This article describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a complex methotrexate ethics case used in teaching a Pharmacy Law and Ethics course. Qualitative analysis of student reflective writings provided useful insight into the students’ experience and comfort level with the final ethics case in the course. These data demonstrate a greater student appreciation of different perspectives, the potential for conflict in communicating about such cases, and the importance of patient autonomy. Faculty lessons learned are also described, facilitating adoption of (...) this methotrexate ethics case by other healthcare profession educators. (shrink)

Background: Brain-dead humans retain many of the physiologic functions of living humans, but they are legally dead and cannot be physically harmed by participation in research. Stakeholder opinions...

Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake (...) of an effective comparison and integration across domains, and for assessing whether or not to use functional diversity approaches for developing ecological management strategies. The objective of this contribution is to identify and critically analyze the most salient of these assumptions. To this aim, we provide an “epistemic roadmap” that pinpoints these assumptions along a set of historical, conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and normative dimensions. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Resumo Neste artigo, defender-se-á uma interpretação do filme A Time to Kill, como sendo uma narrativa cinematográfica falível, mesmo sem a presença de um narrador. Neste texto, assume-se, que uma narrativa falível resulta de um defeito estético e ético do filme. Deste modo, a estrutura estética do filme representa a intenção do realizador em contar a sua versão da história, influenciando assim o seu significado e efeito empático. Com o evoluir da narrativa cinematográfica, as regras de inferência tornam-se cada vez (...) mais complexas. Ainda assim, a convenção cinematográfica estabelece um contexto e define limites identificadores para a sua interpretação. Uma história mal contada inibe a reconstrução imaginativa do espectador, no que diz respeito às motivações das personagens e da causalidade narrativa. Portanto, a qualidade narrativa é essencial para o raciocínio narrativo e empatia estética. Se a narrativa oferece uma compreensão do mundo e de outras pessoas, que de outra forma seriam inacessíveis, e se a forma ou o estilo da narrativa determinam a sua eficácia, então, as formas assumidas pelas nossas histórias têm consequências epistemológicas. Palavras-chave : estética, ética, identificação, narrativa falível, narrativa, raçaIn this paper, I argue for an interpretation of A Time to Kill as an unreliable, yet narrator-less, cinematic narrative. In my view, unreliable narration is an aesthetic and ethical flaw of the film rather than of the narrator. Thus, the film’s aesthetic structure represents the director’s storytelling intentions, and influences its meaning and empathic affect. As cinematic narrative evolves, rules of inference become increasingly complex. Still, filmic convention establishes a context and sets identifiable boundaries for interpretation. A poorly told story inhibits the viewer’s imaginative reconstruction of narrative causation and characters’ motives. Thus, narrative quality is essential to narrative reasoning and aesthetic empathy. If narrative provides an understanding of the world and other people that is otherwise inaccessible, and if the form or style of narrative determines its effectiveness, then the forms our stories take have epistemological consequences. Keywords : aesthetics, ethics, identification, narrative, race, unreliable narrative. (shrink)

We consider three accepted truths about iris biometrics, involving pupil dilation, contact lenses and template aging. We also consider a relatively ignored issue that may arise in system interoperability. Experimental results from our laboratory demonstrate that the three accepted truths are not entirely true, and also that interoperability can involve subtle performance degradation. All four of these problems affect primarily the stability of the match, or authentic, distribution of template comparison scores rather than the non-match, or imposter, distribution of scores. (...) In this sense, these results confirm the security of iris biometrics in an identity verification scenario. We consider how these problems affect the usability and security of iris biometrics in large-scale applications, and suggest possible remedies. (shrink)

Introduction: If ever attained, adopting native-like accent is achieved late in the learning process. Resemblance between L2 and mother tongue can facilitate L2 learning. In particular, cognates (phonologically and semantically similar words across languages), offer the opportunity to examine the issue of foreign accent in quite a unique manner. Methods: Twelve Spanish speaking (L1) adults learnt French (L2) cognates and practiced their native-like pronunciation by means of a computerized method. After consolidation, they were tested on L1 and L2 oral picture- (...) naming during fMRI scanning. Results and Discussion: The results of the present study show that there is a specific impact of accent on brain activation, even if L2 words are cognates, and belong to a pair of closely related languages. Results point that the insula is a key component of accent processing, which is in line with reports from patients with foreign accent syndrome (FSA) following damage to the insula (e.g. Moreno-Torres et al., 2013; Katz et al., 2012; Tomasino et al., 2013), and healthy L2 learners (Chee et al., 2003). Thus, the left insula has been consistently related to the integration of attentional and working memory abilities, together with fine-tuning of motor programming to achieve optimal articulation. (shrink)

Adults’ intentionality judgments regarding an action are influenced by their moral evaluation of this action. This is clearly indicated in the so-called side-effect effect: when told about an action (e.g. implementing a business plan) with an intended primary effect (e.g. raise profits) and a foreseen side effect (e.g. harming/helping the environment), subjects tend to interpret the bringing about of the side effect more often as intentional when it is negative (harming the environment) than when it is positive (helping the environment). (...) From a cognitive point of view, it is unclear whether the side-effect effect is driven by the moral status of the side effects specifically, or rather more generally by its normative status. And from a developmental point of view, little is known about the ontogenetic origins of the effect. The present study therefore explored the cognitive foundations and the ontogenetic origins of the side-effect effect by testing 4-to 5-year-old children with scenarios in which a side effect was in accordance with/violated a norm. Crucially, the status of the norm was varied to be conventional or moral. Children rated the bringing about of side-effects as more intentional when it broke a norm than when it accorded with a norm irrespective of the type of norm. The side-effect effect is thus an early-developing, more general and pervasive phenomenon, not restricted to morally relevant side effects. (shrink)

This is an extended essay review of Tanya and Jeffrey Bub’s Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics: A serious comic on entanglement. We review the philosophical aspects of the book, provide suggestions for instructors on how to use the book in a class setting, and evaluate the authors’ artistic choices in the context of comics theory. Although Totally Random does not defend any particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, we find that, in its mode of presentation, Totally Random is (...) a beautiful expression and illustration of the information-theoretic interpretation and its value. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

ḥeleḳ 1. Peraḳim 1-34 -- ḥeleḳ 2. Peraḳim 35-53.

Peraḳim 1-12 - ḥeleḳ 2 be-sefer ha-tanya, be-tosefet beʼurim u-marʼe meḳomot, mahadurah 2 ʻim hosafot ṿe-tiḳunim.

ḥeleḳ 1. Be-Sefer ha-Zohar ha-ḳadosh ṿe-Tiḳune ha-Zohar, hashmaṭot ha-Zohar, Zohar ḥadash, Sefer ha-Bahir --.

This is the first version of the Rabbi Schneur Zalman's magnum opus -- Tanya, before it was finalized by him and published. This verison was published on behest of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1981. An important scholarly edition which shines a spotlight on the process used by the Alter Rebbe in publishing what has become known as the "written law of Chasidism.".

Bernard E. Harcourt, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001, x + 294 pp. David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, xiii + 307 pp. Andrea McArdle and Tanya Erzen (eds.), Zero Tolerance: Quality of Life and the New Police Brutality in New York City New York: New York University Press, 2001, xvi + 299 pp. Phillipe Bourgois, In (...) Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xii + 392 pp. Loïc Wacquant, Les Prisons de la Misère Paris: Raisons D'Agir Éditions, 1999, 189 pp. (shrink)

Growing concern has been expressed that we have entered a “post-truth” era in which each of us willfully believes whatever we choose, aided and abetted by alternative and social media that spin alternative realities for boutique consumption. A prime example of the belief in alternative realities is said to be acceptance of “conspiracy theories”—a term that is often used as a pejorative to indict claims of conspiracy that are so obviously absurd that only the unhinged could believe them. The epistemological (...) standard often involved in this indictment, however—the standard of “obvious” falsity—invites subjectivity in its application, because what is obviously false to one person can be common sense to another. This is not just a truism; considerable research suggests that people’s political beliefs, in general, and their acceptance or rejection of conspiracy theories in particular, tends in large part to be determined by partisan, ideological, and other priors. (shrink)

The title of this paper reflects the fact truthmaking is quite frequently considered to be expressive of realism. What this means, exactly, will become clearer in the course of our discussion, but since we are interested in Armstrong’s work on truthmaking in particular, it is natural to start from a brief discussion of how truthmaking and realism appear to be associated in his work. In this paper, special attention is given to the supposed link between truthmaking and realism, but it (...) is argued that this link should not be taken too seriously, as truthmaking turns out to be, to a large extent, ontologically neutral. Some consequences of this are studied. (shrink)

It is now possible to have a child without sexual intercourse. The history of this apparently new statement has been breefly synthetised.The new perspectives open ethical problems for the scientific community and a new social context for single women.

The main aim of this paper is to introduce the logics of evidence and truth $$LET_{K}^+$$ and $$LET_{F}^+$$ together with sound, complete, and decidable six-valued deterministic semantics for them. These logics extend the logics $$LET_{K}$$ and $$LET_{F}^-$$ with rules of propagation of classicality, which are inferences that express how the classicality operator $${\circ }$$ is transmitted from less complex to more complex sentences, and vice-versa. The six-valued semantics here proposed extends the 4 values of Belnap-Dunn logic with 2 more values (...) that intend to represent (positive and negative) reliable information. A six-valued non-deterministic semantics for $$LET_{K}$$ is obtained by means of Nmatrices based on swap structures, and the six-valued semantics for $$LET_{K}^+$$ is then obtained by imposing restrictions on the semantics of $$LET_{K}$$. These restrictions correspond exactly to the rules of propagation of classicality that extend $$LET_{K}$$. The logic $$LET_{F}^+$$ is obtained as the implication-free fragment of $$LET_{K}^+$$. We also show that the 6 values of $$LET_{K}^+$$ and $$LET_{F}^+$$ define a lattice structure that extends the lattice L4 defined by the Belnap-Dunn four-valued logic with the 2 additional values mentioned above, intuitively interpreted as positive and negative reliable information. Finally, we also show that $$LET_{K}^+$$ is Blok-Pigozzi algebraizable and that its implication-free fragment $$LET_{F}^+$$ coincides with the degree-preserving logic of the involutive Stone algebras. (shrink)

Argues that there can be interaction without breaking physical laws: e.g. by basic psychic forces, or by varying physical constants, or especially by arranging fractal trees of physical causation leading to behavior.

Le christianisme est, au-delà de la philosophie, une religion philosophique où l'homme tout entier se retrouve. Écartelés entre l'idée du Dieu vivant, qui est constitutive de la pensée et l'agonie de Dieu qui se laisse déchiffrer dans ce mélange de sens et de non-sens qu'on appelle l'expérience, se trouvent cette passion et ce devoir dont nous avons assez dit qu'ils étaient l'homme même. Lorsque la philosophie tente de résoudre le problème du mal en acceptant le risque de l'échec absolu, elle (...) ne trouve pas de solution mais elle rencontre l'homme, l'homme nu au-delà du mythe, l'homme seul en deçà de Dieu, l'homme naturellement prométhéen et chrétien, à qui il n'est pas interdit de trouver dans l'espérance le sens de son existence, c'est-à-dire de sa passion. (shrink)

Between 1873 and 1876, Felix Klein published a series of papers that he later placed under the rubric anschauliche Geometrie in the second volume of his collected works (1922). The present study attempts not only to follow the course of this work, but also to place it in a larger historical context. Methodologically, Klein’s approach had roots in Poncelet’s principle of continuity, though the more immediate influences on him came from his teachers, Plücker and Clebsch. In the 1860s, Clebsch reworked (...) some of the central ideas in Riemann’s theory of Abelian functions to obtain complicated results for systems of algebraic curves, most published earlier by Hesse and Steiner. These findings played a major role in enumerative geometry, whereas Plücker’s work had a strongly qualitative character that imbued Klein’s early studies. A leitmotif in these works can be seen in the interplay between real curves and surfaces as reflected by their transformational properties. During the early 1870s, Klein and Zeuthen began to explore the possibility of deriving all possible forms for real cubic surfaces as well as quartic curves. They did so using continuity methods reminiscent of Poncelet’s earlier approach. Both authors also relied on visual arguments, which Klein would later advance under the banner of intuitive geometry (anschauliche Geometrie). (shrink)

The thought that empathy plays an important role in moral motivation is almost a platitude of contemporary folk psychology. Parallel themes were mooted in German moral philosophy and aesthetics in the 1700s, and versions of the empathy construct remained prominent in continental accounts of moral motivation through the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. This chapter elucidates the Empathic Motivation Hypothesis (EMH) and sets out some of the conceptual and empirical challenges it faces. It distinguishes empathic concern from other dimensions (...) of empathy (e.g., resonance, attunement, distress, and non-empathic concern) and examines the merits of EMH as a developmental thesis, focusing on evidence from psychopathology and attachment theory. (shrink)