According to relationism, for Alice to believe that some rabbits can speak is for Alice to stand in a relation to a further entity, some rabbits can speak. But what could this further entity possibly be? Higher-order metaphysics seems to offer a simple, natural answer. On this view (roughly put), expressions in different syntactic categories (for instance: names, predicates, sentences) in general denote entities in correspondingly different ontological categories. Alice's belief can thus be understood to relate her to a sui (...) generis entity denoted by "some rabbits can speak", belonging to a different ontological category than Alice herself. This straightforward account of the attitudes has historically been deemed so attractive that it was seen as providing an important motivation for higher-order metaphysics itself (Prior [1971]). But I argue that it is not as straightforward as it might seem, and in fact that propositional attitudes present a foundational challenge for higher-order metaphysics. (shrink)

A dual-language edition presenting Descartes's original Latin text of his greatest work, with a facing-page authoritative English translation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Unsettling AffairZohar LedermanAdults should not bury babies. Whenever that happens, you know something in the world has gone awry.Similarly to most Israeli Jews, I had to enlist in the military when I was 18. As part of my basic military training, I had to guard a certain settlement in the West Bank for two weeks. The drill was what we call “4–8”: four hours of guarding, eight hours (...) of rest. I was supposed to stand on my feet throughout my shift without eating, reading, or doing anything that might distract my attention. The terrorists are coming, we were told, and they are bloodthirsty. You can save lives! Well, not that of the terrorist, obviously.I did very little guarding during those two weeks. I was too busy coping with depression and loneliness, although I am only now aware of the latter. Desperately struggling to keep my head above water, I did what I could to survive. I read books, lots of books. I remember reading Nietzsche’s Zarathustra’s parable of one’s development in the desert. You start off as a lion, then a camel, and finally a child. If I could bestow only one piece of advice to my younger self, it would be to pack lightly, as even the camel’s back can only take so much. My laziness paid off. Nothing happened during that time. My older brother was kind enough to drive for an hour and bring me and my comrades the best candy Israel has to offer, and Coke. So I snacked, drank, and read.Two years later, I was called to the very same settlement as an emergency medical technician, just about to commence medical school. I was accompanied by my brother, who was then in paramedic school. We were in the midst of a family dinner in one of the too-many Jewish holidays. A terrorist attack occurred—a terrorist penetrated a house while everyone was asleep and shot everything that moved, including a male baby. Being only a couple of months old, his body occupied less than a quarter of the ambulance gurney. The upper part was bare; the lower part was wrapped in a diaper. There was no blood, no obvious visible signs of trauma on his body, except for a small hole in his right arm, just under the bicipital muscle, right where the brachial artery is.Talking about the ethics of futile care seems out of sync in such moments, even if I were aware then of the debate. When a baby is dying, you do everything to save him. Two fingers on the chest, 15 chest compressions, 2 breaths. That is what we had to do then, and that is what we did. Needless to say, the pale body did not respond. My brother and I drove the small body to the morgue. I could do nothing but stare at it throughout the 50-minute drive. There is something wrong in a world where this kind of thing happens. I promised the baby that I would fix it.I have not fixed it. But I have been trying.I am now an emergency medicine physician and a bioethicist. I have not been involved in other terrorist attacks since then, but I have seen my share. Some deaths feel natural and even due; others feel cruel, untimely, and unjust. The latter takes away a tiny bit of your soul and makes you question your role in the world. By being the best physician I can be, I hope to prevent future cruel, unjust, and untimely deaths, one person at a time. But there is only so much a physician can do.Similarly to others working in bioethics, my research spans several topics, from clinical to public health ethics. A few topics, however, are particularly close to my heart, and the Israeli occupation is one of them. The untimely death of the baby drives this passion.I could not save that baby. No one could. But as a physician and a privileged academic I can choose to channel my efforts to make them count towards preventing other cruel, untimely, and unjust deaths. Through... (shrink)

Many individuals who have mental disorders often report negative experiences of a distinctively epistemic sort, such as not being listened to, not being taken seriously, or not being considered credible because of their psychiatric conditions. In an attempt to articulate and interpret these reports we present Fricker’s concepts of epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007, p. 1) and then focus on testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice as it applies to individuals with mental disorders. The clinical impact of these concepts on quality of (...) care is discussed. Within the clinical domain, we contrast epistemic injustice with epistemic privilege and authority. We then argue that testimonial and hermeneutic injustices also affect individuals with mental disorders not only when communicating with their caregivers but also in the social context as they attempt to reintegrate into the general society and assume responsibilities as productive citizens. Following the trend of the movement of mental health care to the community, the testimonies of people with mental disorders should not be restricted to issues involving their own personal mental states. (shrink)

This paper argues that a lonely death is, by definition, a bad death and that society as a whole, as well as individuals in society are obligated to assure a certain degree of well‐being, flourishing, or care among and for fellow individuals. Individuals can then be said to have a right against dying a lonely death. Such a right has corresponding duties. The paper further specifies what such duties may entail based on what individuals may need on their deathbed, specifically (...) focusing on the need for human touch. Assuming that human touch might indeed be needed by some individuals in order to avoid a lonely death, the paper explores potential implications from a public health perspective, particularly during infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine relationships among religious coping styles, the experience of daily hassles, and resiliency. Through the use of a set of questionnaires, positive and negative religious coping styles are identified and analyzed in relation to a direct measure of resiliency, level of psychological distress, and level of daily hassles. Negative religious coping is positively related to psychological distress, while individuals who experience more daily hassles but use higher levels of positive religious coping have greater (...) resiliency than individuals who use higher levels of negative religious coping. Additionally, the combination of daily hassles, major life stressors, level of positive religious coping, and resiliency accounted for a significant proportion of the variability in psychological distress. Post hoc analyses removed questions of spirituality from the resiliency scale that could possibly overlap with the measure of religious coping. These exploratory analyses indicate that negative religious coping is negatively correlated with non-spiritual resiliency. Exploratory analyses also indicate that individuals who experience more daily hassles but use higher levels of positive religious coping do not have greater levels of non-spiritual resiliency than individuals who use negative religious coping. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Full Collection of Personal NarrativesZohar Lederman, Ola Ziara, Rachel Coghlan, Oksana Sulaieva, Anna Shcherbakova, Oleksandr Dudin, Vladyslava Kachkovska, Iryna Dudchenko, Anna Kovchun, Lyudmyla Prystupa, Yuliya Nogovitsyna, Ghaiath Hussein, Kathryn Fausch, P. P. Kyaw, Ayesha Ahmad, Richard W Sams II, Handreen Mohammed Saeed, Artem Riga, Ryan C. Maves, Elizabeth Dotsenko, Irina Deyneka, Eva V. Regel, and Vita Voloshchuk• An Unsettling Affair• How We Keep Caring While Walking Through Our (...) Pain• Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of Wartime• Why We Stay• A Semi-Personal Story from a Ukrainian NGO Professional (or a Semi-Professional Story from a Ukrainian Person) Living through the War• When Ethics Survives Where People Do Not: A Story From Darfur• Burma’s Healthcare Under Fire: My Experience as an Exiled Medical Professional• When a Conflict Collapses on a Child: An (Aborted) Medical Evacuation of a Hazara Toddler During the Kabul Airport Blast and the Taliban Takeover• The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of War• Providing Care to a Potential Aggressor: An Ethical Dilemma• One Surgeon’s Experience During Armed Conflict in Ukraine• The Limits of Our Obligations• A Liberating Breath• Soldiers of the Invisible Front: How Ukrainian Therapists Are Fighting for the Mental Health of the Nation Under Fire• Stories of Families with Chronically Ill Pediatric Patients during the War in UkraineCopyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Pedagogy is an inherently spatial practice. Implicit in much of the rhetoric of physical space designed for teaching and learning is an ontological position that assumes material space as distinct from human practice, often conceptualising space as causally impacting upon people’s behaviours. An alternative, and growing, perspective instead theorises infrastructure as a sociomaterial assemblage, an entanglement, with scholarly learning, teaching, institutional agendas, architectural intent, technology, staff, students, pedagogic outcomes, and built form all participants in an active symbiosis of becoming. This (...) article synthesises and works with spatial theories to elaborate on the emergent literature and illustrates a sociomaterial understanding through narratives of self and staff, teaching and learning in a university context. The terms sociomaterial, assemblage and entanglement allude to a relational ontology underlying spatial-social being-becoming. This understanding can support the realisation of the intent underlying transformations of material spaces to create collaborative and inclusive university environments, where staff and students can learn, belong, and become as part of a scholarly community. I argue that sociomaterial theory is valuable to make meaning of the inseparable mélange of people, place, technologies, interaction, discourse, feeling, value and power that is teaching and learning. (shrink)

Consider the sentence “Lois knows that Superman flies, but she doesn’t know that Clark flies”. In this paper we defend a Millian contextualist semantics for propositional attitude ascriptions, according to which ordinary uses of this sentence are true but involve a mid-sentence shift in context. Absent any constraints on the relevant parameters of context sensitivity, such a semantics would be untenable: it would undermine the good standing of systematic theorizing about the propositional attitudes, trivializing many of the central questions of (...) epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of action. In response to this problem, we prove a series of tenability results. We show that, given certain constraints on the parameters of context sensitivity, there is a broad class of principles of propositional attitude psychology whose good standing follows from corresponding claims about people’s mental representations. But these constraints also have some surprising consequences: they are jointly incompatible with coarse-grained theories of propositions, and they are in tension with a natural picture of how speakers and hearers coordinate on the interpretation of attitude ascriptions. In light of these consequences we explore different ways in which the contextualist picture might be developed, and argue that our preferred way compares favorably with Fregeanism and neo-Russellianism. (shrink)

Barker, Renae In recent weeks the issue of the religious content of Australian education has been hotly debated. In February The Age reported the latest development: principals in several Victorian state schools had ceased to offer special religious instruction in their schools.

If Place Spirituality is considered as an attachment experience to a geographic place or an “object,” for Muslims this concept can be explained by the sharia or Islamic law. However, in the highest level of experience as a Muslim, one may attach to God everywhere and at all times, without consideration of any place, time, or object. This experience can clearly be understood with the explanation of the three levels for Muslims: sharia or “conceptual knowledge,” tariqa or “experiential knowledge,” and (...) ma’rifa or “divine spiritual experiences” or “spiritual consciousness”. At the first and second levels, one may have a Place Spirituality, while at the third level the understanding of and connection to God might be enhanced, and the experience to connect to God can be everywhere, all the time. (shrink)

We provide a general argument against value incomparability, based on a new style of impossibility result. In particular, we show that, against plausible background assumptions, value incomparability creates an incompatibility between two very plausible principles for ranking lotteries: a weak "negative dominance" principle (to the effect that Lottery 1 can be better than Lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of Lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of Lottery 2) and a weak form of ex ante Pareto (to (...) the effect that, if Lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better prospect to some individuals than Lottery 2, and equally good prospects to everyone else, then Lottery 1 is better than Lottery 2). After spelling out our results, and the arguments based on them, we consider which principle the proponent of incomparability ought to reject. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, a body of research has developed examining the academic dishonesty of university and college students. While research has explored academic dishonesty amongst American criminal justice and policing students, no research has specifically focused on investigating the dynamics and correlates of academic dishonesty amongst Australian criminology students. This study drew upon data obtained from a survey of 79 undergraduate criminal justice and policing students studying at an Australian university. Overall, the results suggest that male gender, viewing (...) academic dishonesty as less serious and holding justifications for engaging in this type of behaviour were significant predictors of self-reported academic dishonesty. The findings suggest that more proactive strategies need to be implemented by universities to prevent student involvement in academic dishonesty. (shrink)

The current public debate about the role and place of religion in Australia's education system feels very much like deja vu. The Religious Freedom Review2 may be new, but we've been here before. Religious schools have regularly been at the forefront of the evolving relationship between the state and religion in Australia, from the creation and collapse of the Church and Schools Corporation in the 1830s, and the implementation of the dual board system in the 1840s, to the removal of (...) all government funding for religious schools in the 1860s-90s, and then its reintroduction in the 1960s and '70s.3 The current debate about the extent to which religious schools will continue to be permitted to discriminate against students, staff and contractors in line with the religious ethos of the school is therefore just the latest reiteration of an ongoing narrative. (shrink)

Virtues are standardly characterized as stable dispositions. A stable disposition implies that the virtuous actor must be disposed to act well in any domain required of them. For example, a politician is not virtuous if s/he is friendly in debate with an opponent, but hostile at home with a partner or children. Some recent virtue theoretic accounts focus on specific domains in which virtues can be exercised. I call these domain-variant accounts of virtue. This paper examines two such accounts: Randall (...) Curren and Charles Dorn’s (2018) discussion of virtue in the civic sphere, and Michael Brady’s (2018) account of virtues of vulnerability. I argue that being consistent with the standard characterization of virtue requires generalizing beyond a domain. I suggest four actions the authors could take to preserve their accounts while remaining consistent with the standard characterization. I also discuss how virtue education could be enhanced by domain-variant accounts. (shrink)

W.V. Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein have been compared with regard to the analytic/synthetic distinction, propositions known a priori or a posteriori, mathematical and logical necessity and naturalism, amongst other topics. Following Pieranna Garavaso and Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, I compare how Quine and Wittgenstein conceptualize a system of beliefs. Overlooked is Wittgenstein's description of the role of propositions and Quine's description of the location of propositions. The difference between the role and location signals a difference in how these frameworks conceptualize the boundary (...) between empirical and logical propositions, and in particular the justificatory status of propositions in the system. The Wittgensteinian framework accommodates a change in the justificatory status of propositions: propositions can play at one time a rule-like role and at another time an empirical role. For Quine, change in status refers to revising the proposition (or not) in the light of recalcitrant evidence. (shrink)

According to the structured theory of propositions, if two sentences express the same proposition, then they have the same syntactic structure, with corresponding syntactic constituents expressing the same entities. A number of philosophers have recently focused attention on a powerful argument against this theory, based on a result by Bertrand Russell, which shows that the theory of structured propositions is inconsistent in higher order-logic. This paper explores a response to this argument, which involves restricting the scope of the claim that (...) propositions are structured, so that it does not hold for all propositions whatsoever, but only for those which are expressible using closed sentences of a given formal language. We call this restricted principle Closed Structure, and show that it is consistent in classical higher-order logic. As a schematic principle, the strength of Closed Structure is dependent on the chosen language. For its consistency to be philosophically significant, it also needs to be consistent in every extension of the language which the theorist of structured propositions is apt to accept. But, we go on to show, Closed Structure is in fact inconsistent in a very natural extension of the standard language of higher-order logic, which adds resources for plural talk of propositions. We conclude that this particular strategy of restricting the scope of the claim that propositions are structured is not a compelling response to the argument based on Russell’s result, though we note that for some applications, for instance to propositional attitudes, a restricted thesis in the vicinity may hold some promise. (shrink)

An action is agentially perfect if and only if, if a person tries to perform it, they succeed, and, if a person performs it, they try to. We argue that trying itself is agentially perfect: if a person tries to try to do something, they try to do it; and, if a person tries to do something, they try to try to do it. We show how this claim sheds new light on the logical structure of intentional action, on the (...) question of whether basic actions are tryings, and on the notion of “options” in decision theory. On the way to these central ideas, we argue that a person can try to do something even if they believe it is impossible that they will succeed, that a person can try to do something even if they do not want to succeed, and that a person can try to do something even if they do not intend to succeed. (shrink)

Several theorists have observed that attitude reports have what we call “revisionist” uses. For example, even if Pete has never met Ann and has no idea that she exists, Jane can still say to Jim ‘Pete believes Ann can learn to play tennis in ten lessons’ if Pete believes all 6-year-olds can learn to play tennis in ten lessons and it is part of Jane and Jim’s background knowledge that Ann is a 6-year-old. Jane’s assertion seems acceptable because the claim (...) she reports Pete as believing is entailed by Pete’s beliefs if they are revised in light of Jane and Jim’s background knowledge. We provide a semantic theory of revisionist reports based on this idea. We observe that the admissible “revisions” are limited in a striking way. Jane cannot say ‘Pete thinks Ann is a 6-year-old and can play tennis in ten lessons’ in the same context that she can say ‘Pete believes Ann can learn to play tennis ten lessons’, even though this too follows from Jane and Jim’s background knowledge together with what Pete believes. Our theory predicts the infelicity of these latter reports. It also has the resources to predict the truth of “exported” attitude reports and casts the relationship between these reports and “singular thought” in a new light. We conclude by discussing how revisionist reports make trouble for a simplistic view of the connection between the relations expressed by attitude verbs in natural language and the relations of most interest to philosophers of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

Recent philosophical literature on epistemic harms has paid little attention to the difference between deliberate and non-deliberate harms. In this paper, I analyze the “Curare Case,” a case from the 1940’s in which patient testimony was disregarded by physicians. This case has been described as an instance of epistemic injustice. I problematize this description, arguing instead that the case shows an instance of “epistemic disadvantage.” I propose epistemic disadvantage indicates when harms result from warranted asymmetric relations that justifiably exclude individuals (...) from hermeneutical participation. Epistemic disadvantage categorizes harms that result from justifiable exclusions, are non-deliberate, and result from poor epistemic environments. This analysis brings out a meaningful difference between accidental and deliberate harms in communicative exchanges. (shrink)

Virtues are standardly characterized as stable dispositions. A stable disposition implies that the virtuous actor must be disposed to act well in any domain required of them. For example, a politician is not virtuous if s/he is friendly in debate with an opponent, but hostile at home with a partner or children. Some recent virtue theoretic accounts focus on specific domains in which virtues can be exercised. I call these domain-variant accounts of virtue. This paper examines two such accounts: Randall (...) Curren and Charles Dorn’s discussion of virtue in the civic sphere, and Michael Brady’s account of virtues of vulnerability. I argue that being consistent with the standard characterization of virtue requires generalizing beyond a domain. I suggest four actions the authors could take to preserve their accounts while remaining consistent with the standard characterization. I also discuss how virtue education could be enhanced by domain-variant accounts. (shrink)

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the leaders of the Genetics Society of America struggled to find an appropriate group response to Trofim Lysenko’s scientific claims and the Soviet treatment of geneticists. Although some of the leaders of the GSA favored a swift, critical response, procedural and ideological obstacles prevented them from following this path. Concerned about establishing scientific orthodoxy on one hand and politicizing the content of their science on the other, these American geneticists drew on democratic language (...) and concepts as they engaged in this political issue. The relatively weak statements that did emerge from the GSA attracted little attention in the scientific or popular press. The intensely politicized atmosphere of American science complicated the GSA’s task, as domestic concerns about protecting democracy were beginning to constrain academic freedom. In the context of American Cold War culture, Lysenko became just one example of the dangers the Cold War world presented to scientific freedom. (shrink)

We show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Frege’s distinction between sense and reference does not reconcile a classical logic of identity with apparent counterexamples to it involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi () attempts to respond to this objection by appeal to so-called extended preferences: very roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes agents’ preferences. This paper examines the prospects for defending the preference-satisfaction theory via this extended preferences program. We argue that making conceptual sense of extended preferences is less problematic than others have supposed, but (...) that even so extended preferences do not provide a promising way for the preference satisfaction theorist to make interpersonal well-being comparisons. Our main objection takes the form of a trilemma: depending on how the theory based on extended preferences is developed, either the result will be inconsistent with ordinary preference-satisfaction theory, or it will fail to recover sufficiently rich interpersonal well-being comparisons, or it will take on a number of other arguably odd and undesirable commitments. (shrink)

The naive theory of properties states that for every condition there is a property instantiated by exactly the things which satisfy that condition. The naive theory of properties is inconsistent in classical logic, but there are many ways to obtain consistent naive theories of properties in nonclassical logics. The naive theory of classes adds to the naive theory of properties an extensionality rule or axiom, which states roughly that if two classes have exactly the same members, they are identical. In (...) this paper we examine the prospects for obtaining a satisfactory naive theory of classes. We start from a result by Ross Brady, which demonstrates the consistency of something resembling a naive theory of classes. We generalize Brady’s result somewhat and extend it to a recent system developed by Andrew Bacon. All of the theories we prove consistent contain an extensionality rule or axiom. But we argue that given the background logics, the relevant extensionality principles are too weak. For example, in some of these theories, there are universal classes which are not declared coextensive. We elucidate some very modest demands on extensionality, designed to rule out this kind of pathology. But we close by proving that even these modest demands cannot be jointly satisfied. In light of this new impossibility result, the prospects for a naive theory of classes are bleak. (shrink)

An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that they cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi :434, 1953) attempts to solve this problem by appeal to people’s so-called extended preferences. This paper presents a new problem for the extended preferences program, related to Arrow’s celebrated impossibility theorem. We consider three ways in which the extended-preference theorist might avoid this problem, and recommend that she pursue one: developing aggregation rules that violate Arrow’s Independence of (...) Irrelevant Alternatives condition. (shrink)

One Health is a novel paradigm that recognizes that human and non-human animal health is interlinked through our shared environment. Increasingly prominent in public health responses to zoonoses, OH differs from traditional approaches to animal-borne infectious risks, because it also aims to promote the health of animals and ecological systems. Despite the widespread adoption of OH, culling remains a key component of institutional responses to the risks of zoonoses. Using the threats posed by highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses to human (...) and animal health, economic activity and food security as a case exemplar, we explore whether culling and other standard control measures for animal-borne infectious disease might be justified as part of OH approaches. Our central premise is that OH requires us to reformulate ‘health’ as universal good that is best shared across species boundaries such that human health and well-being are contingent upon identifying and meeting the relevant sets of human and non-human interests and shared dependencies. Our purpose is to further nascent discussions about the ethical dimensions of OH and begin to describe the principles around which a public health agenda that truly seeks to co-promote human and non-human health could potentially begin to be implemented. (shrink)

Many families of patients hold the view that it is their right to be present during a loved one's resuscitation, while the majority of patients also express the comfort and support they would feel by having them there. Currently, family presence is more commonly accepted in paediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation than adult CPR. Even though many guidelines are in favour of this practice and recognise potential benefits, healthcare professionals are hesitant to support adult family presence to the extent that paediatric family (...) presence is supported. However, in this paper, we suggest that the ethical case to justify family presence during paediatric resuscitation is weaker than the justification of family presence during adult resuscitation. We go on to support this claim using three main arguments that people use in clinical ethics to justify FPDR. These include scarcity of evidence documenting disruption, psychological benefits to family members following the incident and respect for patient autonomy. We demonstrate that these arguments actually apply more strongly to A-FPDR compared with P-FPDR, thereby questioning the common attitude of healthcare professionals of allowing the latter while mostly opposing A-FPDR. Importantly, we do not wish to suggest that P-FPDR should not be allowed. Rather, we suggest that since P-FPDR is commonly allowed, so should A-FPDR. This is because the aforementioned arguments that are used to justify FPDR in general actually make a stronger case for A-FPDR. (shrink)

Some people commonly know a proposition just in case they all know it, they all know that they all know it, they all know that they all know that they all know it, and so on. They commonly believe a proposition just in case they all believe it, they all believe that they all believe it, they all believe that they all believe that they all believe it, and so on. A long tradition in economic theory, theoretical computer science, linguistics (...) and philosophy has held that people have some approximation of common knowledge or common belief in a range of circumstances, for example, when they are looking at an object together, or when they have just discussed something explicitly in conversation. In this paper, I argue that people do not have any approximation of common knowledge or common belief in these circumstances. The argument suggests that people never have any approximation of common knowledge or common belief. (shrink)

This study examines the communication strategies employed by MeritCare's public relations staff during the fen-phen case. The ethic of significant choice was the primary lens for the study. The study revealed that MeritCare's public relations staff members believed they did, in fact, follow the ethic of significant choice. Specifically, they perceived that the biases held by staff helped maintain the public's safety as the primary issue during the fen-phen events. They also believed that their communication strategies allowed them to avoid (...) ambiguity and emotionalized language. Finally, the staff members felt that teaming with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota enabled them to influence the marketplace of ideas by capitalizing on the credible standing of Mayo Clinic. (shrink)

The impossibility theorem of Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini has been thought to demonstrate that standard state-space models cannot be used to represent unawareness. We first show that Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini do not establish this claim. We then distinguish three notions of awareness, and argue that although one of them may not be adequately modeled using standard state spaces, there is no reason to think that standard state spaces cannot provide models of the other two notions. In fact, standard space (...) models of these forms of awareness are attractively simple. They allow us to prove completeness and decidability results with ease, to carry over standard techniques from decision theory, and to add propositional quantifiers straightforwardly. (shrink)

This paper argues in support of the WHO’s proposal to forego COVID-19 booster shots until 10% of people in every country are fully vaccinated. The Ethical Argument section shows that we save the most lives and ensure the least amount of suffering by allocating doses first to unvaccinated people. It also argues that there is a duty to support decent lives and to promote health equity, which establish that refraining from boosters is a requirement of justice, not charity. The Replies (...) to Objections section answers objections that appeal to pragmatism, nationalism, ownership, scientific advancement, self-interest, semantics and futility. The Conclusion section emphasizes that for now, wealthy nations should not boost vaccinated people’s immunity and should instead send doses to poorer nations where they are most urgently needed. No data was used in this study. (shrink)

The main economic activity of the people of Eritrea is agriculture: crop production and livestock herding. Agriculture mainly comprises mixed farming and some commercial concessions. Most agriculture is rain-fed. The main rain-fed crops are sorghum, millet and sesame, and the main irrigated crops are all horticultural crops like bananas, onions and tomatoes and cotton. The major livestock production constraints are disease, water and feed shortages and agricultural expansion especially in the river frontages. The agricultural sector employs eighty percent of the (...) working population, but its production has not managed to cover internal food demand and is forced to cover nearly 50 per cent of its annual cereal requirements through imports-commercial and food assistance. Like most African countries, Eritrea is also a victim of the problem of food insecurity. In good years the country produces only about 60 per cent of its total food needs and in poor years, it produces no more than 25 per cent. On average, once in 10 years, the country is threatened with famines. Annual crop production depends on rainfall that is variable and unevenly distributed from year to year. Therefore, the primary goal of Eritrea is to guarantee food security by introducing modern technology, irrigation, terracing, soil and water conservation, with less dependence on rainwater. Thus the Government has articulated its food policy, which stresses national ownership of grant food assistance and to achieve food security in the coming five years. The policy indeed encompasses all sectoral policies and represents the Government's engagements with regard to food security. Despite the general trends of improvement in the economy of Eritrea, it has not yet fully recovered, and thus will still continue to require variable degrees of food assistance for the coming few more years. Based on this historical and recurrent food insecurity in Eritrea, an attempt is made in this paper to assess the agriculture development and food policy in the country. Furthermore, the paper captures the available food security policy proposals of Eritrea and eventually draws conclusions. (shrink)

Food security is about ensuring that all people at all times have both physical and economic access to the basic food they need. In a number of African countries chronic malnutrition and transitory food insecurity are pervasive. Like most African countries, Eritrea is also a victim of the problem of food insecurity. Based on this historical and recurrent food insecurity in Eritrea, an attempt is made in this paper to assess the possible causes of food insecurity in the country. Furthermore, (...) the paper captures the available food security policy proposals of Eritrea and eventually draws conclusions and extends possible recommendations and policy remedies suited to the country. (shrink)