Shifts are a well-known feature of the literature on spacetime symmetries. Recently, discussions have focused on so-called dynamic shifts, which by analogy with static and kinematic shifts enact arbitrary linear accelerations of all matter (as well as a change in the gravitational potential). But in mathematical formulations of these shifts, the analogy breaks down: while static and kinematic shift act on the matter field, the dynamic shift acts on spacetime structure instead. I formulate a different, `active' version of the dynamic (...) shift which does act on matter. (shrink)

Ruetsche ([2011]) argues that the occurrence of unitarily inequivalent representations in quantum theories with infinitely many degrees of freedom poses a novel interpretational problem. According to Ruetsche, such theories compel us to reject the so-called ideal of pristine interpretation; she puts forward the ‘coalescence approach’ as an alternative. In this paper I offer a novel defence of the coalescence approach. The defence rests on the claim that the ideal of pristine interpretation already fails before one considers the peculiarities of QM∞: (...) there are pre-QM∞ parallels to coalescence. Despite this departure from pristinism, the ‘modest’ view that emerges poses no threat to scientific realism. (shrink)

It is now standard to interpret symmetry-related models of physical theories as representing the same state of affairs. Recently, a debate has sprung up around the question when this interpretational move is warranted. In particular, Møller-Nielsen :1253–1264, 2017) has argued that one is only allowed to interpret symmetry-related models as physically equivalent when one has a characterisation of their common content. I disambiguate two versions of this claim. On the first, a perspicuous interpretation is required: an account of the models’ (...) common ontology. On the second, stricter, version of this claim, a perspicuous formalism is required in addition: one whose mathematical structures ‘intrinsically’ represent the physical world, in the sense of Field. Using Dewar’s :485–521, 2019) distinction between internal and external sophistication as a case study, I argue that the second requirement is decisive. This clarifies the conditions under which it is warranted to interpret symmetry-related models as physically equivalent. (shrink)

The presence of symmetries in physical theories implies a pernicious form of underdetermination. In order to avoid this theoretical vice, philosophers often espouse a principle called Leibniz Equivalence, which states that symmetry-related models represent the same state of affairs. Moreover, philosophers have claimed that the existence of non-trivial symmetries motivates us to accept the Invariance Principle, which states that quantities that vary under a theory’s symmetries aren’t physically real. Leibniz Equivalence and the Invariance Principle are often seen as part of (...) the same package. I argue that this is a mistake: Leibniz Equivalence and the Invariance Principle are orthogonal to each other. This means that it is possible to hold that symmetry-related models represent the same state of affairs whilst having a realist attitude towards variant quantities. Various arguments have been presented in favour of the Invariance Principle: a rejection of the Invariance Principle is inter alia supposed to cause indeterminism, undetectability or failure of reference. I respond that these arguments at best support Leibniz Equivalence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this journal, Middleton and Murgueitio Ramírez argue that absolute velocity is measurable, contrary to the received wisdom. Specifically, they claim that ‘there exists at least one reasonable analysis of measurement according to which the speedometer in [a world called “the Basic World”] measures the absolute velocity of the car.’ In this note, I critically respond to that claim: the analysis of measurement that Middleton and Murgueitio Ramírez propose is not reasonable; nor does it entail that absolute velocities are (...) measurable. (shrink)

Physics presents us with a symphony of natural constants: G, h, c, etc. Up to this point, constants have received comparatively little philosophical attention. In this paper I provide an account of dimensionful constants, in particular the gravitational constant. I propose that they represent inter-quantity structure in the form of relations between quantities with different dimensions. I use this account of G to settle a debate over whether mass scalings are symmetries of Newtonian Gravitation. I argue that they are not, (...) but only if we interpret mass anti-quidditistically. This is analogous to anti-haecceitism in the presence of spacetime symmetries. (shrink)

Moral sensitivity is known to be the starting point for moral competence and even is a core concept in the curricula for bachelor’s-level nursing students in the Netherlands. While the development of moral sensitivity in nursing is commonly agreed to be important, there is no clear understanding of how to develop moral sensitivity through nursing education and what components of nursing education contribute to moral sensitivity. Studies on educational interventions could build knowledge about what works in developing moral sensitivity and (...) how to achieve this outcome. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore if and how educational interventions contribute to the development of moral sensitivity in nursing students. A scoping review was conducted. Four electronic databases were searched: CINAHL, PubMed, MEDLINE and SpringerLink. Articles that were not about formal or initial nursing education and that had no link to moral development or moral sensitivity were excluded. After the final selection on educational interventions, 10 articles out of the initial 964 resources were included in the review. Three different but related dimensions of moral sensitivity emerged from the literature: (1) raising moral awareness, (2) providing the ability to frame and name ethical issues and (3) improving moral reasoning ability. Half of the studies used quantitative measures to evaluate the educational intervention, in particular the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire; the other half used diverse qualitative evaluation methods. None of the studies presented teaching methods that included all three dimensions of moral sensitivity. Moral awareness of self appears to be more loosely connected to the other two dimensions, which raises the question of whether it can be seen as a prerequisite for them. To encompass all dimensions of moral sensitivity, a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures seems most appropriate to study that topic. (shrink)

The role that trust plays in blockchain-based systems is understood and portrayed in various manners. The blockchain technology is said to enable and establish trust as well as to redirect it, to substitute for it, and to make it obsolete. Furthermore, there is disagreement on whom or what users have to trust when using the blockchain technology: code, math, algorithms, and machines, or still human actors. This paper hypothesizes that the divergences of the depictions largely rest on implicitly adhering to (...) different accounts of trust. Thus, the goal of this paper is to outline how the current lack of a shared understanding of the term “trust” leads to diverging interpretations of the blockchain technology’s core features. Furthermore, it shows how this lack of common understanding obstructs scholars from referring to one another meaningfully in the discourse on blockchain technology. To do so, this paper outlines the most prominent depictions of the setup of relevant trust relationships within blockchain-based systems and traces their roots to different underlying assumptions on the nature of trust. (shrink)

Among political philosophers - and indeed public officials - it is generally believed that some sort of general principle of distributional equality can provide solid moral foundations for universal access to health care. In fact, this belief is so widely received that even among those who are very critical of egalitarianism, few have expressed doubts about the prospects for an egalitarian defense of universal access to health care. The purpose of this paper is to put pressure on this received view.

D. M. Armstrong famously claims that deterministic laws of nature are contingent relations between universals and that his account can also be straightforwardly extended to irreducibly probabilistic laws of nature. For the most part, philosophers have neglected to scrutinize Armstrong’s account of probabilistic laws. This is surprising precisely because his own claims about probabilistic laws make it unclear just what he takes them to be. We offer three interpretations of what Armstrong-style probabilistic laws are, and argue that all three interpretations (...) are incompatible either with some feature of Armstrong’s broader metaphysics or with essential features of his account of laws (or both). (shrink)

The distinction between dimensions and units in physics is commonplace. But are dimensions a feature of reality? The most widely-held view is that they are no more than a tool for keeping track of the values of quantities under a change of units. This anti-realist position is supported by an argument from underdetermination: one can assign dimensions to quantities in many different ways, all of which are empirically equivalent. In contrast, I defend a form of dimensional realism, on which some (...) assignments of dimensions to quantities better describe reality than others. The argument I provide is a form of inference to the best explanation. In particular, the technique of dimensional analysis is explanatory, but it is only successful for certain systems of dimensions. Since these dimensional systems support scientific explanations, we have reason to believe that they are real. (shrink)

- Emilie du Châtelet offers an interesting and unusual account of the origin of our representation of extension. - She is an idealist about the essence extension, bodies and space, regarding them as mental constructs. - Du Châtelet's account requires a brute fact about the mind, in apparent tension with the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

If the words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, as assumed by Boucher and Osgood’s (1969) famous Pollyanna hypothesis and computationally confirmed for large text corpora in several languages (Dodds et al., 2015), then children and youth literature (CYL) should also show a Pollyanna effect. Here we tested this prediction applying a vector space model- based sentiment analysis tool called SentiArt (Jacobs, 2019) to two CYL corpora, one in English (372 books) and one in German (500 (...) books). Pitching our analysis at the sentence level, and assessing semantic as well as lexico-grammatical information, bBoth corpora show the Pollyanna effect and thus add further evidence to the universality hypothesis. The results of our multivariate sentiment analyses provide interesting testable predictions for future scientific studies of literature. (shrink)

Although discriminative deep neural networks are currently dominant in cognitive modeling, we suggest that capacity-limited, generative models are a promising avenue for future work. Generative models tend to learn both local and global features of stimuli and, when properly constrained, can learn componential representations and response biases found in people's behaviors.

This book provides a multidisciplinary analysis of the potential conflict between a government’s duty to protect children and a parent’ right to raise children in a manner they see fit. Using philosophical, bioethical, and legal analysis, the author engages with key scholars in pediatric decision-making and individual and religious rights theory. Going beyond the parent-child dyad, the author is deeply concerned both with the inteests of the broader society and with the appropriate limits of government interference in the private sphere. (...) The text offers a balance of individual and population interests, maximizing liberty but safeguarding against harm. Bioethics and law professors will therefore be able to use this text for both a foundational overview as well as specific, subject-level analysis. Clinicians such as pediatricians and gynecologists, as well as policy-makers can use this text to achieve balance between these often competing claims. The book is written by a physician with practical and theoretical knowledge of the subject, and deep sympathy for the parental and family perspectives. As such, the book proposes a new way of evaluating parental and state interventions in children's’ healthcare: a refreshing approach and a useful addition to the literature. (shrink)

In “On what matters: Personal identity as a phenomenological problem” (2020), Steven Crowell engages a number of contemporary interpretations of Husserl’s account of the person and personal identity by noting that they lack a phenomenological elucidation of the self as commitment. In this article, in response to Crowell, I aim to show that such an account of the self as commitment can be drawn from Husserl’s work by looking more closely at his descriptions from the time of Ideas and after (...) of the self as ego or I and egoic experience as attentive experience. I specifically aim to sketch the beginning of a response to three questions I take Crowell to be posing to a Husserlian account of the person and personal identity: (1) What more than pre-reflective self-awareness can be attributed to the self on phenomenological grounds so that we can understand, phenomenologically speaking, how selves become persons? (2) How can what characterizes the self in addition to pre-reflective self-awareness be discerned in both our commitment to truth and our feeling bound by love and other emotive commitments that cannot be fully rationally justified, which Husserl acknowledges are both sources of personal self-constitution? And (3), do all selves become persons? In the paper I elaborate how my answers to the first two questions turn on the self not just being self-aware but active in a particular sense. And to begin to address the third question, I suggest that while any form of wakeful conscious experience is both self-aware and active, this activity of the self makes a difference for those who are socio-historically embedded in the way we are. Specifically, on the proposed Husserlian account, selves that are socio-historically embedded become persons in and through their active relating to what they attentively experience. In concluding, I indicate how this Husserlian account might compare to Crowell’s claim that “self-identity (ipseity) is not mere logical identity (A=A) but a normative achievement […] which makes a ‘personal’ kind of identity possible” (2020). (shrink)

Racial inequity has influenced both personal and public health in the United States and has impacted enrollment in medical schools and training programs. The effects of racial inequity on training and how it is perceived can differ depending on who is being affected. Recommendations are offered for positive changes through mentoring of individuals, institutional leadership, and structural changes in organizations.

Followers’ perceptions of their leaders’ ethics have the potential to impact the way they react to the influence of these leaders. The present study of 365 U.S. Air Force Academy Cadets examined how followers’ perceptions of their leaders’ ethics moderated the relationships found between the leaders’ use of power, as conceptualized by French and Raven, and the followers’ contextual performance. Our results indicated that leaders’ use of expert, referent, and reward power was associated with higher levels of organizational citizenship behaviors (...) among their followers when the followers perceived these leaders to be more ethical. Moreover, when followers perceived their leaders to be less ethical, these followers reported lower levels of OCBs when their leaders’ utilized referent power. Practical implications, limitations, and future research are also discussed. (shrink)

This edited volume examines the realizations between theological considerations and natural law theorizing, from Plato to Spinoza.Theological considerations have long had a pronounced role in Catholic natural law theories, but have not been as thoroughly examined from a wider perspective. The contributors to this volume take a more inclusive view of the relation between conceptions of natural law and theistic claims and principles. They do not jointly defend one particular thematic claim, but articulate diverse ways in which natural law has (...) both been understood and related to theistic claims.In addition to exploring Plato and the Stoics, the volume also looks at medieval Jewish thought, the thought of Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham, and the ways in which Spinoza's thought includes resonances of earlier views and intimations of later developments. Taken as a whole, these essays enlarge the scope of the discussion of natural law through study of how the naturalness of natural law has often been related to theses about the divine. The latter are often crucial elements of natural law theorizing, having an integral role in accounting for the metaethical status and ethical bindingness of natural law. At the same time, the question of the relation between natural law and God-and the relation between natural law and divine command-has been addressed in a multiplicity of ways by key figures throughout the history of natural law theorizing, and these essays accord them the explanatory significance they deserve. (shrink)

Fichte denies the sin, the evil. Can he thereby affirm freedom of the phenomenon, of man?Fichte leugnet die Sünde, das Böse. Kann er so Freiheit der Erscheinung, des Menschen behaupten?

In the early 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to concerted advocacy-group lobbying, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of "hate crime" laws requiring the collection of statistics on, and enhancing the punishment for, crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places the evolution of the hate crime concept in socio-legal perspective. James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter adopt a skeptical if not critical stance, maintaining that legal definitions of (...) hate crime are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. No matter how hate crime is defined, and despite an apparent media consensus to the contrary, the authors find no evidence to support the claim that the United States is experiencing a hate crime epidemic--instead, they cast doubt on whether the number of hate crimes is even increasing. The authors further assert that, while the federal effort to establish a reliable hate crime accounting system has failed, data collected for this purpose have led to widespread misinterpretation of the state of intergroup relations in this country. The book contends that hate crime as a socio-legal category represents the elaboration of an identity politics now manifesting itself in many areas of the law. But the attempt to apply the anti-discrimination paradigm to criminal law generates problems and anomalies. For one thing, members of minority groups are frequently hate crime perpetrators. Moreover, the underlying conduct prohibited by hate crime law is already subject to criminal punishment. Jacobs and Potter question whether hate crimes are worse or more serious than similar crimes attributable to other anti-social motivations. They also argue that the effort to single out hate crime for greater punishment is, in effect, an effort to punish some offenders more seriously simply because of their beliefs, opinions, or values, thus implicating the First Amendment. Advancing a provocative argument in clear and persuasive terms, Jacobs and Potter show how the recriminalization of hate crime has little value with respect to law enforcement or criminal justice. Indeed, enforcement of such laws may exacerbate intergroup tensions rather than eradicate prejudice. (shrink)

Early in the 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to what was said to be an epidemic of prejudice-motivated violence, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of 'hate crime' laws that required the collection of statistics and enhanced the punishment of crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places in socio-legal perspective both the hate crime problem and society's response to it. From the outset, Jacobs and Potter adopt a (...) skeptical if not critical stance. They argue that hate crime is a hopelessly muddled concept and that legal definitions of the term are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. Moreover, no matter how hate crime is defined, the authors find no evidence to support the claim that the US is experiencing a hate crime epidemic—nor that the number or rate of hate crimes is at an historic zenith. (shrink)

Intentional weight loss can increase health risk in the long‐term, despite short‐term benefits, because human adipose tissue is widely contaminated with various lipophilic environmental contaminants, especially persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Recently, chronic exposure to low POPs has emerged as a new risk factor for common metabolic diseases and cardiovascular diseases. The amount of POPs released from adipocytes to the circulation increases during weight loss, thereby increasing POPs exposure of other critical organs. Possible harmful effects due to release of POPs during (...) weight loss are opposite to those usually expected from losing weight. It is speculated that this tradeoff can explain recent puzzling findings on intensive weight loss. The presence of POPs in adipose tissue adds a challenge to weight management and an optimal strategy of weight management needs to consider both fat mass and dynamics of POPs. (shrink)

Femtech, apps gericht op de reproductieve gezondheid van vrouwen, belooft vrouwen te empoweren door hen kennis en controle te geven over hun lichaam. Maar femtech is niet zonder problemen: de ervaring van de gebruiker past niet altijd in de tot data gereduceerde werkelijkheid van de app. Bovendien pretenderen de apps inclusief te zijn maar zijn zij heteronormatief. Ook verzamelen en verkopen de fertiliteitapps intieme informatie. Femtech kan daarmee een bron van kwetsbaarheid zijn voor gebruikers.

RESUMENLa disputa entre Jacobi y Schelling sobre los conceptos fundamentales de fundamento y causa a propósito de las cosas divinas (1811/1812) será analñizada con la intención de prinfundizar en la comrpensión de la libertad.PALABRAS CLAVESSCHELLING, JACOBI, LIBERTAD, VOLUNTAD, CAUSA Y FUNDAMENTOABSTRACTThe in the dispute between Jacobi and Schelling about the divine things (1811/12)central notions of reason and cause are inquired into a sufficient understanding ofliberty.KEY WORDSSCHELLING, JACOBI, FREEDOM, WILL, CAUSE, BASIS.

La disputa entre Jacobi y Schelling sobre los conceptos fundamentales de fundamento y causa a propósito de las cosas divinas será analizada con la intención de profundizar en la comprensión de la libertad.

In this issue of the journal and in the August 2021 issue we are including some articles concerning Artificial Intelligence and ethics, and computer technology and ethics more broadly. Developments...

As mentioned in the April 2021 issue of the journal, we are including some articles on Artificial Intelligence and ethics, and computer technology and ethics more broadly. In February 2020, the Ins...

If Justice Louis Brandeis were alive to witness San Francisco’s recent experiment with universal health care legislation, he might amend his famous characterization of the states as “laboratories of democracy” to include municipalities as well. In San Francisco, where ten percent of residents have no health insurance and where fifteen percent of businesses provide no health coverage for their employees, the Board of Supervisors recently passed the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance, which funds a network of primary care services (...) for uninsured residents. While the Ordinance has, in the main, met with general approval, its provision mandating contributions from local businesses that do not meet minimum health spending requirements is the subject of ongoing litigation. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in the city’s favor, thereby allowing the spending provision to go forward pending a full appeal on the merits of the case. (shrink)

Emergency services personnel are a high stress occupation, being frequently confronted with highly consequential stressors and expected to perform: without fault; under high pressure; and in unpredictable circumstances. Research often invokes similarities between the experiences of emergency services personnel and elite athletes, opening up the possibility of transferring learnings between these contexts. Both roles involve genuine risks to emotional wellbeing because their occupations involve significant stress. Similarly, both roles face obstacles and injury, and their “success” is dependent on high-quality execution (...) of their skills under pressure. As such, both occupations are required to have resilience and effective coping abilities to ensure psychological well-being. Researchers suggest emotional awareness may be a key variable in the management and maintenance of resilience. This study: explored the experiences of emergency services personnel; characterised connections between emotional awareness and resilience; and reflected on the ways these findings can be extrapolated to elite athletes. We analysed 11 interviews with emergency services personnel. Participants identified resilience as crucial when coping with stress, however, many defined resilience as remaining unaffected by stress rather than, for example, managing and responding to it. Participants defined emotional awareness as understanding their emotions, and they recognised associated benefits for coping, resilience, and burnout. Nevertheless, most participants did not engage in practices to improve their emotional awareness. Barriers, such as maladaptive beliefs and help-seeking stigma, interfered with participants’ ability to cultivate emotional awareness, to promote resilience. In contrast, some participants described profound improvements in resilience and coping following the cultivation of emotional awareness. This finding illustrates that systemic change must target the individual, team, and organisation to correct misperceptions about resilience, emotional awareness, and psychological help-seeking. Developing emotional awareness may help emergency services personnel and other high stress occupations like elite athletes process difficult experiences and enhance their resilience, promoting well-being, and career longevity. (shrink)

Kant bestimmt Weisheit als Erkenntnis des und Angemessenheit des Willens zum höchsten Gut. Dieses versteht er als Vereinigung von Moralität und Glück. Da diese nicht aus derselben Gesetzlichkeit zu begreifen sind, denkt Kant zur Vermittlung die Postulate Unsterblichkeit und Gott. Die Idee des höchsten Guts praktisch, d. i. für die Maxime unseres vernünftigen Verhaltens, hinreichend zu bestimmen, ist für Kant die Weisheitslehre, wissenschaftlich reflektiert die Philosophie. Schelling schließt sich dem an; auch für ihn ist Philosophie Wollen der Weisheit. Diese sieht (...) auf das letzte Ziel, auf das, was in Wahrheit sein soll. Dieses zu wissen und zum bestimmenden Grund des Willens zu machen ist für Schelling Weisheit. (shrink)