Jeremy Waldron objects to judicial review of legislation on the ground that it effectively accords the views of a few judges ‘superior voting weight’ to those of ordinary citizens. This objection overlooks that representative government does the same. This article explores the concept of political representation and argues that delegates may be institutionally bound to heed the convictions of their constituents, but they are not their proxies. Rather, they are best viewed as their trustees. They ought to decide according to (...) what they think is in their constituents’ interest. In this sense, a strong element of independent judgment is involved in their institutional role. So, if we have no problem with assigning their views superior voting weight, it should not be thought particularly objectionable to give judges the same power. What is more, once we acknowledge the independence they enjoy, the question arises whether and by what institutional means we ought to constrain and check their power. The judiciary is well suited effectively to carry out this supervisory function, because it is immune from political pressure by the legislature that would reduce it to its instrument. Hence, in some cases the institution of judicial review is morally justified. (shrink)

According to Joseph Raz's sources thesis, the existence and content of authoritative directives must be identifiable by resort to the social fact of their provenance from a de facto authority, without regard to any of the normative considerations that the authority in question is supposed to rely on in its judgment. This article argues that the sources thesis fails to account for the role of jurisdictional considerations (namely, considerations about the scope of a de facto authority's power) in the identification (...) of valid law. It examines a legal system with a legislature and courts and a practice of constitutional review of legislation by the courts for its conformity with fundamental rights and argues that the special normative status of (at least some) authoritative directives in this legal system depends on respect for jurisdiction. An assessment of whether an authority has stayed intra vires involves recourse to the normative considerations that it is the authority's job to weigh up. This criticism of the sources thesis highlights the importance of incorporating jurisdiction into our philosophical accounts of legal authority. (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls proposes that the two principles of justice should be realized through a four-stage sequence of institutional action that starts with a constitution agreed upon by delegates to a constitutional convention. A largely overlooked aspect of this proposal is that delegates are taken to hold conflicting opinions about justice. Their disagreement is one of the factors that determine their institutional choices. This paper employs Bernard Williams’s theory of the political value of liberty to explain (...) and vindicate the role assigned to disagreement at the constitutional convention. Constitutional norms ought to be sensitive to the fact that the functioning of a political order, even one suitably ordered by the most reasonable conception of justice, inevitably involves loss of a precious liberty; the factoring of disagreement into the constitutional convention can fruitfully be understood as a way of modelling this requirement. This exegetical exercise enriches our understanding of the point of constitutions. At the same time it suggests that Rawls may not be as guilty of the cardinal sin of moralism that Williams famously accused him of. (shrink)

According to legal conventionalism, a legal system cannot come into existence and be sustained over time unless legal officials see themselves as working together with their fellow participants in the practice of law for the purpose of achieving coordination or alternatively realizing a joint endeavor. This thesis has traditionally been thought to support a positivist understanding of law. The paper challenges this piece of common wisdom. It aims to establish that the idea of cooperation among legal officials that figures so (...) prominently in conventionalist accounts of law may in a suitable form be appropriated by a robust version of natural-law theory. It claims that participants in the practice of law may be understood as having reasons of political morality to heed the acts and decisions of their fellow participants and calibrate their own behavior accordingly. It takes the value of democracy to illustrate the point. Democracy furnishes a reason for courts to give effect to democratically reached decisions rather than work out on their own how best to adjudicate disputes before them. (shrink)

Human-Computer Interaction and games set a new domain in understanding people’s motivations in gaming, behavioral implications of game play, game adaptation to player preferences and needs for increased engaging experiences in the context of HCI serious games. When the latter relate with people’s health status, they can become a part of their daily life as assistive health status monitoring/enhancement systems. Co-designing HCI-SGs can be seen as a combination of art and science that involves a meticulous collaborative process. The design elements (...) in assistive HCI-SGs for Parkinson’s Disease patients, in particular, are explored in the present work. Within this context, the Game-Based Learning design framework is adopted here and its main game-design parameters are explored for the Exergames, Dietarygames, Emotional games, Handwriting games, and Voice games design, drawn from the PD-related i-PROGNOSIS Personalized Game Suite holistic approach. Two main data sources were involved in the study. In particular, the first one includes qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, involving 10 PD patients and four clinicians in the co-creation process of the game design, whereas the second one relates with data from an online questionnaire addressed by 104 participants spanning the whole related spectrum, i.e., PD patients, physicians, software/game developers. Linear regression analysis was employed to identify an adapted GBL framework with the most significant game-design parameters, which efficiently predict the transferability of the PGS beneficial effect to real-life, addressing functional PD symptoms. The findings of this work can assist HCI-SG designers for designing PD-related HCI-SGs, as the most significant game-design factors were identified, in terms of adding value to the role of HCI-SGs in increasing PD patients’ quality of life, optimizing the interaction with personalized HCI-SGs and, hence, fostering a collaborative human-computer symbiosis. (shrink)

In Where Our Protection Lies, Dimitrios Kyritsis develops an innovative constitutional framework that aims to reconcile two commitments: democratic governance and the protection of fundamental rights. This review article argues that the reconciliation fails to provide fundamental rights with meaningful protection. On the one hand, the framework’s moral resources hollow out the duties that rights impose on legislatures. Instead of protecting persons from the abusive exercise of legislative power, the framework narrows what constitutes abuse. On the other hand, (...) the framework’s institutional resources leave persons without the means of vindicating their rights. What Kyritsis terms protection consists in the ongoing susceptibility to the violation of one’s fundamental rights. (shrink)

In The Global Model of Constitutional Rights Kai Möller claims that the proportionality test is underlain by an expansive moral right to autonomy. This putative right protects everything that advances one’s self-conception. It may of course be limited when balanced against other considerations such as the rights of others. But it always creates a duty on the state to justify the limitation. Möller further contends that the practice of proportionality can best be understood as protecting the right to autonomy. This (...) review article summarizes the main tenets of Möller’s theory and criticizes them on two counts. First, it disputes the existence of a general right to autonomy; such a right places an unacceptably heavy burden on others. Second, it argues that we do not need to invoke a right to autonomy to explain and justify the main features of the practice of proportionality. Like other constitutional doctrines, proportionality is defensible, if it is grounded in pragmatic—mainly epistemic and institutional—considerations about how to increase overall rights compliance. These considerations are independent of any substantive theory of rights. (shrink)

This article examines whether restrictions on access to welfare rights for EU immigrants are justifiable on grounds of reciprocity. Recently political theorists have supported some robust restricti...

The purpose of this article is to examine Gadamer's criticism of Collingwood's re-enactment. A parallel concern is the evaluation of Collingwood's hermeneutics of history. Given that Collingwood can be read as a hermeneutic thinker, what is the impact of Gadamer's critique of re-enactment? My response to this question focuses on the dual significance of completeness for hermeneutics. The fore-conception of completeness, on the one hand, presupposes meaningfulness. The incompleteness of meaning, on the other hand, shows that the finite human can (...) never arrive at a perfect explanation. The fusion of horizons is created by the tension that exists between completeness and incompleteness. According to Gadamer, the lack of a clear distinction between the two notions of completeness leads Collingwood to a historicist position exemplified by re-enactment. I review Collingwood's books to demonstrate that, pace Gadamer, both notions of completeness are central to Collingwood's philosophy, guaranteeing the hermeneutical stance of his thought. However, what substantiates Gadamer's dissatisfaction with re-enactment is Collingwood's insufficient grasp of the difference between human historicity and the practice of professional history. I argue that while Collingwood is correct to indicate the inferential procedure of the writing of a political history, he nevertheless forgets that the historian is still a finite human being conditioned by historical situatedness. (shrink)

Preschoolers often struggle to compute scalar implicatures involving disjunction, in which they are required to strengthen an utterance by negating stronger alternatives, e.g. to infer that, ‘The girl has an apple or an orange’ likely means she does not have both. However, recent reports surprisingly find that a substantial subset of children interpret disjunction as conjunction, concluding instead that the girl must have both fruits. According to these studies, children arrive at conjunctive readings not because they have a non-adult-like semantics, (...) but because they lack access to the stronger scalar alternative and, and employ doubly exhaustified disjuncts when computing implicatures. Using stimuli modelled on previous studies, we test English-speaking preschoolers and replicate the finding that many children interpret or conjunctively. However, we speculate that conditions which replicate this finding may be pragmatically infelicitous, such that results do not offer a valid test of children’s semantic competence. We show that when disjunctive statements are uttered in contexts that render the speaker’s intended question more transparent, conjunctive readings disappear almost entirely. (shrink)

Mid-distance runners are subject to intense cognitive and somatic anxiety, not only during competition but also during practice. An important variable which may influence athletes’ performance is perceived behavioral control on anxiety. The aim of the present study was to examine whether aspects such as sex, sport/competition experience and weekly practices, differentiated the participants respectively. The participants consisted of 110 athletes, 61 male and 49 female athletes, between the ages of 15 and 28.They all completed the Greek version of the (...) “Pre- Race Questionnaire”. Results indicated differences between the less experienced and more experienced athletes in almost all factors of the questionnaire, for both sport/competition experience, and weekly practices. No gender differences were shown. Overall, results could help sport professionals such as coaches and the athletes themselves, become more familiar with the sport-specific psychological aspects involved in their unique sport. (shrink)

(2014). The Ethical Implications of the Use of Private Military Force: Regulatable or Irreconcilable? Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 49-69. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2014.908645.

We provide a grounded model for analysing formation in cross sector social partnerships to understand why business and nonprofit organizations increasingly partner to address social issues. Our model introduces organizational characteristics, organizational motives and history of partner interactions as critical factors that indicate the potential for social change. We argue that organizational characteristics, motives and the history of interactions indicate transformative capacity, transformative intention and transformative experience, respectively. Together, these three factors consist of a framework that aids early detection of (...) unnecessary partnering efforts and provide indicators of partners' transformative potential. Further we discuss the reciprocal, multi-level nature of change in social partnerships through the interplay between the organizational, individual and social levels of reality. The formation stage of partnerships contributes to the partnership and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literatures a deep understanding of the organisations' early interactions by placing within a historical context that reveals their dynamics and their potential to deliver organisational and social change. (shrink)

Deep Learning has been widely used for tackling challenging natural language processing tasks over the recent years. Similarly, the application of Deep Neural Networks in legal analytics has increased significantly. In this survey, we study the early adaptation of Deep Learning in legal analytics focusing on three main fields; text classification, information extraction, and information retrieval. We focus on the semantic feature representations, a key instrument for the successful application of deep learning in natural language processing. Additionally, we share pre-trained (...) legal word embeddings using the word2vec model over large corpora, comprised legislations from UK, EU, Canada, Australia, USA, and Japan among others. (shrink)

Deep Learning has been widely used for tackling challenging natural language processing tasks over the recent years. Similarly, the application of Deep Neural Networks in legal analytics has increased significantly. In this survey, we study the early adaptation of Deep Learning in legal analytics focusing on three main fields; text classification, information extraction, and information retrieval. We focus on the semantic feature representations, a key instrument for the successful application of deep learning in natural language processing. Additionally, we share pre-trained (...) legal word embeddings using the word2vec model over large corpora, comprised legislations from UK, EU, Canada, Australia, USA, and Japan among others. (shrink)

Cloud computing has become an integral part of our daily life and work. In the oil and gas industry, cloud computing is becoming increasingly attractive to experts, operators, and software companies. However, we believe that there is still some level of mystery for many geoscientists in what cloud computing can actually offer, what the pros and cons are, and how it is different from the preceding technologies. We attempt to explain some of the mysteries around the concept of cloud computing (...) and furthermore discuss the benefits and shortcomings of the cloud for the oil and gas industry. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was to predict and explain the academic cheating behaviors of elementary school students with learning disabilities by applying the cusp catastrophe model. Participants were 32 students with identified LD from state governmental agencies although all both them and the typical students participated in the experimental manipulation. Academic cheating was assessed using an empirical paradigm where true achievement was subtracted from achievement in a test without proper invigilation. Data analysis supported the proposed cusp catastrophe models, (...) where mastery-related motives acted as asymmetry and performance goals as bifurcation variables respectively. These findings were confirmed with application of the interactive goal hypothesis, where the interactive approach and avoidance performance goal term functioned as a splitting factor in the relationship between adaptive motivation and performance. (shrink)

Probabilistic argumentation and neuro-argumentative systems offer new computational perspectives for the theory and applications of argumentation, but their principled construction involves two entangled problems. On the one hand, probabilistic argumentation aims at combining the quantitative uncertainty addressed by probability theory with the qualitative uncertainty of argumentation, but probabilistic dependences amongst arguments as well as learning are usually neglected. On the other hand, neuro-argumentative systems offer the opportunity to couple the computational advantages of learning and massive parallel computation from neural networks (...) with argumentative reasoning and explanatory abilities, but the relation of probabilistic argumentation frameworks with these systems has been ignored so far. Towards the construction of neuro-argumentative systems based on probabilistic argumentation, we associate a model of abstract argumentation and the graphical model of Boltzmann machines in order to (i... (shrink)

Building on research and measures on solitude, ethical leadership theories, and decision making literatures, we propose a conceptual model to better understand processes enabling ethical leadership neglected in the literature. The role of solitude as antecedent is explored in this model, whereby its selective utilization focuses inner directionality toward growing authentic executive awareness as a moral person and a moral manager and allows an integration between inner and outer directionality toward ethical leadership and resulting decision-making processes that will have an (...) impact on others’ perceptions of leader authentic ethical leadership. Thus it is proposed that utilization of solitude positively predicts executive-level authentic ethical leadership action and in turn, ethical decision making perceived fairness and integrity. We also propose two moderators, strengthening the hypothesized (positive) association between solitude and ethical leadership; these are the executive’s ability for moral reasoning and a motivation for socialized (as opposed to personalized) power. (shrink)

Here we describe how more important findings were obtained in a delirium study by using an informal assessment of mental capacity, and, in those who lacked capacity, obtaining consent later when or if capacity returned or a proxy was found. From a total of 233 patients 23 patients lacked capacity as judged by our informal capacity judgment and 210 did not. Of those who lacked capacity, 13 agreed to enter in the study. Six of them regained capacity later. When these (...) 13 participants were excluded from analysis, significant findings were no longer evident. These results show that by the inclusion of subjects who lacked capacity the results of analyses of the condition from whish they suffer are altered. We suggest that this approach to the study of delirium is more ethical than the usual system of strict exclusion of people who lack capacity to give consent and for whom assent is not available. (shrink)

Previous studies on legitimation, multimodality and political discourse by researchers, such as Van Leeuwen, Van Dijk and Mackay, have suggested different but supplementary methods of legitimation analysis by providing a number of analytical frameworks. Multimodal legitimation research, however, seems to be in need of a better conflation of the theoretical backgrounds of disciplines, such as narratology. This article focuses on the multimodal discourse of three political advertisements of the political party New Democracy, filmed for the needs of the Greek legislative (...) election of January 2015. What is investigated is the multimodal means by which New Democracy’s president, and Prime Minister at the time, Antonis Samaras attempted to legitimise his candidacy. In this article, I use the six-layer framework proposed by Mackay for multimodal legitimation analyses and I argue that multimodal legitimation research can benefit and get enhanced from the use of narratology and its analytical categories, such as perspective. (shrink)

This essay examines the early Stoic debates concerning the number of virtues and the differentiation among them. It begins with the defense of virtue’s unity offered by the heterodox Stoic Aristo of Chios and with a comparison between the definitions that Aristo and Zeno offered for the four primary virtues. Aristo maintained that virtue consists exclusively in the knowledge of good and bad. Zeno and his successors presented the virtues as epistemic dispositions whose scopes differ. I conclude that by adding (...) the knowledge of indifferents to the definition of virtue, Zeno and his successors were able to avoid the circularity to which Aristo’s definition of virtue fell victim while providing a way to differentiate among the virtues. (shrink)

The essay examines the Stoic notion of appropriate actions, focusing on the relationship between the perfectly appropriate actions of the virtuous person and “intermediate appropriate actions”. I present some of the philosophical motivations behind the general Stoic theory of καθήκοντα, and argue against the common interpretation of μέσα καθήκοντα as action types that make no reference to the manner of their performance, and of κατορθώματα as μέσα καθήκοντα that are rightly performed by an agent with a virtuous disposition. Instead, I (...) claim that the different types of καθήκοντα should be distinguished with reference to the kinds of things they aim at, rather than the manner in which they are performed. So, μέσα καθήκοντα should be understood as actions aiming at natural advantages that are indifferent, and κατορθώματα as actions aiming at the only true good, i.e., virtue. I discuss some of the advantages of the alternative view and outline the account of virtuous motivation that arises from it. (shrink)

Lieve Van Hoof's welcome addition to the study of Plutarch's moral works focuses on a group of writings that discuss practical issues, ranging from coping with exile and curbing one's curiosity to proper nutrition and table manners. Van Hoof collectively refers to these treatises as "Plutarch's practical ethics," setting them apart from Plutarch's theoretical works, which discuss key philosophical concepts.Van Hoof begins by noting with regret the scholarly neglect of Plutarch's practical ethics. Historians of philosophy, who usually read Plutarch's moral (...) works as sourcebooks on academic philosophical theories, are frustrated when confronted with Plutarch's practical treatises, where references to academic .. (shrink)

The essay investigates the philosophical infancy of the idea that some actions are morally praiseworthy while not being morally obligatory. It focuses on Thomas Aquinas’s distinction between commandments and counsels, the early Christian idea that some acts go beyond nature, and the Stoic notion of circumstantially appropriate actions. I discuss the Christian and Stoic justification of acts of self-denial, such as celibacy, poverty, and martyrdom, and attempt to find a unitary source of goodness and moral obligation that allows for such (...) supererogatory acts. Nature provides such a unitary source in the early Christian theologian Athanasius and the Stoics. I discuss how nature determines one’s duties while also allowing for praiseworthy acts outside the scope of these duties, and in seeming contrast with them. (shrink)

The essay examines the description of virtue as a craft that governs the proper use of possessions in Plato’s Euthydemus and Stoicism. In the first part, I discuss Socrates’ parallel between wisdom and the crafts in the Euthydemus, and the resulting argument concerning the value of external and bodily possessions. I then offer some objections, showing how Socrates’ craft analogy allows one to think of possessions as good and ultimately fails to offer a defense of virtue’s sufficiency for happiness. In (...) the second part, I examine the Stoics’ craft analogy and note a number of differences from Socrates’ account in the Euthydemus. These include the Stoic claim that external advantages never make any contribution to happiness, even when properly used, and the claim that, unlike other crafts, wisdom does not require any external possessions in order to be exercised and yield benefit and happiness. I then place these differences against the backdrop of the debate regarding virtue’s sufficiency for happiness and argue that the Stoic craft model of virtue fares better than its Socratic antecedent. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the revision of the classical thesis concerning secularism the progressive domination of the discussion around the issue of the civil society. These two poles facilitated the development of a series of historiographic approaches that particularly touched on the areas of Eastern and Southeastern Europeís history. Here we are concerned with three central cases of historiographic discourseís production, as indicators of the dominant ìparadigmîís change: the first concerns the role of the Russian church in the pre-Revolutionary period; (...) the second, the issue of secularization and its relations with Islam in the Ottoman Empire; and finally the third, the problem of internal fragmentation of the Orthodox millet with the establishment of Greek autocephalus Church in 1833 and (self-sufficiency) and later the Bulgarian Exarchate. These new approaches were intended to solve various long-standing problems and for the most part resulted in solutions within existing opposites of historiographic schools of thought. (shrink)

Although the integrative memory model proposed by Bastin et al. is interesting, particularly for Alzheimer's disease, it may benefit from incorporating the subjective experience of recollection. We therefore offer complementary lines of interpretation to explain how recollection and familiarity in Alzheimer's disease can be dissociated based not only on accounts of their neural correlates but, critically, on the subjective experience of memory in patients.