A new formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) for the existence of God is offered, which avoids a number of commonly raised objections. I argue that we can and should focus on the fundamental constants and initial conditions of the universe, and show how physics itself provides the probabilities that are needed by the argument. I explain how this formulation avoids a number of common objections, specifically the possibility of deeper physical laws, the multiverse, normalisability, whether God would fine-tune at (...) all, whether the universe is too fine-tuned, and whether the likelihood of God creating a life-permitting universe is inscrutable. (shrink)

Fine-tuning in physics and cosmology is often used as evidence that a theory is incomplete. For example, the parameters of the standard model of particle physics are “unnaturally” small, which has driven much of the search for physics beyond the standard model. Of particular interest is the fine-tuning of the universe for life, which suggests that our universe’s ability to create physical life forms is improbable and in need of explanation, perhaps by a multiverse. This claim has been challenged on (...) the grounds that the relevant probability measure cannot be justified because it cannot be normalized, and so small probabilities cannot be inferred. We show how fine-tuning can be formulated within the context of Bayesian theory testing in the physical sciences. The normalizability problem is seen to be a general problem for testing any theory with free parameters, and not a unique problem for fine-tuning. Physical theories in fact avoid such problems in one of two ways. Dimensional parameters are bounded by the Planck scale, avoiding troublesome infinities, and we are not compelled to assume that dimensionless parameters are distributed uniformly, which avoids non-normalizability. (shrink)

This new book by cosmologists Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes is another entry in the long list of cosmology-centered physics books intended for a large audience. While many such books aim at advancing a novel scientific theory, this one has no such scientific pretense. Its goals are to assert that the universe is fine-tuned for life, to defend that this fact can reasonably motivate further scientific inquiry as to why it is so, and to show that (...) the multiverse and intelligent design hypotheses are reasonable proposals to explain this fine-tuning. This book's potential contribution, therefore, lies in how convincingly and efficiently it can make that case. (shrink)

This volume explores the theoretical frameworks, methodology and field practice suited to late antique archaeology.

State governments provide preprinted advance directive forms to the general public. However, many adults in the United States (US) lack the skills necessary to read and comprehend health care-related materials. In this study, we sought to determine the readability of state government-sponsored advance directive forms.

Exceptionally preserved fossils are the product of complex interplays of biological and geological processes including burial, autolysis and microbial decay, authigenic mineralization, diagenesis, metamorphism, and finally weathering and exhumation. Determining which tissues are preserved and how biases affect their preservation pathways is important for interpreting fossils in phylogenetic, ecological, and evolutionary frameworks. Although laboratory decay experiments reveal important aspects of fossilization, applying the results directly to the interpretation of exceptionally preserved fossils may overlook the impact of other key processes that (...) remove or preserve morphological information. Investigations of fossils preserving non-biomineralized tissues suggest that certain structures that are decay resistant are rarely preserved, and decay-prone structures can fossilize, albeit rarely. As we review here, decay resistance is an imperfect indicator of fossilization potential, and a suite of biological and geological processes account for the features preserved in exceptional fossils. Organisms decayed experimentally in seawater have been used as direct analogs for soft-bodied fossil taxa, with fossils representing a snapshot of a particular stage of decay. We argue that numerous geological and biological processes account for fossilization and that all of these should be considered when reconstructing extinct organisms. (shrink)

The three dialogues in this contribution concern 21st century application of life‐like robots in the care of older adults. They depict conversations set in the near future, involving a philosopher (Dr Phonius) and a nurse (Dr Myloss) who manages care at a large facility for assisted living. In their first dialogue, the speakers discover that their quite different attitudes towards human‐robot interaction parallel fundamental differences separating their respective concepts of consciousness. The second dialogue similarly uncovers deeply contrasting notions of personhood (...) that appear to be associated with respective communities of nursing and robotics. The additional key awareness that arises in their final dialogue links applications of life‐like robots in the care of older adults with potential transformations in our understandings of ourselves – indeed, in our understandings of the nature of our own humanity. This series of dialogues, therefore, appears to address a topic in nursing philosophy that merits our careful attention. (shrink)

As militarization of bodies politic continues apace the world over, as military organizations again reveal themselves as primary political, economic and cultural forces in many societies, we argue that the emergent and potentially dominant form of political economic organization is a species of neo-feudal corporatism. Drawing upon Bourdieu, we theorize bodies politic as living habitus. Bodies politic are prepared for war and peace through new mediations, powerful means of public pedagogy. The process of militarization requires the generation of new, antagonistic (...) evaluations of other bodies politic. Such evaluations are inculcated via these mediations, the movement of meanings across time and space, between formerly disparate histories, places, and cultures. New mediations touch new and different aspects of the body politic: its eyes, its ears, its organs, but they are consistently targeted at the formation of dispositions, the prime movers of action. (shrink)

Ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture have been set by both national governments and their respective livestock sectors. We hypothesize that farmer self-identity influences their assessment of climate change and their willingness to implement measures which address the issue. Perceptions of climate change were determined from 286 beef/sheep farmers and evaluated using principal component analysis. The analysis elicits two components which evaluate identity, and two components which evaluate behavioral capacity to adopt mitigation and adaptation measures. Subsequent Cluster (...) Analyses reveal four farmer types based on the PCA scores. ‘The Productivist’ and ‘The Countryside Steward’ portray low levels of awareness of climate change, but differ in their motivation to adopt pro-environmental behavior. Conversely, both ‘The Environmentalist’ and ‘The Dejected’ score higher in their awareness of the issue. In addition, ‘The Dejected’ holds a high sense of perceived risk; however, their awareness is not conflated with an explicit understanding of agricultural GHG sources. With the exception of ‘The Environmentalist’, there is an evident disconnect between perceptions of agricultural emission sources and their contribution towards GHG emissions amongst all types. If such linkages are not conceptualized, it is unlikely that behavioral capacities will be realized. Effective communication channels which encourage action should target farmers based on the groupings depicted. Therefore, understanding farmer types through the constructs used in this study can facilitate effective and tailored policy development and implementation. (shrink)

The present study examines the relationships between consumers'' ethical beliefs and personality traits. Based on a survey of 295 undergraduate business students, the authors found that individuals with high needs for autonomy, innovation, and aggression, as well as individuals with a high propensity for taking risks tend to have less ethical beliefs concerning possible consumer actions. Individuals with a high need for social desirability and individuals with a strong problem solving coping style tend to have more ethical beliefs concerning possible (...) consumer actions. The needs for achievement, affiliation, complexity and an emotion solving coping style were not significantly correlated with consumer ethical beliefs. (shrink)

The sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic brought global disruption to every aspect of society including healthcare, supply chain, the economy, and social interaction. Among the many emergent considerations were the safety and public health of the public, patients, essential workers, and healthcare professionals. In certain locations, clinical research was halted—or terminated—in deference to the immediate needs of patient care, and clinical trials focusing on the treatment and prevention of coronavirus infection were prioritized over studies focusing on other diseases. Difficult (...) decisions were made rapidly; flexibility and reconsideration were necessary not only because the intensity and severity of infection varied over time and by locale but also because knowledge of the disease and understanding of its treatment grew. Here we discuss the ethical challenges in decision-making and competing ethical tensions during the pandemic in an effort to advance future preparedness. (shrink)

Spermatozoa reach the fallopian tube during ovulation by traveling through the female reproductive tract mucus. This non‐Newtonian viscoelastic medium facilitates spermatozoon movement to accomplish fertilization or, in some cases, blocks spermatozoon movement, leading to infertility. While rheological properties are known to affect spermatozoon motility with in vitro models using synthetic polymers, their precise effects in vivo are understudied. This paper reviews the rheological measurements of reproductive tract mucus during ovulation in humans and model animals, focusing on viscosity and its potential (...) effect on spermatozoa. Mucus viscosity in the female reproductive tract's different compartments is poorly understood. While information on this subject is incomplete, most mammals appear to have a viscosity decrease along their female reproductive tracts. Based on this sparse information, we hypothesize that viscosity changes in female reproductive tracts may guide spermatozoa to eggs, a novel concept that could improve our understanding of reproductive biology. (shrink)

Pierson et al. (2024) report that most American bioethicists hold relatively progressive views compared to the public and are not demographically representative of the communities they serve. Furth...

Obtaining informed consent, an ethical obligation of nurses and other health care providers, occurs routinely when patients make health care decisions. The values underlying informed consent (promotion of patients’ well-being and respect for their self-determination) are embedded in the dominant American culture. Nurses who apply the USA’s cultural values of informed consent when caring for patients who come from other cultures encounter some ethical dilemmas. This descriptive study, conducted with Latino, Chinese and Anglo-American cancer patients in a large, public, west-coast (...) clinic, describes constraints on the informed consent process in a multicultural setting, including language barriers, the clinical environment, control in decision making, and conflicting desired health outcomes for health care providers and patients, and suggests some implications for nursing practice. (shrink)

In his recent paper Gellner singles me out for special comment and some reply is called for. He attributes to me several propositions which he says I made in my note on ‘Physical and social kinship’ in this journal, and he then refutes them. Reading his paper I cannot avoid thinking that he exaggerates the differences between us, thereby apparently strengthening his argument. Some substantial differences there are, but others are fictional. A line-by-line analysis of what he says about me (...) in his paper might be amusing but would be of only ephemeral interest. In this reply I confine myself to a few important issues. (shrink)

Many have thought that there is a problem with causal commerce between immaterial souls and material bodies. In Physicalism or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim attempts to spell out that problem. Rather than merely posing a question or raising a mystery for defenders of substance dualism to answer or address, he offers a compelling argument for the conclusion that immaterial souls cannot causally interact with material bodies. We offer a reconstruction of that argument that hinges on two premises: Kim’s Dictum (...) and the Nowhere Man principle. Kim’s Dictum says that causation requires a spatial relation. Nowhere Man says that souls can’t be in space. By our lights, both premises can be called into question. We’ll begin our evaluation of the argument by pointing out some consequences of Kim’s Dictum. For some, these will be costs. We will then present two defeaters for Kim’s Dictum and a critical analysis of Kim’s case for Nowhere Man. The upshot is that Kim’s argument against substance dualism fails. (shrink)

Philosophical exploration of individualism and externalism in the cognitive sciences most recently has been focused on general evaluations of these two views (Adams & Aizawa 2008, Rupert 2008, Wilson 2004, Clark 2008). Here we return to broaden an earlier phase of the debate between individualists and externalists about cognition, one that considered in detail particular theories, such as those in developmental psychology (Patterson 1991) and the computational theory of vision (Burge 1986, Segal 1989). Music cognition is an area in the (...) cognitive sciences that has received little attention from philosophers, though it has relatively recently been thrown into the externalist spotlight (Cochrane 2008, Kruger 2014, Kersten forthcoming). Given that individualism can be thought of as a kind of paradigm for research on cognition, we provide a brief overview of the field of music cognition and individualistic tendencies within the field (sections 2 and 3) before turning to consider externalist alternatives to individualistic paradigms (section 4-5) and then arguing for a qualified form of externalism about music cognition (section 6). (shrink)

This chapter takes the form of a discussion between the editors of this volume and Steven Lukes, one the most eminent critics of methodological individualism. The focus is on Lukes’ interpretation of methodological individualism in terms of linguistic exclusivism (i.e., naive reductionism), the multiple-realization problem, Boudon’s and Elster’s micro-foundationalist approach, ontological individualism, and the rationality of human action.

Since its introduction to China at the end of 1970s, Bourdieu’s sociological thinking has produced wide-ranging and profound effect on China’s educational researchers, with in-depth studies increas...

What effect does witnessing other students cheat have on one's own cheating behavior? What roles do moral attitudes and neutralizing attitudes (justifications for behavior) play when deciding to cheat? The present research proposes a model of academic dishonesty which takes into account each of these variables. Findings from experimental (vignette) and survey methods determined that seeing others cheat increases cheating behavior by causing students to judge the behavior less morally reprehensible, not by making rationalization easier. Witnessing cheating also has unique (...) effects, controlling for other variables. (shrink)

IntroductionThe objectives of this study are to assess and compare differences in the intensity, frequency, and overall severity of moral distress among a diverse group of healthcare professionals.MethodsParticipants from within Baylor Health Care System completed an online seven-point Likert scale (range, 0 to 6) moral distress survey containing nine core clinical scenarios and additional scenarios specific to each participant’s discipline. Higher scores reflected greater intensity and/or frequency of moral distress.ResultsMore than 2,700 healthcare professionals responded to the survey (response rate 18.14 (...) percent); survey respondents represented multiple healthcare disciplines across a variety of settings in a single healthcare system. Intensity of moral distress was high in all disciplines, although the causes of highest intensity varied by discipline. Mean moral distress intensity for the nine core scenarios was higher among physicians than nurses, but the mean moral distress frequency was higher among nurses. Taking into account both intensity and frequency, the difference in mean moral distress score was statistically significant among the various disciplines. Using post hoc analysis, differences were greatest between nurses and therapists.ConclusionsMoral distress has previously been described as a phenomenon predominantly among nursing professionals. This first-of-its-kind multidisciplinary study of moral distress suggests the phenomenon is significant across multiple professional healthcare disciplines. Healthcare professionals should be sensitive to situations that create moral distress for colleagues from other disciplines. Policy makers and administrators should explore options to lessen moral distress and professional burnout that frequently accompanies it. (shrink)

This project tested a two-way model of communication between lay groups and experts about genetic medicine in Perth, Western Australia. Focus group discussion with community group participants was followed by a communication workshop between community group participants and experts. Four groups of concerns or themes emerged from discussion: clinical considerations; legislative concerns; research priorities, and ethical and wider considerations. Community group concerns are not always met by the actions of "experts". This is, in part, because of the differing life-worlds of (...) each group. However, the communication workshop showed the potential of two-way communication for both lay and expert members in understanding the others' viewpoint. Further, the approach developed here offers one possible way for community groups to participate in a substantial way in policy formulation processes. (shrink)

Theorems of hyperarithmetic analysis occupy an unusual neighborhood in the realms of reverse mathematics and recursion-theoretic complexity. They lie above all the fixed iterations of the Turing jump but below ATR $_{0}$. There is a long history of proof-theoretic principles which are THAs. Until the papers reported on in this communication, there was only one mathematical example. Barnes, Goh, and Shore [1] analyze an array of ubiquity theorems in graph theory descended from Halin’s [9] work on rays in graphs. (...) They seem to be typical applications of ACA $_{0}$ but are actually THAs. These results answer Question 30 of Montalbán’s Open Questions in Reverse Mathematics [19] and supply several other natural principles of different and unusual levels of complexity.This work led in [25] to a new neighborhood of the reverse mathematical zoo: almost theorems of hyperarithmetic analysis. When combined with ACA $_{0}$ they are THAs but on their own are very weak. Denizens both mathematical and logical are provided. Generalizations of several conservativity classes are defined and these ATHAs as well as many other principles are shown to be conservative over RCA $_{0}$ in all these senses and weak in other recursion-theoretic ways as well. These results answer a question raised by Hirschfeldt and reported in [19] by providing a long list of pairs of principles one of which is very weak over RCA $_{0}$ but over ACA $_{0}$ is equivalent to the other which may be strong or very strong going up a standard hierarchy and at the end being stronger than full second-order arithmetic. (shrink)

Although this note is prompted by the recent exchange between Gellner [2], [3] and Needham [4], I shall ignore the issues raised by Gellner's specification for an ideal language. I am concerned here only with Needham's statement that ‘biology is one matter and descent is quite another, of a different order’ which, it will be remembered, Gellner treats as Needham's first error. I write under a sense of obligation, for I discussed this matter with Gellner in 1955 while he was (...) preparing his first article and my arguments then were phrased similarly to those advanced by Needham. It appears that I did not make myself clear to Gellner and I shall try again. I do not wish to attack or defend either protagonist; each is quite able to look after himself. Therefore I propose neither to examine where they have misunderstood each other, nor to discuss the difference between kinship and descent, but simply to state the connexion, as I see it, between physical and social kinship. (shrink)

An introduction to Christian ethics that provides a new, constructive framework for Christian moral and political thought. It draws on and integrates classic sources and approaches with contemporary liberationist and critical voices while making the ethical relationship between human and nonhuman life a central concern.

Halin in 1965 proved that if a graph has n many pairwise disjoint rays for each n then it has infinitely many pairwise disjoint rays. We analyze the complexity of this and other similar results in terms of computable and proof theoretic complexity. The statement of Halin’s theorem and the construction proving it seem very much like standard versions of compactness arguments such as König’s Lemma. Those results, while not computable, are relatively simple. They only use arithmetic procedures or, equivalently, (...) finitely many iterations of the Turing jump. We show that several Halin-type theorems are much more complicated. They are among the theorems of hyperarithmetic analysis. Such theorems imply the ability to iterate the Turing jump along any computable well ordering. Several important logical principles in this class have been extensively studied beginning with work of Kreisel, H. Friedman, Steel and others in the 1960s and 1970s. Until now, only one purely mathematical example was known. Our work provides many more and so answers Question 30 of Montalbán’s Open Questions in Reverse Mathematics in 2011. Some of these theorems including ones in Halin in 1965 are also shown to have unusual proof theoretic strength as well. (shrink)

Personal data is highly vulnerable to security exploits, spurring moves to lock it down through encryption, to cryptographically ‘cloud’ it. But personal data is also highly valuable to corporations and states, triggering moves to unlock its insights by relocating it in the cloud. We characterise this twinned condition as ‘clouded data’. Clouded data constructs a political and technological notion of privacy that operates through the intersection of corporate power, computational resources and the ability to obfuscate, gain insights from and valorise (...) a dependency between public and private. First, we survey prominent clouded data approaches, suggesting their particular affordances produce distinctive versions of privacy. Next, we perform two notional code-based experiments using synthetic datasets. In the field of health, we submit a patient’s blood pressure to a notional cloud-based diagnostics service; in education, we construct a student survey that enables aggregate reporting without individual identification. We argue that these technical affordances legitimate new political claims to capture and commodify personal data. The final section broadens the discussion to consider the political force of clouded data and its reconstitution of traditional notions such as the public and the private. (shrink)

When asked to describe wartime atrocities, terrorist acts, and serial killers, many of us reach for the word 'evil'. But what does it really mean? Luke Russell defends a new account of the nature of evil action and persons. Although the concept of evil is extreme and often misused, it has a legitimate place in contemporary secular moral thought.