The fact that many modal operators are part of an adjunction is probably folklore since the discovery of adjunctions. On the other hand, the natural idea of a minimal propositional calculus extended with a pair of adjoint operators seems to have been formulated only very recently. This recent research, mainly motivated by applications in computer science, concentrates on technical issues related to the calculi and not on the significance of adjunctions in modal logic. It then seems a worthy enterprise (both (...) for these contemporary topical pursuits and also for historical interest) to trace the concept of adjunction back to the origins of the algebraic semantics of modal logic and to make explicit its ubiquity in this branch of mathematics. (shrink)

Hintergrund: Biomedizinische Ontologien existieren unter anderem zur Integration von klinischen und experimentellen Daten. Um dies zu erreichen ist es erforderlich, dass die fraglichen Ontologien von einer großen Zahl von Benutzern zur Annotation von Daten verwendet werden. Wie können Ontologien das erforderliche Maß an Benutzerfreundlichkeit, Zuverlässigkeit, Kosteneffektivität und Domänenabdeckung erreichen, um weitreichende Akzeptanz herbeizuführen? -/- Material und Methoden: Wir konzentrieren uns auf zwei unterschiedliche Strategien, die zurzeit hierbei verfolgt werden. Eine davon wird von SNOMED CT im Bereich der Medizin vertreten, die (...) andere im Bereich der Biologie und Biomedizin von der OBO Foundry. Es soll aufgezeigt werden, wie die Verpflichtung zu speziellen Kriterien der Ontologieentwicklung die Nützlichkeit und Effektivität der Ontologien positiv beeinflusst, indem die Pflege der terminologischen Systeme und ihre Interoperabilität vereinfacht werden. -/- Ergebnisse: SNOMED CT und die OBO Foundry unterscheiden sich grundlegend in ihren Ansätzen und Zielen. Unabhängig davon kann jedoch ein allgemeiner Trend zur strengeren Formalisierung und Fokussierung auf Interoperabilität zwischen unterschiedlichen Domänen und ihren Repräsentationen beobachtet werden. (shrink)

Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our experiments show geographic categories to be similar to their non-geographic counterparts in (...) the ways in which they generate instances of different relative frequencies at different levels. Other tests, however, provide preliminary evidence for the existence of important differences in subjects’ categorizations of geographic and non-geographic objects, and suggest further experimental work especially with regard to the role in cognitive categorization of different types of object-boundaries at different scales. (shrink)

Three-dimensionalists , sometimes referred to as endurantists, think that objects persist through time by being “wholly present” at every time they exist. But what is it for something to be wholly present at a time? It is surprisingly difficult to say. The threedimensionalist is free, of course, to take ‘is wholly present at’ as one of her theory’s primitives, but this is problematic for at least one reason: some philosophers claim not to understand her primitive. Clearly the three-dimensionalist would be (...) better off if she could state her theory in terms accessible to all. We think she can. What is needed is a definition of ‘is wholly present at’ that all can understand. in this paper, we offer one. (shrink)

BackgroundPublic Safety Personnel are routinely exposed to human suffering and need to make quick, morally challenging decisions. Such decisions can affect their psychological wellbeing. Participating in or observing an event or situation that conflicts with personal values can potentially lead to the development of moral injury. Common stressors associated with moral injury include betrayal, inability to prevent death or harm, and ethical dilemmas. Potentially psychologically traumatic event exposures and post-traumatic stress disorder can be comorbid with moral injury; however, moral injury (...) extends beyond fear to include spiritual, cognitive, emotional or existential struggles, which can produce feelings of severe shame, guilt, and anger.ObjectiveThis scoping review was designed to identify the extant empirical research regarding the construct of moral injury, its associated constructs, and how it relates to moral distress in firefighters, paramedics, and police officers.MethodsA systematic literature search of peer-reviewed research was conducted using databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, APA PsychInfo, CINHAL PLUS, Web of Science, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar. Included studies were selected based on the inclusion criteria before being manually extracted and independently screened by two reviewers.ResultsThe initial database search returned 777 articles, 506 of which remained after removal of duplicates. Following review of titles, abstracts, and full texts, 32 studies were included in the current review. Participants in the articles were primarily police officers, with fewer articles focusing on paramedics and firefighters. There were two studies that included mixed populations. Most studies were qualitative and focused on four topics: values, ethical decision-making, organizational betrayal, and spirituality.ConclusionPublic safety organizations appear to recognize the experience of moral distress or moral injury among public safety personnel that results from disconnects between personal core values, formal and informal organizational values, vocational duties, and expectations. Further research is needed to better understand moral distress or moral injury specific to public safety personnel and inform training and treatment in support of public safety personnel mental health. (shrink)

Introduction and translation of “The Four Phases of Philosophy” by Franz Brentano.

Twenty-five papers presented at University of Nairobi in 2000 cover themes of: African Philosophy, Approaches and Methodologies; Problems of Missionary and Colonialist Thinking; Gender and Culture in Africa; Sage Philosophy; and Philosophy, Ethics, and Politics.

Abstract:What makes a leader ethical? This paper critically examines the answer given by developmental theory, which argues that individuals can develop through cumulative stages of ethical orientation and behavior (e.g. Hobbesian, Kantian, Rawlsian), such that leaders at later developmental stages (of whom there are empirically very few today) are more ethical. By contrast to a simple progressive model of ethical development, this paper shows that each developmental stage has both positive (light) and negative (shadow) aspects, which affect the ethical behaviors (...) of leaders at that stage. It also explores an unexpected result: later stage leaders can have more significantly negative effects than earlier stage leadership. (shrink)

Abstract:What makes a leader ethical? This paper critically examines the answer given by developmental theory, which argues that individuals can develop through cumulative stages of ethical orientation and behavior (e.g. Hobbesian, Kantian, Rawlsian), such that leaders at later developmental stages (of whom there are empirically very few today) are more ethical. By contrast to a simple progressive model of ethical development, this paper shows that each developmental stage has both positive (light) and negative (shadow) aspects, which affect the ethical behaviors (...) of leaders at that stage. It also explores an unexpected result: later stage leaders can have more significantly negative effects than earlier stage leadership. (shrink)

Richard M Weaver, a thinker and writer celebrated for his unsparing diagnoses and realistic remedies for the ills of our age, is known largely through a few of his works that remain in print. This new collection of Weaver's shorter writings, assembled by Ted J Smith III, Weaver's leading biographer, presents many long-out-of-print and never-before-published works that give new range and depth to Weaver's sweeping thought. Included are eleven previously unpublished essays and speeches that were left in near-final form (...) at the time of Weaver's death in 1963. In all, there are some one hundred and twenty-six essays, speeches, book reviews, and editorials. (shrink)

Information may be defined as the conceptual or communicable part of the content of mental acts. The content of mental acts includes sensory data as well as concepts, particular as well as general information. An information system is an external (non-mental) system designed to store such content. Information systems afford indirect transmission of content between people, some of whom may put information into the system and others who are among those who use the system. In order for communication to happen, (...) the conceptual systems of the originators and users of the information must be sufficiently similar. A formal conceptual framework that can provide the basis for exchange of information is termed an ontology. In its most fundamental form, ontology studies the most basic constituents of reality. Traditionally, ontology seeks to reflects structures that are independent of thought and cognition. The term ontology is used more broadly in artificial intelligence and software engineering, to refer to the conceptual basis for an information system. (shrink)

The three young philosophers Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith have become well-known in the last few years especially in German-speaking analytical philosophy and phenomenology circles. This is on the one hand as a result of their historical and systematic philosophical work; but it is also because of the provocative way in which they represent their philosophy. Because they often appear in threes, they have become known as the "gang of three" or "three musketeers" or even – and (...) this in an admiring sense – "mafiosi" (Rescher). They are known primarily for the small workshops they have been organizing in uncomplicated Anglo-Saxon manner all over Europe. Their goal has been to show that analytic philosophy as it has been pursued up to now is in need of reform and also that the history of scientific philosophizing is not identical to the history of Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy. Above all, they have tried to make more well known the Austrian tradition of scientific philosophy, and they can be given credit for having done much to promote the current interest in this tradition, which means: the history of Austrian philosophy of the 19th and early 20th centuries and its historical context in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (shrink)

Independently of whether an object of experience becomes a candidate for being a part of the self or a part of the external world, it is always given to us as just an object of experience. The observer-observed relation can be seen as a type of relation with many instances, both between the self and different objects of experience and between any given object of experience and different selves. The self is situated in a spatial grid, where the latter can (...) be characterised as an array of relations, of which the relata include both observers and observed. The world, understood as independent existence, including the self, is empty. However, Paolo Bozzi’s method for identifying the self and delimiting its independent existence from the external world has taught us just the opposite lesson. Bozzi’s project is to teach us how to use them, and to recognise that they allow a self to be situated in a world of objects. (shrink)

Médecins Sans Frontières is not morally required to continue providing the same therapeutic and preventative interventions for lead poisoning in Nigeria in the face of conditions that negatively impact on the achievement of their objectives. Nevertheless, Médecins Sans Frontières may have reasons to revise their objectives and adopt different interventions or methods.

The theories or programs of research described in the chapters of this book move beyond the traditional evaluation model of prejudice, drawing on a broad range of theoretical ancestry to develop models of why, when, and how differentiated reactions to groups arise, and what their consequences might be. The chapters have in common a re-focusing of interest on emotion as a theoretical base for understanding differentiated reactions to, and differentiated behaviors toward, social groups. The contributions also share a focus on (...) specific interactional and structural relations among groups as a source of these differentiated emotional reactions. The chapters in the volume thus reflect a theoretical shift from an earlier emphasis on knowledge about ingroups and outgroups to a new perspective on prejudice in which socially-grounded emotional differentiation becomes a basis for social regulation. (shrink)

The theories or programs of research described in the chapters of this book move beyond the traditional evaluation model of prejudice, drawing on a broad range of theoretical ancestry to develop models of why, when, and how differentiated reactions to groups arise, and what their consequences might be. The chapters have in common a re-focusing of interest on emotion as a theoretical base for understanding differentiated reactions to, and differentiated behaviors toward, social groups. The contributions also share a focus on (...) specific interactional and structural relations among groups as a source of these differentiated emotional reactions. The chapters in the volume thus reflect a theoretical shift from an earlier emphasis on knowledge about ingroups and outgroups to a new perspective on prejudice in which socially-grounded emotional differentiation becomes a basis for social regulation. (shrink)

Wesley Hohfeld is known the world over as the legal theorist who famously developed a taxonomy of legal concepts. His contributions to legal thinking have stood the test of time, remaining relevant nearly a century after they were first published. Yet, little systematic attention has been devoted to exploring the full significance of his work. Beginning with a lucid, annotated version of Hohfeld's most important article, this volume is the first to offer a comprehensive look at the scope, significance, reach, (...) intricacies, and shortcomings of Hohfeld's work. Featuring insights from leading legal thinkers, the book also contains many of Hohfeld's previously unseen personal papers, shedding new light on the complex motivations behind Hohfeld's projects. Together, these selected papers and original essays reveal a portrait of a multifaceted and ambitious intellectual who did not live long enough to see the impact of his ideas on the study of law. (shrink)

The feuding factions of the memory wars, that is, those concerned with the validity of recovered memories versus those concerned with false memories, are unified by Erdelyi's theory of repression. Evidence shows suppression, inhibition, and retrieval blocking can have profound yet reversible effects on a memory's accessibility, and deserve as prominent a role in the recovered memory debate as evidence of false memories. Erdelyi's theory shows that both inhibitory and elaborative processes cooperate to keep unwanted memories out of consciousness.

Platonists beginning in the Old Academy itself and up to and including Plotinus struggled to understand and articulate the relation between Plato’s Demiurge and the Living Animal which served as the model for creation. The central question is whether “contents” of the Living Animal, the Forms, are internal to the mind of the Demiurge or external and independent. For Plotinus, the solution depends heavily on how the Intellect that is the Demiurge and the Forms or intelligibles are to be understood (...) in relation to the first principle of all, the One or the Good. The treatise V.5 [32] sets out the case for the internality of Forms and argues for the necessary existence of an absolutely simple and transcendent first principle of all, the One or the Good. Not only Intellect and the Forms, but everything else depends on this principle for their being. (shrink)

Narrative inquiry in a nursing practicum One approach to creating research‐based nursing education is to think and write narratively about the daily life of a BScN program student and her teacher in diverse settings and over time. Gail, as a nurse‐teacher, and Faith, as a nursing student and now Public Health Nurse, reconstruct their teaching–learning experiences in an integrated practicum in maternal–child health services as a narrative inquiry. After presenting this reconstruction of experience at a conference on maternal scholarship, further (...) inquiry into their experiences shows how narrative inquiry matters to construction of nursing praxis and to life‐long learning as a nurse. Teaching–learning relationships are seen as a template for a student's connections to people experiencing nursing care and to other clinicians. Construction of stories to live by that take into account becoming a nurse, constructing knowledge and enacting caring–healing nursing practices is illuminated through narrative inquiry. (shrink)

This paper takes the case of the proposed building of the Traveston dam on the Mary River in Australia to examine the ways postcolonial power relations are played out in city/regional relationships to further the interests of the city. Postcolonialism is concerned with unravelling multiple histories of colonialism, and identifying the reproduction, contestation, ambivalence and transformation of modes of domination and subordination in colonial relations. Political contingencies and contestations by residents, farmers, traditional Indigenous owners and environmentalists seeking to protect endangered (...) species are examined to highlight the dominance of Western anthropocentric, technocentric, and eurocentric epistemologies in political, ecological, environmental, biotheical debates. (shrink)

In this article, the insertion of a two-staged highly interesting question in an online, survey-based field experiment is shown to produce better survey completion rate (i.e., decreases completion refusal by 8%) and sample representativeness (increases the number of moderate answer patterns by 12%) than a typical (same) highly interesting question at the beginning of a survey only. Using nonparametric tests and subgroup probability analysis, measured effects include survey completion rates, response bias and reported demographic differences. In regards to sample representativeness, (...) the results also raise questions about the sensitivity of the conventional practice of comparing early to late respondent means scores as a method of investigating nonresponse bias in marketing research. Alternative approaches to measuring potential non-response bias are compared with the tradition of comparing early-wave verses late-wave mean respondent differences. The results indicate that the conventional mean test fails to identify differences in nonresponse bias; the scores of highly interested or opposed respondents in the first waves produce equivalent means to the scores of the less interested or opposed respondents in the latter wave between the surveys (e.g., 1's and 5's vs. 2's and 4's, both averaging to 3's) that are identifiable through kurtosis and probability analysis. (shrink)

Two recent papers1,2 report extensive nuclear DNA sequence from a 38,000‐year‐old Neandertal fossil, comparing it to modern humans and estimating when it diverged from, and whether it contributed to, our gene pool. Based on 65,250 and over a million base‐pairs of sequence across the genome, respectively, the groups arrived at slightly different interpretations. The data are an exciting and interesting new contribution, but are not surprising, and a sense of history and question helps put them in perspective. BioEssays 29: 105–110, (...) 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Understanding how people comprehend visual narratives (including picture stories, comics, and film) requires the combination of traditionally separate theories that span the initial sensory and perceptual processing of complex visual scenes, the perception of events over time, and comprehension of narratives. Existing piecemeal approaches fail to capture the interplay between these levels of processing. Here, we propose the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), as applied to visual narratives, which distinguishes between front-end and back-end cognitive processes. Front-end processes occur (...) during single eye fixations and are comprised of attentional selection and information extraction. Back-end processes occur across multiple fixations and support the construction of event models, which reflect understanding of what is happening now in a narrative (stored in working memory) and over the course of the entire narrative (stored in long-term episodic memory). We describe relationships between front- and back-end processes, and medium-specific differences that likely produce variation in front-end and back-end processes across media (e.g., picture stories vs. film). We describe several novel research questions derived from SPECT that we have explored. By addressing these questions, we provide greater insight into how attention, information extraction, and event model processes are dynamically coordinated to perceive and understand complex naturalistic visual events in narratives and the real world. (shrink)

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)