Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

It is predicted that the rapid acquisition of new genetic knowledge and related applications during the next decade will have significant implications for virtually all members of society. Currently, most people get exposed to information about genes and genetics only through stories publicized in the media. We sought to understand how individuals in the general population used and understood the concepts of ???genetics??? and ???genes.??? During in-depth one-on-one telephone interviews with adults in the United States, we asked questions exploring their (...) basic understanding of these terms, as well as their belief as to the location of genes in the human body. A wide range of responses was received. Despite conversational familiarity with genetic terminology, many noted frustration or were hesitant when trying to answer these questions. In addition, some responses reflected a lack of understanding about basic genetic science that may have significant implications for broader public education measures in genetic literacy, genetic counseling, public health practices, and even routine health care. (shrink)

The insightful commentaries to our contribution "Education as the Social Cultivation of Intellectual Virtue" (in 'Social Virtue Epistemology', (eds.) M. Alfano, C. Klein & J. de Ridder, Routledge 2022) offered by Alessandra Tanesini and Lani Watson highlight some important aspects of the work that philosophers, education theorists, and educators should carry out to strengthen the theoretical and practical advantages of the educational approach we have proposed. This commentary briefly addresses a few points that could set the grounds for future investigations (...) on intellectual virtue-based approaches to education and their social dimensions. (shrink)

In this interview, Lani Roberts provides a philosophical justification for the study of diversity issues and highlights the pedagogical methods needed to prepare students to live and thrive in a diverse society. This article is a partial transcript of a recorded interview.

Tato studie se zabývá zobrazováním alchymie v malbách, knižních ilustracích i v architektuře v období raného novověku. Na jednotlivých příkladech obrazů či ilustrací prezentuje různé aspekty alchymistova života i jeho práce. Nezabývá se symbolickou alchymickou ikonografií, ale zaměří se především na zobrazování prostředí a vybavení alchymických dílen i osobností samotných alchymistů. Soustředí se zejména na vyobrazení zařízení alchymických laboratorií, s nimiž se lze setkat jak u renesančních malířů, tak v ilustracích alchymických rukopisů a poměrně ojediněle i v české architektuře. Poskytuje (...) také pohled na vyobrazení vzniklá v souvislosti s literární kritikou alchymie. Alchymisté byli zejména v dílech předních evropských humanistů často záměrně zesměšňováni, kritizováni a označováni za blázny a zloděje. V závěru se zabývá vybranými příklady ze žánrového umění, kde byli rovněž alchymisté zobrazováni často satiricky, ale i s určitou úctou, jako vzdělaní učenci. Výtvarné umění raného novověku nám představuje různé aspekty života alchymistů a je v dnešní době jednou z možností, jak se přiblížit porozumění jejich vědeckým aktivitám. Jak však studie ukazuje, k těmto obrazovým materiálům je třeba přistupovat kriticky. (shrink)

This study examines whether corporate social responsibility performance is associated with corporate tax avoidance. Employing a matched sample of 434 firm-year observations from the Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini database over the period 2003–2009, our logit regression results show that the higher the level of CSR performance of a firm, the lower the likelihood of tax avoidance. Our results indicate that more socially responsible firms are likely to display less tax avoidance. Finally, the results from our additional analysis show that the (...) CSR categories community relations and diversity represent particularly important elements of CSR performance that reduce tax avoidance. (shrink)

We speak of the right to know with relative ease. You have the right to know the results of a medical test or to be informed about the collection and use of personal data. But what exactly is the right to know, and who should we trust to safeguard it? This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the right to know and other epistemic rights: rights to goods such as information, knowledge and truth. These rights play a prominent role (...) in our information-centric society and yet they often go unnoticed, disregarded and unprotected. As such, those who control what we know, or think we know, exert an influence on our lives that is often as dangerous as it is imperceptible. Beginning with a rigorous but accessible philosophical account of epistemic rights, Lani Watson examines the harms caused by epistemic rights violations, drawing on case studies across medical, political and legal contexts. She investigates who has the right to what information, who is responsible for the quality and circulation of information and what epistemic duties we have towards each other. This book is essential reading for philosophers, legal theorists and anyone concerned with the protection and promotion of information, knowledge and truth.. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of board of director gender diversity on corporate tax aggressiveness. Based on a sample of 418 U.S. firms covering the 2006–2009 period, our ordinary least squares regression results show a negative and statistically significant association between female representation on the board and tax aggressiveness after controlling for endogeneity. Our results are consistent across several measures of tax aggressiveness and additional robustness checks.

Landscape Agency New York was founded by Gavin Keeney, c.1997, and encompassed a wide array of activities and effects – e.g., research, writing, design, consulting, and teaching. /S/OMA (Syntactical Operations Metaphorical Affects) was the mobile, and sometimes global design and teaching module within LANY, focusing primarily on entirely hypothetical and/or irreal projects, many becoming the foundation for lectures and courses delivered at institutions in the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe, from 2003 to 2007. Lastly, the LANY Archive-Grotto was established following (...) publication of On the Nature of Things: Contemporary American Landscape Architecture (Birkhauser, 2001), primarily as a means of escaping the then-formulaic production of texts common to Landscape Architecture and Architecture. (shrink)

Mikhail Nikolaevich bridges 19th- and 20th-century Russian culture as well as Leninism and Stalinism, and later became an instrument in Khrushchev's effort at de-Stalinization. Pokrovskii was born in Moscow in 1868. He described the years before 1905 as his time of "democratic illusions and economic materialism." His interest in legal Marxism began in the 1890's but it was only with the Revolution of 1905 that he stepped into the Marxist camp. Pokrovskii was a leader in the creation of the "historical (...) front"—an organization of scholars authorized to work out a Marxist theory of the past. He formalized the bond between scholarship and politics through his belief that historians should assist party authorities in effecting a cultural revolution; thus he supported Stalin's collectivization of agriculture and leg a campaign to silence non-Marxist scholars, some of whom he had defended earlier. Yet his accommodation with Stalin was uneasy, and after Pokrovskii's death in 1932 his allegedly "abstract sociological schemes" were condemned and his career was dubbed _pokrovshcina_—era of the wicked deeds of Pokrovskii. (shrink)

This edition of Giraldus Odonis' Logica for the first time gives access to an important and original treatise, which has unduly been neglected since the author's death. It is also important in that it gives evidence of interesting achievements in the field of logic outside the anti-metaphysical circle surrounding Ockham.

Questioning is a familiar, everyday practice which we use, often unreflectively, in order to gather information, communicate with each other, and advance our inquiries. Yet, not all questions are equally effective and not all questioners are equally adept. Being a good questioner requires a degree of proficiency and judgment, both in determining what to ask and in deciding who, where, when, and how to ask. Good questioning is an intellectual skill. Given its ubiquity and significance, it is an intellectual skill (...) that, I believe, we should educate for. In this paper, I present a central line of argument in support of educating for good questioning, namely, that it plays an important role in the formation of an individual’s intellectual character and can thereby serve as a valuable pedagogical tool for intellectual character education. I argue that good questioning plays two important roles in the cultivation of intellectual character: good questioning stimulates intellectually virtuous inquiry and contributes to the development of several of the individual intellectual virtues. Insofar as the cultivation of intellectually virtuous character is a desirable educational objective, we should educate for good questioning. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of corporate tax avoidance on board of directors and chief executive officer reputation. Our regression results show that when firms engage in tax avoidance, both directors and CEOs, on average, are rewarded by improvements in their reputations as proxied by an increased number of outside board seats. In particular, both independent directors and non-CEO executive directors undergo positive changes in reputation. We also find that CEOs of tax-aggressive firms experience enhanced reputations by gaining extra board (...) seats. Our main regression results hold based on additional analyses. Overall, this study provides important empirical evidence confirming an association between tax avoidance and the individual reputations of directors and CEOs. (shrink)

The landscape of contemporary epistemology has significantly diversified in the past 30 years, shaped in large part by two complementary movements: virtue and social epistemology. This diversification provides an apt theoretical context for the epistemology of education. No longer concerned exclusively with the formal analysis of knowledge, epistemologists have turned their attention towards individuals as knowers, and the social contexts in which epistemic goods such as knowledge and understanding are acquired and exchanged. As such, the concerns of epistemology have once (...) again aligned with questions lying at the heart of the philosophy of education regarding the nature, aims and practice of education. Employing the conceptual tools and frameworks of the contemporary field, these questions are addressed by both epistemologists and education theorists in the emerging epistemology of education literature. (shrink)

For more than fifty years, Sterling M. McMurrin served as one of the preeminent intellectual voices of the LDS community. From his beginnings as an Institute of Religion instructor to U.S. Commissioner of Education, and from a professor of philosophy to U.S. Envoy to Iran, he showed by example how personal and institutional morality can be defended.In a series of candid discussions with Jack Newell, McMurrin reveals his ability to reconcile freedom and conscience. In a spirit of repartee and friendship, (...) writes Boyer Jarvis in the foreword, Newell probes, challenges, and constantly draws McMurrin out as he ... reflects upon his wide-ranging ideas and experiences. Rich in insight and humor, this remarkable dialogue captures the sweep and depth of McMurrin's thoughts as Newell engages him in discussing his approaches to philosophy, education, and religion.Among the qualities that characterized McMurrin's life and mind, explains Newell, perhaps the most notable is the freedom with which he has spoken his views on both the sacred and the profane. His intellectual integrity -- coupled as it almost always is with his humane instincts and innate fairness -- has simultaneously confounded and earned the respect of critics. (shrink)

Both books were highly praised. This third volume brings essays on the thought of historical philosophers in which Anscombe engages directly with their ideas and arguments.

ABSTRACTOne natural application of Linda Zagzebski’s exemplarist moral theory is found in the context of moral and intellectual character education. Zagzebski discusses this application in her recent book, commenting that ‘exemplars can serve as a guide for moral training’ and endorsing ‘the learning of virtue by imitation’. This theme has been pursued compellingly by authors working at the intersection of virtue ethics and education, contributing to an emerging case for exemplarist-based approaches to character education. I focus on intellectual character education (...) and draw attention to an interesting case in which exemplarism in the classroom may be seen to inhibit, rather than promote, the development of intellectually virtuous character. This is the case of virtuous inquisitiveness. (shrink)

Using as a springboard a three-way debate between theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, philosopher of science Nancy Cartwright and myself, I address in layman’s terms the issues of why we need a unified theory of the fundamental interactions and why, in my opinion, string and M-theory currently offer the best hope. The focus will be on responding more generally to the various criticisms. I also describe the diverse application of string/M-theory techniques to other branches of physics and mathematics which render the (...) whole enterprise worthwhile whether or not “a theory of everything” is forthcoming. (shrink)

The interest in meaningful work has significantly increased over the last two decades. Much of the associated managerial research has focused on researching ways to 'provide and manage meaning' through leadership or organizational culture. This stands in sharp contrast with the literature of the humanities which suggests that meaningfulness does not need to be provided, as the distinct feature of a human being is that he or she has an intrinsic 'will to meaning'. The research that has been done based (...) on the humanistic paradigm has been quite fragmented. This article aims to address these gaps through an action research project that actively involved participants in the process of affirming and uncovering the meaningfulness of their work. Our findings contribute to current organizational scholarship and practice as they enable scholars to clearly distinguish 'meaningful work' from 'the management of meaning', bring together the various sources of meaningful work in one framework and show their relationship with each other, clearly show the importance of engaging with both the inspiration towards the ideal as well as the often less than perfect self and the organizational reality in which meaning gets expressed and contribute to our understanding of how to engage individuals in conversations about meaningful work that are not prescriptive or exclusive, but that also show where meanings are commonly held. (shrink)

This review essay provides a critical discussion of Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory. We agree that emt is a book of impressive scope that will be of interest to ethical theorists, as well as epistemologists, philosophers of language, and philosophers of religion. Throughout the critical discussion we argue that exemplarism faces a number of important challenges, firstly, in dealing with the fallibility of admiration, which plays a central role in the theoretical framework, and secondly, in serving as a practical guide (...) for moral development. Despite this, we maintain that emt points the way for significant future theoretical and empirical research into some of the most well-established questions in ethical theory. (shrink)

Twentieth century philosophers introduced the distinction between “objective rightness” and “subjective rightness” to achieve two primary goals. The first goal is to reduce the paradoxical tension between our judgments of what is best for an agent to do in light of the actual circumstances in which she acts and what is wisest for her to do in light of her mistaken or uncertain beliefs about her circumstances. The second goal is to provide moral guidance to an agent who may be (...) uncertain about the circumstances in which she acts, and hence is unable to use her standard moral principle directly in deciding what to do. This paper distinguishes two important senses of “moral guidance”; proposes criteria of adequacy for accounts of subjective rightness; canvasses existing definitions for “subjective rightness”; finds them all deficient; and proposes a new and more successful account. It argues that each comprehensive moral theory must include multiple principles of subjective rightness to address the epistemic situations of the full range of moral decision-makers, and shows that accounts of subjective rightness formulated in terms of what it would reasonable for the agent to believe cannot provide that guidance. (shrink)

This volume offers the first-ever complete English translation of Leibniz’s Dissertatio De Arte Combinatoria together with a critical edition of the original Latin text on fa...

Reference is a central topic in philosophy of language, and has been the main focus of discussion about how language relates to the world. R. M. Sainsbury sets out a new approach to the concept, which promises to bring to an end some long-standing debates in semantic theory.There is a single category of referring expressions, all of which deserve essentially the same kind of semantic treatment. Included in this category are both singular and plural referring expressions, complex and non-complex referring (...) expressions, and empty and non-empty referring expressions. Referring expressions are to be described semantically by a reference condition, rather than by being associated with a referent. In arguing for these theses, Sainsbury's book promises to end the fruitless oscillation between Millian and descriptivist views. Millian views insist that every name has a referent, and find it hard to give a good account of names which appear not to have referents, or at least are not known to do so, like ones introduced through error, ones where it is disputed whether they have a bearer and ones used in fiction. Descriptivist theories require that each name be associated with some body of information. These theories fly in the face of the fact names are useful precisely because there is often no overlap of information among speakers and hearers. The alternative position for which the book argues is firmly non-descriptivist, though it also does not require a referent. A much broader view can be taken of which expressions are referring expressions: not just names and pronouns used demonstratively, but also some complex expressions and some anaphoric uses of pronouns.Sainsbury's approach brings reference into line with truth: no one would think that a semantic theory should associate a sentence with a truth value, but it is commonly held that a semantic theory should associate a sentence with a truth condition, a condition which an arbitrary state of the world would have to satisfy in order to make the sentence true. The right analogy is that a semantic theory should associate a referring expression with a reference condition, a condition which an arbitrary object would have to satisfy in order to be the expression's referent.Lucid and accessible, and written with a minimum of technicality, Sainsbury's book also includes a useful historical survey. It will be of interest to those working in logic, mind, and metaphysics as well as essential reading for philosophers of language. (shrink)

Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear sense of the source of the sound will (...) return. This ‘ventriloquist’ effect reflects the ways in which visual cognition can dominate auditory perception. And this phenomenological observation is one what you can verify or disconfirm in your own case just by the slightest reflection on what it is like for you to listen to someone with or without visual contact with them. (shrink)

Questions are, in many respects, the hallmarks of the philosopher's trade. They are passed down from one generation to the next and yet, throughout history, philosophers have had relatively little to say about questions. In particular, few have asked or tried to answer the question ‘what is a question'. I call this the ‘Question Question’ and I offer an answer to it in this paper, furnishing philosophical analysis with the results of a large online survey, which has been running for (...) more than a decade. (shrink)

We argue that thoughts are structures of concepts, and that concepts should be individuated by their origins, rather than in terms of their semantic or epistemic properties. Many features of cognition turn on the vehicles of content, thoughts, rather than on the nature of the contents they express. Originalism makes concepts available to explain, with no threat of circularity, puzzling cases concerning thought. In this paper, we mention Hesperus/Phosphorus puzzles, the Evans-Perry example of the ship seen through different windows, and (...) Mates cases, and we believe that there are many additional applications. (shrink)

A large body of literature agrees that persons with schizophrenia suffer from a Theory of Mind deficit. However, most empirical studies have focused on third-person, egocentric ToM, underestimating other facets of this complex cognitive skill. Aim of this research is to examine the ToM of schizophrenic persons considering its various aspects, to determine whether some components are more impaired than others. We developed a Theory of Mind Assessment Scale and administered it to 22 persons with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia (...) and a matching control group. Th.o.m.a.s. is a semi-structured interview which allows a multi-component measurement of ToM. Both groups were also administered a few existing ToM tasks and the schizophrenic subjects were administered the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale and the WAIS-R. The schizophrenic persons performed worse than control at all the ToM measurements; however, these deficits appeared to be differently distributed among different components of ToM. Our conclusion is that ToM deficits are not unitary in schizophrenia, which also testifies to the importance of a complete and articulated investigation of ToM. (shrink)

In nursing, expectations of honesty and integrity are clearly stipulated throughout professional standards and codes of conduct, thus the concept of academic integrity has even more impetus in preparing students for graduate practice. However, a disparity between policy and practice misses the opportunity to instil the principles of academic integrity, and at its core honesty, a pivotal trait in the nursing profession. This study draws upon the experience of the nursing faculty to explore how academic integrity policy of deterrence operate (...) in nursing education.While participants deplored cheating behaviours, they expressed frustration in having to ‘police’ large numbers of students who had little awareness of the academic standards to meet policy requirements. In addition, they were cynical because of a perceived lack of severity in sanctions for students who repeatedly breached integrity. Participants expressed a moral obligation as educators to meet student learning needs and preferred to engage with students in a more meaningful way to uphold academic integrity. The ambivalence to detect and report breaches in integrity undermines the effectiveness of policy. Therefore, faculty must recognise the importance of their role in detecting and escalating cases of dishonesty and execute deterrence in a more consistent way. To do this, greater support at an institutional level, such as smaller class sizes, inclusion in decision making around sanctions and recognition of additional workload, will enable faculty to uphold policy. Although policing was not their preferred approach, the role of faculty in detecting and reporting cases of misconduct is crucial to increase the certainty of students getting caught, which is essential if policy is to be effective in deterring dishonest behaviour. (shrink)