This paper outlines the experience of four universities that collaborated on a pre-arrival shared reading project, the Big Read, in 2018/2019. They did so primarily to promote student engagement and retention and also to ease the transition into higher education, particularly for first-generation students, to promote staff connectedness, and to provide a USP for their institution. The paper covers all the associated processes, from isolating the respective aims of the collaborators to the choosing and sharing of a single agreed title. (...) In analysing the outcomes, recommendations are made for future cross-institutional projects of this kind. (shrink)

This paper reports on a project to use, within church communities, previous experience in universities and schools of shared reading for the purposes of outreach, widening participation, and community inclusion. It outlines and explores the experience of selecting a book, and its subsequent discussion among a group of parishioners, to promote a sense of connectedness and belonging. The outcomes have implications for creating and strengthening links within existing church communities, reaching out to those who live locally but are not regular (...) church attenders, and drawing others towards the church from the wider, not necessarily geographically local, community. (shrink)

To explore the reason why some biographies by or about politicians are more successful than others, and to help publishers consider the range of factors that may impact on their commissioning decisions, we sought to establish a range of likely influencing factors and to combine them in a formula. This is not a magic prediction tool, but rather a range of considerations that need to be worked through for various publishing propositions before decisions are made. As an exercise, and a (...) starting point for wider discussions, it may benefit a group of individuals preparing for an editorial meeting at which commissioning is to be considered. (shrink)

According to Hume’s classical definition of causal relations, a cause must fulfill two distinct conditions: a) be a sufficient condition for the occurrence of its effect; b) be temporally prior to it. However, a careful logical analysis shows that the combination of sufficiency and temporality is impossible. This is because if a complete cause is a sufficient condition for its effect to occur-then the effect is a necessary condition for the occurrence of its own complete cause! Thus, there can be (...) no complete cause for anything to occur, which means that causal determination is logically impossible.The paper goes on to examine some possible responses to this argument, and then concludes with a nontemporal version of the paradox that shows that even the first of Hume’s above conditions cannot be fulfilled on its own. This is because if something (e.g., the cause) is a sufficient condition of something else (e.g., the effect), then it cannot be a sufficient condition of itself. (shrink)

Argument schemes are abstractions substantiating the inferential connection between premise(s) and conclusion in argumentative communication. Identifying such conventional patterns of reasoning is essential to the interpretation and evaluation of argumentation. Whether studying argumentation from a theory-driven or data-driven perspective, insight into the actual use of argumentation in communicative practice is essential. Large and reliably annotated corpora of argumentative discourse to quantitatively provide such insight are few and far between. This is all the more true for argument scheme corpora, which tend (...) to suffer from a combination of limited size, poor validation, and the use of ad hoc restricted typologies. In the current paper, we describe the annotation of schemes on the basis of two distinct classifications: Walton’s taxonomy of argument schemes, and Wagemans’ Periodic Table of Arguments. We describe the annotation procedure for each, and the quantitative characteristics of the resulting annotated text corpora. In doing so, we extend the annotation of the preexisting US2016 corpus of televised election debates, resulting in, to the best of our knowledge, the two largest consistently annotated corpora of schemes in argumentative dialogue publicly available. Based on evaluation in terms of inter-annotator agreement, we propose further improvements to the guidelines for annotating schemes: the argument scheme key, and the Argument Type Identification Procedure. (shrink)

Classical positions on central topics--mind/body, epistemology, freedom/determinism--are presented in a series of imagined discussions between renowned philosophers and critical interlocutors.

This book reconceives disability as a set of social relations and practices, as experienced embodiment, and as an emancipatory movement, as well as a biomedical phenomenon. The author brings new attention to complex ethical questions surrounding disability, looking at not only the biomedical understanding of impairment, but also its cultural representations and social organization.

La maladie de l'ame... la belle expression platonicienne n'a de cesse d'etre d'actualite. Non seulement elle est prompte a revenir d'epoque en epoque, mais elle semble particulierement friande de la notre. Que cette maladie designe une vague tristesse, un taedium vitae, ou, plus grave, une depression, elle implique tout a la fois la souffrance morale et la souffrance physique. L'ame et le corps sont divises mais se retrouvent dans la douleur si bien que la maladie de l'ame vient de ce (...) que nous avons un corps. De ce constat paradoxal Jackie Pigeaud tire une histoire, celle du triomphe du dualisme, du fardeau de l'ame et du corps contraints a etre separes et ensemble a perpetuite. Cette histoire trouve son origine dans le monde grec, et plus exactement dans sa philosophie. La division entre maladies de l'ame et autres maladies, c'est-a-dire maladies du corps, appartient a la philosophie. La medecine aurait ete bien soulagee de cette partition. Est-ce a dire qu'elle n'entendait pas etre philosophique? Sans doute: Hippocrate en offre un bon exemple. L'accord, tacite, est le suivant: l'ame appartient au philosophe et le corps au medecin. Ciceron s'occupe des passions et Galien suspend son jugement des qu'il approche la psyche. Chacun y trouve son compte mais les consequences sont importantes: la partition du champ des maladies, la place du malade dans la societe, les traitements a apporter, notamment a la folie, dependent de ce dualisme initial. Si le legs de la medecine greco-romaine est riche, il est aussi fort lourd et trouve des developpements tout au long de l'histoire de la medecine, jusqu'a la constitution au XVIIIe siecle de la psychiatrie. D'une ecriture et d'une pensee personnelles et profondes, ce livre est un essai sur l'histoire de la pensee medicale, depuis l'Antiquite jusqu'a nos jours. La Maladie de l'ame a ete un succes des sa parution, et ce succes n'a pas ete dementi depuis. L'ouvrage n'etait malheureusement plus disponible: les livres ont leur destin commentait l'auteur. Avec cette edition revue et augmentee, accompagnee d'une preface nouvelle, le livre connait enfin le sort qu'il merite.Jackie Pigeaud est professeur emerite de litterature latine a l'Universite de Nantes et membre de l'Institut universitaire de France. On lui doit egalement, aux Belles Lettres, Folie et cures de la folie chez les medecins de l'Antiquite greco-romaine. La manie. (shrink)

Philosophically grounded, methodologically sound, and theoretically rigorous, this paradigm-challenging collection ponders the most dynamic areas of feminist inquiry into bioethical thought and practice and sketches future directions for this rapidly growing field.

In this paper a dialogue game for critical discussion is developed. The dialogue game is a formalisation of the ideal discussion model that is central to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. The formalisation is intended as a preparatory step to facilitate the development of computational tools to support the pragma-dialectical study of argumentation. An important dimension of the pragma-dialectical discussion model is the role played by speech acts. The central issue addressed in this paper is how the speech act perspective (...) can be accommodated in the formalisation as a dialogue game. The starting point is an existing ‘basic’ dialogue game for critical discussion, in which speech acts are not addressed. The speech act perspective is introduced into the dialogue game by changing the rules that govern the moves that can be made and the commitments that these result in, while the rules for the beginning, for the end, and for the structure of the dialogue game remain unchanged. The revision of the move rules is based on the distribution of speech acts in the pragma-dialectical discussion model. The revision of the commitment rules is based on the felicity conditions that are associated with those speech acts. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ways in which anesthetic agents can be used to investigate the role of awareness in learning and memory. It reviews research into learning during light, subclinical anesthesia, termedhypesthesia.This research suggests that the effects of anesthetics on implicit and explicit memory are roughly comparable, although implicit memory for simple stimuli may resist the effects of very low doses of anesthetic. In addition, this paper reports experimental data demonstrating that long-term retention of information is prevented by doses of (...) anesthetic that are low enough to permit awareness and even short-term memory of auditory stimuli. Overall, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that frontal lobe function is particularly sensitive to anesthetics. They raise theoretical and practical questions about the necessity of consciousness for learning and about interpretation of the evidence for learning during surgery under general anesthesia. (shrink)

can be adapted and adopted by developing countries. IFC sees this as being an area where we may be able to benchmark and promote positive change. ● The force of global trade initiatives also influences animal welfare.

Foreign language anxiety has been identified as a crucial affective factor in language learning. Similar to the situation in language classes, university students in interpretation classes are required to perform in a foreign language when their language skills are inadequate. Investigations are needed to determine the specific impact of FLA on interpretation learning. This study investigated the effects of the specific interpretation classroom FLA on interpretation learning and dependency distance as an indicator of learners’ cognitive load. The participants were 49 (...) undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in English–Chinese interpretation classes at a university in Hong Kong. The results showed a significant negative correlation between ICFLA levels and consecutive interpretation achievement scores. ICFLA was also negatively correlated with DD in consecutive interpretations. Four factors underlying ICFLA were identified. The findings of this study would provide useful insights for researchers and educators to understand the nature and effect of FLA in different settings. (shrink)

As an introduction to our work, we emphasize the parallel interpretation of abstract tools and the concepts of undetermined and vague information. Imprecision, uncertainty and their relationships are inspected. Suitable interpretations of the fuzzy sets theory are applied to legal phenomena in an attempt to clearly circumscribe the possible applications of the theory. The fundamental notion of reference sets is examined in detail, hence highlighting their importance. A systematic and combinatorial classification of the relevant subsets of the legal field is (...) supplied for practical application. Although the use of the fuzzy sets theory is sometimes suggested as a palliative measure (no competition exists), it can also be complementary (serve as a building block to improve modelisation). An Appendix gives a brief recall of the key-concepts of the axiomatic theory of fuzziness and its developments: fuzzy sets, fuzzy logic, fuzzy control and theory of possibility. (shrink)

This paper argues that the existence of a canon of established and privileged texts in the primary literacy curriculum in England can be traced historically and has informed current national policy and practice. This canonisation of a particular set of literature has served to marginalise popular cultural and media texts, often the preferred texts of children in contemporary society. The paper examines the historical development of an established, hegemonic body of texts and critically analyses current national curricula frameworks for primary (...) literacy in order to determine the way in which reading material is framed. It is argued that current national policy enshrines particular textual traditions at the expense of more popular forms of material and that this has major implications for the relevance of the future primary literacy curriculum. (shrink)

This article draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken in an old UK university with the main aim of investigating the issue of the gender dimension of academic careers. It examines the idea of an individualistic academic career that demands self-promotion, which is still used as a measure of achievement by those in senior positions. However, there is a basic contradiction. While this idea is upheld, men simultaneously gain by an in-built patriarchal support system. They do not have (...) to make a conscious effort to be helped by it, thereby perpetuating the cultural hegemony of individualism. Women are not admitted to this support system, and if they are seen as needing or wanting to set up their own system, this is viewed as a weakness. The answer appears to be for women to strategically harness feminist ways of working in a collaborative and supportive way. (shrink)

The last few years have seen feminist bioethics experiencing a growing interest in the theme of disability: how bioethics as a whole can or should approach disability, and how the different perspectives brought by feminist bioethics can contribute to bioethical thinking about it. This interest was apparent in the pioneer work of disabled feminists such as Adrienne Asch, continued through the engagement of feminist theorists like Eva Feder Kittay, and appears more generally in feminist bioethics, for example in Jackie (...) Leach Scully's "Disability Bioethics," in the section on disability in Feminist Bioethics: At the Center, on the Margins (Scully, Baldwin-Ragaven, and Fitzpatrick 2010), and in IJFAB's special issue .. (shrink)

Is pure mathematics - arithmetic as well as geometry - reducible to formal logic? Russell answered in the affirmative, considering this so significant as to constitute a fatal blow to Kant's synthetic-apriori philosophy of mathematics. But either pure arithmetic and pure geometry include the full, extra-logical content of their unique axioms and hence their unique theorems, or they do not. If they do, then this reductionism is trivially unsound. It they do not - if they include only the logic of (...) demonstration and exclude everything else - then it is trivially true, but insignificant. In fact this would accomplish no reduction at all, but rather a harmless formalization. (shrink)

According to Hume’s classical definition of causal relations, a cause must fulfill two distinct conditions: a) be a sufficient condition for the occurrence of its effect; b) be temporally prior to it. However, a careful logical analysis shows that the combination of sufficiency and temporality is impossible. This is because if a complete cause is a sufficient condition for its effect to occur-then the effect is a necessary condition for the occurrence of its own complete cause! Thus, there can be (...) no complete cause for anything to occur, which means that causal determination is logically impossible. The paper goes on to examine some possible responses to this argument, and then concludes with a nontemporal version of the paradox that shows that even the first of Hume’s above conditions cannot be fulfilled on its own. This is because if something is a sufficient condition of something else, then it cannot be a sufficient condition of itself. (shrink)

The work of a bioethicist carries distinctive responsibilities. Alongside those of any worker, there are responsibilities associated with giving guidance to practitioners, policy makers and the public. In addition, bioethicists are professionally exposed to and required to identify situations of moral trouble, and as a result may find themselves choosing to work as advocates or activists, with responsibilities that are distinct from those generally acknowledged within academia. The requirement for bioethics to make normative judgements entails taking a stance, which means (...) there cannot be a sharp line between ‘academic’ or ‘objective’ bioethics, and advocacy/activism, but a continuum of bioethicists’ engagement and an associated continuum of responsibilities. (shrink)

Susan has been profoundly deaf since childhood. She is a hearing aid wearer, and likes to use the induction loops built into some public spaces, such as theaters and cinemas, to help cut down the background noise that can make hearing speech very difficult. But this depends on the building having an induction loop fitted and properly maintained. Like many other induction loop users, Susan frequently finds that the advertised loop system is either working poorly or not working at all. (...) Almost as often, she then has the experience of making a complaint about it only to have the problem denied. If she persists, she is often then met... (shrink)

Pandemics such as COVID-19 place everyone at risk, but certain kinds of risk are differentially severe for groups already made vulnerable by pre-existing forms of social injustice and discrimination. For people with disability, persisting and ubiquitous disablism is played out in a variety of ways in clinical and public health contexts. This paper examines the impact of disablism on pandemic triage guidance for allocation of critical care. It identifies three underlying disablist assumptions about disability and health status, quality of life, (...) and social utility, that unjustly and potentially catastrophically disadvantage people with disability in COVID-19 and other global health emergencies. (shrink)