The major normative recommendations in the literature on food risk communication can be summarized in the form of seven practical principles for such communication: (1) Be honest and open. (2) Disclose incentives and conflicts of interest. (3) Take all available relevant knowledge into consideration. (4) When possible, quantify risks. (5) Describe and explain uncertainties. (6) Take all the public's concerns into account. (7) Take the rights of individuals and groups seriously. We show that each of these proposed principles can be (...) justified both in terms of more fundamental ethical principles and instrumentally in terms of the communicating agent's selfinterest. The mechanisms of this concordance of justifications are discussed. It is argued that the concordance is specific for areas such as food risks in which agents such as companies and public authorities are highly dependent on the public's trust and confidence. The implications of these findings both for moral philosophy and for practical food risk communication are discussed. (shrink)

Digital transformation and “artificial intelligence (AI)”—which can more adequately be called “data-based systems (DS)”—comprise ethical opportunities and risks. Therefore, it is necessary to identify precisely ethical opportunities and risks in order to be able to benefit sustainably from the opportunities and to master the risks. The UN General Assembly has recently adopted a resolution aiming for ‘safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems’. It is now urgent to implement and build on the UN General Assembly Resolution. Allowing humans and the (...) planet to flourish sustainably in peace and guaranteeing globally that human dignity is respected not only offline but also online, in the digital sphere, and in the domain of DS, requires two policy measures: (1) human rights-based data-based systems (HRBDS): HRBDS means that human rights serve as the basis of digital transformation and DS. (2) International Data-Based Systems Agency (IDA): IDA should be established at the UN as a platform for cooperation in the field of digital transformation and DS, fostering human rights, security, and peaceful uses of DS, as well as a global supervisory institution and regulatory authority in digital transformation and DS. The establishment of IDA is realistic because humanity has already shown in its past that we are able to not always “blindly” pursue the technically possible but also to limit ourselves to what is technically feasible when humanity and the planet are at stake. For instance, humans researched the field of nuclear technology, developed the atomic bomb, and detonated it several times. Nonetheless, the same humans limited research and development in the field of nuclear technology to prevent even worse consequences by establishing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the UN. (shrink)

Aristotle’s restriction of intellect to humans raised the problem of how animals are able to react to and learn from their environment if they lack the ability to recognize classes of objects, an ability supposedly conferred by intellect. Aristotle’s delineation of the internal senses into the common sense, imagination, and memory did not include a locus for the cleverness or prudence that he found animals to possess in varying degrees. Avicenna supplemented Aristotle’s internal senses by adding the estimative power, which (...) allowed animals to recognize the value of a perceived object in terms of its potential benefit or harm. Albert the Great, who showed more interest than most medieval philosophers in the problem of animal behavior, adopted the estimative power and began his inquiry by considering pygmies, which he judged to be the highest form of animal. This inquiry led Albert to weaken but in the end to retain the distinction based on intellectual abilities between animals and humans. (shrink)

This is a study of how self-transformation may occur through the practice of reframing one's personal experience in terms of a canonical language: that is, a system of symbols that purports to explain something about human beings and the universe they live in. The Christian conversion narrative is used as the primary example here, but the approach used in this book also illuminates other practices such as psychotherapy in which people deal with emotional conflict through language.

Woolcock, Peter G A topic much exercising the minds of religious believers at the moment is whether or not science and religion are natural enemies. The Religion and Ethics program on the ABC's Radio National, for example, has recently provided access on its website to a series of articles on the topic, with titles such as Science or Naturalism? The Contradictions of Richard Dawkins; Christianity and the Rise of Western Science; Did Darwin Defeat God?; Does Science Make Belief in (...) God Obsolete?; Does Science Preclude Belief in Science; Genesis Created Science; Lawrence Krauss's Deficiencies; Theology Must Save Science from Naturalism, just to mention a few. As these titles suggest, the Religion and Ethics program is clearly on a mission to defend religion against the onslaught of philosophical materialism, presenting (as it does) only articles that argue either for the compatibility of science and religion or for the dependence of science on religion. My aim here is to redress the balance. Yes, science and religion are best understood as natural enemies. (shrink)

In recent years, observational techniques at cosmological distances have been sufficiently improved that cosmology has become an empirical science, rather than a field for unchecked speculation. There remains the fact that its object, the whole universe, exists only once; hence, we are unable to separate “general” features from particular aspects of “our” universe. This might not be a serious drawback if we were justified in the belief that presently accepted laws of nature remain valid on the cosmological scale. In the (...) author's opinion, however, there are grounds for doubting that belief. The three arguments presented are (1) the possibility that apparent constants of nature may, during cosmological times, turn out to vary (Dirac conjecture); (2) the effective breakdown of the principle of relativity caused by the effects of the cosmological environment on local experiments; and (3) the fact that present theory leads to field singularities at the early stages of the expanding universe, which might be a signal that currently accepted theoretical concepts are inadequate for an understanding of highly condensed matter. (shrink)

A sceptical response to the idea that wisdom may be turned into a new academic subject or science, and to the idea that to do so would be in any way be wise. .

Woolcock, Peter G Review of: Social humanism: A new metaphysics, by Brian Ellis, Routledge, New York, 2012. $120.

A modern version of Lewis’s theory of valency is presented. This takes account of the results of quantum–mechanical calculations on molecules. Topics covered are polar covalent bonds, hypervalency, coordinate bonds, nonintegral bonds, oxo-anions, variable valency among transition elements, and nonclassical compounds. A distinction is drawn between the valence shell of an atom and the Lewis shell. The concept of a fractional bond pair is presented.

We survey the theory of Mucnik and Medvedev degrees of subsets of $^{\omega}{\omega}$with particular attention to the degrees of $\Pi_{1}^{0}$ subsets of $^{\omega}2$. Sections 1-6 present the major definitions and results in a uniform notation. Sections 7-6 present proofs, some more complete than others, of the major results of the subject together with much of the required background material.

The British National Lottery has now been running for almost three years and it arouses social and ethical misgivings in several quarters, whether in its contribution to the British gambling scene or in the size and distribution of its prizes or in its contributions to the good causes which it was introduced to benefit. Bringing wide experience and an expert eye to analyse and comment on the lottery, Dr Moore, DSc PhD FIA, is Emeritus Professor of Decision Sciences at London (...) Business School, Sussex Place, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA. (shrink)

The mole is a difficult concept. Surveys have shown that even many teachers do not have a proper understanding of it. To help to meet this problem, the SI/IUPAC formulation of the mole is carefully presented and explained. New SI proposals are also briefly discussed.

From Thursday to Saturday, October 4 to 6, 1984, at Russell Sage College in Albany, New York, upwards of 75 members of the Society and friends of Hegel attended the meeting which was devoted to Hegel’s philosophy of spirit, or to the substance and topics presented in their mature form in Part III of the Encyclopedia.

In this important book Peter G. Brown seeks to chart a new future for the species that share the earth. He offers an innovative, yet historically grounded, argument for human rights to bodily integrity; to moral, religious, and political choice; and to subsistence that all persons owe each other irrespective of nationality. He also argues that we have direct moral obligations to non-humans - he calls this 'respect for the commonwealth of life'. Honouring these obligations requires a thorough regrounding (...) of human institutions. Through a series of careful arguments the reader is shown: *How we could reconceptualise economics from a growth orientation to an economics of stewardship as a moral end.*How governments could be thought of as trustees to protect human rights and commonwealth of life.*How civil society could be organised and property rights reconceptualised in service of these objectives.The book concludes with the argument that traditional prerogatives of nation states need to be transparent to enforceable international standards concerning human rights and the commonwealth of life, and offers a practical agenda for beginning this fundamental reorientation. (shrink)

The basis of the Periodic Table is discussed. Electronic configuration recurs in only 21 out of the 32 groups. A better basis is derived by considering the highest classical valency (v) exhibited by an element and a new measure, the highest valency in carbonyl compounds (v*). This leads to a table based on the number of outer electrons possessed by an atom (N) and the number of electrons required for it to achieve an inert (noble) gas configuration (N*). Periodicity of (...) these is nearly complete. The new basis helps to settle the question of the best form of table and related issues. (shrink)

Thirty-two years ago W. V. Quine proposed a definition of 'logical truth' that has been widely repeated and reprinted. Quine himself seems to have recognized that this definition is wrong in detail; in section 1 we eliminate this fault. What has perhaps been less widely observed is that, in abandoning the model-theoretic account of logical truth in favor of a "substitutional" account, Quine's definition swells the ranks of the logical truths and makes the classification of a sentence as a logical (...) truth dependent both on the interpretation of its extralogical words and on the extralogical vocabulary available in the language. (shrink)

Peter G. Sobol - Pierre Gassendi's Philosophy and Science: Atomism for Empiricists - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 161-162 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Peter G. Sobol Mcfarland, Wisconsin Saul Fisher. Pierre Gassendi's Philosophy and Science: Atomism for Empiricists. Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 131. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2005. Pp. xxviii + 436. Cloth, $172.50. In 1971, Richard S. Westfall described Pierre Gassendi as "the original scissors and (...) paste man": an irrepressibly eclectic compiler whose Syntagma Philosophicum was published only after his death "when the author was finally beyond the possibility of adding and patching." Westfall here echoes Voltaire and Alexandre Koyré who, as quoted in Saul Fisher's.. (shrink)

A new way of understanding entropy as a macroscopic property is presented. This is based on the fact that heat flows from a hot body to a cold one even when the hot one is smaller and has less energy. A quantity that determines the direction of flow is shown to be the increment of heat gained divided by the absolute temperature. The same quantity is shown to determine the direction of other processes taking place in isolated systems provided that (...) q is determined by the state of the system. Entropy emerges as the potent energy of a system [Σ], the potency being determined by 1/T. This is shown to tie in with the statistical mechanical interpretation of entropy. The treatment is shorter than the traditional one based on heat engines. (shrink)

The view that metaphysics is a waste of time appears to be gaining in popularity. It is held openly by many scientists and even many philosophers. I argue here that this is a consequence of the way metaphysics is usually done and the futility of a certain approach to it, and not a reason to suppose there is no useful knowledge to be acquired from its study. -/- .

There is a widespread view that Buddhist philosophy embodies logical contradictions such that there would be 'true' contradictions, This article explains that this is not the case and that Buddhist philosophy, more generally the Perennial philosophy, denies all contradictions for the sake of a doctrine of Unity.

Some time ago, in an article for the Journal of Consciousness Studies, David Chalmers challenged his peers to identify the ingredient missing from our current theories of consciousness, the absence of which prevents us from solving the 'hard' problem and forces us to make do with nonreductive theories. Here I respond to this challenge. I suggest that consciousness is a metaphysical problem and as such can be solved only within a global metaphysical theory. Such a theory would look very like (...) the information theory proposed by Chalmers, but with the addition of an extra phenomenon that would allow it to become fundamental. (shrink)

This study identifies and describes the values espoused by the 62 companies that have consistently appeared on the “Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For” list. We identify 24 separate values and offer an analysis of the keywords and phrases used to promote them. We confirm that these values fall within the categories of four well-accepted theoretical frameworks of corporate values and culture. We then provide evidence for three underlying dimensions transcending all four models. They are values that guide relationships (...) and self-regulation; values that describe desired outcomes and performance; and values that inform learning and change. Next, we present the results of a qualitative study describing how these companies put their values into practice. Finally, using publicly available information from the Great Place to Work® Institute, we show how the espoused values we identified relate to: what employees report about their experiences and company self-descriptions. Our findings highlight connections between leadership and values and they offer guidance to those seeking to understand keys to values-based cultures. (shrink)

For much of the 20th century, vulnerability to deprivations of health has often been defined by geographical and economic factors. Those in wealthy, usually ‘Northern’ and ‘Western’, parts of the world have benefited from infrastructures, and accidents of geography and climate, which insulate them from many serious threats to health. Conversely, poorer people are typically exposed to more threats to health, and have lesser access to the infrastructures needed to safeguard them against the worst consequences of such exposure. However, in (...) recent years the increasingly globalized nature of the world’s economy, society and culture, combined with anthropogenic climate change and the evolution of antibiotic resistance, has begun to shift the boundaries that previously defined the categories of person threatened by many exogenous threats to health. In doing so, these factors expose both new and forgotten similarities between persons, and highlight the need for global cooperative responses to the existential threats posed by climate change and the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. In this article, we argue that these emerging health threats, in demonstrating the similarities that exist between even distant persons, provides a catalyst for global solidarity, which justifies, and provides motivation for, the establishment of solidaristic, cooperative global health infrastructures. (shrink)

There is no question about the innovation force and the economic potential of blockchain technology. As the basis for new currencies, financial services, and smart contracts, blockchain technology can be seen as the fifth disruptive computing paradigm, after mainframes, personal computers, the Internet, and mobile devices. However, there are questions about its ethical implications, which have the potential to also impact the economic success of blockchain technology. This article aims to provide ethical guidance on blockchain technology. In order to reach (...) this goal, the focus of the ethical analysis will first concentrate on the unique characteristics of blockchain technology compared to other technology-based innovations. The unique nucleus of blockchain technology can be defined as a move from the trust in people to a trust in math, as a move from an internet of information to an internet of value, or—as I would propose—a shift from an intermediated network to an immediate network. Second, the ethical opportunities (e.g., transparency, participation, global access to services) and risks (e.g., ecological impact, lack of legal monitoring and enforcement) associated with this unique nucleus of blockchain technology will be discussed. Third, an outlook on possible concrete solutions will be provided. (shrink)

CHAPTER A Phenomenological Introduction to the Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness Peter G. Grossenbacher National Institute of Mental Health What is ...

The difficulties of philosophy reflects the nature of reality. Here it is proposed that the inability of scholastic philosophers to solve philosophical problems is a clear indication that neither philosophy nor reality is as complicated as they believe, but that its conceptual simplification cannot be achieved when we reject nondualism and endorse extreme and partial world-theories.

More than thirty-five years ago, a longitudinal study was established to research the health and well-being of older people living in an English city. Self and Meaning in the Lives of Older People provides a unique set of portraits of forty members of this group who were interviewed in depth from their later seventies onwards. Focusing on sense of self-esteem and, especially, of continued meaning in life following the loss of a spouse and onset of frailty, this book sensitively illustrates (...) these persons' efforts to maintain independence, to continue to have a sense of belonging and to contribute to the lives of others. It examines both the psychological and the social resources needed to flourish in later life and draws attention to this generation's ability to benefit from strong family support and from belonging to a faith community. In conclusion, it questions whether future generations will be as resilient. (shrink)