This paper develops the foundations of the descriptive set theory of countable Borel equivalence relations on Polish spaces with particular emphasis on the study of hyperfinite, amenable, treeable and universal equivalence relations.

The global #MeToo movement has precipitated a reckoning with gendered, sexual, and other forms of harassment and bullying in higher education. In academia, harassment is rooted in the history of re...

Assume ZF + AD +V=L and letκ< Θ be an uncountable cardinal. We show thatκis Jónsson, and that if cof = ω thenκis Rowbottom. We also establish some other partition properties.

In this study, we comprehensively examine the relationships between ethical leadership, social exchange, and employee commitment. We find that organizational and supervisory ethical leadership are positively related to employee commitment to the organization and supervisor, respectively. We also find that different types of social exchange relationships mediate these relationships. Our results suggest that the application of a multifoci social exchange perspective to the context of ethical leadership is indeed useful: As hypothesized, within-foci effects (e.g., the relationship between organizational ethical leadership (...) and commitment to the organization) are stronger than cross-foci effects (e.g., the relationship between supervisory ethical leadership and commitment to the organization). In addition, in contrast to the “trickle down” model of ethical leadership (Mayer et al. in Org Behav Hum Decis Process 108:1–13, 2009), our results suggest that organizational ethical leadership is both directly and indirectly related to employee outcomes. (shrink)

In this article, the author once again reflected on her personal and existential experience of frequent visits to African countries as well as to Israel-Palestine. The article focuses on the issues of outsiders becoming effective allies to the cultures they are visiting, teaching and researching by listening to other understandings and interpretations of biblical texts, Jesus' parables specifically. It is an appropriate tribute to Yolanda Dreyer because of Prof. Dreyer's involvement and significant contributions in issues of social justice, both academically (...) and experientially. (shrink)

In considering Van Schooten’s study of the Eric O. case (s.1), I ask whether the different approaches taken by the two different “legal institutions”—the prosecuting authorities on the one hand, the courts on the other—are reflective of different images of warfare (a semantic difference) or of the different images each group holds of its own role (a pragmatic difference). If we consider these two “legal institutions” as distinct semiotic groups (s.2), is there an inevitable “communication deficit” between them (and the (...) public)? (shrink)

Researchers of advanced technologies are constantly seeking new ways of measuring and adapting to user performance. Appropriately adapting system feedback requires accurate assessments of user performance. Unfortunately, many assessment algorithms must be trained on and use pre‐prepared data sets or corpora to provide a sufficiently accurate portrayal of user knowledge and behavior. However, if the targeted content of the tutoring system changes depending on the situation, the assessment algorithms must be sufficiently independent to apply to untrained content. Such is the (...) case for Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART), an intelligent tutoring system that assesses the cognitive complexity of strategy use while a reader self‐explains a text. iSTART is designed so that teachers and researchers may add their own (new) texts into the system. The current paper explores student self‐explanations from newly added texts (which iSTART had not been trained on) and focuses on evaluating the iSTART assessment algorithm by comparing it to human ratings of the students’ self‐explanations. (shrink)

This article reviews the opportunities for legal semiotics to contribute to legal philosophy, legal sociology, the reading of legal texts and the analysis of legal language (with bibliography) and surveys the institutional development of legal semiotics.

We consider evidence for ritualized behavior in the sporting domain, noting that such behavior appears commonplace both before a competitive encounter and as part of pre-performance routines. The specific times when ritualized behaviors are displayed support the supposition that they provide temporary relief from pre-competition anxiety and act as thought suppressors in the moments preceding skill execution. (Published Online February 8 2007).

Existing research on the formation of employee ethical climate perceptions focuses mainly on organization characteristics as antecedents, and although other constructs have been considered, these constructs have typically been studied in isolation. Thus, our understanding of the context in which ethical climate perceptions develop is incomplete. To address this limitation, we build upon the work of Rupp to develop and test a multi-experience model of ethical climate which links aspects of the corporate social responsibility, ethics, justice, and trust literatures and (...) helps to explain how employees’ ethical climate perceptions form. We argue that in forming ethical climate perceptions, employees consider the actions or characteristics of a complex web of actors. Specifically, we propose that employees look outward at how communities are impacted by their organization’s actions, upward to make inferences about the ethicality of leaders in their organizations, and inward at their own propensity to trust others as they form their perceptions. Using a multiple-wave field study conducted at a privately held US corporation, we find substantial evidence in support of our model. (shrink)

He who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with. Emptiness is probably the most important philosophical and religious concept of Mahayana Buddhism. Its precise meaning has been explained differently by different schools and in different Buddhist cultures, but almost all Mahāyāna Buddhists would agree with the following characterization: Philosophically , emptiness is the term that describes the ultimate mode of existence of all phenomena, namely, as naturally ‘empty’ of enduring substance, or self-existence : (...) rather than being independently self-originated, phenomena are dependently originated from causes and conditions. Emptiness, thus, explains how it is that phenomena change and interact as they do, how it is that the world goes on as it does. Religiously , emptiness is the single principle whose direct comprehension is the basis of liberation from samsāra, and ignorance of which, embodied in self-gasping is the basis of continued rebirth – hence suffering – in samsāra. (shrink)

his book develops an account of legal reasoning based on underlying narrative patterns, and compares other such approaches in legal philosophy, psychology and history. Download full ToC and Preface from http://www.legaltheory.demon.co.uk/books_lfnc.html.

Camp might be said to be a queer object to the extent that it resists any attempt to define it in language. This essay reads Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair as a demonstration of the more performative and affective understanding of camp that is needed to overcome the conceptual impossibility of camp’s existence in language alone. This essay reconceptualizes camp as a performative and affective social phenomenon by reading the protagonist of White’s text as an exemplary figure who resists disciplinary (...) identity and legibility through a series of camp performances. Camp emerges at the conclusion of this essay as a mediation of a particular subject–object relation, and its emblem is the bandaid. For if shame appears to tyrannize the life of Twyborn’s protagonist, that subjugation is not total: shame’s performativity gives birth to a defiantly camp persona that re-routes shame as shamelessness. Camp advertises itself as a means of living in and living through performances of gender and sexuality. Shame is thus an important resource for both understanding the protagonist of White’s text and understanding the camp politics of queer critique that he embodies. Camp is a queer object that facilitates the healing of the shameful wound afflicting performative identities. (shrink)

Resolving Bertrand’s probability paradox.

Later reprinted by Deborah Charles Publications (and not available from Amazon), this book expounds and comments on the application of Greimasian semiotics to a legal text, as found in the article by Greimas and Landowski in Greimas, Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales (1976), compares this with the semiotic presuppositions of Hart, Dworkin, MacCormick and Kelsen, and offers my own analysis of the implications of such semiotic analysis for legal theory, including some more recent radical non-positivist accounts.

I develop an interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of motor intentionality, one that emerges out of a reading of his presentation of a now classic case study in neuropathology—patient Johann Schneider—in Phenomenology of Perception. I begin with Merleau-Ponty's prescriptions for how we should use the pathological as a guide to the normal, a method I call triangulation. I then turn to his presentation of Schneider's unusual case. I argue that we should treat all of Schneider's behaviors as pathological, not only (...) his abstract movements, as is commonly acknowledged in the secondary literature, but also crucially his concrete movements. Using these facts of Schneider's illness, I reconstruct a ‘fundamental function’ of consciousness, as Merleau-Ponty called it, in which there are two kinds of bodily agency: the power of the body to be solicited by a situation and the power of the body to project a situation. I propose that these powers became dissociated in Schneider's case, as evidenced by his abstract and concrete movements, while in the normal case, these powers comprise a dynamic unity, enacted as motor intentionality. I also discuss how my interpretation complements Merleau-Ponty's assertion that motor intentions exist between mind and matter. (shrink)

The object of the following paper is to examine in detail the relations between the contents of the poem called the Culex and the acknowledged writings of Virgil. The reader will find that these relations are more numerous and far more intimate than has hitherto been pointed out. They seem to warrant an inference as to the authorship of the poem, which in itself may claim high probability, and which when combined with the external evidence appears to the present writer (...) to reach the level of a practical certainty. In what follows, all statements as to the readings of the manuscripts are based upon Professor A. E. Housman's paper on The Apparatus Criticus of the Culex, unless other authorities are expressly cited. I have followed Professor Ellis's text, except where Professor Housman's evidence makes some other reading more probable. (shrink)

This book reviews the classical schools of jurisprudence with particular reference to their linguistic presuppositions, and summarises an alternative account based on Paris school semiotics. Detailed ToC available from linked web page. NOT available from Amazon.

Liz JacksonEducation University of Hong KongNel Noddings is known around the world for her contributions to philosophy and philosophy of education. Her work on caring and relational ethics broke ne...

Emerging genomic technologies promise more efficient infectious disease control. Whole genome sequencing is increasingly being used in tuberculosis diagnosis, surveillance, and epidemiology. However, while the use of WGS by public health agencies may raise ethical, legal, and socio-political concerns, these challenges are poorly understood. Between November 2017 and April 2018, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 key stakeholders across the fields of governance and policy, public health, and laboratory sciences representing the major jurisdictions currently using WGS in national TB programs. (...) Thematic analysis of the interviews was conducted using NVivo 11. Respondents identified several ethical and practical challenges associated with WGS in TB care and surveillance, all related to issues of trust, including: 1) the power of public health; 2) data sharing and profits derived from surveillance efforts; and 3) concerns regarding who has access to, and can benefit from, the technology. Additional challenges included: the potential utility that WGS adds to a public health program, the risks associated with linking necessary epidemiological metadata to the genomic data, and challenges associated with jurisdictional capacity to implement the technology. Successful implementation of WGS is dependent on fostering relationships of trust between those working with genomics technology and those directly impacted by it, including clinicians. Building trust between the public and the public health agencies and within public health agencies themselves is critical due to the inherent complexity of WGS and its implementation for communicable disease control purposes. (shrink)

In 2016, France passed a major law that is unique in giving terminally ill and suffering patients the right to the controversial procedure of continuous deep sedation until death (CDS). In so doing, the law identifies CDS as a sui generis clinical practice, distinct from other forms of palliative sedation therapy, as well as from euthanasia. As such, it reconfigures the ethical debate over CDS in interesting ways. This paper addresses one aspect of this reconfiguration and its implications for the (...) intentions at work in this complex time at the end of life. The concept of intention is often considered central to the ethics of end-of-life care, but its role is recognized to be problematic, with charges of elusiveness and ambiguity. I aim to show that consideration of the French law affords a new understanding of the intentionality of CDS, and that in addition to the obvious importance of this for clarifying the ethics of the practice, it may suggest new ways of addressing the wider problem of ambiguous clinical intentions at end of life. (shrink)

This paper explains what’s wrong with a Hume-inspired argument for skepticism about induction. Hume’s argument takes as a premise that inductive reasoning presupposes that the future will resemble the past. I explain why that claim is not plausible. The most plausible premise in the vicinity is that inductive reasoning from E to H presupposes that if E then H. I formulate and then refute a skeptical argument based on that premise. Central to my response is a psychological explanation for how (...) people judge that if E then H without realizing that they thereby settled the matter rationally. (shrink)

Ethical guidance for genomic research is increasingly sought and perceived to be necessary. Although there are pressing ethical issues in genomic research – concerning for example the recruitment of patients/participants; the process of taking consent; data sharing; and returning results to patients/participants – there is still limited useful guidance available for researchers/clinicians or for the research ethics committees who review such projects. This report outlines the ethical principles and guidance for genomic research co-produced with stakeholders during two workshops which took (...) place in the UK between November 2016 and May 2017. The stakeholders involved in these workshops included: healthcare professionals, genomic research teams, academics, patients, biobank managers, and representatives from the Health Research Authority, NHS Research Ethics Committees, patient support groups, pharmaceutical industry, and health policy think tanks. The co-produced principles and guidance are specifical... (shrink)

Originally written in 1990, this reviews largely late 20th century debates on the study of law as Logic, Discourse, or Experience; the Unity of the Legal System and the Problem of Reference; Semiotic Presuppositions of Traditional Jurisprudence (Austin, Hart, Kelsen, Dworkin, Legal Realisms); then turns to legal philosophies explicitly Employing Forms of Semiotics (Kalinowski, the Italian Analytical School, Rhetorical and Pragmatic Approaches, Sociological and Socio-Linguistic Approaches, Peircian Legal Semiotics, Greimasian Legal Semiotics and Aesthetic/Symbolic Approaches). A major section then offers (from (...) a largely Greimasian point of view) some hypotheses for legal semiotics on the Problem of Reference, Semantic and Pragmatic Levels, Semiotic Groups and “The Legal Culture”, Normativity and Justification, and finally considers the implications for particular legal phenomena: the “Legal System”, Legal Institutions, Legal Codes, Legal Rules, Rights, Courtroom Behaviour: Witness and Counsel, The Judge: Justification of Decisions on Law, and the Criminal Justice Process. A conclusion addresses the status of legal semiotics. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask whether mishpat ivri (Jewish Law) is appropriately conceived as a “legal system”. I review Menachem Elon’s use of a “Sources” Theory of Law (based on Salmond) in his account of Mishpat Ivri; the status of religious law from the viewpoint of jurisprudence itself (Bentham, Austin and Kelsen); then the use of sources (and the approach to “dogmatic error”) by halakhic authorities in discussing the problems of the agunah (“chained wife”), which I suggest points to a (...) theory more radical than the “sources” theory of law, one more akin to the ultimate phase of the thought of Kelsen (the “non-logical” Kelsen) or indeed to some form of Legal Realism (with which that phase of Kelsen’s thought has indeed been compared)? I finally juxtapose an account based on internal theological resources (a “Jurisprudence of Revelation”). Downloadable at at http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/JSIJ/jsij1.html. (shrink)

This Special Issue reflects a very special occasion. On 13 January 2012, the Tilburg Law School marked the retirement of Associate Professor Dr. Hanneke van Schooten and the recent publication of her latest book, Jurisprudence and Communication (Liverpool: Deborah Charles Publications, 2011) with a special colloquium, at which Dr. Van Schooten summarised the findings of her book, and four colleagues offered responses to it, three (by Jackson, van Roermund and Witteveen, here developed further). -/- .

Jewish law has a history stretching from the early period to the modern State of Israel, encompassing the Talmud, Geonic and later codifications, the Spanish Golden Age, medieval and modern responsa, the Holocaust and modern reforms. Fifteen distinct periods are separately studied in this volume, each one by a leading specialist, and the emphasis throughout is on the development of the institutions and sources of the law.

Review of Lenn Goodman's On Justice (1st 3d.).