We consider the classical concept of time of permanence and observe that its quantum equivalent is described by a bona fide self-adjoint operator. Its interpretation, by means of the spectral theorem, reveals that we have to abandon not only the idea that quantum entities would be characterizable in terms of spatial trajectories but, more generally, that they would possess the very attribute of spatiality. Consequently, a permanence time shouldn’t be interpreted as a “time” in quantum mechanics, but as a measure (...) of the total availability of a quantum entity in participating to a process of creation of a spatial localization. (shrink)

Cavin and Colombetti correctly affirm that in judging the probability of a hypothesis we should take into account “the total available evidence.” However, they neglect their own affirmation when they claim that I make an unwarranted assumption that God would not massively deceive the human race, when they claim that I do not take into account any evidence favoring hypotheses incompatible with the traditional account of what happened to the body of Jesus, and when they claim that I do (...) not take into account the evidence that humans have a strong propensity to private sinning. (shrink)

The available resources for global health assistance are far outstripped by need. In the face of such scarcity, many people endorse a principle according to which highest priority should be given to the worst off. However, in order for this prioritarian principle to be useful for allocation decisions, policy-makers need to know what it means to be badly off. In this article, we outline a conception of disadvantage suitable for identifying the worst off for the purpose of making health resource (...) allocation decisions. According to our total advantage view: the worst off are those who have the greatest total lifetime disadvantage; advantage foregone due to premature death should be treated in the same way as other ways of being disadvantaged at a time; how badly off someone is depends on the actual outcomes that will befall her without intervention, not her prospects at a time; and all significant forms of disadvantage count for determining who is worst off, not just disadvantage relating to health. We conclude by noting two important implications of the total advantage view: first, that those who die young are among the globally worst off, and second, that the epidemiological shift in the global burden of disease from communicable to non-communicable diseases should not lead to a corresponding shift in global health spending priorities. (shrink)

The shift to longitudinal, comprehensive electronic health records means that any health care provider or third-party user of the EHR will be able to access much health information of questionable clinical utility and possibly of great sensitivity. Genetic test results, reproductive health, mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence are examples of sensitive information that many patients would not want routinely available. The likely policy response is to give patients the ability to segment information in their EHRs and to (...) sequester certain types of sensitive information, thereby limiting routine access to the totality of a patient's health record. This article explores the likely effect on the physician-patient relationship of patient-directed sequestration of sensitive health information, including the ethical and legal consequences. (shrink)

Much earlier work claims that appositives and expressives are invariably speaker-oriented. These claims have recently been challenged, most extensively by Amaral et al. (Linguist and Philos 30(6): 707–749, 2007). We are convinced by this new evidence. The questions we address are (i) how widespread are non-speaker-oriented readings of appositives and expressives, and (ii) what are the underlying linguistic factors that make such readings available? We present two experiments and novel corpus work that bear directly on this issue. We find that (...) non-speaker-oriented readings, while rare in actual language use, are systematic. We also find that non-speaker-oriented readings occur even outside of attitude predications, which leads us to favor an account based in pragmatically-mediated perspective shifting over one that relies on semantic binding by attitude predicates. (shrink)

BackgroundSome persons conceived with donor gametes react negatively when they found their birth via donor conception. They request access to information about and seek to communicate with the donor. However, some countries mandate donor anonymity. Other countries allow donor-conceived persons to access donor information, but they can only use this access if their parents have disclosed donor conception to them. We investigated a thorny issue of donor conception: whether donor conception should be shifted from an anonymous basis to a non-anonymous (...) basis.MethodsWe review the issues and concerns regarding donor conception. We then consider the impact of direct-to-consumer genetic testing on donor conception, as well as the influence of donor conception on offspring’s identity and the potential of different types of donors. To discuss the future policy of donor conception, the policies on the anonymity of gamete donors were investigated using publicly-available documents in 15 countries.ResultsThe aim of mandating donor anonymity is to protect the privacy of the donor and intended parents. However, the diffusion of direct-to-consumer genetic testing may make it impossible to maintain anonymity. Birth via donor conception shapes the offspring’s identity, and the donor may further influence the development of offspring’s identity through communications. It remains important to disclose donor conception to donor-conceived offspring and to provide them with donor information. However, that information might be insufficient for some donor-conceived persons. Here are benefits to having open-identity donors and known donors. Such donors can make an agreement with the parents regarding future communication with the offspring, although both sides should respect privacy. Subsequent counseling for all parties involved can result in better tripartite communication agreements.ConclusionsIn sum, ethical and practical issues that complicate donor anonymity are driving a shift to non-anonymous donor conception, in which all parties come to a communication agreement. To pave the way for such a donor conception system, transitional measures can be put into place. For countries that already adopted non-anonymous donor conception, ensuring the communication agreements is important to protect the rights of parents, donor, and offspring. (shrink)

Chapter 1: An Introduction: The ‘Semantic Sting’ Argument Describes Dworkin’s theory as concerning the conditions of legal validity. “A legal system is a system of norms. Validity is a logical property of norms in a way akin to that in which truth is a logical property of propositions. A statement about the law is true if and only if the norm it purports to describe is a valid legal norm…It follows that there must be certain conditions which render certain norms, (...) but not others, legally valid. Hence it also follows that there can be two types of disagreement over the truth or falsehood of propositions about the law. People can disagree over the question ‘What are the conditions of legal validity?’, in which case their disagreement is a theoretical one. Or they can agree on the conditions of validity, and disagree as to whether or not those conditions actually obtain in a given case or not.” Argues that the best way to interpret Dworkin’s ‘semantic-sting argument’ is as a general argument against conventionalism in legal positivism. Summarizes the outcome of Dworkin’s argument as follows: “[I]f Dworkin is right about the legal reasoning of lawyers and judges, conventionalism would be self-defeating: if lawyers and judges recognize as legally binding not only those norms which are uncontroversially identifiable under the Rule of Recognition, that is, if what they recognize as binding is not only source-based law, then conventionalism turns out to be false on its own terms. In other words, either law is not what lawyers and judges think that it is, in which case law is not a matter of conventions, or – if it is what lawyers and judges think – conventionalism is false, as they do not see the law as purely a matter of conventions.” Dworkin’s theory, then, is a new conception of jurisprudence aiming to present itself as a rival to conventionalism. The book will be concerned with re-examining positivism in light of the interpretative challenge. Chapter 2: Meaning and Interpretation “[R]oughly, interpretation can be defined as an understanding or explanation of the meaning of an object.” Interpretation in this narrow sense is distinct from a less formal and broader use of interpretation that makes it equivalent to explanation. “Hence also, only those objects which are capable of bearing some meaning qualify as objects of interpretation.” [Why shouldn’t we think of interpretation as object-identification? This seems to be closer to what Dworkin has in mind.] Thus, a consideration of the philosophical work on meaning is appropriate. First, a consideration of Davidson on interpretation. The thesis is that Davidson’s “radical interpretation” can only account for sentence meaning and not for linguistic interpretation in general. Davidson cannot account for the non-rule-governed aspects of communication. “Semantics, as opposed to interpretation, concerns those aspects of communication which are rule or convention governed…but such rules are normally unavailable as reasons or justifications for an interpretation. On the contrary, interpretation is usually required because the issue is not determined by rules or conventions.” Interpretation, rather, is parasitic with understanding the meaning of an expression and not equivalent with it. As Dummett notes, any reflection on the meanings of words assumes prior knowledge of ordinary meanings. “This leads to the conclusion that understanding or explaining the meaning of an expression and interpreting it, are two conceptually separate things. It also indicates that seman ics can only be employed, if at all, to elucidate the concept of interpretation by way of contrast: interpretation concerns those aspects of communication which are under-determined by semantic rules or conventions.” Pragmatics, the study of problems posed by discrepancies between utterer’s meaning and sentence meaning, would seem to be closer to inquiry into interpretation. Both are concerned with understanding how meaning is possible where conventional rules leave off. Contemporary pragmatics, moreover, recognizes the logically indeterminate character of communicative inferences beyond conventional meaning and that the contextual conditions that account for the possibility cannot be realized in the semantic structure of the sentence. However, different criteria of success may be at work in pragmatics than interpretation. Pragmatics is concerned with how communication is achieved and thus the criteria of success would be grasping a speaker’s intentions. Many think, however, that communication is unimportant in certain spheres of communication, e.g. artistic interpretation, and that in these cases the aim of interpretation is not to uncover the actual artist’s intentions. What kind of meaning is interpretation aimed at then? It cannot be the meaning the object has for the interpreter. “Interpretation purports to be a statement about the object interpreted, not about the subject who offers the interpretation…it is crucial to remember that not everything we say about a work of art, or any other text, amounts to an interpretation of it. Only those aspects of a text which can shed light on its meaning form part of the text’s interpretation. What the text means for someone rarely entails anything about what the text means.” [This is puzzling to some extent for it remains somewhat ambiguous what it means to talk of subject-independent meaning.] Interpretive meaning attribution is, rather, counterfactual. “In general, I will suggest that the answer to this question consists in the fact that meaning is assigned by a counterfactual statement. Given that x is the meaning attributed to, for instance a text T, and x is not the literal meaning of T, nor is it the meaning of T intended by its author, then the attribution of meaning x to T can only be understood as the contention that on the basis of certain assumptions a certain fictitious or stipulated speaker would have meant x by expressing T.” Thus, on this account, interpretation, when it does not concern an actual speaker, turns out to be a kind of counterfactual intention attribution. Twofold point: “First, that interpretation is essentially a matter of attributing intentions, that is, in the pragmatics sense of ‘meaning’, namely, meaning that such-and-such by an act or expression. At the same time, interpretations need not be based on the intentions of actual authors; the meaning of an act or expression is understandable in terms of counterfactual intentions.” [Are we really restricted to understanding the coherence and integrity of meaning in such a way? Presumably the author is a kind of device for organizing meaning, much like Dworkin’s integrity, but need it take that format?] The logic of interpretation is typically reducible to intention attribution. [What role does the counterfactual author play in structuring meaning?] The criteria of interpretive success will depend upon the object, whether it is the real author or the counterfactual author. If the former, success will depend upon the retrieval of the author’s actual intentions. “Likewise, if the author is characterized in terms of some ideal representative of a certain genre, for instance, the presumptions which are taken to determine this c aracterization would provide the criteria of success for the particular interpretation offered.” [The criteria of success would seem, then, to be the principles, ideals, etc. that we attribute to the counterfactual author. These attributed qualities would be doing all the work – is the attribution of intention to the hypothetical author, then, really necessary at all?] [Does this account presuppose a weird dichotomy between what an object is and what it means? This dichotomy is different, if present at all, in Dworkin.] Chapter 3: Dworkin’s Theory of Interpretation and the Nature of Jurisprudence Three main insights of Dworkin’s theory of interpretation: “First, that interpretation strives to present its object in its best possible light. Second, that interpretation is essentially genre-dependent. And third, that there are certain constraints that determine the limits of possible interpretations of a given object.” Why the best light? Dworkin doesn’t really address this question in depth but claims that otherwise we are left with no way of justifying and choosing an interpretation or we are left with the author’s intention model, which we should reject. [Marmor doesn’t seem clear on what precisely it means to present something in its best light – seems to conflate it with most appealing light which, I take it, is different than what Dworkin has in mind.] “Dworkin is quite right to maintain that without having some views about the values inherent in the genre to which the text is taken to belong, no interpretation can take off the ground. The values we associate with the genre partly, but crucially, determine what would make sense to say about the text, what are the kinds of meaning we could ascribe to it.” There is no necessity for an interpretation to present an object in its best light with regards to the genre it is taken to be part of. Interpretations “could simply strive to present it in a certain light, perhaps better than some, worse than others, but in a way which highlights an aspect of the meaning of the text which may be worth paying attention to for some reason or another.” [What kind of reasons would count in choosing to present it in one light rather than another?] There is simply zero grounds for Dworkin’s assertion that we have no reason to pay attention to an interpretation that does not present it in its best light. Take a psychoanalytic interpretation of Hamlet, for example – not the best light, but a legitimate one. [This seems related to the next criticism – clearly Dworkin would have to loosen his insistence on the best, though not to detriment.] Moreover, especially with regards to art, it doesn’t appear possible to make an all things considered judgment about the best interpretation given the incommensurability of different values that are taken to inhere in a given genre. [Dworkin can respond here that we may have different available interpretations that could be justified with respect to the relevant value. Moreover, a lack of common denominator does not prevent any comparison whatsoever.] Constructive interpretation concerns social practices constituted by norms – it imposes a purpose or value rendering intelligible the normative character of the practice. There is a separate aspect of constructive interpretation that maintains that elements of the practice are sensitive to the point of the practice. It is important to note that different social practices will institutionalize themselves in different ways – thus, different practices will establish varying conditions on how the practice can be altered. The position of the positivists is that evaluative judgments concerning what the law should be are insufficient for determining what the law is given the nature of law’s institutionalization.&nb p; [This would seem to reside on a certain conception of law, i.e. an interpretation about where the value of law lies.] “[T]his being one of the main points of dispute between Dworkin and his positivist opponents, Dworkin cannot at this initial state presume law to be sensitive to its value in the manner that other, non-institutional practices might be, without incurring the charge of having assumed the very point at issue.” The upshot for Dworkin is that any explanation of a social practice such as law requires the same kind of reasoning as participation in that practice. This will be called the hermeneutic thesis. We can try to reconstruct a justification for this view based on the necessity of shared background assumptions – but this will not do since Dworkin’s claim is stronger: it contends that participants’ and theorists’ must “adopt one and the same normative point of view.” [The sense of normative here is unclear. It is true, though, that shared background assumptions do not imply viewing the law as valuable in any particular way, or at least it does not imply this in any strong sense.] Dworkin makes two distinct points with the hermeneutic thesis: “First, that the explanation of a social practice, like law or the arts, is essentially interpretative, and as such, necessarily value laden. Second, that the interpretation of such social practices, which Dworkin calls ‘argumentative’, is unique in the sense that the practice itself is an evaluative enterprise, and that therefore the interpreter of such a practice must form an evaluative judgment of her own about those values which are inherent in the practice that she purports to interpret.” [As stated, the first thesis is terribly ambiguous – for Dworkin, it clear implies a commitment to constructive interpretation. For Marmor, who accepts it, it is totally unclear what commitment he intends to make. He seems to mean simply that we have criteria for success concerning what counts as a successful explanation.] Mamor denies the second thesis. “What Dworkin seems to ignore here is that there is a crucial difference between forming a view about the values which are manifest in a social practice, like law, and actually having evaluative judgments about them.” [The problem, however, it that it is a contentious matter what values are part of the law – a theorist’s account of what values are constitutive of a particular legal system must rely on the kind of arguments which participants rely on. Of course, a theorist might simply note a debate about values and attempt to remain agnostic, but this will fail to be a full theoretical account of what law is!] Dworkin’s thesis seems to depend exclusively on his account of constructive interpretation. [This seems exactly right.] Chapter 4: Coherence, Holism, and Interpretation: The Epistemic Foundation of Dworkin’s Legal Theory Begins with discussion of Rawls’ reflective equilibrium. Sums up dual criticism as follows: “[T]he assumption that intuitions are independently true and the converse one, that their truth depends on fitting a coherent scheme, both seem to yield paradoxical results.” Dworkin, in his article “The Original Position”, claims that Rawls cannot commit himself to ethical realism. “[T]he natural model presupposes some form of ethical realism, while the constructive model does not. One important difficulty arising from an attempt to apply the natural model to Rawls is, that under the natural model, any theory which dopes not account for an intuition, at least for one which is held firmly, cannot be wholly satisfactory, just as scientific theory which does not account for certain observational data it is supposed to cover, would not be satisfactory in a familiar way.” Rawls, rather, is committed to a constructivist view of morality. Moreover, the reason we value coherence epistemically in moral theory is that it itself is a value of political morality – fairness requires consistency and publicity in the application of moral standards. Marmor notes the following problem with such a view: “[I]f coherence is justified, as it is here, with reference to certain moral values, that is, a specific conception of fairness, then we face the following problem: the presupposed values of fairness must themselves be based upon intuitive convictions, in which case the question of their truth cannot be ignored. If they are taken to be true…we are driven back to the perplexities of the natural model.” Discusses, helpfully, the Fish/Dworkin debate. The upshot is that Dworkin’s interpretive model is best off if it commits itself to a Quineian holism. However, this undermines his distinction between internal and external skepticism since holism must deny that moral judgments constitute a closed system. [This analysis seems exactly right.] Endorses Simmonds view that Dworkin’s theory does not meet the requirements of complexity he identifies as necessary to avoid vicious circularity in interpretive judgments of fit and identity. Coherence is doing the work through and through and therefore the interpretive theory of law is circular. [Will require further investigation, though it is unclear how coherence is doing any work in the pre-interpretive stage. At this stage, the judgments, if interpretive, seem to be derived from different sources. In any case, using coherence as a value seems to be highly suspect.] Why doesn’t Dworkin just reject Fish’s assumptions: because of his jurisprudence. “If legal texts can have a meaning that is not entirely dependent on a process of interpretation, then it is at least sometimes the case that the law can simply be understood, and applied, without the mediation of interpretation. And if that is the case, then the argument from interpretation against legal positivism collapses. It is no longer the case that every conclusion about what the law is, depends on evaluative considerations about what it ought to be.” Chapter 5: Semantics, Realism, and Natural Law Assessment of Michael Moore’s legal realism and its implications. [The final criticisms of Moore are not decisive.] Chapter 6: Constructive Identification and Razian Authority A consideration of Dworkin’s denial that the communication model of interpretation is appropriate for legal interpretation. Marmor argues that intentions do play a crucial role in the identification of legal norms in a way that is incompatible with Dworkin’s “coherence thesis”. Marmor takes Dworkin to be committed to the constructive identification thesis: that the identification of something as part of the legal, artistic, etc. genre can be done sufficiently by evaluative considerations. “Here, one must maintain that evaluative considerations are sufficient to determine whether something is a legal norm or a work of art”. [Fit, however, constrains possible evaluative considerations – thus evaluative considerations are not sufficient in themselves.] “Now the crucial point here is this: if you maintain the possibility of constructive identification in art, you must assume that works of art can be identified as such on the basis of certain features they happen to possess, features which contain no reference to any particular intention to create a work of art…unless we take intentions into account, how can we discriminate between the concept of an aesthetic artifact and the con ept of a work of art?” [It is unclear, and I think false, that constructive interpretation of anything requires identifying something irrespective of an artificers intentions. Those intentions may be relevant, dependent upon the genre under which we are trying to classify the object. Nothing, seemingly, about constructive interpretation in general excludes this possibility.] Marmor’s point is that it turns out to be impossible to identify art as art without reference to an artist’s intentions – especially given the state of contemporary art. [It is notable that Marmor’s response to counterexample implicitly depends upon a fully developed theory of aesthetics. His cursory comments on the matter of identifying art seem insufficient to say the least.] The rest of the chapter considers the incompatibility of Raz’s account of authority with constructive interpretation. The incompatibilities mentioned do not move beyond what Raz identifies in his article “Authority, Law and Morality”, but a defense of this notion of authority is defended in several [inconclusive] respects. [Raz and Marmor want to separate identification from content. This is not clearly a defensible separation.] Chapter 7: No Easy Cases? Chapter defends notion that there is a distinction between easy and hard cases in the positivist sense. Takes a Hartian approach and ultimately defends the distinction by associating it Wittgenstein’s conception of rule following. The point is that one need to look the purpose of rule in order to understand what the rule requires. Chapter 8: Legislative Intent and the Authority of Law Examines the following doctrine concerning the role of legislative intent in adjudication: “[F]irst, it would hold that laws, at least in certain cases, are enacted with relatively specific intentions, and that this is a matter of fact which is discernible through an ordinary fact-finding procedure. Second, that in certain cases the presence of such a fact, namely, that the law was enacted with a certain intention, provides judges with a reason to decide the legal dispute in accordance with the relevant legislative intent.” [It is important that for Marmor, interpretive strategies are only appropriate in hard cases. However, we should wonder what grounds positivism can offer for deciding a hard case in any manner which is not the morally best manner according to the judgment of the judge. There are no legal grounds, by definition, in hard cases and so what justificatory strategy would endorse any judicial decision except for the morally best one?] We can ascribe intentions to a legislative body, when this is possible at all, by taking the shared intentions of the majority, rather than some group intention, to be the significant intentions. Moreover, we should expect a good deal of consensus about intentions for otherwise it is hard to explain how legislative bodies are able to produce so much legislation. Discussion of kinds of intentions concludes as follows: “I have distinguished between three main types of intention that are potentially relevant from the legal point of view. Apart from the intentions that are manifest in the language of the law itself, legislators typically have further intentions in enacting a given law, and sometimes they would have certain intentions bearing on its proper application. I have also suggested that some of these further intentions may be essentially non-avowable, in which case they are rendered initially irrelevant. Finally, I have pointed out that considerations of consistency require that the legislator’s application intentions be taken into account only if, and to the extent that, they are in accord with his further intentions.” The manner in which intentionalism is to be justif ed relies on the distinction, Marmor maintains, between expert and mere collective action authority. “The point I wanted to make is strictly conditional: if, and only if, a certain law is justified on the basis of the expertise branch of the normal justification thesis, would it make sense to defer to the legislature’s intentions in the interpretation of the law, that is, to the extent that there is, in fact,; such an intention and it can clarify something that needs clarification.” Insofar as a legislature can be considered an expert on the matter requiring adjudication and interpretation should the body’s intention be taken into account. Chapter 9: Constitutional Interpretation Begins by laying out general necessary features of a constitution. Then Marmor moves on to consider general questions of constitutional legitimacy. First, he considers what grounds might be offered for the legitimacy of a constitution at all. He notes that the central question is what permits a single generation to bind future generations. He then examines four arguments to avoid this problem. The first is based on the moral legitimacy of the constitution; Marmor rejects this solution for the [truly dubious] reason that the constitution would make no practical difference because it would not supply reasons in addition to those provided by morality [but, presumably, the point is that these legally valid rules would be institutionally enshrined]. The second is based on the moral authority of the framers and Marmor rightly rejects this on the basis of the idealization of the framers it requires and less rightly on the basis that there cannot be moral authorities. Third is the “argument from interpretation” which claims that “as long as the particular content of the constitution is determined by its interpretation, and the authoritative interpretation at any time correctly instantiates the values which ought to be upheld in the community, the constitution would be morally legitimate”. The fourth is Raz’s which argues that a constitution is valid so long as its constraints are morally permissible because conventions of this type might aid the continuity of the legal system, i.e. it is important to have a convention of this type and the constitution is a kind of this type. Marmor appears to endorse these two approaches and concludes: “The conditions for the legitimacy of a constitution must comprise the following conditions. First, the values and principles enshrined in it must be morally permissible…Second, when certain choices are made in particular cases, they would be legitimate if they are either morally underdetermined, or else, morally correct…It follows from this that both arguments must assume that at least in those areas in which the constitution would make a moral difference, it can be interpreted to make the difference that it should, that is, according to the true moral principles that should apply to the particular case...the moral legitimacy of constitutions very much dependent on the practices of their interpretation. In other words, a great deal of the burden of moral legitimacy is shifted by these arguments to the application of the constitution, thus assuming that the constitution is legitimate only if the courts are likely to apply the constitution in a morally desirable way.” [This implies that the only significant value constitutions have is in providing a conventional practice where some such practice is required.] Moves on to argue that courts typically rely, and rightly so, on moral considerations when deciding constitutional issues because typically, in cases of the kind that reach the supreme or constitutional court, there is no law on the case. Much of this relies on his earlier discussion about the nature of interpretation in the law – that legal interpretation is always a matter of cha ging the law. (shrink)

Task shifting is increasingly used to address human resource shortages impacting HIV service delivery in low- and middle-income countries. By shifting basic tasks from higher- to lower-trained cadres, such as Community Health Workers, task shifting can reduce overhead costs, improve community outreach, and provide efficient scale-up of essential treatments like antiretroviral therapies. Although there is rich evidence outlining positive outcomes that CHWs bring into HIV programs, important questions remain over their place in service delivery. These challenges often reflect concerns over (...) whether CHWs can mitigate HIV through a means that does not overlook the ethical and practical constraints that undergird their work. Ethical and practical guidance thus needs to become the cornerstone of CHW deployment. This paper analyzes such challenges through the lens of Ethical Principlism. We examined papers identifying substantive and ethical challenges impacting CHWs as they provide HIV services in low- and middle-income contexts. To do this, we analyzed papers written in English and published from year 2000 or later. These articles were identified using MEDLINE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Google Scholar databases. In total, 465 articles were identified, 78 of which met our inclusion criteria. Article reference lists and grey literature were also examined. CHWs experience specific challenges while carrying out their duties, such as conducting emotionally- and physically-demanding tasks with often inadequate training, supervision and compensation. CHWs have also been poorly integrated into health systems, which not only impacts quality of care, but can hinder their prospects for promotion and lead to CHW disempowerment. As we argue, these challenges can be addressed if a set of ethical principles is prioritized, which specifically entail the principles of respect for persons, justice, beneficence, proportionality and cultural humility. CHWs play a crucial role in HIV service delivery, yet the ethical challenges that can accompany their work cannot be overlooked. By prioritizing ethical principles, policymakers and program implementers can better ensure that CHWs are combatting HIV through a means that does not exploit or take their critical role within service delivery for granted. (shrink)

This essay examines the impact of the imposition of businesses techniques, in particular, those associated with Total QualityManagement, on the relationships of important components of the health care delivery system, including payers, managed care organizations, institutional and individual providers, enrollees, and patients. It examines structural anomalies within the delivery system and concludes that the use of Total Quality Management techniques within the health care system cannot prevent the shift of attention of other components away from the enrollee (...) and the patient, and may even contribute to it. It speculates that the organization ethics process may serve as a quality control mechanism to prevent this shift and so help eliminate some of the ethically problematic processes and outcomes within the health care delivery system. (shrink)

Phase-shift analysis is a commonly used technique to extract the scattering amplitudes of a two-body strong-interaction scattering process from the experimentally measured quantities | total cross-section, di erential cross-section, polarization and spin-correlation parameters. However, at a xed energy, all the scattering amplitudes can be multiplied by an arbitrary angle-dep phase-factor without a ecting the measurables. It would seem then that the phase of the..

The disruptions to everyday life wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic include distortions in the experience of time, as reported widely by ordinary citizens and observed by journalists and social scientists. But how does this temporal disruption play out in different time scales—in the individual day as opposed to the medium- and long-term futures? And how might place influence how individuals experience and understand the pandemic's temporal transformations? This essay examines a range of temporal disruptions reported in day diaries and surveys (...) submitted to the Everyday Life in Middletown project, an online archive that has been documenting ordinary life in Muncie, Indiana, USA since 2016. Viewing these materials as instances of life writing, the essay probes the interactions between temporal disruptions and the local setting as they inflect the autobiographical selves our writers construct in their pandemic writings. It shows how living in Muncie—a postindustrial city with its particular combination of historical, demographic, economic, social, and political dynamics—structures the autobiographical stories available to our writers, and how the disruption of time produces new variations and problems for life writing. In the midst of a global crisis, we glimpse the pandemic's reshaping of a local structure of feeling in which a pervasive, local narrative of civic decline frames individual self-fashioning. (shrink)

When everyone can be a publisher, what distinguishes the journalist? This article considers contemporary challenges to institutional roles in a digital media environment and then turns to three broad journalistic normative values - authenticity, accountability, and autonomy - that affect the credibility of journalists and the content they provide. A set of questions that can help citizens determine the trustworthiness of information available to them emerges from the discussion.

Application of the reliability of repairable systems on solving problems from constructing production systems takes an important place in the process of finding the optimal solution among the suggested system choices. The basic hypothesis when using the reliability of the repairable systems is that every machine is representing a component, a fact that is debatable when talking about technical sciences. However, considering the second assumption of the stationary process, the function of the availability is introduced. It represents the measure (...) between the reliability and the benefit of maintaining the components and the system as a whole one. An additional and the last reason for analyzing constructing machine as a whole one has an economic reason. From the aspect of the total cost and the capacity of the system, the function of the availability is catching more and more impact in the process of determinating the total cost in bill of quantities as the most important part of tender documents. Until former works, techno-economic optimisation usually ran over when choosing the system of the construction machines. In the work, there are shown the methodologies for gathering and analyzing the indicators of availabilities per unit of a company's machine park. The time of demission and reparation have been investigated among 34 components in the period of 6 years. Based on the obtained result for different conditions of machine exploitation and facilities, it is suggested the methodology of the future behaviour of the corresponding within the model optimization availability of constructing production system with the aim of eliminating extra criterion. The suggested model takes in consideration the total cost of the components when they are functional, and when they are not. This kind of approach enables the one who take choices decision of the height of profits, in the lenght of work in function of the projection of cash flow and managing with real indicators of functioning the system at the project level. Given the fact that the maintanance policy of machines is based on availability, and not on reliability of components, with the aim of maximizing the availability of different budget scenarios, a logical approach to the selection of the objective function in the terms of management of construction production systems is to minimize costs for a given availability of system constructing machinery is based on the use of historical data base with the values of the operational availability of components, conditions in which they function, in the process of forecasting the project availability for projects that follow. Ranking variant solutions is the result of the adopted function of the aim as a consequence due to enlargement methods of availability for serial parallel systems with the associated restrictions. For optimal system availability is taken a value that belongs to minimal total cost. However, it is predicted that after the end of the financial year, the real and projected indicators of system functions get compared to each other. Informational support to the proposed model is informational company system, which was built in the PHP programming language on the Linux software platform, and with data based in My SQL. The suggested model is tested on the system for the production and embedding bitumen bound materials on the specific project. Obtained results confirm the assumptions used in work. (shrink)

Faring poorly by international standards, out-of-home childcare in Canada is often described as ‘in crisis’. This study addresses how national childcare movement actors, who are overwhelmingly women, have discursively constructed their collective identity during two contrasting political climates. Data comprise publically available media releases produced in 2005 and 2008 by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, a national grassroots childcare social movement organization. Guided by Fairclough's overarching framework for critical discourse analysis and Koller's approach to analysing collective identity through (...) CDA, the discursive mechanisms of CCAAC movement actors have employed in relation to their collective identity construction are identified and explored. Finally, whether or not these mechanisms may have been strategic is explored. (shrink)

Should we think of our universe as law-governed and “clockwork”-like or as disorderly and “soup”-like? Alternatively, should we consciously and intentionally synthesize these two extreme pictures? More concretely, how deterministic are the postulated causes and how rigid are the modeled properties of the best statistical methodologies used in the biological and behavioral sciences? The charge of this entry is to explore thinking about causation in the temporal evolution of biological and behavioral systems. Regression analysis and path analysis are simply explicated (...) with reference to a thought experiment of painting three universes (clockwork, soup, and conscious) useful for imagining our actual universe. Attention to historical, structural, and mechanistic explanatory perspectives broadens the palette of methodologies available for analyzing determinism in, and explanation of, biological and behavioral systems. Each justified methodology provides a partial perspective on complex reality. Is a total explanation of any system ever possible, and what would it require? (shrink)

The rigid recoil of a crystal is the accepted mechanism for the Mössbauer effect. It’s at odds with the special theory of relativity which does not allow perfectly rigid bodies. The standard model of particle physics which includes QED should not allow any signals to be transmitted faster than the speed of light. If perturbation theory can be used, then the X-ray emitted in a Mössbauer decay must come from a single nuclear decay vertex at which the 4-momentum is exactly (...) conserved in a Feynman diagram. Then the 4-momentum of the final state Mössbauer nucleus must be slightly off the mass shell. This off-shell behavior would be followed by subsequent diffusion of momentum throughout the crystal to bring the nucleus back onto the mass shell and the crystal to a final relaxed state in which it moves rigidly with the appropriate recoil velocity. This mechanism explains the Mössbauer effect at the microscopic level and reconciles it with relativity. Because off-mass-shell quantum mechanics is required, the on-mass-shell theories developed originally for the Mössbauer effect are inadequate. Another possibility is that that the recoil response involves a non-perturbative effect in the standard model which could allow for a non-local instantaneous momentum transfer between the crystal and the decay, as proposed for example by Preparata and others in super-radiance theory. The recoil time of the crystal is probably not instantaneous, and if it could be measured, one could distinguish between various theories. An experiment is proposed in this paper to measure this time. The idea is to measure the total energy radiated due to bremsstrahlung from a charged Mössbauer crystal which has experienced a recoil. Using Larmor’s formula, along with corrections to it, allows one to design an experiment. The favored idea is to use many small nano-spheres of Mössbauer-active metals, whose outer surfaces are charged. The energy radiated then varies as the charge squared divided by the recoil time. This can then be measured with the extreme sensitivity available in Mössbauer experiments. If it turns out that experiments prove the need for off-mass-shell theory, then this would have profound implications for all of condensed matter physics. It would mean that an off-mass-shell theory like those considered by Stueckelberg, Horwitz, Piron, Greenberger, and many others are required to describe nature. The inclusion of these would be a major shift in the foundations. It would mean that there are new dynamic variables—the rest masses of particles. The ability to measure the diffusion relaxation time should prove useful also in chemical analysis, and provide a new class of analytical methods for material science. This problem is also interesting because the Mössbauer effect is a phenomenon where the solid-state environment dramatically and indisputably influences the probability of a nuclear process. (shrink)

Understanding the causes of maize landrace loss in farmers’ field is essential to design effective conservation strategies. These strategies are necessary to ensure that genetic resources are available in the future. Previous studies have shown that this loss is caused by multiple factors. In this longitudinal study, we used a collection of 93 maize landrace accessions from Morelos, Mexico, and stored at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center Maize Germplasm Bank, to trace back to the original 66 donor families (...) after 50 years and explore the causes for why they abandoned or conserved their seed lots. We used an actor-centered approach, based on interviews and focus group discussions. We adopt a Multi-Level Perspective framework to examine loss as a process, accommodating multiple causes and the interactions among them. We found that the importance of maize landrace cultivation had diminished over the last 50 years in the study area. By 2017, 13 families had conserved a total of 14 seed lots directly descended from the 1967 collection. Focus group participants identified 60 accessions that could still be found in the surrounding municipalities. Our findings showed that multiple interconnected changes in maize cultivation technologies, as well as in maize markets, other crop markets, agricultural and land policies, cultural preferences, urbanization and climate change, have created an unfavorable environment for the conservation of maize landraces. Many of these processes were location- and landrace-specific, and often led to landrace abandonment during the shift from one farmer generation to the next. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings on Semiotics 1894–1912 ed. by Francesco BellucciCornelis de WaalEdited by Francesco BellucciCharles S. Peirce: Selected Writings on Semiotics 1894–1912 Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020; no index.With Francesco Bellucci's Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings on Semiotics 1894–1912 and the Peirceana series, which Bellucci co-edits with Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, the center of gravity in Peirce studies has dramatically shifted to Europe. The powerhouses of old, such as (...) the Peirce Edition Project at Indiana University and the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism at Texas Tech University, appear pretty much dead in the water. And this new center of gravity is by no means limited to secondary literature. Bellucci's edition of Peirce's writings on semiotics and Pietarinen's multi-volume Logic of the Future present us with well-thought-out and responsibly edited volumes of primary literature that will leave their mark on Peirce scholarship for decades to come. And there are other volumes on the way.Bellucci's volume spans almost two decades of Peirce's life—a period during which Peirce had retreated to Milford, Pennsylvania, spending most of his time with his pen on paper. The main purpose of Bellucci's volume is to give us better access to material that has not yet been published—material that is, as Bellucci contends, "essential to understand Peirce's views about signs, their classification, and the relations between semiotics and logical inquiry" (p.1).In line with this, Bellucci starts off where the Writings break off. The last volume of the Writings, which appeared well over a decade ago, ends midway 1892, and Bellucci's volume opens with the sixth chapter of Peirce's 1894 logic book How to Reason, "The Essence of Reasoning." Bellucci thereby skips the second chapter of that same logic book, even though it deals directly with the question "What is a Sign?" He does this on the ground that that chapter is already published in the second [End Page 265] volume of The Essential Peirce (p.3). Bellucci's Selected Writings on Semiotics is thus best considered a professional tool aimed at filling gaps in the literature for Peirce scholars who are already familiar with, or knowledgeable of, what is already out there. Making these texts available is especially important since the manuscripts they are based on are not widely accessible and are in various states of disarray.Each text in Bellucci's volume comes with a (sometimes-extensive) editorial note that is largely bibliographical and, like the Writings, explains which manuscript sheets constitute the text by supplementing the Robin Catalogue designation with the page reference system devised by the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism. The headnote is followed by explanatory annotations, emendations, and alterations, not unlike the system used for the Writings. In this way the reader can easily ascertain where Bellucci made corrections to the original text and what changes Peirce made himself when he was in the process of writing. Putting the apparatus immediately following each text is a much better choice than hiding everything in the back of the volume, as was done in the Writings. Given the nature of this edition, however, it would have been better to have the editorial note precede the text, as is done, for instance in The Essential Peirce, rather than follow it (or use two notes), as that would have made it easier for the reader to position the text within Peirce's oeuvre before beginning to read it (for instance, by reading "What is a Sign?" before starting "The Essence of Reasoning").Bellucci's Selected Writings on Semiotics includes eighteen selections in total, each of which is described briefly in the volume's Introduction with a rationale for including it. As with the Writings, titles not given by Peirce are printed in italic square brackets. At times a more forceful editorial hand in establishing the titles themselves would have been helpful. Selection 10, for instance, "The Basis of Pragmaticism," suggests that it would include two pieces already found in The Essential Peirce, namely "The Basis of Pragmaticism in Phaneroscopy," and "The Basis of Pragmaticism in the... (shrink)

The paper examines the nature of the behavioral evidence underlying attributions of intelligence in the case of human beings, and how this might be extended to other kinds of cognitive system, in the spirit of the original Turing Test. I consider Harnad's Total Turing Test, which involves successful performance of both linguistic and robotic behavior, and which is often thought to incorporate the very same range of empirical data that is available in the human case. However, I argue that (...) the TTT is still too weak, because it only tests the capabilities of particular tokens within a preexisting context of intelligent behavior. What is needed is a test of the cognitive type, as manifested through a number of exemplary tokens, in order to confirm that the cognitive type is able to produce the context of intelligent behavior presupposed by tests such as the TT and TTT. (shrink)

Some feminists have been critical about the dominant conception of autonomy, questioning, for example, its conception of persons and ideal of personhood. Tom Beauchamp and James Childress (BC), the major proponents of the dominant conception of autonomy, believe that these feminists have misunderstood their theory and, moreover, that their theory is immune to feminist attack. Their response to feminist critics, however, has been dismissive and does nothing to assuage these critics concerns. In this paper I briefly review the state of (...) play in this debate about autonomy, showing that BC are not without positive rejoinders to objections raised by feminist critics. These rejoinders rest on the notion that feminist concerns are a matter of what is logically entailed by BCs theory of autonomy and attempt to show that feminist commitments are logically consistent with that theory. However, these rejoinders are less than convincing for reasons illuminated by Cheshire Calhoun. Calhoun reminds us that feminists are sensitive to ways in which the shape of discourse is influenced by non-epistemic considerations. In particular, Calhoun draws our attention to the cumulative effect of a whole tradition of moral reasoning that focuses on too narrow a range of moral problems and too narrow an understanding of people and the human condition. BCs conception of autonomy relies on and reinforces ideologies of the moral life created in just this way. Following Calhoun, I show that criticism of their theory as ideology is not criticism of its logical implications, but something far more damaging, something without available rejoinders. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To study some ethical problems created by accession of a previously nomadic and traditional society to modern invasive medicine, by assessment of physicians' attitudes towards sharing information and decision-making with patients in the setting of a serious illness. DESIGN: Self-completion questionnaire administered in 1993. SETTING: Riyadh, Jeddah, and Buraidah, three of the largest cities in Saudi Arabia. SURVEY SAMPLE: Senior and junior physicians from departments of internal medicine and critical care in six hospitals in the above cities. RESULTS: A (...) total of 249 physicians participated in the study. Less than half indicated they provided information on diagnosis and prognosis of serious illnesses all the time. Physicians who were more senior and those who spoke Arabic fared better than other groups. The majority preferred to discuss information with close relatives rather than patients, even when the patients were mentally competent. Most of the physicians felt patients had the right to refuse a specific treatment modality, and 68% denied patients the right to demand such a treatment if considered futile. Further analysis showed that physicians' attitudes varied along a spectrum from passive to paternalistic with the largest group in a balanced position. CONCLUSIONS: In traditional societies where physicians are regarded as figures of authority and family ties are important, there is a considerable shift of access to information and decision-making from patients to their physicians and relatives in a manner that threatens patients' autonomy. Ethical principles, wider availability of invasive medical technology and a rise in public awareness dictate an attitude change. (shrink)

Ex interiore ipso exeas. Preface. This book reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, that is, shared codes of unwritten rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories discussing the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines. Its main claim is that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established goal, but (...) instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us. -/- 1. The Hellenic moral tradition. -/- Two different traditions of morality in vi-v century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. -/- 2. Plato and the Good. -/- Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates rejoinder to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 3. Aristotle and practical philosophy. -/- Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistency in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater families, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics, is illustrated. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexes, or ‘dispositions’. Prudence, or better, practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with boùleusis or deliberation is discussed, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 4. Cynics and Stoics: ethics as therapy. -/- The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place that was given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of the science of well-being aiming, more than pleasure understood as in the popular view, the reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Roman and Imperial Moralists. -/- The chapter is dedicated to the reconstruction of a particular kind of literature, whose specific features have long been under-stressed, namely the Roman and Imperial moral literature. Cicero is treated at some length, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is given pride of place, stressing the novelty of his approach to ethics as cognitive therapy, in this case just following an already existing new wave of interest after nineteenth-century oblivion justified by alleged lack of authentic ‘philosophical’ character. -/- 6. The Hebrew moral tradition. -/- A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torah (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Levitic is stressed as the turning point when the stress on mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, starts being combined with legal tradition yielding the change in the sensibility of the Second Temple time. -/- 7. Second Temple Judaism. -/- This chapter describes the Long March leading from the post-exile Zadokite restoration to the first-century aevi vulgaris. The first topic reconstructed is the Zadokite theology of the double retribution. The second is the alternative Enochic tradition consistently rejecting the central role of the Temple, the Priesthood and worship as atonement for sins and offering as an alternative God’s unlimited mercy and preaching mercy, not sacrifice as the way of behaving requested by God. Wisdom literature, the third subject discusses, is a kind of third way, on the one hand increasingly critical towards the double retribution and ruling theology’s optimism facing the world as it is and on the other mocking at the Enochic current as a band of dreamers and visionaries. The third way consists in disenchantment facing the word as it is combined with a refusal of vain and childish hope of prizes for the righteous, suggesting instead the leading idea of right deeds for righteousness’s sake. Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Yeshua and Philo of Alexandria are described as the three leading figures at the culminating point of such process of emergence of a new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This starting point consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, whose meaning is, arguably, more consistent than a long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine made us believe. And Christian morality, vis-à-vis allegedly legalist ‘Ancient Testament’ teachings, is less of a novelty than most early Christian writers announced. -/- 8. Talmudic moral doctrines and proto-Christian paraenesis. -/- The first three sections examine the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirke Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deot, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexes and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was "the tool by which the world was built"; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous, but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The last two sections examine first the various Christian currents and then Gnostic para-Christian or non-Christian currents as well as Manicheism. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure, purest Judaism. The last section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manicheism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. -/- 9. Christianity as “philosophy”. -/- The chapter reconstructs the stormy story of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and several rhetorical topics from the Stoic and Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua himself had been influenced by cynical preachers, is a proof of the necessity to translate the original Christian message in a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 10. Ethics in the Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. -/- The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on the retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince, had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries, a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with the disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 11. Ethics in the Jewish philosophy. -/- The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place for the first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed too a few traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Tora and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirke Avot could be translated. -/- 12. The practical philosophy revival in Latin Europe. -/- A reconstruction is carried out of a fresh start of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium rescuing a Platonic and Augustinian legacy, with Anselm and Peter Abelard. In this phase remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions, gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of a full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. -/- 13. Scholastic practical philosophy: Thomas Aquinas. -/- Aquinas’s ethics is theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to the repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave pure nature incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too ambitious, and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Prima Secundae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas was able to solve the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from the knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethics, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of the death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not the Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is no way an ethical ‘absolutism’, as both the traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularists tend to believe, but rather an ethic of prudential judgment on the individual case. Exceptions to this approach – or better the result of logical fallacies – are provided by the thesis of the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of so-called intrinsically evil acts, a thesis that would simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences that Thomas did not live long enough to draw. -/- 14. Scholastic practical philosophy: John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. A reconstruction is carried out of the ethical doctrines by both most authoritative Franciscan doctors. Their continuity with Aquinas is vindicated against prejudice carried by centuries of polemics within the Catholic Church and tendentious disparaging of both as forerunners of execrable Reformation. Besides aspects of continuity, also the important novelties are illustrated, first John’s abandonment of Aquinas’s and Augustine’s eudemonism, asserting righteousness for righteousness’s sake, and then William’s explicit defence of the philosopher’s virtues, that is, natural morality, and his solution to the dilemma of God’s omnipotence and the universal validity of natural law extending to God himself. -/- 15. Aristotelianism interpreted by the Magistri Artium. -/- A reconstruction of the until recently forgotten ethical doctrines by the Parisian Magistri Artium, falsely depicted as ‘Averroists’ and either deprecated as heretics or mistaken for predecessors of modern secularism. In fact, they illustrate a view of ‘natural’ virtue as may be understood by human reason without the assistance by Revelation. -/- Etiamsi daremus Deum non esse. Intermediate considerations. Three considerations may be suggested by the story told in the book. The first one is that intellectual histories have been mounted in the past with the same state of mind as one may mount a war chariot. Such constructions are not very helpful as tools for understanding the past. Wars waged in the past have left the field obstructed by ruins not easy to remove even by those historians who have animated by an impartial academic motivation. They have been influenced too by consequences of past emphasis on some authors and damnatio capitis suffered by others, by stratifications left on sources by secondary literature and translations, by allotment of originally close sources to different literary genres, by the monopolization of religious texts by churches with full cooperation by secular scholars who still fear contamination. The second one is that aware or unaware ethnocentrism has carried various calamities to our comprehension of the past. Their last vestiges have surfaced again in the semi-scholarly discussion on the idea of Europe occasioned by the debate on a project of a European Constitution. Mention of Europe’s Christian roots has been the clumsiest move. Proclamations of such roots were so obvious in what they affirmed as they were totally off-path concerning what they omitted, namely that he modern European moral tradition included legacies from Middle-Eastern wisdom, Hellenic philosophy, Roman Imperial legal literature, and, besides, a Jewish legacy in turn incorporating other more ancient Middle-Eastern legacies and which has been partly conveyed by Christianity. And the Islamic-Arabic philosophy too, in so far it made the Nicomachean Ethics available to Latin Christian scholars, is one more of Europe’s roots. The third is that religious traditionalists and secularist fundamentalists have gone hand in hand for a couple of centuries in either extolling or deprecating the allegedly Modern idea of Ethics without God, first formulated by Hugo Grotius with the claim that natural law would still be valid ‘etiamsi daremus – quod sine summo scelere dari potest – Deum non esse’. The facts are, firstly, that this is not an irreligious claim and Grotius was just a pious and meek Christian and, secondly, that it is not a ‘modern’ claim but rather one more formulation of the claim that there is a natural morality, independent of divine revelation, a claim shared by Moshe ben Maimon, Aquinas and William of Ockham. -/- . (shrink)

There is a burgeoning and increasingly institutionalized discourse within organizational theory and business practice dedicated to exploring the intersections of “religion” and “spirituality” at work. Turning especially to the broadly influential management theory of Margaret Wheatley, I locate “spiritual” management within a contemporary management ethos characterized by both an increasing interest in transitive phenomena and pre-conscious understanding and the wholesale deregulation of industrial metaphors for society in favor of holistic, cybernetic and global metaphors for a networked society. Turning to the (...) phenomenological and existential anthropology of the anthropologist, Michael Jackson, I argue that social theories, whether industrial or post-industrial, can never claim a full and final grasp over the total processes of life itself. Methodologically, I argue that we might seek to attend to the personal and social dimensions of new “workplace spirituality” contexts by paying careful empirical attention to the practical deployments and personalizations of the lived metaphors of “spiritual” capitalism, considered for these purposes to be important “patterns of intersubjective experience”. What Jackson refers to as “phenomenological and existential deconstruction” has a political edge to it because it always seeks to force abstract theory into a more empirically grounded relationship with life as it is actually lived. As Marx and various critical theories have suggested, the particular experiences of workers often resist and confound the sanitized and universalized ideologies of capital. (shrink)

When reading the papers of Solomon, Thagard and Goldman, I observed their framing doing considerable explicit and implicit work. Framing, a visual metaphor, stimulated me to respond with images of one kind or another. These should allow readers to visualize more issues and propositions than an argumentive format could have pinned down in the limited space available.Figure 1 conveys how the three papers seem to me to frame the issue of integrating the cognitive and social: Scientists’beliefsare the focal phenomena, within (...) three nested boxesof factorssurrounding them: thinking (reasoning etc.); cognition (information input and processing); and social (interaction among agents). (The other objects and lines will be explained in due course.) These factors are referred to asinfluences,something outside that gets into beliefs (1). The authors then argue about which set of influences is strongest or how to think about the factors “intermingling,” “overlapping,” “interacting.”. (shrink)

Topic of this paper is the way in which the structure of events features in discourse. We focus on the structure as introduced by verbs that express some sense of progress. First it is shown by means of examples that this structure is anaphorically available in discourse. Then we go on to discuss the different ways in which the same event may be structured within one discourse situation. We give formal representations of the crucial examples in many-sorted dynamic logic.

Understanding the causes of maize landrace loss in farmers’ field is essential to design effective conservation strategies. These strategies are necessary to ensure that genetic resources are available in the future. Previous studies have shown that this loss is caused by multiple factors. In this longitudinal study, we used a collection of 93 maize landrace accessions from Morelos, Mexico, and stored at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) Maize Germplasm Bank, to trace back to the original 66 donor (...) families after 50 years and explore the causes for why they abandoned or conserved their seed lots. We used an actor-centered approach, based on interviews and focus group discussions. We adopt a Multi-Level Perspective framework to examine loss as a process, accommodating multiple causes and the interactions among them. We found that the importance of maize landrace cultivation had diminished over the last 50 years in the study area. By 2017, 13 families had conserved a total of 14 seed lots directly descended from the 1967 collection. Focus group participants identified 60 accessions that could still be found in the surrounding municipalities. Our findings showed that multiple interconnected changes in maize cultivation technologies, as well as in maize markets, other crop markets, agricultural and land policies, cultural preferences, urbanization and climate change, have created an unfavorable environment for the conservation of maize landraces. Many of these processes were location- and landrace-specific, and often led to landrace abandonment during the shift from one farmer generation to the next. (shrink)

Writing, the exigency of writing: no longer the writing that has always (through a necessity in no way avoidable) been in the service of the speech or thought that is called idealist (that is to say, moralizing), but rather the writing that through its own slowly liberated force (the aleatory force of absence) seems to devote itself solely to itself as something that remains without identity, and little by little brings forth possibilities that are entirely other: an anonymous, distracted, deferred, (...) and dispersed way of being in relation, by which everything is brought into question – and first of all the idea of God, of the Self, of the Subject, then of Truth and the One, then finally the idea of the Book and the Work so that this writing (understood in its enigmatic rigor), far from having the Book as its goal rather signals its end: a writing that could be said to be outside discourse, outside language. – Maurice Blanchot ( The Infinite Conversation , xi) The Compendium * Beginning with the idea and practice of writing, and moving to the subject or self, then to truth and the One, and arriving at the Book and the Work, Blanchot’s words reflect the trajectory of the following work of writing. True to the embeddedness of the subject in the work of writing, the term “Compendium” has been a metonym for me over the past few years as I have thought about the concept of totality alongside its expression in figures such as the One, the Whole, or the All. In the following I aim to share some of the content of this metonym, and to enrich it by making some distinctions. 1 Here the term “Compendium” will refer to a concept of totality that is ontological (pertaining to being, and the copula) and also textual (pertaining to the symbolic, and the signifier-signified relationship). The Compendium is a figure for thinking the world as a Book, in the broadest sense—an approach to reality that is by no means new, but one that is due for renewal. 2 In partial answer to the question of the Compendium we will say that the word ‘Compendium’ stands in for expressions which seek to totalize, or concepts which seek to approach the concept of ‘everything,’ particularly when these expressions are bound up in the question of the Book (both the book as a physical object and the Book as a metaphysical figure: a way of thinking about the work in and of writing). The question of the Compendium is strongly associated with the physical and metaphysical form of the Book, like the mysterious and symbolic books which are opened in the Biblical book of Revelation, the book of life and the book of death, which together constitute an important couplet. 3 Parataxis & Hypotaxis There are two helpful distinctions that will bring us closer to an answer to the question “What is a Compendium?” The first distinction is between two figures in and for writing: parataxis and hypotaxis . Typically paired in contrast to one another as literary techniques, with parataxis indicating a side-by-side placement of textual elements and hypotaxis referring to subordinate arrangements of textual elements, the two figures can be understood as having a philosophical significance in addition to their practical function as devices for writers. For us these two terms will remain between philosophical theory and writing practice, and serve as a perspective for our writing and creation of texts. Here I take texts to refer to anything from the concrete written words in a book, to the ontological text of the world that we experience. Parataxis , as a figural way of thinking about the ontological structure of texts, refers to texts which are tightly woven and interdependent – texts within which each sentence bears the weight of the entire work. Parataxis often involves repetition, great density, and fragility. One of the best examples of this sort of text is Theodor Adorno’s posthumous magnum opus , Aesthetic Theory . In addition to the text itself, the translation history of the book may also help us to better understand parataxis and its relation to hypotaxis . The final published version of Aesthetic Theory , in German, was a text that Adorno intended to revise and rewrite, but this intention was never realized because of his untimely death. Where the German text of Aesthetic Theory certainly exemplifies the concept of parataxis , the first English edition took this densely woven text and carved Adorno’s lengthy paragraphs and lengthy sentences into manageable ‘bite-sized’ pieces of English text. The first translator took further liberty and inserted headings and new paragraph breaks where there were none in the original. Aesthetic Theory was eventually retranslated by Robert Hullot-Kentor and is now available in a form that is much more faithful to the original work. 4 The pertinent idea that this translation history points to is the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis . Where parataxis describes texts which are repetitive, densely woven, and often fragile, hypotaxis describes texts which are hierarchical and in which the primary relation is linear – the latter of which is very similar to the first English translation of Aesthetic Theory . On the other hand, the original German text that Adorno wrote was very dense, often repetitive, and contained long sections of text unbroken by paragraphs or headings. This example of parataxis was then turned towards hypotaxis through the initial translation which took a text that was, in many ways, nonhierarchical and nonlinear, and artificially subjected it to a hierarchy that was not its own (and here I take the word of Fredric Jameson who comments on the two translations in a note at the beginning of his book Late Marxism ). 5 The point here is not about translation, but rather the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis precisely as they are figures for discourse, written or otherwise. The concept of parataxis looks far more postmodern and rhizomic than the concept of hypotaxis which remains very modern and arborescent. This is a more figural way of talking about the distinction. However, if we wanted to take a more precise and analytical approach we could say that on the level of form parataxis involves a relationship between sentences and paragraphs in which each part bears an equally crushing responsibility to present the whole content of the text. As well, on the level of content, parataxis requires that each concept in a work take on the full conceptual weight of the total work. Continuing the analysis, we could say that parataxis describes texts in which there is no (or very little) linear or causal move from antecedent to consequent, whether in content or form. Instead, parataxis describes texts which weave together concepts via conjugations or associations. The concept of hypotaxis , on the other hand, requires that texts submit themselves to hierarchy, one example of which is logical argumentation. The contingency of the conclusion upon premises in hypotaxis is certainly distinct from the repetition, re-presentation, and conjugation of concepts in parataxis , and I think that this is evident in the difference between the writing styles prevalent in contemporary Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy. It is not the case that the distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis absolutely corresponds with the writing styles of Continental and Analytic philosophy (respectively). There are thinkers who take exception to this pattern, such as Badiou’s more formal approach in the discourse of Continental philosophy to give one example. However, when Analytic philosophy takes its writing lessons from the sciences, and seeks to do philosophy via the clean linear move from antecedent to consequent, then I think that Analytic philosophy writes with hypotaxis in mind. On the other hand, when Continental (particularly German and French) philosophy takes its writing lessons from narrative or poetry then Continental philosophy writes with parataxis in mind. It is not fair to say that all those writing Continental philosophy are looking to narrative and poetry for stylistic direction, just as it is not the case that all those writing Analytic philosophy have mathematics and science as their writing format, however there are some striking ways in which the differing epistemologies of Continental and Analytic philosophy encourage writing with parataxis and hypotaxis in mind (respectively). For some, writing with parataxis or hypotaxis in mind is a conscious decision and a product of stylistic self-consciousness, and for others it is an unconscious discursive and epistemic requirement that must be met in order to be involved in a particular discourse. Before moving on to our second distinction, and then an examination of the question of the Book, it is important to point out that both totality and figurations like the One, the Whole, and the All, come out of very human desires to totalize or to actualize our being-towards-totality. The relationship between identity and totality then can be construed, with Heidegger in mind, as striving toward wholeness, completion, or fulfillment, each of which is a quality of compendia. 6 Compilation & Selection The first distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis pertains to both form and content, and to both the mechanics of writing and the ideas to which writing refers. The second distinction pertains to both as well. In the process of writing and in the process of perception as well, there is a tension between compilation and selection . To begin with, in the work of theory-writing there is compilation, and this is because writing theory requires a broad perspective and certain measure of totalization. On the other hand, writing theory requires that the writer select an idea or a combination of ideas to individuate out of a radical and infinite multiplicity of identities and combinations. The concern here is not primarily for the writing of a theory about a specific idea, like a secondary work or a reference text. But rather the concern is with the writing of grand theories: Marx and Marxism, Derrida and Deconstruction, Husserl and Phenomenology, Sartre and Existentialism, Saussure and Structuralism —each of which strives along a trajectory towards being all-encompassing, whether it intends to or not. Today, we could even say that Speculative Realism has embarked on this journey, and perhaps now we could say that the discourse of Speculative Realism has reached the inevitable point after which a grand theory leaves the hands of its writer or writers and becomes a possession of the collective consciousness of the academy, or (perhaps now) the mass consciousness of the blogosphere—and this is a true pharmakon , a poison and a cure, a blessing and a curse. 7 When we write theory, whether the scope is that of a grand theory or a particular theory, we write in the tension between compilation (making good on the desire to be all encompassing) and selection (being required to decide and discern and to judge what is included in the work and what is deleted or appended or abridged or given over to ellipses). Generally speaking, the work of theory-writing often comes out of a desire to totalize, that is, to develop a theory of everything that is able to apprehend new experiences and ideas while still remaining whole. I grant that this is not a universal desire, and that not everyone who sits down to write a work (or book) of theory does so because of their will-to-totality, but it remains that this drive to totalize does condition a great many writers of theory (especially those who seek to develop grand theories like those mentioned previously). At the beginning of his book of interviews, Between Existentialism and Marxism , Sartre is quoted as saying, after completing the first volume of his Critique of Dialectical Reason : “I no longer feel the need to make long digressions in my books, as if I were forever chasing after my own philosophy. It will now be deposited in little coffins, and I will feel completely emptied and at peace—as I felt after Being and Nothingness . A feeling of emptiness: a writer is fortunate if he can attain such a state. For when one has nothing to say, one can say everything .” 8 This is where our two initial distinctions come to bear on the being-towards-totality as it is expressed in the concrete practice of writing: the first being between parataxis and hypotaxis , and the second being between compilation and selection. Where this second distinction is concerned there is a certain paradox at play given that selection is inescapable, and compilation is unachievable. Selection is inescapable (with the figure of the Compendium in mind) because, even when the imperative to compile is followed to excruciating lengths, selection still has the last word. This is why the Compendium is a figure rather than some material thing that can actually be accomplished or actualized. No matter how far one goes along with the will-to-archive and the will-to-compile, it is only ever a question of minimizing selection and never eliminating it. This leads to the second point, which is that total compilation is unachievable. The closest thing to total compilation that we have before us is the ontological and textual fabric of the world. Even in the case of the world, compilation cannot be enacted in a total fashion because of the need to include both the sphere of the actual and the sphere of the possible or potential. This as another way in which compilation is always-already selection, and further evidence that total compilation is practically impossible. Discursive Figuration and Total Writing Rather than figuration referring to a figure of speech or an image, here the term points to a way in which to think about the work of writing, both the work put into writing, and the work that is the result of writing: the finished yet incomplete final piece. As figures or figurations, the Book and the Compendium are ways of thinking about the work of writing and the human desire for the wholeness, completion, and fulfillment that are made manifest in the completed form of the book (whether a published or printed or saved document put to rest by the author). These two figures bear more strongly upon works that seek to be all-encompassing, and works that strive towards expressions of totality such as the One, the Whole, or the All. Moving on to the topic of the subtitle, and on a more prescriptive note, I would say that there is more hope for theory-writing to be found in parataxis than hypotaxis . Part of the reason for this claim is the poststructuralist critique of hierarchies, and yet another part is the compelling line of thinking called “weak thought” (in theology by John D. Caputo, and in philosophy by Gianni Vattimo, among others). 9 The consequences of these two convictions are such that if one is to strongly assert the truth of a grand theory without leaving the realm of hierarchy-critique and weak thought, then one must write paradoxically with parataxis in mind, and in so doing write weakly and non-hierarchically. This does not mean avoiding a sort of topography or topology when writing theory, rather it means avoiding both subjugation and oppression in thought by pursuing a nonviolent sort of ontology. In order to do this, theory writing does not present itself as an exercise in logical analysis where one mechanically moves from a set of premises (via contingency) to the inevitable conclusion (via necessity). Instead, theory approaches the idea of a Compendium. Given that the figural Compendium places parataxis and compilation above hypotaxis and selection, then the question becomes: is placing one part of a binary term before another not just another way of selecting, or another expression of hypotaxis ? Counter to the urge to resign oneself to the reign of selection, with some qualification one can nonetheless write without deciding whether selection and hypotaxis should be subservient to compilation and parataxis (which is to say that writing-without-decision is somewhere between and beyond possibility and impossibility). This dilemma can be disarmed by stating that theory writing is not about primacy, and not about having-decided-beforehand, both stylistically and also where content is concerned. This is the paradox of writing: always striving along a trajectory ( telos ) towards totality via parataxis and compilation, but always being drawn back to finitude and making selections, and placing one idea before another with hypotaxis in mind. In light of this paradox, the question of the Compendium as a figure for discourse and a figural Book has resonance with Jacques Derrida’s essay on Edmund Jabès’ Book of Questions , found in his Writing and Difference . The Question of the Book “Little by little the book will finish me.” 10 Derrida quotes Jabès, and proceeds to outline the reflexive relationship between the author of the book and the book itself, each of which are subjected to the other through a sort of chiasmus, both ontological and textual (not that the two are entirely separable). The Book, for Derrida like Blanchot in the introductory quotation, “infinitely reflects itself” and “develops as a painful questioning of its own possibility”, and in light of this we can draw an association with the painful tension between the practical reality of selection and the ideal trajectory of compilation. 11 This tension in writing, between the will to total compilation and the necessity of abridgment, is an ontological tension between part and whole just as it is a textual tension between signifier and signified. The ontological tension in writing that Derrida expresses in his essay on Jabès is between everything and nothing – a contradiction which Derrida finds in Jabès’ Book of Questions and also in the divine, in God. When one writes between compilation and selection one writes towards totality, and here we can follow Derrida who states that the lapse in signification, presumably in the signifier-signified discrepancy, is a “ rupture with totality itself” and furthermore that this lapse cannot be rectified through deductive reason or even philosophical discourse. 12 This rupture with totality, found in the troubled relation between signifier and signified, can also tell us a lot about the Book and about writing. Given an understanding of writing as an ontological act that strives towards (but never accomplishes) totality, we can see the written book as the manifested and given body of that striving. Perhaps in other disciplines or even other schools of philosophy there is a cultural climate within which the article is prized above the book, but I am fairly confident, especially when referring to the grand theories of Continental thought, that there is a respect for the book as a uniquely meaningful object capable of apprehending totality. Derrida writes, Between the too warm flesh of the literal event and the cold skin of the concept runs meaning. This is how it enters into the book. Everything enters into, transpires in the book. This is why the book is never finite. It always remains suffering and vigilant. 13 Here the vitality of the literal event is compromised by the deadening weight of the concept, and the figure of the Book assists in this lapse of meaning. The Book is a totalizing object, much like the figure of the Compendium, and yet this totalization lacks its final object of completed totality both because the figural Book is necessarily incomplete, and because the physical book is always-already a product of selection. Instead of achieving its end of being a place where everything takes place, it suffers from the lapse of writing, the discrepancy between event and concept. Derrida continues his exposition on Jabès by bringing to light yet another reflexive relation, a reversal of the relationship between the Book and the world. Derrida writes that, for Jabès, “the book is not in the world, but the world is in the book.” 14 In addition to what was stated before, I take figuration to mean that the concepts employed, such as the Book or the Compendium, are not subject to the supposed rigor of analysis that is so prized by Enlightenment or Capitalist realisms. The figure of the Book and the figure of the Compendium cannot be held accountable to standards imported from scientific method, given an understanding that these standards require a concept to be replicable, consistent, falsifiable, measurable, and so on… This is an important point to make, especially in the present atmosphere within which theory must justify itself under conditions that are not its own. Instead of being held to these standards, figuration serves as a way in which to think about writing that leaves thought open to idealistic speculation, imperfect analogies, and most importantly the ever-present gain and loss that occur in the relationship between thought and being. By extension the figural way of addressing writing indulges in enough generalization to accommodate the excess/lack relationship between the ideal form of the Book or the Compendium, and the manifested and given body of a text (as it is practically completed and closed). Here we speak against the hostile atmosphere which would have theory submit itself to hierarchical rigor, rather than Blanchot’s “enigmatic rigor”, by being explicit about the discursive conditions and epistemic conditions under which theory operates. To write with parataxis in mind is, to a certain degree, to write with weakness as one’s methodology (with weak thought being in opposition to hypotaxis and hierarchy as much as weak thought can be in opposition to anything). Rather than asserting the strength of hierarchical theory, and rather than employing antagonistic argumentation with the goal of refutation different discursive and epistemic conditions for theory writing must be cultivated (and these are by no means new). First the critical and theoretical spirit reveals itself as being concerned with the task of complication—especially the complication and critique of binaries, dichotomies, dualities, polarities, paradoxes, parallaxes, hybridities, and especially antinomies. Second, theory positions itself as a sort of showing or revealing, rather than being ultimately focused on coming to full agreement or disagreement. This is where figuration can help theory-writing, both by placing emphasis on teleologies and trajectories (like parataxis and compilation), and by shifting focus away from pure primacy, power, or absolute origin. Figuration then, assists theory writing by placing the concern of theory outside of the concerns of the hard or soft sciences, and into the realm of thought or the idea. To speak of ‘the’ Compendium or ‘the’ Book, here, is to generalize not regarding the perfect form of the Compendium or Book, but to engage speculatively with an abstract idea which remains singular and yet complicated by multiplicity. The question of the Book that Derrida asks through Jabès is a question of everything and nothing, totality and nonbeing, and this question is a concern for writing and a concern for the figure of the Compendium so defined by the tension between compilation and selection, and parataxis and hypotaxis . On the note of nonbeing, we can look to the final page of Derrida’s first essay on Jabès in Writing and Difference and notice the introduction of his neologism, différance (with an ‘a’). Derrida writes: Life negates itself in literature only so that it may survive better. So that it may be better. It does not negate itself any more than it affirms itself: it differs from itself, defers itself, and writes itself as différance . Books are always books of life (the archetype would be the Book of Life kept by the God of the Jews) or of afterlife (the archetype would be the Books of the Dead kept by the Egyptians). 15 This introduction of différance into the equation of the Book, alongside ontological affirmation and negation, hearkens back to the discussion of the symbolic lapse earlier in his essay. Differing and deferring, the Book is always a Book of Life and a figure for the intersection of the vital (life) and the total in writing. In a way, the writer of the Book may be someone who lives life, and in another way the writer of the book-as-object may be someone who engages in the act of writing, both practically (by inscribing words on paper, or typing script on a computer) and ontologically or symbolically (by investing their existence and inexistence into a work worthy of the figural Book). In addition to the writer as writer, the writer also serves as an editor, and the editorial role alongside the idea of the Compendium shows the editor to be one who collects and compiles, while being restrained by eventual selection and decision. Beyond this the editor of works and texts, in both the Book and the world, is engaged in a process of inscribing notation—of annotating (on) the Compendium. Eternal commentary is a feature of the textual Compendium, just as open-ended totality describes the ontological Compendium. The writer as writer does not simply write texts, but rather engages in a profoundly ontological act of inscribing their existence into the world, and the writer as editor does not merely annotate or alter texts as they are, but rather comments upon the text of the world. In/Conclusion So as we create texts, and as we write and create theory, let us be and remain attentive to the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book. These two concurrent metonymies are essential for total writing (grand theories, etc.), and may be forgettable for those concerned with fragmentary or hierarchical writing (which are valid in their own right). From the ontological and symbolic text of the world and phenomenological experience, to concrete texts such as books or mixed media, the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book are important for the actualization of the human will to be all-encompassing. The figure of the Compendium teaches writers of theory that the repetition, density, and fragility of parataxis offers a strong sort of weakness which does not become yet another variety of oppressive and hegemonic thought. Rather than write with hypotaxis in mind, subjugating one thought to another via cause and effect or antecedent and consequent, I would hope that theory-writing could guiltlessly indulge in the dialectical and contradictory conjugation of ideas, and take this as a legitimate methodology. Rather than being ashamed of showing resonances or giving way to abridgment or ellipses, it is my own authorial (but not authoritative) conviction that one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the fact that complete totalization is impossible, and one need not give up on totalizing and constructing grand theories because of the worry of violence, for the Book and the Compendium lack their completed object and are ever incomplete trajectories. NOTES * UPDATED 7/19/13: we've updated the HTML version to reflect the (correct) PDF version. Our apologies to the author—eds. 1. I would like extend thanks to Dr. Peter Schwenger of the University of Western Ontario for his comments on this paper and his hospitality as it was presented as a Theory Session at the Centre for Theory and Criticism on October 26th 2012. I would also like to thank Andrew Weiss for conversation and critique. 2. I should clarify my use of the term ‘figure’ at the outset. Given the use of the term by Jean-Francois Lyotard in Discourse, Figure (and also Gilles Deleuze in Francis Bacon ), I should state clearly that my use of the term will not correspond to the term ‘figure’ understood as the representation of an object. Instead, my use of the term ‘figure’ and its variations (‘figural’, ‘figurative’, ‘figuration’) will refer to the illustrative or metaphorical use of the Compendium or the Book as models or ways of thinking about writing and discourse. 3. Cf. Revelations 20:12-15. 4. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London & New York: Continuum Press, 1997). 5. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London & New York: Verso, 1990), ix-x. 6. I have written about this concept of being-towards-totality elsewhere in two pieces of writing: the first is called Notes on the Compendium (an unfinished draft) which addresses some very wide theoretical concerns, being structured as a sort of itinerary or archive, and the second is Dialectics Unbound (Punctum Books, 2013) which outlines a concept of totality without the violence of totalization. While these works are more concerned with ontological totality, here I would like to focus on the idea of the Compendium as a textual totality. 7. Cf. Louis Morelle, “Speculative Realism: After Finitude and Beyond, A vade mecum” in Speculations: Journal of Speculative Realism . Issue 3 (Brooklyn, New York: Punctum Books, 2012), 241-272. 8. Jean-Paul Sartre, Between Existentialism and Marxism . Trans. John Matthews (London & New York: Verso, 1974), 9. 9. Cf. John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2006). 10. Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book” in Writing and Difference . Trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 65. 11. Ibid, 65. 12. Ibid, 71. 13. Ibid, 75. 14. Ibid, 76. 15. Ibid, 78. (shrink)

Objectives: No systematic review or meta-analysis concerning the prevalence of shift work disorder has been conducted so far. The aim was thus to review prevalence studies of SWD, to calculate an overall prevalence by a random effects meta-analysis approach and investigate correlates of SWD prevalence using a random-effects meta-regression.Methods: Systematic searches were conducted in ISI Web of Science, PsycNET, PubMed, and Google Scholar using the search terms “shift work disorder” and “shift work sleep disorder.” No restrictions in (...) terms of time frame were used. Included studies had to present original data on the prevalence of SWD in an occupational sample published in English. A total of 349 unique hits were made. In all, 29 studies were finally included from which two authors independently extracted data using predefined data fields. The meta-regression included four predictors.Results: The overall prevalence of SWD was 26.5%. Cochran Q was 1,845.4, and the I2 was 98.5%, indicating very high heterogeneity across the observed prevalence estimates. Diagnostic criteria and sample size were inversely related to SWD prevalence.Conclusions: The prevalence of SWD was high across the included studies. The between-study disparity was large and was partly explained by diagnostic criteria and sample size. In order to facilitate comparative research on SWD, there is a need for validation and standardization of assessment methodology as well as agreement in terms of sample restrictions. (shrink)

One very natural dividing line that—for better or worse—is often used to distinguish those who believe in God from those who do not is that between theism and atheism, where ‘theism’ is used to mark the believers and ‘atheism’ the non-believers. Such contrastive labels can serve many practical functions even when the terms in question are not clearly defined. Individuals are often, on the basis of their beliefs and values, attracted toward one such label more so than the other. However, (...) once a clear statement of the substantive difference between theism and atheism is requested, things become more complicated, much more so than our casual use of these terms would suggest. What exactly is the best way to capture the relationship between theism and atheism? To what extent are they opposed to one another, and relatedly, to what extent should they be regarded as exhausting the available theoretical options? §2 will canvass a range of responses to this cluster of questions. In §3, we explore the social-epistemic dimension of the atheism/theism divide, by focusing in particular on the issue of religious disagreements, including those disagreements that take very different assumptions as starting points. (shrink)

Background: Positive effects of acute exercise on cognitive performances in general inspired research that investigated the effects of acute exercise on specific cognitive subdomains. Many existing studies examined beneficial effects of acute exercise on subsequent set shifting performance in healthy adults. Set shifting, a subdomain of executive function, is the ability to switch between different cognitive sets. The results of existing studies are inconsistent. Therefore, a meta-analysis was conducted that pooled available effect sizes. Additionally, moderator analyses were carried out to (...) identify covariates that determine the magnitude of exercise-induced set shifting benefits.Methods: Medline, PsycINFO, and SPORTDiscus were searched for eligible studies. Hedges' g corrected standardized mean difference values were used for analyses. Random-effects weights were applied to pool effects. Potential moderation of the effect of acute exercise on subsequent set shifting performance by exercise intensity, type of exercise, participants' age, and type of control group were examined.Results: Twenty-two studies were included into analysis. All aggregated effect sizes ranged from small to moderate. Overall, a small significant beneficial effect was revealed. Heterogeneity of included effect sizes was moderate and significant. Moderator analyses revealed a larger average effect in older adults than for studies examining younger adults. Light exercise led to larger effects than moderate or vigorous exercise. Studies testing acute exercise against active control groups showed a noticeably smaller average effect than studies that used passive or cognitive engaging control groups. Interestingly, application of resistance or aerobic exercise led to no different average effect sizes. However, none of the tested covariates reached statistical significance.Conclusion: Acute exercise improves subsequent set shifting performance. However, effect sizes are small, making the relevance for everyday life questionable. The results indicate that older adults benefit more from acute exercise than younger adults do. Light intensity exercise seems most effective while the type of exercise does not seem to influence the magnitude of effects. Research designs with active control groups show the smallest average effect, raising concerns about placebo effects.PROSPERO registration number: CRD42019138799. (shrink)

The article examines Adorno’s conviction that a critique of concepts inevitably entails a critique of society. Some commentators, notably Cook, read Adorno’s idea of the seamless transition from conceptual to social critique as dependent on the use of normative concepts. According to this ‘Marxist’ reading, a critique of unfaithful concepts provokes a persuasive and constructive critique of society for failing to fulfil concepts. This line of argument creates problems. Adorno’s inquiries into society’s resistance to decipherment imply that the progression from (...) conceptual to social critique via normative concepts leads to advocating misguided, potentially dangerous social standards. In response to this dilemma, the article proposes an alternative interpretation of the transition from conceptual to social critique. The focus shifts from normative concepts to Adorno’s examinations of society as a condition of false consciousness and suffering. From this perspective, conceptual critique entails a convincing — albeit no longer constructive — critique of society. (shrink)

Green republicanism can be described as a subset of republican political theory that aims at promoting human flourishing by ensuring a non-dominating and ecologically sustainable republic. An essential aspect of green republicanism is the promotion of post-productivism while preserving or expanding republican freedom as non-domination. Post-productivism implies the promotion of personal autonomy rather than the pursuit of permanent economic growth and the promotion of labour as an intrinsically positive human activity, which for green republicans will have three positive aspects: reduced (...) ecological impact, more time available for civic participation, and the extension of democratic decision-making and norms to the sphere of production. An important aspect in the definition of a post-productivist society is the way welfare schemes are designed. In this article, I will thus compare the existing welfare regimes with a participation income and with an unconditional basic income, and analyse how they promote green republican goals. I conclude that the current systems are one of the elements of the productivist society and that would not answer the green republican conditions. A green participation income could have a positive ecological impact and contribute to a shift to post-productivism but would face serious challenges from a republican perspective, namely in terms of the non-arbitrariness of its attribution. Finally, I conclude that depending on how it is defined, an unconditional basic income could contribute to post-productivism while being non-arbitrary thus obeying the green republican conditions. (shrink)

The article presents several examples of different mathematical structures and interprets their properties related to the existence of universal functions. In this context, relations between the problem of totality of elements and possible forms of universal functions are analyzed. Furthermore, some global and local aspects of the mentioned functional systems are distinguished and compared. In addition, the paper attempts to link universality and totality with the dynamic and static properties of mathematical objects and to consider the problem of limitations in (...) the construction of structures combining harmoniously the availability of information at the local and global level. (shrink)

With a global commitment to scaling up AIDS care and treatment in resource-poor settings for some of the most HIV-affected countries in Africa, availability of antiretroviral treatment is no longer the principal obstacle to expanding access to treatment. A shortage of trained healthcare personnel to initiate treatment and manage patients represents a more challenging barrier to offering life-saving treatment to all patients in need. Physician-centered treatment policies accentuate this challenge. Despite evidence that task shifting for nurse-centered AIDS patient care (...) is effective and can alleviate severe physician shortages that currently obstruct treatment scale-up, political commitment and policy action to support task shifting models of care has been slow to absent. In this paper we review the evidence in support of task shifting for AIDS treatment in Africa and argue that continued policy inaction amounts to unwarranted healthcare rationing and as such is ethically untenable. (shrink)

This article examines how the availability of Big Data, coupled with new data analytics, challenges established epistemologies across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and assesses the extent to which they are engendering paradigm shifts across multiple disciplines. In particular, it critically explores new forms of empiricism that declare ‘the end of theory’, the creation of data-driven rather than knowledge-driven science, and the development of digital humanities and computational social sciences that propose radically different ways to make sense of (...) culture, history, economy and society. It is argued that: Big Data and new data analytics are disruptive innovations which are reconfiguring in many instances how research is conducted; and there is an urgent need for wider critical reflection within the academy on the epistemological implications of the unfolding data revolution, a task that has barely begun to be tackled despite the rapid changes in research practices presently taking place. After critically reviewing emerging epistemological positions, it is contended that a potentially fruitful approach would be the development of a situated, reflexive and contextually nuanced epistemology. (shrink)

In his analysis of subliminal perception research, Erdelyi documented two important phenomena: subchance perception and temporal variability in stimulus availability and accessibility. This Commentary addresses three issues raised by Erdelyi's review: the importance of distinguishing “micro” from “macro” temporal shifts; the need to analyze perception without awareness data at the level of the individual as well as the group; and parallels between the dissociations associated with neuroclinical phenomena and those observed in patients with certain forms of personality pathology. Continued (...) integration of laboratory findings with in vivo observations of clinical syndromes will yield a more cohesive and heuristic approach to the study of implicit mental states. (shrink)

In Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Fred Dretske explains representational content by appealing to natural indication: a mental representation has its content in virtue of being a reliable natural indicator of a particular type of state of the world. His account fails for several reasons, not the least of which is that it cannot account for misrepresentation. Recognizing this, Dretske adds a twist in his more recent work on representational content (sketched in 'Misrepresentation' and elaborated in Explaining Behavior): a (...) mental representation acquires its semantic content when the fact that it naturally indicates some type of state of the world acquires explanatory relevance. This shift in emphasis from natural indication to function (and, so, to behaviour) is intended to address the disjunction problem. Whether or not it succeeds (I argue that it does not), new problems emerge as a direct result of the shift to emphasis on behaviour. First, although Dretske appeals to appropriate response behaviours for particular types of representations, it is not at all clear that such behaviours exist. Second, Dretske's theory cannot account for representations that never figure in the behaviour of the organism of which they are a part. In response to these problems, I suggest two possible routes to recovery: one, an appeal to implicit beliefs (or dispositions); and, two, an appeal to compositionality. Although it seems clear that Dretske must enlist one of these options if he is to formulate a successful causal naturalist theory of representational content, given his theoretical commitments, neither option is readily available to him. (shrink)

The present research investigates the role of voluntary, conscious processing in strategy change. In 2 experiments, we address whether the switch to a new strategy is the result of data - driven, automatic processes or of voluntary processes. Experiment 1 demonstrates that participants performing an alphabet verification task are able to transfer a newly adopted strategy to dissimilar information never encountered before, verbally describe the task regularity that allows for the generation and application of the new strategy immediately after the (...) strategy was adopted. Using the same experimental task, Experiment 2 shows that participants, and decide against adopting a new strategy when the available evidence suggests that the new strategy cannot be used for the entire range of problems encountered. Overall, the obtained results support the view that strategy change is mediated by voluntary controlled processing. They do not support the view that strategy change is an inevitable, automatic consequence of task practice. The present research thus highlights a potential function of conscious human processing. (shrink)

Peter Kosso discusses the weak gravitational lensing observations of the Bullet Cluster and argues that dark matter can be detected in this system solely through the equivalence principle without the need to specify a full theory of gravity. This paper argues that Kosso gets some of the details wrong in his analysis of the implications of the Bullet Cluster observations for the Dark Matter Double Bind and the possibility of constructing robust tests of theories of gravity at galactic and greater (...) scales. Even the Bullet Cluster evidence is not sufficiently detailed to allow precision tests of General Relativity that would distinguish it from its rivals at galactic and greater scales. Taking into account the total evidence available, we cannot rule out “ugly” solutions to the dynamical discrepancy in astrophysics that involve both a large quantity of dark matter and a theory of gravity whose predictions differ significantly from those of General Relativity for interactions taking place at galactic and greater scales. (shrink)

According to the Fine-Tuning Argument, the existence of life in our universe confirms the Multiverse Hypothesis. A standard objection to FTA is that it violates the Requirement of Total Evidence. I argue that RTE should be rejected in favor of the Predesignation Requirement, according to which, in assessing the outcome of a probabilistic process, we should only use evidence characterizable in a manner available before observing the outcome. This produces the right verdicts in some simple cases in which RTE (...) leads us astray, and, when applied to FTA, it shows that our evidence does confirm HM. (shrink)

As COVID-19 emerged as a phenomenon of the total environment, and despite the intertwined and complex relationships that make humanity an organic part of the Bio- and Geospheres, the majority of our responses to it have been corrective in character, with few or no consideration for unintended consequences which bring about further vulnerability to unanticipated global events. Tackling COVID-19 entails a systemic and precautionary approach to human-nature relations, which we frame as regaining diversity in the Geo-, Bio-, and Anthropospheres. (...) Its implementation requires nothing short of an overhaul in the way we interact with and build knowledge from natural and social environments. Hence, we discuss the urgency of shifting from current to precautionary approaches to COVID-19 and look, through the lens of diversity, at the anticipated benefits in four systems crucially affecting and affected by the pandemic: health, land, knowledge and innovation. Our reflections offer a glimpse of the sort of changes needed, from pursuing planetary health and creating more harmonious forms of land use to providing a multi-level platform for other ways of knowing/understanding and turning innovation into a source of global public goods. These exemplary initiatives introduce and solidify systemic thinking in policymaking and move priorities from reaction-based strategies to precautionary frameworks. (shrink)

The paper begins by examining the original Turing Test (2T) and Searle’s antithetical Chinese Room Argument, which is intended to refute the 2T in particular, as well as any formal or abstract procedural theory of the mind in general. In the ensuing dispute between Searle and his own critics, I argue that Searle’s ‘internalist’ strategy is unable to deflect Dennett’s combined robotic-systems reply and the allied Total Turing Test (3T). Many would hold that the 3T marks the culmination of (...) the dialectic and, in principle, constitutes a fully adequate empirical standard for judging that an artifact is intelligent on a par with human beings. However, the paper carries the debate forward by arguing that the sociolinguistic factors highlighted in externalist views in the philosophy of language indicate the need for a fundamental shift in perspective in a Truly Total Turing Test (4T). It’s not enough to focus on Dennett’s individual robot viewed as a system; instead, we need to focus on an ongoing system of such artifacts. Hence a 4T should evaluate the general category of cognitive organization under investigation, rather than the performance of single specimens. From this comprehensive standpoint, the question is not whether an individual instance could simulate intelligent behavior within the context of a pre-existing sociolinguistic culture developed by the human cognitive type. Instead the key issue is whether the artificial cognitive type itself is capable of producing a comparable sociolinguistic medium. (shrink)

The paper discusses the origin of dark matter and dark energy from the concepts of time and the totality in the final analysis. Though both seem to be rather philosophical, nonetheless they are postulated axiomatically and interpreted physically, and the corresponding philosophical transcendentalism serves heuristically. The exposition of the article means to outline the “forest for the trees”, however, in an absolutely rigorous mathematical way, which to be explicated in detail in a future paper. The “two deductions” are two successive (...) stage of a single conclusion mentioned above. The concept of “transcendental invariance” meaning ontologically and physically interpreting the mathematical equivalence of the axiom of choice and the well-ordering “theorem” is utilized again. Then, time arrow is a corollary from that transcendental invariance, and in turn, it implies quantum information conservation as the Noether correlate of the linear “increase of time” after time arrow. Quantum information conservation implies a few fundamental corollaries such as the “conservation of energy conservation” in quantum mechanics from reasons quite different from those in classical mechanics and physics as well as the “absence of hidden variables” (versus Einstein’s conjecture) in it. However, the paper is concentrated only into the inference of another corollary from quantum information conservation, namely, dark matter and dark energy being due to entanglement, and thus and in the final analysis, to the conservation of quantum information, however observed experimentally only on the “cognitive screen” of “Mach’s principle” in Einstein’s general relativity. therefore excluding any other source of gravitational field than mass and gravity. Then, if quantum information by itself would generate a certain nonzero gravitational field, it will be depicted on the same screen as certain masses and energies distributed in space-time, and most presumably, observable as those dark energy and dark matter predominating in the universe as about 96% of its energy and matter quite unexpectedly for physics and the scientific worldview nowadays. Besides on the cognitive screen of general relativity, entanglement is available necessarily on still one “cognitive screen” (namely, that of quantum mechanics), being furthermore “flat”. Most probably, that projection is confinement, a mysterious and ad hoc added interaction along with the fundamental tree ones of the Standard model being even inconsistent to them conceptually, as far as it need differ the local space from the global space being definable only as a relation between them (similar to entanglement). So, entanglement is able to link the gravity of general relativity to the confinement of the Standard model as its projections of the “cognitive screens” of those two fundamental physical theories. (shrink)

In various European countries, the relation between `the left' and `the right' presents itself today in paradoxical form: the attenuation of the differences at the level of policy making is accompanied by the persistence, if not even strengthening, of the polarisation in terms of verbal position taking and of partisan self-description. To understand this situation, one needs to return to that which constitutes the ideological core of the opposition between left and right. The left remains marked, though not necessarily in (...) an explicit fashion, by the heritage of the quest for `total revolution'. Such quest presupposes a radical critique of the world in the form in which it presents itself, namely as an obstacle to the full realisation of humanity. In this sense, the left is intrinsically connected to critique, and left and right stand opposed to each other in the same way that critique is opposed to celebration. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, the critique of the left was elaborated in particular in the form of a social critique of capitalism. Since the 1970s and 1980s, and since the end of communism in particular, the theme of total revolution, however, dissociates itself more and more from the idea of social revolution to focus instead on the idea of sexual revolution. Certain problems that the left encounters today stem from the fact that it amalgamates two highly different kinds of expectation and of critiques. On the one hand, there are the social concerns and the critiques of capitalism, which, however, are no longer oriented towards total revolution. On the other hand, there are expectations that are still turned towards total revolution, but have been shifted towards the exigency of a revolution in the order of reproduction and of sexuality and, thus, have dissociated themselves from the critique of capitalism. (shrink)

Scholars have made great efforts to investigate the antecedents of knowledge sharing. In the current study, we applied the proactive motivation model (Parker, Bindl, and Strauss, 2010) to propose a theoretical model to advance this research line and examined the relationship between coaching and knowledge sharing. A total of 197 supervisor–subordinate dyads from a logistics company completed the survey questionnaire. Our results show that leaders’ coaching behavior positively relates to employees’ knowledge sharing behavior via psychological availability. Furthermore, our (...) results show that team psychological safety climate moderates the relationship between psychological availability and employees’ knowledge sharing behavior, as well as the indirect effect between leaders’ coaching behavior and employees’ knowledge sharing. (shrink)

Innovative, accessible, and easily implemented, One Degree Revolution is acclaimed yoga educator and leadership coach Coby Kozlowski's holistic program for self-inquiry and personal transformation. Her philosophy is deeply connected to living yoga-not just doing yoga. In fact, readers don't need to have ever attended a yoga class to dive into this book: her thoughtful teachings are for anybody interested in learning to navigate the waves of life more skillfully and gracefully. Imagine sailing a boat with a course set for a (...) lifetime. If that route changes by just one navigational degree, what would happen to the journey? How far from the original trajectory would we be in one year? Five years? Ten years? Twenty years? Well, we would end up in a totally different place. In much the same way, we can change the course of our life by making a one degree shift. In other words, we don't have to change everything about ourselves or our world to make a difference. Coby inspires readers to dig deep, to ask powerful questions and to dive into the insights, experiments, and inquiries of living yoga: how can I best be with life? How can the teachings of yoga direct us to see the most aligned choices, let go of past hurts, and discover deep and meaningful connections? And what are the most skillful ways we can learn to savor all that life presents? These yoga philosophies are infused with practical strategies for creating the life you truly want and having a positive impact on the world. One Degree Revolution will guide readers to access infinite personal possibilities, celebrate their authentic selves, find meaning and purpose, trust the unfolding of life, and foster transformational change, one degree at a time. (shrink)

Background: Maximum safe resection of infiltrative brain tumors in eloquent area is the primary objective in surgical neuro-oncology. This goal can be achieved with direct electrical stimulation to perform a functional mapping of the brain in patients awake intraoperatively. When awake surgery is not possible, we propose a pipeline procedure that combines advanced techniques aiming at performing a dissection that respects the anatomo-functional connectivity of the peritumoral region. This procedure can benefit from intraoperative monitoring with computerized tomography scan and brain (...) shift correction. Associated with this intraoperative monitoring, the additional value of preoperative investigation combining brain mapping by navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation with various neuroimaging modalities has not yet been reported.Case Report: A 42-year-old left-handed man had increased intracranial pressure, left hand muscle deficit, and dysarthria, related to an infiltrative tumor of the right frontal lobe with large mass effect and circumscribed contrast enhancement in motor and premotor cortical areas. Spectroscopy profile and intratumoral calcifications on CT-scan suggested an WHO grade III glioma, later confirmed by histology. The aforementioned surgical procedure was considered, since standard awake surgery was not appropriate for this patient. In preoperative time, nTMS mapping of motor function was performed, combined with magnetic resonance imaging -based tractography reconstruction of 6 neural tracts and resting-state functional MRI connectivity of sensorimotor and language networks. In intraoperative time, DES mapping was performed with motor evoked response recording and tumor resection was optimized using non-rigid image transformation of the preoperative data to iCT data. Image guidance was updated with correction for brain shift and tissue deformation using biomechanical modeling taking into account brain elastic properties. This correction was done at crucial surgical steps, i.e., when tumor bulged through the craniotomy after dura mater opening and when approaching the presumed eloquent brain regions. This procedure allowed a total resection of the tumor region with contrast enhancement as well as a complete regression of IICP and dysarthria. Hand paresis remained stable with no additional deficit. Postoperative nTMS mapping confirmed the good functional outcome.Conclusion: This case report and technical note highlights the value of preoperative functional evaluation by nTMS updated intraoperatively with correction of brain deformation by iCT. This multimodal approach may become the optimized technique of reference for patients with brain tumors in eloquent areas that are unsuitable for awake brain surgery. (shrink)

The unreasonable shift point will cause a large shift impact, which will affect the engine fuel economy and the service life of the wet clutch. To decrease shift impact on agricultural tractors with HMCVT and find the best working point, the following methods are proposed in this paper: firstly, conducting all-factor method and response surface method to design and carry out bench test of shift impact; secondly, using the basic linear fitting, RSM, and stepwise regression analysis (...) to establish comprehensive mathematical models and selecting models with high prediction accuracy; thirdly, putting forward the method of determining the weight of variance to match parameters of three quality evaluation indexes with inconsistent correlation; finally, establishing the total shift quality evaluation index and obtaining the optimal shift working point. It is found that oil filling pressure has a significant effect on speed drop, while the engine speed has a significance on the dynamic load and sliding friction. To make the transmission section of the best quality, the oil pressure at this time is 1 MPa and the engine speed is 1040 r/min. The results show that the proposed method can determine the optimal shift point and provide a reference for developing the control strategy. (shrink)

This paper draws on data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS) (over 4,000 randomly selected households) to tease out the dimensions of the ‘second shift’. Predictions that as women entered the paid workforce men would contribute more to household labour have largely failed to eventuate. This underpins the view that women are working a second shift because they are shouldering a dual burden of paid and unpaid work. However, time use research (...) seems to show that when both paid and unpaid work is counted, male and female workloads are in total very similar. This has led to suggestions that a literal second shift is a myth; that it exists in the sense that women do more domestic work than men, but not in the sense that they work longer hours in total. Using a more accurate and telling measure of workload than previous research (paid and unpaid labour including multitasked activities), this paper explores the second shift and how it relates to family configuration, ethnicity and indicators of class and socioeconomic standing. It finds a clear disparity between the total workloads of mothers and fathers, much of which consists of simultaneous (secondary) activity, and some demographic differences in female (but not male) total workloads. It concludes that the view that the second shift is a myth is only sustainable by averaging social groups very broadly and by excluding multitasking from the measurement of total work activity. (shrink)

Editor's Preface to Fichte-Studien 49 (2021), "The Enigma of Fichte’s First Principles", (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021): : IX-XIX. Also available on open-access. See the publisher's website.