The representational theory of measurement provides a collection of results that specify the conditions under which an attribute admits of numerical representation. The original architects of the theory interpreted the formalism operationally and explicitly acknowledged that some aspects of their representations are conventional. There have been a number of recent efforts to reinterpret the formalism to arrive at a more metaphysically robust account of physical quantities. In this paper we argue that the conventional elements of the representations afforded by the (...) representational theory of measurement require careful scrutiny as one moves toward such an interpretation. To illustrate why, we show that there is a sense in which the very number system in which one represents a physical quantity such as mass or length is conventional. We argue that this result does not undermine the project of reinterpreting the representational theory of measurement for metaphysical purposes in general, but it does undermine a certain class of inferences about the nature of physical quantities that some have been tempted to draw. (shrink)

Making Things Up By BennettKarenOxford University Press, 2018. xii + 260 pp.

Edward Harold Fulcher Swain (1883?1970) developed a unique idea about the importance of forests, advocating the creation of a new society based upon forests, and he pursued policies to implement his unique vision of forestry when he served as the Director of Queensland's Forestry Board from 1918 to 1924 and the Forestry Commissioner for New South Wales from 1935 to 1948. Swain's beliefs developed out of a combination of his Australian experiences and connections with foresters in the British Empire and (...) America. When he could not convince Australian elites about the need to create a forest-based society, he asked foresters at the 1947 Empire Forestry Conference in London to assert the primacy of forestry in land management in the British Empire. Many foresters positively received parts of Swain's argument, but his ideas could never be fully implemented in the British Empire because of the dominance of agrarian doctrines of development in post-Second World War colonial planning and the rapid process of decolonization. Swain's life sheds light onto current debates among historians about the origin and legacy of forestry in Australia and the British Empire. His ideas, many that parallel the basic tenets of modern environmentalism, require historians to rethink the relationship between Empire forestry and environmentalism. (shrink)

Across species, animals have an intrinsic drive to approach appetitive stimuli and to withdraw from aversive stimuli. In affective science, influential theories of emotion link positive affect with strengthened behavioural approach and negative affect with avoidance. Based on these theories, we predicted that individuals’ positive and negative affect levels should particularly influence their behaviour when innate Pavlovian approach/avoidance tendencies conflict with learned instrumental behaviours. Here, across two experiments – exploratory Experiment 1 (N = 91) and a preregistered confirmatory Experiment 2 (...) (N = 335) – we assessed how induced positive and negative affect influenced Pavlovian-instrumental interactions in a reward/punishment Go/No-Go task. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no evidence for a main effect of positive/negative affect on either approach/avoidance behaviour or Pavlovian-instrumental interactions. However, we did find evidence that the effects of induced affect on behaviour were moderated by individual differences in self-reported behavioural inhibition and gender. Exploratory computational modelling analyses explained these demographic moderating effects as arising from positive correlations between demographic factors and individual differences in the strength of Pavlovian-instrumental interactions. These findings serve to sharpen our understanding of the effects of positive and negative affect on instrumental behaviour. (shrink)

The making/allowing distinction tends to be accompanied by three other considerations that do have moral significance: ease of avoidance, motive, and knowability of consequences. Much discussion of making/allowing is based on intuitions about contrasted pairs of cases—a procedure that has dangers against which this chapter warns. Any thesis to the effect that making/allowing sometimes makes a moral difference is a sign of uncompleted work; the result is not interesting until we know the differentia.

This thousand-page book contains one third of the text of Samuel Pepys's diary, along with maps, a chronology, a glossary of archaic words, and an unusually helpful index, The diary, written in commercial short-hand, spans the 1660s, a decade in which power passed from the Roundheads to Charles II, London was ravaged by plague and then by fire, the English repeatedly fought the Dutch, and Pepys grew to be one of the most important civil servants in the land ("the father (...) of the English Navy", according to some). The diary, which I know only in this abridged version, has given me more sheer pleasure than any other book I have ever read. Writing for himself alone, Pepys had no sense of posterity looking over his shoulder with judgments about public, historic importance. He selected things for inclusion in the diary purely on the basis of how they struck him. This grand subjectivity would be fatal in a dull or passive or insensitive writer, but in Pepys it makes the work fresh and vibrant, constantly surprising, unlike anything else in literature. Even when describing an "important" scene, he is still his natural self and gives touches of his own behaviour, like this at the King's coronation: But so great a noise, that I could make but little of the Musique; and endeed, it was lost to everybody. But I had so great a list to pissse, that I went out a little while before the King had done all his ceremonies.... Not just his behavior, but also his reactions. (shrink)

The massive expansion of information from the seventeenth century placed considerable demands on mental capacity, and individual scholars responded with strategies of memory training and note?taking that prompted, relieved or replaced memory. It has been acknowledged how cowpox inoculation (vaccination) and smallpox inoculation (variolation) stimulated new forms of record keeping and the standardization and tabulation of medical data for scientific analysis and to inform public policy. Yet the key figure in these developments, Edward Jenner, while a careful observer who thought (...) hard about the patterns he discerned, did not take good notes either from his reading or of his observations. He depended a great deal on his memory, especially a remarkable visual memory, consolidating his recollections and refining his thinking more through conversation and familiar letters than careful note?taking and writing. It was rather in the work of the practitioners who took up Jenners? writings, including some laymen and women, that we find the keeping of records of their vaccinations, in order to provide patient records and to report the results to friends, colleagues and a wider public. (shrink)

Gordon Kaufmann's recent book, God the Problem, provokes reflection on the notion of the world os God's body. He is concerned to indicate the intelligibility in a secular age of discourse about God's transcendence. The thrust of his position is clearly toward the concept that the world is God's body, but he rejects abruptly any suggestion that this is acceptable. In the following pages I will look briefly at Kaufmann's own position, raise some questions about it, and propose Whiteheadian thought (...) as being more faithful to some of Kaufmann's intentions. (shrink)

The sic of this passage is ordinarily taken as meaning, ‘on this condition,’ viz. the condition implied in reddas and serues. But du Mesnil urged that this interpretation was illogical. The fulfilment of the condition implied in reddas involves in itself the realization of the wish expressed in regat, and so makes that wish unnecessary. To this objection two answers have been made. Schütz expresses the opinion that the prayer is for the perpetual enjoyment of the favourable conditions enumerated in (...) verses 1–4. But apart from the unnaturalness of this explanation, it involves the north-west wind as the perpetual attendant of the vessel. This would prevent its easy return to Italy. The other answer is that such ‘matter of fact’ criticism should not be applied to poetry. But to the minds of many this seems a mere evasion of the question at issue. Most students of Horace, I venture to say, are far from satisfied with the traditional interpretation of the passage. (shrink)

The sic of this passage is ordinarily taken as meaning, ‘on this condition,’ viz. the condition implied in reddas and serues. But du Mesnil urged that this interpretation was illogical. The fulfilment of the condition implied in reddas involves in itself the realization of the wish expressed in regat, and so makes that wish unnecessary. To this objection two answers have been made. Schütz expresses the opinion that the prayer is for the perpetual enjoyment of the favourable conditions enumerated in (...) verses 1–4. But apart from the unnaturalness of this explanation, it involves the north-west wind as the perpetual attendant of the vessel. This would prevent its easy return to Italy. The other answer is that such ‘matter of fact’ criticism should not be applied to poetry. But to the minds of many this seems a mere evasion of the question at issue. Most students of Horace, I venture to say, are far from satisfied with the traditional interpretation of the passage. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the nature of “meaning” and “meaningfulness” in the context of instrumental music education. By doing so, I propose to expand the ways in which instrumental music educators conceive their mission and the ways in which we may instill meaning in people’s lives. Traditionally, pursuits of philosophical deliberation have claimed that meaningfulness comes from either personal happiness (e.g., Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) or an impersonal sense of duty (e.g., St. Augustine, St. (...) Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant). However, philosopher Susan Wolf (2010) criticizes these positions in favor of a broader perspective, one that arises from understanding that there is a third sort of value, namely “meaningfulness.” Rightly understanding meaningfulness may help us engage more fully with a greater sense and understanding of the full potentials of eudaimonia: a life of significance and value for oneself and one’s community. Therefore, this paper links meaningfulness to a 4-E (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) account of “sense-making” in/for instrumental music education. In doing so, I discuss the aims of public-school music education; aims that engage teachers and students in meaningfulness—a meaningfulness that is ethical, embodied, enacted, and extended—in, with, and through musics and, more directly, “instrumental” music making. (shrink)

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 78, Issue 1, Page 105-108, Winter 2020.

In this paper, I discuss the development and use of images employed by the Dresden Royal Museum for Zoology, Anthropology and Ethnography to resolve debates about how to use visual representation as a means of making ethnographic knowledge. Through experimentation with techniques of visual representation, the founding director, A.B. Meyer, proposed a historical, non-essentialist approach to understanding racial and cultural difference. Director Meyer's approach was inspired by the new knowledge he had gained through field research in Asia-Pacific as well as (...) new forms of imaging that made highly detailed representations of objects possible. Through a combination of various techniques, he developed new visual methods that emphasized intimate familiarity with variations within any one ethnic group, from skull shape to material ornamentation, as integral to the new disciplines of physical and cultural anthropology. It is well known that photographs were a favoured form of visual documentation among the anthropological and ethnographic sciences at thefin de siècle. However, in the scholarly journals of the Dresden museum, photographs, drawings, tables and etchings were frequently displayed alongside one another. Meyer sought to train the reader's eye through organized arrangements that represented objects from multiple angles and at various levels of magnification. Focusing on chimpanzees, skulls and kettledrums from Asia-Pacific, I track the development of new modes of making and reading images, from zoology and physical anthropology to ethnography, to demonstrate how the museum visually historicized humankind. (shrink)

This paper discusses the issue of overriding the right of individual consent to participation in cluster randomised trials (CRTs). We focus on CRTs testing the efficacy of non-pharmaceutical interventions. As an example, we consider school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Norway, a CRT was promoted as necessary for providing the best evidence to inform pandemic management policy. However, the proposal was rejected by the Norwegian Research Ethics Committee since it would violate the requirement for individual informed consent. This sparked (...) debate about whether ethics stand in the way of evidence-based health policy, since the Norwegian Research Ethics law’s strict requirements for individual consent make it practically impossible to carry out CRTs of public health interventions. We argue that, in the case of the school closure trial, the suggested CRT would not have eliminated an epistemic gap and thus would not have justified the violation of consent rights. First, we focus on the methodological challenges to estimating quantifiable effects of school closures in the specific case of an airborne infectious disease. Second, in line with Evidential Pluralism, we highlight the value of alternative lines of evidence for informing school closure policy in a pandemic. In general, we propose that a trial requiring the waiver of participants’ consent rights must be highly likely to eliminate an epistemic gap. We elaborate on the practical aspects of this criterion and discuss the potential advantages of adding it to the Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials. (shrink)

How can we motivate ourselves to do what we think we ought? How can we deliberate about personal values and priorities? Bennett Helm argues that standard philosophical answers to these questions presuppose a sharp distinction between cognition and conation that undermines an adequate understanding of values and their connection to motivation and deliberation. Rejecting this distinction, Helm argues that emotions are fundamental to any account of value and motivation, and he develops a detailed alternative theory both of emotions, desires (...) and evaluative judgements and of their rational interconnections. The result is an innovative theory of practical rationality and of how we can control not only what we do but also what we value and who we are as persons. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop a neo-Humean response to the problem of moral inclusion by bringing Humean moral philosophy into deep and serious dialogue with Latin American philosophy. Our argument for achieving this two-fold aim unfolds as follows. In section one, we elucidate Mia Sosa-Provencio’s conception of a mestiza ethics of care. We begin by highlighting its fundamental elements, especially its concern with what we refer to as the cultural embeddedness both of moral agents and of moral patients. We then (...) explain how this aspect of the mestiza ethic poses a distinctive challenge for Humean moral philosophy. In section two, we develop a neo-Humean response to this challenge. We begin by highlighting the strengths and limits of trying to develop a response by appealing to Hume’s conceptions of sympathy and humanity. We then present what we take to be the most plausible way for a neo-Humean conception of moral philosophy to offer a satisfactory reply to the challenge posed by the mestiza ethics of care, by appealing to two key concepts from outside the system of Hume’s moral philosophy: namely, sympathetic understanding and relational humility. (shrink)

Efforts in Virginia highlight an emerging approach to improving health and well-being for the population — human-centered design intentionally focused on protecting health and improving well-being. This keynote emphasized a data-informed approach facilitated by multi-sectoral leadership that promotes alignment of community assets focused to result in system changes more likely to sustainably improve health and well-being.

Medical interventions are usually categorized as “invasive” when they involve piercing the skin or inserting an object into the body. Beyond this standard definition, however, there is little discussion of the concept of invasiveness in the medical literature, despite evidence that the term is used in ways that do not reflect the standard definition of medical invasiveness. We interviewed psychiatrists, patients with depression, and members of the public without depression to better understand their views on the invasiveness of several psychiatric (...) electroceutical interventions (treatments that involve electrical or magnetic stimulation of the brain) for the treatment of depression. Our study shows that people recognize several kinds of invasiveness: physical, emotional, and lifestyle. In addition, several characteristics of therapies influence how invasive they are perceived to be; these include the perceived capacity of an intervention to result in harm; how localized the effects of the intervention are; the amount of control retained by the person receiving the intervention; how permanent its effects are perceived as being; and how familiar it seemed to participants. Our findings contribute to a small literature on the concept of invasiveness, which emphasizes that categorizing an intervention as invasive, or as noninvasive, evokes a variety of other normative considerations, including the potential harm it poses and how it compares to other potential therapies. It may also draw attention away from other salient features of the intervention. (shrink)

We systematically reviewed contemporary literature to create an evidence-informed framework for research studies involving children and adolescents who can assent to participate. We searched seven citation indices to locate peer-reviewed research published in English language journals between 2000 and 2012. After screening 1,231 titles and abstracts for relevance, we assessed levels of evidence, extracted information, and analysed content from 87 articles. Most articles narrowly focused on paediatric assent barriers and facilitators for decision-making about research participation. No articles provided a single, (...) comprehensive ethical framework to guide the development and review of research assent protocols. We developed a 6-step framework that provides guidance to: prepare the child for the assent process; assess the child’s readiness to engage in decision making; discuss the elements of informed consent to the greatest extent possible; seek an initial assent decision; monitor and affirm assent; and respect the child’s role as a research participant. The PAeDS-MoRe framework also supports the creation of process models that address the unique, developmental needs of paediatric sub-groups, and guides the operationalization of jurisdictional requirements for ethical research involving children who are unable to provide free, informed and ongoing consent. (shrink)

Grossmann proposes the “fearful ape hypothesis,” suggesting that heightened fearfulness in early life is evolutionarily adaptive. We question this claim with evidence that (1) perceived fearfulness in children is associated with negative, not positive long-term outcomes; (2) caregivers are responsive to all affective behaviors, not just those perceived as fearful; and (3) caregiver responsiveness serves to reduce perceived fearfulness.

While acknowledging the psychological experience of intimacy, evolutionary theory postulates proliferation as the underlying grounds for human relationships. Intimacy, according to evolutionary theory, is merely a psychological mechanism whereby sexual selection and parental investment are facilitated. Unfortunately, the assumption of an underlying evolutionary mechanism which governs human relationships including romantic love, jealousy, and parent–child bonds is fraught with problematic consequences. Unlike the evolutionary understanding of intimacy, the philosophy of E. Levinas offers an alternative conceptualization in which human relationships themselves constitute (...) the grounds of intimacy. This alternative conceptualization escapes the problematic consequences of evolutionary theory. Intimacy from this grounding is inextricably tied to the infinite obligation we take on in relation to others. Implications of this conceptualization are explored. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:My Patient, TeacherMarissa BlumI remember meeting Beatriz about 12 years ago when security was called to her office visit room by the fellow doctor-in-training who was seeing her. She was yelling loudly about her pain medications, causing a terrific commotion. I stepped in to relieve the fellow and tried to calm her down and move the visit along without anyone getting hurt or further upset. And from then on, (...) Beatriz was moved to my schedule from the fellow's for her monthly visits for her knee pain and refills of fentanyl and oxycodone. She had terrible knees and walked with a cane, almost always accompanied by her son. At one point, she came to our clinic asking to be seen but couldn't, and then fell onto her knees and rolled onto her back in the wait-room, clutching and waiving her cane, expelling expletives and railing at anyone who wanted to help but denying them that privilege. It was as though she relished exposing her pain and a lifetime of hardship for all to confront. I came down from my office to talk with her and when I couldn't convince her to get up on her own, we called EMS to assist and they took her away in an ambulance.For the first few years, I recoiled seeing her name on my schedule each month. I knew I would have to endure a barrage of labile emotions and complaints not just about her constant pain and feelings of inadequacy of her pain medications, but also about her other doctors and how they don't respond to her, or about how the rest of her family shows no care for her. Initially, these visits were hard because they were unpredictable and Beatriz also had bipolar disorder and maybe borderline personality too. I never knew which type of Beatriz I would walk in to see: Angry, tearful, lamentful, and all of those faces were difficult for me. But we met every month for years. During those visits, which almost always were attended by her son, who quietly sat by to either gently rebuff or passively agree with her, I learned so much about her and her very hard life. She was left to raise two children alone, unskilled and ill with hepatitis C, which led to liver cancer, followed later by breast cancer. She chose not to pursue additional therapy for breast cancer, expressing a fatalistic view of her life and intimating she in some way deserved the ailments that she developed. She saw me for disabling knee and hip arthritis that took away her independence and ability to scale the outdoor steps to her second-floor apartment and required the assistance of her son to dress, bathe and care for her. Beatriz never knew this, and I didn't share [End Page 18] it with her, but on one of my early morning drives into North Philadelphia, I saw her on a sun-baked unfriendly street, struggling to move around with her walker. She had many reasons to be angry, and the 30 minutes I spent with her every month became a catharsis for her to unload all that she felt.During my medical training, I encountered hundreds of patients—mostly all in the hospital setting—who might be characterized as difficult and understandably; no one who is relegated to the hospital setting, acutely or chronically ill and requiring inpatient care, could possibly be in the best mood of their lives. Somehow, it was easier for me to care for patients in these snapshot encounters that I controlled. I dictated my time in the room and didn't necessarily have to encounter the same challenging patient longitudinally, which made certain encounters much easier to bear. I realize now I wasn't fully processing the burdens carried by these patients in a way that enabled me to be a compassionate and fully present physician to them. It was an adaptation to the fast-paced life of residency, where one just has to get the job done and move on to the next task without time to process or reflect on difficult patient interactions. This is a... (shrink)