In spite of heralded progress in civil rights, this paper pessimistically maintains that blacks are systematically excluded from directorships on the boards of the major industrial companies in this country. The statistics derived from a 1980 survey, which yielded responses from 143 companies, show that blacks constituted only 1.9 percent of the entire directorate pool, with no black chairmen, no company with more than one black director, and significantly high multiple-board service on the part of a few black directors. There (...) is a strong correlation between size and importance of a company and black directorships, as well as between longer-range company commitments and white male directorships. There is discussion of answers from board members relating to constituency representation, philosophy regarding black recruitment and reasons for the paucity of black representation. After drawing a profile of typical boards, the study shows how the pool of individuals traditionally eligible to serve as directors virtually excludes blacks, confining them to rigid and narrow categories, and concludes that the "white club" remains white because it is insulated by an inflexible system whose inequity has been internalized and whose existence current directors would rather not acknowledge. While admitting the difficulty of discussing and even defining the existence of tokenism, the paper looks at the phenomenon of single-black-member boards, questioning the status, use and professions of some black directors. In the context of a climate that encourages governmental mandating of corporate responsibility, the authors suggest that corporate initiative wisely be generated toward achieving more equitable balances in the highest economic echelons where black impotence, given the present system, can neither be remedied nor tolerated much longer. (shrink)

The trade-off between force and length of muscle as adjusted by neural signals is a critical fact in the dynamics of motor control. Whether we call it “length-tension effect,” “feedback-like,” “invariant condition,” or “spring-like” is unimportant. We must not let semantics or details of representation obscure the basic physics of effects introduced by this trade-off in muscle.

In this paper I contend that the 'superfluity' of triangles is only apparent; all those specified are indeed required for the smallest sub-units, so long as the symmetry of the final body to be constructed is taken into account at earlier stages.

D I Lloyd; I Experientially Remember, Therefore I Exist? A reply to R. D. Smith, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 17, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 97–1.

D I Lloyd; I Experientially Remember, Therefore I Exist? A reply to R. D. Smith, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 17, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 97–1.

D I Lloyd; Theory and Practice1, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 10, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 98–113, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1976.tb0.

D I Lloyd; Theory and Practice1, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 10, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 98–113, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1976.tb0.

D I Lloyd; What’s in a Laugh? Humour and its educational significance, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 73–79, https:/.

Open peer commentary on the article “Never Mind the Gap: Neurophenomenology, Radical Enactivism, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness” by Michael D. Kirchhoff & Daniel D. Hutto. Upshot: Enactivism is a welcome development in cognitive science, but its “radical” rejection of representation poses problems for capturing phenomenality. The totality of our interactions exceeds our awareness, so circumscribing the activity that constitutes consciousness seems to require representational guidance.

Plato's geometrical theory of what we now call chemistry, set out in the Timaeus, uses triangles, his stoicheia, as the fundamental units with which he constructs his four elements. A paper claiming that these triangles can be divided indefinitely is criticized; the claim of an error here in the commentary by F.M. Cornford is unfounded. Plato's constructions of the elements are analyzed using simple point group theory. His procedure generates fully symmetric polyhedra, but Cornford's 'simpler' alternatives generate polyhedra with low (...) symmetries and multiple isomeric forms. However, Cornford's principle of constructing larger triangles by assembling smaller ones is still valid. (shrink)

We discuss potential biorisks from large language models (LLMs). AI assistants based on LLMs such as ChatGPT have been shown to significantly reduce barriers to entry for actors wishing to synthesize dangerous, potentially novel pathogens and chemical weapons. The harms from deploying such bioagents could be further magnified by AI-assisted misinformation. We endorse several policy responses to these dangers, including prerelease evaluations of biomedical AIs by subject-matter experts, enhanced surveillance and lab screening procedures, restrictions on AI training data, and access (...) controls on biomedical AI. We conclude with a suggestion about future research directions in bioethics. (shrink)

If the world were wholly just, the following inductive definition would exhaustively cover the subject of justice in holdings.1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.3. No one is entitled to a holding except by applications of i and 2.The complete (...) principle of distributive justice would say simply that a distribution is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution. (shrink)

It first needs to be shown that this question raises a problem, for many people think it is answered, or at least dissolved, in the following way. There are two independent ways of answering the question “Why should I do X?”; one ultimately in terms of what I want to do, the other ultimately in terms of what I morally ought to do. Thus showing that I morally ought to do something is a final justification of a course of action. (...) No answer can be given to the further question “Given that X is what I morally ought to do, why ought I to do X?”. No further moral reasons can be given as ex hypothese the final moral reasons have already been given. As it is denied that moral reasons can be reduced to reasons in terms of what I want to do, the only other possible kind of reason has been ruled out also. This, however, is said net to matter, because moral reasons are not in need cf any further justification. Moral considerations simply are reasons for action just as much as wanting to do something simply is a reason for doing it. (shrink)

In this essay an ‘objective’ account of intrinsic value is proposed and partly defended. It is claimed that a kind of value exists which is, or may reasonably be supposed to be, a property of certain objects. The presence of such value is not to be wholly accounted for as the ‘projection’ of certain human feelings elicited by the object thought to be of value, nor by the object's meeting certain operative human conventions prescribing what is to be admired, nor (...) by its being conformable, in some way, to human needs or desires. Hume, of course, would have none of this. It is hoped to show that if one adopts Hume's account, then his attempt to show that there nevertheless will be convergence in the long run as to what is of aesthetic value is forced and unsuccessful. By contrast, on the ‘objective’ account convergence is to be expected. This, of course, only shows the superiority of the ‘objective’ account so long as there is an expectation of long-term convergence. This is not an expectation of most contemporary value ‘subjectivists’, and therefore the argument will not be directly relevant to their positions. (shrink)