In their recent paper, “Practical Knowledge without Luminosity,” Bob Beddor and Carlotta Pavese (2022) claim that the doctrine of essentially intentional actions, or “essentialism,” is false. Essentialism states that some actions are essentially intentional, such that, “whenever they are performed, they are performed intentionally” (2022, p. 926). Beddor and Pavese work to reject essentialism, which figures as a key premise in Juan Piñeros Glasscock’s anti-luminosity argument against the knowledge condition for intentional action (Piñeros Glasscock, p. 1240). Historically, essentialism has received (...) little attention from philosophers since its inception in Elizabeth Anscombe’s Intention (2000, §47). However, I believe that essentially intentional actions can play an important role in an ontology of action. In my paper, I develop and argue for a variety of essentialism in the context of naive action theory, which I call naive essentialism. Naive essentialism is a two-fold thesis, which claims that (1) essentially intentional actions exist, and (2) that essentially intentional actions ground accidentally intentional actions. My paper has four parts. In the first part, I distinguish between essentially and accidentally intentional actions, and unpack the relevant principles of naive action theory. Second, I present the grounding thesis that accidentally intentional actions are grounded in essentially intentional actions. Next, I provide an argument for the existence of essentially intentional actions. Lastly, I briefly respond to a possible objection to my argument. The upshot of my arguments is that essentially intentional actions form the metaphysical and explanatory bedrock in a naive ontology of action, and that there are good reasons for accepting a key premise in Piñeros Glasscock’s anti-luminosity argument. (shrink)

Prayer and the temple were two of the most prominent themes in the Third Gospel and they have garnered scholarly interest. However, the discussion about prayer vis-à-vis the temple in Luke’s special source (L) has gone unnoticed. Using source criticism and narrative criticism, the research shows a connection between prayer and the temple in L. The relationship between the two reflects the development from a belief in the temple as a place for praying and receiving an answer, to Jesus who (...) intercedes for the people. This article argues that the prayer in Luke’s special source revealed Jesus as the new, personified temple through whom the L communities prayed and received answers to their prayers. Based on this finding, this article then shows the possible reconstruction of the separation between Judaism and Christianity from the perspective of L communities. Contribution: This article contributes to the discussion on Lukan Christology by proposing that Jesus is the new personified temple as understood by the L communities. Such a depiction lends new support to Dunn’s reconstruction of the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians. (shrink)

Corporate governance guidelines are a mechanism that a firm can enact which should reduce agency costs and better align the interests of boards and the suppliers of capital. This study examines stock price reactions primarily attributable to institutional investors occurring when corporations announce the enactment of corporate governance guidelines. A final sample of 77 firms was derived from the first announcement of corporate governance guidelines exclusive to the SEC-EDGAR database. The results indicate that good governance does matter. Firms that announced (...) the enactment of corporate governance guidelines experienced increased stock prices following the announcements. There was an immediate (days 1–4) reaction for firms that provided all or part of the guidelines’ substance; a delayed (days 8–10) reaction occurred for those firms that only referenced the guidelines’ enactment. Additionally, firms with either a potentially greater following or that had a previous history of acrimonious relations with stakeholders were rewarded by the announcement of the enactment of guidelines. (shrink)

Malgré les déclarations d'intention et les efforts des écologistes, la planète est en danger. Ses ennemis cherchent un profit immédiat à empoisonner l'air, les sols et l'eau, à abattre les arbres et les animaux. Ils trouvent un intérêt à détruire la réalité pour lui substituer un monde virtuel contrôlable. Cet essai invite à établir de nouvelles relations entre la planète et les hommes.

The contents and structure of semantic memory have been the focus of much recent research, with major advances in the development of distributional models, which use word co‐occurrence information as a window into the semantics of language. In parallel, connectionist modeling has extended our knowledge of the processes engaged in semantic activation. However, these two lines of investigation have rarely been brought together. Here, we describe a processing model based on distributional semantics in which activation spreads throughout a semantic network, (...) as dictated by the patterns of semantic similarity between words. We show that the activation profile of the network, measured at various time points, can successfully account for response times in lexical and semantic decision tasks, as well as for subjective concreteness and imageability ratings. We also show that the dynamics of the network is predictive of performance in relational semantic tasks, such as similarity/relatedness rating. Our results indicate that bringing together distributional semantic networks and spreading of activation provides a good fit to both automatic lexical processing (as indexed by lexical and semantic decisions) as well as more deliberate processing (as indexed by ratings), above and beyond what has been reported for previous models that take into account only similarity resulting from network structure. (shrink)

SOME MODERN THOMISTS claiming to follow the lead of Thomas Aquinas, hold that the objects of the types of mathematics known in the thirteenth century, such as the arithmetic of whole numbers and Euclidean geometry, are real entities. In scholastic terms they are not beings of reason but real beings. In his once-popular scholastic manual, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, Joseph Gredt maintains that, according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the object of mathematics is real quantity, either discrete quantity in arithmetic or (...) continuous quantity in geometry. The mathematician considers the essence of quantity in abstraction from its relation to real existence in bodily substance. "When quantity is considered in this way," he writes, "it is not a being of reason but a real being. Nevertheless it is so abstractly considered that it leaves out of account both real and conceptual existence." Recent mathematicians, Gredt continues, extend their speculation to fictitious quantity, which has conceptual but not real being; for example, the fourth dimension, which by its essence positively excludes a relation to real existence. According to Gredt this is a special, transcendental mathematics essentially distinct from "real mathematics," and belonging to it only by reduction. (shrink)

Prayer, the central spirituality in the theological and ethical life of Christ’s disciples, has not yet received significant attention from Johannine scholars. Although some scholars emphasised and discussed prayer in the New Testament, Johannine scholars have failed to recognise the significance of prayer in the Fourth Gospel. Using narrative criticism the article aims to uncover the relationship between prayer and koinonia in the Fourth Gospel. The research on the theme of prayer and koinonia conducted in the Fourth Gospel has yielded (...) the finding that prayer was a manifestation of abiding in Jesus. Koinonia was a form of prayer. Contribution: The article fills the lacuna in Johannine studies, more specifically, in the field of prayer and koinonia. The article, which is in line with the scope of HTS Theological Studies, and offers a new interpretation of prayer and koinonia in the Fourth Gospel. (shrink)

The analysis of a dispute can focus on either interests, rights, or power. Commentators often frame the conflict over conscience in clinical practice as a dispute between a patient’s right to legally available medical treatment and a clinician’s right to refuse to provide interventions the clinician finds morally objectionable. Multiple sources of unresolvable moral disagreement make resolution in these terms unlikely. One should instead focus on the parties’ interests and the different ways in which the health care delivery system can (...) accommodate them. In the specific case of pharmacists refusing to dispense emergency contraception, alternative systems such as advanced prescription, pharmacist provision, and over-the-counter sales may better reconcile the client’s interest in preventing unintended pregnancy and the pharmacist’s interest in not contravening his or her conscience. Within such an analysis, the ethicist’s role becomes identifying and clarifying the parties’ morally relevant interests. (shrink)

Health care institutions have paid increasing attention to preventing nosocomial transmission of influenza through vaccination of health care personnel. While multifaceted voluntary interventions have increased vaccination rates, proponents of mandatory programs contend the rates remain unacceptably low. Conventional bioethical analyses of mandatory programs are inadequate; they fail to account for the obligations of nonprofessional personnel or to justify the weights assigned to different ethical principles. Using an ethics framework for public health permits a fuller analysis. The framework's focus on fairness (...) accentuates the potential differences between the risk of transmitting infection and employment status, and the need to equitably evaluate exemptions. The framework's emphasis on balancing benefits and burdens highlights the need to justify a specific goal and questions the need to exclude all nonmedical exemptions. While mandatory vaccination programs are justifiable, greater attention should be paid to their implementation. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 25-27.

A number of recent models of semantics combine linguistic information, derived from text corpora, and visual information, derived from image collections, demonstrating that the resulting multimodal models are better than either of their unimodal counterparts, in accounting for behavioral data. Empirical work on semantic processing has shown that emotion also plays an important role especially in abstract concepts; however, models integrating emotion along with linguistic and visual information are lacking. Here, we first improve on visual and affective representations, derived from (...) state‐of‐the‐art existing models, by choosing models that best fit available human semantic data and extending the number of concepts they cover. Crucially then, we assess whether adding affective representations (obtained from a neural network model designed to predict emojis from co‐occurring text) improves the model's ability to fit semantic similarity/relatedness judgments from a purely linguistic and linguistic–visual model. We find that, given specific weights assigned to the models, adding both visual and affective representations improves performance, with visual representations providing an improvement especially for more concrete words, and affective representations improving especially the fit for more abstract words. (shrink)

The quantum formalism ofdistinguishable, yetequivalent particles (with symmetric or antisymmetric wave functions) is here worked out. The result is an entirely explicit formulation of the way in which classical mechanics emerges from quantum mechanics for such particles. Distinguishability is achieved at the cost of dynamical precision; the two are, in fact, complementary.

It is shown here that the microcanonical ensemble for a system of noninteracting bosons and fermions contains a subensemble of state vectors for which all particles of the system are distinguishable. This “IQC” (inner quantum-classical) subensemble is therefore fully classical, except for a rather extreme quantization of particle momentum and position, which appears as the natural price that must be paid for distinguishability. The contribution of the IQC subensemble to the entropy is readily calculated, and the criterion for this to (...) be a good approximation to the exact entropy is a logarithmically strengthened form of the usual criterion for the validity of classical statistics in terms of the thermal de Broglie wavelength and the average volume per particle. Thus, it becomes possible to derive the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution directly from the ensemble in the classical limit, using fully classical reasoning about the distinguishability of particles. The entropy is additive—theN! factor of the Boltzmann count cancels out in the course of the calculation, and the “N! paradox” is thereby resolved. The method of “correct Boltzmann counting” and the lowest term of the Wigner-Kirkwood series for the partition function are seen to be partly based on the IQC subensemble, and their partly nonclassical nature is clarified. The clear separation in the full ensemble of classical and nonclassical components makes it possible to derive the classical statistics of indistinguishable particles from their quantum statistics in a controlled, explicit way. This is particularly important for nonequilibrium theory. The treatment of molecular collisions along too-literally classical lines turns out to require exorbitantly high temperatures, although there are suggestions of indirect ways in which classical nonequilibrium theory might be justified at ordinary temperatures. The applicability of exact classical ergodic and mixing theory to systems at ordinary temperatures is called into question, although the general idea of coarse-graining is confirmed. The concepts on which the IQC idea is based are shown to give rise to a series development of thermostatistical quantities, starting with the distinguishable-particle approximation. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

In this publication, we will use the principal concepts of John of the Cross, the famous mystic of the XVI th century, as a framework to go over, in a non-reductionist way, three challenges in contemporary neuroscience of decision-making. Firstly, the dark night and the purgative paths will be related to discontinuity in decision-making. Secondly, the passive and active paths will be associated to brain plasticity, architecture, and levels of decision. Thirdly, the illumination, which can be felt when a solution (...) is reached, has to do with positive emotions and can be inspired by the science of love of John of the Cross. We shall lastly conclude by emphasizing the usefulness of his work to illuminate the neuroscience of decision-making. (shrink)

Background: While employers are increasingly considering and implementing COVID-19 vaccination requirements, little is known about the reasons offered by employees seeking religious exemptions.Methods: We conducted a mixed methods analysis of all the requests for religious exemptions submitted during the initial implementation of a COVID-19 vaccination requirement at a single academic medical center in the United States.Results: Five hundred sixty-five (3.4%) employees requested religious exemptions. At least 305 (54.0%) requesters had job titles suggesting that they had direct patient contact. Four hundred (...) ninety-nine (88.3%) of requesters self-identified as Christian, of whom 120 (21.2%) identified as Roman Catholic. Requesters offered 0 to 8 (mean 2.7) categories of reasons for their request. The most frequently stated reasons pertained to the use of fetal cell lines in vaccine development and manufacturing (382, 67.6%), interest in maintaining purity (221, 39.1%), or belief in divine healing (172, 30.4%). Some requesters also volunteered evidence of the sincerity of their beliefs including examples of their religious practices (116, 20.5%), other practices (66, 11.7%), and emotional states (32, 5.7%). One hundred fifty-two applications (26.9%) contained text copied without attribution, primarily from sample religious exemption request letters available on the Internet.Conclusions: Most requesters focused on the use of fetal cell lines in the development or manufacturing of the vaccines as the justification for their request. The development of vaccines that are not reliant on fetal cell lines may increase vaccination rates. Understanding reasons for religious exemption requests may inform vaccine education and vaccination policies. (shrink)

This paper is addressed to recent theoretical discussions of the Anthropocene, in particular Bernard Stiegler’s Neganthropocene (Open Universities Press, 2018), which argues: “As we drift past tipping points that put future biota at risk, while a post-truth regime institutes the denial of ‘climate change’ (as fake news), and as Silicon Valley assistants snatch decision and memory, and as gene-editing and a financially-engineered bifurcation advances over the rising hum of extinction events and the innumerable toxins and conceptual opiates that Anthropocene Talk (...) fascinated itself with—in short, as ‘the Anthropocene’ discloses itself as a dead-end trap…”. The objective of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to discuss how the Anthropocene is appropriated to certain ideological discourses (paradoxically) to maintain the hegemony of precisely those systems of production that have most accelerated climate change etc.; (2) to consider how the factography of the Anthropocene is exploited in this process to mask the ideological character of industry-aligned “technocratic” environmental management. The paper is not concerned with specific case studies in terms of government and industry policy, or climate science, but rather with the ways in which the discourse of the Anthropocene has been inflected within the humanities and the broader cultural field—that is to say, ideologically, as a system or logic of meaning. How the Anthropocene “means” is, in this respect, a question of some importance. This paper does not attempt to address all the facets of this question, but focuses upon a central “apocalyptic” strain in the discourse of the Anthropocene drawn particularly from Francis Fukuyama’s millennial posthumanism and centred in the question of “sustainability” as catastrophe management—with the risk that real environmental degradation will become an alibi for a revived neoliberalism. In other words, that the critical Earth system transformations that characterise the Anthropocene are themselves commodities, and that the project of their amelioration is in process of defining a future (opportunistic) “crisis” rhetoric with a global political franchise. The ideological import of the Anthropocene stems precisely from the fact that it is planetary and, while catalysed by human agency, independent in its specific behaviour from it. The Anthropocene objectively presents as the contemporary counterpart of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and the most compelling argument for a new kind of technological “arms race.” But it also presents as the condition of an emerging ideological discourse which will determine how this race is run. From the discourse on “energy security” to the widespread “security crackdown” on environmental activists across the so-called developed & developing world, the Anthropocene has come to represent the co-option of a scientific factography for the thinly disguised resurgence of “ideological science” of the Fukuyamaesque variety (post-history, post-human). For Fukuyama, the true meaning of “posthuman” is thus the accomplishment of humanity’s historical mission. As the “End of History” designates an end of ideological struggle, so too the dénouement of the Anthropocene and the “ends of man” represent the accomplished purpose of species warfare: dominion, not simply over the world, but over all possible worlds. According to this narrative, science—like technology—must be uniquely at the service of the maintenance of the global order, organised around a universal appeal to “crisis management.” It is precisely for this reason that what calls itself post-human masks the return of an ever-more-apocalyptic Humanism. (shrink)

Table of contents -- Foreword by klaus schwab -- Author biographies -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction - by armand doucet & jelmer evers -- education in a time of unprecedented change by michael soskil -- education today: a collection of snapshots by elisa guerra -- - overcoming equity gaps in and through education by michael soskil -- Teach me: the learner profile by armand doucet -- the power of learning by nadia lopez -- contextualizing personalization in education by (...) class='Hi'>armand doucet -- Evolution of technology in the classroom by koen timmers -- flip the system: the networked activist teacher by jelmer evers -- Conclusion- by armand doucet & jelmer evers -- Epilogue by andreas schleicher. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 8, Page 11-13, August 2012.

Chapter LEARNING BY UNDERSTANDING ANALOGIES Russell Greiner1 ABSTRACT2 This article describes a method for learning by analogy — ie, for proposing new ...