New Visions of the Zhuangzi is a collection of thirteen essays on the ancient Daoist philosophical work, presenting new angles and approaches. It overcomes the traditional division of schools in favor of topics, sheds new light on key philosophical notions, examines Zhuangzi's use of language, and explores issues of his use of language. In addition, it also applies modern neuroscience to its instructions, explores its vision of the ideal mind, and connects Zhuangzi's teachings to issues of education and community relevant (...) in contemporary society. (shrink)

How is the concept of patient care adapting in response to rapid changes in healthcare delivery and advances in medical technology? How are questions of ethical responsibility and social diversity shaping the definitions of healthcare? In this topical study, scholars in anthropology, nursing theory, law and ethics explore questions involving the changing relationship between patient care and medical ethics. Contributors address issues that challenge the boundaries of patient care, such as: · HIV-related care and research · the impact of new (...) reproductive technologies · preventative healthcare · technological breakthroughs that are changing personal-caring relationships. Chapters range from a consideration of the practicalities of nursing and family healthcare to a debate about ‘universal human needs’ and patients’ rights. This book is a provocative exploration of the ways in which healthcare models are socially constructed. It will be of interest to policy-makers, medical practitioners and administrators, as well as students of sociology, anthropology and social policy. (shrink)

This article offers a critique of Karsten Stueber’s account of rule following as presented in his article "How to Think about Rules and Rule Following." The task Stueber sets himself is of defending the idea that human practices are bound and guided by rules (both causally and normatively) while avoiding the discredited "cognitive model of rule following." This article argues that Stueber’s proposal is unconvincing because it falls foul of the very problems it sets out to avoid. Stueber’s defense of (...) rules as normative guides is shown to be either circular or burdened with an infinite regress, while his account of rules as causal determinants of our actions is shown to lapse back into the "cognitive model" that he explicitly rejects. Key Words: rules • rule following • norms • causes • social science. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between critical thinking and formative assessment. In this paper Popham’s (2008) conception of formative assessment as “a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students’ status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics” is highlighted as well as a framework from Stiggins and associates (2006). Despite vast research that indicates bothpositively impact student achievement, they are “errors of omission” and vastly underutilized in teacher (...) preparation (Popham, 2008; Paul, Elder & Bartell, 1987). The national high school graduation rate (71.9%) and lack of college readiness of those who do graduate compel teacher education programs to prepare pre-service teachers who master these constructs (EPE Research Center, 2011; Conley, 2007). Formative assessment strategies are offered for classroom use and recommendations are made for university faculty who can model these strategies to improve teacher candidate quality. (shrink)

In previous works, we presented a modification of the usual possible world semantics by introducing an independent temporal structure in each world and using accessibility functions to represent the relation among them. Different properties ofthe accessibility functions have been considered and axiomatic systems which define these properties have been given. Only a few ofthese systems have been proved tobe complete. The aim ofthis paper is to make a progress in the study ofcompleteness for functional systems. For this end, we use (...) indexes as names for temporal flows and give new proofs of completeness. Specifically, we focus our attention on the system which defines injectivity, because the system which defines this property without using indexes was proved to be incomplete in previous works. The only system considered which remains incomplete is the one which defines surjectivity, even ifwe consider a sequence ofnatural extensions ofthe previous one. (shrink)

Argument evaluation, one of the central problems in argumentation theory, consists in studying what makes an argument a good one. This paper proposes a formal approach to argument evaluation from the perspective of justification logic. We adopt a multi-agent setting, accepting the intuitive idea that arguments are always evaluated by someone. Two general restrictions are imposed on our analysis: non-deductive arguments are left out and the goal of argument evaluation is fixed: supporting a given proposition. Methodologically, our approach uses several (...) existing tools borrowed from justification logic, awareness logic, doxastic logic and logics for belief dependence. We start by introducing a basic logic for argument evaluation, where a list of argumentative and doxastic notions can be expressed. Later on, we discuss how to capture the mentioned form of argument evaluation by defining a preference operator in the object language. The intuitive picture behind this definition is that, when assessing a couple of arguments, the agent puts them to a test consisting of several criteria. As a result of this process, a preference relation among the evaluated arguments is established by the agent. After showing that this operator suffers a special form of logical omniscience, called preferential omniscience, we discuss how to define an explicit version of it, more suitable to deal with non-ideal agents. The present work exploits the formal notion of awareness in order to model several informal phenomena: awareness of sentences, availability of arguments and communication between agents and external sources. We discuss several extensions of the basic logic and offer completeness and decidability results for all of them. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on a logical approach to the important notion of closeness, which has not received much attention in the literature. Our notion of closeness is based on the so-called proximity intervals, which will be used to decide the elements that are close to each other. Some of the intuitions of this definition are explained on the basis of examples. We prove the decidability of the recently introduced multimodal logic for closeness and, then, we show some capabilities (...) of the logic with respect to expressivity in order to denote particular positions of the proximity intervals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper we present a new semantic approach for propositional linear temporal logic with discrete time, strongly based in the well-order of IN (the set of natural numbers). We consider temporal connectives which express precedence, posteriority and simultaneity, and they provide a family of expressively complete temporal logics. The selection of the new semantics and connectives used in this work was principally to obtain a suitable executable temporal logic, which can be used for the specification and control of (...) process behaviour in discrete time in a similar way to thai presented by D. Gabbay in [GAB 89], Our new approach has two advantages: firstly, the connectives are defined intuitively so that they have interpretations which relate to properties of interest in real systems; secondly, it provides a new semantics that facilitates simpler proofs of many valid formulas and metatheorems. To confirm this second advantage, we use our semantics to give a formal proof of the Separation Theorem for one of these logics (specifically LN3). The great interest of this Separation Theorem for the executable temporal logic is emphasised by D. Gabbay in [GAB 89], [GAB 88]. (shrink)

Combining modalities has proven to have interesting applications and many approaches that combine time with other types of modalities have been developed. One of these approaches uses accessibility functions between flows of time to study the basic properties of the functions, such as being total or partial, injective, surjective, etc. The completeness of certain systems expressing many of these properties, with the exception of surjectivity, has been proven. In this paper we propose a language with nominals to denote the initial (...) and final sets of each function in a model in order to obtain a complete system for reasoning about surjective partial functions. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente texto es llegar a una descripción clara y comprensiva de la forma budista de abordar la cuestión cognitiva. La palabra cognición se refiere aquí al proceso por el cual se desenvuelve la convicción de que algo es "verdadero". El examen budista de la cognición puede, a su vez, ser encarado como una forma de buscar mayor libertad y distanciamiento frente a los pensamientos, opiniones y tendencias propios.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives claim to make production of commodities more socially and environmentally sustainable by regulating their members and through systems of certification. These claims, however, are highly contested. In this article, I examine how actors use MSI regulation with regard to land conflicts with a focus on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. MSIs are a resource that actors in land conflicts can use to generate evidence that gives them leverage in their negotiations. To do so, actors employ the interrelations (...) between two kinds of land conflict: localized land conflicts between local land users, and disputes between more distant actors over aggregated land-use related to the sustainability of palm oil production. To demonstrate this, I use the notion of assemblage in two case studies from Sumatra, Indonesia. Thinking in terms of assemblage allows the contradictory but interrelated practices that shape MSIs to be understood. In distinct locally embedded processes, actors enact MSIs in contexts of unequal power relations, from which MSI governance emerges. The way in which access to an MSI is distributed among contending actors shapes MSI enactments and thus its governance. The unequal distribution of access to the RSPO results in a governance that favors companies over communities. (shrink)

The Critique of Pure Reason—Kant’s First Critique—is one of the most studied texts in intellectual history, but as Alfredo Ferrarin points out in this radically original book, most of that study has focused only on very select parts. Likewise, Kant’s oeuvre as a whole has been compartmentalized, the three Critiques held in rigid isolation from one another. Working against the standard reading of Kant that such compartmentalization has produced, The Powers of Pure Reason explores forgotten parts of the First (...) Critique in order to find an exciting, new, and ultimately central set of concerns by which to read all of Kant’s works. Ferrarin blows the dust off of two egregiously overlooked sections of the First Critique—the Transcendental Dialectic and the Doctrine of Method. There he discovers what he argues is the Critique’s greatest achievement: a conception of the unity of reason and an exploration of the powers it has to reach beyond itself and legislate over the world. With this in mind, Ferrarin dismantles the common vision of Kant as a philosopher writing separately on epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics and natural teleology, showing that the three Critiques are united by this underlying theme: the autonomy and teleology of reason, its power and ends. The result is a refreshing new view of Kant, and of reason itself. (shrink)

We may be at the brink of a Kuhnian paradigm shift when it comes to the categorical classification system of mental disorders. Reviewing more than 30 years of critical literature on the categorical classification of personality disorders, Kueger, Hopwood, Wright, and Markon conclude that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is "fundamentally broken". Just before, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health declared that the institute will no longer support research that is based on DSM categories.The (...) critique on the categorical system of mental disorders consists of several arguments that are briefly mentioned as they have been... (shrink)

Philosophers of perception frequently assume that we see actual states of affairs, or facts. Call this claim factualism. In his book, William Fish suggests that factualism is supported by phenomenological observation as well as by experimental studies on multiple object tracking and dynamic feature-object integration. In this paper, I examine the alleged evidence for factualism, focusing mainly on object detection and tracking. I argue that there is no scientific evidence for factualism. This conclusion has implications for studies on the phenomenology (...) and epistemology of visual perception. (shrink)

For over forty years, economic inequality and distributive justice have been two of the primary concerns of political philosophers. This volume addresses these issues in a novel way, by focusing on the concepts of solidarity and public goods as both descriptive and normative frameworks. Solidarity links the social, political and moral together, in a distinctively political approach that recognizes the social sources of power on the one hand and sources of moral motivation on the other. Public goods such as education, (...) healthcare, and transport systems are indispensable to the forging of solidarity, but at the same time they may become sources of oppression or injustice, when they fail to respect individual autonomy or when they calcify majoritarian preferences. The essays in this volume explore different features of the political, moral and civic approaches to solidarity. The moral theory of solidarity is advanced in one case as an intrinsically valuable concept of social connectedness and in another as an approach of epistemic deference; a structural account of solidarity theorizes about action against racial oppression, and a power-relations account points at the urgency of the affective, non-rational dimensions of solidarity. The social value of property and its moral implications are articulated through the lens of French 19th Century ‘Solidarism’ and as a complementary theory to left-libertarianism. Public goods are defended as instrumental to solidarity, in one case within a liberal framework and in another within a human-perfectionism framework. By providing a series of thought-provoking debates about social obligations and justice, the volume re-establishes solidarity and public goods as pertinent concepts for theorizing about social justice and inequality. (shrink)

The sensorimotor theory of vision and visual consciousness is often described as a radical alternative to the computational and connectionist orthodoxy in the study of visual perception. However, it is far from clear whether the theory represents a significant departure from orthodox approaches or whether it is an enrichment of it. In this study, I tackle this issue by focusing on the explanatory structure of the sensorimotor theory. I argue that the standard formulation of the theory subscribes to the same (...) theses of the dynamical hypothesis and that it affords covering-law explanations. This however exposes the theory to the mere description worry and generates a puzzle about the role of representations. I then argue that the sensorimotor theory is compatible with a mechanistic framework, and show how this can overcome the mere description worry and solve the problem of the explanatory role of representations. By doing so, it will be shown that the theory should be understood as an enrichment of the orthodoxy, rather than an alternative. (shrink)

A method for the recursive identification of physiological models of the cardiovascular baroreflex is proposed and applied to the time-varying analysis of vagal and sympathetic activities. The proposed method was evaluated with data from five newborn lambs, which were acquired during injection of vasodilator and vasoconstrictors and the results show a close match between experimental and simulated signals. The model-based estimation of vagal and sympathetic contributions were consistent with physiological knowledge and the obtained estimators of vagal and sympathetic activities were (...) compared to traditional markers associated with baroreflex sensitivity. High correlations were observed between traditional markers and model-based indices. (shrink)

Family firms are ubiquitous and play a crucial role across all world economies, but how they differ in the disclosure of social and environmental actions from non-family firms has been largely overlooked in the literature. Advancing the discourse on corporate social responsibility reporting, we examine how family influence on a business organization affects CSR reporting. The arguments developed here draw on institutional theory, using a rich body of empirical evidence gathered through a content analysis of the CSR reports of 98 (...) large- and medium-sized Italian firms. The grounded theory analysis informs and contextualizes several differences in the type and content of corporate social responsibility reports of family and non-family firms. Our findings show that in comparison to non-family firms, family firms disseminate a greater variety of CSR reports, are less compliant with CSR standards and place emphasis on different CSR topics. We, thus, contribute to the family business and corporate social responsibility reporting literatures in several ways, offering implications for practice and outlining promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson supports the thesis that every possible entity necessarily exists and so he needs to explain how a possible son of Wittgenstein’s, for example, exists in our world:he exists as a merely possible object, a pure locus of potential. Williamson presents a short argument for the existence of MPOs: how many knives can be made by fitting together two blades and two handles? Four: at the most two are concrete objects, the others being merely possible knives and merely possible (...) objects. This paper defends the idea that one can avoid reference and ontological commitment to MPOs. My proposal is that MPOs can be dispensed with by using the notion of rules of knife-making. I first present a solution according to which we count lists of instructions - selected by the rules - describing physical combinations between components. This account, however, has its own difficulties and I eventually suggest that one can find a way out by admitting possible worlds, entities which are more commonly accepted - at least by philosophers - than MPOs. I maintain that, in answering Williamson’s questions, we count classes of physically possible worlds in which the same instance of a general rule is applied. (shrink)