Background:Nurses exposed to community health nursing commonly encounter situations that can be morally distressing. However, most research on moral distress has focused on acute care settings and very little research has explored moral distress in a community health nursing setting especially among nursing students.Aim:To explore the moral distress experiences encountered by undergraduate baccalaureate nursing students in community health nursing.Research design:A descriptive qualitative design was employed to explore the community health nursing experiences of the nursing students that led them to have (...) moral distress.Participants and research context:The study included 14 senior nursing students who had their course in Community Health Nursing in their sophomore year and stayed in the partner communities in their junior year for 6 and 3 weeks during their senior year.Ethical considerations:Institutional review board approval was sought prior to the conduct of the study. Self-determination was assured and anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed to all participants.Findings:Nursing students are vulnerable and likely to experience moral distress when faced with ethical dilemmas. They encounter numerous situations which make them question their own values and ideals and those of that around them. Findings of the study surfaced three central themes which included moral distress emanating from the unprofessional behavior of some healthcare workers, the resulting sense of powerlessness, and the differing values and mindsets of the people they serve in the community.Conclusion:This study provides educators a glimpse of the morally distressing situations that often occurs in the community setting. It suggests the importance of raising awareness and understanding of these situations to assist nursing students to prepare themselves to the “real world,” where the ideals they have will be constantly challenged and tested. (shrink)

Dr. David K. Naugle is widely regarded as a leading thinker in the area of Christian worldview formation. As Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Dallas Baptist University, he has drawn accolades and admiration. -/- This collection in his honor demonstrates that intellectual pursuits are inherently spiritual, that no area of life is separate from the lordship of Christ, and that true Christian faith is in fact the deep fulfillment of the human experience. On topics ranging from linguistics to gardening and (...) everything in between, these essays represent the depth and breadth of the idea that all goodness is God's goodness, all truth is God's truth, and all beauty is God's beauty. (shrink)

Philosophers sometimes hope that our discipline will be transformative for students, perhaps especially when we teach so-called philosophy of the body. To that end, this article describes an experimental upper-level undergraduate course cross-listed between Philosophy and Physical Education, entitled “Thinking Through the Body: Philosophy and Yoga.” Drawing on the perspectives of professor and students, we show how a somatic practice (here, hatha yoga) and reading texts (here, primarily contemporary phenomenology) can be integrated in teaching and learning. We suggest that the (...) course raised questions about the ethics of evaluation as well as about the split between theory and practice, which have larger pedagogical implications. (shrink)

Gilbert and colleagues point out the discrepancy between the limited empirical data illustrating changes in personality following implantation of deep brain stimulating electrodes and the vast number of conceptual neuroethics papers implying that these changes are widespread, deleterious, and clinically significant. Their findings are reminiscent of C. P. Snow’s essay on the divide between the two cultures of the humanities and the sciences. This division in the literature raises significant ethical concerns surrounding unjustified fear of personality changes in the context (...) of DBS and negative perceptions of clinician-scientists engaged in DBS. These concerns have real world implications for funding future innovative, DBS trials aimed to reduce suffering as well as hampering true interdisciplinary scholarship. We argue that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism and the value it places on empirical inquiry, experiential knowledge, and inter-disciplinary scholarship – reflecting diverse ways of knowing – provides a framework to start to address the important questions Gilbert and colleagues raise. In particular, we highlight the importance of expert clinician knowledge in contributing to the neuroethical questions raised by Gilbert and colleagues. Finally, we provide illustrative examples of some of our interdisciplinary empirical research that demonstrate the iterative cycle of inquiry characteristic of pragmatism in which conceptual neuroethics questions have led to empirical studies whose results then raise additional conceptual questions that give rise to new empirical studies in a way that highlights the contributions of the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)

Gilbert and colleagues point out the discrepancy between the limited empirical data illustrating changes in personality following implantation of deep brain stimulating electrodes and the vast number of conceptual neuroethics papers implying that these changes are widespread, deleterious, and clinically significant. Their findings are reminiscent of C. P. Snow’s essay on the divide between the two cultures of the humanities and the sciences. This division in the literature raises significant ethical concerns surrounding unjustified fear of personality changes in the context (...) of DBS and negative perceptions of clinician-scientists engaged in DBS. These concerns have real world implications for funding future innovative, DBS trials aimed to reduce suffering as well as hampering true interdisciplinary scholarship. We argue that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism and the value it places on empirical inquiry, experiential knowledge, and inter-disciplinary scholarship – reflecting diverse ways of knowing – provides a framework to start to address the important questions Gilbert and colleagues raise. In particular, we highlight the importance of expert clinician knowledge in contributing to the neuroethical questions raised by Gilbert and colleagues. Finally, we provide illustrative examples of some of our interdisciplinary empirical research that demonstrate the iterative cycle of inquiry characteristic of pragmatism in which conceptual neuroethics questions have led to empirical studies whose results then raise additional conceptual questions that give rise to new empirical studies in a way that highlights the contributions of the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)

Gilbert and colleagues point out the discrepancy between the limited empirical data illustrating changes in personality following implantation of deep brain stimulating electrodes and the vast number of conceptual neuroethics papers implying that these changes are widespread, deleterious, and clinically significant. Their findings are reminiscent of C. P. Snow’s essay on the divide between the two cultures of the humanities and the sciences. This division in the literature raises significant ethical concerns surrounding unjustified fear of personality changes in the context (...) of DBS and negative perceptions of clinician-scientists engaged in DBS. These concerns have real world implications for funding future innovative, DBS trials aimed to reduce suffering as well as hampering true interdisciplinary scholarship. We argue that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism and the value it places on empirical inquiry, experiential knowledge, and inter-disciplinary scholarship – reflecting diverse ways of knowing – provides a framework to start to address the important questions Gilbert and colleagues raise. In particular, we highlight the importance of expert clinician knowledge in contributing to the neuroethical questions raised by Gilbert and colleagues. Finally, we provide illustrative examples of some of our interdisciplinary empirical research that demonstrate the iterative cycle of inquiry characteristic of pragmatism in which conceptual neuroethics questions have led to empirical studies whose results then raise additional conceptual questions that give rise to new empirical studies in a way that highlights the contributions of the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)

The article Pragmatismand the Importance of Interdisciplinary Teams in Investigating Personality Changes Following DBS.

Deep neural networks have become increasingly successful in applications from biology to cosmology to social science. Trained DNNs, moreover, correspond to models that ideally allow the prediction of new phenomena. Building in part on the literature on ‘eXplainable AI’, I here argue that these models are instrumental in a sense that makes them non-explanatory, and that their automated generation is opaque in a unique way. This combination implies the possibility of an unprecedented gap between discovery and explanation: When unsupervised models (...) are successfully used in exploratory contexts, scientists face a whole new challenge in forming the concepts required for understanding underlying mechanisms. (shrink)

With automation of routine decisions coupled with more intricate and complex information architecture operating this automation, concerns are increasing about the trustworthiness of these systems. These concerns are exacerbated by a class of artificial intelligence that uses deep learning, an algorithmic system of deep neural networks, which on the whole remain opaque or hidden from human comprehension. This situation is commonly referred to as the black box problem in AI. Without understanding how AI reaches its conclusions, it is an open (...) question to what extent we can trust these systems. The question of trust becomes more urgent as we delegate more and more decision-making to and increasingly rely on AI to safeguard significant human goods, such as security, healthcare, and safety. Models that “open the black box” by making the non-linear and complex decision process understandable by human observers are promising solutions to the black box problem in AI but are limited, at least in their current state, in their ability to make these processes less opaque to most observers. A philosophical analysis of trust will show why transparency is a necessary condition for trust and eventually for judging AI to be trustworthy. A more fruitful route for establishing trust in AI is to acknowledge that AI is situated within a socio-technical system that mediates trust, and by increasing the trustworthiness of these systems, we thereby increase trust in AI. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss several problems with current Big data practices which, we claim, seriously erode the role of informed consent as it pertains to the use of personal information. To illustrate these problems, we consider how the notion of informed consent has been understood and operationalised in the ethical regulation of biomedical research (and medical practices, more broadly) and compare this with current Big data practices. We do so by first discussing three types of problems that can impede (...) informed consent with respect to Big data use. First, we discuss the transparency (or explanation) problem. Second, we discuss the re-repurposed data problem. Third, we discuss the meaningful alternatives problem. In the final section of the paper, we suggest some solutions to these problems. In particular, we propose that the use of personal data for commercial and administrative objectives could be subject to a ‘soft governance’ ethical regulation, akin to the way that all projects involving human participants (e.g., social science projects, human medical data and tissue use) are regulated in Australia through the Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs). We also consider alternatives to the standard consent forms, and privacy policies, that could make use of some of the latest research focussed on the usability of pictorial legal contracts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Call for New Theological Reflection on the Sacramental Character of Marriage and the Thought of St. ThomasLawrence J. WelchTheologians across the theological spectrum have called attention to the urgent need for a new reflection on the theological and sacramental character of marriage. Peter Hünermann, known for his strong criticism of magisterial teachings on marriage, and the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, known for his equally strong defense of them, (...) have both drawn attention to this need. At an international symposium in September 2015, held in Rome prior to the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on Marriage and the Family, Hünermann gave a presentation entitled "On the Specific Theological Character of the Sacrament of Matrimony."1 The symposium aimed at providing a critical and scholarly discussion of new and constructive perspectives for the Church doctrine on marriage and family life in time for the 2015 synod on the family.2 Some of Hünermann's work from this paper also came to be known from an interview in Commonweal magazine where he summarized some of the main points of his symposium presentation.3 In the interview, he also revealed that before the 2015 synod he [End Page 845] was invited to speak with Pope Francis about the theology of marriage. Understandably, this meeting heightened interest in the German theologian's thought.Hünermann argues that "the specific character of the sacrament of marriage, which is very closely connected to the dying of the marriage bond,... has scarcely been the object of theological reflection, [and] is almost unknown in the consciousness of the bishops." 4 Hünermann appeals to St. Thomas as a way forward for understanding the theological character of marriage. This appeal is situated within a wider examination5 that offers an elaboration and new interpretation of "the specific dogmatic characteristics of the sacrament of matrimony that emerge in today's situation from a critical comparison of the encyclical Casti connubii and the Catholic theological tradition, especially the theology of St. Thomas."6 Sharply critical of the encyclical, Hünermann sees it as having saddled the Church with a legalistic concept of marriage elevated above history that is too far removed from the Catholic theological tradition and St. Thomas's theology of marriage.The year before his death, Cardinal Caffarra gave the 2016 graduation address at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Washington, DC.7 Among the challenges he identified for the institute to address was the [End Page 846] need for theological reflection on the sacramental character of marriage. Referring to his earlier work, he pointed out that theology after the Council of Trent "lost the awareness of sacramental ontology, of the real transformation produced by the sacrament in the persons of the spouses [res et sacramentum]."8 Furthermore, according to Caffarra, the "theology of the conjugal covenant was supplanted by the notion of a contract, as a human act by which two persons commit to one another." The sacramental character was thought of as consisting of the assurance of divine graces given to fulfill the contract. Caffarra claimed that, "consequently, the words of Jesus 'What God has joined together, let not man put asunder,' lost all their realistic force. Absolute indissolubility, once the sacrament was perfected [=a ratified, consummated marriage], became essentially indefensible."9The primary interest of this paper is to respond to the call for a renewed theological reflection on the specific character of the sacrament of marriage. I wish to take up Caffarra's suggestion to focus on the sacramental character (res et sacramentum) on the one hand, and on the other hand, Hünermann's suggestion that a kind of ressourcement from St. Thomas Aquinas's theology of marriage can be of great help for a fresh theological reflection on the specific character of the sacrament of marriage. Although I agree with Hünermann that a renewed consideration of the thought of St. Thomas can be a way forward, I differ from him on how it can be. Hünermann notices that St. Thomas speaks of the grace of the sacrament of marriage as a helping grace.10 St. Thomas does indeed speak this way of the... (shrink)

Some organisations make vaccination a condition of employment. This means prospective employees must demonstrate they have been vaccinated (eg, against measles) to be hired. But it also means organisations must decide whether _existing_ employees should be expected to meet newly introduced vaccination conditions (eg, against COVID-19). Unlike prospective employees who will not be _hired_ if they do not meet vaccination conditions, existing employees who fail to meet new vaccination conditions risk being _fired_. The latter seems worse than the former. Hence, (...) objections to vaccination mandates commonly centre on the harms that will be visited on existing employees who are unwilling to be vaccinated. However, because this objection does not necessarily entail the claim that vaccination is unnecessary for the effective and safe performance of certain jobs, those making this objection should have less of an objection, or no objection at all (at least on these grounds), to introducing vaccination requirements in some cases for _prospective_ employees. Yet, in this paper, I shall argue that if one has reason to believe vaccination requirements can be justified for prospective employees, one should also believe they are justified for existing employees _despite_ any asymmetry in consequences experienced by the two groups. As a consequence, common objections made against vaccination mandates grounded solely in the harms that may be experienced by existing employees who are unwilling to be vaccinated should be considered unpersuasive. (shrink)

The harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding is at the heart of Kant’s account of beauty in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, but interpreters have long struggled to determine what Kant means when he claims the faculties are in a state of free play. In this article, I develop an interpretation of the free play of the faculties in terms of the freedom of attention. By appealing to the different way that we attend to objects in (...) aesthetic experience, we can explain how the faculties are free, even when the subject already possesses a concept of the object and is bound to the determinate form of the object in perception. (shrink)

One debate surrounding Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2014) four-case argument against compatibilism focuses on whether, and why, we judge manipulated agents to be neither free nor morally responsible. In this paper, we propose a novel explanation. The four-case argument features cases where an agent is the only individual in her universe who has been manipulated. Let us call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents existential manipulation. Contrast this with universal manipulation, which affects all agents within a (...) universe. We propose that we find agents in Pereboom’s manipulation cases less free and morally responsible in part because they are the target of existential manipulation. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found that people’s free will and moral responsibility judgments were sensitive to the scope of manipulation: people judged existentially manipulated agents significantly less free and responsible than universally manipulated agents. (shrink)

Mereological principles are often controversial; perhaps the most stark contrast is between those who claim that Weak Supplementation is analytic—constitutive of our notion of proper parthood—and those who argue that the principle is simply false, and subject to many counterexamples. The aim of this paper is to diagnose the source of this dispute. I’ll suggest that the dispute has arisen by participants failing to be sensitive to two different conceptions of proper parthood: the outstripping conception and the non-identity conception. I’ll (...) argue that the outstripping conception (together with a specific set of definitions for other mereological notions), can deliver the analyticity of Weak Supplementation on at least one sense of ‘analyticity’. I’ll also suggest that the non-identity conception cannot do so independently of considerations to do with mereological extensionality. (shrink)

Evidential Uniqueness is the thesis that, for any batch of evidence, there’s a unique doxastic state that a subject with that evidence should have. One of the most common kinds of objections to views that violate Evidential Uniqueness are arbitrariness objections – objections to the effect that views that don’t satisfy Evidential Uniqueness lead to unacceptable arbitrariness. The goal of this paper is to examine a variety of arbitrariness objections that have appeared in the literature, and to assess the extent (...) to which these objections bolster the case for Evidential Uniqueness. After examining a number of different arbitrariness objections, I’ll conclude that, by and large, these objections do little to bolster the case for Evidential Uniqueness. (shrink)

The generation of the pitch control signal in a wind turbine (WT) is not straightforward due to the nonlinear dynamics of the system and the coupling of its internal variables; in addition, they are subjected to the uncertainty that comes from the random nature of the wind. Fuzzy logic has proved useful in applications with changing system parameters or where uncertainty is relevant as in this one, but the tuning of the fuzzy logic controller (FLC) parameters is neither straightforward nor (...) an easy task. On the other hand, reinforcement learning (RL) allows systems to automatically learn, and this capability can be exploited to tune the FLC. In this work, a WT pitch control architecture that uses RL to tune the membership functions and scale the output of a fuzzy controller is proposed. The RL strategy calculates the fuzzy controller gains in order to reduce the output power error of the WT according to the wind speed. Different reward mechanisms based on the output power error have been considered. Simulation results with different wind profiles show that this architecture performs better (123.7 W) in terms of power errors than an FLC without RL (133.2 W) or a simpler PID (208.8 W). Even more, it provides a smooth response and outperforms other hybrid controllers such as RL-PID and radial basis function neural network control. (shrink)

Through case studies on biodiversity, deforestation, pollution, and war, among others, Stoett analyzes the ability of international policy to provide environmental protection and discusses the ever-present factors of equality, sovereignty, and human rights integral to these issues. While providing a panoramic view of the actors and structures producing these policies. Stoett reminds readers that the topic is personal, that effective governance is not solely the responsibility of governments but of individuals and communities as well. Environmental diplomacy may not always meet (...) its intended goals, but positive steps are being achieved, and change can only happen when angst is replaced with an educated determination to work toward environmental justice. The Second Edition will explore new events, issues, and agreements since 2011; notably the Paris Agreement. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be a new theme added throughout and highlighted in each case study. (shrink)

Language for God explores the ways language and images influence who we are and how we live. It declares the necessity of language and images for God that are expansive and inclusive of all genders. Lutheran perspectives are used as a compass to offer scriptural, theological, and historical insights to advance the reformation of Christian language.

La longue histoire de l’Acropole d’Athènes est une vitrine fascinante de la façon dont un patrimoine ancien peut être transformé, d’un sanctuaire païen à un sanctuaire chrétien, à une forteresse islamique, à l’autel symbolique de la Grèce moderne. De plus, ce site a suscité l’admiration presque religieuse des chercheurs et, comme dans le cas des marbres d’Elgin, a été contesté à de nombreux égards. L’auteur du volume analysé, William St Clair, un spécialiste des marbres d’Elgin et de divers a...

This article is an attempt to clarify the role of pregivenness by drawing on the accounts afforded by Eugen Fink both in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation and in the complementary writings to this study. Pregivenness is first situated, along with givenness and non-givenness, within the framework of the system of transcendental phenomenology. As a second step, an examination is undertaken of the dimensions of pregivenness in the natural attitude. Next, nonpregivenness in the transcendental sphere is examined with a focus upon (...) the way in which indeterminateness does not undermine the possibility of a transcendental foreknowledge in the natural attitude, and on the other hand implies the productive character of phenomenological knowledge. After showing how, with the reduction, the pregivennes of the world turns into the pregivenness of world-constitution, the paper addresses the problems raised by the nonpregivenness both of the depth-levels and the reach of transcendental life. By unfolding these lines of inquiry, transcendental phenomenology surmounts the provisional analysis of constitution at the surface level as well as the limitation of transcendental life to the egological sphere. Finally, it is contended that Fink’s account of pregivenness overstates apperceptive or secondary pregivenenness because is does not deal with the pregivenness that precedes acts and is the condition of possibility for primary passivity. Reasons for the omission of impressional or primary pregivenness are suggested. (shrink)

Science, Truth, and Meaning presents a scientific and philosophical examination of our place in the world. It also celebrates how diverse, scientific knowledge is interconnected and reducible to common foundations.The book focuses on aspects of scientific truth that relate to our understanding of reality, and confronts whether truth is absolute or relative to what we are. Hence, it assesses the meaning of the scientific deductions we have made and how they have profoundly influenced our conception of life and existence.The subtitle (...) is 'From Wonder to Understanding', which is a paraphrased quote from Einstein, who said that the search for scientific truth is '... a continual flight from wonder to understanding'.In addressing the goal of advancing our understanding of our place in the world, this book also reveals the development and details of diverse sciences, their connections and achievements, and that while perhaps the same fundamental questions exist, they are seen in the light of an ever-refined scientific perspective on reality.Why the book is needed: many popular science books have been written, aimed at different levels of subject expertise, and nearly all treat their specific subject in isolation. Few attempt to link different sciences to their common foundations, and those that do are written by physicists. Since human knowledge is derived by, and relates to, the biological organism that human beings are, then such a book written from a biological perspective represents a novel perspective on the integration of science, and addresses new questions. This is such a book.Impressive aspects: the depth, breadth, consistency, and clarity of the work. (shrink)

A textbook for the undergraduate who is meeting the Lebesgue integral for the first time, relating it to the calculus and exploring its properties before deducing the consequent notions of measurable functions and measure.

Toward a Postmodern Ethic of Radical Freedom is one of the first, if not the first, to bring Cornel West and Michel Foucault together in a meaningful dialogue to formulate "a postmodern ethic of radical freedom." This dialogue begins with the practical posture of West, more specifically his notions of truth and reality and work, then goes back to his more theoretical work to explore the same notions. As a project in constructive ethics, this book examines Cornel West's epistemology (notion (...) of truth) and metaphysics (notions of reality) as foundational components for a postmodern ethic of radical freedom. These foundational components are then brought into a discursive conversation with aspects of Michel Foucault's archaeology and genealogy, with a method called reconstruction. This reconstruction results in two important trajectories, radical ontology and radical epistemology, which become the pillars for a postmodern ethic of radical freedom. The last chapter of the book weaves together all components with the womanist work of Monica Coleman and Patricia Hill Collins as examples of this ethic of radical freedom. Practically speaking, this postmodern ethic of radical freedom serves as a platform to ensure transcendence so that all people, regardless of race, gender, or sexuality, can enjoy a flourishing and fulfilled life. (shrink)

Your God is too small—way too small! What if God is not a human-like personal being but the God Beyond God of the Christian mystical traditions? What if God is the ultimate reality beyond all beings, including beyond all divine beings, indeed beyond all Being? It’s a mind-bending idea. Speaking of God as a human-like personal being is much easier but people who care about the deepest mystical understandings of God within our traditions need to make the effort to speak (...) about the God Beyond God, despite the difficulties. This book makes the attempt to speak of the God Beyond God in the language of the sermon, using metaphor and potent imagery tuned to the existential intensities of human life. The God Beyond God is closer to us than our jugular veins, vividly present in every moment of our lives. These sermons are practical and moving, and they also resonate with the most rigorous theological understandings of ultimate reality. Their deconstruction of our convenient fantasies about a divine being make these sermons emotionally intense and perhaps not suitable for beginners in the journey of faith. But veteran believers can breathe deeply in the air of these meditations, relaxing into the bliss of engaging ultimate reality without delusions, without deflections, and without controlling the object of our worship. (shrink)

In Revering God, author and scholar Thaddeus Williams bridges the gap between abstract theology and awe-inspired devotion, helping readers better understand God and drawing them into a deeper state of joy and reverence for their Creator.

This qualitative study was positioned within an emerging scientific field concerned with the interaction between biblical text and the psychological profile of the preacher. The theoretical framework was provided by the sensing, intuition, feeling and thinking approach to biblical hermeneutics, an approach rooted in reader-perspective hermeneutical theory and in Jungian psychological type theory that explores the distinctive readings of sensing perception and intuitive perception, and the distinctive readings of thinking evaluation and feeling evaluation. The empirical methodology was provided by developing (...) a research tradition concerned with applying the SIFT approach to biblical text. In the present study, a group of 17 Anglican clergy were invited to work in psychological type-alike groups to explore two of the biblical passages identified by Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary for the Feast of Christ the King. Dividing into three workshops, according to their preferences for sensing and intuition, the clergy explored Psalm 93. Dividing into three workshops, according to their preferences for thinking and feeling, the clergy explored John 18:33–37. The rich data gathered from these workshops supported the hypothesis that biblical interpretation and preaching may be shaped by the reader’s psychological type preference and suggested that the passages of scripture proposed for the Feast of Christ the King may be a joy for intuitive thinking types, but a nightmare for sensing feeling types.Contribution: Situated within the reader perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the SIFT method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. Employing this method, the present study contributes to the fields of homiletics and hermeneutics by demonstrating how some readers may struggle more than others to interpret the scripture readings proposed by the lectionary for the Feast of Christ the King. (shrink)

Samuel Alexander was an important figure in the rise of realism in the early twentieth century. Alongside Moore and Russell he forwarded the cause of realism in England with a systematic exposition of a realist metaphysics in his magnum opus Space, Time and Deity (1920). This volume is a collection of essays on Alexander’s philosophy, ranging from his metaphysics of spacetime, theory of categories, epistemology and account of perception, naturalism, and interpretations of reactions by R.G. Collingwood and John Anderson.

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) are an essential element of transport in industry 4.0. Although they may seem simple systems in terms of their kinemat.

J. M. Shorter; X*—Personal Identity, Personal Relationships, and Criteria, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 71, Issue 1, 1 June 1971, Pages 165–1.

Determining what has gone wrong in a malfunctioning body and proposing an effective treatment requires expertise. Since antiquity, philosophers and doctors have wondered what sort of knowledge this expertise involves, and whether and how it can warrant its conclusions. Few people were as qualified to deal with these questions as Galen of Pergamum. A practising doctor with a keen interest in logic and natural science, he devoted much of his enormous literary output to the task of putting medicine on firm (...) methodological grounds. At the same time he reflected on philosophical issues entailed by this project, such as the nature of experience, its relation to reason, the criteria of truth, and the methods of justification. This volume explores Galen's contributions to epistemology, as they arise in the specific inquiries and polemics of his works, as well as their legacy in the Islamic world. (shrink)

Minimalism about truth is one of the main contenders for our best theory of truth, but minimalists face the charge of being unable to properly state their theory. Donald Davidson incisively pointed out that minimalists must generalize over occurrences of the same expression placed in two different contexts, which is futile. In order to meet the challenge, Paul Horwich argues that one can nevertheless characterize the axioms of the minimalist theory. Sten Lindström and Tim Button have independently argued that Horwich’s (...) attempt to formulate minimalism remains unsuccessful. We show how to properly state Horwich’s axioms by appealing to propositional functions that are given by definite descriptions. Both Lindström and Button discuss proposals similar to ours and conclude that they are unsuccessful. Our new suggestion avoids these objections. (shrink)

In his 2000 book, From Chaos to Coercion: Detention and the Control of Tuberculosis, Richard Coker makes a number of important observations and arguments regarding the use of coercive public health measures in response to infectious disease threats. In particular, Coker argues that we have a tendency to neglect public health threats and then demand immediate action, which can leave policymakers with fewer effective options and may require (or may be perceived as requiring) more aggressive, coercive measures to achieve public (...) health goals. While Coker makes a convincing case as to why we should find it ethically problematic when governments find themselves in this position and resort to coercion, left outstanding is the question of whether this should preclude governments and health authorities from using coercion if and when they do find themselves in this position. In this paper, I argue that, while we should consider it ethically objectionable when governments resort to coercion because they have neglected a public health threat, its causes, and other possible responses to that threat, this should not then necessarily rule out the use of coercion in such circumstances; that there are ethically objectionable antecedents for why coercion is being considered should not necessarily or automatically cause us to think coercion in such cases cannot be justified. I address an objection to this argument and draw several conclusions about how governments’ use of coercion in public health should be evaluated. (shrink)

This paper gives a first theoretical formulation to a religious phenomenon which has not received much attention in philosophical discourse so far despite appearing in different highly heterogeneous religions. Vicarious religious ordinance refers to cases in which a living or deceased fully mature human being is knowingly or unknowingly assigned a religious affiliation without their consent or the consent of their dependents. I shall first offer three real-world examples of vicarious religious ordinance from Mormonism, Islam, and Shintoism and then raise (...) some normative concerns. I suggest (i) that vicarious religious ordinance does not fit neatly into current debates about religious epistemology, especially the recent debate on religious disagreement. I argue (ii) that normative questions as to why vicarious religious ordinance elicits indignation in its ‘victims’ is not easily explained through adducing similar examples. This paper aims to motivate further coordinated research on this topic. (shrink)

The informed consent process presents challenges for psychological trauma research (e.g. Institutional Review Board [IRB] apprehension). While previous research documents researcher and IRB-member perspectives on these challenges, participant views remain absent. Thus, using a mixed-methods approach, we investigated participant views on consent guidelines in two convenience samples: crowdsourced (N = 268) and undergraduate (N = 265) participants. We also examined whether trauma-exposure influenced participant views. Overall, participants were satisfied with current guidelines, providing minor feedback and ethical reminders for researchers. Moreover, (...) participant views for consent were similar irrespective of trauma-exposure. Our study has implications for IRBs and psychological researchers. (shrink)

Esta obra ofrece al lector un amplio relato de las enseñanzas de la Conferencia Episcopal Española a lo largo de todos los años posteriores al Concilio Vaticano II. Las enseñanzas de los Obispos se presentan según su temática, antecedentes y objetivos, y en su contexto social. Esta presentación permite al lector tener pleno conocimiento de la interpretación que los obispos hicieron de los acontecimientos históricos de la época. Por último, se añaden algunas observaciones críticas para comparar las ideas de los (...) obispos sobre los laicos con la doctrina del Concilio. (shrink)