This paper raises concerns about the tenor of 21st century interaction by identifying a tendency whereby relatively innocuous, canonically private communication is transformed into public communication deemed offensive enough to attract institutional or legal sanction. To understand examples of this tendency, it applies Goffman’s architecture of interaction to email communication and proposes the notion of situational transformation to encapsulate reframing processes involving footing, face and participation framework. Through these processes (to which, it is shown, the email medium is especially vulnerable) (...) and a discourse of civility, the private becomes public and opposition becomes offence. (shrink)

As pervasive as the use of the Internet has become in the United States, a huge percentage of the world’s population has yet to ever use a telephone. It seems ironic, then, that there is a concerted effort on the part of industrialized nations to first hook up their traditionally disadvantaged citizens to the Internet and second, to hook up citizens of developing nations. This paper addresses the universal access phenomenon by considering the growth of the Internet in terms of (...) Leaver and Taker users—idioms usually associated with a culture’s interactions with its environment. Leaver cultures interact with their environment in a sustainable manner while Taker cultures produce more than they need and impose their ways upon others. The Internet is explored as a community of users, which in its current state is dominated by Takers. However, realizing the need for a more heterogeneous Internet community, this paper explores incentives for Leaver cultures to assimilate online and methods of improving interface designs to be more intuitive to Leaver communities. It is hoped that a tragedy of the commons of Internet resources can be avoided as more Leavers participate in the sustainment of the Internet as a valuable tool for all communities. (shrink)

As pervasive as the use of the Internet has become in the United States, a huge percentage of the world’s population has yet to ever use a telephone. It seems ironic, then, that there is a concerted effort on the part of industrialized nations to first hook up their traditionally disadvantaged citizens to the Internet and second, to hook up citizens of developing nations. This paper addresses the universal access phenomenon by considering the growth of the Internet in terms of (...) Leaver and Taker users—idioms usually associated with a culture’s interactions with its environment. Leaver cultures interact with their environment in a sustainable manner while Taker cultures produce more than they need and impose their ways upon others. The Internet is explored as a community of users, which in its current state is dominated by Takers. However, realizing the need for a more heterogeneous Internet community, this paper explores incentives for Leaver cultures to assimilate online and methods of improving interface designs to be more intuitive to Leaver communities. It is hoped that a tragedy of the commons of Internet resources can be avoided as more Leavers participate in the sustainment of the Internet as a valuable tool for all communities. (shrink)

Plato wrote in theRepublicthat quarrels between fellow countrymen are wont to be more virulent and nasty than those between external enemies. Sigmund Freud have similarly cautioned of the malice and excess that can attend conflicts that are fuelled not by antithetical oppositions, but by the “narcissism of minor difference.” Bearing these warnings in mind, scholars of the ethics of war would be well advised to consider the implications of James Turner Johnson's acute observation in his contribution to this special section (...) ofEthics & International Affairsthat their field of study is currently beset not so much by external opposition as by divisions within the ranks. The principal antagonism within the field, at least as I understand it, is the rift that has emerged between what I shall call historical and analytical approaches to the subject. Laying my cards on the table, the work that I have done in the past connects more clearly with the former than the latter. However, it has struck me, as it must have struck others, that the historical approach has in recent years come to assume a rather scuffed and unfashionable, evenoutré, appearance. It has been the subject of numerous curt dismissals, but has also, more interestingly, been tarnished by a few powerful critiques. This article will elucidate four of the most hard-hitting charges levied at the historical approach, and evaluate its continuing utility in light of them. The question then is: Have the critics of this approach landed it a knock-out blow, or can the historical approach withstand the bricks and bats that have been hurled its way? (shrink)

James Turner Johnson is the foremost scholar of the just war tradition working today. His treatment of the historical development of the just war tradition has been hugely important, influencing a generation of theorists. Despite this, Johnson's work has not generated much in the way of critical commentary or analysis. This paper aims to rectify this oversight. Engaging in a close and critical reading of Johnson's work, it claims that his historical reconstruction of the just war tradition is bounded by (...) two key thematic lines — the imperative of vindicative justice and the ideal of Christian love — and occasionally betrays an excessive deference to the authority of past practice. By way of conclusion, this paper sums up the promise and limits of Johnson's approach, and reflects upon its contribution to contemporary just war scholarship. (shrink)

Drawing on Isaiah Berlin's celebrated essay on Tolstoy, this paper poses the question should James Turner Johnson be deemed a hedgehog or a fox? That is, it considers whether Johnson should be regarded as a monist (hedgehog) or a pluralist (fox) in his contribution to the just war tradition. It contends that his commitment to history, while superficially indicative of a hedgehog, serves to conceal a deep-lying pluralism ? or at least the possibility of such ? in his views on (...) the meaning of history. Contrary to initial appearances, then, Johnson's commitment to history is not univocal: it does not speak with one voice, and to one purpose. Rather it suggests a variety of voices or positions, and is amenable to multiple interpretations, not all of which are of a piece with one another. This paper seeks to uncover these various voices or positions, with a view to raising some searching questions pertaining to how we should properly understand the just war tradition today. (shrink)

By claiming that “just war is just war,” critics suggest that just war theory both distracts from and sanitizes the horror of modern warfare by dressing it up in the language of moral principles. However, the phrase can also be taken as a reminder of why we need just war theory in the first place. It is precisely because just war is just war, with all that this implies, that we must think so carefully and so judiciously about it. Of (...) course, one could argue that the rump of just war scholarship over the past decade has been characterized by disinterest regarding the material realities of warfare. But is this still the case? This essay examines a series of benchmark books on the ethics of war published over the past year. All three exemplify an effort to grapple with the hard facts of modern violent conflict, and they all skillfully bring diverse traditions of just war thinking into conversation with one another. (shrink)

This essay reviews the long tradition of experimental genetics of the Drosophila indirect flight muscles (IFM). It discusses how genetics can operate in tandem with multidisciplinary approaches to provide a description, in molecular terms, of the functional properties of the muscle myofibril. In particular, studies at the interface of genetics and proteomics address protein function at the cellular scale and offer an outstanding platform with which to elucidate how the myofibril works. Two generalizations can be enunciated from the studies reviewed. (...) First, the study of mutant IFM proteomes provides insight into how proteins are functionally organized in the myofibril. Second, IFM mutants can give rise to structural and contractile defects that are unrelated, a reflection of the dual function that myofibrillar proteins play as fundamental components of the sarcomeric framework and biochemical “parts” of the contractile “engine”. BioEssays 23:1047–1063, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Among the most vexed moral issues in contemporary conflict is the matter of whether irregular forces waging wars of national liberation should be expected to abide by the same jus in bello rules as state actors, even though these rules may prejudice their cause. Is it, in other words, reasonable to demand that irregular forces, including guerrilla groups and national liberation movements, should comport themselves like state armies, even in cases where this would stymie their capacity to effectively pursue their (...) military goals? This article examines Michael Gross’s recent provocative response to this question. Taking Article 44 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions as his point of departure, Gross contends that the laws governing battlefield conduct should be revised to allow irregular forces waging an otherwise just war greater leeway to pursue their cause. Controversially, he extends this concession to the use of qualified terrorist tactics. Focusing on Gross’s use of the notion of a ‘right to a fighting chance’ as a normative grounding for this far-reaching proposition, this article draws on specific historical cases that arose in the context of Ancient Greek warfare to challenge Gross’s position. On a broader note, this article concludes with some remarks to the effect that this foray into the world of Ancient Greek warfare is demonstrative of the critical potential of a historical approach to the ethics of war. (shrink)

The year 2020 has been a very trying one for many people, and universities have not been exempted from the challenges it has posed. There are real concerns that the effects of COVID-19 could lead to a lost generation of academic researchers. At the same time, this has been an unusually fecund period for the field of ethics and international affairs. New ideas regarding the relationship between politics and ethics have come to light, with implications for how we think about (...) what ethics actually comprises. This essay seeks to take stock of this moment by considering the contributions to the field made by four recently published books. It concludes that we are observing a trend toward a more expansive way of thinking about ethics, one that has significant implications for how we approach the task of international relations scholarship. (shrink)

Nigel Biggar’s In Defence of War delivers a stout defence of just war thinking. It refuses to shy away from the tough questions raised by modern warfare. Instead, it submits that thinking clearly about these questions may require just war scholars to demonstrate a toughness to match, by callousing themselves to the human suffering their vocation forces them to confront. This article seeks to tease out Biggar’s understanding of callousness, challenging the reader to consider what is lost and enabled by (...) it. It concludes that Biggar offers a revealing account of callousness in war, but leaves us with many searching questions. Is callousness a vice or virtue, and is it an Achilles heel or a basic prerequisite of just war thinking? (shrink)

Moral Victories is the first book-length treatment of the ethical dimensions of victory in war.

Prompted by the development of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (Jones et al, 2009), recent years has witnessed a considerable increase in research examining challenge and threat in sport. This manuscript provides a critical review of the literature examining challenge and threat in sport, tracing its historical development and some of the current empirical ambiguities. In an attempt to reconcile some of these ambiguities, and utilising neurobiological evidence associated with approach- and avoidance-motivation (cf. Elliot & Covington, (...) 2001), this paper draws upon the Evaluative Space Model (ESM: Cacioppo et al., 1997) and considers the implications for understanding challenge and threat in sport. For example, rather than see challenge and threat as opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum, the ESM implies that individuals could be (1) challenged, (2) threatened, (3) challenged and threatened, or (4) neither challenged or threatened by a particular stimulus. From this perspective it could be argued that the appraisal of some sport situations as both challenging and threatening could be advantageous, whereas the current literature seems to imply that the appraisal of stress as a threat is maladaptive for performance. In drawing upon the ESM, we outline the Evaluative Space Approach to Challenge and Threat and provide several testable hypotheses for advancing understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). We also outline a number of cardiovascular and experiential measures that can be used to examine these hypotheses. In sum, this paper provides a significant theoretical, empirical and practical contribution to our understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). (shrink)

In this study, we discuss the role of senior nurses who sit on clinical commissioning groups that now plan and procure most health services in England. These nurses are expected to bring a nursing view to all aspects of clinical commissioning group business. The role is a senior level appointment and requires experience of strategic commissioning. However, little is known about how nurses function in these roles. Following Barrientos' methodology, published policy and literature were analysed to investigate these roles and (...) National Health Service England's claim that nursing can influence and advance a nursing perspective in clinical commissioning groups. Drawing on work by Berg, Barry and Chandler on ‘new public management’, we discuss how nurses on clinical commissioning groups work at the alignment of the interests of biomedicine and managerialism. We propose that the way this nursing role is being implemented might paradoxically offer further evidence of the devaluing of nursing rather than the emergence of a strong professional nursing voice at the level of strategic commissioning. (shrink)

An incoherent visualization is when aspects of different senses of a word are present in the same visualization. We describe and implement a new model of creating contextual coherence in the visual imagination called Coherencer, based on the SOILIE model of imagination. We show that Coherencer is able to generate scene descriptions that are more coherent than SOILIE's original approach as well as a parallel connectionist algorithm that is considered competitive in the literature on general coherence. We also show that (...) co-occurrence probabilities are a better association representation than holographic vectors and that better models of coherence improve the resulting output independent of the association type that is used. Theoretically, we show that Coherencer is consistent with other models of cognitive generation. In particular, Coherencer is a similar, but more cognitively plausible model than the C3 model of concept combination created by Costello and Keane. We show that Coherencer is also consistent with both the modal schematic indices of perceptual symbol systems theory and the amodal contextual constraints of Thagard's theory of coherence. Finally, we describe how Coherencer is consistent with contemporary research on the hippocampus, and we show evidence that the process of making a visualization coherent is serial. (shrink)

Pragmatic language competence plays a central role in how aviation flight crews perform crew resource management ; this competence significantly affects aviation safety. This paper contributes to existing literature on interventionist applications of conversation analysis by defining and evaluating a novel collaborative transcription and repair based learning method for aviation CRM learning. CTRBL was evaluated using a quantitative quasi-­experimental repeated-measure design with 42 novice, university pilots. Results support that CTRBL is an effective, low-resource CRM learning method that will benefit from (...) exploratory applications and further study in pragmatics, aviation, and other sociotechnical domains. The views in this article were the result of independent research of the authors. Views herein do not necessarily represent the views of the National Transportation Safety Board or the United States. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

We are quickly passing through the historical moment when people work in front of a single computer, dominated by a small CRT and focused on tasks involving only local information. Networked computers are becoming ubiquitous and are playing increasingly significant roles in our lives and in the basic infrastructure of science, business, and social interaction. For human-computer interaction o advance in the new millennium we need to better understand the emerging dynamic of interaction in which the focus task is no (...) longer confined to the desktop but reaches into a complex networked world of information and computer-mediated interactions. We think the theory of distributed cognition has a special role to play in understanding interactions between people and technologies, for its focus has always been on whole environments: what we really do in them and how we coordinate our activity in them. Distributed cognition provides a radical reorientation of how to think about designing and supporting human-computer interaction. As a theory it is specifically tailored to understanding interactions among people and technologies. In this article we propose distributed cognition as a new foundation for human-computer interaction, sketch an integrated research framework, and use selections from our earlier work to suggest how this framework can provide new opportunities in the design of digital work materials. (shrink)

The Principle of Credulity: 'It is basic to human knowledge of the world that we believe things are as they seem to be in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary' [Swinburne 1996: 133]. This underlies the Evidential Problem of Evil, which goes roughly like this: ‘There appears to be a lot of suffering, both animal and human, that does not result in an equal or greater utility. So there's probably some pointless suffering. As God's existence precludes pointless suffering, (...) theism is implausible.’ CORNEA is the principle that observation O raises hypothesis H's probability only if O is more probable given H than it is given not-H. Theists sometimes maintain that apparently pointless suffering is just as likely given theism as atheism (I support this claim by appealing to a Lewisian account of the relevant counterfactuals). Given CORNEA, therefore, what we see of suffering does not make theism unlikely. I maintain that a consequence of so deploying CORNEA is that CORNEA and the Principle of Credulity are incompatible. We are left with a skeptical paradox. CORNEA is a consequence of Bayes’s Theorem, I argue; but it is incompatible with a presupposition of empirical science, namely, that appearances create epistemic warrant, ceteris paribus. External-world probability skepticism follows. I treat the paradox as real. First, I offer an account of how we strike a balance in practice between CORNEA, on the one hand, and the Principle of Credulity and the scientific enterprise on the other. Second, I try to resolve the paradox outright by rejecting the Principle of Credulity and maintaining that the scientific project remains well motivated even allowing probability skepticism. On either response to the paradox, the Evidential Problem of Evil continues to have serious, but defeasible, force against theism. (shrink)

A Cantor singleton is the unique nonrecursive member of some $\Pi^0_1$ class. In this paper we investigate the relationships between the following three notions: Cantor singletons, Cantor-Bendixson rank, and recursive join. Among other results, we show that the rank of $A\oplus B$ is at most the natural sum of the ranks of $A$ and $B$ , and that, if $B$ has the same rank as $A\o plus B$ , then $A$ is recursive in $B$.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.1 (2000) 96-99 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Long Path to Nearness: A Contribution to a Corporeal Philosophy of Communication and the Groundwork for an Ethics of Relief The Long Path to Nearness: A Contribution to a Corporeal Philosophy of Communication and the Groundwork for an Ethics of Relief. Ramsey Eric Ramsey. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1998. Pp. xiv + 145. $49.95, cloth. (...) The cryptic title of Ramsey Eric Ramsey's new text creates a very useful metaphor that runs, as a long, sometimes winding, path through the wooded grounds of philosophy, communication, and ethics. The distance of the journey to corporeal communication and an ethics of relief is long in the sense that the journey requires most readers to shed some perceptual baggage as payment for passage. An example of such baggage shedding is Ramsey's effort to "re-call" communication. A valuable section of his work, it elicits an interesting new metaphorical perception of that which we take for granted.The premise that Ramsey works under is an acknowledged one of a critical existential Marxist who is influenced by Martin Heidegger. The additional [End Page 96] frame of this project is Calvin O. Schrag's 1987 book Communication Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity; indeed, Ramsey posits this work as a "building upon" Schrag's contribution. Certainly, in the use and understanding of communicative praxis, Ramsey does extend the work of Schrag. But there is more to Ramsey than new chapters in a story told earlier.Ramsey presents two arguments, along with well-sculpted, carefully detailed supporting premises that make the unfolding an enjoyable process. The issues of The Long Path to Nearness are (1) the neglected body in communication theory, which represents the inescapable contact point with the natural world, and (2) liberation ethics, explicated from an understanding of the absoluteness of uncertainty and the implications of responsibility. The arguments are fashioned around a Heideggerian "being-in-the-world" consciousness, one that, in its essence would presuppose both the body and the other as pretheoretical. Ramsey takes another approach, however, and avoids the transcendental while arguing, in a later context, for the transcendent.The long path begins with a phenomenological explication of the corporeal body, with a frequent and consistent implication of praxis as a sort of journey signpost (50 miles to Dallas... then 40 miles to Dallas, etc.) reminding the reader that practice is essential to the understanding of communication corporeality. In "re-calling" communication, Ramsey defines communication as a dynamic practice that offers possibility, possibility shaped by the binary of active and passive moments. For Ramsey's project, the passive moment is that which represents the material world and the inescapable Dasein that implies the body. Ramsey does not argue for an intercorporeality, choosing instead to imply the concept with a "being-in-the-world-with-other" perspective in the context of the corporeality argument. The active moment is the moment of subjectivity, which represents the consciousness of intentionality. Given Heidegger's definition of logos as "speaking" and Ramsey's professed phenomenological perspective (a study of being as opposed to knowing), possibility for Ramsey represents communication as "being-in-the-world-speaking" through a consciousness of intentionality and a material body presence. This presence in the world is practiced, negotiated, and experienced through communication.Ramsey's argument of possibility is an intricate exploration of the potentiality of horizons that are open-ended, endlessly challenging, and inviting potentiality for an ethics of liberation. Ramsey's explication of possibilities is one of the significant offerings of this effort, and is worth examination on the basis of its nuances and constructions.The overall argument for corporeality will be largely familiar to a European audience immersed in the body politic. This is not to say that the [End Page 97] effort does not offer new and inviting understandings, but rather to suggest that the premises of Ramsey's work best relate to those of continental thought regarding body presence. For those who... (shrink)

From the Preface: "The majority of the papers contained in this volume was delivered in the fall of 1978 at The Catholic University of America as part of the Machette series of lectures on Aristotle. Although collections of essays on Aristotle are hardly lacking at present, this volume presents new studies which, it is hoped, give some idea of the variety of philosophical perspectives in which Aristotle has held and continues to hold great interest and of the scholarly analysis needed (...) in order to reach a better understanding of a difficult author." • CONTENTS: 1. Categories in Aristotle, Michael Frede • 2. Definitions in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo • 3. Aristotle and Galileo: The Uses of ΥΠΟΘΕΣΙΣ (suppositio) in Scientific Reasoning, William A. Wallace • 4. Aristotle and the History of Greek Scepticism, A. A Long • 5. Aristotle's Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators, Gérard Verbeke • 6. ΕΙΔΗ in Aristotle's Earlier and Later Theories of Substance, John A. Driscol • 7. Averroes as Commentator on Aristotle's Theory of the Intellect, Arthur Hyman • 8. Aristotle's Method of Ethics, Terence Irwin • 9. Goodness and Human Aims in Aristotle's Ethics, Nicholas P. White • 10. Aristotle on the Essence of Happiness, Daniel T Devereux • 11. The ΚΑΛΟΝ in Aristotelian Ethics, Joseph Owens • 12. Telos and Teleology in Aristotelian Ethics, Henry B Veatch. (shrink)

Cian O’Driscoll’s Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Just War covers a vast range of materials, discussing the idea of victory and its relationship to just war theory. The idea of victory raises s...