The growth of the Korean Church in the 20th century has been an amazing phenomenon but it is starting to show some cracks, particularly in the area of leadership. This article examines how its culture, in particular the affects of Shamanism and Confucianism, have contributed to some of the problems being experienced in Korean leadership today. The authors consider this issue in light of the Corinthian correspondence, suggesting that appropriation of Paul’s understanding of the church and leadership might go a (...) good distance in helping to rectify this problem. (shrink)

Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria are now considered significant, global non-financial evaluating factors of corporate value. However, no attention is given to what influences the integration of ESG information by individual investors in their investment decisions. This study first identifies different types of information investors use to make investment decisions. Risks identified in information integration in investment decision making is reviewed. Next, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model is used to identify individual investors’ investment tendencies and (...) the factors affecting integration of ESG information into investment decisions. Each of four categories for UTAUT innovation adoption factors are discussed in relation to how they affect individual investors’ integration of ESG information. Standardization of ESG reporting and evaluation frameworks would reduce efforts to adopt ESG information and could build a strong foundation for facilitating ESG information integration. Corporates’ efforts to further communicate their ESG management through their investor relations and active governmental well as non-governmental organizations’ participation are recommended. (shrink)

Background Conventional consent practices face ethical challenges in continuously evolving digital health environments due to their static, one-time nature. Dynamic consent offers a promising solution, providing adaptability and flexibility to address these ethical concerns. However, due to the immaturity of the concept and accompanying technology, dynamic consent has not yet been widely used in practice. This study aims to identify the facilitators of and barriers to adopting dynamic consent in real-world scenarios. Methods This scoping review, conducted in December 2022, adhered (...) to the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines, focusing on dynamic consent within the health domain. A comprehensive search across Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus yielded 22 selected articles based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results The facilitators for the adoption of dynamic consent in digital health ecosystems were the provision of multiple consent modalities, personalized alternatives, continuous communication, and the dissemination of up-to-date information. Nevertheless, several barriers, such as consent fatigue, the digital divide, complexities in system implementation, and privacy and security concerns, needed to be addressed. This study also investigated current technological advancements and suggested considerations for further research aimed at resolving the remaining challenges surrounding dynamic consent. Conclusions Dynamic consent emerges as an ethically advantageous method for digital health ecosystems, driven by its adaptability and support for continuous, two-way communication between data subjects and consumers. Ethical implementation in real-world settings requires the development of a robust technical framework capable of accommodating the diverse needs of stakeholders, thereby ensuring ethical integrity and data privacy in the evolving digital health landscape. (shrink)

ObjectivesWorking-age cancer patients face barriers to resuming work after treatment completion. Those resuming work contend with reduced productivity arising from persisting residual symptoms. Existing studies of return to work after cancer diagnosis were done predominantly in Western countries. Given that employment and RTW in cancer survivors likely vary regionally due to healthcare provision and social security differences, we documented rates and correlates of RTW, work productivity, and activity impairment among Chinese cancer survivors in Hong Kong at one-year post-treatment.MethodsOf 1,106 cancer (...) patients assessed at six-months post-cancer treatment, 593 previously worked; detailed work status, psychological distress, physical symptom distress, supportive care needs, health-related quality of life, and illness perception were assessed. Six months later, work productivity and activity impairment were assessed. Descriptive analyses examined RTW rate. Fully adjusted regressions determined RTW, work productivity, and activity impairment predictors.ResultsAt baseline, 39% were working, 26% on sick leave, and 35% were unemployed. Compared to patients returning to work, unemployed participants were older, likely manual/service-oriented workers, and had lower family income, chemotherapy, fewer unmet health system and information needs, poorer physical functioning, and negative illness perceptions. Sick leave participants were likely service-oriented workers, who had head and neck cancer, chemotherapy, and poor physical functioning. At FU, baseline depressive symptoms, physical symptom distress, and negative illness perceptions predicted presenteeism and work productivity loss; gynecological cancer, fewer unmet health system and information needs, and greater unmet sexuality needs predicted absenteeism; physical symptom distress, negative illness perception, and poor physical functioning predicted activity impairment.ConclusionCancer survivors who had more physically demanding jobs and poorer physical functioning delayed RTW. Unmanaged physical symptom and psychological distress hindered work productivity. (shrink)

In the current era of the Sustainable Development Goals, many countries are attempting to strengthen their health system and achieving Universal Health Coverage. The Korean National Health Insurance system functions as a core element of health financing, contributing to achieving UHC by promoting public health and social security through insurance benefits for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, childbirth, and health promotion. The Republic of Korea achieved 100% NHI coverage of the target population in 1989, 12 years after the introduction of the (...) social insurance system. However, poor coverage of health services and lack of financial protection are major obstacles to achieving UHC. Therefore, the Korean government announced and implemented ‘Moon Jae-in Care’ in August 2017 to enhance the coverage rate of NHI by 70%. First, this study reviews the existing health insurance system in Korea from the perspective of health financing and UHC. Second, it analyses ‘Moon Jae-in Care’, based on the main framework of UHC. Third, it considers the ethical implications of these developments, with focus on the principles of equity, fairness, autonomy, and solidarity. Although the NHI reform is expected to propel Korean health care closer to UHC, many ethical, social, and political issues remain. (shrink)

Background Nurses providing care to patients with end-of-life or terminal illnesses often encounter ethically challenging situations leading to moral distress. However, existing quantitative studies have examined moral distress using instruments that address general clinical situations rather than those specific to end-of-life care. Furthermore, qualitative studies have often been limited to participants from a single unit or those experiencing moral distress-induced circumstances. A comprehensive and integrated understanding of the overarching process of moral distress is vital to discern the unique circumstances surrounding (...) end-of-life care and its consequential impacts. Research objectives To explore the moral distress experiences of nurses who are frequently involved in caring for patients with end-of-life or terminal illnesses and apply it to two existing theories: the model of moral distress and the ecological model. Research design A qualitative descriptive approach was employed. Participants and research context Seven focus group interviews involving 30 nurses were performed. The subsequent transcriptions underwent rigorous content analysis. Ethical considerations We obtained Institutional Review Board approval from a university. Focus group interviews were conducted with nurses who agreed to participate and signed the consent form. Findings The moral distress-inducing factors and nurses’ perceived impact of moral distress were identified and categorized based on moral distress theories and ecological models. A total of 15 categories and 30 subcategories across the following 4 domains were derived: (1) intrapersonal, (2) interpersonal, (3) organizational, and (4) structural factors. Conclusions End-of-life-specific circumstances induced moral distress among nurses, with both negative and positive impacts identified. Effective organizational and policy support is essential to manage conflicts, form a healthy organizational culture, provide training, and prevent unnecessary expenses due to the negative consequences of moral distress. (shrink)

The study hypothesizes that the environmental, social, and governance of the host country have a significant effect on clean development mechanism implementation. As CDM incorporates sustainable development as one of the objectives for the green transition, many countries endeavor to adopt and implement CDM as their cleaner production method. Based on the institutional theory, the study aims to investigate the mechanism by which the institutional process of each ESG pillar makes an opportunity for a host country and to see how (...) such country-specific factors influence the implementation of CDM projects. A county-year unbalanced sample drawn from World Bank and multinational CDM project data was analyzed using panel logistic and Poisson regression. Panel regression results show that high-energy intensity and low renewable electricity output as an environmental pillar positively affect CDM implementation. Unemployment and undernourishment as a social pillar positively affect CDM whereas low government effectiveness and the high rule of law positively affect CDM. In the results of zero-inflated Poisson regression, the direction of government effectiveness was upturned. The findings have broadened and deepened the ESG pillar based on the institutional theory and emphasized sustainable development rather than economic outputs. (shrink)

Eastern philosophy, including Korean thought, is opposed to the dominant Western perspec­tives, especially dualism. Korean Dong-hak life ecology equates the human being with God and nature and holds that there is a circular interrelationship between them. It is based on Daoism which stresses the unity of the universe and Buddhism which contains an anthropo­cosmic world view. The key ideas involving Korean green concerns are Dong-hak ecology, ecological Daoism, and Buddhist ecological philosophy. These ideas have been translated into practice in the (...) Indramang Community. (shrink)

In billion years of evolution, eukaryotes preserved the chromosome ends with arrays of guanine repeats surrounded by thymines and adenines, which can form stacks of four‐stranded planar structure known as G‐quadruplex (G4). The rationale behind the evolutionary conservation of the G4 structure at the telomere remained elusive. Our recent study has shed light on this matter by revealing that telomere G4 undergoes oscillation between at least two distinct folded conformations. Additionally, tumor suppressor BRCA2 exhibits a unique mode of interaction with (...) telomere G4. To elaborate, BRCA2 directly interacts with G‐triplex (G3)‐derived intermediates that form during the interconversion of the two different G4 states. In doing so, BRCA2 remodels the G4, facilitating the restart of stalled replication forks. In this review, we succinctly summarize the findings regarding the dynamicity of telomeric G4, emphasize its importance in maintaining telomere replication homeostasis, and the physiological consequences of losing G4 dynamicity at the telomere. (shrink)

This paper elucidates and rationalizes the ethical governance system for healthcare AI research, as outlined in the ‘Research Ethics Guidelines for AI Researchers in Healthcare’ published by the South Korean government in August 2023. In developing the guidelines, a four-phase clinical trial process was expanded to six stages for healthcare AI research: preliminary ethics review (stage 1); creating datasets (stage 2); model development (stage 3); training, validation, and evaluation (stage 4); application (stage 5); and post-deployment monitoring (stage 6). Researchers identified (...) similarities between clinical trials and healthcare AI research, particularly in research subjects, management and regulations, and application of research results. In the step-by-step articulation of ethical requirements, this similarity benefits from a reliable and flexible use of existing research ethics governance resources, research management, and regulatory functions. In contrast to clinical trials, this procedural approach to healthcare AI research governance effectively highlights the distinct characteristics of healthcare AI research in research and development process, evaluation of results, and modifiability of findings. The model exhibits limitations, primarily in its reliance on self-regulation and lack of clear delineation of responsibilities. While formulated through multidisciplinary deliberations, its application in the research field remains untested. To overcome the limitations, the researchers’ ongoing efforts for educating AI researchers and public and the revision of the guidelines are expected to contribute to establish an ethical research governance framework for healthcare AI research in the South Korean context in the future. (shrink)

This article examines the socio?economic functions of electronic newspaper in the context of epochal change from the industrial society to the information society. We argue that electronic newspaper is expanding its social roles and performing new functions. This article conceptualizes electronic newspaper as providing three digital marketplaces for (1) news and information, (2) opinion, and (3) trading. Examples are drawn from electronic newspapers from the United States, the United Kingdom and the Chinese communities. The notion of the market is first (...) explored and various characteristics of the marketplace are examined together with those of the electronic newspaper, which assumes the format of an open media code. Finally, implications of the advent of electronic newspaper on the changing role of journalism is discussed. (shrink)

This research examines how one’s construal level of a crisis differs by crisis type, and how the interplay of crisis type and apology appeal type impacts the effectiveness of apology messages in a corporate crisis context. Findings indicate that one’s mental construal toward a crisis varies by crisis type, with a self-threatening crisis leading to a lower level of construal than a society-threatening one. Findings further suggest that in a society-threatening crisis condition, an informational apology was more effective than an (...) emotional one. However, in a self-threatening crisis condition, there was no significant difference between two different message types. These findings offer valuable guidelines for developing effective crisis response strategy. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is among the most important philosophers of the Twentieth Century. Within the continental tradition, almost every great figure has been deeply influenced by his work. For this reason, a full understanding of the course of modern philosophy is impossible without at least a basic grasp of Heidegger. Unfortunately, his work is notoriously difficult, both because of his innovative ideas and his difficult writing style. In this compelling book, Lee Braver cuts through the jargon to present Heidegger’s ideas in (...) clear English, using illuminating examples and explications of thorny passages. In so doing, he offers readers an accessible overview of Heidegger’s entire career. The first half of the book presents a guide through _Being and Time_, Heidegger’s early masterpiece, while the second half covers the key themes of his later writing, including technology, subjectivity, history, nihilism, agency, and the nature of thought itself. As Heidegger’s later work is deeply engaged with other philosophers, Braver explains the relevance of Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Nietzsche for Heidegger’s thought. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars trying to find their way through Heidegger’s difficult ideas. Anyone interested in Twentieth Century continental philosophy must come to terms with Heidegger, and this book is the ideal place to begin. (shrink)

The normativity of so-called “coherence” or “structural” requirements of rationality has been hotly debated in recent years. However, relatively little has been said about the nature of structural rationality, or what makes a set of attitudes structurally irrational, if structural rationality is not ultimately a matter of responding correctly to reasons. This paper develops a novel account of incoherence (or structural irrationality), critically examining Alex Worsnip’s recent account. It first argues that Worsnip’s account both over-generates and under-generates incoherent patterns of (...) attitudes, and then proposes an alternative that both avoids these problems and captures a crucial insight behind Worsnip’s account. According to this account, a set of attitudes is incoherent just in case having all of the attitudes in that set is incompatible with reacting to a question in a way that one is, in virtue of having the attitudes, committed to. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a novel view of the coherence (or structural) requirements on belief and intention, according to which they are not norms, but rather principles describing how your belief and intention operate. I first argue, on the basis of the unintelligibility of some relevant attitudes-reports, that there are conditions under which you simply do not count as believing or intending unless your beliefs and intentions satisfy the requirements: the conditions under which all of your relevant attitudes are (...) occurrent or activated. I then argue that you are subject to a coherence requirement only if your relevant attitudes are all activated, for you are not necessarily subject to the charge of irrationality in violating a coherence requirement when your attitudes are not all activated. If so, however, you satisfy the coherence requirements whenever you are subject to them, which makes it plausible that the “requirements” should be seen as descriptive principles about belief and intention. [*published with open access]. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger are two of the most important--and two of the most difficult--philosophers of the twentieth century, indelibly influencing the course of continental and analytic philosophy, respectively. In _ Groundless Grounds_, Lee Braver argues that the views of both thinkers emerge from a fundamental attempt to create a philosophy that has dispensed with everything transcendent so that we may be satisfied with the human. Examining the central topics of their thought in detail, Braver finds that Wittgenstein and (...) Heidegger construct a philosophy based on _original_ _finitude_--finitude without the contrast of the infinite. In Braver's elegant analysis, these two difficult bodies of work offer mutual illumination rather than compounded obscurity. Moreover, bringing the most influential thinkers in continental and analytic philosophy into dialogue with each other may enable broader conversations between these two divergent branches of philosophy. Braver's meticulously researched and strongly argued account shows that both Wittgenstein and Heidegger strive to construct a new conception of reason, free of the illusions of the past and appropriate to the kind of beings that we are. Readers interested in either philosopher, or concerned more generally with the history of twentieth-century philosophy as well as questions of the nature of reason, will find _Groundless Grounds _of interest. (shrink)

While much has been written on Latour’s politics and use of militaristic language, by attending to some of Latour’s lesser known or read writings, his political location within the traditional Left-Right spectrum becomes more discernable, as does the reason for his frequent resort to the language of war. This article does not seek to defend Latour’s politics or rhetoric, but to provide a corrective by incorporating, rather than taking distance from, his use of militaristic language. Doing so reveals an understanding (...) of Latour’s project as having always been—if not traditionally Left—charting a different Leftist approach. (shrink)

I have taken such pains to indicate the scope, terms, and foci of Neumann's analysis because he provides one of the main pillars on which any further systematic study of the woman hero must rest. By showing Psyche's relation to the mythic or archetypal structure of heroism, by demonstrating the particular ways in which the hero is a figure distinguished primarily by involvement in particular patterns of action and psychological development, Neumann provides an invaluable service to further studies of literature, (...) heroism, and women. Without belaboring the distinction between the hero and the heroine, Neumann validates the claim that a woman can be a hero and eliminates the awkward distinction between the heroine as heroic figure and the heroine as conventional woman that has perplexed so much recent literary, especially feminist, analysis.1 He is also very good at locating the details in Psyche's dilemma that constitute significant associative images within a narrative representing heroism by means of a female character. Specifically, he indicates how Psyche's beauty is as much a burden as a boon, shows the importance of her relationship to other female characters, and points out the ways in which the apparent hostility of other women acts as a necessary goad to Psyche's own developing independence. Neumann's analysis is also suggestive in showing the appropriateness of archetypal criticism to material which is not myth in the narrow sense. To be sure, Apuleius' Amor and Psyche results from the distillation of narratives whose origins are clearly to be found in the folklore and functioning mythologies of Greek and Roman culture; just as clearly, however, Apuleius is telling his tale as part of a highly self-conscious, complexly structured narrative2 analogous, in some ways, to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Milton's great religious epics, and even that seemingly least mythic set of narrative structures, the novel. · 1. See, e.g., Ellen Moers' long discussion of "heroinism" in Literary Women: The Great Writers , pp. 113-242. Moers' use of this awkward term, the female version of the presumably masculine heroism, perpetuates the idea that only men can be true heroes, while extraordinary women remain "special cases" necessitating special terminology.· 2. See P. G. Walsh, The Roman Novel: The 'Satyricon' of Petronius and the 'Metamorphoses' of Apuleius , pp. 141-223. Lee R. Edwards is an editor of The Massachusetts Review and an associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is presently completing The Labors of Psyche: Female Heroism and Fictional Form. (shrink)

Are a material object, such as a statue, and its constituting matter, the clay, parts of one another? One wouldn't have thought so, and yet a number of philosophers have argued that they are. I review the arguments for this surprising claim showing how they all fail. I then consider two arguments against the view concluding that there are both pre-theoretical and theoretical considerations for denying that the statue and the clay are mutual parts.

Church's thesis, that all reasonable definitions of “computability” are equivalent, is not usually thought of in terms of computability by acontinuouscomputer, of which the general-purpose analog computer (GPAC) is a prototype. Here we prove, under a hypothesis of determinism, that the analytic outputs of aC∞GPAC are computable by a digital computer.In [POE, Theorems 5, 6, 7, and 8], Pour-El obtained some related results. (The proof there of Theorem 7 depends on her Theorem 2, for which the proof in [POE] is (...) incorrect, but for which a correct proof is given in [LIR]. Also, the proof in [POE] of Theorem 8 depends on the unproved assertion that a solution of an algebraic differential equation must be analytic on an open subset of its domain. However, this assertion was later proved in [BRR].) As in [POE], we reduce the problem to a problem about solutions of certain systems of algebraic differential equations (ADE's). If such a system is nonsingular (i.e. if the “separant” does not vanish along the given solution), then the argument is very easy (see [VSD] for an even simpler situation), so that the essential difficulties arise fromsingularsystems. Our main tools in handling these difficulties are drawn from the excellent (and difficult) paper [DEL] by Denef and Lipshitz. The author especially wants to thank Leonard Lipshitz for his kind help in the preparation of the present paper.We emphasize here that our proof of the simulation result applies only to the GPAC as described below. The GPAC's form a natural subclass of the class of all analog computers, and are based on certain idealized components (“black boxes”), mostly associated with the technology of past decades. One can easily envisage other kinds of black boxes of an input-output character that would lead to different kinds of analog computers. (For example, one could incorporate delays, or spatial integrators in addition to the present temporal integrators, etc.) Whether digital simulation is possible for these “extended” analog computers poses a rich and challenging set of research questions. (shrink)

Are counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents automatically true? That is, is Conjunction Conditionalization: if (X & Y), then (X > Y) valid? Stalnaker and Lewis think so, but many others disagree. We note here that the extant arguments for Conjunction Conditionalization are unpersuasive, before presenting a family of more compelling arguments. These arguments rely on some standard theorems of the logic of counterfactuals as well as a plausible and popular semantic claim about certain semifactuals. Denying Conjunction Conditionalization, then, requires (...) rejecting other aspects of the standard logic of counterfactuals, or else our intuitive picture of semifactuals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 157-172 [Access article in PDF] Symposium: On Ken Burns's "Jazz" Jazz: America's Classical Music? 1 Lee B. Brown I VIEWERS OF KEN BURNS'S third cultural epic "Jazz" probably fell into one of three categories. 2 Some found it gripping. Some found it grating. Some found it both at once.The series has unforgettable moments: spectacular jitterbug sequences; Jimmy Lunceford's horn men fanning their trumpet bells (...) with hat mutes in sync; the close-up of the whirring cross-hand drumming of Art Blakey; the bitter-sweet glance Billie Holiday and Lester Young exchange in their last filmed appearance together; the occasional marriage of visuals to music. One riveting three minutes comes when the talking heads tune out, a 78-rpm disk of Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" is set spinning, and the thrilling notes pour out on a carousel of visual imagery—finally freeze-framing on the face of the young genius himself.On the downside, the series is massively repetitious. As a result of Burns's decision to track two major figures—Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington—from cradle to grave, the same cuts of Armstrong appear again and again, no matter what the time frame. Some of the series' commentators are particularly annoying—the fiddler of Burns's Civil War series, Matt Glaser, for instance, with his fatuous theories [End Page 157] about Louis Armstrong and Albert Einstein. And the documentary's heavy load of social freight—by Wynton Marsalis, and his mentors Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch 3 —threatens to flatten the music.The series is designed as informative entertainment, not Jazz 101. But Burns pays a price here, as he did in his documentary about baseball, in which not even the basics of the game, let alone any of the subtleties, were explained. In "Jazz" we get no explanation of what Jelly Roll Morton did to transform ragtime into jazz. (The series could easily have pressed Morton himself into service. With no sacrifice of his considerable charm, Morton did explain it, beautifully, in his recorded Library of Congress interviews. 4) Although the swing era gets big billing, no attempt is made to explain how swing rhythm actually works, as contrasted with earlier practices. (I have watched swing drummer Panama Francis entertain a packed hall with a brief but riveting illustration of how it works.)As jazz history, the film also has problems. Some legendary figures are resurrected unconvincingly. When Marsalis tells us what the legendary trumpet player Buddy Bolden sounded like, the illustrative off-camera trumpet is Marsalis's, not Bolden's, who embedded not one note in a record groove. Further, we face the tiresomely obvious problem of omissions. We hear nothing of Albert Ayler, Keith Jarrett, Sun Ra, Mildred Bailey, Benny Carter, Lennie Tristano, Erroll Garner, Eric Dolphy, Art Pepper, or Woody Herman. All we learn about Bill Evans—whose influence on jazz piano was huge—is that Miles Davis hired him even though he was white. Omissions are inevitable, of course. But there is a muted pattern to the exclusions. It was impossible for the series to avoid Benny Goodman, given his central role in the swing era. But white figures are too often either ignored or treated as alienated outsiders. We hear New York Times columnist Margo Jefferson opine that Bix Beiderbecke drank himself to death because he wasn't allowed to play with black musicians. In fact, many of the greatest players—white and black—never played with musicians of their own caliber.Most figures covered in the film are treated either with respect or with reverence. But things get nasty when matters turn to avant-gardists. Thus, Branford Marsalis—Wynton's talented brother—singles out the volcanic pianist Cecil Taylor for a particularly hostile attack. 5 Instead of explaining what Ornette Coleman meant by "free jazz," Albert Murray tells us that jazz is, by definition, free music—and by implication, that Coleman's concept must be fatuous. And Wynton has complained [End Page 158] elsewhere about a jazz avant-garde retreat into what he calls "a... (shrink)

The various explanations and emendations so far offered for this passage do not seem to have solved its difficulties yet. While it is generally held that agrees ad sensum with the subject of the sentence , the sense of the adjective itself appears far from satisfactory. Of the conjectures proposed till now only Jackson's isconsidered noteworthy by the latest editor of the play. Jackson, however, offersit as a ‘fair provisional remedy’ only.

Barbour, Hawking, Misner and others have argued that time cannot play an essential role in the formulation of a quantum theory of cosmology. Here we present three challenges to their arguments, taken from works and remarks by Kauffman, Markopoulou and Newman. These can be seen to be based on two principles: that every observable in a theory of cosmology should be measurable by some observer inside the universe, and all mathematical constructions necessary to the formulation of the theory should be (...) realizable in a finite time by a computer that fits inside the universe. We also briefly discuss how a cosmological theory could be formulated so it is in agreement with these principles. (shrink)

Many people believe that human beings begin to exist with the emergence of the 1-cell zygote at fertilization. I present a novel argument against this belief, one based on recently discovered facts about human embryo development. I first argue that a human zygote is developmentally plastic: A zygote that naturally develops into a singleton (i.e., develops into exactly one infant/adult without twinning) might have naturally developed into a numerically different singleton. From this, I derive the conclusion that a human infant (...) or adult is numerically distinct from the zygote she came from and so did not begin to exist at fertilization. This implies that a zygote does not have a “future like ours” and strongly suggests that it is not a human being. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that legal standards of proof are reducible to thresholds of probability. Many have rejected this thesis because it seems to entail that defendants can be found liable solely on the basis of statistical evidence. I argue that this inference is invalid. I do so by developing a view, called Legal Causalism, that combines Thomson's (1986) causal analysis of evidence with recent work in formal theories of causal inference. On this view, legal standards of proof can be (...) reduced to probabilities, but deriving these probabilities involves more than just statistics. (shrink)

The standard semantics for counterfactuals ensures that any counterfactual with a true antecedent and true consequent is itself true. There have been many recent attempts to amend the standard semantics to avoid this result. I show that these proposals invalidate a number of further principles of the standard logic of counterfactuals. The case against the automatic truth of counterfactuals with true components does not extend to these further principles, however, so it is not clear that rejecting the latter should be (...) a consequence of rejecting the former. Instead I consider how one might defuse putative counterexamples to the truth of true-true counterfactuals. (shrink)

On the surface, developing a social psychology of science seems compelling as a way to understand how individual social cognition – in aggregate – contributes towards individual and group behavior within scientific communities (Kitcher, 2002). However, in cases where the functional input-output profile of psychological processes cannot be mapped directly onto the observed behavior of working scientists, it becomes clear that the relationship between psychological claims and normative philosophy of science should be refined. For example, a robust body of social (...) psychological research demonstrates implicit gender bias in the evaluation of others (e.g., Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke, 1999). Many expected implicit bias to be a major cause of women’s underrepresentation in math intensive fields of science; however, quantitative sociological research of hiring and manuscript and grant evaluation has discovered no gender disparity in outcomes (Ceci & Williams, 2011). Why might this be so? This paper will discuss methodological challenges that go beyond classic problems of external validity in extrapolating psychological effects and explanations to scientific communities. These problems include more complex external validity issues raised by the introduction of multi-process models of cognition (e.g., implicit versus explicit social cognition) as well as the reflexive role that folk and experimental theories of social psychology play in guiding the behavior of scientists at the individual and community level. (shrink)

An assessment is offered of the progress that the major approaches to quantum gravity have made towards the goal of constructing a complete and satisfactory theory. The emphasis is on loop quantum gravity and string theory, although other approaches are discussed, including dynamical triangulation models (euclidean and lorentzian) regge calculus models, causal sets, twistor theory, non-commutative geometry and models based on analogies to condensed matter systems. We proceed by listing the questions the theories are expected to be able to answer. (...) We then compile two lists: the first details the actual results so far achieved in each theory, while the second lists conjectures which remain open. By comparing them we can evaluate how far each theory has progressed, and what must still be done before each theory can be considered a satisfactory quantum theory of gravity. We find there has been impressive recent progress on several fronts. At the same time, important issues about loop quantum gravity are so far unresolved, as are key conjectures of string theory. However, there is a reasonable expectation that experimental tests of lorentz invariance at Planck scales may in the near future make it possible to rule out one or more candidate quantum theories of gravity. (shrink)

The life-world is a central topic of Husserl’s phenomenology. He addresses this issue in some of the works published during his lifetime and attempts to analyze the life-world extensively in many of his works and posthumously published research manuscripts. The life-world is one of the topics that have been discussed most extensively in phenomenology. However, there are many misunderstandings of Husserl’s phenomenology of the life-world. One misunderstanding concerns the variety of concepts of the life-world in Husserl and the possibility of (...) developing various fields of the phenomenology of the life-world. It is the aim of this paper to show that Husserl has a pluralistic concept of the life-world, which makes it possible to develop various fields of the phenomenology of the life-world. I will introduce the monistic view and the pluralistic view of the concept of the life-world in Husserl and will clarify what the life-world is, thereby showing that the monistic view of the concept of the life-world in Husserl is not legitimate. However, even though Husserl has a pluralistic concept of the life-world, nowhere does he systematically clarify the various concepts of the life-world. Hence I will sort out and clarify various concepts of the life-world such as the narrower concept and the wider concept, the general concept and the particular concept, the natural concept and the transcendental concept, and the empirical concept and the eidetic concept. Based on the discussion of the various concepts of the life-world in Husserl, I will assess the monistic view and the pluralistic view of Husserl’s concept of the life-world so that we can better understand his various concepts of the life-world. (shrink)

Many moral theories are committed to the idea that some kinds of moral considerations should be respected, whatever the cost to ‘lesser’ types of considerations. A person's life, for instance, should not be sacrificed for the trivial pleasures of others, no matter how many would benefit. However, according to the decision-theoretic critique of lexical priority theories, accepting lexical priorities inevitably leads us to make unacceptable decisions in risky situations. It seems that to operate in a risky world, we must reject (...) lexical priorities altogether. This paper argues that lexical priority theories can, in fact, offer satisfactory guidance in risky situations. It does so by equipping lexical priority theories with overlooked resources from decision theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 211-222 [Access article in PDF] Criticism and the Terror of Nothingness C. Jason Lee DESTINY IS OFTEN ANOTHER NAME for narrative, it being the order we retrospectively find in scattered events. It is traditionally the role of the storyteller to create a believable narrative, with the reader investing attention into believing the story while the critic dissects the results to ascertain whether the magic (...) works. As Wallace Stevens put it, "we orchestrate a whole history and then imprison ourselves in the score, as if someone else had written it." 1 In the author's note to the second edition (1962) of Wise Blood (1949) Flannery O'Connor makes the point that her novel is a comic novel, yet its comedy does not lessen the depth of understanding it offers concerning the complexity of freedom. 2 The obsession with fate and destiny that swamps her characters, leads the reader into a gothic nightmare where humans in their attempt to re-create themselves dig themselves further into the graves of their dead relatives. For O'Connor free will does not mean one will but many wills conflicting in one man, and she explains the integrity of the central character of Wise Blood, Hazel Motes, as stemming from his vigorous attempts to rid himself of the "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind."This figure is the Jesus of his grandfather, and it is also the religious preoccupation of the Deep South. Destiny has shaped his features and his character in the mold of his grandfather, and whomever he meets believes he too is a preacher. After establishing the Church Without Christ, like many sons attempting to shake off their origin, Hazel Motes realizes that his new way of behaving is in some sense being controlled [End Page 211] by his past and that he must shake off all vestiges to possess freedom. One might argue that, by eventually blinding himself, Hazel Motes is behaving as a soul who has given into the temptation of purgation, as if this is destiny. But it can be argued that this act is going against destiny, as it is an act that is perhaps trying to persuade God of something, despite the Oedipal connotations.Questioned by his landlady why he blinded himself he says to pay, and when asked to pay for what, he replies it does not matter what. Mrs. Flood is frightened of death, particularly death being one long blind existence, and Hazel Motes is a reminder to her of her destiny. This can be read as a judgment on life also. Yet she eventually decides to take care of him, for both altruistic and materialistic reasons, believing that his widow would inherit his war pension. Mrs. Flood, her name evocative of apocalyptic occurrences and Old Testament punishment, is a critic of the text; the text in this instance is nothing written but rather Motes himself. It seems that Hazel Motes, his name a reference to taking the mote out of one's own eye before you try and take the splinter out of another's, is punishing himself for his previous denial of Christ and for his sins, such as fornication, as with Mrs. Watts the prostitute and Sabbath Hawks, and murder, but also something more primal.After trying desperately to break the curse of his biological inheritance, his wise blood, just like the character Enoch Emery, it forces him to once again take on roles that deny him freedom. Hazel Motes may seem to a contemporary reader as a caricature, the mad preacher/antipreacher of the American South, but as V. S. Pritchett puts it, Hazel Motes is "entirely real" (p. viii). His self-blinding is part of his further alienation from the world, the world he has come back to after the "Great War." O'Connor shows how this watershed in human history was so devastating, Motes's new theology entirely rational. After having an insight into the world in reality through war, Hazel Motes is now "going to do some things... (shrink)

The academic literature commonly exposes large components of informal economies housed in developed countries as nefarious systems designed to help people evade taxes or carry on other illegal activities. However, our community-based participatory action study uncovered a significant element of a social and economic system that was largely undocumented, but was viewed as far more righteous than dishonorable and immoral. Our research involved approximately 375 participants from seven communities spread across a large and sparsely populated geographic region in the northern (...) part of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The purpose for the research was to explore how entrepreneurship contributes to the good life, well-being, and prosperity by building social and economic capacity across a rural business ecosystem. We found that an important, yet undocumented part of the business ecosystem was grounded in history, culture, and tradition. When considered through a legitimacy theory lens, this perspective challenges the implication drawn from some of the academic literature that those who participate in informal business systems in developed countries usually do so for immoral reasons that might warrant a legal penalty. Further, we propose that researchers, policy makers, and community development professionals use the term undocumented economy rather than expressions like informal, hidden and underground economy to distinguish components of economic systems based on righteous motivations and activities from those founded on iniquitous practices and non-existent or unofficial record keeping. We begin this article with a definition for the undocumented economy in which we describe why we consider it to be righteous. (shrink)

Mistakes during criminal investigations are costly, leading to wrongful convictions, so it is helpful to employ rigorous analytic methods to help mitigate errors and biases. This paper introduces a new method to help make sense of a set of information, allowing thought processes to be externalised in a systematic and transparent manner. While this method is presented in a criminal investigation context, it can be applied to any situation where analysis of several hypotheses and evidence is required. Open source software (...) was created and used to test the method empirically. A simulated criminal investigation was carried out by seventy-five trainee investigators, the results showed better conclusions were reached when using the method. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cross-Cultural Encounters and ExclusionEun-Jeung Lee (bio)There are only a handful of comprehensive studies about the role that knowledge of non-European civilizations and ideas played in the formation of early modern and Enlightenment European thought. Any in-depth treatment of how European thinkers understood China and India between 1600 and 1744 is therefore a more than welcome addition to existing research in this area. During this period, new information about Chinese (...) Confucian culture reached Europe through reports and writings of Jesuit missionaries. It was also during this time that Chinese and Indian ideas started to be excluded from the category of world philosophy.Early modern European thinkers who came into contact with reports about non-European cultures, such as China and India, embraced, rejected, or criticized the transmitted ideas in relation to their own system of thinking. In that sense, European thinkers were not much different from those East Asian scholars who in the seventeenth century first encountered translated Western books and books on the West written in classical Chinese, for [End Page 215] example the Korean literati of the Chosŏn dynasty. These scholars, in a fashion strikingly similar to how their contemporary European thinkers dealt with Chinese Confucian culture, accepted, rejected, or criticized Western knowledge based on their own canon of thought.1 This process can be said to be a ubiquitous response to such cross-cultural encounters. Today, it is generally accepted that it is through such reactions that we can understand the spiritual and social conditions of a society.2 The way European thinkers discussed Chinese or Indian thought throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries allows important insights into Western thought at the time, but not so much that of China or India.The eventual exclusion of Chinese and Indian thought from "world philosophy" in the eighteenth century, scholars agree, had its roots in the belief of the superiority of European civilization. "Histories of world philosophy" became mainstream in the latter half of the eighteenth century, forming the global standard for a very long time due to the effects of European imperialism and European intellectual hegemony. Current debates on the decolonization of philosophy recognize the importance of how to approach depictions of the history of philosophy from a practical and global perspective.3 A critical and systematic study of the process of exclusion of non-European cultures from histories of philosophy compiled in Europe are therefore crucial to such discussions. Selusi Ambrogio's study forms an important contribution to this area of inquiry.Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy spans the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when the arrival of information about the history and culture of China in Jesuit treatises and reports came as a great shock to European philosophers. Especially Chinese history and its ancient tradition of written culture, much older than Christian historiography, became the focus of interest in European intellectual circles. It is no coincidence that Descartes, widely considered the founder of modern philosophy, in his Discours de la méthode mentions China as a prime reason for the existence of a new uncertainty in European philosophy.4In his book, Ambrogio systematically shows how the philosophical dispute over the evaluation of Chinese philosophy was embedded within a paradigm shift from the older Philosophia perennis to the newer Philosophia sectaria and eclectica. This shift not only shaped the scientification of the history of philosophy in the eighteenth century, but also redefined European conceptions of time and history. In the debates about the correct paradigm for the history of philosophy, Confucian philosophy, as transmitted by the Jesuits, played a key role due to the long tradition of its canonical texts.Ambrogio summarizes how histories of philosophy written in Europe first included China but subsequently began a process of exclusion of Chinese thought. He does this by placing a special focus on the tension between theology and philosophy before the time of Hegel. In the first chapter, [End Page 216] Ambrogio shows how the Chinese were seen "as contemporaries" but, at the same time, "as ancient barbaric peoples inserted within the biblical history of philosophy" (p. 56). The second chapter deals with discussions that define... (shrink)

Capturing the essence of the origin and evolution of the so-called "degeneracy debates," over whether the flora and fauna of America (including Native ...

Bio-heteronormative conceptions of the family have long reinforced a nuclear ideal of the family as a heterosexual marriage, with children who are the genetic progeny of that union. This ideal, however, has also long been resisted in light of recent social developments, exhibited through the increased incidence and acceptance of step-families, donor-conceived families, and so forth. Although to this end some might claim that the bio-heteronormative ideal is not necessary for a social unit to count as a family, a more (...) systematic conceptualization of the family—the kind of family that matters morally—is relatively underexplored in the philosophical literature. This paper makes a start at developing and defending an account of the family that is normatively attractive and in line with the growing prevalence of non-conventional families and methods of family-formation. Our account, which we call a constitutive-affirmative model of the family, takes the family to be constituted by an ongoing process of relevant affective and affirmative relations between the putative family members. (shrink)

D. Alan Shewmon has advanced a well-documented challenge to the widely accepted total brain death criterion for death of the human being. We show that Shewmon's argument against this criterion is unsound, though he does refute the standard argument for that criterion. We advance a distinct argument for the total brain death criterion and answer likely objections. Since human beings are rational animals – sentient organisms of a specific type – the loss of the radical capacity for sentience involves a (...) substantial change, the passing away of the human organism. In human beings total brain death involves the complete loss of the radical capacity for sentience, and so in human beings total brain death is death. (shrink)

Benatar argues that the absence of cosmic meaning is part of the reason why our lives are so bad that we had better not procreate. The goal of this paper is to argue against this claim from a Kantian point of view. For this goal, I argue first that the fact that human life is a product of blind evolution is not a reason for justifying that our lives are overall bad, mainly on the grounds that the concepts of good (...) and bad make sense only within the logical space of reasons. I also argue that the fact that we can hardly make a significant difference to the universe is not a reason for justifying that our lives are overall bad, either, mainly on the grounds that whether one's life is good or bad can be evaluated primarily in terms of whether one's permissible ends are achieved to a satisfactory extent, and so one's good life does not depend on making a significant difference to the universe. (shrink)

I develop and refine an argument for the total brain death criterion of death previously advanced by Germain Grisez and me: A human being is essentially a rational animal, and so must have a radical capacity for rational operations. For rational animals, conscious sensation is a pre-requisite for rational operation. But total brain death results in the loss of the radical capacity for conscious sensation, and so also for rational operations. Hence, total brain death constitutes a substantial change—the ceasing to (...) be of the human being. Objections are considered, including the objection that total brain death need not result in the loss of capacity for sensation, and that damage to the brain less than total brain death can result in loss of capacity for rational operations. (shrink)

W. H. Auden, the sometimes Greta Garbo of twentieth-century poetry, once told Stephen Spender that he liked America better than England because in America one could be alone. Further, in his introduction to The Criterion Book of Modern American Verse Auden remarked that while in England poets are considered members of a “clerkly caste,” in America they are an “aristocracy of one.” Certainly it does seem to be the individual poet—Whitman, Williams, Olson, Plath, O’Hara, Ginsberg—who has altered the landscape of (...) American poetry and prosody, not the group. And most American literary “movements,” as Robert Creeley has pointed out, are simply comprised of a few people who on occasion drink together, and who are as likely as not to end the evening in violent argument over an aesthetic or political point. Yet the notion of schools or movements remains, in mainstream historical criticism at least, a vital one. How many introductions to anthologies of American poetry, for example, continue to use such rubrics as the Transcendentals, the Populists, the Black Mountain poets, the Beats, the New York group? And while established poets often rebel from any sense that they are part of a larger community, which by definition is self-limiting, they are often complicit in their initial categorization. For poets as well as critics the idea of a school is often a useful fiction serving as both a kind of protective hothouse and a platform for getting a hearing.The most recent “group” of American poets—the first since the anthology wars of the early sixties really to be of more than passing interest and perhaps to be actually capable of bringing about a major shift of attention in American poetry and poetics—is the so-called “Language” school. Individual volumes by poets often considered part of this group number well into three figures now and there have been important journals and anthologies produced in a serious and sustained fashion by these writers. Yet in part because of what seems the essentially hermetic character of the project , there has been little notice of this activity by academic critics or reviewers.1 What I’d like to do here is briefly map a few major aspects of the territory, describing some of the practical and theoretical questions which seem to occupy many of these writers in their ongoing critique of the “workshop poem.” 1. Two important exceptions are discussions of some of this work in Stephen Fredman, Poet’s Prose: The Crisis in American Verse and Marjorie Perloff’s review “The Word as Such: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry in the Eighties,” American Poetry Review 13 : 15-22. All further references to Perloff’s article, abbreviated “WS,” will be included in the text. For a discussion of the various Language poetry journals and anthologies, see my chapter “American Poetry, 1940s to the Present” in American Literary Scholarship: An Annual/1983, ed. Warren French , pp. 349-74. Lee Bartlett, an associate professor of English, has directed the University of New Mexico’s creative writing program for five years. Coeditor of the critical journal American Poetry, his Talking Poetry: Conversations in the Workshop with Contemporary Poets will be published this fall. Currently he is writing a biography of William Everson. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unknowing BarbaraLee Edelman (bio)There's something you should know about Barbara Johnson. Something you don't know. Something you can't know. Something that's hidden in plain sight. And Johnson, though never possessing that knowledge, indicates, time and time again, both its utter impossibility and the impossibility of ceasing to utter it—the impossibility that generates time as always already time again, as allegorical temporality, as the compulsion (implicit in the phrase "you (...) should know") to repeat our failure to know it and to call that failure knowledge itself. There's something you should know about Barbara Johnson, and it's something I'm here not to tell you. For telling, as Johnson allows us to see, obscures the unmasterable relation between what's told and the act of telling it. It distracts our attention, in other words, from something else always at work in its words to complicate or confound it, something we've come to identify as the rhetorical, the performative, or the literary, but something to which Johnson, by way of reference to Freud, gives another name as well: "Freud called this something the death instinct, but this death instinct is to be understood as what ceaselessly escapes the mastery of understanding and the binary logic of opposition by exhibiting some 'other' logic one can neither totally comprehend nor exclude." To which she then goes on to add: "Any statement that affirms, while using a logic different from the logic of binary opposition, will necessarily not conform to binary notions of 'clarity'" ["Nothing Fails Like Success" 13].Now consider the opening sentences of the headnote to the Norton Anthology of Criticism's selection from Barbara Johnson's work, a headnote that situates Johnson with the anonymous authority of a knowledge from on high, of the sujet supposé savoir, though that subject here, like its object, is Barbara Johnson, who wrote it herself: "Barbara Johnson is known as a translator in various senses of the word. She is the celebrated translator of Jacques Derrida's Dissemination; and she is also one of the earliest and most interesting translators of structuralist and poststructuralist theory into literary insights. Often praised for her 'lucidity' and 'clarity,' she has nevertheless emphasized, again and again, the unavoidability and necessity of linguistic complexity and difficulty in formulating intractable problems."1 Though this seems, on the face of it, clear enough, don't let that obscure its obscurity. For Johnson acknowledges—or confesses, or laments—that she's "often praised" for a "clarity" to which, as the earlier passage makes clear, the statements in deconstructive texts "will necessarily not conform." Are Johnson's texts not deconstructive then? Is her logic really binary? Or is some "other" logic operative here when she clearly affirms that deconstructive affirmations necessarily won't seem clear?To see this obscurity more clearly—to see it more clearly, that is, as obscurity—let me translate Johnson's comments into the logical pattern of a syllogism, although Johnson herself reminds us that "what is most radical in deconstruction" is precisely its incompatibility with familiar structures of binary logic ["Nothing" 12]. Describing that incompatibility, she writes, "while traditionalists say that a thing cannot be both A and not-A, deconstructors open up ways in which A is necessarily but unpredictably [End Page 89] already different from A" [14]. Let me frame this account of deconstruction as the major premise of a syllogism: "All deconstructive statements or texts affirm through a logic different from that of binary opposition.'" Johnson, in discussing the death instinct, has already provided our minor premise: "All statements or texts that affirm through a logic not that of binary opposition 'will necessarily not conform to binary notions of "clarity."'" Syllogistic logic, then, clearly affirms an inevitable conclusion: "All deconstructive statements or texts 'will necessarily not conform to binary notions of "clarity."'" But if this is so, why is Johnson herself "often praised" for being clear? Just what does she have in common with the logical clarity of a syllogism despite her repeated insistence on "linguistic complexity and difficulty"?Well, for one thing, she shares a name. My syllogism belongs to the type that's been known, since... (shrink)

Lays out an account of the origins and development of liberal political and economic theoryIncludes case studies that cover thinkers and ideas from the English Civil War through to liberalism's first encounters with socialism Provides comparative analysis of distinct intellectual traditions including English natural rights theory, the Scottish Enlightenment, Victorian-era utilitarianism and classical political economyIntegrates history of economic thinking into broader milieu of modern political, moral and natural philosophyExamines secondary literature and research from a range of disciplinary areas including political (...) theory, modern intellectual history, economic thought and modern British history and philosophyThis book re-examines the philosophical roots of classical liberal political economy, as well as addressing the relationship between the empire and liberalism. It proposes an interpretive model based upon the interconnection between distinct theories of natural rights and the harmony of interests. It takes a fresh look at classical liberalism by exploring economic arguments in thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who are not typically viewed as economic thinkers, and by highlighting the importance of Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith in the development of interest-based liberalism. It also re-examines lesser-known economic tracts by thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume and John Stuart Mill in light of their more well-known political writings. With classical liberal assumptions still prominent in contemporary debates about economic justice, it is vital for every democratic citizen to understand the complex origins and development of the ideas that did so much to shape our world today. (shrink)