Intelligence augmentation was one of the original goals of computing. Artificial Intelligence (AI) inherits this project and is at the leading edge of computing today. Computing can be considered an extension of brain and body, with mathematical prowess and logic fundamental to the infrastructure of computing. Multimedia computing—sensing, analyzing, and translating data to and from visual images, animation, sound and music, touch and haptics, as well as smell—is based on our human senses and is now commonplace. We use data visualization (...) and sonification, as well as data mining and analysis, to sort through the complexity and vast volume of data coming from the world inside and around us. It helps us ‘see’ in new ways. We can think of this capacity as a new kind of “digital glasses”. The Internet of Living Things (IOLT) is potentially an even more profound extension of ourselves to the world: a network of electronic devices embedded into objects, but now with subcutaneous, ingestible devices, and embedded sensors that include people and other living things. Like the Internet of Things (IOT), living things are connected; we call those connections “ecology”. As the IOT becomes increasingly synonymous with the IOLT, the question of ethics that is at the centre of aesthetics and the arts will move to the forefront of our experience of and regard for the world in and around us. (shrink)

J. Stephen Russell examines the impact that Chaucer's education had on his greatest work, the Canterbury Tales, and demonstrates that understanding the nature of education in the Middle Ages, especially linguistic education, provides important insights into Chaucer's poem.

In his list of essential reading, Richard Baxter includes a section on “affectionate practical English writers.” Among others, he mentions George Swinnock. While essentially forgotten today, Swinnock's contemporaries held him in high esteem as a skilful physician of the soul. The focus of this article is Swinnock's view of Scripture meditation as necessary for bridging the gap between head and heart in Christian experience. He encourages his readers to “retire out of the world's company, to converse with the word of (...) God.” He believes this “conversing” warms the heart, causing it to “boil with love” for God. With that basic premise in view, this article is organized around three main sections. The first establishes Swinnock's place in the Puritan meditative tradition, stretching back to Joseph Hall. The second analyzes Swinnock's faculty-focused approach to meditation, whereby it begins in the understanding, extends to the affections, and ends in the will, resulting in practical knowledge. The third section considers Swinnock's teaching on the role of the Holy Spirit in Scripture meditation. As with the other means of grace, meditation is ultimately dependent upon the Holy Spirit to work through it and along with it directly upon the faculties of the soul. The article concludes with Swinnock's threefold approach to transformative Scripture meditation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Vice, Disorder, Conduct, and CulpabilityStephen J. Morse (bio)Keywordsvice, conduct, culpability, mental disorderDr. John sadler’s interesting paper raises an important issue. It defines vice as criminal, wrongful or immoral behavior. He claims that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) “confounds the concepts of vice and mental illness” and that this confounding has “important implications... for the relationship between crime, criminality, wrongful conduct, and mental illness.” The paper (...) correctly notes that disorders for which vice is the primary criterion tend to be impoverished diagnostically and are probably less valid than non–vice-related disorders. Dr. Sadler wonders if the subjects of his case studies are “involved in sick behavior, immoral behavior, both, neither, or some other metaphysical kind altogether.” This is an excellent question that this comment will seek to clarify. It will also consider the moral and legal implications of the answer.The domain of immoral, wrongful, and criminal behavior is essentially action. Some moral and religious traditions evaluate the content of an agent’s thoughts, desires, and character, but the dominant view is that vice primarily describes action that is wrongful because it violates the rights of others or it is wrong in itself. The rules of morality and law create value, but their essential task is to guide the action of agents who must live together. Dr. Sadler does not explicitly recognize that the diagnostic criteria that are vice are all actions, and not simply abnormal perceptions, desires, thoughts, or moods. His three case studies of conduct disorder, factitious disorder, and paraphilia confirm this point. Even pedophilia, which can be diagnosed simply on the basis of urges or fantasies that cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty, would not be considered a vice unless the agent acted on these sexual urges. Those individual actions that meet Dr. Sadler’s criteria for vice I will term “vice actions.”Actions, including vice actions, may be evaluated medically and morally. There is no logical or conceptual reason why the same action cannot be both a sign of mental disorder and wrongful and potentially blameworthy. Actions can be just mad, just bad, or mad and bad. Also, the same action may sometimes be a sign of disorder and sometimes not. No general argument suggesting the contrary is provided. Consequently, there is no confound between the concepts of vice and mental disorder unless vice actions fail to satisfy the generic criteria for being a sign of mental disorder. Dr. Sadler seems to implicitly recognize [End Page 47] this when he asks whether vice–mental disorder relationship criteria are impoverished because there is a lack of consensus about “the minimum requirements for an acceptable set of descriptive criteria for a mental disorder category,” or when he asks “where criminal syndromes... fit into a classification of mental disorders.”No consensual, generic definition of mental disorder exists, and deciding whether actions should be signs of mental disorder is particularly fraught because cultural context and values always play a role in the definition of mental disorder. The other potential signs and symptoms of mental disorder are virtually all phenomena that simply happen to people and are not products of agency. Actions are by definition the product of agency, however, and vice actions affect by definition the rights and interests of others. The latter is true whether or not the agent is “vicious.” Even if an agent who has done wrong is excused, the rights of the victim have been violated.Moral, political, and legal evaluation is largely beside the point for non-action signs and symptoms, but it is always on point for vice actions. This is the primary potential source of the confound between vice and disorder. To claim that a vice action is a sign of disorder because it is vice begs the question and is indeed a confound. Even the presence of a biological marker will not save this claim. All human action presumably has biological markers and one cannot say that a marker is of a disorder without first having an independent definition of disorder that the vice action satisfies.Until a robust theory of mental disorder is provided, we cannot determine whether a vice action is... (shrink)

The proliferation of computers in the business realm may lead to ethical problems between individual and societal rights, and the organization's need to control costs. In an attempt to explore the causes of this potential conflict, this study examined the varying levels of sensitivity 223 respondents assigned to different types of information typically stored in computer-based human resource information systems. It was found that information most directly related to the job — pay rate, fringe benefits, educational history — was considered (...) to be the most sensitive. Participants, however, were more concerned about certain types of individuals/groups accessing these systems than about the kinds of information contained in them. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Men often make riskier decisions than women across a wide range of real-life behaviors. Whether this sex difference is accentuated, diminished, or stable under stressful conditions is, however, contested in the scientific literature. A critical blind spot lies amid this contestation: Most studies use standardized, laboratory-based, cognitive measures of decision making rather than complex real-life social simulation tasks to assess risk-related behavior. To address this blind spot, we investigated the effects of acute psychosocial stress on risk decision making in men (...) and women using a standardized cognitive measure and a novel task that simulated a real-life social situation. Participants were exposed to either an acute psychosocial stressor or an equivalent control condition. Stressor-exposed participants were further characterized as high- or low-cortisol responders. Results confirmed that the experimental manipulation was effective. On the IGT, participants characterized as low-cortisol responders made significantly riskier decisions than those characterized as high-cortisol responders. Similarly, in the online chatroom, participants characterized as low-cortisol responders were, relative to those in the Non-Stress group, significantly more likely to make risky decisions. Together, these results suggest that at lower levels of cortisol both men and women tend to make riskier decisions in both economic and social spheres. (shrink)

This article uses the translation approach to analyze the Green Revolution in Bali, Indonesia. The translation approach reopens the controversy about a classical topic in development studies: the failure or success of the Green Revolution. The translation method helps us to understand how the previous explanations of the failure or success of the Green Revolution in Bali were socially constructed and how the presence and the identity of social groups involved in agriculture on Bali were negotiated during the controversy. J. (...) Stephen Lansing's recent computer model of Balinese agriculture is examined as a new component of the Green Revolution technological package. The analysis shows that the success of Lansing's model is better understood as a result of his communication strategy than as a scientific achievement. (shrink)

Recent ethical breeches by corporate governorsat the highest levels have called into questionwhether ethical attitudes have changed sincethe Corporate Raider scandals of the mid-1980s. We exploit a unique opportunity to follow-up ona previous investigation of college students inthe mid-1980s to analyze this question. Usinga similar survey instrument, we find thatstudents surveyed in 2001 are significantlyless accepting of the ethically questionablesituations in seven of 15 scenarios and moreaccepting in only one. Seven scenarios showedno significant change. We conclude that,overall, ethical attitudes of (...) students in 2001appear to have become higher over time. To theextent that current students are futurebusiness leaders, we find these results to beencouraging for the long term. (shrink)

Using a dataset of corporate philanthropic gifts of $1 million or more, we examine the influence of corporate donors on the performance of recipient non-profit organizations. We find that corporate donors positively influence NPO performance, specifically in the form of higher revenues per employee, program ratios, and fundraising returns. We find little evidence that large foundation or individual donors similarly enhance organizational performance. In additional analysis, we find that large corporate donations matter when the corporation is more likely to have (...) influence over the recipient NPO. These findings suggest that corporate donors provide the monitoring and expertise needed to enhance organizational performance beyond simply providing funding to NPOs. Our results are robust to a two-stage model and propensity score matching to address endogeneity concerns. While prior research has examined the effect of corporate philanthropy on donor organization performance, we contribute to the literature by examining whether corporate philanthropy also improves recipient organization performance. (shrink)

This rich and varied collection of essays addresses some of the most fundamental human questions through the lenses of philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and theology. Peter Augustine Lawler and Dale McConkey have fashioned an interdisciplinary consideration of such perennial and enduring issues as the relationship between nature and history, nature and grace, reason and revelation, classical philosophy and Christianity, modernity and postmodernity, repentance and self-limitation, and philosophy and politics.

This is the second of three volumes containing edited versions of papers and commentaries presented in invited symposium sessions of the Eighth World Congress of the Econometric Society. The papers summarize and interpret key developments and discuss future directions in a wide range of topics in economics and econometrics. The papers cover both theory and applications. Written by leading specialists in their fields, these volumes provide a unique survey of progress in the discipline.

Social media and Internet technologies present several emerging and ill-explored issues for a modern healthcare workforce. One issue is patient-targeted Googling, which involves a healthcare professional using a social networking site or publicly available search engine to find patient information online. The study’s aim was to address a deficit in data and knowledge regarding PTG, and to investigate medical student use of SNSs due to a close association with PTG. The authors surveyed final year medical students at the Otago Medical (...) School, University of Otago in January 2016. A subset completed focus groups that were analysed using thematic analysis to identify key themes relating to students’ attitudes towards PTG, and reasons why they might engage in PTG. Fifty-four students completed the survey, which showed that PTG was uncommon. Attitudes were varied and context dependent. Most participants saw problems with PTG and favoured more explicit guidance on the issue. SNS usage was high ; participants were concerned by the content of their SNS profiles and who they were connecting with online. Participants showing high SNS use were 1.83 times more likely to have conducted PTG than lower use groups. The diverse attitudes uncovered in this study indicated that teaching or guidelines could be useful to healthcare professionals considering PTG. Though ethically problematic, PTG may be important to patient care and safety. The decision to conduct PTG should be made with consideration of ethical principles and the intended use of the information. (shrink)

This is the third of three volumes containing edited versions of papers and commentaries presented in invited symposium sessions of the Eighth World Congress of the Econometric Society. The papers summarize and interpret recent developments and discuss future directions in a wide range of topics in economics and econometrics. The papers cover both theory and applications. Written by leading specialists in their fields, these volumes provide a unique survey of progress in the discipline.

In its comprehensive overview of Alain Locke's pragmatist philosophy this book captures the radical implications of Locke's approach within pragmatism, the critical temper embedded in Locke's works, the central role of power and empowerment of the oppressed and the concept of broad democracy Locke employed.

Downs, Stephen Review(s) of: Earthly visions: Theology and the challenges of art, by T.J. Gorringe, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 254, $55.00.

This paper presents methods to visualize the structure of trees that occur in genetic programming. These methods allow for the inspection of structure of entire trees even though several thousands of nodes may be involved. The methods also scale to allow for the inspection of structure for entire populations and for complete trials even though millions of nodes may be involved. Examples are given that demonstrate how this new way of “seeing” can afford a potentially rich way of understanding dynamics (...) that underpin genetic programming. The examples indicate further studies that might be enabled by visualizing structure at these scales. (shrink)

This is a set of three volumes containing edited versions of papers and commentaries presented in invited symposium sessions of the Eighth World Congress of the Econometric Society. The papers summarize and interpret recent key developments and discuss future directions in a wide range of topics in economics and econometrics. The papers cover both theory and applications. Written by leading specialists in their fields, these volumes provide a unique survey of progress in the discipline.

This is the first of three volumes containing edited versions of papers and commentaries presented in invited symposium sessions of the Eighth World Congress of the Econometric Society. The papers summarize and interpret recent key developments and discuss future directions in a wide range of topics in economics and econometrics. The papers cover both theory and applications. Written by leading specialists in their fields these volumes provide a unique survey of progress in the discipline.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page W12-W13.

Johnson and Stricker published an opinion piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics presenting their perspective on the 2008 agreement between the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the Connecticut Attorney General with regard to the 2006 IDSA treatment guideline for Lyme disease. Their writings indicate that these authors hold unconventional views of a relatively common tick-transmitted bacterial infection caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that their opinions would clash with the IDSA's (...) evidence-based guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. Their allegations of conflict of interest against the IDSA resemble those made against the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2000, which were found to be baseless. It is the responsibility of all physicians and medical scientists to stand up to antiscientific, baseless and unethical attacks on those who support an evidence-based approach to caring for patients. (shrink)

Comments on L. T. Hoshmand & J. Martin's (see record 1995-28533-001) proposal for providing unity in psychological science. Hoshmand and Martin suggest that psychology may derive its own naturalized epistemology by studying and describing the activities in which psychologists are currently engaged, find successful, and how it is that they historically arrived at these practices. While Hoshmand and Martin's notion that an historico-descriptive analysis may be helpful for the study of psychology is not rejected, it is argued that a critical (...) examination of the theoretical bases of psychological research programs, as well as the theoretical assumptions of the historico-descriptive method itself, must precede its employment. (shrink)