This paper draws on 'views and visions' responses collected at the time of the Land Use-UK project in 1996. Surveyors were groups of school children with contributions in more remote locations from adults. As well as mapping the landscape participants were asked about their hopes and visions for the grid squares surveyed. One kilometre squares were identified by stratified random sampling techniques from the Ordnance Survey National Grid. The responses indicated varying levels of optimism and pessimism. The sample of responses (...) in this paper relates to rural key squares ( N = 424) and urban key squares ( N = 413). Young surveyors appeared to be the most pessimistic and there was some correlation of increasing pessimism with increasing land use intensity. (shrink)

Infinite time Turing machines with only one tape are in many respects fully as powerful as their multi-tape cousins. In particular, the two models of machine give rise to the same class of decidable sets, the same degree structure and, at least for partial functions f : ℝ → ℕ, the same class of computable functions. Nevertheless, there are infinite time computable functions f : ℝ → ℝ that are not one-tape computable, and so the two models of infinitary computation (...) are not equivalent. Surprisingly, the class of one-tape computable functions is not closed under composition; but closing it under composition yields the full class of all infinite time computable functions. Finally, every ordinal that is clockable by an infinite time Turing machine is clockable by a one-tape machine, except certain isolated ordinals that end gaps in the clockable ordinals. (shrink)

Causal theories of content, a popular family of approaches to defining the content of mental states, commonly run afoul of two related and serious problems that prevent them from providing an adequate theory of mental content—the misrepresentation problem and the disjunction problem. In this paper, I present a causal theory of content, built on information theoretic tools, that solves these problems and provides a viable model of mental content. This is the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, which identifies the (...) content of a signal as the event the surprisal of which is most reduced by that signal. Conceptually, this amounts to the claim that the content of a signal is the event the probability of which has increased by the largest proportion, or the event that the signal makes the most less surprising to us. I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content in four stages. First, I introduce the general project of causal theories of content, and the challenges presented to this project by the misrepresentation and disjunction problems. Next, I review two recent and prominent causal theories of content and demonstrate the serious challenges faced by these approaches, both clarifying the need for a solution to the misrepresentation and disjunction problems and providing a conceptual background for the greatest surprise reduction theory. Then, I develop the greatest surprise reduction theory of content, demonstrate its ability to resolve the misrepresentation and disjunction problems, and explore some additional applications it may have. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of a particularly difficult challenge that remains to be addressed—the partition problem—and sketch a path to a potential solution. (shrink)

Background: Despite the expansion of ethics consultation services, questions remain about the aims of clinical ethics consultation, its methods and the expertise of those who provide such services.Objective: To describe physicians’ expectations regarding the training and skills necessary for ethics consultants to contribute effectively to the care of patients in intensive care unit .Design: Mailed survey.Participants: Physicians responsible for the care of at least 10 patients in ICU over a 6-month period at a 921-bed private teaching hospital with an established (...) ethics consultation service. 69 of 92 eligible physicians responded.Measurements: Importance of specialised knowledge and skills for ethics consultants contributing to the care of patients in ICU; need for advanced disciplinary training; expectations regarding formal-training programmes for ethics consultants.Results: Expertise in ethics was described most often as important for ethics consultants taking part in the care of patients in ICU, compared with expertise in law , religious traditions , medicine and conflict-mediation techniques . When asked about the formal training consultants should possess, however, physicians involved in the care of patients in ICU most often identified advanced medical training as important.Conclusions: Although many physicians caring for patients in ICU believe ethics consultants must possess non-medical expertise in ethics and law if they are to contribute effectively to patient care, these physicians place a very high value on medical training as well, suggesting a “medicine plus one” view of the training of an ideal ethics consultant. As ethics consultation services expand, clear expectations regarding the training of ethics consultants should be established. (shrink)

Bernard Williams charges that the moral psychology built into R. M. Hare’s utilitarianism is incoherent in virtue of demanding a bifurcated kind of moral thinking that is possible only for agents who fail to reflect properly on their own practical decision making. I mount a qualified defence of Hare’s view by drawing on the account of the ‘reactive attitudes’ found in P. F. Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Against Williams, I argue that the ‘resilience’ of the reactive attitudes ensures that our (...) taking an instrumental view of our dispositions to experience guilt and compunction, as Hare calls for us to do while engaged in ‘critical’ moral thinking, will not prevent us from experiencing these feelings as people ordinarily do while we are thinking ‘intuitively’. I also consider the implications of my argument for consequentialism more generally and (briefly) Kantianism. (shrink)

Stanovich & West distinguish between evolutionary rationality and normative rationality, and System 1 and System 2 mental processes. They hold that the main function of System 2 has to do with normative and not evolutionary rationality. We ask how System 2 could then be an adaptation, especially given S&W's own work on individual differences.

Editors and commentators ancient and modern have not responded very well to the challenge of the two riddles which round off the contest between Damoetas and Menalcas at the end of Eclogue 3 . The first is generally regarded as impossibly difficult; the second as impossibly easy. Critics take refuge in quoting Servius' despairing statement: sciendum aenigmata haec sicuti pleraque carere aperta solutione. Yet it is most unlikely that Virgil would introduce insoluble or meaningless riddles into the Bucolica. If there (...) is no solution the lines become pointless, even tasteless; and these are not epithets to be applied lightly to Virgil's poetry. (shrink)