The article presents a systematic and detailed account of scholarly developments on the problem of studying the process of nation-building and the role of history, memory, language and culture in reflecting this process. The research reveals that according to the premordialist approach, nations are not formed instantaneously, by the relevant political will or by coincidence of circumstances; the process of creating and consolidating a nation is a long and meaningful one, full of historical events and national cultural tokens. The primordialist (...) concepts are considered unanimous in their recognition of the exceptional significance of psychological factors in the creation of a nation. The creation of a nation involves a sophisticated set of linguistic, religious, ethnic, territorial and myth-household factors that determine the formation of a corresponding type of sociality. The framework of the analytics of the phenomenon of a nation includes not only psychological, but also social, cultural, political, ethical, moral and axiological aspects. The new system-building concepts such as solidarity, habitus, plebiscite were added to the discussion of nation. In view of that, it is impossible to carry out the reduction of the phenomenon of a nation to a particular problem field and to localize it to invariant indicators. The formation and optimization of the capitalistic type of social system generates new factors in the interpretation and consolidation of a nation. The reasons for a political defeat in the development of a nation can be referedr to either conscious manipulative techniques, or spontaneous miscalculations. Elaborating the alternative versions of history is nothing but unjustified politicization, implementation of imperial and colonial ambitions, overcoming which is a necessary prerequisite for successful nation-building. The establishment and offsetting of such manipulative influence facilitate the stabilization of the social situation and the resolution of conflicts, and, consequently, contribute to national development. The key point is to establish a nation within the framework of the international and state policy, especially by distinguishing the consolidating and disintegrating influences of state and international politicies on nation-building. The policy of uniting the nation can become effective when the important reforms do not deepen the fragmentation of the nation, but rather neutralize it. (shrink)

A. Raghuramaraju has curated and edited this volume, which proposes a major breakthrough in the field of philosophical studies. The volume reproduces not only Desire and Liberation and Kalidas Bhattacharyya's introduction to it, but also the letters that Bhattacharyya wrote to Chandidas, and Chandidas's own commentary on his text. In Desire and Liberation Vaddera Chandidas creates a new metaphysical system. The author rejects major convergences inphilosophy from both India and the West, especially on the ontological primacy of non-being that (...) results in permanence. He is especially opposed to the idea of permanence, which renders unreliable anything that is not permanent but changing. Chandidas points out that contradictoriness is the structural 'tinge' ofreality. (shrink)

Cosmology is currently a broad and rapidly developing field of knowledge.

One of the traditional ways mathematical ideas and even new areas of mathematics are created is from experiments. One of the best-known examples is that of the Fermat hypothesis, which was conjectured by Fermat in his attempts to find integer solutions for the famous Fermat equation. This hypothesis led to the creation of a whole field of knowledge, but it was proved only after several hundred years. This book, based on the author's lectures, presents several new directions of mathematical (...) research. All of these directions are based on numerical experiments conducted by the author, which led to new hypotheses that currently remain open, i.e., are neither proved nor disproved. The hypotheses range from geometry and topology (statistics of plane curves and smooth functions) to combinatorics (combinatorial complexity and random permutations) to algebra and number theory (continuous fractions and Galois groups). For each subject, the author describes the problem and presents numerical results that led him to a particular conjecture. In the majority of cases there is an indication of how the readers can approach the formulated conjectures (at least by conducting more numerical experiments). Written in Arnold's unique style, the book is intended for a wide range of mathematicians, from high school students interested in exploring unusual areas of mathematics on their own, to college and graduate students, to researchers interested in gaining a new, somewhat nontraditional perspective on doing mathematics. In the interest of fostering a greater awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life, MSRI and the AMS are publishing books in the Mathematical Circles Library series as a service to young people, their parents and teachers, and the mathematics profession. Titles in this series are co-published with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI). (shrink)

© 2016 Regents of the University of California.The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 3,062 new measurements from 721 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. All the particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We also give numerous (...) tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 117 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including those on Pentaquarks and Inflation. The complete Review is published online in a journal and on the website of the Particle Data Group. The printed PDG Book contains the Summary Tables and all review articles but no longer includes the detailed tables from the Particle Listings. A Booklet with the Summary Tables and abbreviated versions of some of the review articles is also available. (shrink)

In [4] the authors studied the residue field of a model M of IΔ0 + Ω1 for the principal ideal generated by a prime p. One of the main results is that M/ has a unique extension of each finite degree. In this paper we are interested in understanding the structure of any quotient field of M, i.e. we will study the quotient M/I for I a maximal ideal of M. We prove that any quotient field of (...) M satisfies the property of having a unique extension of each finite degree. We will use some of Cherlin's ideas from [3], where he studies the ideal theory of non standard algebraic integers. (shrink)

Perforation or gap formation in a vegetation is a major process in landscape transformation. The occurrence of gaps profoundly alters the microclimatical conditions in a vegetation. A method is proposed to quantify perforation by using the three main 2-D characteristics of the gaps: area, number and boundary length. New measures are developed by normalizing the observed values to the reference status of minimum and maximum perforation. As minimum perforation status, the presence of one single gap with area equal to the (...) map resolution is assumed. The new measures are combined using a 3-D Euclidean distance to visualize the process and to detect changes. The method is exemplified using a field case of gaps in a tropical terra firme rainforest at Tiputini, Ecuador. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results (...) between studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Due to investments in interdisciplinary research endeavors, the number and variety of interdisciplinary research centers have grown exponentially during the past decades. While interdisciplinary research centers rely on varied organizational arrangements, we know little about the conditions and processes that mediate collaborative arrangements and interdisciplinary research outcomes. This study examines how different collaborative arrangements shape scholars’ experiences of interdisciplinary research and understandings of interdisciplinary knowledge culminations in the context of university-based research centers. We conducted three in-depth qualitative case studies on (...) different centers, which recruited researchers from natural sciences, medicine, and social sciences. We refer to them as the Biotech Center, the Environmental Center, and the Premature Birth Center. Our analysis of 53 interviews with interdisciplinary scholars across the three centers demonstrates that the scholars perceive particular features of the centers’ collaborative arrangements as meaningful for interdisciplinary collaboration. Specifically, the center’s mission, physical architecture, and leadership and task structure were seen as affecting scholars’ motivation, interaction, and inclusion in the centers, which then shaped the interdisciplinary knowledge culminations. At the Biotech Center, knowledge was translated towards concrete products, at the Environmental Center knowledge was pooled together from varied fields to create new problem framings, and at the Premature Birth Center, interdisciplinary collaboration was crafted through top-down knowledge brokerage. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results (...) between studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

We argue that the ecological research community should develop a plan for improving the ethical consistency and moral robustness of the field. We propose a particular ethics strategy—specifically, an ongoing process of collective ethical reflection that the community of ecological researchers, with the cooperation of applied ethicists and philosophers of biology, can use to address the needs we identify. We suggest a particular set of conceptual and analytic tools that, we argue, collectively have the resources to provide an empirically (...) grounded and conceptually complete foundation for an ethics strategy for ecological research. We illustrate our argument with information gathered from a survey of ecologists conducted at the 2013 meeting of the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution. (shrink)

Building on the long-standing tradition of challenging oppression and questioning whose interests are being served in the field of language education, we report on a study that involved a group of U.S.-based graduate students who collaborated with a ninth-grade English teacher in Nepal. The study comes out of a larger project that sought to internationalize the curriculum of a graduate educational linguistics course at a U.S. university. At the heart of this internationalizing curriculum endeavour was a commitment to expose (...) graduate students in the U.S. to the issues of language teaching outside of the U.S. This was done through co-designing of a unit of lessons, with six graduate students meeting virtually with their teacher partner, Ditya, in Nepal over the course of a semester. The graduate students and Ditya constitute our research participants. The graduate student participants learned about the need to develop pedagogical materials that were relevant to the local context in Nepali classroom, and not attempt to transplant a Western-centric curriculum onto the Nepali classroom. In keeping with recent calls to decolonize higher education, we illustrate how critical theory in general and decolonizing pedagogy in particular can be infused into a U.S. graduate curriculum by drawing on the rich, indigenous knowledge and resources of a teacher collaborator from the Global South. We do this by reporting how this critical, decolonizing goal was realized through collaborative professionalism, which is characterized by the sharing of knowledge, skills, and experience to improve student achievement, reflection, dialogue and collective responsibility. (shrink)

Building on the advances made by feminist reconsiderations of methods, methodology and epistemology, this paper calls for an alliance between feminist social science and the emerging field of queer theory. By challenging traditional scientific approaches to research on sexual minority groups, a distinctly ‘queer’ approach is advocated that adopts a reflexive position on subjectivity and sexuality. While essentialist approaches privilege gay/lesbian, man/woman, and object/subject, this approach advances a framework of critical sexualities that moves social science into an arena of (...) inclusivity and multiple identities, rather than reductionistic categorical thought. The implications are clear: a rethinking of identity categories that transcend stagnant dualisms. (shrink)

Context: Constructivist teachers who find themselves working within an educational system that adopts a realist epistemology, may find themselves at odds with their own beliefs when they catch themselves paying closer attention to the knowledge authorities intend them to teach rather than the knowledge being constructed by their learners. Method: In the preliminary analysis of the mathematical learning of six low-performing Year 7 boys in a Maltese secondary school, whom one of us taught during the scholastic year 2014-15, we constructed (...) a conceptual framework which would help us analyze the extent to which he managed to be sensitive to constructivism in a typical classroom setting. We describe the development of the framework M-N-L as a viable analytical tool to search for significant moments in the lessons in which the teacher appeared to engage in what we define as “constructivist teaching” during mathematics lessons. The development of M-N-L is part of a research program investigating the way low-performing students make mathematical sense of new notation with the help of the software Grid Algebra. Results: M-N-L was found to be an effective instrument which helped to determine the extent to which the teacher was sensitive to his own constructivist beliefs while trying to negotiate a balance between the mathematical concepts he was expected to teach and the conceptual constructions of his students. Implications: One major implication is that it is indeed possible for mathematics teachers to be sensitive to the individual constructions of their learners without losing sight of the concepts that society, represented by curriculum planners, deems necessary for students to learn. The other is that researchers in the field of education may find M-N-L a helpful tool to analyze CT during typical didactical situations established in classroom settings. (shrink)

A unique description of the phenomena that arise from the interaction between quantum systems and their environment. Because of the novel character of the approach discussed, the book addresses scientists from all fields of physics and related disciplines as well as students of physics.

Like other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, ecological research needs ethics. Given the rapid pace of technological developments and social change, it is important for scientists to have the vocabulary and critical-thinking skills necessary to identify, analyze, and communicate the ethical issues generated by the research and practices within their fields of specialization. The goal of introducing ethics education for ecological researchers would be to promote a discipline in which scientists are willing and able to engage in ethical questions (...) and problem solving, even if they do so inadequately at first. Practicing ecologists ought to be able to identify and critically evaluate the ethical dimensions of their field studies because ecologists are at the forefront of important interfaces between humans and other-than-human organisms and natural systems. They are among the first to identify the impact of anthropogenic changes to the environments. Rapidly changing local and global environments mean that ecologists will be on the front line of any efforts to create a sustainable lifestyle for humans on this planet. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:nooK itEVIEWS 141 La Doctrine de la Revelation Divine de Saint Thomas D'Aquin: Actes du Symposium sur la Pensee de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, recueil puhlie sous la direction de LfoN ELDERS, S.V.D. in Studi Tomistici 37. Pontificia Academia di S. Tommaso, Lihreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990. Pp. 278. 30,000.00 lire. This collection of essays by distinguished scholars presents the acts of a conference on the doctrine of Revelation according to (...) Saint Thomas Aquinas. The volume contains twelve papers, four in French, four in English and four in German. The contributors are, in alphabetical order: A. Blanco, G. Cottier, O.P., Ph. Delhaye, L. Elders, S.V.D., L. Hodl, B. McGregor, O.P., J. H. Nicolas, O.P., L. Scheffczyk, R. Schenk, O.P., J. Schumacher, P. Stohr, and J. P. Torrell, O.P. The ground covered by their articles is as broad as the horizon of their authors. Aquinas's doctrine is confronted with problems ranging from the modernist crisis to those currently discussed in missiology. In theology, when one associates Revelation with Thomism, one is forced to think of Father Garrigou-Lagrange's De Revelatione, truly a landmark in the history of modern theology. Reading it, one cannot help hut to he impressed by the mastery and the clarity with which this eminent Dominican theologian of the antimodernist period disputes and refutes the arguments which threatened the Church at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, Garrigou-Lagrange's hook has never been translated into modern languages. And yet, in a certain way, volume 37 of Studi Tomistici can substitute for it, since it deals with issues closely related to those which Garrigou-Lagrange addressed in his study of Revelation. It also recasts the discussion in the terms in which it is expressed in the theological field today. For this reason, this volume provides a valuable resource for the contemporary student of theology for whom the details of the modernist crisis in the early part of this century have not only faded with time, hut also have become less pressing due to the complexity of the problematic which retains the attention of theologians in the post-Vatican II period. The focus of this collection of papers is the epistemology of divine Revelation, to the point that this could he its subtitle. Ten of the twelve articles deal with this question. Only Delhaye's paper ventures outside of the field of epistemology to cover the topic of morals, while Horl takes up the ecumenical question. Scheffczyk's article provides a broad perspective on the evolution and the perenniality of the modernist/antimodernist problematic in theology. He shows that the root of the problem lies in the epistemology of the 142 BOOK REVIEWS Enlightenment, i.e. in idealism, which imposed itself as the philosophy of the anticlerical nineteenth century. In the last part of his paper he demonstrates how Saint Thomas's theology provides the insights neces· sary to articulate the doctrinal unity which exists between the teaching on Revelation found in Vatican I and that of Vatican II. He draws the reader's attention to the notion of degrees of Revelation whose culminating point is indeed the beatific vision and which is prepared for by a historical unfolding. Schumacher and Stohr also deal with the modernist's characterization of the traditional scholastic doctrine of Revelation as an imparting of propositions. Schumacher reviews the theory of Revelation of several of the modernist theologians. A com· mon characteristic of these theories is an idealist epistemology that re· duces the life of the intellect to its immanent part and thus renders impossible God's communication of intelligible truths without violating the laws of Nature. Stohr, on the other hand, investigates current theological theories and shows how Rahner and Schillebeeckx encounter the same difficulty with the intelligible content of Revelation because of their attempts to reconcile the Gospel's claim of effectiveness in chang· ing lives with idealist philosophy. With respect to the main line of inquiry, Nicolas's paper deals explicitly with epistemology of Revelation. This study of the " epistemo· logical aspects of Revelation " has two parts. In the first, Nicolas provides a commentary on S.Th... (shrink)

Shepherdson [14] showed that for a discrete ordered ring I, I is a model of IOpen iff I is an integer part of a real closed ordered field. In this paper, we consider integer parts satisfying PA. We show that if a real closed ordered field R has an integer part I that is a nonstandard model of PA (or even IΣ₄), then R must be recursively saturated. In particular, the real closure of I, RC (I), is recursively (...) saturated. We also show that if R is a countable recursively saturated real closed ordered field, then there is an integer part I such that R = RC(I) and I is a nonstandard model of PA. (shrink)

We present an overview of the topics in the title and of some of the key results pertaining to them. These have historically been topics of interest in computability theory and continue to be a rich source of problems and ideas. In particular, we draw attention to the links and connections between these topics and explore their significance to modern research in the field.

This is Part 1 of a paper on fibred semantics and combination of logics. It aims to present a methodology for combining arbitrary logical systems L i , i ∈ I, to form a new system L I . The methodology `fibres' the semantics K i of L i into a semantics for L I , and `weaves' the proof theory (axiomatics) of L i into a proof system of L I . There are various ways of doing this, we (...) distinguish by different names such as `fibring', `dovetailing' etc, yielding different systems, denoted by L F I , L D I etc. Once the logics are `weaved', further `interaction' axioms can be geometrically motivated and added, and then systematically studied. The methodology is general and is applied to modal and intuitionistic logics as well as to general algebraic logics. We obtain general results on bulk, in the sense that we develop standard combining techniques and refinements which can be applied to any family of initial logics to obtain further combined logics. The main results of this paper is a construction for combining arbitrary, (possibly not normal) modal or intermediate logics, each complete for a class of (not necessarily frame) Kripke models. We show transfer of recursive axiomatisability, decidability and finite model property. Some results on combining logics (normal modal extensions of K) have recently been introduced by Kracht and Wolter, Goranko and Passy and by Fine and Schurz as well as a multitude of special combined systems existing in the literature of the past 20-30 years. We hope our methodology will help organise the field systematically. (shrink)

The perturbative approach to quantum field theory has long been viewed with suspicion by philosophers of science. This article offers a diagnosis of its conceptual problems. Drawing on Norton’s discussion of the notion of approximation I argue that perturbative QFT ought to be understood as producing approximations without specifying an underlying QFT model. This analysis leads to a reassessment of common worries about perturbative QFT. What ends up being the key issue with the approach on this picture is not (...) mathematical rigour, or the threat of inconsistency, but the need for a physical explanation of its empirical success. 1Three Worries about Perturbative Quantum Field Theory2The Perturbative Formalism 2.1Expanding the S-matrix2.2Perturbative renormalization3Approximations and Models4Perturbative Quantum Field Theory Produces Approximations5The Real Problem. (shrink)

There is considerable disagreement about the epistemic value of novel predictive success, i.e. when a scientist predicts an unexpected phenomenon, experiments are conducted, and the prediction proves to be accurate. We survey the field on this question, noting both fully articulated views such as weak and strong predictivism, and more nascent views, such as pluralist reasons for the instrumental value of prediction. By examining the various reasons offered for the value of prediction across a range of inferential contexts , (...) we can see that neither weak nor strong predictivism captures all of the reasons for valuing prediction available. A third path is presented, Pluralist Instrumental Predictivism; PIP for short. (shrink)

Much research in the field of emotions has shown that people differ in the cues that they use to perceive their own emotions. People who are more responsive to personal cues (personal cuers) make use of cues arising from their own bodies and behavior; people who are less responsive to personal cues (situational cuers) make use of cues arising from the world around them. An evolutionary explanation of this well-documented phenomenon is that it occurs because of the operation of (...) a cognitive module designed to enable the organism to predict its own impending behavior. This theory suggests that situational cuers would be people for whom external factors are the best source of information about their own future behavior, whereas personal cuers are people for whom cues about themselves are the best source of information about their own future behavior. Such a view is founded in the New Realist philosophy of the early twentieth century, a philosophy that affected psychology through the work of E. C. Tolman and J. J. Gibson. (shrink)

I discuss issues concerning the philosophical foundations andimplications of quantum field theory, renormalization inparticular. A new understanding of the correspondence principle,an unexpected role of perturbation theory and, most of all, acriterion to reduce the set of consistent theories frominfinitely many to finitely many, are the key concepts of atheoretical set-up that appears to overcome in a natural wayvarious consistency problems of quantum mechanics and offerseveral hints for further developments.

BackgroundPublic awareness and engagement are among the main prerequisites for protecting the rights of research participants and for successful and sustainable functioning of research biobanks. The aim of our study was to analyse public awareness and attitudes towards research biobanks in Latvia, and to compare these data with the results of the 2010 Eurobarometer study. We also analysed the influence of awareness and attitudes towards biobanks on willingness to participate in biobank studies and on preferred type of informed consent.MethodsWe developed (...) a 12-question survey repeating seven questions about biobanks from the 2010 Eurobarometer questionnaire and adding five others. After describing the study variables, we performed a two-stage analysis of the results. In the first stage we analysed differences between the answers from 2010 and 2019 and conducted univariate analyses of relationships among particular variables, and between those variables and the socio-demographic characteristics of participants. In the second stage we investigated multivariable associations of willingness to participate and type of consent with awareness, trust and the socio-economic characteristics of participants.ResultsAccording to our study, the general public in Latvia is still not well informed about research biobanks. Fewer respondents have heard about research biobanks than in 2010. At the same time, the number of respondents who are willing to donate biological samples and personal data to a biobank has increased, e.g. the number of respondents who would definitely or probably be willing to provide information about themselves has increased from 25.8.% to 40.7 since 2010. Overall, concerns about the donation of different types of biological samples and data to a biobank have slightly decreased.ConclusionsPublic awareness about biobanks is important for their sustainability. It needs to be increased not only by traditional methods of informing the public, but also by more innovative and participatory approaches, e.g. by citizen science projects. There is a need to strengthen the public visibility and trustworthiness of ethics committees in Latvia in the field of biobanking. (shrink)

How ought the historian to reconcile themselves philosophically with the fact of evental contingency and of its relationship to structural determination? Does the existence of contingent causation undermine the very concept of historical necessity, or do the two instead in dialectical entanglement? In this essay, I engage with the problem of historical contingency from a transcendental-materialist perspective informed by the work of Slavoj Žižek, tendering a philosophically serious response to the famous Pascalian conundrum of Cleopatra’s nose and its challenge to (...) structuralist accounts of historical causation. The position associated with Laplace – that is to say, that the course of history would be entirely predictable were one provided with a complete account of initial conditions – is firmly rejected. Instead, I revive Althusser’s attempt to craft a theory of ‘aleatory materialism’, in which the determinative power of structural forces nevertheless leave space for the radical and unpredictable transformation of a situation by the chance crystallisation of events and encounters. In this effort, I recruit conceptual architecture not only from the fields of historiography and philosophy, but also quantum physics, psychoanalysis, and mathematics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to the CommentariesLloyd FieldsAbstractIn this response, I address three points raised in the commentaries: the question of whether there is a legitimate formal use of “moral,” the claim that a certain sort of affective capacity is required for acquiring the capacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs, and the problem of how to show that psychopaths lack the capacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs. I maintain that there is (...) a use of “moral” according to which moral beliefs need not be rational. Regarding the affective capacity that Adshead identifies, I explain that I had not intended that such a capacity be constitutive of a moral belief, even an other-regarding one. I then try a new approach, in the light of Adshead’s commentary, to the third point addressed, according to which the psychopath is unable to form other-regarding moral beliefs because a causally necessary condition for doing so is absent in him.KeywordsMoral beliefs, moral understanding, personality disorder, empathy, incapacity, responsibilityThe criticisms offered in the three excellent commentaries on my paper raise deep and important issues. I agree with many of the points made and will respond to three key issues: (1) the question of whether there is a legitimate formal use of “moral”; (2) the claim that there is a certain sort of affective capacity that is required in order to form other-regarding moral beliefs; (3) the problem of how to show that psychopaths lack the capacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs.I concede that Duff establishes (Duff 1977) that the psychopath lacks moral understanding in Duff’s own content-based sense of “moral.” It is illuminating, however, to emphasize that in my formal sense a psychopath of the kind that I consider in my paper is capable of some degree of understanding of “moral” concepts. Unlike Duff, I do not build rationality into my account of moral principles. Hence, I can accommodate eccentric, irrational or even “crazy” moral beliefs like that of Duff’s split-infinitive fanatic. A person can have irrational factual beliefs; why not irrational moral beliefs?Adshead in her commentary attributes to me the claim that moral beliefs, including other-regarding beliefs, “result” in a disposition to experience certain emotions, and to have certain attitudes in certain situations. She then writes, “it is arguable that the disposition to experience certain emotions and have certain attitudes towards others could be critical to acquiring the capacity to have other-regarding beliefs.” There is only an apparent disagreement here. First, I intended to claim that a disposition to experience certain emotions, etc., is partly constitutive of having a moral belief, not a result of having one. Second, in specifying my third condition of having a moral belief, I had in mind such attitudes and emotions as approval, disapproval, indignation and remorse. Adshead identifies an affective capacity, aspects of which are the recognition of, empathy with, and sympathy with, another’s distress. This capacity seems to correspond more or less to what Rousseau described as “natural compassion” (Rousseau [End Page 291] 1973, 66–69), which arises prior to reflection and the use of reason, and which is exemplified by a mother’s responsiveness to the distress of her child. Rousseau distinguished natural compassion from moral virtues, which require the use of reason. I agree with Adshead that having this affective capacity is likely to be critical to acquiring the capacity to have other-regarding moral beliefs.Radden’s incisive commentary poses the problem of how to show that the psychopath lacks the capacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs, since this does not follow from the fact that he fails to form them. In the light of Adshead’s commentary, I should like to try a different approach to this problem. At least one type of situation in which we say that something, x, cannot do a certain sort of thing, d, is one where a causally necessary condition for x doing d is absent. For example, we should say of a car, not simply that it does not run, but that, as it is presently constituted, it cannot run, if we found that the carburetor of its... (shrink)

What makes ethical accounts natural law ethical is, I argue, commonly misrepresented in teaching within much of the philosophical academy. Yet those immersed in the field of natural law and ethics rarely give definitions/brief characterisations of what makes ethical accounts natural law ethical. I suggest theoretical reasons for the lack. I argue that bringing natural law into ethics is best understood as leading to theoretically unitary accounts, not simply collections of positions detachable from each other: an overlooked and significant (...) point when defending natural law ethical accounts. My arguments throughout rely on the metaethical/normative ethical distinction, which is relatively little used in the natural law literature. I argue that the distinction helps clarify what is distinctive of natural law ethical accounts in general, especially to the secular contemporary philosophical academy, where appreciation of natural law ethical accounts is commonly appreciably lower than in philosophical contexts with a religious ethos. (shrink)

Introduction: The use of human samples in genomic research has increased ethical debate about informed consent (IC) requirements and the information that subjects should receive regarding the results of the research. However, there are no quantitative data regarding researchers’ attitudes about these issues. Methods: We present the results of a survey of 104 US and 100 Spanish researchers who had published genomic epidemiology studies in 61 journals during 2006. Results: Researchers preferred a broader IC than the IC they had actually (...) obtained in their published papers. US authors were more likely than their Spanish colleagues to support obtaining a broad IC, covering either any future research project or any projects related to a group of diseases (67.6% vs 43%; adjusted OR = 4.84, 95% CI, 2.32 to 10.12). A slight majority of researchers (55.8%) supported informing participants about individual genomic results only if the reliability and clinical validity of the information had been established. Men were more likely than women to believe that patients should be informed of research results even if these conditions were not met (adjusted OR = 2.89, 95% CI = 1.46 to 5.72). Conclusions: This study provides evidence of a wide range of views among scientists regarding some controversial ethical issues related to genomic research, suggesting the need for more study, debate and education. In the interim, journals might consider including the investigators’ policies regarding these ethical issues in the papers they publish in the field of genomic epidemiology. (shrink)

Frank Plumpton Ramsey was born in February 1903, and he died in January 1930—just before his 27th birthday. In his short life he produced an extraordinary amount of profound and original work in economics, mathematics and logic as well as in philosophy: work which in all these fields is still, over sixty years on, extremely influential.

Physicists use different theories to describe the world on different scales. In particular, they use the standard model of particle physics at very high energies, but move to various effective field theories, such as quantum electrodynamics, when modelling lower energy scattering processes. One way to explain this methodological fact is pragmatic in spirit. According to this view, physicists move to an effective field theory at lower energies in order to extract predictions and qualitative understanding which would be difficult (...) or impossible to extract directly from a more fundamental theory. By contrast, another way of accounting for the methodological data is metaphysical in spirit. On this view, the reason that physicists use different theories at different scales is that the world actually exhibits different nomic structure on different scales. These two positions have recently been thrown into sharp relief in a debate between Woodward (2016) and Batterman (2021), with Woodward taking the pragmatist line and Batterman the metaphysical line. One difficulty with the metaphysical answer is that its content is unclear: in what sense exactly could an effective field theory provide a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability than our world’s fundamental theory? This talk attempts to provide an answer to this question by developing a simple metaphysical model. I start by assuming a set of possible worlds which are nomically possible according to some fundamental theory (I suggest that one is free to adopt either a Humean or Non-Humean view of these fundamental nomic necessities). I then introduce an equivalence relation between possible worlds: two worlds are scale-E equivalent if they assign the same values to physical quantities below energy scale E (up to some finite level of precision P). The key question now is whether this relation induces equivalence classes on the set of nomically possible worlds. I argue that in the case of current quantum field theories this does indeed occur, as evidenced by the possibility of “integrating out” high energy degrees of freedom in the renormalisation group framework. The formation of equivalence classes in the fundamental theory's possibility space indicates that some of its high energy features do not make a difference to its low energy dynamical behaviour. This suggests the following reading of the claim that an effective field theory provides a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability: the solutions of the effective field theory stand in one-to-one correspondence with equivalence classes induced by the scale-E equivalence relation, whereas the fundamental theory overcounts the physical possibilities which are relevant at scale E. In this sense, the effective field theory provides a more natural representation of low energy physics than the fundamental theory. I conclude by explaining how this metaphysical model offers a reduction compatible understanding of multiple realisability, once again pointing to renormalisation group results in quantum field theory to support this. (shrink)

SummaryEarly geological investigations in the St David's area (Pembrokeshire) are described, particularly the work of Murchison. In a reconnaissance survey in 1835, he regarded a ridge of rocks at St David's as intrusive in unfossiliferous Cambrian; and the early Survey mapping (chiefly the work of Aveline and Ramsay) was conducted on that assumption, leading to the publication of maps in 1845 and 1857. The latter represented the margins of the St David's ridge as ‘Altered Cambrian’. So the supposedly intrusive ‘syenite’ (...) was regarded as younger, and there was no Precambrian. These views were challenged by a local doctor, Henry Hicks, who developed an idea of the ex-Survey palaeontologist John Salter that the rocks of the ridge were stratified and had formed a Precambrian island, round which Cambrian sediments (now confirmed by fossil discoveries) had been deposited. Hicks subsequently proposed subdivision of his Precambrian into ‘Dimetian’, ‘Pebidian’, and (later) ‘Arvonian’, and he attempted correlations with rocks in Shropshire, North Wales, and even North America, seeking to develop the neo-Neptunist ideas of Sterry Hunt. The challenge to the Survey's work was countered in the 1880s by the Director General, Geikie, who showed that Hicks's idea of stratification in the Dimetian was mistaken. A heated controversy developed, several amateur geologists, supported by a group of Cambridge Sedgwickians, forming a coalition of ‘Archaeans’ against the Survey. Geikie was supported by Lloyd Morgan. Attention focused particularly on Ogof Lle-sugn Cave and St Non's Arch, with theory/controversy-ladenness of observations evident on both sides. Evidence from an eyewitness student record of a Geological Society meeting reveals the ‘sanit`ized’ nature of the official summary of the debate in QJGS. Field mapping early in the twentieth century by J. F. N. Green allowed a compromise consensus to be achieved, but Green's evidence for unconformity between the Cambrian and the Dimetian, obtained by excavation, can no longer be verified, and his consensual history of the area may need revision. Unconformity between the Cambrian and the Pebidian tuffs is not in doubt, however, and Precambrian at St David's is accepted. The study exhibits features of geological controversy and the British geological community in the nineteenth century. It also furnishes a further instance of the great influence of Murchison in nineteenth-century British geology and the side-effects of his controversy with Sedgwick. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett (1996) has disputed David Chalmers' (1995) assertion that there is a "hard problem of consciousness" worth solving in the philosophy of mind. In this paper I defend Chalmers against Dennett on this point: I argue that there is a hard problem of consciousness, that it is distinct in kind from the so-called easy problems, and that it is vital for the sake of honest and productive research in the cognitive sciences to be clear about the difference. But I (...) have my own rebuke for Chalmers on the point of explanation. Chalmers (1995, 1996) proposes to "solve" the hard problem of consciousness by positing qualia as fundamental features of the universe, alongside such ontological basics as mass and space-time. But this is an inadequate solution: to posit, I will urge, is not to explain. To bolster this view, I borrow from an account of explanation by which it must provide "epistemic satisfaction" to be considered successful (Rowlands, 2001; Campbell, 2009), and show that Chalmers' proposal fails on this account. I conclude that research in the science of consciousness cannot move forward without greater conceptual clarity in the field. (shrink)

The field of AI safety aims to prevent increasingly capable artificially intelligent systems from causing humans harm. Research on moral alignment is widely thought to offer a promising safety strategy: if we can equip AI systems with appropriate ethical rules, according to this line of thought, they'll be unlikely to disempower, destroy or otherwise seriously harm us. Deontological morality looks like a particularly attractive candidate for an alignment target, given its popularity, relative technical tractability and commitment to harm-avoidance principles. (...) I argue that the connection between moral alignment and safe behavior is more tenuous than many have hoped. In general, AI systems can possess either of these properties in the absence of the other, and we should favor safety when the two conflict. In particular, advanced AI systems governed by standard versions of deontology need not be especially safe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 68J The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview. By HANS URS VON BALTHASAR. Translated by Joseph Fessio, S. J., Michael M. Waldstein (Preface), and Susan Clements (Conclusion). San Fran· cisco: Ignatius Press/Communio, 1991. Pp. 127. $9.95 (paper). Except for the preface and conclusion, Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Theology of Henri de Lubac first appeared as the long essay, "Henri de Lubac-L'oeuvre organique d'une vie," in (...) Nouvelle Revue Theologique 97 (1975), 897-913 and 98 (1976), 33-59, and translated by Joseph Fessio, S.J., as "The Achievement of Henri de Luhac" in Thought 51 (1976), 7-49. The preface was added soon after for the German edition, Henri de Lubac: Sein organisches Lebenswerk (Frei· burg im Breisgau: Johannes Verlag, 1976). The conclusion was added for Balthasar's and Jesuit Georges Chantraine's Le Cardinal de Lubac: L'Homme et son oeuvre (Paris: Ed. Lethielleux, 1983). While de Lubac denied " a true, personal philosophical or theo· logical synthesis " in the multiplicity of his oeuvre, he did believe that there could he found " a pattern that constitutes its unity " (de Luhac on p. 10). A more systematic work had been planned with Bruno de Solages, Peres Congar, Chenu, and others. In de Luhac's words, " the lightning bolt of Humani Generis killed the project" (p. 11). We can only wonder at what might have been. At the center of de Lubac's thought is a spiritual perception of "the essence of Christian mysticism" (p. 11). A hook on this subject was planned hut never completed; its fundamental importance was indicated by de Luhac in 1956: "I believe my hook on mysticism has inspired me for a long time in everything I work on; in its light I make my judgments and gain the criteria for ordering my thoughts and ideas" (p. 11). The purpose of Balthasar's little book is to trace these "great spiritual options of the master" (p. 26). Balthasar wrote his preface after he had received from de Luhac the manuscript that would he published as his Memoire sur l'occasion de mes ecrits (1989; ET: At the Service of the Church (1993]). Accord· ing to Balthasar, this "meandering" text has great value in display· ing the organic unity of de Luhac's writings in the contexts which occasioned them-" as well as the legendary condemnations and banish· ments prepared for him by his order and by the Church" (p. 9). De Luhac adopted the " fundamental elan " (p. 13) of Blondel, Marechal, and Rousselot. They enabled de Lubac to see in Thomas Aquinas " the paradox of the spiritual creature that is ordained beyond itself by the innermost reality of its nature to a goal that is unreachable for it and that can only he given as a gift of grace " (p. 13). Balthasar is unambiguous in his belief in the correctness of their interpretation. 684 BOOK REVIEWS Blondel, Marechal, and de Lubac were " martyrs for truth " (p. 13). De Lubac " exposed himself to the attacks of a tutiorist scholastic theology, armed with nothing but the historical and theological truth" (p. 13). Of the three, de Lubac was the most persecuted. The conflict with scholasticism is presented in all its sharpness. One must go back to Thomas himself, over the commentatorial tradition of John of St. Thomas and Cajetan, whose work represents, in the words of Gilson, " a successful ' corruptorium Sanctae Thomae.'... Thomas has been castrated by it" (p. 14). Gilson's "unqualified assent" to de Lubac's Thomistic conclusions means much to Balthasar, because it is "the assent of the greatest authority in the field of the history of phi· losophy" (p. 15). Upon reading Sumaturel (1946), Gilson wrote to de Lubac that the difference between the scholastic and the humanist theologians, like de Lubac, in part lies in the way they understand propositions. The scholastics " understand only univocal propositions and those that seem to be univocal. The former [humanist theologiansJ, by contrast, are more interested in the truth that the proposition attempts to formulate and that partly escapes it" (p. 14). In their incomprehension and fear of analogy, the scholastics are represented as hankering after a security that... (shrink)

This is Part 1 of a paper on fibred semantics and combination of logics. It aims to present a methodology for combining arbitrary logical systems $\mathbf{L}_i, i \in I$, to form a new system $\mathbf{L}_I$. The methodology `fibres' the semantics $\mathscr{K}_i$ of $\mathbf{L}_i$ into a semantics for $\mathbf{L}_I$, and `weaves' the proof theory of $\mathbf{L}_i$ into a proof system of $\mathbf{L}_I$. There are various ways of doing this, we distinguish by different names such as `fibring', `dovetailing' etc, yielding different systems, (...) denoted by $\mathbf{L}^F_I, \mathbf{L}^D_I$ etc. Once the logics are `weaved', further `interaction' axioms can be geometrically motivated and added, and then systematically studied. The methodology is general and is applied to modal and intuitionistic logics as well as to general algebraic logics. We obtain general results on bulk, in the sense that we develop standard combining techniques and refinements which can be applied to any family of initial logics to obtain further combined logics. The main results of this paper is a construction for combining arbitrary, modal or intermediate logics, each complete for a class of Kripke models. We show transfer of recursive axiomatisability, decidability and finite model property. Some results on combining logics have recently been introduced by Kracht and Wolter, Goranko and Passy and by Fine and Schurz as well as a multitude of special combined systems existing in the literature of the past 20-30 years. We hope our methodology will help organise the field systematically. (shrink)

1. Aim and Scope of this Paper.—In this paper I shall try to show that “duty” derives its significance from its relation to “interest,” and that the former concept cannot be understood when taken apart from its relation to the latter. Such a doctrine is, I am aware, rejected by some contemporary philosophers; and I shall, I trust, make it sufficiently clear in the sequel why I am unable to accept their view.I am not, however, concerned primarily with criticism of (...) other theories. This paper represents an attempt to interpret a particular province of “the common moral consciousness” and to elicit the principles there implied. I begin by accepting the view that, like natural science, ethics has its data, and that it is the business of ethics to interpret these data which are the contents of the “moral consciousness.” In Section A I discuss various methods which may be used for the discovery of the relevant data, and suggest that initial enquiries can most fruitfully be pursued in the field of law and custom. In Section B I undertake an analysis of the principles of the law relating to promise-keeping. As a result of what is there found, it becomes necessary, in Section C, to discuss the nature of rights and their relation to interests, and, in Section D, the nature of duties and their relation to rights. (shrink)

Frank Plumpton Ramsey was born in February 1903, and he died in January 1930—just before his 27th birthday. In his short life he produced an extraordinary amount of profound and original work in economics, mathematics and logic as well as in philosophy: work which in all these fields is still, over sixty years on, extremely influential.

Excerpt from Vector Analysis and the Theory of Relativity One of the most striking effects of the publication of Einstein's papers on generalized relativity and of the discussions which arose in connection with the subsequent astronomical observations was to make students of physics renew their study of mathematics. At first they attempted to learn simply the technique, but soon there was a demand to understand more; real mathematical insight was sought. Unfortunately there were no books available, not even papers. Dr. (...) Murnaghan's little book is a most successful attempt to supply what is a definite need. Every physicist can read it with profit. He will learn the meaning of a vector for the first time. He will learn methods which are available for every field of mathematical physics. He will see which of the processes used by Einstein and others are strictly mathematical and which are physical. Every chapter is illuminating, and the treatment of the subject is that of a student of mathematics and is not developed ad hoc. The extension of surface and line integrals is most interesting for physicists and the discussion of the space relations in a four-dimensional geometry is one most needed. This is specially true concerning the case of point-symmetry which forms the basis of Einstein's formulae for gravitation as applied to the solar system. I feel personally that I owe to this book a great debt. I have read it with care and shall read it again. It has given me a definiteness of understanding which I never had before, and a vision of a field of knowledge which before was remote. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

There have been many advances in clinical ethics over the last three decades, since The Journal of Clinical Ethics first came about. This issue of JCE notes some of them. Fortuitously for this goal, new requirements for doing research just have been published, and the leading United States research ethics meeting has just concluded. The conference offered edge-of-the-field presentations in research ethics, and indicates where we should go beyond this edge: what we still have to do. In this article (...) I build upon foundations to explore what they imply for what we should do now in our clinics. (shrink)

If the opening sequence of a film is a microscopic 'event' that achieves far more than setting the tone and whetting the appetite for what we are about to see, then Todd Haynes' I'm Not There is exemplary. This paper works its way through the conceptually dense and intricately woven textual layers of the film's opening to stage a three-way dialogue between Haynes, Bob Dylan and Jacques Derrida: three mavericks who defy simple categorisation, by transgressing the boundaries of their respective (...) fields (song writing, cinema and philosophy). By introducing Derrida's deconstructive logic of hauntology as a strategy for reading Haynes' biopic on Dylan, the figure of the ghost is called upon to situate the quest for an identity's authenticity as a perennial, irresolvable problem in song, cinema and philosophy. Belonging to a time that is neither past nor present, a place that is neither here nor there, the ghost offers the perfect medium to join Haynes, Dylan and Derrida in (re)thinking identity in terms that respond to a call (in the name of art, justice and truth, among other things) that is not based on an unyielding conception of authenticity. (shrink)

We examine the possible role played by field angular momentum in two systems of vastly different sizes: (i) the nucleon and (ii) highly magnetic white dwarf stars. For the nucleon we study the restrictions on the nucleon's structure that arise from the requirement that the total field angular (spin, orbital and field angular momentum) should satisfy the standard angular momentum commutation relationship. For the magnetic white dwarfs we argue that the magnetic field may alter the statistics (...) of some fraction of the white dwarf's electrons from fermionic to bosonic. This would effect the stars structure, giving it a smaller than expected radius, and a lower than expected temperature. In some extreme cases one could imagine that this effect could lead to the collapse of the white dwarf into a neutron star despite being below the Chandreshekar limit. (shrink)

We draw from ego depletion and leader–member exchange theories to provide nuanced insight into why abusive supervision is indirectly associated with supervisor-directed destructive voice. A multi-wave, multi-source field study demonstrates evidence that abusive supervision has a positive conditional indirect effect on supervisor-directed destructive voice through subordinates’ relational ego depletion with their supervisors that is stronger for higher LMX differentiation contexts than lower LMX differentiation contexts. We make novel theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions by providing a parsimonious explanation for why (...) relational aspects of supervisory treatment drain subordinates’ capacities for controlling their volitional actions during interactions with their supervisors and how this relationship impacts subordinates’ supervisor-directed destructive voice. Overall, our study extends the application of ego depletion and LMX theories to the examination of abusive supervision and destructive voice in order to meaningfully inform researchers’ attempts to build cohesive streams of research in these areas and practitioners’ attempts to promote ethical workplace environments. (shrink)