"AGM members lunch." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 13.

In Rogues, Jacques Derrida once again examines some central concepts in political theory and ethics, in the context of the post-9/11world and the present American drive to reforge global hegemony. The book is important not only for what it says about the concepts of sovereignty, unconditionality, law, and justice, but also for engaging in an extended way with the thought of Plato, Aristotle, and especially Kant. Bill Martin argues that Derrida’s thought is vitally significant for radical politics. He compares (...) Rogues, as (arguably) Derrida’s last major work (to appear before his passing in October 2004) with Sartre’s last book, Hope Now. Lastly, Martin memorializes Derrida, whom he knew as teacher and friend, as “a kind and generous man who stood for many good things,” and hereflects on the philosophical trajectory that extends from Sartre to Derrida. (shrink)

What if a tree told a joke in the woods and there was no one there to hear it? Occasionally I watch The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I have appreciated Ellen as a comedian since she first came on the public scene, and one part of her talk show that I enjoy is the dancing in the opening segment, where Ellen dances to music played by a DJ, and she goes up into the audience and the overwhelmingly female audience dances with (...) her. I like to dance and I enjoy watching other people dance, but the Ellen dance segment also holds a special fascination for me, as there is a style of dancing I have observed over the last twenty-five years or so, a style that might as well be called “lesbian,” and which, if you don’t .. (shrink)

Review of J. Fisher Solomon's "Discourse and Reference in the Nuclear Age"; Diane P. Michefelder's "Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter"; Rodolphe Gasche's "The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection"; Michael H. McCarthy's "The Crisis in Philosophy"; Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson's "Ethics and Politics: Cases and Comments".

Michael A. Petersa and Fazal Rizvib aBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China; bMelbourne University, Melbourne, Australia Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘no...

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

What is the role of conscious experience in the epistemology of perceptual knowledge: how should we characterise what is going on in seeing that o is F in order to illuminate the contribution of seeing o to their status as cases of knowing that o is F? My proposal is that seeing o involves conscious acquaintance with o itself, the concrete worldly source of the truth that o is F, in a way that may make it evident to the subject (...) that o is an instance of ‘x is F’ as she understands this, and hence evident that o is F. Seeing that o is F is thus a way of its being evident that o is F and is therefore a way of knowing that o is F. (shrink)

Trust is both ethically important and essential for business but difficult to measure. This paper contributes toward clarifying the nature of trust in a way that is both conceptually helpful for ethical inquiries concerning business and pertinent to the measurement of trust as an element in organizations. Several papers hypothesize that increasing the role of trust in a corporation reduces the need for external monitoring and contracts. Assessing this important hypothesis requires a way to gauge whether a firm has a (...) trusting corporate culture. We develop an objective measure of trust in a firm’s corporate culture by counting the number of times 21 trust-related words appear in an important kind of document: the Management Discussion and Analysis section of the annual report. We report two significant findings: that, contrary to what one might think, firms with a trusting culture frequently use audit and control-type words and that trust is positively linked with subsequent share price volatility. We propose explanations of these findings with the hope of facilitating the objective measurement of trust and enhancement of a trusting atmosphere in corporate culture. (shrink)

Legal decision-support systems have the potential to improve access to justice, administrative efficiency, and judicial consistency, but broad adoption of such systems is contingent on development of technologies with low knowledge-engineering, validation, and maintenance costs. This paper describes two approaches to an important form of legal decision support—explainable outcome prediction—that obviate both annotation of an entire decision corpus and manual processing of new cases. The first approach, which uses an attention network for prediction and attention weights to highlight salient case (...) text, was shown to be capable of predicting decisions, but attention-weight-based text highlighting did not demonstrably improve human decision speed or accuracy in an evaluation with 61 human subjects. The second approach, termed semi-supervised case annotation for legal explanations, exploits structural and semantic regularities in case corpora to identify textual patterns that have both predictable relationships to case decisions and explanatory value. (shrink)

A sharp contrast had recently been drawn by one of our Cambridge Professors between Bertrand Russell and Broad1 in respect of their characters and their intellectual and moral careers. We have been told that Russell was several times in prison, married and divorced several times, had several mistresses, was frequently short of money, and very unstable in changing his philosophical views. As far as I know Broad was never in prison for anything. Again, so far from marrying several times, he (...) tells us with some satisfaction in his Autobiography that there was ‘never any risk’ of his ‘catching his foot in the man-trap of matrimony.’ This was one of the reasons why, in contrast with Russell, he was never short of money. Other reasons were that his tastes were simple, and that like his West Country philosophical forerunner, John Locke, and evidently like his Director of Studies, McTaggart, he paid great attention to investment. He was determined to save and invest enough to make himself ‘as soon as possible independent of the vicissitudes of employment’. (shrink)

Mass ideology is unique to modern society and rooted in early modern philosophy. Traditionally, knowledge had been viewed as resting on metaphysics. Rejecting metaphysical truth evoked questions about the source of "truth." For nineteenth-century ideologists, "truth" comes either from dominating classes in a progressively determined history or from a post-Copernican freedom of the superior man to create it. In From Physics to Politics Robert C. Trundle, Jr. uncovers the relation of modern philosophy to political ideology. And in rooting truth in (...) human nature and Nature by modal reasoning, he resolves the problem of politicized truth. Our concepts of scientific truth, logic, and necessity are essentially connected. Modern philosophy restricts our understanding of necessity to the political dreams and aspirations of Enlightenment intellectuals. As a result, these intellectuals refuse to acknowledge as factual or meaningful whatever is not intelligible within the practical goals of establishing science as a system of enlightened ideas. The effect of these ideas is that in our time metaphysical principles, speculative truths, our understanding of science, and the nature of logic have become subordinated to ideological dreams. Fascism, Nazism, Marxism, political correctness, and moral relativism are not historical aberrations but essential consequences. Trundle's work is groundbreaking and daring, and his underlying thesis demonstrates why scientific truth demands a modal defense. The defense not only integrates science, ethics, and politics, but shows how "truth" may be ascribed to moral and scientific principles in contrast to a modern philosophical tradition. Since this tradition is the origin of political ideology, it has led to an irrational politicization of truth. The book will appeal particularly to those interested in political history, histories of philosophy, the philosophy of sciences, and ethics. Robert C. Trundle, Jr. is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Scientific Research Society of Sigma Xi, an affiliate scholar for Idealistic Studies, and has served as reader for University de Laval's Laval Theologique et Philosphique. His publications include over three dozen articles in Res Publica, Logique et Analyse, Thought, Philosphy in Science, and New Horizons in the Philosophy of Science. His books include Beyond Absurdity (with R. Puligandla), Ancient Greek Philosophy, and Medieval Reasoning. He is currently professor in the department of social sciences and philosophy at Northern Kentucky University. (shrink)

Using the emerging technology of large-scale textual analysis, this study examines the use of the term ‘customer satisfaction’ and its variants in the annual reports issued by publicly traded U.S. corporations and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Form 10-K. We document the frequency of the term’s occurrence in 10-Ks over the 1995–2013 period and the differences in usage across industries. We then relate the term’s usage in 10-Ks to subsequent scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index to (...) determine whether management’s discussion of customer satisfaction in financial disclosures is credible. The commitment of management to shareholders versus, more broadly, stakeholders is a central question in business ethics, and the integrity of management communication is a fundamental construct in the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. We document a complex relation between management’s discussion of customer satisfaction and subsequently reported satisfaction. We find that the general use of customer satisfaction in 10-K documents is negatively correlated with subsequent ACSI scores. However, for retail firms, when the phrase is located near words indicating measurement or monitoring of the phenomenon, the empirical relation is reversed and becomes positive. (shrink)

Temporal regularities in speech, such as interdependencies in the timing of speech events, are thought to scaffold early acquisition of the building blocks in speech. By providing on-line clues to the location and duration of upcoming syllables, temporal structure may aid segmentation and clustering of continuous speech into separable units. This hypothesis tacitly assumes that learners exploit predictability in the temporal structure of speech. Existing measures of speech timing tend to focus on first-order regularities among adjacent units, and are overly (...) sensitive to idiosyncrasies in the data they describe. Here, we compare several statistical methods on a sample of 18 languages, testing whether syllable occurrence is predictable over time. Rather than looking for differences between languages, we aim to find across languages (using clearly defined acoustic, rather than orthographic, measures), temporal predictability in the speech signal which could be exploited by a language learner. First, we analyse distributional regularities using two novel techniques: a Bayesian ideal learner analysis, and a simple distributional measure. Second, we model higher-order temporal structure—regularities arising in an ordered series of syllable timings—testing the hypothesis that non-adjacent temporal structures may explain the gap between subjectively-perceived temporal regularities, and the absence of universally-accepted lower-order objective measures. Together, our analyses provide limited evidence for predictability at different time scales, though higher-order predictability is difficult to reliably infer. We conclude that temporal predictability in speech may well arise from a combination of individually weak perceptual cues at multiple structural levels, but is challenging to pinpoint. (shrink)

The phenomenon of multimodality is central to our everyday interaction. 'Hybrid' modes of communication that combine traditional uses of language with imagery, tagging, hashtags and voice-recognition tools have become the norm. Bringing together concepts of meaning and communication across a range of subject areas, including education, media studies, cultural studies, design and architecture, the authors uncover a multimodal grammar that moves away from rigid and language-centered understandings of meaning. They present the first framework for describing and analysing different forms of (...) meaning across text, image, space, body, sound and speech. Succinct summaries of the main thinkers in the fields of language, communications and semiotics are provided alongside rich examples to illustrate the key arguments. A history of media including the genesis of digital media, Unicode, Emoji, XML and HTML, MP3 and more is covered. This book will stimulate new thinking about the nature of meaning, and life itself, and will serve practitioners and theorists alike. (shrink)

A taped conversational interview with Daniel Dennett and Bill Uzgalis covers a wide range of topics arising from Dennett’s thoughts about computing and human beings. The background of Dennett’s work is explored as are his views about mind-brain identity theory, artificial intelligence, functionalism, human exceptionalism, animal culture, language, pain, freedom and determinism, and quality of life.

When scientists act unethically, their actions can cause harm to participants, undermine knowledge creation, and discredit the scientific community. Responsible Conduct of Research training i...

A Cantor series expansion for a real number x with respect to a basic sequence $Q=(q_1,q_2,\dots )$, where $q_i \geq 2$, is a generalization of the base b expansion to an infinite sequence of bases. Ki and Linton in 1994 showed that for ordinary base b expansions the set of normal numbers is a $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete set, establishing the exact complexity of this set. In the case of Cantor series there are three natural notions of normality: normality, ratio (...) normality, and distribution normality. These notions are equivalent for base b expansions, but not for more general Cantor series expansions. We show that for any basic sequence the set of distribution normal numbers is $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete, and if Q is $1$ -divergent then the sets of normal and ratio normal numbers are $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3$ -complete. We further show that all five non-trivial differences of these sets are $D_2(\boldsymbol {\Pi }^0_3)$ -complete if $\lim _i q_i=\infty $ and Q is $1$ -divergent. This shows that except for the trivial containment that every normal number is ratio normal, these three notions are as independent as possible. (shrink)

This paper examines the role that population vulnerabilities play in insurance coverage for a representative sample of Latinos and Asians in the United States. Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), these analyses compare coverage differences among and within ethnic subgroups, across states and regions, among types of occupations, and among those with or without English language proficiency. Extensive differences exist in coverage between Latinos and Asians, with Latinos more likely to be uninsured. Potential explanations include (...) the type of occupations available to Latinos and Asians, reforms in immigration laws, length of time in the United States, and regional differences in safety-net coverage. Policy implications are discussed. (shrink)

A recently proposed approach to relativistic quantum mechanics is applied to the problem of a particle in a quadratic potential. The methods, both exact and approximate, allow one to obtain eigenstate energy levels and wavefunctions, using conventional numerical eigensolvers applied to Schrödinger-like equations. Results are obtained over a nine-order-of-magnitude variation of system parameters, ranging from the non-relativistic to the ultrarelativistic limits. Various trends are analyzed and discussed—some of which might have been easily predicted, others which may be a bit more (...) surprising. (shrink)

A comprehensive introduction to the Classical Greek sophists, placing them afresh in their cultural context. These public figures, such as Protagoras and Gorgias, were wide-ranging experts before discipline-specialization, and represent the flourishing of linguistic, historical, and philosophical reflection in the time of Socrates.

Conference Report for Toward a Science of Consciousness Tucson Conference, April 4- 8, 2006.

In 1883 Friedrich Nietzsche published parts I and II of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The Prologue contains the famous—or infamous—assertion that “when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke thus to his heart: ‘Could it be possible! This old saint has not yet heard in his forest that God is dead!’”1 Fourteen years later, Bram Stoker, in Dracula, has the mate of the cargo ship, Demeter, write in its log: “we are now off in the North Sea, and only God can guide us (...) in the fog, which seems to move with us; and God seems to have deserted us.”2 Much later in the novel, Jonathan Harker expresses his anxiety over his wife, Mina, in terms of faith but also of drift: “Surely God will not permit the world to be the poorer by the loss of. (shrink)

Early modern empiricists thought that the nature of perceptual experience is given by citing the object presented to the mind in that experience. Hallucination and illusion suggest that this requires untenable mind-dependent objects. Current orthodoxy replaces the appeal to direct objects with the claim that perceptual experience is characterized instead by its representational content. This paper argues that the move to content is problematic, and reclaims the early modern empiricist insight as perfectly consistent, even in cases of illusion, with the (...) realist contention that these direct objects of perception are the persisting mind-independent physical objects we all know and love. (shrink)

A person’s authoritative self-knowledge about the contents of his or her own beliefs is thought to cause problems for content externalism, for it appears to yield arguments constituting a wholly non-empirical source of empirical knowledge: knowledge that certain particular objects or kinds exist in the environment. I set out this objection to externalism, and present a new reply. Possession of an externalist concept is an epistemological skill: it depends upon the subject’s possession of demonstratively-based knowledge about the object or kind (...) to which it refers. Thus, a person’s knowledge that he or she has an externalist belief, since this depends upon actually having that belief, and therefore upon possessing the relevant externist concept, presupposes knowledge about the object/kind in question, which provides a direct and perfectly empirical source of knowledge that this object/kind exists. Hence, the putatively problematic arguments do not constitute a non-empirical source of such empirical knowledge. (shrink)

A timely new edition of the classic journalism guide, now featuring updated material on the importance of reporting in the age of media mistrust and fake news--and how journalists can use technology while also navigating its challenges. More than two decades ago, the Committee of Concerned Journalists gathered some of America's most influential newspeople to ask the question "What is journalism for?" Through exhaustive research, surveys, interviews, and public forums, they identified the essential elements that define journalism and its role (...) in our society. The result is one of the most important books on the media ever written, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard, the Society of Professional Journalists Award, and the Bart Richards Award from Penn State University. Updated with new material covering the ways journalists can deftly leverage technology to their advantage, especially given the shifting revenue architecture--with "clickbait" fading away and consumers paying a higher premium for quality reporting--this fourth edition of The Elements of Journalism is an essential read for journalists, students, and anybody hoping to stay informed in contentious times. (shrink)

The first truly introductory text on Lyotard, this book situates Lyotard's interventions in the postmodern debate in the wider context of his rethinking of the politics of representation. Bill Readings examines Lyotard's relationship to structuralism, Marxism and semiotics, and contrasts his work with the literary deconstruction of Paul de Man; he positions Lyotard's work so as to draw out the implications of poststructurlaism's attention to _difference_ in reading. Lyotard's willingness to question the political and examine the relationship between art (...) and politics is shown to undermine the charge that deconstruction abdicates political and social articulation. (shrink)

Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area.

Introduction -- What is journalism for? -- Truth: the first and most confusing principle -- Who journalists work for -- Journalism of verification -- Independence from faction -- Monitor power and offer voice to the voiceless -- Journalism as a public forum -- Engagement and relevance -- Make the news comprehensive and proportional -- Journalists have a responsibility to conscience -- The rights and responsibilities of citizens.

Psychiatry is unique in medicine in being on the border between science and the humanities. Science provides insight into the 'causes' of a problem, enabling us to formulate an 'explanation', while the humanities provide insight into its 'meanings' and helps with our 'understanding'. The new interdisciplinary field of 'philosophy of psychiatry' has developed to explore the range of issues relevant to this border country. The Oxford Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry is a unique textbook which provides a detailed introduction to (...) the field, a framework for study and skill development, and an overview of current research. It focuses on case studies in 5 key topic areas. Each case study is supported by selected readings from both philosophy and mental health, thinking skills exercises, self-test questions, key learning points and detailed guides to further reading. (shrink)