The stars and the planets must have been in alignment when Paul Hager needed a doctoral student to work on his research grant at the same time that I had transitioned from 20 years as business practitioner to become an educator interested in workplace learning. This paper explores the Bakhtinian ways in which I learned about learning with Paul, and how our process of engagement continues to influence my appreciation of the philosophy and practice of education. In such musings, I (...) draw upon Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism, answerability and ideological becoming to discuss how the invitational qualities of engagement sustain a pedagogy of practice that I am privileged to share with my guide and friend, Emeritus Professor Paul Hager. (shrink)

Packed with ideas designed to help children learn to sing, this booklet offers criteria for selecting songs, strategies to bring out the best in children's voices, and suggestions for games, ideas, and resources.

The current public health crisis has exposed deep cracks in social equality and justice for marginalised and vulnerable communities around the world. The reported rise in the number of ‘do not resuscitate’ orders being imposed on people with disabilities has caused particular concerns from a human rights perspective. While the evidence of this is contested, this article will consider the human rights implications at stake and the dangers associated with using ‘quality of life’ measures as determinant of care in medical (...) decision-making and triage assessments. (shrink)

Policies promoted and adopted for allocating ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic have often prioritised healthcare workers or other essential workers. While the need for such policies has so far been largely averted, renewed stress on health systems from continuing surges, as well as the experience of allocating another scarce resource—vaccination—counsel revisiting the justifications for such prioritisation. Prioritising healthcare workers may have intuitive appeal, but the ethical justifications for doing so and the potential harms that could follow require careful analysis. Ethical (...) justifications commonly offered for healthcare worker prioritisation for ventilators rest on two social value criteria: instrumental value, also known as the ‘multiplier effect’, which may preserve the ability of healthcare workers to help others, and reciprocity, which rewards past usefulness or sacrifice. We argue that these justifications are insufficient to over-ride the common moral commitment to value each person’s life equally. Institutional policies prioritising healthcare workers over other patients also violate other ethical norms of the healthcare professions, including the commitment to put patients first. Furthermore, policy decisions to prioritise healthcare workers for ventilators could engender or deepen existing distrust of the clinicians, hospitals and health systems where those policies exist, even if they are never invoked. (shrink)

Michael A PetersBeijing Normal UniversityChatGPT is an AI chatbot released by OpenAI on November 30, 2022 and a ‘stable release’ on February 13, 2023. It belongs to OpenAI’s GPT-3 family (generativ...

To date, game-based learning programs that include comprehensive creativity skills and disposition training are still very limited. The present researchers developed a comprehensive game-based creativity learning program for fifth and sixth grade pupils. Further analysis presented relationship trends between mindful learning experience, flow experience, self-efficacy, and mastery experience. Eighty-three 5th and 6th grade participants undertook the six-week game-based creativity learning program. Upon the completion of experimental instruction, those who scored higher on the concerned variables improved more in self-evaluation of both (...) creativity ability and confidence, than their counterparts. Additionally, path model analysis revealed that mindful learning experience was a powerful predictor of both mastery experience and flow experience; it also influenced mastery experience through flow experience and self-efficacy during game-based creativity learning. The findings support the effectiveness of the game-based learning program developed in this study. Moreover, this study contributes to the theoretical construction of how game-based learning can be designed to facilitate mindful learning experience, flow experience, self-efficacy, and mastery experience during creativity training among pupils. Effective mechanisms include providing rewards for high-quality performance, challenging tasks, free choices of design components, immediate feedback, and idea sharing. The profound theoretical framework proposed in this study provides a valuable approach for creativity instruction through game-based learning or classroom instruction. (shrink)

ObjectivesIn 2015, the Province of Quebec, Canada passed a law that allowed voluntary active euthanasia. Palliative care stakeholders in Canada have been largely opposed to euthanasia, yet there is little research about their views. The research question guiding this study was the following: How do palliative care physicians in Quebec position themselves regarding the practice of VAE in the context of the new provincial legislation?MethodsWe used interpretive description, an inductive methodology to answer research questions about clinical practice. A total of (...) 18 palliative care physicians participated in semistructured interviews at two university-affiliated hospitals in Quebec.ResultsParticipants positioned themselves in opposition to euthanasia. Their justifications were framed within their professional commitment to not hasten death, which sat in tension with the value of patients’ autonomy to choose how to die. Participants described VAE as unacceptable if it impeded opportunities to evaluate and alleviate suffering. Further, they contested government rhetoric that positioned VAE as a way to improve end-of-life care. Participants felt that VAE would diminish the potential of palliative care to relieve suffering. Dilemmas were apparent in their narratives, about reconciling respect for patient autonomy with broader palliative care values, and the value of accompanying and not abandoning patients who make requests for VAE while being committed to neither prolonging nor hastening death.ConclusionsThis study provides insight into nuanced positions of experienced palliative care physicians in Quebec and confirms expected tensions between an important stakeholder and the practice of VAE as guided by the new legislation. (shrink)

Recent arguments claim that behavioral science has focused – to its detriment – on the individual over the system when construing behavioral interventions. In this commentary, we argue that tackling economic inequality using both framings in tandem is invaluable. By studying individuals who have overcome inequality, “positive deviants,” and the system limitations they navigate, we offer potentially greater policy solutions.

This article sheds light on the diversity of meanings and connotations that tend to be lost or hidden in translations between different conceptualizations of nature in East and South-East Asia. It reviews the idea of “nature” in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Tagalog, Cebuano, Lumad, Indonesian, Burmese, Nepali, Khmer, and Mongolian. It shows that the conceptual subtleties in the conceptualization of nature often hide wider and deeper cosmological mismatches. It concludes by suggesting that these diverse voices need to be represented in (...) global reports on sustainability, which can be fostered by the direct involvement of experts from diverse traditions of thought who have access and interpretative knowledge of sources in languages other than English. To take into consideration the diversity of conceptualizations of nature can lead to better decisions about sustainability and improve the acceptability and efficiency of environmental policies in each local context, as well as internationally. Solutions and policies on the ground must be designed based on the local conceptual and cultural frames. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

We should not investigate facts by the light of arguments, but arguments by the light of facts.Myson of Chen, one of the Seven Sages ca. 600 B.C.To settle scores as well as problems, to shake things up, to make people think about what they said and wrote, to be provocative without being unjust...Kingsley AmisIn their critique of Wisconsin's revised child protection Statute, Kenneth De Ville and Loretta Kopelman argue rightly that “words matter.” Word mongering infects most political dialogue and (...) is nowhere more virulent than in the American abortion debate. Dichotomies such as “ unborn child” and “fetus,” expectant mother” and “pregnant woman,” “anti-choice’’ and “pro-choice,” “pregnancy termination” and “murder” symbolize the polarity of the abortion argument and the importance of language as a powerful conceptual weapon. The debate over reproductive rights is a war often fought on a linguistic battlefield. There, combatants forgo rules of engagement. Mal-intentioned illiteracy, ranging from the puerile to the vituperative, is always strategic. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of natural analogy in scientific theorizing via Mary Hesse’s original understanding of analogical reasoning. Starting with discussing Hesse’s examples and her symbolic scheme, I argue that the traditional distinction between the type of formal analogy and the type of material analogy should be abandoned. All analogies in theorizing, that are both formal and material, contain a set of pretheoretic associations and a theoretic structure between two analogues. I thus provide a new interpretation of Hesse’s (...) symbolic scheme to reveal the pretheoretical and the structural dimensions of analogy and further illustrate the account of natural analogy by applying it to the history of the construction of Coulomb’s law, which is traditionally seen as a typical case of formal analogy, arguing that pretheoretic associations as well as a theoretic structure play a necessary role in this case. In the final part of this paper, I argue that the account of natural analogy is preferable to Dedre Gentner’s structural mapping theory. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of natural analogy in scientific theorizing via Mary Hesse’s original understanding of analogical reasoning. Starting with discussing Hesse’s examples and her symbolic scheme, I argue that the traditional distinction between the type of formal analogy and the type of material analogy should be abandoned. All analogies in theorizing, that are both formal and material, contain a set of pretheoretic associations and a theoretic structure between two analogues. I thus provide a new interpretation of Hesse’s (...) symbolic scheme to reveal the pretheoretical and the structural dimensions of analogy and further illustrate the account of natural analogy by applying it to the history of the construction of Coulomb’s law, which is traditionally seen as a typical case of formal analogy, arguing that pretheoretic associations as well as a theoretic structure play a necessary role in this case. In the final part of this paper, I argue that the account of natural analogy is preferable to Dedre Gentner’s structural mapping theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction by Mark PayneAihua ChenFlowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction, by Mark Payne; 192 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.Mark Payne's Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction contributes significantly to the nascent scholarship on the ever-increasing corpus of postapocalyptic fiction by reading this genre philosophically and interrogating how it imagines new forms of life beyond the confines of a particular kind of world (...) and outside the polis walls. Payne's claim is that postapocalyptic fiction is "political theory in fiction form" and "shows what it would be like to live that life" (p. 2). Moreover, he posits that postapocalyptic fiction "imagines forms of human freedom, sociality, and capability outside the discourse of normative theory" (pp. 2–3). This monograph, framed by the great thinkers such as Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, and many others, provides a cogent and incisive analysis of the themes of occupation, ontology, and the anthropological horizon in postapocalyptic fiction. It offers a comprehensive study of the genre, ranging in the context of philosophical and political ideas from Mary Shelley's The Last Man to Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy. The readings include a well-developed introduction, three analytical chapters, and a conclusion.In his extensive introduction, Payne provides a rich background for his study of postapocalyptic fiction and perspicuously outlines his theoretical framework and research scope. Payne first traces the literary lineage of postapocalyptic fiction to the biblical tale of Noah, and Hesiod's Works and Days. He offers a helpful delineation of the salient differences between apocalyptic fiction and postapocalyptic fiction, and thus narrows his research scope to postapocalyptic fictions that commit themselves to "staging human beings living on after the catastrophe, and to showing why catastrophe is necessary for the new forms of human sociality they envision" (p. 18), which accounts for his omission of some famous postapocalyptic novels, such as Will Self's The Book of Dave and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven.After acknowledging his indebtedness to earlier research, Payne argues that although some critical readings of postapocalyptic fiction "have rightly identified its commitment to starting over, they have generally mischaracterized it by beginning at the macrosocial level, with the social contract and other large-scale forms of social organization, rather than the single human being and their body." He further suggests that "postapocalyptic fiction advances a strand of political thought that is as ancient as Aristotle's student Dicaearchus, who argued, against his teacher, that the polis is not the best form of life for the realization of human potential" (p. 21).Therefore, his research addresses this gap by focusing on individualism, small-scale sociality, and forms of freedom and regeneration outside the polis wall. Payne points out that "the form of freedom staged in postapocalyptic fiction is [End Page 499] marronage" (p. 26). Especially noteworthy is that Payne gives a detailed explication of the theory of marronage, the relationship between occupation and mentation to which he frequently refers in subsequent chapters to expound how survivors after the apocalyptic event can adapt themselves to the altered world and have new forms of mental life through their new occupations.The first chapter, "The Apocalyptic Cosmos," examines how cosmic forces transform human beings' physical existence and forms of life in the works of Hesiod, Shelley, and Olaf Stapledon, and how these writers engage with the immediacy of relationship between occupation and mentation. Payne first engages in illuminating exploration of how Shelley draws on Works and Days for her vision of postapocalyptic fiction. He argues that The Last Man looks to Works and Days "for its vision of human victimization at the hands of a whimsical cosmos" (p. 37). For Shelley, primitive agriculture is the ideal form of life, in which "the relationship between occupation and mentation is the most satisfying to human beings because it affords them the idea that personal, small-scale, local divinities care about human beings in the same way that human beings care for them" (p. 44). In the latter part of the chapter, Payne illustrates how Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker reveal... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction by Mark PayneAihua ChenFlowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction, by Mark Payne; 192 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.Mark Payne's Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction contributes significantly to the nascent scholarship on the ever-increasing corpus of postapocalyptic fiction by reading this genre philosophically and interrogating how it imagines new forms of life beyond the confines of a particular kind of world (...) and outside the polis walls. Payne's claim is that postapocalyptic fiction is "political theory in fiction form" and "shows what it would be like to live that life" (p. 2). Moreover, he posits that postapocalyptic fiction "imagines forms of human freedom, sociality, and capability outside the discourse of normative theory" (pp. 2–3). This monograph, framed by the great thinkers such as Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, and many others, provides a cogent and incisive analysis of the themes of occupation, ontology, and the anthropological horizon in postapocalyptic fiction. It offers a comprehensive study of the genre, ranging in the context of philosophical and political ideas from Mary Shelley's The Last Man to Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy. The readings include a well-developed introduction, three analytical chapters, and a conclusion.In his extensive introduction, Payne provides a rich background for his study of postapocalyptic fiction and perspicuously outlines his theoretical framework and research scope. Payne first traces the literary lineage of postapocalyptic fiction to the biblical tale of Noah, and Hesiod's Works and Days. He offers a helpful delineation of the salient differences between apocalyptic fiction and postapocalyptic fiction, and thus narrows his research scope to postapocalyptic fictions that commit themselves to "staging human beings living on after the catastrophe, and to showing why catastrophe is necessary for the new forms of human sociality they envision" (p. 18), which accounts for his omission of some famous postapocalyptic novels, such as Will Self's The Book of Dave and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven.After acknowledging his indebtedness to earlier research, Payne argues that although some critical readings of postapocalyptic fiction "have rightly identified its commitment to starting over, they have generally mischaracterized it by beginning at the macrosocial level, with the social contract and other large-scale forms of social organization, rather than the single human being and their body." He further suggests that "postapocalyptic fiction advances a strand of political thought that is as ancient as Aristotle's student Dicaearchus, who argued, against his teacher, that the polis is not the best form of life for the realization of human potential" (p. 21).Therefore, his research addresses this gap by focusing on individualism, small-scale sociality, and forms of freedom and regeneration outside the polis wall. Payne points out that "the form of freedom staged in postapocalyptic fiction is [End Page 499] marronage" (p. 26). Especially noteworthy is that Payne gives a detailed explication of the theory of marronage, the relationship between occupation and mentation to which he frequently refers in subsequent chapters to expound how survivors after the apocalyptic event can adapt themselves to the altered world and have new forms of mental life through their new occupations.The first chapter, "The Apocalyptic Cosmos," examines how cosmic forces transform human beings' physical existence and forms of life in the works of Hesiod, Shelley, and Olaf Stapledon, and how these writers engage with the immediacy of relationship between occupation and mentation. Payne first engages in illuminating exploration of how Shelley draws on Works and Days for her vision of postapocalyptic fiction. He argues that The Last Man looks to Works and Days "for its vision of human victimization at the hands of a whimsical cosmos" (p. 37). For Shelley, primitive agriculture is the ideal form of life, in which "the relationship between occupation and mentation is the most satisfying to human beings because it affords them the idea that personal, small-scale, local divinities care about human beings in the same way that human beings care for them" (p. 44). In the latter part of the chapter, Payne illustrates how Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker reveal... (shrink)

Literary Information in China: A History. Edited by Jack W. Chen, Anatoly Detwyler, Christopher M. B. Nugent, Xiao Liu, and Bruce Rusk. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. Pp. xxxii + 638. $90.

If the Past Hypothesis underlies the arrows of time, what is the status of the Past Hypothesis? In this paper, I examine the role of the Past Hypothesis in the Boltzmannian account and defend the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law of nature. Such a view is known to be compatible with Humeanism about laws, but as I argue it is also supported by a minimal non-Humean "governing'' view. Some worries arise from the non-dynamical and time-dependent (...) character of the Past Hypothesis as a boundary condition, the intrinsic vagueness in its specification, and the nature of the initial probability distribution. I show that these worries do not have much force, and in any case they become less relevant in a new quantum framework for analyzing time's arrows---the Wentaculus. Hence, the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law should be more widely accepted than it is now. (shrink)

Science as Salvation discusses the high spiritual ambitions which tend to gather round the notion of science. Officially, science claims only the modest function of establishing facts. Yet people still hope for something much grander from it--namely, the myths by which to shape and support life in an increasingly confusing age. Our faith in science is abused by some scientists whose adolescent fantasies have spilled over into their professional lives. Salvation, immortality, mastery of the universe, humans without bodies, and intelligent (...) self-reproducing computers are just some of the notions and speculations that are now found--not on the pages of science fiction--but on the pages of science itself. The danger is that these concepts are given to a myth-hungry public who turn to science now that religion has lost its ability to create myth. Science as Salvation discusses the function and meaning of such fantasies. Midgley examines the need for and the use of myth in science, and how science and religion are related. She argues that we need to develop a realistic understanding of scientific imagination and its importance. Taking them seriously as symptoms of a genuine myth-hunger, it suggests that the proper function of science may need to include wider perspectives, which would make it plain that such desperate, compensatory dramas are unnecessary. (shrink)

The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of (...) time in the universe. In this paper, we propose a minimal primitivism about laws of nature (MinP) according to which there is no such requirement. On our view, laws govern by constraining the physical possibilities. Our view captures the essence of the governing view without taking on extraneous commitments about the direction of time or dynamic production. Moreover, as a version of primitivism, our view requires no reduction / analysis of laws in terms of universals, powers, or dispositions. Our view accommodates several potential candidates for fundamental laws, including the principle of least action, the Past Hypothesis, the Einstein equation of general relativity, and even controversial examples found in the Wheeler-Feynman theory of electrodynamics and retrocausal theories of quantum mechanics. By understanding governing as constraining, non-Humeans who accept MinP have the same freedom to contemplate a wide variety of candidate fundamental laws as Humeans do. (shrink)

The wave function in quantum mechanics presents an interesting challenge to our understanding of the physical world. In this paper, I show that the wave function can be understood as four intrinsic relations on physical space. My account has three desirable features that the standard account lacks: it does not refer to any abstract mathematical objects, it is free from the usual arbitrary conventions, and it explains why the wave function has its gauge degrees of freedom, something that are usually (...) put into the theory by hand. Hence, this account has implications for debates in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. First, by removing references to mathematical objects, it provides a framework for nominalizing quantum mechanics. Second, by excising superfluous structure such as overall phase, it reveals the intrinsic structure postulated by quantum mechanics. Moreover, it also removes a major obstacle to ``wave function realism.''. (shrink)

Some commentators have condemned Kant’s moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant’s apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant’s view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant’s (...) moral project. (shrink)

Ben shu ba zhe xue shi yan jiu, bi jiao zhe xue yan jiu, wen hua wen ti yan jiu he wen xian shi liao yan jiu he wei yi ti, dui Wang Yangming zhe xue de nei rong jin xing le quan mian he shen ru de fen xi, bing dui qi zhe xue de nei rong jin xing le quan mian he shen ru de fen xi, bing dui qi zhe xue de bu tong fa zhan jie duan (...) jin xing le xi zhi de kao cha, li tu cheng xian chu Wang Yangming zhe xue de ji ben xing ge he zheng ti mian mao. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt had insightfully pointed out that an agent acts freely when he acts in accord with the mental states with which he identifies. The concept of identification rightly captures the ownership condition (something being one’s really own), which plays a significant role in the issues of freedom and moral responsibility. For Frankfurt, identification consists of one’s forming second-order volitions, endorsing first-order desires, and issuing in his actions wholeheartedly. An agent not only wants to φ but also fully embraces his (...) desire to φ (and φ). Frankfurt’s official theory above encounters some serious problems, especially since it is believed that his concept of wholehearted identification is too strong to be necessary for freedom. In this paper, I propose that we can uncouple identification from wholeheartedness and thus get two different senses of identification: weak identification and strong identification. Then, I argue that this distinction does a better job than Frankfurt’s official theory. On the one hand, weak identification is enough for ownership and freedom and thus more promising than strong identification; on the other hand, this distinction has an attractive implication that it fits well with our intuition about the degree of freedom and responsibility. (shrink)

A strongly deterministic theory of physics is one that permits exactly one possible history of the universe. In the words of Penrose (1989), "it is not just a matter of the future being determined by the past; the entire history of the universe is fixed, according to some precise mathematical scheme, for all time.” Such an extraordinary feature may appear unattainable in a world like ours. In this paper, I show that it can be achieved in a simple way and (...) discuss its implications for metaphysics and philosophy of science, including natural properties, free will, explanation, and modality. First, I propose a precise definition of strong determinism. Next, I discuss its philosophical ramifications and a toy example. Finally, I provide a realistic example of a strongly deterministic (and simple) physical theory---the Everettian Wentaculus. A surprising consequence is that whether or not our world is strongly deterministic may be empirically underdetermined. (shrink)

Two of the most difficult problems in the foundations of physics are (1) what gives rise to the arrow of time and (2) what the ontology of quantum mechanics is. They are difficult because the fundamental dynamical laws of physics do not privilege an arrow of time, and the quantum-mechanical wave function describes a high-dimensional reality that is radically different from our ordinary experiences. -/- In this paper, I characterize and elaborate on the ``Wentaculus” theory, a new approach to time’s (...) arrow in a quantum universe that offers a unified solution to both problems. Central to the Wentaculus are (i) Density Matrix Realism, the idea that the quantum state of the universe is objective but can be impure, and (ii) the Initial Projection Hypothesis, a new law of nature that selects a unique initial quantum state. On the Wentaculus, the quantum state of the universe is sufficiently simple to be a law, and the arrow of time can be traced back to an exact boundary condition. It removes the intrinsic vagueness of the Past Hypothesis, eliminates the Statistical Postulate, provides a higher degree of theoretical unity, and contains a natural realization of “strong determinism." I end by responding to four recent objections. In a companion paper, I elaborate on Density Matrix Realism. (shrink)

Classical logic has proved inadequate in various areas of computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, philosopy and linguistics. This is an introduction to extensions of first-order logic, based on the principle that many-sorted logic (MSL) provides a unifying framework in which to place, for example, second-order logic, type theory, modal and dynamic logics and MSL itself. The aim is two fold: only one theorem-prover is needed; proofs of the metaproperties of the different existing calculi can be avoided by borrowing them from (...) MSL. To make the book accessible to readers from different disciplines, whilst maintaining precision, the author has supplied detailed step-by-step proofs, avoiding difficult arguments, and continually motivating the material with examples. Consequently this can be used as a reference, for self-teaching or for first-year graduate courses. (shrink)

Research ethics, once a platform for declaring intent, discussing moral issues and providing advice and guidance to researchers, has developed over time into an extra-legal regulatory system, complete with steering documents (ethics guidelines), overseeing bodies (research ethics committees) and formal procedures (informed consent). The process of institutionalizing distrust is usually motivated by reference to past atrocities committed in the name of research and the need to secure the trustworthiness of the research system. This article examines some limitations of this approach. (...) First, past atrocities cannot provide the necessary justification unless institutionalized distrust is a necessary or efficient means to prevent future ones – and there are several reasons to doubt this. Second, the efficacy of ethics review in safeguarding morally acceptable research depends on the moral competence and integrity of individual researchers – the very qualities that institutionalized distrust calls into question. Third, ethics guidelines cannot, as is sometimes assumed, educate or guide researchers in moral behaviour unless they already possess considerable capacity for moral judgment. Fourth, institutionalized distrust is a potential threat to the moral competence and integrity of researchers by encouraging a blinkered view of ethical issues, inducing moral heteronomy through incentives, and alienating them to research ethics. We conclude that the moral problem posed by inappropriate short-term behaviour on behalf of researchers is dwarfed by the potential long-term consequences if their moral competence is allowed to deteriorate. Measures must therefore be taken to ensure that researchers are equipped to take their individual responsibility and are not obstructed from so doing. (shrink)

Er ist wie Günter Grass, Martin Walser und Joseph Ratzinger 1927 geboren, Zeitgenosse von Habermas und Enzensberger und sein Leben verlief so spannend wie kein zweites seiner Generation. Die Mutter war Tänzerin bei Mary Wigman, sein Vater Kunsthistoriker. Seine Eltern waren links, atheistisch und lebten in der Berliner Bohème der Zwanziger Jahre. 1942, nach dem Tod seiner Mutter, wird der Vater zum katholischen Priester geweiht. 1944 ist Spaemann bei einem Bauer untergetaucht, er ist Deserteur im eigenen Land. Entdeckt man (...) ihn jetzt, wird er sofort erschossen. Heute ist Robert Spaemann der bedeutendste konservative Philosoph im In und Ausland. In einem langen Gespräch mit Stephan Sattler resümiert er sein Leben, ganz unter der Maxime der Suche nach dem, "was in Wahrheit ist". Spaemann ist der bedeutendste konservative Philosoph im In- und Ausland und bekennender Gegner der Nutzung der Atomkraft und der Genmanipulation. (shrink)

本书是一本关于陈冲体验人生感悟人生的书法集子。内容包括:悟道篇;明理篇;做人篇;处世篇等。.

This study examines the relation between firms' corporate philanthropic giving and their performance in three other social domains - employee relations, environmental issues, and product safety. Based on a sample of 384 U.S. companies and using data pooled from 1998 through 2000, we find that worse performers in the other social areas are both more likely to make charitable contributions and that the extent of their giving is larger than for better performers. Analyses of each separate area of social performance, (...) however, indicate that the relation between giving and negative social performance only holds for the environmental issues and product safety areas. We find no significant association between corporate philanthropy and employee relations concerns. In general, these findings suggest that corporate philanthropy may be more a tool of legitimization than a measure of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Human behavior depends on the ability to effectively introspect about our performance. For simple perceptual decisions, this introspective or metacognitive ability varies substantially across individuals and is correlated with the structure of focal areas in prefrontal cortex. This raises the possibility that the ability to introspect about different perceptual decisions might be mediated by a common cognitive process. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability were correlated across two different perceptual tasks where individuals made judgments (...) about different and unrelated visual stimulus properties. We found that inter-individual differences were strongly correlated between the two tasks for metacognitive ability but not objective performance. Such stability of an individual’s metacognitive ability across different perceptual tasks indicates a general mechanism supporting metacognition independent of the specific task. (shrink)

Ethical guidelines commonly state that research subjects should have a right to withdraw consent to participate. According to the guidelines we have studied, this right applies also to research on biological samples. However, research conducted on human subjects themselves differs in important respects from research on biological samples. It is therefore not obvious that the same rights should be granted research participants in the two cases. This paper investigates arguments for and against granting a right to withdraw consent to research (...) on biobank samples. We conclude that (1) there are no explicit arguments for such a right in the guidelines we have studied, (2) the arguments against such a right are inconclusive, (3) considerations of autonomy, privacy, personal integrity, and trust in medical research provide sufficient reasons for granting a right to withdraw consent to research on biobank samples, (4) in certain cases, research participants should be allowed to waive this right. (shrink)

The work of general practitioners is infused by norms from several movements, of which evidence based medicine, patient-centredness, and virtue ethics are some of the most influential. Their precepts are not clearly reconcilable, and structural factors may limit their application. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework that explains how GPs respond, across different fields of interaction in their daily work, to the pressure exerted by divergent norms. Data was generated from unstructured interviews with and observations of sixteen Swedish (...) GPs and family medicine residents between 2015 and 2017. Straussian Grounded Theory was used for analysis. We found that GPs’ maxims of action can be characterised in terms of dichotomous responses to demands from four distinct sets of norms, or “voices”: the situation, the self, the system, and the profession. From the interactions between these voices emerge sixteen clusters of maxims of action. Based on the common features of the maxims in each cluster, we have developed a conceptual framework that appears to be rich enough to capture the meaning of the ethical decisions that GPs make in their daily work, yet has a high enough level of abstraction to be helpful when discussing the factors that influence those decisions. Our four-dimensional model of GPs’ responses to norms is a first step toward a middle-range theory of quality from GPs’ perspective. It brings out the complexity of their practice, reveals tensions that easily remain invisible in more concrete accounts of their actions, and aids the transferability of substantive theories on GPs’ ethical decision making. By explaining the nature of the ethical conflicts that they experience, we provide some clues as to why efforts to improve quality by imposing additional norms on GPs may meet with varying degrees of success. (shrink)

本书分为三个部分。第一部分是自序,包括前言、序、代序、序言等;第二部分是他序,即为他人所撰之序;第三部分是自跋。.

Should people be involved as active participants in longitudinal medical research, as opposed to remaining passive providers of data and material? We argue in this article that misconceptions of ‘autonomy’ as a kind of feat rather than a right are to blame for much of the confusion surrounding the debate of dynamic versus broad consent. Keeping in mind two foundational facts of human life, freedom and dignity, we elaborate three moral principles – those of autonomy, integrity and authority – to (...) better see what is at stake. Respect for autonomy is to recognize the other's right to decide in matters that are important to them. Respect for integrity is to meet, in one's relationship with the other, their need to navigate the intersection between private and social life. Respect for authority is to empower the other – to help them to cultivate their responsibility as citizens. On our account, to force information onto someone who does not want it is not to respect that person's autonomy, but to violate integrity in the name of empowerment. Empowerment, not respect for autonomy, is the aim that sets patient-centred initiatives employing a dynamic consent model apart from other consent models. Whether this is ultimately morally justified depends on whether empowerment ought to be a goal of medical research, which is questionable. (shrink)

Sample quotes from emails sent by visitors to Mary Klages's successful literary theory web pages on which this book is based: 'Finding your course was a godsend ...

Chen Guying’s _Laozi_ includes some of the most significant traditional commentary and influential contemporary scholarship. This book completely changed _Laozi_ studies in China, and its English translation gives scholars a unique inroad to Chinese perspectives on the _Laozi_.