This study examined the factors driving the public value of e-government from the viewpoint of the Chinese people. The usage of ICT through e-government systems must generate the adequate corresponding public value that can motivate the acceptance of e-government services. The sample 517 data generated from Chinese citizens were analyzed using AMOS 23 software by undertaking the structural equation model system of analysis. The results show that constructs such as information quality, service parameters, user orientation, efficiency, openness, and responsiveness were (...) significantly related to the public value of e-government. Additionally, the research validated that the public value of e-government has a direct influence on the behavioral intention to adopt e-government services. The managerial and practical implications of these research findings on the public value of e-government and the acceptance of e-government services are dissected meticulously. (shrink)

This collection demonstrates the strong influence that humanism and freethought had in developing the history and ideals of black intellectualism. Most people are quick to note the profound influence that religion has played in African-American history: consoling the downtrodden slave or inspiring the abolitionists, the underground railroad, and the civil rights movement. But few are aware of the role humanism played in shaping the black experience: developing the thought and motivating the actions of powerful African-American intellectuals. Section One of this (...) book offers biographical sketches of such prominent black humanists as Frederick Douglass, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E.B. DuBois, Hubert H. Harrison, and Richard Wright. Section Two features essays by black humanists: Douglass, DuBois, Charles W. Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Jaffree, Claude McKay, Melvin B. Tolson, and Bruce Wright. Section Three offers the views of contemporary black African humanists: Freda Amakye Ansah, Emmanuel Kofi Mensah, Nkeonye Otakpor, Franz Vanderpuye, and Kwasi Wiredu. Section Four contains interviews conducted by Allen on the subjects of black humanist activism, the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, and the Harlem Renaissance with: Martin G. Bernal, Charles Faulkner, Leonard Harris, Norman Hill, and Alaine Locke. (shrink)

The _Maimonides Review_ is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles, which seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies.

Conceptual engineering is commonly characterized as the method for assessing and improving our representational devices. Little has been said, however, on how best to construe these representational devices—in other words, on what conceptual engineering should be all about. This paper tackles this problem with a basic strategy: First, by presenting a taxonomy of the different possible subject matters for conceptual engineering; then, by comparatively assessing them and selecting the most conducive one with a view to making conceptual engineering an actionable (...) method, that is, a method that can be applied effectively and consistently to specific case studies. The outcome is that conceptual engineering should be all about concepts on pain of pragmatic inconsistencies otherwise. (shrink)

Traces the decentered formulation of self at the heart of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy from his earliest works to his most recent.

Ectogenesis, or “artificial womb technology,” has been heralded by some, such as prominent feminist Shulamith Firestone, as a way to liberate women. In this chapter, we challenge this view by offering an alternative analysis of the technology as relying upon and perpetuating a problematic model of pregnancy which, rather than liberating women, serves to devalue them. We look to metaphysics as the abstract study of reality to elucidate how the entities in a pregnancy are related to one another. We consider (...) two models of the metaphysics of pregnancy: (1) the Parthood Model, whereby the fetus is a part of what/who gestates it; and (2) and the Fetal Container Model, whereby the gestator is a container for the fetus. We suggest that under the assumption of the Fetal Container Model, we are more likely to think that any container will suffice for gestation, even an artificial one. In contrast, under the assumption of the Parthood Model, we are less likely to treat the gestator as interchangeable or replaceable, given the parthood relationship between gestator and fetus. This chapter argues that ectogenesis is conceptually linked to the Fetal Container Model and advocates a more cautious approach in promoting ectogenesis as a tool for women’s liberation. (shrink)

We argue that deliberative decision-making that is inclusive, transparent and accountable can contribute to more trustworthy and legitimate decisions on difficult ethical questions and political trade-offs during the pandemic and beyond.

On the dominant interpretation, Schopenhauer possesses a will to will view of boredom: boredom consists in the dissatisfaction of a second-order desire to pursue objects of first-order desire. I ch...

Public health legal preparedness begins with effective legal authorities, and law provides a key foundation for public health practice in the United States. Laws not only create public health agencies and fund them, but also authorize and impose duties upon government to protect the public's health while preserving individual liberties. As a result, law is an essential tool in public health practice and is one element of public health infrastructure, as it defines the systems and relationships within which public health (...) practitioners operate.For purposes of this paper, law can be defined as a rule of conduct derived from federal or state constitutions, statutes, local laws, judicial opinions, administrative rules and regulations, international codes, or other pronouncements by entities authorized to prescribe conduct in a legally binding manner. Public health legal preparedness, a subset of public health preparedness, is defined as attainment of legal benchmarks within a public health system. (shrink)

In the age of the `return to the empirical' in which the theoretical disputes of an earlier era seem to have fallen silent, we seek to excavate the intellectual conditions for reviving theoretical debate, for it is upon this recovery that deeper understanding of the nature and purpose of empirical social science depends. We argue against the all too frequent turn to ontology, whereby critical realists have sought an epistemological guarantor of sociological validity. We seek, to the contrary, to crystallize (...) a culturally-based, hermeneutic account of a rational social science. Derived from disputes within the sociology of culture, on the one hand, and the long-standing concerns of interpretive philosophy, on the other, we offer a cultural-sociological approach to epistemology. We view the production of truth in social science as a reading of a meaningful social world, and as a performance of truth-claims that is constrained by evidence, but whose success depends on other contextual factors. We conclude that the rationality of social science can be achieved only by forgoing ontology. Theories are abstractions of investigators' meanings that allow the interpretation of social meanings in turn, whether those are actions, relations, or structures. Successful explanations are those that intertwine these meaning structures of investigators and actors in an effective way. (shrink)

Mill defines utilitarianism as the combination of a “theory of life” and a moral claim: only pleasure and freedom from pain are desirable as ends, and the promotion of happiness is the sole goal of moral action. So defined, utilitarianism is open to ad hominem pessimistic objection: a “theory of life” which entails the impossibility of happiness fits poorly with a morality centered on its promotion. The first two challenges Mill confronts in Utilitarianism share this pessimistic structure. Interestingly, however, these (...) challenges paint inverted pictures of the best utilitarian life: one suggests this life is satisfying but ignoble, the other that it is noble but unsatisfying. I explain Mill's treatment of both challenges as genuinely pessimistic interpretations of utilitarianism's “theory of life.” Read through the lens of Mill's engagement with pessimism, these challenges point to distinctive conceptions of dignity and satisfaction that play a significant role in Mill's ethics. (shrink)

How to accept a conditional? F. P. Ramsey proposed the following test in (Ramsey 1990).(RT) If A, then B must be accepted with respect to the current epistemic state iff the minimal hypothetical change of it needed to accept A also requires accepting B.

In this paper I offer an analysis of Plotinus’ argument for the existence of a quasi-psychic entity, the so-called ‘trace of soul’, that functions as an immanent cause of life for an organism’s body. I argue that Plotinus posits this entity primarily in order to account for the body’s possession of certain quasi-psychic states that are instrumental in his account of soul-body interaction. Since these quasi-psychic states imply that an organism’s body has vitality of its own , and Platonic souls (...) are no part or aspect of any body, Plotinus draws the conclusion that the soul must be a cause of the body’s life by imparting a quasi-psychic qualification to it. In so doing, Plotinus introduces elements of hylomorphism into Platonist psychology, and addresses a problem for the animation of the body that Platonic soul-body dualism may plausibly be thought to face. (shrink)

Dominant normative theories of armed conflict orientate themselves around the ultimate goal of peace. Yet the deployment of these theories in the international sphere appears to have failed in advancing toward this goal. In this paper, we argue that one major reason for this failure is these theories’ use of essentially contested concepts—that is, concepts whose internally complex character results in no principled way of adjudicating between rival interpretations of them. This renders the theories susceptible to manipulation by international actors (...) who are able to pursue bellicose policies under the cover of nominally pacific frameworks, and we show how this happened historically in a case study of the Korean War of 1950–1953. In order to better serve the goals of peace, we suggest, the rules of war should be reframed to simpler, but more restrictive, normative principles. (shrink)

Schopenhauer repeatedly claims that all pleasure is negative, and this view seems to play key roles throughout his work. Nonetheless, many scholars have argued that Schopenhauer actually acknowledges certain positive pleasures. Two major arguments have been offered for this reading, one focused on the link between Schopenhauer's view of pleasure and Plato's, and one focused on Schopenhauer's distinction between two components of aesthetic pleasure. I argue that neither way of motivating the positive pleasure reading succeeds. Both overlook a key aspect (...) of Schopenhauer's account: namely, his suggestion that there are two distinct kinds of negative pleasure, pleasures of satisfaction and pleasures of distraction. When Schopenhauer claims that all pleasure is negative, he means it. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the foundations of Plotinus’ innovative theory that prime matter is unaffectable. I begin by showing that Plotinus’ main arguments for this thesis (in Ennead 3.6) all rely upon the controversial assumption that the properties prime matter underlies are not properties of prime matter itself. It is then argued that prime matter’s privation of sensible qualities has its conceptual basis in an idiosyncratic understanding of form-matter composition generally, and its primary doctrinal basis in Aristotle’s critical reports (...) on the Platonists’ substratum in Physics 1.9. While Plotinus finds Platonic authority for unaffectible matter in the Receptacle passage of the Timaeus, it is Aristotle’s testimony that provides the crucial impetus for reading that text in this way. On this basis, Plotinus develops a Platonist conception of form’s inherence in matter with distinctively non-Aristotelian features. (shrink)

The 2015 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes nootropic drugs should be available under prescription”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, now in its seventh year, provided the starting point for arguments on the subject. The present article brings together and extends many of the arguments put forward during the debate. We explore the current usage of nootropic drugs, their safety and whether it would be beneficial to individuals and (...) society as a whole for them to be available under prescription. The Varsity Medical Debate was first held in 2008 with the aim of allowing students to engage in discussion about ethics and policy within healthcare. The event is held annually and it is hoped that this will allow future leaders to voice a perspective on the arguments behind topics that will feature heavily in future healthcare and science policy. This year the Oxford University Medical Society at the Oxford Union hosted the debate. (shrink)

We study ultraproducts of finite residue rings \ where \ is a non-principal ultrafilter. We find sufficient conditions of the ultrafilter \ to determine if the resulting ultraproduct \ has simple, NIP, \ but not simple nor NIP, or \ theory, noting that all these four cases occur.

The current study sought to assess the mediating role of green market orientation dimensions in the relationship between social risk and new product performance among European Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs). We also assessed the moderating role of entrepreneurial orientation in the relationship between green market orientation and new product performance. The study was based on primary data gathered from 317 EMNEs in Ghana. After various validity and reliability checks, ordinary least squares (OLS) analysis was performed to estimate the various relationships hypothesized (...) in the study. The study finds that social risk has a negative effect on the success of EMNEs' new products. This negative effect is however nullified by the positive mediating effects of strategic green market orientation, tactical green market orientation and internal green market orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation also played a significant moderating effect in the relationship between green market orientation dimensions and EMNEs' new product performance. Based on this, theoretical and managerial contributions were made. (shrink)

Childbearing trans and nonbinary people are confronted with the heteronormative and cisgender frameworks that underpin “maternity” services. We explored the educational needs of 108 perinatal staff in the United Kingdom as related to the needs of trans and nonbinary service users. Participants were most confident in formulating care plans and least confident about the provision of colleagues’ perinatal care in this context. While the majority of participants were positive toward the trans and nonbinary communities, they considered that those communities remain (...) marginalized in perinatal services. Transphobic, anti-trans, and nonbinary attitudes were highlighted by our respondents. Our findings suggest that caregivers witnessed transphobia among colleagues and were apprehensive themselves about providing care to childbearing trans and nonbinary people. They reported a cisheteronormative model of care that lacked awareness of trans and nonbinary issues. The educational needs identified included information about the practicalities of childbearing as a trans or nonbinary person, how to use inclusive language effectively, and creating policies and processes for supporting childbearing trans and nonbinary people. These caregivers’ preferences included hearing from trans and nonbinary people and sharing best practices among themselves, with open discussions about how to be inclusive. (shrink)

Nefesh HaTzimtzum provides the single most comprehensive and accessible presentation of the teachings and worldview of the Vilna Gaon's primary student, Rabbi Chaim Volozhin. It is focused on Rabbi Chaim's magnum opus, Nefesh HaChaim, a work that has lain in almost total obscurity for nearly two centuries due to its deep Kabbalistic subject matter. Nefesh HaTzimtzum opens up the real depth of the ideas presented in Nefesh HaChaim together with all of Rabbi Chaim's related writings, making them accessible to the (...) public for the first time in any language. In addition to the complete English translation, Nefesh HaTzimtzum includes the full facing page Hebrew text of Nefesh HaChaim and many other writings by Rabbi Chaim, along with in-depth explanations, an informative historical overview, an easily consumable innovative presentation layout and a full index. After centuries of confusion, extensive clarification is provided of the central Kabbalistic concept of Tzimtzum, or the secret of how an infinite God occupies a finite world. Most importantly, it unequivocally demonstrates that the key Kabbalists, including the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Chaim Volozhin and the Baal HaTanya, all unanimously agreed on the underlying principles of the concept of Tzimtzum and that contrary to widespread historical misunderstanding, there was no fundamental dispute about the philosophical principles of Judaism between the Hasidim and the Mitnagdim. Based on this Nefesh HaTzimtzum shows that both Nefesh HaChaim and Sefer HaTanya present the same methodology for serving God which is rooted in their identical understanding of the concept of Tzimtzum. Nefesh HaTzimtzum is published in two volumes which are sold separately. This volume contains the complete Hebrew text of Nefesh HaChaim which is brought to life by an illuminating translation and incisive commentary. It additionally provides extensive translated source material necessary to properly understand the basic text. The text is further complemented by an informative introduction which includes a historical overview. (shrink)

Kerekh 1. shaʼar 1 pereḳ 1-6 -- Kerekh 2. shaʻar 1 pereḳ 7-22.

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)

A replicator is simply something that makes copies of itself. There are hypothetical replicators (e.g., self-catalyzing chemical cycles) that are suspected to be unable to exhibit heritable variation. Variation in any of their constituent molecules would not lead them to produce offspring with those new variant molecules. Copying, such as in DNA replication or in xerox machines, allows any sequence to be remade and then sequence variations to be inherited. This distinction has been used against non-RNA-world hypotheses: without RNA replication (...) systems have no capacity to exhibit heritable variation. However, is copying the only way to have heritable variation? This article suggests that evolution can happen without anything being copied and that, in fact, RNA copying is too complex to arise spontaneously as the first pre-biotic system. There would then be a historical gradation of systems from non-alive to alive in which the capacity to have heritable changes would progressively increase and in which copying, as in template-based RNA-replication, would be a crucial but relatively late event. In addition, this article proposes a way by which RNA replication could have arisen, after systems able to evolve arose, as a crucial innovation and how that innovation spread over existing evolutionary systems and became a major driver of subsequent evolution. (shrink)

There is an important class of conditionals whose assertibility conditions are not given by the Ramsey test but by an inductive extension of that test. Such inductive Ramsey conditionals fail to satisfy some of the core properties of plain conditionals. Associated principles of nonmonotonic inference should not be assumed to hold generally if interpretations in terms of induction or appeals to total evidence are not to be ruled out.

For a locally compact group G, we show that it is possible to present the class of continuous unitary representations of G as an elementary class of metric structures, in the sense of continuous logic. More precisely, we show how nondegenerate ∗-representations of a general ∗-algebra A (with some mild assumptions) can be viewed as an elementary class, in a many-sorted language, and use the correspondence between continuous unitary representations of G and nondegenerate ∗-representations of L1(G). We relate the notion (...) of ultraproduct of logical structures, under this presentation, with other notions of ultraproduct of representations appearing in the literature, and we characterize property (T) for G in terms of the definability of the sets of fixed points of L1 functions on G. (shrink)

In developing his theory of aether in De Caelo 1, Aristotle argues, in DC 1.4, that one circular motion cannot be contrary to another. In this paper, I discuss how Aristotle can maintain this position and accept the existence of celestial spheres that rotate in contrary directions, as he does in his revision of the Eudoxan theory in Metaphysics 12.8.

Plotinus maintains that there is a single first principle, the One (or the Good), from which all other things derive. He is usually thought to hold this view on the grounds that any other thing’s existence depends on its participation in a paradigm of unity. This paper argues that Plotinus has a further, independent argument for adopting a single first principle, according to which principle pluralism is committed (unacceptably) to attributing good cosmic states of affairs to chance. This argument exhibits (...) similarities to ancient design arguments, but is used to draw the more radical conclusion that there is only one non-derivative existent. (shrink)

This volume makes an excellent and very important contribution to English-language scholarship on the life, thought, and influence of the Majorcan lay theologian and philosopher, Ramon Llull, the Doctor Illuminatus, from his own day through the Renaissance period into the European exploration of the New World. Llull was a brilliant but idiosyncratic thinker, whose interests and writings touched upon, it seems, every major theological and philosophical theme of his day as well as many topics that only would gain greater interest (...) in later centuries. The editors, Amy M. Austin and Mark D. Johnston, in their preface to the volume note right away the main obstacles contemporary (especially... (shrink)

Talk at the Philosophy [in:of:for:and] Digital Knowledge Infrastructures online workshop 2023 (28/09/2023).

Se trata de una reseña del libro de Inés Moreno. La autonomía de la experiencia estética y su problemática aplicación al arte. Montevideo: Ediciones Universitarias-Unidad de Comunicación de la Universidad de la República, 184 páginas.

Richard Shusterman. Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 420 páginas. Yanina Benitez (ed.). Intersecciones. Reelaboraciones de la filosofía contemporánea y la estética filosófica. Porto: Cravo, 2020, 395 páginas.

RESUMENEl desarrollo embriológico es un fenómeno que ha inspirado la especulación filosófica desde temprano en la historia del pensamiento. Desde los tiempos de Aristóteles dos modelos conceptuales antitéticos se han utilizado tradicionalmente para comprender la embriogénesis: o el embrión posee ya una forma o estructura, o ésta se forma de nuevo en cada generación. Nuestro objetivo en este artículo es mostrar que el contraste entre la posición preformacionista y epigenética persiste a pesar de los formidables avances teóricos y experimentales de (...) la biología del desarrollo contemporánea. El preformacionismo y la epigénesis han perfeccionado constantemente sus posiciones en el curso de la historia con el fin de responder a los retos conceptuales de la época. Este continuo proceso de transformación ha dado lugar a una convergencia parcial entre las dos posiciones. Sin embargo, vamos a argumentar que, a pesar de los esfuerzos por conciliar ambas posturas, esta antinomia, que se erige como una de las más fundamentales de la biología, no será fácil de superar. ABSTRACTThe process of development of the embryo has inspired philosophical speculation since the advent of Western thought. Since the time of Aristotle two antithetical conceptual models have traditionally been used to understand embryogenesis: either form or structure is preformed in the embryo or it is newly formed with each generation. Our aim in this article is to show that the contrast between the pre-formationist and epigenetic positions persists despite the formidable theoretical and experimental advances of contemporary developmental biology. Pre-formationism and epigenesis have constantly refined their positions in the course of history in order to answer the conceptual challenges of each epoch. This process of continuous transformation has resulted in a partial convergence of the two positions. However, we shall argue that, despite the partial successes of this process of continuous convergence, one of the most fundamental antinomies in biology persists. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Special Issue ‘Foundational Issues in Conceptual Engineering’. The issue contains contributions by James Andow, Delia Belleri, David Chalmers, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Eugen Fischer, Viktoria Knoll, Edouard Machery and Amie Thomasson. We, the editors, provide a brief introduction to the main topics of the issue and then summarize its contributions.

Mechanistic explanation involves the attribution of functions to both mechanisms and their component parts, and function attribution plays a central role in the individuation of mechanisms. Our aim in this paper is to investigate the impact of a perspectival view of function attribution for the broader mechanist project, and specifically for realism about mechanistic hierarchies. We argue that, contrary to the claims of function perspectivalists such as Craver, one cannot endorse both function perspectivalism and mechanistic hierarchy realism: if functions are (...) perspectival, then so are the levels of a mechanistic hierarchy. We illustrate this argument with an example from recent neuroscience, where the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon of ephaptic coupling cross-cuts the more familiar mechanism for synaptic firing. Finally, we consider what kind of structure there is left to be realist about for the function perspectivalist. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to examine the unique challenges faced by choir directors in Ghana and provide recommendations for managing and thriving in this context. It aims to highlight the importance of resilience, resourcefulness, and cultural sensitivity in navigating the funding constraints, limited resources, intense competition, and cultural expectations that characterize the Ghanaian choir environment. Methodology: The methodology used in this article is not explicitly stated. However, the recommendations and insights provided are based on a combination of (...) scholarly research, professional experiences, and observations related to choir management in Ghana. The authors gathered data through a literature review, interviews, and observations to understand the challenges faced by choir directors and identify effective strategies for managing them. Findings: The findings of this study suggest that choir directors in Ghana can overcome challenges and contribute to the country's musical heritage by implementing specific strategies. These include seeking diverse funding sources, engaging with local businesses, cultural organizations, and government agencies for financial support, promoting the unique qualities of their choirs, and emphasizing cultural authenticity, repertoire diversity, and innovative performances to attract audiences and sponsors. Recommendations: The theoretical ideas that informed this article's recommendations and the actual experiences that took place in the Ghanaian choir context validated them. The authors likely drew upon their expertise, scholarly research, and consultation with practitioners to develop and validate these recommendations. They should seek diverse funding sources, engage with local businesses and organizations, and promote the unique qualities of their choirs to attract audiences and sponsors. Policymakers are encouraged to support the development and sustainability of choirs in Ghana by recognizing their cultural significance and providing financial and logistical support. Policies that promote the arts, cultural preservation, and community engagement can contribute to the growth and success of choirs. Additionally, policies addressing funding constraints and resource limitations can alleviate some of the challenges faced by choir directors, enabling them to thrive and contribute to Ghana's musical landscape. The article aims to inspire and guide directors in managing choirs in Ghana, highlighting the potential for cultural enrichment and artistic excellence within this unique context. (shrink)