Thirty-five stakeholder representatives and six observers from thirty organizations, interested in anticipating the adoption of energy efficiency for the Pacific Northwest, identified and described one hundred and seventy-eight national and regional trends extending to the year 2015 impacting energy efficiency, and proposed more than ninety actions for addressing these trends at the regional level. The representatives were engaged in a collaborative action planning workshop that was facilitated with the CogniScope methodology founded in the systems sciences. Convergence was achieved on eight (...) highly influential actions as the highest priority. (shrink)

We give a model-theoretic account for several results regarding sequences of random variables appearing in Berkes and Rosenthal [12]. In order to do this,•We study and compare three notions of convergence of types in a stable theory: logic convergence, i.e., formula by formula, metric convergence (both already well studied) and convergence of canonical bases. In particular, we characterise א0-categorical stable theories in which the last two agree.•We characterise sequences that admit almost indiscernible sub-sequences.•We apply these tools to the theory of (...) atomless random variables (ARV). We characterise types and notions of convergence of types as conditional distributions and weak/strong convergence thereof, and obtain, among other things, the Main Theorem of Berkes and Rosenthal. (shrink)

We characterise imaginaries (up to interdefinability) in Hilbert spaces using a Galois theory for compact unitary groups.

The objective of Working Group 4 of the COST Action NET4Age-Friendly is to examine existing policies, advocacy, and funding opportunities and to build up relations with policy makers and funding organisations. Also, to synthesize and improve existing knowledge and models to develop from effective business and evaluation models, as well as to guarantee quality and education, proper dissemination and ensure the future of the Action. The Working Group further aims to enable capacity building to improve interdisciplinary participation, to promote knowledge (...) exchange and to foster a cross-European interdisciplinary research capacity, to improve cooperation and co-creation with cross-sectors stakeholders and to introduce and educate students SHAFE implementation and sustainability. To enable the achievement of the objectives of Working Group 4, the Leader of the Working Group, the Chair and Vice-Chair, in close cooperation with the Science Communication Coordinator, developed a template to map the current state of SHAFE policies, funding opportunities and networking in the COST member countries of the Action. On invitation, the Working Group lead received contributions from 37 countries, in a total of 85 Action members. The contributions provide an overview of the diversity of SHAFE policies and opportunities in Europe and beyond. These were not edited or revised and are a result of the main areas of expertise and knowledge of the contributors; thus, gaps in areas or content are possible and these shall be further explored in the following works and reports of this WG. But this preliminary mapping is of huge importance to proceed with the WG activities. In the following chapters, an introduction on the need of SHAFE policies is presented, followed by a summary of the main approaches to be pursued for the next period of work. The deliverable finishes with the opportunities of capacity building, networking and funding that will be relevant to undertake within the frame of Working Group 4 and the total COST Action. The total of country contributions is presented in the annex of this deliverable. (shrink)

https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar/article/view/v61-fidora.

In histories of Orthodox Judaism, one often reads the story of a collision between tradition and modernity. Orthodoxy, according to this logic, is a fortress of the old world, which, upon encounter...

Recognized as one of the earliest Jewish neo-Platonist writers, Isaac ben Solomon Israeli influenced Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars through the Middle Ages. A native of Egypt who wrote in Arabic, Israeli explored definitions of such terms as imagination, sense-perception, desire, love, creation, and “coming-to-be” in his writings. This classic volume contains English translations of Israeli’s philosophical writings, including the _Book of Definitions_, the _Book of Substances,_ and the _Book on Spirit and Soul_. Additionally, _Isaac Israeli_ features a biographical sketch (...) of the philosopher and extensive notes and comments on the texts, as well as a survey and appraisal of his philosophy. Restored to print for the first time in decades, _Isaac Israeli _will be essential reading for students and scholars of medieval philosophy and Jewish studies. (shrink)

Saadya ben Joseph al-Fayyumi, gaon of the rabbinic academy at Sura and one of the preeminent Jewish thinkers of the medieval period, attempted to create a complete statement of Jewish religious philosophy in which all strands of philosophical thought were to be knit into a unified system. In _The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs_, Saadya sought to rescue believers from "a sea of doubt and the waters of confusion" into which they had been cast by Christianity, Islam, and other faiths. (...) By employing philosophical--or kalamic--argumentation to examine and defend traditional Jewish beliefs, Saadya hoped to turn blind faith into conviction based on rational understanding. First published in 1946, and reprinted here without alteration, Alexander Altmann’s judicious abridgment of his own translation has remained the standard edition of this influential work. A new Introduction by Daniel Frank sets Saadya’s work in its broader historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts. (shrink)

In his recently published Donner le temps II, Derrida raises, but does not develop, the possibility that Heidegger's notion of Gelassenheit (‘releasement’, ‘letting-be’) might escape the economic confines of exchange, debt, and repayment and therefore qualify as a pure gift. In this paper, I explore this possibility, explaining that Gelassenheit would have to be understood, first, not primarily as a human comportment but at the level of being itself, second, beyond appropriation, and third, as ‘without why’. If Heidegger's focus on (...) appropriation in ‘Time and Being’ remains entangled in the economy of exchange (as Derrida insinuates in the final session of Donner le temps II), Heidegger's anarchic treatment of ‘letting’ ( laisser, Lassen) in the final session of his 1969 seminar in Le Thor opens instead onto a ‘pure giving’ ( pur donner, reines Geben). (shrink)

Some healthcare systems are said to be grounded in solidarity because healthcare is funded as a form of mutual support. This article argues that health care systems that are grounded in solidarity have the right to penalise some users who are responsible for their poor health. This derives from the fact that solidary systems involve both rights and obligations and, in some cases, those who avoidably incur health burdens violate obligations of solidarity. Penalties warranted include direct patient contribution to costs, (...) and lower priority treatment, but not typically full exclusion from the healthcare system. We also note two important restrictions on this argument. First, failures of solidary obligations can only be assumed under conditions that are conducive to sufficiently autonomous choice, which occur when patients are given ‘Golden Opportunities’ to improve their health. Second, because poor health does not occur in a social vacuum, an insistence on solidarity as part of healthcare is legitimate only if all members of society are held to similar standards of solidarity. We cannot insist upon, and penalise failures of, solidarity only for those who are unwell, and who cannot afford to evade the terms of public health. (shrink)

Purposeful infection of healthy volunteers with a microbial pathogen seems at odds with acceptable ethical standards, but is an important contemporary research avenue used to study infectious diseases and their treatments. Generally termed ‘controlled human infection studies’, this research is particularly useful for fast tracking the development of candidate vaccines and may provide unique insight into disease pathogenesis otherwise unavailable. However, scarce bioethical literature is currently available to assist researchers and research ethics committees in negotiating the distinct issues raised by (...) research involving purposefully infecting healthy volunteers. In this article, we present two separate challenge studies and highlight the ethical issues of human challenge studies as seen through a well-constructed framework. Beyond the same stringent ethical standards seen in other areas of medical research, we conclude that human challenge studies should also include: independent expert reviews, including systematic reviews; a publicly available rationale for the research; implementation of measures to protect the public from spread of infection beyond the research setting; and a new system for compensation for harm. We hope these additions may encourage safer and more ethical research practice and help to safeguard public confidence in this vital research alternative in years to come. (shrink)

Strategies to increase influenza vaccination rates have typically targeted healthcare professionals and individuals in various high-risk groups such as the elderly. We argue that they should focus on increasing vaccination rates in children. Because children suffer higher influenza incidence rates than any other demographic group, and are major drivers of seasonal influenza epidemics, we argue that influenza vaccination strategies that serve to increase uptake rates in children are likely to be more effective in reducing influenza-related morbidity and mortality than those (...) targeting HCPs or the elderly. This is true even though influenza-related morbidity and mortality amongst children are low, except in the very young. Further, we argue that there are no decisive reasons to suppose that children-focused strategies are less ethically acceptable than elderly or HCP-focused strategies. (shrink)

According to Fogelin’s account of deep disagreements, disputes caused by a clash in framework propositions are necessarily rationally irresolvable. Fogelin’s thesis is a claim about real-life, and not purely hypothetical, arguments: there are such disagreements, and they are incapable of rational resolution. Surprisingly then, few attempts have been made to find such disputes in order to test Fogelin’s thesis. This paper aims to rectify that failure. Firstly, it clarifies Fogelin’s concept of deep disagreement and shows there are several different breeds (...) of such disagreements. Thus, to fully assess Fogelin’s thesis, it will be necessary to seek out cases of each breed to evaluate their rational irresolvability. Secondly, it begins this task by looking at a significant debate within the logical literature over the truth of contradictions. We demonstrate that, while the debate exemplifies a breed of deep disagreement, the parties involved can supply one another with rationally compelling reasons. (shrink)

Efforts to promote equitable public policy with algorithms appear to be fundamentally constrained by the “impossibility of fairness” (an incompatibility between mathematical definitions of fairness). This technical limitation raises a central question about algorithmic fairness: How can computer scientists and policymakers support equitable policy reforms with algorithms? In this article, I argue that promoting justice with algorithms requires reforming the methodology of algorithmic fairness. First, I diagnose the problems of the current methodology for algorithmic fairness, which I call “formal algorithmic (...) fairness.” Because formal algorithmic fairness restricts analysis to isolated decision-making procedures, it leads to the impossibility of fairness and to models that exacerbate oppression despite appearing “fair.” Second, I draw on theories of substantive equality from law and philosophy to propose an alternative methodology, which I call “substantive algorithmic fairness.” Because substantive algorithmic fairness takes a more expansive scope of analysis, it enables an escape from the impossibility of fairness and provides a rigorous guide for alleviating injustice with algorithms. In sum, substantive algorithmic fairness presents a new direction for algorithmic fairness: away from formal mathematical models of “fair” decision-making and toward substantive evaluations of whether and how algorithms can promote justice in practice. (shrink)

The aim of Dimitris Vardoulakis’s paper, ‘Toward a Critique of the Ineffectual: Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle and the Construction of an Action without Ends’, is to provide the foundation for a critique of aimless action by tracing its genesis to Heidegger’s putative misinterpretation of Aristotelian phronēsis (practical wisdom) in the 1920s. Inasmuch as ‘the ineffectual’—the name Vardoulakis gives to action devoid of ends—plays a crucial role in post-Heideggerian continental philosophy, he thereby seeks to diagnose and to provide an aetiology of (...) an illness afflicting contemporary thought. In my response, I will first argue that, while Vardoulakis is right to identify an emphasis on the ineffectual in Heidegger, he is mistaken about its origin. Heidegger does not strip phronēsis of instrumentality, nor does he mistranslate Nichomachean Ethics 1139a31–32. Second, I trace an alternative source for the ineffectual, which is not simply a negative alternative to technological machination but stems from a positive experience of what Meister Eckhart, and Heidegger in his wake, called life without why. Finally, I look at a couple of texts, including one discussed by Vardoulakis, in which even the later Heidegger is not entirely dismissive of calculative instrumentality but instead assigns the latter to a secondary, restricted site of competence. (shrink)

This book stems from an examination of how Western philosophy has accounted for the foundations of law. In this tradition, the character of the “sovereign” or “lawgiver” has provided the solution to this problem. But how does the sovereign acquire the right to found law? As soon as we ask this question we are immediately confronted with a convoluted combination of jurisprudence and theology. The author begins by tracing a lengthy and deeply nuanced exchange between Derrida and Nancy on the (...) question of community and fraternity and then moves on to engage with a diverse set of texts from the Marquis de Sade, Saint Augustine, Kant, Hegel, and Kafka. These texts—which range from the canonical to the apocryphal—all struggle in their own manner with the question of the foundations of law. Each offers a path to the law. If a reader accepts any path as it is and follows without question, the law is set and determined and the possibility of dialogue is closed. The aim of this book is to approach the foundations of law from a series of different angles so that we can begin to see that those foundations are always in question and open to the possibility of dialogue. (shrink)

There is significant controversy over whether patients have a ‘right not to know’ information relevant to their health. Some arguments for limiting such a right appeal to potential burdens on others that a patient’s avoidable ignorance might generate. This paper develops this argument by extending it to cases where refusal of relevant information may generate greater demands on a publicly funded healthcare system. In such cases, patients may have an ‘obligation to know’. However, we cannot infer from the fact that (...) a patient has an obligation to know that she does not also have a right not to know. The right not to know is held against medical professionals at a formal institutional level. We have reason to protect patients’ control over the information that they receive, even if in individual instances patients exercise this control in ways that violate obligations. (shrink)

This article explains and defends a novel idea about how people can be misled by a discussion topic, even if the discussion itself does not explicitly involve the making of false claims. The crucial aspect of this idea is that people are liable to infer, from the fact that a particular topic is being discussed, that this topic is important. As a result, they may then be led to accept certain beliefs about the state of the world they consider necessary (...) for the topic’s importance. What the article calls “importance misrepresentation” occurs when these beliefs about the state of the world are false or otherwise mistaken. The article explores different ways in which importance misrepresentation can occur, and it uses this idea to help clarify and strengthen some well‐known criticisms of the topic choices of academic philosophers. (shrink)

I introduce a distinction between health need and medical need, and raise several questions about their interaction. Health needs are needs that relate directly to our health condition. Medical needs are needs which bear some relation to medical institutions or processes. I suggest that the question of whether medical insurance or public care should cover medical needs, health needs, or only needs which fit both categories is a political question that cannot be resolved definitionally. I also argue against an overly (...) strict definition of medical need on the grounds that this presupposes, wrongly, that medical intervention should always be a last resort. (shrink)

Twilight Zone and Philosophy attempts to bring the insights and paradoxes of Rod Serling's project to contemporary audiences through a variety of philosophical perspectives"--Publisher.

There is an ongoing increase in the use of mobile health technologies that patients can use to monitor health-related outcomes and behaviours. While the dominant narrative around mHealth focuses on patient empowerment, there is potential for mHealth to fit into a growing push for patients to take personal responsibility for their health. I call the first of these uses ‘medical monitoring’, and the second ‘personal health surveillance’. After outlining two problems which the use of mHealth might seem to enable us (...) to overcome—fairness of burdens and reliance on self-reporting—I note that these problems would only really be solved by unacceptably comprehensive forms of personal health surveillance which applies to all of us at all times. A more plausible model is to use personal health surveillance as a last resort for patients who would otherwise independently qualify for responsibility-based penalties. However, I note that there are still a number of ethical and practical problems that such a policy would need to overcome. The prospects of mHealth enabling a fair, genuinely cost-saving policy of patient responsibility are slim. (shrink)

The idea of using responsibility in the allocation of healthcare resources has been criticized for, among other things, too readily abandoning people who are responsible for being very badly off. One response to this problem is that while responsibility can play a role in resource allocation, it cannot do so if it will leave those who are responsible below a “sufficiency” threshold. This paper considers first whether a view can be both distinctively sufficientarian and allow responsibility to play a role (...) even for those who will be left with very poor health. It then draws several further distinctions that may affect the application of responsibility at this level. We conclude that a more plausible version of the sufficientarian view is to allow a role for responsibility where failure to do so will leave someone else who is not responsible below the sufficiency threshold. However, we suggest that individuals must exhibit “sufficient responsibility” in order for this to apply, involving both a sufficient level of control and an avoidable failure to respond adequately to reasons for action. (shrink)

In transplant medicine, the use of normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) in donation after circulatory determination of death raises ethical difficulties. NRP is objectionable because it restores the donor's circulation, thus invalidating a death declaration based on the permanent cessation of circulation. NRP's defenders respond with arguments that are tortuous and factually inaccurate and depend on introducing extraneous concepts into the law. However, results comparable to NRP's—more and higher‐quality organs and more efficient allocation—can be achieved by removing organs from deceased donors (...) and using normothermic machine perfusion (NMP) to support the organs outside the body, without jeopardizing confidence in transplantation's legal and ethical foundations. Given the controversy that NRP generates and the convoluted justifications made for it, we recommend a prudential approach we call “ethical parsimony,” which holds that, in the choice between competing means of achieving a result, the ethically simpler one is to be preferred. This approach makes clear that policy‐makers should favor NMP over NRP. (shrink)

A considerable literature has emerged around the idea of using ‘personal responsibility’ as an allocation criterion in healthcare distribution, where a person's being suitably responsible for their health needs may justify additional conditions on receiving healthcare, and perhaps even limiting access entirely, sometimes known as ‘responsibilisation’. This discussion focuses most prominently, but not exclusively, on ‘luck egalitarianism’, the view that deviations from equality are justified only by suitably free choices. A superficially separate issue in distributive justice concerns the two–way relationship (...) between health and other social goods: deficits in health typically undermine one's abilities to secure advantage in other areas, which in turn often have further negative effects on health. This paper outlines the degree to which this latter relationship between health and other social goods exacerbates an existing problem for proponents of responsibilisation (the ‘harshness objection’) in ways that standard responses to this objection cannot address. Placing significant conditions on healthcare access because of a person's prior responsibility risks trapping them in, or worsening, negative cycles where poor health and associated lack of opportunity reinforce one another, making further poor yet ultimately responsible choices more likely. It ends by considering three possible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

Healthcare practitioners have access to a range of ethical guidance. However, the normative role of this guidance in ethical decision-making is underexplored. This paper considers two ways that healthcare practitioners could approach ethics guidance. We first outline the idea of deference to ethics guidance, showing how an attitude of deference raises three key problems: moral value; moral understanding; and moral error. Drawing on philosophical literature, we then advocate an alternative framing of ethics guidance as a form of moral testimony by (...) colleagues and suggest that a more promising attitude to ethics guidance is to approach it in the spirit of ‘critical engagement’ rather than deference. (shrink)

Greg Bognar has recently offered a prioritarian justification for ‘fair innings’ distributive principles that would ration access to healthcare on the basis of patients' age. In this article, I agree that Bognar's principle is among the strongest arguments for age-based rationing. However, I argue that this position is incomplete because of the possibility of ‘time-relative' egalitarian principles that could complement the kind of lifetime egalitarianism that Bognar adopts. After outlining Bognar's position, and explaining the attraction of time-relative egalitarianism, I suggest (...) various ways in which these two kinds of principle could interact. Since various options have very different implications for age-based rationing, proponents of such a rationing scheme must take a position on time-relative egalitarianism to complement a lifetime prioritarian view like Bognar's. (shrink)

This book explores the nature of meaning, primarily through readings of the work of Walter Benjamin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Alexander Stern offers a critical analysis of Benjamin's philosophy of language, finding in it a common root with Wittgenstein's thought on language, and traces the historical foundation of both accounts of meaning to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German philosophy. Benjamin's theory of language is notoriously dense and obscure. In elucidating it, Stern emphasizes Benjamin's attempt to reorient the Kantian project around language-the (...) medium in which knowledge is expressed-and his concern with the logical understanding of language gaining credence in the work of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege. The result is a radical model of the relationship between language, experience, and the world that sees "absolutely everything" as linguistic in a broadened sense and which sees the logical or designative capacities of language as grounded in an aesthetic foundation. Wittgenstein and Benjamin are read in the book as complementary to one another, sharing comparable critiques of empiricism and comparable accounts of concept use, linguistic understanding, and the relation between experience and language. Although this similarity breaks down over Wittgenstein's account of the "experience of meaning," which is subordinated to his account of meaning as use, Stern argues that Benjamin's theory of language can productively address some unresolved issues in Wittgenstein's understanding of meaning. (shrink)

Interactive robots are used increasingly not only in entertainment and service robotics, but also in rehabilitation, therapy and education. The work presented in this paper is part of the Aurora project, rooted in assistive technology and robot-human interaction research. Our primary aim is to study if robots can potentially be used as therapeutically or educationally useful ‘toys’. In this paper we outline the aims of the project that this study belongs to, as well as the specific qualitative contextual perspective that (...) is being used. We then provide an in-depth evaluation, in part using Conversation Analysis, of segments of trials where three children with autism interacted with a robot as well as an adult. We focus our analysis primarily on joint attention which plays a fundamental role in human development and social understanding. Joint attention skills of children with autism have been studied extensively in autism research and therefore this behaviour provides a relevant focus for our study. In the setting used, joint attention emerges from natural and spontaneous interactions between a child and an adult. We present the data in the form of transcripts and photo stills. The examples were selected from extensive video footage for illustrative purposes, i.e. demonstrating how children with autism can respond to the changing behaviour of their co-participant, i.e. the experimenter. Furthermore, our data shows that the robot provides a salient object, or mediator for joint attention. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of this work in the context of further studies with robots and children with autism within the Aurora project, as well as the potential contribution of robots to research into the nature of autism. (shrink)

This article studies the impact of a robot’s appearance on interactions involving four children with autism. This work is part of the Aurora project with the overall aim to support interaction skills in children with autism, using robots as ‘interactive toys’ that can encourage and mediate interactions. We follow an approach commonly adopted in assistive robotics and work with a small group of children with autism. This article investigates which robot appearances are suitable to encourage interactions between a robot and (...) children with autism. The children’s levels of interaction with and response to different appearances of two types of robots are compared: a small humanoid doll, and a life-sized ‘Theatrical Robot’. The small humanoid robot appeared either as a human-like ‘pretty doll’ or as a ‘robot’ with plain features. The Theatrical Robot was presented either as an ordinary human, or with plain clothing and a featureless, masked face. The results of these trials clearly indicate the children’s preference in their initial response for interaction with a plain, featureless robot over the interaction with a human-like robot. In the case of the life-size Theatrical Robot, the response of children towards the plain/robotic robot was notably more social and pro-active. Implications of these results for our work on using robots as assistive technology for children with autism and their possible use in autism research are discussed. (shrink)

Research ethics guidelines grew out of several infamous episodes where research subjects were exploited. There is significant international synchronization of guidelines. However, indigenous groups in New Zealand, Canada and Australia have criticized these guidelines as being inadequate for research involving indigenous people and have developed guidelines from their own cultural perspectives. Whilst traditional research ethics guidelines place a lot of emphasis on informed consent, these indigenous guidelines put much greater emphasis on interdependence and trust. This article argues that traditional guidelines (...) are premised on relationships of equal power, and that often the researcher has more power that is not fully equalized by providing information. Where there is a relationship of unequal power, then focusing on interdependence and trust is more likely to achieve ethical safety. We illustrate this thesis by describing the detail of a research project looking at the use of interpreters, where we video-recorded live consultations and then interviewed the patient, interpreter and doctor. We conclude by suggesting that mainstream research ethics guidelines should pay more attention to the development of a trustworthy relationship between subject and researcher, and that, following the lead from clinical medicine, we should develop a culturally competent ethical framework for research on human subjects. (shrink)

We developed this study to examine the issue of parental refusal of treatment, looking at the issue through a cultural competence lens. Recent cases in Canada where courts have declined applications by clinicians for court orders to overrule parental refusal of treatment highlight the dispute in this area. This study analyses the 16 cases of a larger group of 24 cases that were selected by a literature review where cultural or religious beliefs or ethnic identity was described as important reasons (...) behind the refusal. The most significant finding was that nearly all of the cases cited unacceptable side effects as the main reason for declining treatment. We then analysed the detail of the cases and concluded that in the first instance a skilled clinical approach to develop an agreed management plan is by far the best approach. In the event that agreement cannot be reached we recommend engaging a mediator to help the clinician and parents/child to find an agreeable way forward. We argue that the option of se... (shrink)