my notes this further list of words and idioms used by Livy but not recorded in the lexica as Livian. With one or two clearly indicated exceptions, I have included nothing which is given in Lewis and Short, Forcellini-Corradini-Perin or Georges, and I have included nothing in which Mr. Anderson has anticipated me, except that in a few places I (...) have added to the citations he gives; but my citations make no more claim to be exhaustive than his do. I have given within parentheses the authors who are cited by the lexica for a particular word or use, but I have refrained from adding other authorities. (shrink)

"It is the purpose of this article to attempt to re-examine the account of Thrasymachus' doctrine in Plato's Republic, and to show how it can form a self-consistent whole. [...] In this paper it is maintained that Thrasymachus is holding a form of [natural right]." Note: Volume 40 = new series 9.

There are two types of fluctuations in the quantum vacuum: type 1 vacuum fluctuations are on shell and can interact with matter in specific, limited ways that have observable consequences; type 2 vacuum fluctuations are off shell and cannot interact with matter. A photon will polarize a type 1, bound, charged lepton–antilepton vacuum fluctuation in much the same manner that it would polarize a dielectric, suggesting the method used here for calculating the permittivity $$\epsilon _{0}$$ϵ0 of the vacuum. In a (...) model that retains only leading terms, $$\epsilon _{0} \cong ^{2}= 9.10\times 10^{-12}$$ϵ0≅2=9.10×10-12 C/. The calculated value for $$\epsilon _{0}$$ϵ0 is 2.7% more than the accepted value. The permittivity of the vacuum, in turn, determines the speed c of light in the vacuum. Since the vacuum is at rest with respect to every inertial frame of reference, c is the same in every inertial reference frame. (shrink)

In an earlier study I argued that the appearance of the name of Memmius in the first, second, and fifth books alone of Lucretius de Rerum Natura is only the most striking indication of a fundamental change in the poet's attitude towards his reader which is already well established quite a short way through book 5, and which makes it almost incontestable that Lucretius wrote books 3, 4, and 6 after he had lost all hope of converting Memmius to Epicureanism.