Entendida em sentido amplo, como reconstrução autotranscendente, a aprendizagem requer, para potencializar a razão crítico-discursiva, uma dimensão intersubjetiva e uma relação assimétrica entre professor e estudante. No ciberespaço, âmbito linguístico específico que ocasiona processos de socialização e de individualização, o entendimento do que constitui aprendizagem válida passa, necessariamente, pelo diálogo entre educadores. A partir de interrogações de índole epistemológica, o artigo insere-se nesse diálogo. Depois de caracterizar a hipermídia como a linguagem do ciberespaço e identificar diferentes perfis de leitores de (...) hipermídia, duas afirmações são ensaiadas: (i) as tecnologias digitais possuem potencial para amplificar a aprendizagem; e (ii) as tecnologias digitais não minimizam a importância da mediação docente na forma escolar da aprendizagem. (shrink)

In the past thirty years or so, the doctrine that actions are events has become an essential, and sometimes unargued, part of the received view in the philosophy of action, despite the efforts of a few philosophers to undermine the consensus. For example, the entry for Agency in a recently published reference guide to the philosophy of mind begins with the following sentence: A central task in the philosophy of action is that of spelling out the differences between events in (...) general and those events that fall squarely into the category of human action. There is no consensus about what events are. But it is generally agreed that, whatever events may prove to be, actions are a species or a class of events. We believe that the received view is mistaken: actions are not events. We concede that for most purposes, the kind of categorial refinement which is involved in either affirming or denying that actions are events is frankly otiose. Our common idiom does not stress the difference between actions and events, at least not in general terms, because it has no need to. Perhaps it sounds a little odd to say that some events are performed; but if we balked at describing, say, the abdication of Edward VIII as one of the politically significant events in Britain in 1936, it could not be for metaphysical reasons. And since actions, like events, are datable — though often, as we shall see, only imprecisely — actions are said to take place and to occur. But an important class of actions consist in moving something; indeed, according to many philosophers, every action consists in moving something. And when we consider actions of this sort from a theoretical point of view it becomes imperative to distinguish between actions and events. Or so we shall argue. (shrink)

Crowdfunding platforms have revolutionized entrepreneurial finance, with 200 billion dollars expected to be dispersed annually to entrepreneurs and small business owners by 2020. Despite the importance of this growing phenomenon, our knowledge of the dynamics of successful lending-based prosocial crowdfunding and its implications for the business ethics literature remain limited. We use a social responsibility lens to examine whether crowdfunders on a lending-based prosocial platform lend their money based on altruistic or strategic motives. Our results indicate that the dynamics of (...) prosocial lending-based crowdfunding are somewhat consistent with traditional forms of financing. Specifically, despite a prosocial setting in nature, crowdfunders tend to act strategically, positively responding to signals of quality and low risk. Notably, we also find that projects that are high on both financial and social appeal receive the highest average amount of funding. Furthermore, language on the lender’s profile indicating ability to pay is positively related to both funding success and funding amount. Our study contributes to filling the gap in the business ethics literature about the dynamics of lending-based prosocial crowdfunding, and the strategic and altruistic ethical motives that drive lenders in such endeavors. (shrink)

Crowdfunding platforms have revolutionized entrepreneurial finance, with 200 billion dollars expected to be dispersed annually to entrepreneurs and small business owners by 2020. Despite the importance of this growing phenomenon, our knowledge of the dynamics of successful lending-based prosocial crowdfunding and its implications for the business ethics literature remain limited. We use a social responsibility lens to examine whether crowdfunders on a lending-based prosocial platform lend their money based on altruistic or strategic motives. Our results indicate that the dynamics of (...) prosocial lending-based crowdfunding are somewhat consistent with traditional forms of financing. Specifically, despite a prosocial setting in nature, crowdfunders tend to act strategically, positively responding to signals of quality and low risk. Notably, we also find that projects that are high on both financial and social appeal receive the highest average amount of funding. Furthermore, language on the lender’s profile indicating ability to pay is positively related to both funding success and funding amount. Our study contributes to filling the gap in the business ethics literature about the dynamics of lending-based prosocial crowdfunding, and the strategic and altruistic ethical motives that drive lenders in such endeavors. (shrink)

Crowdfunding platforms have revolutionized entrepreneurial finance, with 200 billion dollars expected to be dispersed annually to entrepreneurs and small business owners by 2020. Despite the importance of this growing phenomenon, our knowledge of the dynamics of successful lending-based prosocial crowdfunding and its implications for the business ethics literature remain limited. We use a social responsibility lens to examine whether crowdfunders on a lending-based prosocial platform lend their money based on altruistic or strategic motives. Our results indicate that the dynamics of (...) prosocial lending-based crowdfunding are somewhat consistent with traditional forms of financing. Specifically, despite a prosocial setting in nature, crowdfunders tend to act strategically, positively responding to signals of quality and low risk. Notably, we also find that projects that are high on both financial and social appeal receive the highest average amount of funding. Furthermore, language on the lender’s profile indicating ability to pay is positively related to both funding success and funding amount. Our study contributes to filling the gap in the business ethics literature about the dynamics of lending-based prosocial crowdfunding, and the strategic and altruistic ethical motives that drive lenders in such endeavors. (shrink)

We think we have lots of substantial knowledge about the future. But contemporary wisdom has it that indeterminism prevails in such a way that just about any proposition about the future has a non-zero objective chance of being false.2, 3 What should one do about this? One, pessimistic, reaction is scepticism about knowledge of the future. We think this should be something of a last resort, especially since this scepticism is likely to infect alleged knowledge of the present and past. (...) One anti-sceptical strategy is to pin our hopes on determinism, conceding that knowledge of the future is unavailable in an indeterministic world. This is not satisfying either: we would rather not be hostage to empirical fortune in the way that this strategy recommends. A final strategy, one that we shall explore in this paper, is one of reconciliation: knowledge of a proposition is compatible with a subject’s belief having a non-zero objective chance of error.4 Following Williamson, we are interested in tying knowledge to the presence or absence of error in close cases, and so we shall explore the connections between knowledge and objective chance within such a framework. We don’t want to get tangled up here in complications involved in attempting to formulate a necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge in terms of safety. Instead, we will assume the following rough and ready necessary condition: a subject knows P only if she could not easily have falsely believed P.5 Assuming that easiness is to be spelt.. (shrink)

Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 206-228, December 2021.

The main aims in this article are to discuss and criticize the core thesis of a position that has become known as phenomenal conservatism. According to this thesis, its seeming to one that p provides enough justification for a belief in p to be prima facie justified. This thesis captures the special kind of epistemic import that seemings are claimed to have. To get clearer on this thesis, the article embeds it, first, in a probabilistic framework in which updating on (...) new evidence happens by Bayesian conditionalization, and second, a framework in which updating happens by Jeffrey conditionalization. The article spells out problems for both views, and then generalizes some of these to nonprobabilistic frameworks. The main theme of the discussion is that the epistemic import of a seeming should depend on its content in a plethora of ways that phenomenal conservatism is insensitive to. (shrink)

Cognitive science has recently made some startling discoveries about temporal experience, and these discoveries have been drafted into philosophical service. We survey recent appeals to cognitive science in the philosophical debate over whether time objectively passes. Since this research is currently in its infancy, we identify some directions for future research.

In this chapter, we recount some of the most pressing objections to character scepticism, pointing out their limitations and, when appropriate, incorporating their suggestions. From here, we consider what empirically informed moral improvement might look like by turning to the skill analogy. While the skill analogy provides a realistic rubric for becoming a better person, many of the questions concerning the details of how moral improvement might take place remain unanswered. When developing expertise in domains like chess and morality, a (...) wide range of factors will likely be important and it is unlikely than any one individual factor will be especially important. Given this, for any account of moral improvement, our optimism should be bounded: the effect of any particular intervention is likely to be limited, in both magnitude and domain. Lastly, we consider how character scepticism has reshaped the way we think about moral responsibility, whether this is cashed out in reasons-responsiveness or self-expression accounts. While both views face challenges, by distinguishing the possession of the responsibility-making feature from failures to manifest that property in behaviour, we gain a certain degree of wiggle room that allows us to accommodate empirical findings while holding on to notions of responsibility. This chapter highlights that the ‘person-situationism debate’ has expanded far beyond its beginnings, giving way to new accounts of moral improvement and moral responsibility. (shrink)

"The book mounts a challenge to the notion of a clear distinction between public and private and attempts to account for the mobility of the many boundaries between the two. The first essay introduces some of those problematic boundaries in the light of the influential studies of Habermas, Koselleck, Aries and Chartier, who together have helped shape our understanding of the formation of the modern public and private spheres. A number of essays deal with the nature of public opinion in (...) relation to state control and with the role of the intelligentsia. Some investigate non-political forms of sociability and the creation of various kinds of publics within the cultural realm. Others scrutinize gender roles and the validity of the accepted correspondence of male/female to public/private in the light of women's use of the printed word. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on some misconceptions about Critical Pragmatics, what it is, what it assumes and what it proposes. Doubtless, some of these misconceptions are due to clumsy writing on our part; perhaps others are due to inattentive reading. And some may be due to an effort to shield us from the apparent implausibility of what we said—and in fact meant. It does not matter much. We focus on those misunderstandings that most matter to us, either because, by (...) repetition, they have ended up being annoying, even if they are not, perhaps, that important; or because they are substantial enough to represent a distortion of the basic picture of Critical Pragmatics and its theoretical foundations, namely, Critical Referentialism—also known as the Reflexive-referential Theory—and, more generally, Perry’s fundamental views on meaning and content(s). (shrink)

In §8 of his Begriffsschrift (1879), Gottlob Frege discusses issues related to identity. Frege begins his most famous essay, “On Sense and Denotation” (1892), published 13 years later, by criticizing the view advocated in §8. He returns to these issues in the concluding paragraph. Controversies continue over these important passages. We offer an interpretation and discuss some alternatives. We defend that in the Begriffsschrift, Frege does not hold that identity is a relation between signs. §8 of the Begriffsschrift is motivated (...) by the conflict between two different criteria for sameness of conceptual content of sentences. To resolve that conflict, Frege introduces ‘≡’ in §8 and, thus, circumstances with names as constituents. To the same end, in “On Sense and Denotation,” Frege introduces senses and Thoughts and abandons both ‘≡’ and circumstances. He solves what we call the Co-instantiation problem, and disregards, but does not solve, the Name problem. (shrink)

The concept of measuring inconsistency in information was developed by John Grant in a 1978 paper in the context of first-order logic. For more than 20 years very little was done in this area until in the early 2000s a number of AI researchers started to formulate new inconsistency measures primarily in the context of propositional logic knowledge bases. The aim of this volume is to survey what has been done so far, to expand inconsistency measurement to other formalisms, (...) to connect it with related topics, and to provide ideas for further research in a topic that is particularly relevant now in view of the many inconsistencies in the massive amount of information available. The book contains 11 chapters. The first chapter, by John Grant, gives his original motivation for starting this field, explains why it was formulated in a highly mathematical manner, presents important material that was omitted from the original paper, and provides ideas about the use of dimensions in measuring inconsistency. The second chapter, by Matthias Thimm, is a survey that covers most of the research on inconsistency measures up to 2017. The other 9 chapters, all by experts either in inconsistency measures, or in the topic under consideration, or both, connect inconsistency measures with argumentation, disjunctive logic programming, fuzzy logic systems, modal logics, multiset representation, paraconsistent consequence, probabilistic logic, relational databases, and spatio-temporal databases."-- back cover. (shrink)

Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equally empty. In particular, not all proper names that fail to name an existing object fail in the same way: although they are all empty, they are not all equally vacuous. “Vulcan,” “Jacob Horn,” “Odysseus,” and “Sherlock Holmes,” for instance, are all empty. They have no referents. But they are not entirely vacuous or useless. Sometimes they are used in statements that are true or (...) false. We are basically referentialists about proper names. The ordinary semantic function of a proper name is to refer to an object, and to do it directly, that is, without semantically providing any identifying condition that the object should meet to be the referent. To put it differently, we agree that statements containing proper names express singular propositions, i.e., that their truth-conditions involve the referent of the proper name, if it exists, and not any identifying condition of it. Now, since empty names lack a referent, and therefore would not express such a singular proposition, how do we explain that many, if not all, statements containing them have a truth-value? Answering this question for the case of fictional names, in particular, is the aim of this paper. (shrink)

Three experiments examined contributions of study phase awareness of word identity to subsequent word-identification priming by manipulating visual attention to words at study. In Experiment 1, word-identification priming was reduced for ignored relative to attended words, even though ignored words were identified sufficiently to produce negative priming in the study phase. Word-identification priming was also reduced after color naming relative to emotional valence rating (Experiment 2) or word reading (Experiment 3), even though an effect of emotional valence upon color naming (...) (Experiment 2) indicated that words were identified at study. Thus, word-identification priming was reduced even when word identification occurred at study. Word-identification priming may depend on awareness of word identity at the time of study. (shrink)

An increasing number of scholars, students and practitioners of psychology are becoming intrigued by the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and of Felix Guattari. This book aims to be a critical introduction to these ideas, which have so much to offer psychology in terms of new directions as well as critique. Deleuze was one of the most prominent philosophers of the 20 th century and a figure whose ideas are increasingly influential throughout the humanities and social sciences. His work, particularly his (...) collaborations with psychoanalyst Guattari, focused on the articulation of a philosophy of difference. Rejecting mainstream continental philosophy just as much as the orthodox analytical metaphysics of the English-speaking world, Deleuze proposed a positive and passionate alternative, bursting at the seams with new concepts and new transformations. This book overviews the philosophical contribution of Deleuze including the project he developed with Guattari. It goes on to explore the application of these ideas in three major dimensions of psychology: its unit of analysis, its method and its applications to the clinic. Deleuze and Psychology will be of interest to students and scholars of psychology and those interested in continental philosophy, as well as psychological practitioners and therapists. (shrink)

As the Lord Jesus stated, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” The primary responsibility of shepherds is to serve in Matthew 20:28. The shepherd’s basic role is that of a servant; the word servant is derived from the Greek word doulos, which means slave. In this sense, the ministry of shepherding is a ministry of service; the shepherd serves as a leader, a father, a prophet, a priest, and a head for the flock (...) or congregation that God has committed to him, in addition to being a servant or slave. As a role model for his flock or congregation, the church pastor’s role must be evident. The goal of this article is to broaden the shepherd model based on Psalm 23, which represents the functions of a Christian life. The duty of the shepherd is highlighted as we examine the identification and biblical usage of sheep and shepherds. The role of the shepherd is to care for his congregation, based on Psalm 23:3, by guiding them to the right path, besides also providing goodness and mercy (Psalm 23:6). (shrink)

The current assessment of behaviors in the inventories to diagnose autism spectrum disorders (ASD) focus on observation and discrete categorizations. Behaviors require movements, yet measurements of physical movements are seldom included. Their inclusion however, could provide an objective characterization of behavior to help unveil interactions between the peripheral and the central nervous systems. Such interactions are critical for the development and maintenance of spontaneous autonomy, self-regulation and voluntary control. At present, current approaches cannot deal with the heterogeneous, dynamic and stochastic (...) nature of development. Accordingly, they leave no avenues for real-time or longitudinal assessments of change in a coping system continuously adapting and developing compensatory mechanisms. We offer a new unifying statistical framework to reveal re-afferent kinesthetic features of the individual with ASD. The new methodology is based on the non-stationary stochastic patterns of minute fluctuations (micro-movements) inherent to our natural actions. Such patterns of behavioral variability provide re-entrant sensory feedback contributing to the autonomous regulation and coordination of the motor output. From an early age, this feedback supports centrally driven volitional control and fluid, flexible transitions between intentional and spontaneous behaviors. We show that in ASD there is a disruption in the maturation of this form of proprioception. Despite this disturbance, each individual has unique adaptive compensatory capabilities that we can unveil and exploit to evoke faster and more accurate decisions. Measuring the kinesthetic re-afference in tandem with stimuli variations we can detect changes in their micro-movements indicative of a more predictive and reliable kinesthetic percept. Our methods address the heterogeneity of ASD with a personalized approach grounded in the inherent sensory-motor abilities that the individual has already developed. (shrink)

Our main aims in this paper is to discuss and criticise the core thesis of a position that has become known as phenomenal conservatism. According to this thesis, its seeming to one that p provides enough justification for a belief in p to be prima facie justified (a thesis we label Standard Phenomenal Conservatism). This thesis captures the special kind of epistemic import that seemings are claimed to have. To get clearer on this thesis, we embed it, first, in a (...) probabilistic framework in which updating on new evidence happens by Bayesian conditionalization, and second, a framework in which updating happens by Jeffrey conditionalization. We spell out problems for both views, and then generalize some of these to non-probabilistic frameworks. The main theme of our discussion is that the epistemic import of a seeming (or experience) should depend on its content in a plethora of ways that phenomenal conservatism is insensitive to. (shrink)

We examine the role of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the weaponization of American psychology post-9/11. In 2004, psychologists’ involvement in the detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects generated controversy over psychological ethics in national security (PENS). Two signal events inflamed the controversy. The 2005 APA PENS Report legitimized clinical psychology consultation in support of military/intelligence operations with detained terrorist suspects. An independent review, the 2015 Hoffman Report, found APA collusion with the US Department of Defense in producing the (...) APA PENS Report and subsequent policies. Ongoing activities within APA to weaponize psychology sharpened the controversy. The authors—two psychologists and four former military/intelligence professionals—bring a military/intelligence operational perspective to detail two neglected areas of collateral damage. The first is the toll on psychology as a scientific enterprise. The second is covert influence on professional associations for incompatible security-sector objectives. We establish epistemic, historical, institutional, legal, and operational foundations for evaluation of these damages, as well as implications for APA and related professional associations in the ongoing Global War on Terror. (shrink)

This book highlights some of the most pressing safety, ethical, legal and societal issues related to the diverse contexts in which robotic technologies apply. Focusing on the essential concept of well-being, it addresses topics that are fundamental not only for research, but also for industry and end-users, discussing the challenges in a wide variety of applications, including domestic robots, autonomous manufacturing, personal care robots and drones.

Prosocial crowdfunding was originally conceived as a financial mechanism to assist vulnerable unbanked populations, typically excluded from formal financial markets. It subsequently grew into a billion-dollar scheme in the multi-billion-dollar crowdfunding industry. However, recent evidence claims prosocial crowdfunding may be shifting away from its goal to support the poor and underserved. Drawing on a composite social responsibility and framing theory framework, we examine the role that vulnerability plays in successfully raising funds in a prosocial crowdfunding context. We conduct multilevel logistic (...) regressions on a sample of microloans allocated to 105,727 ventures in 64 countries. Our results indicate that applying for funds through a field partner which caters to vulnerable populations may in fact have a negative effect on the entrepreneur’s request to be fully funded. Notwithstanding, framing the entrepreneur as being female or rural as key characteristics of individual vulnerability increases the project’s likelihood to be fully funded. This conflict offers noteworthy theoretical and practical implications for ethics in prosocial crowdfunding, an understudied field of research. (shrink)

The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, and ecological niches, complemented by information on collection and measurement protocols. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in biodiversity science suggests that existing standards such as the Darwin Core terminology are inadequate for describing biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. Existing ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology and others in the Open (...) Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry library, provide a semantic structure but lack many of the necessary terms to describe biodiversity data in all its dimensions. In this paper, we describe the motivation for and ongoing development of a new Biological Collections Ontology, the Environment Ontology, and the Population and Community Ontology. These ontologies share the aim of improving data aggregation and integration across the biodiversity domain and can be used to describe physical samples and sampling processes (for example, collection, extraction, and preservation techniques), as well as biodiversity observations that involve no physical sampling. Together they encompass studies of: 1) individual organisms, including voucher specimens from ecological studies and museum specimens, 2) bulk or environmental samples (e.g., gut contents, soil, water) that include DNA, other molecules, and potentially many organisms, especially microbes, and 3) survey-based ecological observations. We discuss how these ontologies can be applied to biodiversity use cases that span genetic, organismal, and ecosystem levels of organization. We argue that if adopted as a standard and rigorously applied and enriched by the biodiversity community, these ontologies would significantly reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among biodiversity resources and researchers. (shrink)

This work, in English "Struggle for power, organic crisis and judicial independence", has its origin in research academics of the IAEN carried out to provide expert advise to the Inter American Court of Human Rights in the case Quintana and others (Supreme Court of Justice) vs the State of Ecuador. The research is about the nature of the evolution of the ecuadorian state, the dynamics of its institutions, its players, parties, laws, its factors of instability, the way rights have been (...) deployed since the return to democracy in 1979, those who have benefited from neoliberal democracy and those who have paid the costs, and where in all this was the Supreme Court of Justice. The Introduction takes a look at this origin of the work and its intellectual import, provides a brief characterization of the Inter American Sistem of Human Rights Protection, how the Quintana Case fits within it, and an overview of the chapters and their logic. The first chapter analyzes the institutional and sociological factors that have contributed to Ecuador's historically unstable state, based primarily in an antagonistic struggle for power between the Executive and Legislative branches. The second chapter analyzes the economic and political factors that provoked an organic crisis, or crisis of hegemony, between 1997 and 2007 in Ecuador. The third chapter analyzes the evolution of the way in which judges are selected in Europe, the outcomes they have generated, and how they compare with the ecuadorian systems of judge selection in terms of securing judicial independence. The fourth chapter develops a theory of judicial independence in democracy and analyzes how Ecuador measures up to that standard, from when it became a neoliberal minimal democracy in 1981, to when it became a neoliberal false democracy as a consequence of instalation of a system evidently lacking in the people's support under the guise of the 1998 Constitution and its system of judge selection, and the new democratic horizons set by the 2008 Constitution, and the judicial system that springs from it. (shrink)

The rise of the phenomenon of virtue ethics in recent years has increased at a rapid pace. Such an explosion carries with it a number of great possibilities, as well as risks. This volume has been written to contribute a multi-faceted perspective to the current conversation about virtue. Among many other thought-provoking questions, the collection addresses the following: What are the virtues, and how are they enumerated? What are the internal problems among ethicists, and what are the objections and replies (...) to contemporary virtue ethics? Additionally, the practical implications following from the answers to these questions are discussed in new and fascinating research. Fundamental concepts such as teleology and eudaimonism are addressed from both a historical and dialectical approach. This tome will contribute not only to providing further clarity to the current horizons in virtue ethics, but also to the practical conclusion following from the study: to challenge the reader toward a greater pursuit of the virtuous life. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to draw out the consequences of the communal character of learning approach promoted by a sociocultural framework. This approach has both descriptive-analytical and prescriptive-guiding power: it helps to analyze existing practices be they traditional, exclusive, or innovative but, what is, probably, even more important, it also helps to guide practitioners in the design of more inclusive educational practices. In the first part of the paper, we will provide a framework for analyzing the case of (...) a shift from a traditional institutionalized perspective that understands learning as an individual process located in the head of the learner to the institutionalization of learning as a communal process — a regime which helps avoid constructing children in terms of a deficit model, disability, and academic failure. In the second part of the paper, we will discuss how treating learning as a communal process can guide an educational practitioner to develop a new pedagogical regime of a learning community of social activists that leads to inclusive pedagogy and eliminate “zones of teacher-student disability. (shrink)

Search and switching costs are two market frictions that are well known in the literature for preventing people from switching to a new and cheaper provider. Previous experimental literature has studied these two frictions in isolation. However, field evidence shows that these two frictions frequently occur together. Recently, a theoretical framework has been developed (Wilson in Eur Econ Rev 56(6):1070–1086) which studies the interplay between these two costs. We report on an experiment testing this theory to see if individual behaviour (...) with search and switching costs is in line with the theoretical predictions derived from the optimal choice rule of Wilson. The results show the crucial role of the search strategy: not only, according to Wilson model, the search cost has a greater deterrent impact on search than the switching costs, but also the sub-optimality of the search strategy is the major source of sub-optimality in the switching behaviour. (shrink)

Food pantries play a growing role in supporting households facing or at risk of food insecurity in the United States. They also support emergency response and recovery following disasters and extreme weather events. Although food pantries are often placed in close proximity to communities with the highest rates of poverty and risk of food insecurity, access to these facilities can be disrupted during and after extreme events. Decreased access to food pantries following disasters can be particularly problematic as the need (...) for these services is also likely to grow after such events. Despite the vast body of research on food retail access and food environments, relatively little research has utilized spatial analysis to understand food pantry access, particularly after extreme events. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we characterize changes in access to food pantries following flooding events in Harris County, Texas—a highly populated and flood prone region with high levels of food insecurity and poverty. Specifically, our study models disruptions in road networks due to flooding and assesses the impacts of these disruptions on proximity to food pantries. The results reveal that much of Harris County sees only small increases in travel distance to food pantries due to extreme flooding, but some areas may be unable to access food pantries at all. This research highlights the potential and some of the limits of private food assistance networks to support emergency response efforts. (shrink)

It is possible to defend the Church’s teaching that contraception is incompatible with God’s plan for sexuality in many different ways. This essay sketches the fundamental views of reality common to all the defenses and the main lines of the most prominent defenses, some based on natural law, on the theology of the body, and on the physical, psychological, and social consequences of the use of contraception. While all the defenses have merit, the argument based on the recognition that sexual (...) intercourse is meant to be a complete self-gift has a special power of its own. (shrink)

In the research on literacy learning the concept of language awareness has come forward as a unifying framework for understanding the underlying knowledge that supports ability in reading and writing. Consensus is gathering around the idea that language awareness is an essential foundation. If subsequent work in this area confirms it, this factor may turn out to be the key cognitive-domain explanation for successful literacy learning in school (and for academic purposes in general). In this review we examine two cross-cultural (...) comparisons regarding this claim. The comparisons point to the need to examine cases that juxtapose contrasting conditions. Relevant contrasts place side by side examples that appear to be typical and examples that appear to be exceptional. Taking what appear on the surface as sharply diverging cases, how is access to requisite underlying competencies similar, and how different, from one instance to the other? (shrink)

In §8 of hisBegriffsschrift(1879), Gottlob Frege discusses issues related to identity. Frege begins his most famous essay,“On Sense and Denotation”(1892),published 13 years later, by criticizing the view advocated in §8. He returns to theseissues in the concluding paragraph. Controversies continue over these importantpassages. We offer an interpretation and discuss some alternatives. We defend thatin theBegriffsschrift,Frege does not hold that identity is a relation between signs.§8 of theBegriffsschriftis motivated by the conflict between two differentcriteria for sameness of conceptual content of sentences. (...) To resolve that conflict,Frege introduces‘≡’in §8 and, thus, circumstances with names as constituents. Tothe same end, in“On Sense and Denotation,”Frege introduces senses andThoughts and abandons both ‘≡’ and circumstances. He solves what we call theCo-instantiation problem, and disregards, but does not solve, the Name problem. (shrink)

We are living in an algorithmic age where mathematics and computer science are coming together in powerful new ways to influence, shape and guide our behaviour and the governance of our societies. As these algorithmic governance structures proliferate, it is vital that we ensure their effectiveness and legitimacy. That is, we need to ensure that they are an effective means for achieving a legitimate policy goal that are also procedurally fair, open and unbiased. But how can we ensure that algorithmic (...) governance structures are both? This article shares the results of a collective intelligence workshop that addressed exactly this question. The workshop brought together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to consider barriers to legitimate and effective algorithmic governance and the research methods needed to address the nature and impact of specific barriers. An interactive management workshop technique was used to harness the collective intelligence of this multidisciplinary group. This method enabled participants to produce a framework and research agenda for those who are concerned about algorithmic governance. We outline this research agenda below, providing a detailed map of key research themes, questions and methods that our workshop felt ought to be pursued. This builds upon existing work on research agendas for critical algorithm studies in a unique way through the method of collective intelligence. (shrink)