There have been many famine incidents in the human history. Some of these have resulted in the disaster of the people. Muslims have also suffered from these famines. There have been countless famine examples from the time of the Prophet. One of the most significant of these famines is the famine incident that was effective in Madinah and its surroundings during the khalīfat of Umar bin al-Hattab (d. 23/644). This famine, corresponding to the 6th year of the khalīfat of Umar, (...) had negative consequences. In this period when the rains were not falling and the soil almost turned to ash, creatures were harmed, and some deaths occurred. When the opportunities in the city were insufficient to eliminate the shortage, the khalif asked for help from the surrounding provinces. The coming help eased the situation for the people. In this famine year, which is known as the Remade year, Umar did not collect zakat from the public, nor applied a sentence to theft in this period. Umar did everything in his power but as the effects of the famine did not lessen, Umar went to the rain prayer for the drought to disappear. When the rain came, life took its normal course and the people who came to Madinah from the rural parts due to the famine were sent back home by the khalīfa.Summary: There have been famine incidences in different geographies throughout human history. The Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia was also affected by these natural disasters. Mecca, which has a particularly dry climate, has witnessed countless famines from pre-Islamic times to the present day. Madinah, which became a center of attraction with the Prophet's migration, struggled with famines in the times of the Prophet as well as in later periods. Among these famines, the famine experienced during the khalīfat of Umar had considerably heavy consequences.The year of the famine in Madinah was recorded as Amurremade, which means the year was given that name because there was no rain at all, and the soil turned int the color of ash and was swept easily by the wind. The famine, which began in the late 17th year of the Hejira and continued until the beginning of the 18th year, lasted approximately nine months. During this time, the soil dried up, the crops did not grow green and the animals perished. The public was exposed to starvation and misery and had nothing in their hands. The bazaars and markets got empty, there was nothing left to buy and sell. People dug in the ground to find food and ate the lizards and moles they found.The famine had an harder impact on the rural areas of Madinah. Those living in the desert had to take refuge in Madinah when they could not find anything to eat. The severe drought even caused deaths in some tribes. The survivors had to eat whatever they could to stay alive. The animals they butchered had no meat, too. Thus, people removed the skins of dead animals and cooked them and gnawed on them or broke the bones of dead animals and ate the crumbs.When the famine continued for a long time, the living conditions of many people changed. Khalif Umar took some precautions to overcome the troubles of the people. First, he gave the food in the central treasury (Beytulmal) in Madinah to the service of those who suffered from famine. When the food in the Beytulmal did not suffice, he called for his governors to send aid to Madinah and its surroundings. The call was answered. Abundant aid was sent to Madinah from Damascus, Kufah, Basra, Egypt and Yemen. Thanks to the help sent, people were relieved. The aid sent from the provinces was planned to be distributed equally to both the people of Madinah and the people who came from outside and settled around Madinah. For this, Umar tried to determine the number of people in need by assigning some people. After the number of people was determined, he prepared a list showing the names and needs of those who suffered from famine. Documents bearing the seal of Umar were given to the public so that they could buy food. The aid also helped to decrease the prices. Because the prices of almost everything, particularly the basic necessities, had reached very high levels.Khalif Umar thanks to donations supported by governors founded also flour silos for those in need. Those who came to Madinah got food such as flour, bread, dates, grapes etc. In addition, some days, twenty camels were butchered and those who suffered from the famine were invited to get hot meals. For those who could not come, food was sent. This practice was continued regularly every month until the famine ended. When Umar could not find anything to distribute, he designated one family that had food to host another family that could not find food. After the rains started, the Khalif sent the Arabs, who came to Madinah in time of the famine back to their countries. He also funded them form treasury so that they could reach their homes comfortably. The Arab tribes were delighted and thanked for the good treatment Umar showed during the famine.Umar did not collect zakah from the goods during the drought period. However, when famine weakened, he took the zakat of two years together. In the same way, he did not apply the punishment to those who fed themselves illegally because of necessity.Umar worked hard to resolve the people's hardship and took all precautions in the famine period. However, the famine maintained its hard impact. Therefore, Umar decided to go for rain prayer and asked his governors to go to rain prayer, too. When people learned that Umar would pray for the rain, they all joined him. Caliph Umar, taking Abbas with him, wished forgiveness from Allah. The prayers were accepted and plenty of rain came down in and around Madinah. So, the famine came to an end and the people took a breath.Umar, the ruler of the Muslims, did not eat anything different from the people during the famine and sometimes was in a worse situation than the others. Many times, he preferred the benefit of others until the famine ended. For this, he was often hungry. This seriously threatened the Caliph Umar's health. These conditions were not limited to the caliph's person but also affected his family. Because Umar’s family members lived in more misery than other families. The conditions continued in this way until the famine lost its effect. (shrink)

Muitas expectativas povoam nosso coração de discípulos e missionários, às vésperas da Conferência de Aparecida. Uma delas diz respeito ao diálogo inter-confessional nas suas duas vertentes: ecumênica (com as Con) ssões cristãs) e inter-religiosa (com as demais religiões). Alguns, convictos do valor desta importante diretriz do Concílio Vaticano II, indagam se o diálogo estará devidamente presente nos debates da V Conferência.

William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, initially preached in Methodist Churches, later left this position and formed a social and religious formation called the "Christian Mission". This movement was named "Salvation Army" in 1878. The Salvation Army, organized in many countries, has established nursing homes for elderly, women and children and continues to attract attention and increase its reputation both locally and internationally with aid organizations, rehabilitation of prisoners, natural disasters, fight against human trafficking and aid to refugees. (...) In every region where The Salvation Army is located, there is an administrative centre known as the regional headquarters. Headquarters are headed by the district commander at the international headquarters in London. Smaller districts are run by colonels, larger districts by commissars. Resembling the Catholic Church due to its episcopal structure, the Salvation Army accepts the same beliefs as this church at the point of belief. Although the movement has also the appearance of a Protestant and evangelical church, it approaches the sacraments from a different aspect. In this research, the history, organizational structure, activities, belief principles and practices of the Salvation Army have been tried to be revealed. Descriptive, comparative and chronological methods have been used while conveying the aforementioned issues in order of importance. In addition, the literature was scanned and various sources belonging to the emergence period of the Salvation Army and especially those belonging to them were examined. (shrink)

Recently, research on uncertainty modeling is progressing rapidly and many essential and breakthrough stud ies have already been done. There are various ways such as fuzzy, intuitionistic and neutrosophic sets to handle these uncertainties. Although these concepts can handle incomplete information in various real-world issues, they cannot address all types of uncertainty such as indeterminate and inconsistent information. Also, plithogenic sets as a generalization of crisp, fuzzy, intuitionistic fuzzy, and neutrosophic sets, which is a set whose elements are characterized by (...) many attributes’ values. In this paper, our aim is to demonstrate and review the history of fuzzy, intuitionistic and neutrosophic sets. For this purpose, we divided the paper as: section 1. History of Fuzzy Sets, section 2. History of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets and section 3. History of Neutrosophic Theories and Applications, section 4. History of Plithogenic Sets. (shrink)

The question of how we can know anything about ideal entities to which we do not have access through our senses has been a major concern in the philosophical tradition since Plato's Phaedo. This article focuses on the paradigmatic case of mathematical knowledge. Following a suggestion by Gödel, we employ concepts and ideas from Husserlian phenomenology to argue that mathematical objects – and ideal entities in general – are recognized in a process very closely related to ordinary perception. Our analysis (...) combines Husserl's insights into the nature of perception and the phenomena of evidence and justification with case studies of the role of intuition in axiomatic set theory. (shrink)

Our investigation is concerned with the finite model property with respect to admissible rules. We establish general sufficient conditions for absence of fmp w. r. t. admissibility which are applicable to modal logics containing K4: Theorem 3.1 says that no logic λ containing K4 with the co-cover property and of width > 2 has fmp w. r. t. admissibility. Surprisingly many, if not to say all, important modal logics of width > 2 are within the scope of this theorem–K4 itself, (...) S4, GL, K4.1, K4.2, S4.1, S4.2, GL.2, etc. Thus the situation is completely opposite to the case of the ordinary fmp–the absolute majority of important logics have fmp, but not with respect to admissibility. As regards logics of width ≤ 2, there exists a zone for fmp w. r. t. admissibility. It is shown that all modal logics A of width ≤ 2 extending S4 which are not sub-logics of three special tabular logics have fmp w.r.t. admissibility. (shrink)

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as well (...) as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

Should cognitive scientists be any more embarrassed about their lack of a discipline-fixing definition of cognition than biologists are about their inability to define “life”? My answer is “no”. Philosophers seeking a unique “mark of the cognitive” or less onerous but nevertheless categorical characterizations of cognition are working at a level of analysis upon which hangs nothing that either cognitive scientists or philosophers of cognitive science should care about. In contrast, I advocate a pluralistic stance towards uses of the term (...) ‘cognition’ that eschews the urge to treat cognition as a metaphysically well-defined “natural” kind. (shrink)

When the policies and activities of one country or generation harm both other nations and later generations, they constitute serious injustices. Recognizing the broad threat posed by anthropogenic climate change, advocates for an international climate policy development process have expressly aimed to mitigate this pressing contemporary environmental threat in a manner that promotes justice. Yet, while making justice a primary objective of global climate policy has been the movement's noblest aspiration, it remains an onerous challenge for policymakers. -/- Atmospheric Justice (...) is the first single-authored work of political theory that addresses this pressing challenge via the conceptual frameworks of justice, equality, and responsibility. Throughout this incisive study, Steve Vanderheiden points toward ways to achieve environmental justice by exploring how climate change raises issues of both international and intergenerational justice. In addition, he considers how the design of a global climate regime might take these aims into account. Engaging with the principles of renowned political philosopher John Rawls, he expands on them by factoring in the needs of future generations. Vanderheiden also demonstrates how political theory can contribute to reaching a better understanding of the proper human response to climate change. By showing how climate policy offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, he illustrates the ways in which applying normative theory to policy allows us to better understand both. -/- Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Atmospheric Justice makes an important step toward providing us with a set of carefully elaborated first principles for achieving environmental justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I critique two conceptions of mechanisms, namely those put forth by Stuart Glennan (Erkenntnis 44:49–71, 1996; Philosophy of Science 69:S342–S353, 2002) and Machamer et al. (Philosophy of Science 67:1–25, 2000). Glennan’s conception, I argue, cannot account for mechanisms involving negative causation because of its interactionist posture. MDC’s view encounters the same problem due to its reificatory conception of activities—this conception, I argue, entails an onerous commitment to ontological dualism. In the place of Glennan and MDC, I propose (...) a “modified conception” of mechanisms, which (a) obviates the problem of negative causation by reinterpreting MDC’s activities according to a “descriptivist” account, and (b) avoids MDC’s problem by postulating a monistic ontology of entities. Thus, by solving these problems, my modified conception offers a cogent, more adequate alternative to Glennan’s and MDC’s conceptions of mechanisms. (shrink)

To understand better why evidence of student cheating is often ignored, a national sample of psychology instructors was sampled for their opinions. The 127 respondents overwhelmingly agreed that dealing with instances of academic dishonesty was among the most onerous aspects of their profession. Respondents cited insufficient evidence that cheating has occurred as the most frequent reason for overlooking student behavior or writing that might be dishonest. A factor analysis revealed 4 other clusters of reasons as to why cheating may be (...) ignored. Emotional reasons included stress and lack of courage. Difficult reasons included the extensive time and effort required to deal with cheating students. Fear reasons included concern about retaliation or a legal challenge. Denial reasons included beliefs that cheating students would fail anyway and that the worst offenders do not get caught. The reasons why instances of academic dishonesty should be proactively confronted are presented. (shrink)

According to immunology’s prevailing paradigm, immunity is based on self/nonself discrimination and thus requires a construction of identity. Two orientations vie for dominance: The original conception, conceived in the context of infectious diseases, regards the organism as insular and autonomous, an entity that requires defense of its borders. An alternate view places the organism firmly in its environment in which both benign and onerous encounters occur. On this latter relational account, active tolerance allows for cooperative relationships with other organisms in (...) the larger ecological economy. These contending orientations —one derived from biomedicine and the other from the ecological sciences— have drawn the attention of social scientists and culture critics. On the one hand, feminists have portrayed immune theory as based upon borrowed social notions of identity that reflect male aggressive values and thus distort more balanced accounts of immunity; and, on the other hand, other commentary projects immune theory as a framework in which analysis of Western societies putatively reveals analogous patterns of ‘self’ and ‘other’ interactions, where autoimmunity and immunization are understood as expressions of the insular understanding of identity. Here, a meta-interpretation is presented that shows how these critiques place the immune self on a spectrum stretching from its formulation as an autonomous agent, a modernist conception of the independent individual, to a postmodern portrayal in which this conception of selfhood has been deconstructed. Accordingly, immunology is drawn into a wide-ranging debate about agency, where differing interpretations of immunity serves as a template in which competing understandings of human social intercourse is modeled.Según el paradigma dominante en inmunología, la inmunidad está basada en la discriminación entre yo/noyo y requiere, por tanto, una construcción de la identidad. Dos orientaciones compiten por dominar: la concepción original, concebida en el contexto de las enfermedades infecciosas contempla al organismo como aislado y autónomo, como una entidad que necesita defender sus fronteras. Una visión alternativa sitúa firmemente al organismo en su entorno, en el cual suceden tanto encuentros beneficiosos como costosos. En este enfoque relacional, la tolerancia activa permite relaciones cooperativas con otros organismos en una economía ecológica más amplia. Estas orientaciones en liza —una derivada de la biomedicina y otra de las ciencias ecológicas— han llamado la atención de los científicos sociales y de los críticos de la cultura. Por una parte, el feminismo ha descrito la teoría inmunológica como basada en nociones sociales prestadas de identidad que reflejan los valores agresivos del macho y que, de este modo, impiden una explicación más equilibrada de la inmunidad. Por otra parte, otro comentario proyecta la teoría inmunológica como un marco en el que el análisis de las sociedades occidentales revela aparentemente patrones análogos de interacciones ‘yo’ y ‘otros’, en las que la autoinmunidad y la inmunización son entendidas como expresiones de la comprensión insular de la identidad. Se ofrece aquí una meta-representación que muestra cómo estas críticas sitúan al yo inmune en un espectro que va desde su formulación cómo un agente autónomo, una concepción modernista del individuo independiente, a una visión postmoderna en la que esta concepción de la identidad ha sido deconstruida. De acuerdo con esto, la inmunología recoge un amplio debate sobre la agencia en el que diferentes interpretaciones de la inmunidad sirven como molde en el que se modelan comprensiones competidoras de la comprensión de las relaciones sociales humanas. (shrink)

In Canada there is a growing demand for human eggs for reproductive purposes and currently demand exceeds supply. This is not surprising, as egg production and retrieval is onerous. It requires considerable time, effort, and energy and carries with it significant physical and psychological risks. In very general terms, one cycle of egg production and retrieval involves an estimated total of 56 hours for interviews, counseling, and medical procedures. The screening carries risks of unanticipated findings with severe consequences for insurability. (...) The daily hormone injections can be painful and uncomfortable, causing cramping, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, bloating, mood changes, and irritability. (shrink)

Critics have argued that human-controlled avatar interactions fail to facilitate the kinds of expressivity and social understanding afforded by our physical bodies. We identify three claims meant to justify the supposed expressive limits of avatar interactions compared to our physical interactions. First, “The Limited Expressivity Claim”: avatars have a more limited expressive range than our physical bodies. Second, “The Inputted Expressivity Claim”: any expressive avatarial behaviour must be deliberately inputted by the user. Third, “The Decoding Claim”: users must infer or (...) figure out the expressive meaning of human-controlled avatars’ behaviour through cognitively onerous processes. With the aim of critically assessing all three claims, we analyze data collected through observations of and interviews with expert players of the avatar-based video game League of Legends. Focusing on Daniel Stern’s (2010) notion of vitality, we analyze the participants’ descriptions of seeing and interacting with other avatars during performance. Our analysis shows that the informants experience human-based avatarial interactions as qualitatively different than interactions with bots, that the informants see the movements of other players’ avatars as having different expressive styles, and that the informants actively use and manipulate this avatarial expressivity during performance. The results of our analysis, we argue, provide reasons for loosening or resisting the three claims concerning the limits of avatarial expressivity. (shrink)

This article argues that, under likely empirical conditions, sufficientarianism leads not to an easily achievable duty to maintain a social minimum but to the onerous duty of maintaining a social maximum at the sufficiency level. This happens because sufficientarians ask us to give no weight at all to small benefits for people above the sufficiency level if the alternative is to relieve the suffering of people below it. If we apply this judgment in a world where there are rare diseases (...) and hard-to-prevent accidents that cause people to fall below the sufficiency threshold, all of our discretionary spending will have to be devoted to bringing harder and harder cases up to sufficiency. Nothing will be left for anyone to consume above the sufficiency level. (shrink)

I propose a new form of epiphenomenalism, 'explanatory epiphenomenalism', the view that the identification of A's mental properties does not provide a causal explanation of A's behaviour. I arrive at this view by showing that although anomalous monism does not entail type epiphenomenalism (despite what many of Davidson's critics have suggested), it does (when coupled with some additional claims) lead to the conclusion that the identification of A's reasons does not causally explain A's behaviour. I then formalize this view and (...) show that it is an attractive position, because it captures the insights of existing forms of epiphenomenalism without their onerous metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

The distinction between causal role and selected effect functions is typically framed in terms of their respective explanatory roles. However, much of the controversy over functions in genomics takes place in an investigative, not an explanatory context. Specifically, the process of component-driven functional investigation begins with the designation of some genetic or epigenetic element as functional —i.e. not junk— because it possesses properties that, arguably, suggest some biologically interesting organismal effect. The investigative process then proceeds, in a bottom-up fashion, to (...) search for those effects. I argue that this process encounters a problem reminiscent of one that Gould and Lewontin associated with the adaptationist program. Just as their stereotypical adaptationst became trapped in the myopic pursuit of one selectionist hypothesis after another, so can the investigation of CR functions in genomics lead to an unending series putative organism-level CR functions for junk DNA. This is an acute problem for genomics, because eukaryotic genomes are littered with transposable elements and their deactivated descendants which often masquerade as interesting CR-functional components and it is experimentally onerous to determine whether they lack such a function. I further argue that selectionist reasoning about TE-host coevolutionary dynamics can greatly streamline the investigative process. Importantly, selectionist hypotheses need not be well confirmed to be illuminating in this context. Informed selectionist reasoning about the strategic roles of TEs in the genome offers a corrective to the idea that most of our DNA is somehow CR functional for the organism. (shrink)

This paper argues that, if we are committed to a Pro-choice stance with regard to selective abortion for disability, we will be unable to justify the prohibition of sex-selective abortion (SSA), for two reasons. First, familiar Pro-choice arguments in favour of a woman’s right to select against fetal impairment also support, by parity of reasoning, a right to choose SSA. Second, rejection of the criticisms of selective abortion for disability levelled by disability theorists also disposes, by implication, of the key (...) objections to SSA, as developed, most notably, by feminists. The paper, then, consists of a conditional defence of SSA, under which SSA should be available, and protected by a right, if selective abortion for disability is. Opponents of SSA might respond by conceding additional restrictions on selection against disabled fetuses. It should become clear throughout the paper, however, that any such new restrictions would be unacceptably onerous for women. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, reaction quarantine, social distancing, and economic crises have posed a greater risk to physical and psychological health. Such derogatory mental health stigma is associated with adverse outcomes in the student population. The purpose of the current study is to provide a timely evaluation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its adverse effects on students’ psychological well-being to sustain economic sustainability. A thorough review of the literature and current studies, significant emphasis of socio-demographic indicators, interpretation of physical (...) symptoms, home quarantine activities, and COVID-19 unique stressors were extracted. Data were collected through electronic surveys from 640 university students at local and foreign universities. The findings revealed substantial adverse effects resulting in varying levels of stress, symptoms of depression, and specific discomfort in the case. Among COVID-19 stressors, financial instability, unpredictability toward future/career, and media exposure have been described as common factors that cause poor psychological well-being and weaken economic sustainability. COVID-19, quarantine, self-isolation, and onerous interventions primarily weaken university students’ mental health. The emphasis on this vulnerable category, however, is substantially absent from the literature. This research addresses the urgent need to develop possible solutions and preventive measures to promote economic sustainability by ensuring students’ psychological well-being. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Huw Price’s widely read “Truth as Convenient Friction” overstates the onerousness, and underrates the utility, of the ontological commitments involved in Charles S. Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth. This argument comes in three parts. First, I briefly explain Peirce’s view of truth, and relate it to his account of assertion. Next, I articulate what I take Price’s grievance against Peirce’s view to be, and suggest that this criticism misses the target. Finally, (...) I argue that Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth has greater explanatory power than the narrowly linguistic version put forward by Price, such that even the ontology-averse should accept it. (shrink)

Contemporary official parenting advice about disciplining children can be boiled down to ‘Be nice’. I first expand on this claim, drawing on primarily Birth to Five and secondarily Parentchannel.tv, showing that ‘Be nice’ breaks down into the absence of punishment and the expansion of both positive reinforcement and leading by example, these three components comprising an approach that is popularly described as positive parenting. Second, I examine the ways in which such apparently innocuous advice could be damaging: positive parenting is (...) arduous if not impossible, thereby setting parents up to fail, and partly because of this onerousness, it is arguably destructive of the spontaneity of the parent–child relationship. However, the difficulties of upholding a whole-heartedly spontaneous approach to parenting have led critics to endorse a model of the good parent as the reflective parent, and in conclusion I warn that this is just as coercive as the positive parenting model that it is designed to replace. (shrink)

Minds are obscure things. This is especially obvious and especially onerous to those interested in understanding the mind. One way to begin an investigation of mind, given its abstruseness, is to explore the implications of something we believe must be true of minds. This is the approach I take in this paper. Whatever uncertainties we have about the mind, it’s a safe bet that the mind is an adaptation. So, I begin with this truth about minds: minds are the product (...) of evolution by natural selection. In what follows, I trace some of the consequences of this fact. Doing so will take us some distance toward answering a variety of questions about the mind. (shrink)

Many philosophers and game theorists have been struck by the thought that the backward induction argument (BIA) for the finite iterated pris- oner’s dilemma (FIPD) recommends a course of action which is grossly counter-intuitive and certainly contrary to the way in which people behave in real-life FIPD-situations (Luce and Raiffa 1957, Pettit and Sugden 1989, Bovens 1997).1 Yet the backwards induction argument puts itself forward as binding upon rational agents. What are we to conclude from this? Is it that people (...) in real-life FIPD-situations tend to act irrationally and that our own intuitions about what to do in such situations reveal us to be irra- tional? Alternatively, should we abandon game theory and decision theory as a guide to rationality? Or are there other ways in which the apparent disparity between the dictates of rationality and the reality of reasoning can be accommodated? (shrink)

The use of context can considerably facilitate reasoning by restricting the beliefs reasoned upon to those relevant and providing extra information specific to the context. Despite the use and formalization of context being extensively studied both in AI and ML, context has not been much utilized in agents. This may be because many agents are only applied in a single context, and so these aspects are implicit in their design, or it may be that the need to explicitly encode information (...) about various contexts is onerous. An algorithm to learn the appropriate context along with knowledge relevant to that context gets around these difficulties and opens the way for the exploitation of context in agent design. The algorithm is described and the agents compared with agents that learn and apply knowledge in a generic way within an artificial stock market. The potential for context as a principled manner of closely integrating crisp reasoning and fuzzy learning is discussed. (shrink)

The notion that all the world's peoples constitute a "brotherhood of man" is not a given among all human beings -- it is rather the product of history. So suggests acclaimed philosopher Alain Finkielkraut in _In the Name of Humanity,_ an unsettling reflection on the twentieth century in its twilight hours in which he asks us to rethink our assumptions about universalism and humanism. While many people look to humanist ideals as a deterrent to nationalist chauvinism, Finkielkraut challenges the abstract (...) idea of universalism by describing the terrible crimes "civilized" Europe has committed in its name. At the same time as it challenges the inhumanity of our century's great universalistic solutions, _In the Name of Humanity_ also confronts the more onerous elements of unreflective nationalism -- clearly condemning the dangerous use of claims for ethnic purity. However, the book does not put forth a standard-issue polemic against the multitude of nationalistic currents that continue to plague the international arena. Indeed, even as he deplores the violence that seems to go hand in hand with nationalism, Finkielkraut defends its underlying cause -- the need to belong. Eloquently quoting the experiences of refugees from Hitler's Germany, he shows the reader why we must heed the call of this irreducible need. Finkielkraut reminds us that the concept of cultural relativism -- indeed, the very idea of tolerating other cultures -- is a relatively recent development in Western history. As he looks for answers he interrogates the differences between historical racism and the racism embedded in the philosophies of this century's genocidal movements, showing how modern racist ideologies like National Socialism look not to sin within the self as the stumbling block of human advancement but to a clandestine conspiracy by a particular, identifiable element of human society. What this form of radical racist thought eliminates is the notion of personal responsibility -- instead of finding the answers to misfortune within the self, modern racism suggests that evil can be identified in others and summarily eliminated. Lucidly connected to the ideas of past thinkers, from Plato to Levinas to Hannah Arendt, Finkielkraut's latest work is a troubling indictment of our century that refuses to back away from the "messiness" of human life and culture. In his willingness to abjure simple solutions, he offers a glimmer of hope. (shrink)

While health care professionals advise those who have undergone weight loss surgery to increase their levels of physical activity, research suggests that often this is not achieved. This paper explores the experiences of ten Norwegian women as they engaged in physical activity several years after weight loss surgery. In contrast to the existing literature, which explores physical activity post-WLS largely in terms of quantitative data and measurable outcomes, the present study sought to explore women’s lived experiences of physical activity, including (...) the meanings they ascribed to different forms of activity and how such meanings changed over time. The research participants, all of whom had undergone WLS more than five years earlier, described the meanings they attached to becoming physically active, as well as the different activities and movement practices they engaged in, from interval training to mountain hiking and yoga. For all the women, maintaining and increasing their level of physical activity was challenging. On the one hand, engaging in exercise after weight loss improved their sense of joy and well-being and expanded their opportunities to move and act. On the other hand, during physical activity they needed to be constantly alert to symptoms of post-surgical side-effects, including variable energy levels, digestive problems and acute illness episodes. As the women explored their new capacities, it seemed to be important for them to explore various forms of physical activity in order to find the form of exercise which best suited them or which they most enjoyed. In some cases, they constructed new meanings around activities which, prior to surgery, had seemed onerous and bereft of pleasure. We argue that such insights will benefit health professionals who provide advice on physical activity at different post-surgical stages, sometimes to persons seriously concerned about regaining weight. (shrink)

In a justifiably famous passage in Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates discusses whether or not the truly wicked, those who perpetrate injustices against humankind, can be happy. This issue has been the subject of countless commentaries by moral philosophers. In the end, Socrates comes to the reassuring conclusion that the unjust cannot really be happy.It is well known of course that Socrates argues for what is called by one writer “the supreme crowning paradox” of Socratic ethics: Socrates makes the case that the (...) worst thing that can happen to a person is that he or she should commit some terrible wrong and escape the corrective influence of justice. This supremely paradoxicalsounding insight is important not only for what it tells us about Socratic thinking on ethical matters, but more importantly because of the way that the conclusion that Socrates desperately wants to draw — that the perpetrators of injustice are miserable and ultimately suffer — is one that has stimulated moral inquiry. It has led to the search by many philosophers for a master argument which might show that whatever lure immorality might have for us, it is not only bad for us, but it is ultimately irrational for us to be unjust.If shown, a persuasive argument for the ultimate irrationality of injustice would be a powerful argument for encouraging the motivation to justice and morality, however onerous the commitment to the moral conventions of our society might be. Such an argument must show that whatever might be the lure of perpetrating injustice, it is an illusion which rational argumentation can show. (shrink)

As the new director of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World, I have no deep sense of departure from Philosophy in the Contemporary World. I am simply losing a task that has at times been, in all honesty, difficult and onerous. As with childbirth, I am told, however, memory of the pain gives way to memory of the glory. And it is to the birth of children I would compare each successive issue of the journal since 1997. The (...) journal is healthy, increasing in subscriptions, and looking ahead to being administered and published by the Philosophy Documentation Center. It is a source of pride for the society's members, who indeed form a multitude of parents. Jim Sauer is an able new shepherd, and will take the journal to heights I could not. In ways I feel like I can be more supportive of the journal, and its editor, now that I am not doing the work myself. I am strongly committed to that support. (shrink)

This Article proposes a thought-experiment with regard to the administration of class actions. It is almost axiomatic that class actions are determined through a single “certification.” However, class actions can be certified through a tiered certification, e.g., a preliminary certification on a more lenient standard, followed by a full certification. Flattening the certification process allows a richer set of solutions to familiar dilemmas. Currently, a noncertified class does not bar subsequent certification attempts. Focusing on this problem, this Article demonstrates that (...) tiered certification is a superior solution — members of a class that passed the first certification but not the second receive at least minimal procedural protection and thus could be precluded from serial certification attempts. More generally, tiered certification can better handle several species of collective litigation, which can be referred to as semi-class actions. Collective proceedings, whose certification costs are greater than their social benefit, do not justify a comprehensive class treatment. But to the extent that these cases entail some modest social value, they deserve to pass a less onerous, preliminary certification. The Article discusses cases that fit this pattern, for instance prospective, class-wide relief for technical regulatory violations. (shrink)

In The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism, George H. Smith focuses his thematic approach regarding the study of classical liberal political philosophy on both natural-rights philosophers, in what Smith deems the “Lockean Paradigm,” and nineteenth-century utilitarian liberals. Smith does not merely provide an overview of the history of this theory—rather, he attempts to discover how and why liberal theory had faced major challenges in the nineteenth-century with regard to both its theoretical foundations and its level (...) of public support. Concluding, along with Herbert Spencer, that following positive results in innovation and in the economic sphere, which were achieved through the reduction of government power, “most people, seeing that these beneficial results had something to do with government, failed to differentiate between the repeal of onerous laws and the passing of new laws” (p. 213), Smith attempts to discover why liberals were unsuccessful in clai. (shrink)

Insects have small brains and heuristics or ‘rules of thumb’ are proposed here to be a good model for how insects optimize the objects they make and use. Generally, heuristics are thought to increase the speed of decision making by reducing the computational resources needed for making decisions. By corollary, heuristic decisions are also deemed to impose a compromise in decision accuracy. Using examples from object optimization behaviour in insects, we will argue that heuristics do not inevitably imply a lower (...) computational burden or lower decision accuracy. We also show that heuristic optimization may be driven by certain features of the optimization problem itself: the properties of the object being optimized, the biology of the insect, and the properties of the function being optimized. We also delineate the structural conditions under which heuristic optimization may achieve accuracy equivalent to or better than more fine-grained and onerous optimization methods. (shrink)

Eros and Illness explores the place of desire in illness. We urgently need such an exploration because illness is no longer simply a natural feature of the human condition. Most people fall ill, but illness now falls under the supervision of biomedicine, a science-based, state-regulated system dominated by the new molecular gaze. The use of a person's distinctive genetic data to guide treatment and to forestall disease--called "personalized medicine"-- reflects how the molecular gaze can produce valuable advances in biomedical healthcare. (...) What does this indispensable super-vision, however, tend to overlook? Eros and Illness proposes that biomedicine ignores, in clinical practice and in bench science, the powerful role of desire in illness. Desire, always double-edged, requires attention because it can do both great harm and great good. Patients, caregivers, family members, and physicians, as they recognize the role of desire, gain access to a power that can make the passage through illness much less onerous and far more healing: truly "personalized. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001) 343-354 [Access article in PDF] "Always a Third Party Who Says 'Me'": Rhetoric and Alterity 1 Bradford Vivian In his thoughtful and provocative response to my essay, "The Threshold of the Self" (Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4: 303-18), Philip Lewin offers a series of related critiques concerning my discussion of the affinities between rhetoric and subjectivity. In that essay I posited that a revised understanding (...) of rhetoric allows us to account for the formation of subjectivity without the lingering influence of Cartesian ideals. Lewin, however, argues that my use of self-persuasion to explain the aesthetic formation of subjectivity "suggests a kind of autonomy and self-transparency in self-formation that has discouragingly Cartesian overtones" (335). He cites my thesis that "In order to compose and cultivate one's being in the world, one must persuade one's self to choose and orchestrate certain styles of life from among those available into an entire aesthetics of being" (316-17). Subsequently, Lewin asks, "How does this process of self-persuasion actually take place? What aspect or agency of psyche is doing the persuading?" (336) In short, Lewin argues that the notion of self-persuasion necessarily, even if unwittingly, preserves a valorization of subjective consciousness--a governing seat of intuitive reason. There is a sense in which I agree with the general critique offered here. Although I attempted to advance an account of thought that affirmed the ways in which consciousness is engendered by power relations and regimes of truth, the notion of self-persuasion remains too evocative of an ideal and rationally governed subject, too vulnerable to Lewin's claim that it "reintroduce[s] several of the cogito's essential features" (4), for it to define the affiliation between rhetoric and subjectivity.If Lewin and I agree that the master concept of self-persuasion proves untenable, we nevertheless reach this conclusion by different means. In fact, I argue that the manner in which Lewin arrives at this conclusion [End Page 343] ironically endorses the sort of imperatives for which he indicts my essay. Neither Lewin's nor my implicit endorsement of such imperatives should be cause for lament, however. Rather, I would like to suggest that there is much to learn from the distinct ways in which both Lewin and I have yet to overcome certain values and ideals.Instead of simply defending my previous essay, then, I attempt in the majority of what follows to respond to Lewin's critiques as a way of provoking still further discussion of rhetoric and subjectivity. Before doing so, I first comment upon Lewin's response in order to clarify my essay's guiding aspirations and explore the ways in which they may have been comprised. Thereafter, I propose a discourse on rhetoric and subjectivity whose revised methodology seeks to realize the aspirations of my previous essay in a more convincing fashion.Lewin's objections concerning my use of self-persuasion serve to remind us that the critical transformation of our language and conceptuality is fundamentally constrained by the history and grammar of that language and conceptuality. Simply put, a concept like self-persuasion may carry too much Cartesian baggage to accomplish the task for which I selected it. The onerous weight of such baggage is evinced less by the precision of Lewin's critique and more by the fact that the language of my essay could be made to support that critique.Therefore, let me briefly review the aspirations of my inquiry. I intended to initiate a rethinking of rhetoric and subjectivity that acknowledged the formative influence of historical subject positions on the self without reducing the life of the self to those subject positions. Instead of measuring subjectivity against the ideal of a transcendent and essential subject position influenced only by the transparency of reason, I sought to offer a discourse on subjectivity that affirmed the principles of difference, multiplicity, becoming, and variation in the formation of the self. Such a discourse, as I imagined it, would not deny that reason, agency, or essence come to pass... (shrink)

Careful attention to contemporary political debates, including those around global warming, the federal debt, and the use of drone strikes on suspected terrorists, reveals that we often view our responsibility as something that can be quantified and discharged. Shalini Satkunanandan shows how Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Weber, and Heidegger each suggest that this calculative or bookkeeping mindset both belongs to 'morality', understood as part of our ordinary approach to responsibility, and effaces the incalculable, undischargeable, and more onerous dimensions of our responsibility. (...) These thinkers also reveal how the view of responsibility as calculable is at the heart of 'moralism' - the pettifogging, mindless, legalistic, excessively judgmental, or punitive policing of our own or others' compliance with moral duties. By elaborating their narratives of a difficult 'conversion' to the open-ended and relentless character of responsibility, Satkunanandan explores how we might be less moralistic and more responsible in politics. She ultimately argues for a political ethos attentive to how calculative thinking can limit our responsibility, but that still accepts a circumscribed place for calculation in responsible politics. (shrink)

The perfect fit of syntactic derivability and logical consequence in first-order logic is one of the most celebrated facts of modern logic. In the present flurry of attention given to the semantics of natural language, surprisingly little effort has been focused on the problem of logical inference in natural language and the possibility of its completeness. Even the traditional theory of the syllogism does not give a thorough analysis of the restricted syntax it uses.My objective is to show how a (...) theory of inference may be formulated for a fragment of English that includes a good deal more than the classical syllogism. The syntax and semantics are made as formal and as explicit as is customary for artificial formal languages. The fragment chosen is not maximal but is restricted severely in order to provide a clear overview of the method without the cluttering details that seem to be an inevitable part of any grammar covering a substantial fragment of a natural language. (Some readers may feel the details given here are too onerous.). (shrink)

In Australia, along with many other countries, limited guidance or other support strategies are currently available to researchers, institutional research ethics committees, and others responsible for making decisions about whether to return genomic findings with potential value to participants or their blood relatives. This lack of guidance results in onerous decision-making burdens—traversing technical, interpretative, and ethical dimensions—as well as uncertainty and inconsistencies for research participants. This article draws on a recent targeted consultation conducted by the Australian National Health and Medical (...) Research Council to put forward strategies for supporting return of finding decision-making. In particular, we propose a pyramid of decision-making support: decision-making guidelines, technical and interpretative assistance, and ethical assistance for intractable “tough” cases. Each step of the pyramid involves an increasing level of regulatory involvement and applies to a smaller subsection of genomic research findings. Implementation of such strategies would facilitate a growing evidence base for return of finding decisions, thereby easing the financial, time, and moral burdens currently placed on researchers and other relevant decision-makers while also improving the quality of such decisions and, consequently, participant outcomes. (shrink)

Despite the frequency of stillbirths, the subsequent implications are overlooked and underappreciated. We present findings from comprehensive, systematic literature reviews, and new analyses of published and unpublished data, to establish the effect of stillbirth on parents, families, health-care providers, and societies worldwide. Data for direct costs of this event are sparse but suggest that a stillbirth needs more resources than a livebirth, both in the perinatal period and in additional surveillance during subsequent pregnancies. Indirect and intangible costs of stillbirth are (...) extensive and are usually met by families alone. This issue is particularly onerous for those with few resources. Negative effects, particularly on parental mental health, might be moderated by empathic attitudes of care providers and tailored interventions. The value of the baby, as well as the associated costs for parents, families, care providers, communities, and society, should be considered to prevent stillbirths and reduce associated morbidity. (shrink)

Vaccine refusal occurs for a variety of reasons. In this article we examine vaccine refusals that are made on conscientious grounds; that is, for religious, moral, or philosophical reasons. We focus on two questions: first, whether people should be entitled to conscientiously object to vaccination against contagious diseases ; second, if so, to what constraints or requirements should conscientious objection to vaccination be subject. To address these questions, we consider an analogy between CO to vaccination and CO to military service. (...) We argue that conscientious objectors to vaccination should make an appropriate contribution to society in lieu of being vaccinated. The contribution to be made will depend on the severity of the relevant disease, its morbidity, and also the likelihood that vaccine refusal will lead to harm. In particular, the contribution required will depend on whether the rate of CO in a given population threatens herd immunity to the disease in question: for severe or highly contagious diseases, if the population rate of CO becomes high enough to threaten herd immunity, the requirements for CO could become so onerous that CO, though in principle permissible, would be de facto impermissible. (shrink)

Institutions represent a solid basis to organize and stabilize human life in diferent social contexts. They are external events in the world, but they also have a strong anchorage in the mind and in last years many scholars tried to explore their cognitive ground. Starting from the original attempt of Douglass C. North, who at the end of his career tried to establish a program called “Cognitive Institutionalism”, we discuss the merits and the limits of this approach. First, we show (...) that his statements are cognitively onerous as they imply the notions of mental models and beliefs. Instead, we argue that shared institutions do not require such a convergence and that coordination takes place in the form of social practices and habits. Second, we clarify some aspects of North’s cognitive theory avoiding the ontological reading, i.e. explaining in what sense institutions might depend on the human mind and how people are joined into a practice made possible via institutions. (shrink)