Excerpt from Science and Ethics: Being a Series of Six Lectures Delivered Under the Auspices of the Natural Law Research League And abroad (germany, France, America, but although within the circumscribed limits of these lectures I have not. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format (...) whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This article proposes a framework for the analysis of experienced discrimination in home mortgages. It addresses the problem of home mortgage lending discrimination in one of the richest areas of northern Italy. Employees of a local hospital were interviewed to study their perception of discriminatory behavior related to home financing. The analysis follows two steps. The first evaluates self-selection and the second focuses on the likelihood that applications are accepted by the bank. Findings show that discrimination is likely to appear (...) when the applicant’s nationality is considered. In addition to its findings, the study provides an original econometric model on a two-step procedure to test perceived discrimination and suggests a method and approach that may constitute a point of reference for those willing to study perceived discrimination. (shrink)

A new lifetime distribution, called exponential doubly Poisson distribution, is proposed with decreasing, increasing, and upside-down bathtub-shaped hazard rates. One of the reasons for introducing the new distribution is that it can describe the failure time of a system connected in the form of a parallel-series structure. Some properties of the proposed distribution are addressed. Four methods of estimation for the involved parameters are considered based on progressively type II censored data. These methods are maximum likelihood, moments, least squares, (...) and weighted least squares estimations. Through an extensive numerical simulation, the performance of the estimation methods is compared based on the average of mean squared errors and the average of absolute relative biases of the estimates. Two real datasets are used to compare the proposed distribution with some other well-known distributions. The comparison indicates that the proposed distribution is better than the other distributions to match the data provided. (shrink)

Summary In some very interesting recent work, Peter Fenves has sought to trace G. W. Leibniz's views on human diversity back to the philosopher's core philosophical concerns, in particular to his metaphysical picture of the world as consisting in causally unconnected substances, monads, that are ‘windowless’, ‘worlds apart’. In this article I argue by contrast that Leibniz's anthropological views develop quite independently of his core metaphysics, and are rooted instead in his significant work as a historian and genealogist. In this (...) connection, he develops a conception of race as a ‘series of generations’, and of genealogy as ‘the explication of this series’, that will in turn ground much of his thought about not just human groups, but about living kinds in general. These conceptions, moreover, offer significant new insight into Leibniz's position with respect to the philosophical problem of the ontological status of species. (shrink)

This study aimed to identify real-life experts working for a port authority and lay people (students) who played The Sustainable Port, a serious game aiming to simulate the dynamics occurring in a port area. To achieve this goal, we analyzed eye gaze data collected noninvasively using low-grade webcams from 28 participants working for the port authority of the Port of Rotterdam and 66 students. Such data were used for a classification task implemented using a MiniRocket classifier, an algorithm used for (...) time-series classification. The classifier reached an F1 score of 0.75 (SD = 0.07), a PR AUC of 0.73 (SD = 0.14), and an ROC AUC of 0.75 (SD = 0.15) providing evidence that it is possible to identify real-life experts about maritime port management using data that can be obtained from a webcam. We speculate that the gaze direction used to train the MiniRocket may contain relevant information about the cognitive processes and decisions occurring throughout the gameplay. We suggest that the methods here presented not only can be used to detect experts playing simulations, such as serious games, but also to identify experts tackling screen-presented tasks. (shrink)

Since Hilary Putnam offered multiple realization as an empirical hypothesis in the 1960s, philosophical consensus has turned against the idea that mental processes are identifiable with brain processes, and multiple realization has become the keystone of the 'antireductive consensus' across philosophy of science. Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro offer the first book-length investigation of multiple realization, which serves as a starting point to a series of philosophically sophisticated and empirically informed arguments that cast doubt on the generality (...) of multiple realization in the cognitive sciences. They argue that mind-brain identities have played an important role in the growth and achievements of the cognitive sciences, and suggest that there is little prospect for multiple realization in an empirically-based theory of mind. This leads Polger and Shapiro to offer an alternative framework for understanding explanations in the cognitive sciences, as well as in chemistry, biology, and other non-basic sciences. (shrink)

The Chhoti Sadri inscription of the Mānavāyaṇi king Gauri of Malwa is a most unusual specimen of a Sanskrit verse praśasti. Its remarkably poor Sanskrit has attracted the most attention, but its rhetorical structure is also quite abnormal. It is proposed here that such unusual features as the first person presentation and the fronting of subjects with demonstrative pronouns suggest a setting involving an actual, or perhaps only an imagined, presentation of a royal portrait gallery, such as are attested both (...) in Sanskrit literature and in Indian archaeology. (shrink)

Scott Campbell has recently defended the psychological approach to personal identity over time by arguing that a person is literally a series of mental events. Rejecting four-dimensionalism about the persistence of physical objects, Campbell regards constitutionalism as the main rival version of the psychological approach. He argues that his "series view" has two clear advantages over constitutionalism: it avoids the "two thinkers" objection and it allows a person to change bodies. In addition, Campbell suggests a reply to the (...) objection, often raised against views such as his, that thoughts must be distinct from their thinker. In this paper, I argue that Campbell's responses to the "two thinkers" and the "thoughts/thinker" objections are unsuccessful. Furthermore, his reply to the latter leads to four-dimensionalism of the kind he wanted to avoid – and this view too allows a person to change bodies. Moreover, I argue that it speaks against the series view that generalised versions of it fare much more poorly than do generalised versions of constitutionalism and four-dimensionalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Elisabeth Blair 173 How it feels is a series of questions Are you home now, or in the body of a bird? Do you drown, or do you sit calm in the watery air? And the fire—did you light it yourself, or did someone you know, or someone you have yet to meet? Can you sit quiet by it or (...) is it bridging the wet and dry with its feet, consuming your shoes first, then your eyes, skipping the topography in between in fickle pecking like chicken for grain? Is the shower water or is it fire? What if you want to feel something? Are you tired of time, to be so locked into now in this way, in the shower, and later in the circle, where they’ll say, We saw your scars, we know you were abused— it’s OK—we were too— —? But you had only scratched your back in the shower (accidentally) that day. Elisabeth Blair 174 Elisabeth Blair What is the fire that is the fire of drowning and what is the urgency that is the command of fog, saying you’d better sit down? You’d better stand up. Wood. Upholstery. Snow. Mud. These are real, while you are sinister, not believed. There were welts on your back; now they’ve gone. You try to explain: You had a belly once. You had a body. This place stores you in the leg of a bird, and not an invested one but a chicken, pecking, running lines in the ground. Most of the time is gone. You’re a stream down which a foundling comes. You’re a paramecium—all the hints and holds of life are here in you, but you are just a little one. You’re a mouth. You use yourself to laugh, to clutch your chin with one hand, rest the other on your knee. You use yourself to say no, I do not have scars—to clarify. You use yourself like the chicken in the yard uses itself to get by. Elisabeth Blair 175 Listen. I haven’t hit you. I’ve only used your body to demonstrate the richness of your feeling and the piracy inherent in your unwillingness to brave the feeling. I’ve only pulled you up. I’ve only sheltered you with a slap. I’ve dipped into your orange blood with my finger and felt relief—I know how to help. You listen to me— your blood will redden, then your face. You’ll get better. 176 Elisabeth Blair The English boy dwells in any of many neurodivergent states, no doubt undiagnosed. You only speak when spoken to by the staff, but he will and does speak—and laugh. He pulls his pants down and shits in the mess tent. You look at the grain in the rough wooden bench. He kicks as they tackle him to the ground, and all the while—as they swear and shout and he fights—comes that laughter, making ripples on your eyes. They put him in a sleeping bag, wrap a tarp around it, tie it with rope, then leave him on the ground for days, on display, in March, in the mountains, in many feet of snow. They call it a burrito. Let him laugh, they say, let him wiggle and roll.  [we were not killed]  [I am not ungrateful  I am not ungrateful] Elisabeth Blair 177 Age 16 A few years before, your horns newly removed, there had come a drought. Once you felt it, and felt yourself not just alone but marked— once on the forehead and once on either side where you had been but now were not— you developed doubts. You had intended to be reasonable, to talk. But the melting ice: there was no container. The evaporating water: there was no shade. No room to meet in. No family to group. No wits to gather or weave, nothing to save. Your hands became a precipice attached to a belief. The belief was mismanaged, had a bad day. Stuff clattered onto you. You lay there in the stuff and knew you had broken hearts. People... (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume (...) covers three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

As the world faces rapidly increasing cycles of disruption, challenges, and disorder, mission leaders are stretched to adapt, trying to catch up with the pace of change and provide leadership to further the mission God has given his Church. This paper, presented at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies Montagu Barker Lecture Series: “Polycentric Theology, Mission, and Mission Leadership,” focuses on ways leadership is changing, suggesting a new theoretical model for mission leadership. It reviews the idea of polycentrism through (...) mission history, mission and church organizations, movement theory, and governance, identifying themes of an emerging theory of polycentric mission leadership. (shrink)

The text commonly known as the Babylonian Poem of Creation has attracted scholarly attention since it was first translated in the late nineteenth century, although critical editions have appeared only recently. In 2014 there was published a lengthy study on enūma eliš that presents a number of original approaches to the ancient composition. This new book is the subject of the following notes.

Several of Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God rely on the claim that causal series cannot proceed in infinitum. I argue that Aquinas has good reason to hold this claim given his conception of causation. Because he holds that effects are ontologically dependent on their causes, he holds that the relevant causal series are wholly derivative: the later members of such series serve as causes only insofar as they have been caused by and are effects (...) of the earlier members. Because the intermediate causes in such series possess causal powers only by deriving them from all the preceding causes, they need a first and non-derivative cause to serve as the source of their causal powers. (shrink)

The humanist theory of the nude is one of the places where what can be called a ‘poor metaphysics’ developed during the Renaissance. To construct the concept of the nude as a representation of man in his own right, art theorists used common scholastic categories such as substance and accident, form and matter, potentiality and actuality, quantity and quality, whole and part, soul and body. Resolutely poor in its object – the human body, the work of art – and in (...) its form – technical treatise, fictional dialogue, or simple working notes – this reflection is nonetheless rich and original because of what constitutes its very weakness: the contamination of the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition with Neoplatonism, Vitruvianism, elements of natural philosophy, musical theory, and even Kabbalah. It testifies less to the permanence of scholastic metaphysics during the Renaissance than to the ingenious adaptation of its tools to new, humbler, and more rebellious objects of thought. (shrink)

A detailed theoretical analysis is presented of what five utility representations – subjective expected utility (SEU), rank-dependent (cumulative or Choquet) utility (RDU), gains decomposition utility (GDU), rank weighted utility (RWU), and a configural-weight model (TAX) that we show to be equivalent to RWU – say about a series of independence properties, many of which were suggested by M. H. Birnbaum and his coauthors. The goal is to clarify what implications to draw about the descriptive aspects of the representations from (...) data concerning these properties. The upshot is a sharp rejection of SEU and RDU and no clear choice between GDU and TAX, but a list of 8 properties is given that should receive more attention to discriminate between the latter two models. (shrink)

This book overviews how different special sciences could be applied in everyday life. The book was published as part of a nonfiction agricultural series written and edited in part by Nikolai Borodin (1861-1937). In the pre-revolutionary period, Borodin and fellow scholar B. Bakhmetiev visted the USA to obtain a loan and ensure the execution of order for supply of military and agricultural equipment. During the Civil War Borodin joined the White movement and Kolchak's government which sent him to the (...) United States to purchase the agricultural machinery and equipment for educational institutions in Sberia. When the Bolsheviks won the war, Borodin remained abroad. (shrink)

In 2022, students at North American universities with third-dose COVID-19 vaccine mandates risk disenrolment if unvaccinated. To assess the appropriateness of booster mandates in this age group, we combine empirical risk-benefit assessment and ethical analysis. To prevent one COVID-19 hospitalisation over a 6-month period, we estimate that 31 207–42 836 young adults aged 18–29 years must receive a third mRNA vaccine. Booster mandates in young adults are expected to cause a net harm: per COVID-19 hospitalisation prevented, we anticipate at least (...) 18.5 serious adverse events from mRNA vaccines, including 1.5–4.6 booster-associated myopericarditis cases in males (typically requiring hospitalisation). We also anticipate 1430–4626 cases of grade ≥3 reactogenicity interfering with daily activities (although typically not requiring hospitalisation). University booster mandates are unethical because they: (1) are not based on an updated (Omicron era) stratified risk-benefit assessment for this age group; (2) may result in a net harm to healthy young adults; (3) are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission; (4) violate the reciprocity principle because serious vaccine-related harms are not reliably compensated due to gaps in vaccine injury schemes; and (5) may result in wider social harms. We consider counterarguments including efforts to increase safety on campus but find these are fraught with limitations and little scientific support. Finally, we discuss the policy relevance of our analysis for primary series COVID-19 vaccine mandates. (shrink)

1. Expository.--2. Historical and critical.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1871 Edition.

This chapter introduces the idea that computation is a key tool that can help us understand how the human brain works. Recent years have seen a revolution in the kinds of tasks computers can perform. Underlying these advances is the burgeoning field of machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, which aims at creating machines that can act without being programmed, learning from data and experience. Rather startlingly, it turns out that the same methods that allow us to make intelligent (...) machines also appear to hold the key to explaining how our brains work. In this chapter, we explore this exciting new field and some of the questions that it raises. (shrink)

Enūma eliš exhibits a masterful array of intertextual borrowings that makes it exceptional among Akkadian literary texts. In this paper I discuss “intertextu- ity” as an analytical category and its suitability and limitations for the study of ancient compositions. I consider three different levels of intertextuality and present instances from an assorted group of texts. I finally show how a variety of intertextual types that are usually found in isolation are combined in Enūma eliš to create an original piece.

In a series of five experiments, we demonstrate that moral judgments and folk intuitions are often predictably fragmented. Drawing on the domains of ethics and action theory, we illustrate ways in which judgment tends to be associated with stable individual differences such as personality traits and reflective cognitive styles. We argue that these individual differences pose several unique challenges as well as provide opportunities for further theoretical development in the emerging field of experimental philosophy. Implications are briefly discussed.