Context The attitudes of medical professionals towards physician assisted dying have been widely discussed. Less explored is the level of agreement among physicians on the possibility of ‘rational suicide’—a considered suicide act made by a sound mind and a precondition of assisted dying legislation. Objective To assess attitudes towards rational suicide in a representative sample of senior doctors in England and Wales. Methods A postal survey was conducted of 1000 consultants and general practitioners randomly selected from a commercially available database. (...) The main outcome of interest was level of agreement with a statement about rational suicide. Results The corrected participation rate was 50%; 363 questionnaires were analysed. Overall 72% of doctors agreed with the possibility of rational suicide, 17% disagreed, and 11% were neutral. Doctors who identified themselves as being more religious were more likely to disagree. Some doctors who disagreed with legalisation of physician assisted suicide nevertheless agreed with the concept of rational suicide. Conclusions Most senior doctors in England and Wales feel that rational suicide is possible. There was no association with specialty. Strong religious belief was associated with disagreement, although levels of agreement were still high in people reporting the strongest religious belief. Most doctors who were opposed to physician assisted suicide believed that rational suicide was possible, suggesting that some medical opposition is best explained by other factors such as concerns of assessment and protection of vulnerable patients. (shrink)

In ‘Naming and Necessity,’ Saul Kripke defends a number of essentialist claims. One of them is that having a certain origin is a necessary property of a material thing. Used in connection with a human being or, presumably, a living thing of another kind whose members sexually reproduce, ‘necessity of origin’ means that the organism must have been born of those individuals who are its parents, i.e., whose body tissues are sources of the sperm and egg from which it issued, (...) in the actual world. To say that the origin of an inanimate material thing is necessary is to say that having its origin in the hunk of matter from which it came is essential to it. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is increasing need for peer reviewers as the scientific literature grows. Formal education in biostatistics and research methodology during residency training is lacking. In this pilot study, we addressed these issues by evaluating a novel method of teaching residents about biostatistics and research methodology using peer review of standardized manuscripts. We hypothesized that mentored peer review would improve resident knowledge and perception of these concepts more than non-mentored peer review, while improving review quality.MethodsA partially blinded, randomized, controlled multi-center study (...) was performed. Seventy-eight neurology residents from nine US neurology programs were randomized to receive mentoring from a local faculty member or not. Within a year, residents reviewed a baseline manuscript and four subsequent manuscripts, all with introduced errors designed to teach fundamental review concepts. In the mentored group, mentors discussed completed reviews with residents. Primary outcome measure was change in knowledge score between pre- and post-tests, measuring epidemiology and biostatistics knowledge. Secondary outcome measures included level of confidence in the use and interpretation of statistical concepts before and after intervention, and RQI score for baseline and final manuscripts.ResultsSixty-four residents (82%) completed initial review with gradual decline in completion on subsequent reviews. Change in primary outcome, the difference between pre- and post-test knowledge scores, did not differ between mentored (−8.5%) and non-mentored (−13.9%) residents (p = 0.48). Significant differences in secondary outcomes (using 5-point Likert scale, 5 = strongly agree) included mentored residents reporting enhanced understanding of research methodology (3.69 vs 2.61; p = 0.001), understanding of manuscripts (3.73 vs 2.87; p = 0.006), and application of study results to clinical practice (3.65 vs 2.78; p = 0.005) compared to non-mentored residents. There was no difference between groups in level of interest in peer review (3.00 vs 3.09; p = 0.72) or the quality of manuscript review assessed by the Review Quality Instrument (RQI) (3.25 vs 3.06; p = 0.50).ConclusionsWe used mentored peer review of standardized manuscripts to teach biostatistics and research methodology and introduce the peer review process to residents. Though knowledge level did not change, mentored residents had enhanced perception in their abilities to understand research methodology and manuscripts and apply study results to clinical practice. (shrink)

To the evolutionarily oriented clinical psychiatrist, the discipline of behavioural ecology is a fertile basic science. Human psychology discusses variation in terms of means, standard deviations, heritabilities, and so on, but behavioural ecology deals with mutually incompatible alternative behavioural strategies, the heritable variation being maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection. I suggest that behavioural ecology should be included in the interdisciplinary dialogue recommended by Keller & Miller (K&M). (Published Online November 9 2006).

The adaptationist framework is necessary and sufficient for unifying the social and natural sciences. Gintis's “beliefs, preferences, and constraints” (BPC) model compares unfavorably to this framework because it lacks criteria for determining special design, incorrectly assumes that standard evolutionary theory predicts individual rationality maximisation, does not adequately recognize the impact of psychological mechanisms on culture, and is mute on the behavioural implications of intragenomic conflict. (Published Online April 27 2007).

Modern historical criticism of the gospels and Christian origins began in the seventeenth century largely as an attempt to debunk the Christian religion as a pious fraud. The gospels were seen as bits of priestcraft and humbug of a piece with the apocryphal Donation of Constantine. In the few centuries since Reimarus and his critical kin, historical criticism has been embraced and assimilated by many Christian scholars who have seen in it the logical extension of the grammatico-historical method of the (...) Reformers. The new views of New Testament exegesis and of early Christian history are important and well known. Many New Testament scholars would now hold with Schweitzer and Bultmann that Jesus was a preacher of the imminent end of the world. He may have secretly considered himself to be the Messiah, or he may have simply sought to pave the way for another, the apocalyptic Son of Man. After his execution, his disciples' experiences of his resurrection forced on them a conclusion already implicit in his teachings and personal piety: that Jesus was indeed, or had become, the Messiah, and was in fact God's Son. They expected he would soon return as the Son of Man he had predicted. (shrink)

Originally published in Mexico in 1970, _Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América _is the first book by the Argentine philosopher Rodolfo Kusch to be translated into English. At its core is a binary created by colonization and the devaluation of indigenous practices and cosmologies: an opposition between the technologies and rationalities of European modernity and the popular mode of thinking, which is deeply tied to Indian ways of knowing and being. Arguing that this binary cuts through América, Kusch seeks to (...) identify and recover the indigenous and popular way of thinking, which he contends is dismissed or misunderstood by many urban Argentines, including leftist intellectuals. _Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América_ is a record of Kusch's attempt to immerse himself in the indigenous ways of knowing and being. At first glance, his methodology resembles ethnography. He speaks with and observes indigenous people and mestizos in Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. He questions them about their agricultural practices and economic decisions; he observes rituals; he asks women in the market the meaning of indigenous talismans; he interviews shamans; he describes the spatial arrangement and the contents of shrines, altars, and temples; and he reproduces diagrams of archaeological sites, which he then interprets at length. Yet he does not present a "them" to a putative "us." Instead, he offers an inroad to a way of thinking and being that does not follow the logic or fit into the categories of Western social science and philosophy. In his introduction, Walter D. Mignolo discusses Kusch's work and its relation to that of other twentieth-century intellectuals, Argentine history, and contemporary scholarship on the subaltern and decoloniality. (shrink)

Price replies to Sciabarra's criticism that Carol Selby Price and Robert Price's Mystic Rhythms erroneously classifies Rush lyricist Neil Peart as "conservative." "Conservative" may imply limitation of individual freedom by the government—or by organized religion. Peart leans more toward a non-religious libertarianism and Rand's Objectivism, which may be considered "conservative" in the same narrow sense. Ironically, Randian thinkers share with religion the use of the Hero Myth archetype. Price focuses on recent Rand-type comic book superheroes, including (...) Steve Ditko's Mister A and The Question, and Alan Moore's parody on diese, Rorschach. (shrink)

ROBERT M. PRICE replies to Sciabarra's criticism that Carol Selby Price and Robert Price's Mystic Rhythms erroneously classifies Rush lyricist Neil Peart as "conservative." "Conservative" may imply limitation of individual freedom by the government—or by organized religion. Peart leans more toward a non-religious libertarianism and Rand's Objectivism, which may be considered "conservative" in the same narrow sense. Ironically, Randian thinkers share with religion the use of the Hero Myth archetype. Price focuses on recent Rand-type comic book (...) superheroes, including Steve Ditko's Mister A and The Question, and Alan Moore's parody on these, Rorschach. (shrink)

This article reports in detail an ethics case consultation involving a decision to forgo life-sustaining treatment for a middle-aged man following a massive cerebral bleed resulting in profound brain damage, but not unconsciousness. An unusual feature of this case is that, despite normal intelligence, caring family relationships and a history of life-threatening cardiac disease, vigorous and sustained inquiry could not elicitany indications of this patient's values, perceptions or preferences regarding end of life care.Other than a deliberately autobiographical methodological prologue and (...) a few brief comments at the end, the case is presented straightforwardly and without intercurrent analysis. (shrink)

The sun -- The silence of art : Bataille's babbling sacrifice -- A map, of sorts -- Life's grave traces -- The clarity of method and its demands -- Truths of displacement -- Aristotle and the trace of phenomenology -- Encompassing flow or receding deformation ... a first tracing -- The formal force of presence -- The creative force of form -- The force of an impotent demand -- Limitation and light : creatures of the possible -- The intellect moves (...) as the necessity of exchange -- The trace as the force of the absent -- The trace and the gravity of words -- The trace as the absence and the motion of the intelligible -- Affirmation and absence -- The sense of a gesture -- Deformation of one hand rather than another -- The difficulty of gestures -- The subject as the site of the representation of possibility -- The unity of the place of a doubled reflection -- The displacing and transcending logic -- Of the power of representation -- On the place of the subject -- The beginning of the subjective -- Movement and method -- Belonging to the necessity of the element -- The divine task of beginning -- The necessity of the hand -- The difficult gesture of abandon -- The presence of an object, the force of a gesture -- The black box -- The vanishing compulsion -- The philosophical stakes of aesthetic form -- The dark gestures of the hand -- The presence of the frame ... and its gestures -- The originality of trust -- The silence evoked. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

Introduction: Schools have become a primary setting for providing mental health care to youths in the U.S. School-based interventions have proliferated, but their effects on mental health and academic outcomes remain understudied. In this study we will implement and evaluate the effects of a flexible multidiagnostic treatment called Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, or Conduct Problems on students' mental health and academic outcomes.Methods and Analysis: This is an assessor-blind randomized controlled effectiveness trial conducted across five (...) school districts. School clinicians are randomized to either MATCH or usual care treatment conditions. The target sample includes 168 youths referred for mental health services and presenting with elevated symptoms of anxiety, depression, trauma, and/or conduct problems. Clinicians randomly assigned to MATCH or UC treat the youths who are assigned to them through normal school referral procedures. The project will evaluate the effectiveness of MATCH compared to UC on youths' mental health and school related outcomes and assess whether changes in school outcomes are mediated by changes in youth mental health.Ethics and Dissemination: This study was approved by the Harvard University Institutional Review Board. We plan to publish the findings in peer-reviewed journals and present them at academic conferences.Clinical Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02877875. Registered on August 24, 2016. (shrink)

This essay is the journal editor's introduction to part 3 of an ongoing symposium on quietism. With reference to writings of James Joyce, Francis Picabia, J. M. Coetzee, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Elaine Pagels, and Karen King—and with extended reference to Jonathan Lear's study of “cultural devastation,” Radical Hope—Jeffrey Perl explores the possibility that the fear of anomie is misplaced. He argues that, in comparison with the violence and narrowness of any given social order, anomie may well be preferable, and, (...) in any case, may be no more than another name for quietism. (shrink)

This essay is the journal editor's introduction to part 3 of an ongoing symposium on quietism. With reference to writings of James Joyce, Francis Picabia, J. M. Coetzee, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Elaine Pagels, and Karen King—and with extended reference to Jonathan Lear's study of “cultural devastation,” Radical Hope—Jeffrey Perl explores the possibility that the fear of anomie (“anomiphobia”) is misplaced. He argues that, in comparison with the violence and narrowness of any given social order, anomie may well be preferable, (...) and, in any case, may be no more than another name for quietism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual actions. (...) "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical. -/- INTRODUCTION Since its beginning in the 19th century, sociology has faced the fundamental question of what a social phenomena stands for? At a glance, sociologists deal with the study of social groups, collective behavior, institutions, social structures, social networks, and social dynamics, and ultimately all such phenomena are composed of individuals. Therefore, social phenomena seem to have no independent ontological status, and in this case, sociology is ultimately about reducible individuals. Different approaches about the micro-macro relationship, using the concept of "emergence", argue that although collective phenomena are created by individuals, they cannot be reduced to individual action. The term "emergence" is used to distinguish "emergent results" from " Procedural results". Results are called Procedural that can only be calculated by adding or subtracting the causes that act together. On the contrary, they are emergent outcomes that are qualitatively novel compared to the causes from which they originate. An example of such emergent results is mental characteristics that emerge from neural processes, but are not considered among the characteristics of neural processes of components - which are their origin. Philosophical debates about emergentism and reductionism focus on the mind-brain relationship, but as many philosophers have noted, they can be generalized to apply to any hierarchical set of features. The cognitive revolution reactivated a 19th century controversy between theorists of Identity and dualism. The theorists of Identity believe in reductionist materialism and elimination of metaphysics, according to which the mind is nothing more than the biological, while the dualists believe that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. Emergence has been considered as a third way between the theories of Identity and dualism. -/- METHODOLOGY Interdisciplinarity Is fundamentally indicated by the dominance of open systems as well as social and emerging systems at different levels. Therefore, as long as we are facing a new emergentism, there will necessarily be different fields and an interdisciplinary method. The commonality of social sciences and cognitive sciences on the issue of emergence provides the possibility of interaction and exchange of concepts between these two for deeper research. Therefore, in this research, apart from the concepts of Subvenience and downward causation, we have used multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, which are used to explain the emerging concept in cognitive sciences, including neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. For analytical and interdisciplinary approaches, after examining the concepts of subvenience, and wildly disjunctive, Individualistic and collectivist emergentism have been reviewed. And then their adequacy is criticized and evaluated in meeting strong emergence conditions. -/- FINDINGS Philosophers of the mind have been able to define the conditions of irreducibility and downward causation, which are essential for strong emergence, by using the principle of subvenience with the help of multiple realization and wildly disjunctive principles. Therefore, by definition, emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and emergentist collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the challenges facing the two methodological approaches of individualism and collectivism leads us to three unresolved issues about the emerging phenomenon, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. Despite the differences in the stances of these two approaches regarding the aforementioned triple problems, individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and some others are irreducible due to their complexity, the determination of which, depends on the case study of the mechanism of emergence of each social characteristic. -/- CONCLUSION An emergence that is consistent with reductionism is called a weak emergence. And strong emergence includes the principle of irreducibility and downward causality. According to strong emergence, the characteristics of social phenomena have downward causal power, which cannot be reduced to the causal forces. The principle of subvenience, together with multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, can provide the conditions of irreducibility and downward causality, which are essential conditions of strong emergence. Based on the philosophical analysis of two methodological approaches, individualist and collectivist, it can be concluded that emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and reification collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the problems faced by these two approaches leads us to three unresolved issues, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. individualist emergentists acknowledge the existence of emergent social characteristics, but despite this, they believe that these characteristics are not real but merely analytical constructs that require explanation based on individuals and their mutual actions. But collectivists argue that emergentism yields a categorical ontology and supports social realism. They accept the dependence of social characteristics on individuals, but claim that social entities and structures are ontologically independent. Individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and others are irreducible due to their complexity; and the only way to recognize this is to engage in empirical studies of the mechanisms and temporal processes of "emergence" that create social characteristics. -/- NOVELTY The newness of this compact article is as follows: a) Presenting an interdisciplinary approach using the analysis of philosophy of cognitive sciences, including the philosophy of mind, neurobiology and psychology to formulate the issue of social emergence; b) Criticizing individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to the issue of social emergence and explaining the sufficiency and shortcomings of both in providing weak and strong emerging conditions; c) Explaining and categorizing the challenges facing methodological approaches in explaining the phenomenon of social emergence, in three categories: realism, downward causality, and mechanism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., & Kim, J. (eds.) (1992). Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R., Danermark, B. & Price, L. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and wellbeing: A critical realist general theory of interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Blau, P.M. (1981). Introduction: diverse views of social structure and their common denominator. In Blau, P.M. & Merton, R.K. (eds.), Continuity in Structural Inquiry (pp. 1–23). Beverly Hills: Sage. Blau, P.M. (1987). Microprocess and macrostructure. In K.S. Cook (ed.), Social Exchange Theory (pp. 83–100). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Brooks, R.A., & Maes, P. (eds). (1994). Artificial life IV; proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In: J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & Neil J. Smelser (Eds.). The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 153–73). Berkeley: University of California. Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97–115. Fodor, J.A. (1989). Making mind matter more. Philosophical Topics, 17, 59-79. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press. Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world. Mind, 102, 555-586. Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge”. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1-17. Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36. Kincaid, H. (1997). Individualism and the unity of science. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis, D.K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nigel, G., & Conte, R. (eds.) (1995). Artificial societies; The computer simulation of social life. London: UCL Press. O’Connor, T. (1994). Emergent properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31, 91-104. Popper, K.R. (1968). Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 551-585. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). The mechanisms of emergence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 260–282. Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, R.K. (2003). Nonreductive individualism: Part 2, Social causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33, 203–224. Winch, P. (1993). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy‭ (SAMT, Trans.). Tehran, Iran: SAMT. (shrink)

This review of Richard Tuck's Free Riding conveys Tuck's crucial distinction between the logic of collective action which fails due to the problem of causal negligibility, and free riding, which has been modeled as a Prisoner's Dilemma and involves casually impacting another actor in an adverse manner. Tuck also distinguishes the practice of voting which he argues neither fails due to the worry of causal negligibility or due to free riding; instead it represents a problem of achieving sufficiency of votes (...) representing a minimum winning coalition. This article clarifies how the problem of collective action resembles perfect free market competition which is defined to be characterized by a state in which no single agent can impact the price of a good. Similarly, in a large scale collective action, no single actor can have a causal impact on the outcome of the vast enterprise. This inability to make a difference due to the negligibility of each individual's causal power differentiates collective action and the tragedy of the commons from other social problems. (shrink)

"Like H. H. Price, who said that 'Clarity is not enough' in the intellectual realm, we may say that clarity is all the less sufficient in the ethical realm." Indeed few will want to reproach this author with overvaluing clarity or with placing excessive emphasis on precision. He constantly prefers the suggestive to the exact. Though the book deals with ethical questions, the aim is not to present a general theory of ethics, but to derive ethical and political consequences (...) from the phenomenology of man. What, in fact, emerges is a loosely related series of studies, which have in common the primacy of the concrete subject. The first part of the book is devoted to a phenomenological ontology of the concrete subject. The conclusions are not novel, but they do provide a necessary background for the later studies. The second part of the book considers ethical questions, and presents an interesting trichotomy of values into embodied values, such as holiness as embodied in God; values which are never realized once and for all and which require repeated actualization, such as charity; and values which must be protected and fortified, such as political liberty. Also included are studies of the ethical aspects of lying and of being ashamed. Rotenstreich claims that lying is morally reprehensible because truth is an ethical value. To support this latter contention, he argues that truth is demanded by rationality, the essence of man, and that man has a duty to develop his essence. The third and last part of the book is devoted to political questions.—F. S. M. (shrink)

An essay in normative jurisprudence where the author is concerned with delineating and evaluating legal decision procedures. The appeal to precedent and equity are critically examined and found to be deficient. Wasserstrom proposes as an improvement a two-level decision procedure, which is like precedent in appealing to a rule of law as a necessary condition for deciding a case, and like equity "in that considerations of justice are directly relevant to the justification of any decision." He frankly admits that this (...) decision procedure is an improvement at the "price of becoming imprecise at certain crucial points." The discussion is informed throughout with an appreciation of both legal and philosophical treatments of the issues.--S. M. W. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to outline challenges associated with the inclusion of welfare issues in breeding goals for farm animals and to review the currently available methodologies and discuss their potential advantages and limitations to address these challenges. The methodology for weighing production traits with respect to cost efficiency and market prices are well developed and implemented in animal breeding goals. However, these methods are inadequate in terms of assessing proper values of traits with social and ethical values (...) such as animal welfare, because such values are unlikely to be readily available from the product prices and costs in the market. Defining breeding goals that take animal welfare and ethical concerns into account, therefore, requires new approaches. In this paper we suggest a framework and an approach for defining breeding goals, including animal welfare. The definition of breeding goals including values related to animal welfare requires a multidisciplinary approach with a combination of different methods such as profit equations, stated preference techniques, and selection index theory. In addition, a participatory approach involving different stakeholders such as breeding organizations, food authorities, farmers, and animal welfare organizations should be applied. We conclude that even though these methods provide the necessary tools for considering welfare issues in the breeding goal, the practical application of these methods is yet to be achieved. (shrink)

This paper reviews the experience of an integrated approach to CSR in the U.S. electric utility sector. The authors report on the results of Southern Company’s historical definition of CSR as a dynamic model, balancing stakeholder needs through shifting pressures to assure long-term shareholder value, superior customer, price performance, and sustainable economic development. Using financial and utility sector measures, the paper assesses the company’s “balancing” approach to addressing CSR, which weights corporate, environmental, community, and economic factors in driving successful (...) and sustained financial, social, and environmental performance. The paper concludes by suggesting that CSR success in this sector requires, first, that the global warming issue be governed by the same balancing considerations to which all stakeholders and their legitimate interests are subject, and second, an energy policy that embraces both atechnology policy and appropriate regulatory incentives. (shrink)

This paper reviews the experience of an integrated approach to CSR in the U.S. electric utility sector. The authors report on the results of Southern Company’s historical definition of CSR as a dynamic model, balancing stakeholder needs through shifting pressures to assure long-term shareholder value, superior customer, price performance, and sustainable economic development. Using financial and utility sector measures, the paper assesses the company’s “balancing” approach to addressing CSR, which weights corporate, environmental, community, and economic factors in driving successful (...) and sustained financial, social, and environmental performance. The paper concludes by suggesting that CSR success in this sector requires, first, that the global warming issue be governed by the same balancing considerations to which all stakeholders and their legitimate interests are subject, and second, an energy policy that embraces both atechnology policy and appropriate regulatory incentives. (shrink)

We argue performance in the serial reaction time task is associated with gradations of awareness that provide examples of fringe consciousness [Mangan, B. . Taking phenomenology seriously: the “fringe” and its implications for cognitive research. Consciousness and Cognition, 2, 89–108, Mangan, B. . The conscious “fringe”: Bringing William James up to date. In B. J. Baars, W. P. Banks & J. B. Newman , Essential sources in the scientific study of consciousness . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.], and address limitations (...) of the traditional SRT procedure, including criticism of exclusion generation tasks. Two experiments are conducted with a modified SRT procedure where irrelevant stimulus attributes obscure the sequence rule. Our modified paradigm, which includes a novel exclusion task, makes it easier to demonstrate a previously controversial influence of response stimulus interval on awareness. It also allows identification of participants showing fringe consciousness rather than explicit sequence knowledge, as reflected by dissociations between different awareness measures. The NEO-PI-R variable Openness to Feelings influenced the diversity of subjective feelings reported during two awareness measures, but not the degree of learning and awareness as previously found with traditional SRT tasks [Norman, E., Price, M. C., & Duff, S. C. . Fringe consciousness in sequence learning: the influence of individual differences. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 723–760.]. This suggests possible distinctions between two components of fringe consciousness. (shrink)

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977. The FCPA is the first and only statute prohibiting bribery and other corrupt business practices by U.S. citizens and companies conducting business overseas. This paper provides an overview of the FCPA during the two decades of its existence. More specifically, the objectives of this paper are four-fold. First, the paper provides background information about the FCPA of 1977 and subsequent amendments in 1988. Second, the paper (...) discusses the enforcement of the FCPA since its passage by examining the number of cases prosecuted under the FCPA and the respective penalties imposed. Third, the paper discusses the economic impact of the FCPA by addressing whether the FCPA places U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage. Fourth, the paper provides public policy recommendations to expand the reach and scope of the FCPA. It covers efforts to criminalize bribery through multilateral organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organization of American States (OAS). It also covers bilateral arrangements and efforts by non-governmental organizations such as Transparency International. (shrink)

This piece was written circa 1982–83, drawing in part on material from my PhD thesis (The Problem of the Single Case, Cambridge, 1981). In the thesis I proposed what would now be called an expressivist account of judgements of the form ‘It is probable that p’. One chapter, on which this paper builds, tried to defend the view against the Frege-Geach argument. This piece earned a revise and resubmit from Philosophical Review, but was never resubmitted. Parts of it made their (...) way into my ‘Semantic Minimalism and the Frege Point’, in Tsohatzidis, S.L.(ed.), Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, Routledge, 1994, pp. 132–55 (reprinted in Naturalism without Mirrors, Oxford, 2011, ch. 3) – though that paper favours a different approach to the Frege-Geach argument, leaning more heavily on semantic minimalism. I’m putting this piece online to facilitate self-citation. (shrink)

Rawdon Wilson's "On Character" raised a great many questions, and I should like to deal with lesser matters before going on to those of more consequence. He has found in my work the Fallacy of Novelistic Presumption. To commit this unnatural act is to assume "that the novel possesses a history that is independent of other modes of fiction and that it may be discussed independently of the history of literature." Let me say at the outset that I am not (...) trying to frame a restrictive definition of the novel. Novels are whatever most critics agree to call novels, and if I speak of "the novel" I can only hope that the phrase will be taken as convenient shorthand rather than an attempt to define an essence. And of course the novel has a history of its own, just as the state of Connecticut has a history even as it remains one of the fifty states, just as literature has a history although it is only one of the arts or institutions of our culture. Mr. Wilson wants a theory of characters that "will necessarily account for - go to the heart of - all instances of character, symbolic, allegorical, naturalistic, whether in the novel, in epic, in romance, in drama, or in lyric." To that I can only reply with E.M. Forster's sentence: "We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing." In this essay Martin Price, Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of English at Yale University, responds to Rawdon Wilson's "On Character" which raised objections to Price's "People of the Book: Character in Forster's A Passage to India". (shrink)

Every price is set by someone; this is where economics begins. Building on that fundamental idea and on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, Objective Economics transforms economics. The thesis of this book is that Ayn Rand's concept of "objective" is the indispensible base of valid economic thought. Consistently applying this idea across the board, the author reaches a general theory of price for the first time in the history of economic thought. This theory of price then provides (...) a valid base for explaining how a free economy functions. Based on facts everyone knows, presented without graphs or higher mathematics, Objective Economics makes accessible to the intelligent layman a clear understanding of how the economy works. For everyone who found college economics impenetrable--and that is just about everyone--this is the book.The thesis of Objective Economics changes everything about economics, including economics' method, the conception of the economy, the meaning of competition, the idea of price, the nature of business costs, the concept of supply, the concept of demand, the law of supply and demand, the theory of price, and the theory of total national output. Overall, as the result of all the preceding, Objective Economics demonstrates that capitalism is the practical economic system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 2, November 2003, pp. 223-266 A Diplomatic Transcription of Hume's "volunteer pamphlet" for Archibald Stewart: Political Whigs, Religious Whigs, and Jacobites M. A. BOX, DAVID HARVEY, AND MICHAEL SILVERTHORNE Many scholars interested in David Hume will have encountered his defense of the beleaguered Archibald Stewart as it appears in an appendix in John Valdimir Price's The Ironic Hume (Austin: University of Texas Press, (...) 1965). Additionally they might know of Price's discussion for The Biblioteck of 1973 of a copy with manuscript markings. A reason for revisiting this pamphlet is that the National Library of Scotland has graciously given permission to reproduce a copy (shelfmark NE.10.e.4) featuring a preface and significant markings in manuscript not in the copy that Price reproduced in his book. As Hume assumes considerable familiarity with the events to which he alludes, we have annotated the text to make it fully intelligible to readers two and half centuries after its composition. The rudimentary bibliographic facts and mysteries are as follows. Two editions survive to us, an octavo (in fours) and a rare duodecimo. Although there is no reason to regard the duodecimo as a second edition correcting or augmenting a first edition, it probably was manufactured after, and was textually derivative from, the octavo. We know nothing of the publishing of M. A. Box is Associate Professor of English, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, PO Box 755720, Fairbanks, AK 99775-5720, USA. David Harvey is at the Classics Department, University of Exeter, Queen's Building, Queen's Drive, Exeter EX4 4QH, UK. Michael Silverthorne is Associate Professor of History, McGiIl University, Stephen Leacock Building, 855 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal H3A 2T7, Canada, e-mail: [email protected] 224 M. A. Box, David Harvey, and Michael Silverthorne the duodecimo, and doubtless that is as its producers intended. Its title page indicates, like that of the octavo, that the printing was done "for M. Cooper" in 1748, but William Strahan's ledgers register the printing in December 1747 of only the octavo in an edition of 1000 copies.1 The job is listed under bookseller Andrew Millar's account, not Mary Cooper's, probably for the reason that Cooper was a front whose role was to screen the true producers. It is possible that Millar hired someone other than Strahan to print the duodecimo, but it is also possible that someone other than Millar had it printed to mimic the octavo and take the opportunity it offered for concealment.2 A different editorial judgment is evinced in the duodecimo in that cosmetic measures are taken in it to obscure the identities of two military men ridiculed. For example, "Fowke" is rendered as "F—" and "John Cope" as "J-C-----." A digression on Mary Cooper is in order. This remarkable woman (died 1761) took over her husband Thomas's business upon his death 9 February 1743. That business had a history of "publishing" pamphlets and therefore made a plausible front for Millar, who in at least thirty-six other instances, none requiring courage, was willing to have his name appear on a title page with "M. Cooper." (This figure derives from a search by imprints using the English Short-Title Catalogue.) Until Thomas Cooper died, his name appeared on editions of John Armstrong's The Oeconomy of Love (1736 and thereafter) though only Millar's name is listed in the Stationers' Register (Foxon, English Verse A303-A311), and Mary's name is on the title page of the 1753 edition for which Strahan charged Millar (Strahan Papers, Add. MS 48800, s.v. August 1753). It was perhaps in this pattern that the second edition of Hume's heterodox Philosophical Essays (1750) would be reissued in 1751 with a new title page replacing Millar's name with Cooper's. That book was made temporarily a more alarming property by the superstitious panic of the London populace following the winter earthquakes in 1750, presaged by a bloody cloud. Within that year Bishop Thomas Sherlock caused a stir with a pastoral letter (A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London) blaming the earthquakes on several iniquities, "particularly heretical books" (Walpole, Correspondence 20... (shrink)

Source: Author: Ahamed Lebbe Mohamed Aslam, S.M. Ahamed Lebbe There is a relationship between the fiscal deficit and inflation, which was confirmed empirically in several studies conducted in many countries. Sri Lanka has been encountering the problem of inflation for the recent years. But in Sri Lanka, this proposition has not yet been studied scientifically. Therefore, this study was going to fill this gap. The objective of this study was to test the impact of fiscal deficit on inflation in Sri (...) Lanka. For this study, the annual time series data were used during the period of 1959 to 2013. The fiscal deficit, exchange rate, government expenditures and import outflow were used as independent variables while the Colombo consumer price index was considered as dependent variable. In addition, the multiple regressions model was used to test the impact of fiscal deficit on inflation. Based on the regression results, the fiscal deficit preserved the positive relationship with inflation in Sri Lanka at one percent significant level. Therefore, this study confirmed that the fiscal deficit accelerates the inflation in Sri Lanka. ]]>. (shrink)