This paper analyzes Kierkegaard's Religiousness A sphere of existence, presented in his edifying works, and Heidegger's concept of authenticity, proposed in Being and Time, as responses to modern nihilism. While Kierkegaard argues that Religiousness A is an unsuccessful response to modern nihilism, Heidegger claims that authenticity, a secularized version of Religiousness A, is a successful response. We argue that Heidegger's secularization of Religiousness A is incomplete and unsuccessful, that Heidegger's later work offers a reconsideration of the problem of modern nihilism, (...) and that later Heidegger suggests a way out of nihilism which is compatible with Kierkegaard's Religiousness B sphere of existence. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a consortium that comprises leading informaticians, biologists, clinicians, and ontologists, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, to develop innovative technology and methods that allow scientists to record, manage, and disseminate biomedical information and knowledge in machine-processable form. The goals of the Center are (1) to help unify the divergent and isolated efforts in ontology development by promoting high quality open-source, standards-based tools to create, manage, and use ontologies, (2) to create (...) new software tools so that scientists can use ontologies to annotate and analyze biomedical data, (3) to provide a national resource for the ongoing evaluation, integration, and evolution of biomedical ontologies and associated tools and theories in the context of driving biomedical projects (DBPs), and (4) to disseminate the tools and resources of the Center and to identify, evaluate, and communicate best practices of ontology development to the biomedical community. Through the research activities within the Center, collaborations with the DBPs, and interactions with the biomedical community, our goal is to help scientists to work more effectively in the e-science paradigm, enhancing experiment design, experiment execution, data analysis, information synthesis, hypothesis generation and testing, and understand human disease. (shrink)

Political and social commentators regularly bemoan the decline of morality in the modern world. They claim that the norms and values that held society together in the past are rapidly eroding, to be replaced by permissiveness and empty hedonism. But as Edward Rubin demonstrates in this powerful account of moral transformations, these prophets of doom are missing the point. Morality is not diminishing; instead, a new morality, centered on an ethos of human self-fulfillment, is arising to replace the old (...) one. As Rubin explains, changes in morality have gone hand in hand with changes in the prevailing mode of governance throughout the course of Western history. During the Early Middle Ages, a moral system based on honor gradually developed. In a dangerous world where state power was declining, people relied on bonds of personal loyalty that were secured by generosity to their followers and violence against their enemies. That moral order, exemplified in the early feudal system and in sagas like The Song of Roland, The Song of the Cid, and the Arthurian legends has faded, but its remnants exist today in criminal organizations like the Mafia and in the rap music of the urban ghettos. When state power began to revive in the High Middle Ages through the efforts of the European monarchies, and Christianity became more institutionally effective and more spiritually intense, a new morality emerged. Described by Rubin as the morality of higher purposes, it demanded that people devote their personal efforts to achieving salvation and their social efforts to serving the emerging nation-states. It insisted on social hierarchy, confined women to subordinate roles, restricted sex to procreation, centered child-rearing on moral inculcation, and countenanced slavery and the marriage of pre-teenage girls to older men. Our modern era, which began in the late 18th century, has seen the gradual erosion of this morality of higher purposes and the rise of a new morality of self-fulfillment, one that encourages individuals to pursue the most meaningful and rewarding life-path. Far from being permissive or a moral abdication, it demands that people respect each other's choices, that sex be mutually enjoyable, that public positions be allocated according to merit, and that society provide all its members with their minimum needs so that they have the opportunity to fulfill themselves. Where people once served the state, the state now functions to serve the people. The clash between this ascending morality and the declining morality of higher purposes is the primary driver of contemporary political and cultural conflict. A sweeping, big-idea book in the vein of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, Charles Taylor's The Secular Age, and Richard Sennett's The Fall of Public Man, Edward Rubin's new volume promises to reshape our understanding of morality, its relationship to government, and its role in shaping the emerging world of High Modernity. (shrink)

When evidence-based policymaking is so often mired in disagreement and controversy, how can we know if the process is meeting its stated goals? We develop a novel mathematical model to study disagreements about adequate knowledge utilization, like those regarding wild horse culling, shark drumlines and facemask policies during pandemics. We find that, when stakeholders disagree, it is frequently impossible to tell whether any party is at fault. We demonstrate the need for a distinctive kind of transparency in evidence-based policymaking, which (...) we call transparency of reasoning. Such transparency is critical to the success of the evidence-based policy movement, as without it, we will be unable to tell whether in any instance a policy was in fact based on evidence. (shrink)

Political and social commentators regularly bemoan the decline of morality in the modern world. They claim that the norms and values that held society together in the past are rapidly eroding, to be replaced by permissiveness and empty hedonism. But as Edward Rubin demonstrates in this powerful account of moral transformations, these prophets of doom are missing the point. Morality is not diminishing; instead, a new morality, centered on an ethos of human self-fulfillment, is arising to replace the old (...) one. As Rubin explains, changes in morality have gone hand in hand with changes in the prevailing mode of governance throughout the course of Western history. During the Early Middle Ages, a moral system based on honor gradually developed. In a dangerous world where state power was declining, people relied on bonds of personal loyalty that were secured by generosity to their followers and violence against their enemies. That moral order, exemplified in the early feudal system and in sagas like The Song of Roland, The Song of the Cid, and the Arthurian legends has faded, but its remnants exist today in criminal organizations like the Mafia and in the rap music of the urban ghettos. When state power began to revive in the High Middle Ages through the efforts of the European monarchies, and Christianity became more institutionally effective and more spiritually intense, a new morality emerged. Described by Rubin as the morality of higher purposes, it demanded that people devote their personal efforts to achieving salvation and their social efforts to serving the emerging nation-states. It insisted on social hierarchy, confined women to subordinate roles, restricted sex to procreation, centered child-rearing on moral inculcation, and countenanced slavery and the marriage of pre-teenage girls to older men. Our modern era, which began in the late 18th century, has seen the gradual erosion of this morality of higher purposes and the rise of a new morality of self-fulfillment, one that encourages individuals to pursue the most meaningful and rewarding life-path. Far from being permissive or a moral abdication, it demands that people respect each other's choices, that sex be mutually enjoyable, that public positions be allocated according to merit, and that society provide all its members with their minimum needs so that they have the opportunity to fulfill themselves. Where people once served the state, the state now functions to serve the people. The clash between this ascending morality and the declining morality of higher purposes is the primary driver of contemporary political and cultural conflict. A sweeping, big-idea book in the vein of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, Charles Taylor's The Secular Age, and Richard Sennett's The Fall of Public Man, Edward Rubin's new volume promises to reshape our understanding of morality, its relationship to government, and its role in shaping the emerging world of High Modernity. (shrink)

Biomedical images and ontologies are closely related conceptually, yet currently they are studied in isolation. Biomedical ontologies provide a representation of the canonical entities considered in biomedical research and clinical observations, and the relations among them. Images reveal instances of those entities and, taken in aggregate, inform the construction of ontologies describing the pertinent domain content revealed in the images. The article by Fielding and Marwede (2011) notes the differences between the ontology of the body and the ontology of the (...) image, developing toward an application of ontology of the psychiatric domain. Although such ontology development is important for knowledge representation .. (shrink)

Government can control conflicts of interest in business firms by either issuing obligatory commands to behave in a specified way or by creating incentives to alter private behavior. In order to choose between these two approaches, we also need to know something about the nature of the subject firms and the way that they are likely to respond to particular stimuli. Legislators and legal scholars often rely on intuition to predict the behavior of firms, but this will not suffice for (...) such a complex situation. Fortunately, there is a well-developed body of scholarship that addresses organizational behavior; unfortunately, like many bodies of scholarship, it contains rival and conflicting approaches. This article discusses four of these approaches to organizational behavior: the nexus of contracts theory, an application of rational choice theory to corporations; decision theory; general systems theory and its recent autopoetic variants; and new institutionalism. It then uses each of these approaches to predict the way that firms will respond to obligatory commands and behavior incentives. The specific cases it discusses are the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Organizational Sentencing Guidelines, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and contemporary compliance theory’s idea of reasonable, responsive, or cooperative enforcement. (shrink)

Morality is not declining in the modern world. Instead, a new morality is replacing the previous one. Centered on individual self-fulfillment, and linked to administrative government, it permits things the old morality forbid, like sex for pleasure, but forbids things the old morality allowed, like intolerance and equality of opportunity.

On the basis of the Woodhouse causal axiomatics, we show that conformal proper times and an extra variable in addition to those of space and time, together give a physical justification for the ‘chronometric hypothesis’ of general relativity. Indeed, we show that, with a lack of these latter two ingredients and of this hypothesis, clock paradoxes exist for which the unparadoxical asymmetry cannot be recovered when using the ‘clock and message functions’ only. These proper times originate from a given conformal (...) structure of the spacetime when ascribing different compatible projective structures to each Woodhouse particle, and then, each defines a specific Weylian ‘sheaf structure’. In addition, the proper time parameterizations are defined via path-dependent conformal scale factors, which act like sockets for any kind of physical interaction and also represent the values of the variable associated with the extra dimension. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Contours of Legal Scholarship Descriptive Scholarship Prescriptive Scholarship Jurisprudence References.

Although American scholars sometimes consider European legal scholarship as old-fashioned and inward-looking and Europeans often perceive American legal scholarship as amateur social science, both traditions share a joint challenge. If legal scholarship becomes too much separated from practice, legal scholars will ultimately make themselves superfluous. If legal scholars, on the other hand, cannot explain to other disciplines what is academic about their research, which methodologies are typical, and what separates proper research from mediocre or poor research, they will probably end (...) up in a similar situation. Therefore we need a debate on what unites legal academics on both sides of the Atlantic. Should legal scholarship aspire to the status of a science and gradually adopt more and more of the methods, (quality) standards, and practices of other (social) sciences? What sort of methods do we need to study law in its social context and how should legal scholarship deal with the challenges posed by globalization?" -- Page i. (shrink)

This work is intended as an introduction to the study of Soviet psy chology. In it we have tried to present the main lines of Soviet psycho logical theory, in particular, the philosophical principles on which that theory is founded. There are surprisingly few books in English on Soviet psychology, or, indeed, in any Western European language. The works that exist usually take the form of symposia or are collections of articles translated from Soviet periodicals. The most important of these (...) are Psychology in the Soviet Union (ed. by Brian Simon), Recent Soviet Psychology (ed. by Neil O'Connor) and Soviet Psychology, A Symposium (ed. by Ralf Winn). Raymond Bauer has also edited an interesting symposium entitled Some Views on Soviet Psychology. Only two systematic studies of Soviet psychology have been published to date: Joseph Wortis' Soviet Psychiatry and Raymond Bauer's The New Man in Soviet Psychology. Both are valuable introductions to Soviet psychology; Bauer's book, in particular, gives a good account of the debates on psychological theory in the Soviet Union in the nineteen twenties and -thirties. Both, however, are somewhat out of date. There are also a number of interesting articles written by Ivan D. London and Gregory Razran, which give general surveys of particular periods or aspects of Soviet psychology. These have been listed in the bibliography. (shrink)

This article argues that we could improve the design of research protocols by developing an awareness of and a responsiveness to the social contexts of all the actors in the research enterprise, including subjects, investigators, sponsors, and members of the community in which the research will be conducted. ?Social context? refers to the settings in which the actors are situated, including, but not limited to, their social, economic, political, cultural, and technological features. The utility of thinking about social contexts is (...) introduced and exemplified by the presentation of a hypothetical case in which one central issue is limitation of the probability of injury to subjects by selection of individuals who are not expected to live long enough for the known risks of the study to become manifest as harms. Benefits of such considerations may include enhanced subject satisfaction and cooperation, community acceptance, and improved data quality, among other desirable consequences. (shrink)

This article argues that we could improve the design of research protocols by developing an awareness of and a responsiveness to the social contexts of all the actors in the research enterprise, including subjects, investigators, sponsors, and members of the community in which the research will be conducted. “Social context” refers to the settings in which the actors are situated, including, but not limited to, their social, economic, political, cultural, and technological features. The utility of thinking about social contexts is (...) introduced and exemplified by the presentation of a hypothetical case in which one central issue is limitation of the probability of injury to subjects by selection of individuals who are not expected to live long enough for the known risks of the study to become manifest as harms. Benefits of such considerations may include enhanced subject satisfaction and cooperation, community acceptance, and improved data quality, among other desirable consequences. (shrink)

Wicked problems are tricky to solve because of their many interconnected components and a lack of any single optimal solution. At the science–policy interface, all problems can look wicked: research exposes the complexity that is relevant to designing, executing and implementing policy fit for ambitious human needs. Expertise in philosophical research can help to navigate that complexity.

For a complete first order theory of Boolean algebras T which has nonisomorphic countable models, we determine the first limit ordinal α = α(T) such that We show that for some and for all other T‘s, A nonprincipal ideal I of B is almost principal, if a is a principal ideal of B} is a maximal ideal of B. We show that the theory of Boolean algebras with an almost principal ideal has complete extensions and characterize them by invariants similar (...) to the Tarski’s invariants. (shrink)

A Boolean algebra B that has a well-founded sublattice L which generates B is called a well-generated Boolean algebra. If in addition, L is generated by a complete set of representatives for B , then B is said to be canonically well-generated .Every WG Boolean algebra is superatomic. We construct two basic examples of superatomic non well-generated Boolean algebras. Their cardinal sequences are 1,0,1,1 and 0,0,20,1.Assuming MA , we show that every algebra with one of the cardinal sequences , α<1, (...) λ<20, or 0,20,1,1 is CWG.Assuming CH, or alternatively assuming MA , we determine which cardinal sequences admit only WG Boolean algebras.We find a necessary and sufficient condition for the canonical well-generatedness of algebras whose cardinal sequence has the form , α<1. We conclude that if such an algebra is CWG, then all of its quotients are CWG. We show that the above is not true for general Boolean algebras. We also conclude that if the cardinality of such an algebra is less than the cardinal defined below, then it is CWG. The cardinal is the least cardinality of an unbounded subset of {f f : ω → ω}.We investigate questions concerning embeddability, quotients and subalgebras of WG and CWG Boolean algebras, and construct various counter-examples. (shrink)

We prove that the logics of Magidor-Malitz and their generalization by Rubin are distinct even for PC classes. Let $M \models Q^nx_1 \cdots x_n \varphi(x_1 \cdots x_n)$ mean that there is an uncountable subset A of |M| such that for every $a_1, \ldots, a_n \in A, M \models \varphi\lbrack a_1, \ldots, a_n\rbrack$ . Theorem 1.1 (Shelah) $(\diamond_{\aleph_1})$ . For every n ∈ ω the class $K_{n + 1} = \{\langle A, R\rangle \mid \langle A, R\rangle \models \neg Q^{n + (...) 1} x_1 \cdots x_{n + 1} R(x_1, \ldots, x_{n + 1})\}$ is not an ℵ 0 -PC-class in the logic L n , obtained by closing first order logic under Q 1 , ..., Q n . I.e. for no countable L n -theory T, is K n + 1 the class of reducts of the models of T. Theorem 1.2 (Rubin) $(\diamond_{\aleph_1}).^3$ . Let $M \models Q^E x y\varphi(x, y)$ mean that there is $A \subseteq |M|$ such that $E_{A, \varphi} = \{\langle a, b \rangle \mid a, b \in A$ and $M \models \varphi\lbrack a, b\rbrack\}$ is an equivalence relation on A with uncountably many equivalence classes, and such that each equivalence class is uncountable. Let $K^E = \{\langle A, R\rangle\mid \langle A, R\rangle\models \neg Q^Exy R(x, y)\}$ . Then K E is not an ℵ 0 -PC-class in the logic gotten by closing first order logic under the set of quantifiers {Q n ∣ n ∈ ω} which were defined in Theorem 1.1. (shrink)

THEOREM 1. (⋄ ℵ 1 ) If B is an infinite Boolean algebra (BA), then there is B 1 such that $|\operatorname{Aut} (B_1)| \leq B_1| = \aleph_1$ and $\langle B_1, \operatorname{Aut} (B_1)\rangle \equiv \langle B, \operatorname{Aut}(B)\rangle$ . THEOREM 2. (⋄ ℵ 1 ) There is a countably compact logic stronger than first-order logic even on finite models. This partially answers a question of H. Friedman. These theorems appear in §§ 1 and 2. THEOREM 3. (a) (⋄ ℵ 1 ) If (...) B is an atomic ℵ 1 -saturated infinite BA, ψ ε L ω 1ω and $\langle B, \operatorname{Aut} (B)\rangle \models\psi$ then there is B 1 such that $|\operatorname{Aut}(B_1)| \leq |B_1| = \aleph_1$ and $\langle B_1, \operatorname{Aut}(B_1)\rangle\models\psi$ . In particular if B is 1-homogeneous so is B 1 . (b) (a) holds for B = P(ω) even if we assume only CH. (shrink)

Let B be a superatomic Boolean algebra (BA). The rank of B (rk(B)), is defined to be the Cantor Bendixon rank of the Stone space of B. If a ∈ B - {0}, then the rank of a in B (rk(a)), is defined to be the rank of the Boolean algebra $B b \upharpoonright a \overset{\mathrm{def}}{=} \{b \in B: b \leq a\}$ . The rank of 0 B is defined to be -1. An element a ∈ B - {0} is (...) a generalized atom $(a \in \widehat{At}(B))$ , if the last nonzero cardinal in the cardinal sequence of B $\upharpoonright$ a is 1. Let a,b $\in\widehat{At}$ (B). We denote a ∼ b, if rk(a) = rk(b) = rk(a · b). A subset H $\subseteq \widehat{At}$ (B) is a complete set of representatives (CSR) for B, if for every a $\in \widehat{At}$ (B) there is a unique h ∈ H such that h ∼ a. Any CSR for B generates B. We say that B is canonically well-generated (CWG), if it has a CSR H such that the sublattice of B generated by H is well-founded. We say that B is well-generated, if it has a well-founded sublattice L such that L generates B. THEOREM 1. Let B be a Boolean algebra with cardinal sequence $\langle\aleph_0: i . If B is CWG, then every subalgebra of B is CWG. A superatomic Boolean algebra B is essentially low (ESL), if it has a countable ideal I such that rk(B/I) ≤ 1. Theorem 1 follows from Theorem 2.9, which is the main result of this work. For an ESL BA B we define a set F B of partial functions from a certain countably infinite set to ω (Definition 2.8). Theorem 2.9 says that if B is an ESL Boolean algebra, then the following are equivalent. (1) Every subalgebra of B is CWG; and (2) F B is bounded. THEOREM 2. If an ESL Boolean algebra is not CWG, then it has a subalgebra which is not well-generated. (shrink)

In this study, we used Terrance L. Furin’s concept of transformational countering to examine six Holocaust education resources designed to address Holocaust trivialization and antisemitism. While academic comparisons are useful to helping students understand challenging content, superficial Holocaust analogies for political purposes are identified as Holocaust trivialization. Given that the current context consists of a growing white nationalist movement characterized by authoritarianism, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories, we enter the study understanding that Holocaust trivialization and far-right extremism must be understood together. (...) We, therefore, examined the type of support teachers receive from Holocaust and human rights organizations in countering extremism and Holocaust trivialization. After analyzing the six resources, our findings demonstrate that resources produced to counter Holocaust trivialization become quickly outdated given the rapid evolution of extremism. Also, findings indicate that teachers receive stronger support in countering extremism and Holocaust trivialization from organizations that focus broadly on supporting human rights compared to the organizations that focus exclusively on Holocaust education. (shrink)

Aim: Patients with advanced cancer need information about end-of-life treatment options in order to make informed decisions. Clinicians vary in the frequency with which they initiate these discussions.Patients and methods: As part of a long-term longitudinal study, patients with an expected 2-year survival of less than 50% who had advanced gastrointestinal or lung cancer or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis were interviewed. Each patient’s medical record was reviewed at enrollment and at 3 months for evidence of the discussion of patient wishes concerning (...) ventilator support, artificial nutrition and hydration , resuscitation and hospice care. A Kaplan–Meier analysis was also performed and 2-year survival calculated.Results: 60 cancer and 32 ALS patients were enrolled. ALS patients were more likely than cancer patients to have evidence of discussion about their wishes for ventilator support , ANH , DNR and hospice care . At 6 months, 91% of ALS patients were alive compared with 62% of cancer patients; at 2 years, 63% of ALS patients were alive compared with 23% of cancer patients .Conclusions: Cancer patients were less likely than ALS patients to have had documented advanced care planning discussions despite worse survival. This may reflect perceptions that ALS has a more predictable course, that advanced cancer has a greater number of treatment options, or differing views about hope. Nevertheless, cancer patients may be less adequately prepared for end-of-life decision-making. (shrink)

A cross-sectional study to ascertain what the Singapore population would regard as material risk in the anaesthesia consent-taking process and identify demographic factors that predict patient preferences in medical decision-making to tailor a more patient-centered informed consent. A survey was performed involving patients 21 years old and above who attended the pre-operative evaluation clinic over a 1-month period in Singapore General Hospital. Questionnaires were administered to assess patients’ perception of material risks, by trained interviewers. Patients’ demographics were obtained. Mann–Whitney U (...) test and Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance was used. Statistical significance was taken at p < 0.05. Four hundred fourteen patients were eligible of which 26 refused to participate and 24 were excluded due to language barrier. 364 patients were recruited. A higher level of education, being employed and younger age group are factors identified in patients who wanted greater participation in medical decisions. Gender, marital status, type of surgery, and previous surgical history did not affect their level of participation. The complications most patients knew about were Nausea, Drowsiness and Surgical Wound Pain. Patients ranked Heart Attack, Death and Stroke as the most significant risks that they wanted to be informed about in greater detail. Most patients wanted to make a joint decision with the anaesthetist, instead of letting the doctor decide or deciding for themselves. Discussion with the anaesthetist is the preferred medium of communication compared to reading a pamphlet or watching a video. Age and educational level can influence medical decision-making. Despite the digital age, most patients still prefer a clinic consult instead of audio-visual multimedia for pre-operative anaesthetic counselling. The local population appears to place greater importance on rare but serious complications compared to common complications. This illustrates the need to contextualize information provided during informed consent to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

Critical study of Sufism and Islamic philosophy with special reference of Ibn-i al-ʻArabī, 1165-1240.

We praise Arbib et al.'s Neural organization for its support of the integration of different levels of analysis, while noting that it does not always achieve what it advocates. We extend this approach into an area of neuropsychological activity in need of the structure offered by Organization at the intersection of the conflated fields of executive function and frontal lobe function.

In attempting to realize the tasks facing Soviet philosophers today, at a crucial moment in the life of our society, and in an attempt to contribute as best we can to clearing up the intellectual atmosphere of the country, we turn again to the question of what philosophy is, what its place in the life of society is, and how it can and must develop. The present article is dedicated to an examination of one of the aspects of this complex (...) question. (shrink)

What is the identity of the best regime in Aristotle's Politics? Although there are a few references to the best regime in Book III, the obvious answer is the regime discussed in Books VII and VIII. Aristotle calls it the best regime on numerous occasions and discusses it at great length. Yet, this is not the complete answer. In Book IV Aristotle makes certain curious remarks on the best regime that, on examination, do not fit the best regime of Books (...) VII and VIII. They lead, instead, to the discovery of a systematic, though quiet, teaching on a very different best regime in Book III. The Politics actually contains a complicated yet coherent teaching on two best regimes. Grasping this teaching is key to arriving at a proper understanding of the distinctive character of Aristotle's political thought. (shrink)