Conducting research with vulnerable populations involves careful attention to the interests of individuals. Although it is generally understood that informed consent is a necessary prerequisite to research participation, it is less clear how to proceed when potential research participants lack the capacity to provide this informed consent. The rationale for assessing the assent or dissent of vulnerable individuals and obtaining informed consent by authorized representatives is discussed. Practical guidelines for recruitment of and data collection from people in the middle or (...) late stage of dementia are proposed. These guidelines were used by research assistants in a minimal risk study. (shrink)

Teachers in inclusive schools are often faced with the challenge of providing appropriate educational experiences for classes of students with abilities ranging from gifted to severely learning disabled. This challenge can be addressed either by the individual teacher or by a whole school approach. This paper reports on a study of the responses of teachers and parents to a trial of 'cluster grouping', as a model for meeting the educational needs of exceptional students. Data were gathered from teachers and parents (...) by questionnaire. The results remind us that there are factors, other than the strengths and weaknesses of a particular model, that can influence success. (shrink)

This book details Harris’s travels throughout the globe among common people through sixty-seven countries over twelve years. She stayed in a harem, wore a burqa, and slept on a sidewalk through the biggest battle in the Algerian War! Questions evoke critical reading and philosophical thought, and the book includes a bibliography of suggestions for further reading.

Roderich Tumulka’s GRWf theory offers a simple, realist and relativistic solution to the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. It is achieved by the introduction of a stochastic dynamical collapse of the wavefunction. An issue with dynamical collapse theories is that they involve an amendment to the Schrodinger equation; amending the dynamics of such a tried and tested theory is seen by some as problematic. This paper proposes an alteration to GRWf that avoids the need to amend the Schrodinger equation via (...) what might be seen as a primary set of solutions to the Schrodinger equation that satisfy a normalisation condition over space and time. The traditional Born-normalised solutions are shown to be conditionalisations of these primary solutions. (shrink)

Stephen Cole Kleene was one of the greatest logicians of the twentieth century and this book is the influential textbook he wrote to teach the subject to the next generation. It was first published in 1952, some twenty years after the publication of Godel's paper on the incompleteness of arithmetic, which marked, if not the beginning of modern logic. The 1930s was a time of creativity and ferment in the subject, when the notion of computable moved from the realm (...) of philosophical speculation to the realm of science. This was accomplished by the work of Kurt Gode1, Alan Turing, and Alonzo Church, who gave three apparently different precise definitions of computable. When they all turned out to be equivalent, there was a collective realization that this was indeed the right notion. Kleene played a key role in this process. One could say that he was there at the beginning of modern logic. He showed the equivalence of lambda calculus with Turing machines and with Godel's recursion equations, and developed the modern machinery of partial recursive functions. This textbook played an invaluable part in educating the logicians of the present. It played an important role in their own logical education.". (shrink)

These past few days, I have been reading a transcript of your speech at the Military Academy on 18 September [1966] and, to be frank, some of the key formulations in it are highly erroneous.

Stereotypes of social construction suggest that the existence of social constructs is accidental and that such constructs have arbitrary and subjective features. In this paper, I explore a conception of social construction according to which it consists in the collective imposition of function onto reality and show that, according to this conception, these stereotypes are incorrect. In particular, I argue that the collective imposition of function onto reality is typically non-accidental and that the products of such imposition frequently have non-arbitrary (...) and objective features. These conclusions are interesting in and of themselves since they debunk important aspects of our socially constructed conception of social construction. Yet, additionally, they have important implications for the viability of mathematical social constructivism since resistance to such constructivism is frequently grounded in the observation that mathematics is non-accidental, non-arbitrary, and objective. As a secondary focus, I explore these implications in this paper. (shrink)

In honoring Carroll Izard’s contributions to emotion research, we discuss infant facial activity and emotion expression. We consider the debated issue of whether infants are biologically prepared to express specific emotions. We offer a perspective that potentially integrates differing viewpoints on infant facial expression of emotion. Specifically, we suggest that evolution has prepared infants with innate action readiness patterns, which are crucial for early infant–caregiver social interaction, and in the course of social interaction specific facial configurations acquire functional significance, becoming (...) associated with specific emotions. Research has not confirmed the presence of innate neurophysiological action patterns that map onto discrete emotions but evidence indicates that the possibility has not been ruled out. (shrink)

The question of language development and origin is a subject that is vital to our understanding of what it means to be human. This is reflected in the large range of academic disciplines that are dedicated to the subject. Language development has in particular been related to studies in cognitive capacity and the ability for mind reading, often termed a theory of mind. The Social Brain Hypothesis has been the only attempt to correlate a cognitive scale of complexity incorporating a (...) theory of mind and intentionality orders to the archaeological record and hominin phylogeny. However, a method is still lacking that allows a correlation of the orders of intentionality (and by inference a theory of mind and language development) to the archaeological signatures that represent the physical expression of hominin behaviour. This paper is primarily concerned with introducing a new theoretical perspective – termed the identity model – which facilitates such a correlation between a scale of cognitive acuity, hominin behaviour through the archaeological record and subsequently language development within an evolutionary context. (shrink)

I discuss a puzzle that shows there is a need to develop a new metaphysical interpretation of mathematical theories, because all well-known interpretations conflict with important aspects of mathematical activities. The new interpretation, I argue, must authenticate the ontological commitments of mathematical theories without curtailing mathematicians' freedom and authority to creatively introduce mathematical ontology during mathematical problem-solving. Further, I argue that these two constraints are best met by a metaphysical interpretation of mathematics that takes mathematical entities to be constitutively constructed (...) by human activity in a manner similar to the constitutive construction of the US Supreme Court by certain legal and political activities. Finally, I outline some of the philosophical merits of metaphysical interpretations of mathematical theories of this type. (shrink)

The UK government has recently taken steps to exclude certain groups of migrants from free treatment under the National Health Service, most controversially from treatment for HIV. Whether this discrimination can have any coherent ethical basis is questioned in this paper. The exclusion of migrants of any status from any welfare system cannot be ethically justified because the distinction between citizens and migrants cannot be an ethical one.

This paper raises several concerns about vulnerability as an alternative language to conceptualize injustice and politicize its attendant injuries. First, the project of resignifying “vulnerability” by emphasizing its universality and amplifying its generative capacity, I suggest, might dilute perceptions of inequality and muddle important distinctions among specific vulnerabilities, as well as differences between those who are injurable and those who are already injured. Vulnerability scholars, moreover, have yet to elaborate the path from acknowledging constitutive vulnerability to addressing concrete injustices. Second, (...) vulnerability studies respond to, and have been shaped by, debates in the 1980s and 1990s over oppression, identity and agency. This genealogy needs to be acknowledged and evaluated. As I demonstrate, prominent theorists define vulnerability in contradistinction to victimization, adopting neo-liberal formulations of victims and victimhood. Finally, I turn to address the politics of vulnerability. At issue are not simply matters of utility or programmes for implementation, but the fraught relationship among ontology, ethics and politics, which I address through an engagement with Rancière's conception of the political and the case of the Black Lives Matter movement. (shrink)

I argue that God’s holiness as conceived in Hebrew Scripture grounds human obligations to obey divine commands. To disobey the commands of a holy God would disrespect a basic good, which we have decisive reason to avoid doing. God’s holiness may be a somewhat obscure property––though I propose transcendence and perfect morality as necessary conditions––but His omniscience and perfect morality guarantee that He would not command human beings to do things that His holiness would not ground His authority to command. (...) I conclude by replying to objections. (shrink)

A mass problem is a set of Turing oracles. If P and Q are mass problems, we say that P is weakly reducible to Q if for all Y ∈ Q there exists X ∈ P such that X is Turing reducible to Y. A weak degree is an equivalence class of mass problems under mutual weak reducibility. Let [Formula: see text] be the lattice of weak degrees of mass problems associated with nonempty [Formula: see text] subsets of the Cantor (...) space. The lattice [Formula: see text] has been studied in previous publications. The purpose of this paper is to show that [Formula: see text] partakes of hyperarithmeticity. We exhibit a family of specific, natural degrees in [Formula: see text] which are indexed by the ordinal numbers less than [Formula: see text] and which correspond to the hyperarithmetical hierarchy. Namely, for each [Formula: see text], let hα be the weak degree of 0, the αth Turing jump of 0. If p is the weak degree of any mass problem P, let p* be the weak degree of the mass problem P* = {Y | ∃X ⊆ BLR )} where BLR is the set of functions which are boundedly limit recursive in X. Let 1 be the top degree in [Formula: see text]. We prove that all of the weak degrees [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], are distinct and belong to [Formula: see text]. In addition, we prove that certain index sets associated with [Formula: see text] are [Formula: see text] complete. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn’s supervenience argument—focusing on the mysterious “ban on mixed worlds”—is still subject to a variety of conflicting interpretations. In this paper, I hope to provide a defense of the argument that clarifies both the argument and the objections it must overcome. Many of the extant objections, I will argue, fail to engage the argument in its true form. And to counter the more compelling objections, it will be necessary to bring in additional argumentation that Blackburn himself does not clearly (...) provide. One important upshot of this discussion is that moral realism is not the only target of the argument: it raises trouble for a variety of metaethical views wed to realist-friendly construals of moral evaluation. Rightly understood, this argument not only survives the prominent responses, but turns out to be more powerful than his critics and Blackburn himself have recognized. (shrink)

Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Vols. for 1972- include papers from the Summer Linguistics Conference, University of California, Santa Cruz.

In December 2007 it was revealed that the British government is considering the exclusion of certain groups of migrants—those considered to be present “illegally”—from primary health care provided by the National Health Service. At present, practitioners have discretion to accept any individual for NHS treatment regardless of their status. A joint Home Office and Department of Health review is examining this access for foreign nationals, and the likely outcome is the restriction of access to irregular migrants, which would, according to (...) the Institute of Public Policy Research, affect around 390,000 people. In 2004 such groups were excluded from NHS secondary care, most controversially from treatment for HIV, and so the present proposal would bar them from all but emergency health treatment. (shrink)

This chapter talks about the war between the Formics, a seemingly malevolent species of aliens, and humans in the Ender's Game. The great tragedy of the violence that erupted from the Human/Formic war was the result of two deep misunderstandings. The Formics not only failed to grasp the capabilities of humanity, but humanity also deeply misunderstood the creatures that they would come to nickname “buggers.” These misunderstandings may have resulted from what is sometimes called “cultural incommensurability.” The chapter relates that (...) what is most important about Ender is not merely his ability to understand his “enemy,” but his ability to love them. He is able to harness the sympathies of the humans and change their minds about the buggers. Along with the Formic hive‐ queen, Ender now occupies the space in between the two conceptual schemes—a space he can never retreat from—and has begun translating their meanings. (shrink)

Previous research on linguistic relativity and economic decisions hypothesized that speakers of languages with obligatory tense marking of future time reference (FTR) should value future rewards less than speakers of languages which permit present tense FTR. This was hypothesized on the basis of obligatory linguistic marking (e.g., will) causing speakers to construe future events as more temporally distal and thereby to exhibit increased “temporal discounting”: the subjective devaluation of outcomes as the delay until they will occur increases. However, several aspects (...) of this hypothesis are incomplete. First, it overlooks the role of “modal” FTR structures which encode notions about the likelihood of future outcomes (e.g., might). This may influence “probability discounting”: the subjective devaluation of outcomes as the probability of their occurrence decreases. Second, the extent to which linguistic structures are subjectively related to temporal or probability discounting differences is currently unknown. To address these, we elicited FTR language and subjective ratings of temporal distance and probability from speakers of English, which exhibits strongly grammaticized FTR, and Dutch, which does not. Several findings went against the predictions of the previous hypothesis: Framing an FTR statement in the present (“Ellie arrives later on”) versus the future tense (“…will arrive…”) did not affect ratings of temporal distance; English speakers rated future statements as relatively more temporally proximal than Dutch speakers; and English and Dutch speakers rated future tenses as encoding high certainty, which suggests that obligatory future tense marking might result in less discounting. Additionally, compared with Dutch speakers, English speakers used more low-certainty terms in general (e.g., may) and as a function of various experimental factors. We conclude that the prior cross-linguistic observations of the link between FTR and psychological discounting may be caused by the connection between low-certainty modal structures and probability discounting, rather than future tense and temporality. (shrink)

This paper provides a starting point for thinking beyond a research–practice divide and discusses possible new conceptualizations of intervention and the role of IT research in contemporary organizational settings. ‘IT research’ denotes a conglomerate of overlapping research conducted under the headings of Information Systems, Systems Development, Critical IS Research and Participatory Design. The paper applies this joint notion of IT research and the IT researcher to draw parallels across these niches of research regarding the question of intervention. Through an analysis (...) of selected field study events, a prominent notion of intervention (as being active as opposed to being passive) is reworked in terms of intervention as circumstance, a circumstantial interplay of situated practices. In closing, subsequent possibilities for repositioning the IT researcher are discussed in terms of reflexivity, facilitation or being a trickster. (shrink)

Undergraduate students with no prior classroom instruction in mathematical logic will benefit from this evenhanded multipart text by one of the centuries greatest authorities on the subject. Part I offers an elementary but thorough overview of mathematical logic of first order. The treatment does not stop with a single method of formulating logic; students receive instruction in a variety of techniques, first learning model theory (truth tables), then Hilbert-type proof theory, and proof theory handled through derived rules. Part II supplements (...) the material covered in Part I and introduces some of the newer ideas and the more profound results of logical research in the twentieth century. Subsequent chapters introduce the study of formal number theory, with surveys of the famous incompleteness and undecidability results of Godel, Church, Turing, and others. The emphasis in the final chapter reverts to logic, with examinations of Godel's completeness theorem, Gentzen's theorem, Skolem's paradox and nonstandard models of arithmetic, and other theorems. Unabridged republication of the edition published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York, 1967. Preface. Bibliography. Theorem and Lemma Numbers: Pages. List of Postulates. Symbols and Notations. Index. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas, one of the "founding fathers" of just war theory, offers an account of virtuous warfare in practice. The author argues that Aquinas's approach to warfare, with its emphasis on justice and charity, is helpful in providing a coherent moral account of war to which Christians can subscribe. Particular attention is given to the role of charity, since this virtue is the distinguishing characteristic of the Christian soldier. Charity compels him to soldier justly, and by fighting justly, he is (...) elevated by God to friendship with God. Notable features of this approach are its emphasis on the criteria for judging whether a war is just and its relativizing of the criteria for proper combat behavior. (shrink)

Until comparatively recently, say the middle of the last century, spinal cord injury was fatal as pressure sores and other infections took their toll. Those with severe brain injuries, unable to move or even communicate, fared even worse; without movement or feeding such patients were nursed until nature took its course. Over the last few decades medical and nursing advances have enabled some of these vegetative patients to survive for considerable time, provoking, at times, ethical and legal dilemmas. Though they (...) survived, without overt behaviour or clear communication their carers were frequently unsure how much residual function remained. Now real progress is occurring in this area thanks to the application of neuro-scientific methods by some outstanding groups of workers. Subjects with severe brain injury may begin in complete, unresponsive coma but then ‘lighten’ to one of three categories. In vegetative state (VS), patients are apparently awake but without evidence of voluntary behaviour and have no apparent awareness of self or environment, whilst in minimally conscious state (MCS) patients have some behaviour beyond the reflex but are not able to communicate effectively. These conditions usually result from widespread brain damage at either or both cortical and subcortical levels due to injury or anoxia, though they can also be seen in end stage neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s. In locked in syndrome (LIS), patients ‘awake’ from coma, usually due to stroke, aware of their surroundings and their situation but unable to speak or move, beyond eye lid control and eye movement. For many, LIS will be recognised from Bauby’s extraordinary account in ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,’ though, incidentally, it was presaged in Samuel Beckett’s novella ‘The Unnameable.’ LIS reflects a profound disconnection between brain and body, except for the upper cranial nerves involved in eyelid movement. The overriding question is how much awareness these patients have.. (shrink)

In a majority of situations the normal adult maintains posture or moves without consciously monitoring motor activity. Posture and movement are usually close to automatic; they tend to take care of themselves, outside of attentive regard. One's body, in such cases, effaces itself as one is geared into a particular intentional goal. This effacement is possible because of the normal functioning of a body schema. Body schema can be defined as a system of preconscious, subpersonal processes that play a dynamic (...) role in governing posture and movement (Head, 1920). There is an important and often overlooked conceptual difference between the subpersonal body schema and what is usually called body image . The latter is most often defined as a conscious idea or mental representation that one has of one's own body (for example, Adame, Radell, Johnson, and Cole, 1991; Gardner and Moncrieff, 1988; Schilder, 1935). Despite the conceptual difference many researchers use the terms interchangeably, leading to both a terminological and conceptual confusion. (shrink)

The last thirty years have seen a resurgence of interest in virtue among philosophers, psychologists, and educators. This co-authored book brings an interdisciplinary response to the study of virtue: it not only provides a framework for quantifying virtues, but also explores how we can understand virtue in a philosophically-informed way that is compatible with the best current thinking in personality psychology. The volume presents a major contribution to theemerging science of virtue and character measurement.

The long standing division of official responsibility in Britain, between the scientific and aesthetic aspects of environmental conservation has obscured more fundamental distinctions within conservation, such as its many different objectives and ethical bases. Furthermore the traditional treatment of the coastline as an administrative boundary may have been expedient in the past, but for many conservation purposes is highly inappropriate. Public administration of conservation in Britain has recently been reorganised, but the question of the administrative status of the coast and (...) sea has yet to be properly addressed. Consideration of the diverse needs of environmental conservation shows that traditional perceptions of the coast need to be radically reappraised. (shrink)

Each book in the Access to Religion and Philosophy series provides a concise and readable introduction to a key area in religious studies and philosophy for A Level students. The third edition of Philosophy of Religion has been updated in line with the revised 2008 A level specification requirements. It examines key issues including the proofs for the existence of God, the problem of evil and suffering and the relationship between mind, body and religious language. It provides a solid basis (...) for those who are starting A level courses in Religious Studies or Philosophy. The new edition combines all the strengths of the second edition with a new design and features to make the content more accessible to all students in order to develop their understanding of the topic. New features include: - Key questions throughout the chapters to help students focus on the key issues - Key terms defined and explained throughout the chapters - Profiles of key individuals - their contribution and significance - More summary diagrams throughout to aid revision - Revision checklists at the end of chapters - New exam-style questions and tips at the end of each chapter. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Liberal political philosophy has little of interest to say about the social liberty of the physically disabled. It accepts that the physically disabled and the able‐bodied are equally at liberty, even though the former can do far less than the latter; and it concludes that there are no interesting political statements we can make about their situation. In this essay, I assume that the physically disabled are unfree, not merely unable, to use public facilities which do not take their (...) disability into account, thereby excluding them. I criticise liberal theories of liberty by exposing and questioning the assumptions which entail the liberal theorist's rejecting this claim. I conclude that there is a form of negative liberty which does enable the liberal theorist to make political statements about the freedom of the disabled [1]. (shrink)