This book offers a unique synthesis of past and current work on the structure, meaning, and use of negation and negative expressions, a topic that has engaged thinkers from Aristotle and the Buddha to Freud and Chomsky. Horn's masterful study melds a review of scholarship in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics with original research, providing a full picture of negation in natural language and thought; this new edition adds a comprehensive preface and bibliography, surveying research since the book's original publication.

The ethics of the Flexibility In duty hour Requirements for Surgical Trainees trial have been vehemently debated. Views on the ethics of the FIRST trial range from it being completely unethical to wholly unproblematic. The FIRST trial illustrates the complex ethical challenges posed by cluster randomised trials of policy interventions involving healthcare professionals. In what follows, we have three objectives. First, we critically review the FIRST trial controversy, finding that commentators have failed to sufficiently identify and address many of the (...) relevant ethical issues. The 2012 Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials provides researchers and research ethics committees with specific guidance for the ethical design and conduct of CRTs. Second, we aim to demonstrate how the Ottawa Statement provides much-needed clarity to the ethical issues in the FIRST trial, including: research participant identification; consent requirements; gatekeeper roles; benefit-harm analysis and identification of vulnerable participants. We nonetheless also find that the FIRST trial raises ethical issues not adequately addressed by the Ottawa Statement. Hence, third and finally, we raise important questions requiring further ethical analysis and guidance, including: Does clinical equipoise apply to policy interventions with little or no evidence-base? Do healthcare providers have an obligation to participate in research? Does the power-differential in certain healthcare settings render healthcare providers vulnerable to duress and coercion to participant in research? If so, what safeguards might be implemented to protect providers, while allowing important research to proceed? (shrink)

Pragmatic comparative effectiveness randomized controlled trials evaluate the effectiveness of one interventions under real-world clinical conditions. The results of ceRCTs are often directly generalizable to everyday clinical practice, providing information critical to decision-making by patients, clinicians, and healthcare policymakers. The PRECIS-2 framework identifies nine domains that serve to score a trial on a continuum between very explanatory to very pragmatic. According to the framework, pragmatic trials may have one or more of the following features: there are fewer eligibility criteria for (...) participants, in an... (shrink)

This article answers the question, How can we build capacity for the development of a critical democratic citizenry? This is achieved by generally describing postmodern society, and by introducing the idea of evolutionary consciousness as the next step in meeting the needs of a postmodern society. Secondly, the current nature of education is described, which is followed by a redefinition of education within the context of a critical ideal. The discussion concludes with a presentation of the pragmatics of building capacity (...) for the development of a critical democratic citizenry through a redefinition of education. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

This volume provides new insights on lying and (intentionally) misleading in and out of the courtroom, a timely topic for scholarship and society. Not all deceptive statements are lies; not every lie under oath amounts to perjury--but what are the relevant criteria? Taxonomies of falsehood based on illocutionary force, utterance context and speakers' intentions have been debated by linguists, moral philosophers, social psychologists and cognitive scientists. Legal scholars have examined the boundary between actual perjury and garden-variety lies. The fourteen previously (...) unpublished essays in this book apply theoretical and empirical tools to delineate the landscape of falsehood, half-truth, perjury, and verbal manipulation, including puffery, bluffing, and bullshit. The papers in this collection address conceptual and ethical aspects of lying vs. misleading and the correlation of this opposition with the Gricean pragmatic distinction between what is said and what is implicated. The questions of truth and lies addressed in this volume have long engaged the attention of scholars in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, organizational research, and the law, and researchers from all these fields will find this book of interest. (shrink)

This volume provides new insights on lying and (intentionally) misleading in and out of the courtroom, a timely topic for scholarship and society. Not all deceptive statements are lies; not every lie under oath amounts to perjury---but what are the relevant criteria? Taxonomies of falsehood based on illocutionary force, utterance context and speakers' intentions have been debated by linguists, moral philosophers, social psychologists and cognitive scientists. Legal scholars have examined the boundary between actual perjury and garden-variety lies. The fourteen previously (...) unpublished essays in this book apply theoretical and empirical tools to delineate the landscape of falsehood, half-truth, perjury, and verbal manipulation, including puffery, bluffing, and bullshit. The papers in this collection address conceptual and ethical aspects of lying vs. misleading and the correlation of this opposition with the Gricean pragmatic distinction between what is said and what is implicated. The questions of truth and lies addressed in this volume have long engaged the attention of scholars in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, organizational research, and the law, and researchers from all these fields will find this book of interest. (shrink)

Aristotle's explanation of the “active intellect” inDe AnimaIII, 5 constitutes a problem for us simply because we have to take this philosopher so seriously. If he were a writer given to poetic lapses or mythical adornments to his work we could consider dismissing the whole chapter as unessential. However, we know that Aristotle does not write unessential chapters, and that he is invariably engaged in an attempt to explain his subject fully and systematically, neither adding to it nor leaving anything (...) out.TheDe Anima, for example, is an attempt to describe the characteristics of living things, in an ascending order from the basic functions of vegetables to the most abstract thinking by human beings. The activities of nutrition, sensation, common sense, imagination, and movement are presented in Book II and in the early part of Book III. (shrink)

Quality and service improvement (QSI) research employs a broad range of methods to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery. QSI research differs from traditional healthcare research and poses unique ethical questions. Since QSI research aims to generate knowledge to enhance quality improvement efforts, should it be considered research for regulatory purposes? Is review by a research ethics committee required? Should healthcare providers be considered research participants? If participation in QSI research entails no more than minimal risk, is consent required? The (...) lack of consensus on answers to these questions highlights the need for ethical guidance. Three distinct approaches to classifying QSI research in accordance with existing ethical principles and regulations can be found in the literature. In the first approach, QSI research is viewed as distinct from other types of healthcare research and does not require regulation. In the second approach, QSI research falls within regulatory guidelines but is exempt from research ethics committee review. In the third approach, QSI research is deemed to be part of the learning healthcare system and, as such, is subject to a different set of ethical principles entirely. In this paper, we critically assess each of these views. While none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory, we argue that use of the ethical principles governing research provides the best means of addressing the numerous questions posed by QSI research. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

Background Pragmatic randomized controlled trials are designed to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in real-world clinical conditions. However, these studies raise ethical issues for researchers and regulators. Our objective is to identify a list of key ethical issues in pragmatic RCTs and highlight gaps in the ethics literature. Methods We conducted a scoping review of articles addressing ethical aspects of pragmatic RCTs. After applying the search strategy and eligibility criteria, 36 articles were included and reviewed using content analysis. Results Our (...) review identified four major themes: 1) the research-practice distinction; 2) the need for consent; 3) elements that must be disclosed in the consent process; and 4) appropriate oversight by research ethics committees. 1) Most authors reject the need for a research-practice distinction in pragmatic RCTs. They argue that the distinction rests on the presumptions that research participation offers patients less benefit and greater risk than clinical practice, but neither is true in the case of pragmatic RCTs. 2) Most authors further conclude that pragmatic RCTs may proceed without informed consent or with simplified consent procedures when risks are low and consent is infeasible. 3) Authors who endorse the need for consent assert that information need only be disclosed when research participation poses incremental risks compared to clinical practice. Authors disagree as to whether randomization must be disclosed. 4) Finally, all authors view regulatory oversight as burdensome and a practical impediment to the conduct of pragmatic RCTs, and argue that oversight procedures ought to be streamlined when risks to participants are low. Conclusion The current ethical discussion is framed by the assumption that the function of research oversight is to protect participants from risk. As pragmatic RCTs commonly involve usual care interventions, the risks may be minimal. This leads many to reject the research-practice distinction and question the need for informed consent. But the function of oversight should be understood broadly as protecting the liberty and welfare interest of participants and promoting public trust in research. This understanding, we suggest, will focus discussion on questions about appropriate ethical review for pragmatic RCTs. (shrink)

Pragmatic randomized controlled trials are designed to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in real-world clinical conditions. However, these studies raise ethical issues for researchers and regulators. Our objective is to identify a list of key ethical issues in pragmatic RCTs and highlight gaps in the ethics literature. We conducted a scoping review of articles addressing ethical aspects of pragmatic RCTs. After applying the search strategy and eligibility criteria, 36 articles were included and reviewed using content analysis. Our review identified four (...) major themes: 1) the research-practice distinction; 2) the need for consent; 3) elements that must be disclosed in the consent process; and 4) appropriate oversight by research ethics committees. 1) Most authors reject the need for a research-practice distinction in pragmatic RCTs. They argue that the distinction rests on the presumptions that research participation offers patients less benefit and greater risk than clinical practice, but neither is true in the case of pragmatic RCTs. 2) Most authors further conclude that pragmatic RCTs may proceed without informed consent or with simplified consent procedures when risks are low and consent is infeasible. 3) Authors who endorse the need for consent assert that information need only be disclosed when research participation poses incremental risks compared to clinical practice. Authors disagree as to whether randomization must be disclosed. 4) Finally, all authors view regulatory oversight as burdensome and a practical impediment to the conduct of pragmatic RCTs, and argue that oversight procedures ought to be streamlined when risks to participants are low. The current ethical discussion is framed by the assumption that the function of research oversight is to protect participants from risk. As pragmatic RCTs commonly involve usual care interventions, the risks may be minimal. This leads many to reject the research-practice distinction and question the need for informed consent. But the function of oversight should be understood broadly as protecting the liberty and welfare interest of participants and promoting public trust in research. This understanding, we suggest, will focus discussion on questions about appropriate ethical review for pragmatic RCTs. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the importance that real patients attach to their right to withdraw from an on-going feasibility randomised trial (RCT) evaluating types and timings of breast reconstruction (two parallel trials) following mastectomy for breast cancer. Our results show that, while some respondents appreciated that exercising the right to withdraw would defeat the scientific objective of the trial, some patients with a surgical preference consented only given the knowledge they could withdraw if they were not (...) allocated to their preferred treatment. (shrink)

We present a mathematical approach to defeasible reasoning based on arguments. This approach integrates the notion of specificity introduced by Poole and the theory of warrant presented by Pollock. The main contribution of this paper is a precise, well-defined system which exhibits correct behavior when applied to the benchmark examples in the literature. It aims for usability rather than novelty. We prove that an order relation can be introduced among equivalence classes of arguments under the equi-specificity relation. We also prove (...) a theorem that ensures the termination of the process of finding the justified facts. Two more lemmas define a reduced search space for checking specificity. In order to implement the theoretical ideas, the language is restricted to Horn clauses for the evidential context. The language used to represent defeasible rules has been restricted in a similar way. The authors intend this work to unify the various existing approaches to argument-based defeasible reasoning. (shrink)

In his classic paper on social costs, social scientist R. H. Coase has argued that in a world without transaction costs in the "buying and selling," of social benefits and damages, resource allocation would be unaffected by a change in the apportioning of liabilities. That is, whether or not a social nuisance-causer must pay damages to those to whom he is a nuisance, will not, in an efficient economy with no transaction costs, have any effect on resource allocation. In this (...) paper, the author intends to show that there is a certain class of nuisances that are not amenable to Coasean solutions even if one grants Coase 's intuitive notions of prudence and rationality, it is considered these situations only in the short term, and considerations of equity are ignored. This class of nuisances comprises certain of those instances in which the interests of a tenant are not identical with those of his landlord. The article also purposes to shed light on the merits of an "unearned increment" tax on the value of land. (shrink)

Since Paul and Zipf, it has become evident that lexical choice and meaning change are largely guided by pragmatic principles. Two central interacting principles are, first, the least-effort tendency to reduce expression and, second, the communicative requirements on sufficiency of information. Descendants of this opposition include Grice’s bipartite Maxim of Quantity grounded within a general theory of rationality and cooperation, the Q and R Principles, and the interplay of effort and effect within Relevance Theory. This chapter motivates a constraint on (...) lexicalization, surveys the role of the R principle in motivating the Division of Pragmatic Labour, syntagmatic reduction, narrowing of meaning, euphemism, and negative strengthening, and provides pragmatic motivation for the lexical clone, un-noun, and un-verb constructions, and for the complementary Avoid Synonymy and Avoid Homonymy principles. (shrink)

For a theist, a man's duty is to conform to the announced will of God. Yet a theist who makes this claim about duty is faced with a traditional dilemma first stated in Plato's Euthyphro—are actions which are obligatory, obligatory because God makes them so, or does God urge us to do them because they are obligatory anyway? To take the first horn of this dilemma is to claim that God can of his free choice make any action obligatory or (...) non-obligatory. The critic claims that the theist cannot take this horn, for God cannot make bad actions good. (shrink)

I would like to present the details of an actual case from my own experience over which I, along with the family, have agonized. I think this case brings into focus some of the unique issues in perinatal medicine where multiple patients, some real and some potential, can enter into a single decision. I hope that through this presentation others may gain insight into the complexities of applied ethics in perinatal medicine.

Conversation, talk, the communicative process, can be compared to the symphonic play of a piece of music. There is an orchestra, the musicians, whose tones and notes must flow, complement and harmonize with one another. There is a main theme. As the music builds variations on the theme are played, and new themes and subthemes are introduced. The basinett responds to the strings, the bass emphasizes the mood of the violin, while the french horn adds a new melody. The subtlety (...) and evenness of flow, the seeming simplicity of the piece, the rich interleaving of subdevelopments, variations, tangents, and recapitulations, are what make a piece of music great.Coherent communication is much the same. It looks easy. It flows. It seems effortless. In reality, of course, it is rich and complex, in both form and content. As in music, conversants may begin a conversation slowly, tentatively, with some simple (or complex) topic in mind. Slowly the momentum builds, the connections surface, and the themes become defined. As in music, these themes are then elaborated upon in various ways. Topic elaborations often spawn their own variations. New themes and subthemes are introduced. All the while, as in music, original themes reappear and are interwoven with the new ones. The twists and turns of the conversation seem to occur effortlessly.In music, there is usually one composer in control of which instrument plays next; one composer who is in charge of what the instrument will say. There is a single coordinator of theme introductions, developments, variations, and interweavings. The composition is done off-line and usually involves editing and re-editing for flaws. In discourse, however, we have on-line development with multiple parties responsible for flow coordination. All parties have to organize their own turns, themes, and variations, in addition to their being able to integrate these items into co-conversants'.In their book, “Understanding Computers and Cognition,” Winograd and Flores (1987) cite the following from Gadamer (Winograd and Flores, 1987, p. 32):It is not so much our judgments as it is our prejudices that constitute our being ... the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something — whereby what we encounter says something to us. (Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 1976, p. 9). (shrink)

Given a structure for a first-order language L, two objects of its domain can be indiscernible relative to the properties expressible in L, without using the equality symbol, and without actually being the same. It is this relation that interests us in this paper. It is called Leibniz equality. In the paper we study systematically the problem of its definibility mainly for classes of structures that are the models of some equality-free universal Horn class in an infinitary language Lκκ, where (...) κ is an infinite regular cardinal. (shrink)

Background: The traditional approach to resolving ethics concerns may not address underlying organisational issues involved in the evolution of these concerns. This represents a missed opportunity to improve quality of care “upstream”. The purpose of this study was to understand better which organisational issues may contribute to ethics concerns. Methods: Directed content analysis was used to review ethics consultation notes from an academic children’s hospital from 1996 to 2006 (N = 71). The analysis utilised 18 categories of organisational issues derived (...) and modified from published quality improvement protocols. Results: Organisational issues were identified in 68 of the 71 (96%) ethics consult notes across a range of patient settings and reasons for consultation. Thirteen of the 18 categories of organisational issues were identified and there was a median of two organisational issues per consult note. The most frequently identified organisational issues were informal organisational culture (eg, collective practices and approaches to situations with ethical dimensions that are not guided by policy), policies and procedures (eg, staff knows policy and/or procedural guidelines for an ethical concern but do not follow it) and communication (eg, communication about critical information, orders, or hand-offs repeatedly does not occur among services). Conclusions: Organisational issues contribute to ethical concerns that result in clinical ethics consults. Identifying and addressing organisational issues such as informal culture and communication may help decrease the recurrence of future similar ethics concerns. (shrink)

In this article, we consider two independently appealing theories—the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience—and argue that at least one is false. The Growing-Block view is a theory about the nature of time. It says that past and present things exist, while future things do not, and the passage of time consists in new things coming into existence. Humean Supervenience is a theory about the nature of entities like laws, nomological possibility, counterfactuals, dispositions, causation, and chance. It says that none of (...) these entities are fundamental, since if they were, this would entail the existence of irreducible necessary connections between matters of fact. Instead, these entities supervene on a fundamental, non-nomological ‘Humean mosaic’ of property instances at spacetime points. We will further explain and motivate the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience in Sects. 2 and 3, but first, we turn to our master argument. (shrink)

The author's motivation for constructing the calculi of this paper\nis so that time and tense can be "discussed together in the same\nlanguage" (p. 282). Two types of enriched propositional caluli for\ntense logic are considered, both containing ordinary propositional\nvariables for which any proposition may be substituted. One type\nalso contains "clock-propositional" variables, a,b,c, etc., for\nwhich only clock-propositional variables may be substituted and that\ncorrespond to instants or moments in the semantics. The other type\nalso contains "history-propositional" variables, u,v,w, etc., for\nwhich only history-propositional variables may (...) be substituted and\nthat correspond to maximally linearly ordered subsets of instants.\nThis second type is for tense logics in which time is not linear\nand where at any moment there may exist alternative future courses\nof events. Quantifiers are included in both types but only for clock-\nand history-propositional variables. However, these quantifiers are\ngiven an essentially substitutional interpretation. In addition,\nbesides each clock-propositional variable being true at exactly one\ninstant, the semantics requires that for each instant there be at\nleast one clock-propositional variable true at that instant, which\nin effect amounts to having each instant of the model "denoted" in\nthe formalism by some clock-propositional variable. Thus it is not\nsurprising that quantification over clock-propositional variables\nturns out to have a "well behaved first-order semantics" (p. 284).\n{One axiom relating history- with clock-propositions seems to need\nrevision: CKTauTbuAUabUba. Since the clock-propositional variables\nmight be true at the same instant the consequent should include an\nalternative, namely, LCab.} Besides the standard truth-functional\nand tense operators G,H,F,P, the author includes L for "it is\nalways the case that". The model-theoretic earlier-than relation\nordering instants and the semantic truth-at (an instant) relation\nare formalized by Uab and Taα (for a wff α) which\nare defined respectively as LCbPa (whenever the clock-proposition\nb is the case the clock-proposition a was the case) and LCaα\n(α is the case whenever the clock-proposition a is the case).\nBecause the future tense operators are definable in terms of U\nand T and the latter are definable in terms of L and P, the\ndual of H, the author notes that his completeness proofs can be\nrestricted to L and H as primitive and with the future tense\noperators used for other interpretations, especially Prior, A.'s\nindeterminist "it will be the case that", where time is not linear.\nThe author concludes with some rather technical observations showing\nthat "in ordinary tense logics the instants are nonstandard elements\nof the models. This provides", according to the author, "a semantic\npressure to build the instants into tense logic, so that they will\nappear as standard elements in the models" (p. 283). (shrink)

Nigel Walker’s first principle of criminalization declares that ‘Prohibitions should not be included in the criminal law for the sole purpose of ensuring that breaches of them are visited with retributive punishment’. I argue that we should reject this principle, for ‘mala prohibita’ as well as for ‘mala in se’: conduct should be criminalized in order to ensure (as far as we reasonably can) that those who engage in it receive retributive punishment. In the course of the argument, I show (...) why we should not see the criminal law as consisting in ‘prohibitions’; I explain different species of mala prohibita, and show how their commission does involve genuine wrongdoing; and I show the importance of distinguishing the question of regulation from that of sanction. (shrink)

The fourth volume in the Criminalization series, this volume explores some of the most general principles and theories of criminalization. It includes not only philosophical work, but also historical, legal, and sociological investigations into criminalization, clarifying the state of the discipline today.

Larry Horn is justifiably famous for his work on the semantics of the English conjunction or and both its relationship to the formal logic truth functions ∨ and @ (“inclusive” and “exclusive” disjunction respectively1) and its relationship to the ways people employ or in natural discourse. These interests have been present since his 1972 dissertation, where he argued for a “scalar implicature-based” account of many of these relationships as opposed to a presuppositional account. They have surfaced in his “Greek Grice” (...) paper (Horn 1973) as well as in his Negation book (Horn 1989) and his recent “Border Wars” paper (Horn, forthcoming) where he defends the position that there are two types of implicatures at work here: Q- implicatures based on Grice’s first maxim of Quantity (“Say Enough”) and R-implicatures based on Grice’s second maxim of Quantity (“Don’t Say Too Much”). In a nutshell, the idea is that when a speaker employs a sentence with a disjunction, the meaning (that is, the semantic value) of the or is inclusive. With careful and judicious use of the Q- and R-implicatures, Larry’s theory allows the hearer (often) to infer that the speaker wanted to convey an exclusive disjunction. (shrink)

The third book in the Criminalization series examines the constitutionalization of criminal law. It considers how the criminal law is constituted through the political processes of the state; how the agents of the criminal law can be answerable to it themselves; and finally how the criminal law can be constituted as part of the international order.