There has recently been a good deal of controversy about Landauer's Principle, which is often stated as follows: The erasure of one bit of information in a computational device is necessarily accompanied by a generation of kT ln 2 heat. This is often generalised to the claim that any logically irreversible operation cannot be implemented in a thermodynamically reversible way. John Norton (2005) and Owen Maroney (2005) both argue that Landauer's Principle has not been shown to hold in general, and (...) Maroney offers a method that he claims instantiates the operation reset in a thermodynamically reversible way. In this paper we defend the qualitative form of Landauer's Principle, and clarify its quantitative consequences (assuming the second law of thermodynamics). We analyse in detail what it means for a physical system to implement a logical transformation L, and we make this precise by defining the notion of an L-machine. Then we show that logical irreversibility of L implies thermodynamic irreversibility of every corresponding L-machine. We do this in two ways. First, by assuming the phenomenological validity of the Kelvin statement of the second law, and second, by using information-theoretic reasoning. We illustrate our results with the example of the logical transformation 'reset', and thereby recover the quantitative form of Landauer's Principle. (shrink)

Issues in medical ethics are rarely out of the media and it is an area of ethics that has particular interest for the general public as well as the medical practitioner. This short and accessible introduction provides an invaluable tool with which to think about the ethical values that lie at the heart of medicine. Tony Hope deals with thorny moral questions, such as euthanasia and the morality of killing, and also explores political questions such as: how should (...) health care resources be distributed fairly? (shrink)

This brief and remarkably inexpensive book by the distinguished Professor Maehle of Durham University is composed of five detailed studies of aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century British med...

For sexual purposes, animals are off limits. But if we regard attributions of species membership as unimportant in familiar ethical contexts, then it may be difficult to explain why this is the case. Someone who is unimpressed by appeals to species membership as a basis for favoring humans over non-humans may remain similarly unimpressed by such appeals when sex becomes an issue. Species barriers may seem to be beside the point. Peter Singer’s attitude toward human sexual relations with non-humans leans (...) heavily in this direction. In a notorious book review where more was perhaps implied than said, Singer advanced the claim that, in the absence of any cruelty or physical harm, sexual relations with non-human animals would not be “an offence to our status and dignity.” And, insofar as we do not regard status and dignity as the main issue here, we may be inclined to agree. However, what follows will lean in the opposite direction to Singer and will argue that once we have set aside any consideration of status and dignity, we will still have significant grounds for ruling out familiar forms of sex with familiar, terrestrial, non-human animals under ordinary circumstances that fall short of the fictionally-extreme. However, the grounds in question turn out to concern something other than species membership simpliciter. (shrink)

This article sets out an account of false emotions and focuses upon the example of false grief. Widespread but short-lived mourning for well known public figures involves false grief on the part of at least some mourners. What is false about such grief is not any straightforward pretence but rather the inappropriate antecendents of the state in question and/or the desires that the relevant state involves. False grief, for example, often involves a desire for the experience itself, and this (...) can be satisfied. By contrast, real grief is utterly without hope. (We cannot have the deceased back again.) However, because false emotions involve some desire, they can be motivating and may lead us to engage in actions and efforts of discernment that can result in the emergence of the real emotion that they mimic. For this reason, they are not always unwelcome. (shrink)

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID‐19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.

Although it is widely recognised that the modern discipline of economics is short on explanatory successes, there is little sign that ongoing critical assessments of the situation are leading to any improvements. The reason for this lack of progress, I argue, is a prevalence of a set of fallacies maintained very often by mainstream practitioners and heterodox critics alike. These tend to take the form of presuppositions that underpin more explicit beliefs and accepted practices. Mostly they remain implicit and (...) largely unnoticed. When noticed, they are regarded as so obviously correct they are rarely critically examined. Here I do examine them both explicitly and critically. (shrink)

In this short paper, I discuss certain aspects of a “common-sense” approach to truth and falsity. It is my experience that many will object to what I have to say. As you read, if you have objections, try to formulate them carefully, and ask yourself whether I attempt a reply.

In this short paper, I introduce two central notions for argument evaluation. The presentation is completely informal. It is possible to develop formal methods for working with validity and souneness, but it is also possible to apply the informal notions directly to problems in philosophy and beyond. In either case, it is important to understand the basic notions, in order to understand what is accomplished in reasoning. Exercises are included, with answers to selected exercises at the end.

I should like to thank Ben Fine, Costas Lapavitsas and Dimitris Milonakis for their stimulating and detailed comments. In the limited space available, I cannot respond to every criticism. A number of criticisms appear to be a matter of mere semantics. In the Marxian literature, the term ‘crisis’ is often used to refer to extended downturns as well as to short and sharp declines. And Marx himself defines the organic composition of capital as the value composition considered ‘in so (...) far as this is determined by its technical composition and reflects it’, which is how the value composition is considered in my paper. Nor will I respond to the charge that my ‘use of Grossmann is mechanical and unpersuasive’, since I am not sure what exactly the objection is. Firstly, I will take up the criticisms regarding the logical structure of Capital. Then I move on to consider one substantive issue raised regarding the tendency for the falling rate of profit. I will next respond to criticism of my treatment of the relation between systematic and historical dialectics. Finally, I respond to criticism of my main thesis overall. (shrink)

What is the young Marx's attitude towards questions of psychology? More precisely, what is his attitude towards the human mind and its relationship to the body? To deal adequately with this issue requires a consideration of the relationship between Marx and Feuerbach. It also requires some discussion of the thought of Aristotle. For the views of Feuerbach and the young Marx are not at all original. Rather, they represent a continuation of a long tradition which derives ultimately from ancient Greek (...) philosophy, and especially from the philosophy of Aristotle. As is well known, Aristotle's thought with respect to questions of psychology are mostly presented, by way of a critique of the doctrines of the other philosophers of his day, in his De Anima. W.H. Walsh has made the perceptive observation that Aristotle's views might be seen as an attempt to develop a third approach which avoids the pitfalls usually associated with the idealism of Plato, on the one hand, and the materialism of Democritus on the other. It might be argued that there is an analogy between the situation in which Aristotle found himself in relation to the idealists and materialists of his own day and that which confronted Marx in the very early 1840s. For, like Aristotle, Marx also might be seen as attempting to develop such a third approach. The difference is simply that, in the case of Marx, the idealism in question is that of Hegel rather than that of Plato, and the materialism is the ‘mechanical materialism’ of the eighteenth century rather than that of Democritus. This obvious parallel might well explain why Marx took such a great interest in Aristotle's De Anima both during and shortly after doing the preparatory work for his doctoral dissertation – the subject matter of which, of course, is precisely the materialist philosophy of the ancient Greek atomists Democritus and Epicurus. (shrink)

In The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (2019), Declan Smithies has carried out a thorough radical internalist programme. Along the way he compares and contrasts many different views, including a group he calls “radical externalism.” From the labels, it might seem that radical internalism and radical externalism must be very different in their core commitments. In this short note, I will single out a version of radical externalism – factivism, more specifically John McDowell’s version (1994, 1995, 2011) – and argue (...) that actually this version has many similarities with Smithies radical internalism. Where there are differences, they do not obviously lie at the internalist/externalist juncture. The main point of this comparison is that philosophical positions that seem very different can share much common ground, and in seeing this one can be in a better position to understand the crucial points of disagreement. (shrink)

The call for family and medical leave reform in the United States was largely the result of sweeping demographic shifts that occurred in the workforce after the 1950s, coupled with an ever-increasing life expectancy and changing social norms concerning the role of women as caretakers. By the early 1990s, the number of women in the workforce had nearly tripled from 1950. During that same period, life expectancy increased by six years for males and seven for females. Meanwhile, the first wave (...) of the Depression-era generation began to reach the age of retirement. In short, the parents of American workers were living longer and retiring in greater numbers while more women, who were more likely to be informal caregivers, decided to join the workforce. As a result, many families with ill or elder parents began to turn to institutional long-term care. (shrink)

The drive for cost-effective use of medical interventions has advantages, but can also be challenging in the context of end-of-life palliative treatments. A quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) provides a common currency to assess the extent of the benefits gained from a variety of interventions in terms of health-related quality of life and survival for the patient. However, since it is in the nature of end-of-life palliative care that the benefits it brings to its patients are of short duration, it fares (...) poorly under a policy of QALY-maximization. Nevertheless, we argue that the goals of palliative care and QALY are not incompatible, and optimal integration of palliative care into the calculation of QALY may reveal a mechanism to modify considerations of how optimal quality of life can be achieved, even in the face of terminal illness. The use of QALYs in resource allocation means that palliative care will always compete with alternative uses of the same money. More research should be conducted to evaluate choices between palliative care and more aggressive therapies for the terminally ill. However, current limited data show that investing in palliative care makes more sense not only ethically, but also financially. (shrink)

Curing Mad Truths, a short collection of essays and lectures, is Rémi Brague's plea for ‘some sort of return to the Middle Ages’ (p. 5) in the teeth of the ideology of Modernity which, he posits, t...

Alongside the photographs are short pieces of critical commentary by Vicki Karaminas and Toni Johnson-Woods, shedding light on the city's changing culture and how this is expressed through the clothing choices of ordinary city-dwellers ...

In a recent paper in this journal, Dagsvik derives the class of independent random utility representations that are “equivalent” to the independence-from-irrelevant-alternatives assumption by Luce. In this short note, we clarify the relations between this paper by Dagsvik, and a paper in Lindberg’s 2012 thesis.

For over fifty years, evaluators have used theories of change to articulate the causal logic underpinning how an intervention is intended to bring about a desired change. From its origins in program evaluation, the approach has been adopted more widely for purposes from programme design to programme management. As theories of change continue to be used for multiple purposes, it is an opportune moment for the evaluation community - where the approach originated - to provide their perspective on the strengths (...) and limitations of the approach and its future directions. To provide these perspectives, we asked nearly thirty of the world's leading evaluators and program theorists to provide a short essay on the past, present and future of theories of change. This book presents their insights organized into five main themes: the use of theories of change in broader public policy contexts; using theories of change to establish causality; developing theories of change reflective of multiple stakeholder perspectives; using theories of change to understand wider societal change processes; and applying theories of change approaches for multiple purposes. By sharing these diverse perspectives, the book aims to both provide evaluators and emerging programme theorists with critical perspectives to inform future practice. (shrink)

Islamic banking, based on the prohibition of interest, is well established throughout the Muslim world. Attention has now turned towards applying Islamic principles in equity markets. The search for alternatives to Western style markets has been given added impetus in Muslim countries by the turmoil in Asian financial markets in 1997. Common stocks are a legitimate form of instrument in Islam, but many of the practices associated with stock trading are not. In this paper the instruments traded and the structure (...) and practices of stock markets are examined from an Islamic perspective. Speculation is not acceptable in Islam and measures would have to be taken to control speculative trading. In addition short selling and margin trading are severely restricted. The use of stock index and equity futures and options are also unlikely to be acceptable within an Islamic market. Regulatory authorities in Muslim countries will therefore find a vast array of problems in attempting to structure a trading system that will be acceptable. (shrink)

Short overview of the From Small Beginnings Project and its relevance for resisting eugenics in contemporary society.

A paramount, yet unresolved issue in personalised medicine is that of automated reasoning with clinical guidelines in multimorbidity settings. This entails enabling machines to use computerised generic clinical guideline recommendations and patient-specific information to yield patient-tailored recommendations where interactions arising due to multimorbidities are resolved. This problem is further complicated by patient management desiderata, in particular the need to account for patient-centric goals as well as preferences of various parties involved. We propose to solve this problem of automated reasoning with (...) interacting guideline recommendations in the context of a given patient by means of computational argumentation. In particular, we advance a structured argumentation formalism ABA+G (short for Assumption-Based Argumentation with Preferences (ABA+) and Goals) for integrating and reasoning with information about recommendations, interactions, patient’s state, preferences and prioritised goals. ABA+G combines assumption-based reasoning with preferences and goal-driven selection among reasoning outcomes. Specifically, we assume defeasible applicability of guideline recommendations with the general goal of patient well-being, resolve interactions (conflicts and otherwise undesirable situations) among recommendations based on the state and preferences of the patient, and employ patient-centered goals to suggest interaction-resolving, goal-importance maximising and preference-adhering recommendations. We use a well-established Transition-based Medical Recommendation model for representing guideline recommendations and identifying interactions thereof, and map the components in question, together with the given patient’s state, prioritised goals, and preferences over actions, to ABA+G for automated reasoning. In this, we follow principles of patient management and establish corresponding theoretical properties as well as illustrate our approach in realistic personalised clinical reasoning scenaria. (shrink)

There are unusual challenges in ethics for RAS. Perhaps the issue can best be summarised as needing to consider “technically informed ethics”. The technology of RAS raises issues that have an ethical dimension, and perhaps uniquely so due to the possibility of moving human decision-making which is implicitly ethically informed to computer systems. Further, if seeking solutions to these problems – ethically aligned design, to use the IEEE’s terminology – then the solutions must be technically meaningful, capable of realisation, capable (...) of assurance, and suitable as a basis for regulation. Thus, ethics for RAS is a rich, complex multi-disciplinary concern, and perhaps more complex than many other ethical issues facing society today. It is also fast-moving. This paper has endeavoured to give an accessible introduction to some of the key issues, noting that many of them are quite subtle, and it is not possible to do them full justice in such a short document. However, we have sought to counterbalance this by giving an extensive list of initiatives, standards, etc. that focus on ethics of RAS and AI, see Annex A. (shrink)

The issues of medical ethics, from moral quandaries of euthanasia and the morality of killing to political dilemmas like fair healthcare distribution, are rarely out of today's media. This area of ethics covers a wide range of issues, from mental health to reproductive medicine, as well as including management issues such as resource allocation, and has proven to hold enduring interest for the general public as well as the medical practitioner. This Very Short Introduction provides an invaluable tool with (...) which to think about the ethical values that lie at the heart of medicine. This new edition explores the ethical reasoning we can use to approach medical ethics, introducing the most important 'tools' of ethical reasoning, and discussing how argument, thought experiments, and intuition can be combined in the consideration of medical ethics. Considering its practical application, Tony Hope and Michael Dunn explore how medical ethics supports health professionals through the growing use of ethics expertise in clinical settings. They also contemplate the increasingly important place of medical ethics in the wider social context, particularly in this age of globalization, not only in healthcare practice, but also policy, discussions in the media, pressure group and activism settings, and in legal judgments. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. (shrink)

Aristotle's definition of time as 'a number of motion with respect to the before and after' has been branded as patently circular by commentators ranging from Simplicius to W. D. Ross. In this book Tony Roark presents an interpretation of the definition that renders it not only non-circular, but also worthy of serious philosophical scrutiny. He shows how Aristotle developed an account of the nature of time that is inspired by Plato while also thoroughly bound up with Aristotle's sophisticated (...) analyses of motion and perception. When Aristotle's view is properly understood, Roark argues, it is immune to devastating objections against the possibility of temporal passage articulated by McTaggart and other 20th century philosophers. Roark's novel and fascinating interpretation of Aristotle's temporal theory will appeal to those interested in Aristotle, ancient philosophy and the philosophy of time. (shrink)

Real living wages (RLWs) are an important ethical and moral policy to ensure that employees earn enough to live on. In providing ‘a fair day's pay for a fair day's work’, they set an ethical foundation for liveability. This article explores the ethics and moral economy of the RLW for lower-paid staff in the overlooked economy context of UK professional football, illustrated by a qualitative case study of Luton Town Football Club (LTFC). The article provides theoretical insights grounded in moral (...) economy concepts about how a RLW contributes to a broader common good means of enabling fuller human participation in decent working and living conditions. Applying these concepts using a multi-disciplinary moral economy interpretation offers deeper theoretical contributions than economistic interpretations restricted to mainly technocratic economic distributive issues. LTFC are evidently ethically embedded in a moral economy as a local community club paying a RLW, and part of the overlooked economy. The research also contributes to contemporary debates on ‘Common Good’ HRM regarding the role of living wages in addressing grand common good challenges like inequality and quality of working lives. (shrink)

Re-reading Derrida: Perspectives on Mourning and its Hospitalities, edited by Tony Thwaites and Judith Seaboyer, is a uniquely collaborative exploration of the legacies of Jacques Derrida. Scholars from a wide variety of fields respond to his work by addressing such issues as the politics of the memorial, poetry, trauma, film, neoliberalism, the novel, and psychoanalysis--and then, in the processes of revision, they respond to each other.

The aesthetic exception theorises anew the relation between art and politics. It challenges critical trends that discount the role of aesthetic autonomy, to impulsively reassert art as an effective form of social engagement. But it equally challenges those on the flipside of the efficacy debate, who insist that art's politics is limited to a recondite space of 'autonomous resistance'. The book shows how each side of the efficacy debate overlooks art's exceptional status and its social mediations. Mobilising philosophy and cultural (...) theory, and employing examples from visual art, performance, and theatre, it proposes four alternative tests to 'effect' to offer a nuanced account of art's political character. Those tests examine how art relates to politics as a practice that articulates its historical conjuncture, and how it prefigures the 'new' through simulations capable of activating the political life of the spectator. (shrink)

In 1925, David Katz published an influential monograph on touch, Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, which was translated into English in 1989. Although it is called “the world of touch,” it also discusses the thermal and the nociceptive senses, albeit briefly. In this chapter, we will follow this approach, but we will speak about “somatosensory senses” in general in order to remind ourselves that perceptions of temperatures and pains should also be considered together in this context.

Pastor and trusted Bible teacher Dr. Tony Evans answers fundamental questions about the Christian faith to help children understand who God is and why they can trust Him with their lives. Help children build a firm foundation of faith.

In God and Human Freedom: A Kierkegaardian Perspective Tony Kim discusses Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of historical unity between the divine and human without disparaging their absolute distinction. Kim’s central analysis between the relation of God and human freedom in Kierkegaard presents God’s absoluteness as superseding human freedom, intervening at every point of His relation with the world and informing humanity of their existentially passive being. Kim argues Kierkegaard is not a strict voluntarist but deeply acknowledges God’s absoluteness and initiative (...) over and against human life. Moreover, the author’s exploration of unity in Kierkegaard points to the very ethics of who God is, one who loves the world. Ultimately, God manifests that love in Jesus Christ, representing God’s ultimate reconciliation with the world in his humility. (shrink)

A lesson from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is that it is possible for people to change their beliefs and attitudes in ways that enhance mood. This chapter discusses mainly how the ideas from positive psychology combined with the therapeutic methods developed in CBT might provide ways of helping individuals to enhance their mood and increase happiness. The best single perspective from which to gain an understanding of positive psychology is that of evolutionary psychology, even though it is underdeveloped and contentious. (...) Evolutionary psychology bridges the gap between individual history and the general features of the human condition that helps to explain both our capacity for happiness and some of the barriers to achieving it. The modern general evolutionary view of emotions is that they help animals in regulating their effort: how they behave at any one time and how they apportion their time and energy between different types of behavior. (shrink)

Gratitude, the proper or fitting response to benevolence, has often been conceptualized as a virtue—a temporally stable disposition to perceive, think, feel, and act in certain characteristic ways in certain situations. Many accounts of gratitude as a virtue, however, have not analyzed this disposition accurately, and as a result, they have not revealed the rich variety of ways in which someone can fail to be a grateful person. In this paper, I articulate an account of the virtue of gratitude, and (...) I use this account to explore various vices that can manifest in its absence. (shrink)

The book presents the case for the making of a new political imagination by offering a critique of existing political institutions, philosophy and practices that are unable to provide the thinking, means and leadership to deal with the complexity and crises of specific locales and the world at large. The authors make clear that there is a fundamental disjuncture between the complexity of the combined critical conditions that are now putting life on Earth at risk, and the divisions and theories (...) of knowledge that are dominantly and instrumentally trying to understand the situation. In response this work makes the case for the need for a new political imagination that rejects the sufficiency of existing political ideologies (including democracy) being the end point of politics. The book tackles the political underpinnings of social and economic life in a world still embedded in the inequities of the afterlife of colonialism and state socialism. Thereafter it engages narratives of change, rethinks imagination and critical practices, to finally present a relationally connected way to move forward. (shrink)

Reason and Doctrinepresents a simple, straightforward outline of Christian dogmas that not only contradict the scientific world view, they have no foundation in scripture. The author considers a wide range of ancient texts in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and their contemporary translations, and discusses the texts that have come to be known as Paul's letters, where he finds distinct errors from the references to Genesis to the accepted story of Jesus as a blood sacrifice. While fully documented and founded on (...) a scholarly investigation, the book is written for general readers. (shrink)

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview, Tony Lawson discussed his role in, and relationship to, Critical Realism as well as various defences of mathematical modelling in economics. In Part 2 he t...

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview Tony Lawson first discusses his role in the formation of IACR and how he relates to the generalized use of the term ‘Critical Realism’. He then provides com...

There is an increasingly widespread belief, both within and outside the discipline, that modern economics is irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. Economics and Reality traces this irrelevance to the failure of economists to match their methods with their subject, showing that formal, mathematical models are unsuitable to the social realities economists purport to address. Tony Lawson examines the various ways in which mainstream economics is rooted in positivist philosophy and examines the problems this causes. It focuses (...) on human agency, social structure and their interaction and explores how the understanding of this social phenomena can be used to transform the nature of economic practice. Economics and Reality concludes by showing how this newly transformed economics might set about shaping economic policy. (shrink)

This second volume continues the story told in the first by focusing on the writings of a selection of seminal thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in England, the German speaking world and in France, ending with the debate around the French Revolution of 1789.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson is mostly remembered as a poet, activist, and ex-wife of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Her volume The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories (1899) has been largely overshadowed as a result. Yet, the collection contains a portfolio of heroines analogous and contemporaneous to the famed New Woman figure of the fin de siècle. In this article, I consider Dunbar-Nelson’s heroines in light of their New Woman-esque agency and autonomy as they find remedies and power in objects and materials (...) steeped in New Orleans’s cultural heritage. Ceded neither social nor political self-governance nor domestic comfort, this article reads these transcendental, metaphysical objects as sources of self-care. With close analysis of “The Goodness of St. Rocque,” “Tony’s Wife,” and “Little Miss Sophie,” I argue that Dunbar-Nelson’s protagonists exert influence over their lives, specifically in the negotiation of romantic relationships, through voodoo charms, Catholic candles, tarot cards, sewing machines, and knitting needles. Covering courtship, break-ups, and unhappy marriages, I demonstrate the ways in which these empowering spiritual objects respond to health concerns, including malnutrition and domestic violence, in turn, situating them as alternatives to patriarchal and historically racist medical institutions. Valorizing the cultural milieu of New Orleans and the customs of the Caribbean and European heritage, and thereby conveying Dunbar-Nelson’s resistance to white and male supremacist ideologies in late-nineteenth-century Southern America, the article ultimately assesses the parallels with (predominantly white) New Woman fiction, through shared themes of fraught heterosexual dynamics and women’s declining health. (shrink)

The name remains: Jewish questioner -- London and language: English writer -- Familial socialism: political Marxist -- King's and kibbutzim: Cambridge Zionist -- Paris, California: French intellectual -- Generation of understanding: East European liberal -- Unities and fragments: European historian -- Age of responsibility: American moralist -- The banality of good: social democrat.