This historical study aims to explain how the transition from student nurse service to fully qualified “graduate nurse” service in the United States in the 20th century affected assumptions about fundamental patient care in hospital wards and provide historical context for current apprenticeship programs. Through analysis of documents from 1920 when student nurse service, a nurse apprentice model, was the norm to 1960 when the nurse apprentice model was waning in favor of registered nurse service, this study found that the (...) replacement of student nurses with registered nurses led to weakened standardization of fundamental bedside care and the introduction of large numbers of unlicensed nursing assistants. While student nurses could perform all the functions of fully qualified graduate nurses, nursing assistants could not, resulting in a separation of fundamental nursing care from the professional nurse role and changes in assumptions and attitudes toward fundamental care. These changes had a negative effect on fundamental nursing care. New apprenticeship programs provide opportunities for improvement. (shrink)

Pure time preference is a preference for something to come at one point in time rather than another merely because of when it occurs in time. In opposition to Sidgwick, Ramsey, Rawls, and Parfit we argue that it is not always irrational to be guided by pure time preferences. We argue that even if the mere difference of location in time is not a rational ground for a preference, time may nevertheless be a normatively neutral ground for a preference, and (...) this makes it plausible to claim that the preference is rationally permitted. (shrink)

We argue that some algorithms are value-laden, and that two or more persons who accept different value-judgments may have a rational reason to design such algorithms differently. We exemplify our claim by discussing a set of algorithms used in medical image analysis: In these algorithms it is often necessary to set certain thresholds for whether e.g. a cell should count as diseased or not, and the chosen threshold will partly depend on the software designer’s preference between avoiding false positives and (...) false negatives. This preference ultimately depends on a number of value-judgments. In the last section of the paper we discuss some general principles for dealing with ethical issues in algorithm-design. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel learning model Clarion , which is a hybrid model based on the two-level approach proposed in Sun (1995). The model integrates neural, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line, bottom-up learning (i.e., learning that goes from neural to symbolic representations). The model utilizes both procedural and declarative knowledge (in neural and symbolic representations respectively), tapping into the synergy of the two types of processes. It was applied to deal with sequential decision tasks. Experiments and (...) analyses in various ways are reported that shed light on the advantages of the model. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's thesis concerning the structure of scientific change was critically examined in relation to the historical problems of social science. The use and interpretation of Kuhn's ideas by psychologists was reviewed and found to center around the proliferation of theoretical views as paradigms, the viewing of theoretical differences as paradigm clashes, and efforts to affirm particular conceptions of psychology's past or future. Such use was seen as curbing discussion of fundamental issues, and to reflect a continuing neglect of the (...) foundational problems peculiar to social science. The relevance of Kuhn's work was seen to rest on a more critical view of his idea of “mature” science, better understanding of the type of social psychology upon which his thesis rests, and greater appreciation of his hermeneutic approach to social-historical analysis. (shrink)

Owen Flanagan's The Really Hard Problem provides a rich source of reflection on the question of meaning and ethics within the context of philosophical naturalism. I affirm the title's claim that the quest to find meaning in a purely physical universe is indeed a hard problem by addressing three issues: Flanagan's claim that there can be a scientific/empirical theory of ethics (eudaimonics), that ethics requires moral glue, and whether, in the end, Flanagan solves the hard problem. I suggest that he (...) does not, although he provides much that is of importance and useful for further reflection along the way. (shrink)

In the Enneads Plotinus articulates an account of ‘creation’ following in the tradition, albeit critically, of Plato’s Timaeus. This article compares Hart’s account of creation, as expressed in The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth , and other secondary literature, with that of Plotinus’s. Some significant differences and interesting parallels are highlighted.

STILLWATER, MINNESOTA—Two men sit at a long table, oblivious to the breakfast-time commotion. One moves a coffee cup from one side of a water glass to the other. “If I look here and don’t see the cup,” he says to the other, “then I know it must be there.” It sounds like a “deep” exchange between swotty young philosophy majors. But the fellow moving the cup has gray hair— and a Nobel Prize in physics. Sliding the porcelain, Anthony Leggett of (...) the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, explains how scientists might try to see past the strictures of quantum mechanics, the bizarre theory that governs the behavior of tiny objects and clashes with our everyday notions of reality. “None of the existing interpretations of quantum mechanics as a theory of the entire world is satisfactory,” Leggett says to John Preskill, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Leggett, Preskill, and 22 other physicists, philosophers, and historians have gathered here for the Seven Pines Symposium.* Packed into a slightly ramshackle lodge in a wooded state park, the scholars—all of them men—will share their insights, suites of rooms without telephones, and meals of roast quail and pheasant at a long communal table. Perhaps not since the famous Solvay Conferences of the early 20th century, at which Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein debated the meaning of quantum theory in their free time, has physics seemed so genteel. Each year, the symposium tackles another of physics’ enduring puzzles: the nature of the vacuum, the concept of a f ield, the meaning of time. The aim is not to resolve the mysteries but to seed new lines of inquiry, says Roger Stuewer, a historian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and chair of the symposium’s advisory board. “When we get the best people together,” he says, “ideas are planted that in some intangible way will influence what they do in the future.” Those germinating ideas are watered with a mellow Zinfandel and nourished with succulent steak. This year, attendees spent 5 days grappling with the implications of quantum mechanics, which have perplexed physi.. (shrink)

This inquiry analyzed the extent to which television commercials used mature models, relative to younger models. It also analyzed the extent to which commercials portrayed the elderly in a favorable or an unfavorable manner. The study used content analysis to test twelve hypotheses. The authors arrived at conclusions relating to the depiction of mature individuals in television commercials and set forth various recommendations to advertisers, based on the analysis.

In “Real Logic in Philosophy” I argued that the study of logic be conceived to be the study of the human faculty for correct reasoning. I relabeled the field of study, as well as the object studied, “real logic”- thereby introducing an ambiguity akin to that found with ‘grammar’. ‘Grammar’ is a term for both a field of study and for the object studied. The parallel to grammar and ‘grammar’ was not accidental. I proposed that the faculty for correct reasoning (...) is analogous to the faculty for natural language understanding. So, just as one’s knowlege of a NL can be usefully thought of as an “internalized” grammar, so one’s faculty for Reasoning Logically—or for “real logic” —can be thought of as an “internalized” system. The faculty for correct inference is, then, an internalized real logic. (shrink)

Severe brain injury is a leading cause of death and disability. Following severe brain injury diagnosis is difficult and errors frequently occur. Recent findings in clinical neuroscience may offer a solution. Neuroimaging has been used to detect preserved cognitive function and awareness in some patients clinically diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. Remarkably, neuroimaging has also been used to communicate with some vegetative patients through a series of yes/no questions. Some have speculated that, one day, this method may allow (...) severely brain-injured patients to make medical decisions. Yet, skepticism is rife, due in part to the inherent difficulty of assessing decision-making capacity through neuroimaging communication. In this thesis, I provide the first systematic analysis of this problem. I present and defend a strategy for assessing decision-making capacity in brain-injured patients who can only communicate through neuroimaging. (shrink)

In his account of epistēmē, the highest level of understanding attainable in philosophical inquiry, Aristotle articulates standards for the ideal explanations that confer this level of understanding. I argue that Aristotle's key standard for epistēmē is of central importance for the biological homology concept. The explanatory shortcoming that results from violating this standard has been vaguely articulated in recent literature on homology; Aristotle's account offers a more neutral and precise formulation of the shortcoming and its antidote. Further, the risk for (...) this shortcoming has heightened with recent accounts of homology grounded in genetics, increasing the contemporary relevance of Aristotelian epistēmē. (shrink)

DuBois, Fanon, Cabral is an examination of the overlap of culture, class, and political leadership in the Africana liberation struggle. Focusing on the writings and activism of W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, and Amilcar Cabral, this book explores the three theorists' articulation of the relationship between acculturation and mass popular leadership among colonized elites in the African diaspora.

With essays by David Hume, Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel kant, William Blake, Jeremy Bentham, Richard Whately, John Henry Newman, Karl Marx, James Whistler, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, etc.

With essays by David Hume, Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel kant, William Blake, Jeremy Bentham, Richard Whately, John Henry Newman, Karl Marx, James Whistler, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, etc.

This volume explores the role of both "mere habits" and sophisticated habitus in the formation of moral character and the virtues, incorporating perspectives from philosophy, theology, psychology, and neuroscience.

This volume explores the role of both “mere habits” and sophisticated habitus in the formation of moral character and the virtues, incorporating perspectives from philosophy, theology, psychology, and neuroscience.

This dissertation investigates conceptions of responsibility at work in contemporary intergenerational nuclear waste policy. It argues that articulations of responsibility at work in current policy unduly privileges resemblance to the present as a condition for that responsibility holding as an intergenerational relation. The dissertation begins by arguing that current waste disposal practices depend on a view of responsibility contingent on the presumption that future generations will be minimally epistemologically, socially, and politically continuous with present generations. Extant policy is therefore found (...) to place an asymmetric and unjust burden on future generations. The dissertation thus concludes that responsibilities to future generations require that responsibility be thought prior to particular determinations of the possible identity of our inheritors. (shrink)

In response to several appeals for a new politics of media, the author argues that a human right to self-identity would help to clarify and inform the normative stakes involved in efforts to liberate powerful media forces for democratic ends. Such a right to self-identity may be seen already to be a latent motivation behind various efforts to secure “representation” for protected classes; however, if the principles were drawn out in more explicit form, they might help to more powerfully transform (...) the targeted media structures along normative lines already legitimized by a human rights tradition. In addition, a discourse of human rights would also help to discipline competing group interests in ways that would better protect individuals involved in those struggles from coercive agendas that would drive them into conformist group loyalties. The author articulates a background theory of human rights that is grounded in the actual histories and practices of the emerging global movement. (shrink)

In speaking of a right in relation to identity formation, I have avoided many important questions, including questions about how properly to understand identity formation itself. Evoking such a right does draw from existing trends, but it remains speculative. Nonetheless, it captures one valuable insight in criticisms of human rights as a Western imposition, namely the insight that an important kind of oppression figures in the imposition of identities. By affirming a human right in relation to identity formation, we can (...) not only confront this kind of oppression but see that it has specific weight in contemporary globalizing politics, economics, and culture. Moreover, we see that human rights can offer a critical relation to that kind of identity assertion and cultural imperialism that has itself employed the language of universal principles. One reason to emphasize this possibility of human rights discourse is to explore how this discourse offers more generally a significant normative perspective for challenging various kinds of oppression and domination today. Emphasizing such possibilities is a way of exploring the respects in which any viable notion of democracy must provide an important place for human rights. (shrink)

Holism in metaphysics can be defended because it can solve a dilemma about error: that the object of one’s wrong judgment is either inside or outside one’s mind and that neither alternative can be the case. Among holists the American philosopher Josiah Royce provides the best account of both the dilemma and its holist answer. The latter consists in steering between the hard and fast difference of being inside and outside the mind that sparks the dilemma. Royce does this by (...) identifying a unity in the difference, which then ceases to be a stark division and becomes instead a unity-in-difference. I then show how a related dilemma is susceptible to this sort of holist solution. Yet the holist answer to these dilemmas invites all the stock objections to holism. These include the obliteration of finite selves and the distinction between such selves and their experiences. Answering these objections calls for an alternative that uses Royce’s ploy of synthesizing the extremes of being inside and being outside the mind. This sort of realism gets between the horns of the dilemmas via the real and intentional modes of forms. (shrink)

Holism in metaphysics can be defended because it can solve a dilemma about error: that the object of one’s wrong judgment is either inside or outside one’s mind and that neither alternative can be the case. Among holists the American philosopher Josiah Royce provides the best account of both the dilemma and its holist answer. The latter consists in steering between the hard and fast difference of being inside and outside the mind that sparks the dilemma. Royce does this by (...) identifying a unity in the difference, which then ceases to be a stark division and becomes instead a unity-in-difference. I then show how a related dilemma is susceptible to this sort of holist solution. Yet the holist answer to these dilemmas invites all the stock objections to holism. These include the obliteration of finite selves and the distinction between such selves and their experiences. Answering these objections calls for an alternative that uses Royce’s ploy of synthesizing the extremes of being inside and being outside the mind. This sort of realism gets between the horns of the dilemmas via the real and intentional modes of forms. (shrink)