In some applications, researchers using the synthetic control method (SCM) to evaluate the effect of a policy may struggle to determine whether they have identified a “good match” between the control group and treated group. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of the mean and maximum Absolute Standardized Mean Difference (ASMD) as a test of balance between a synthetic control unit and treated unit, and provide guidance on what constitutes a poor fit when using a synthetic control. We explore (...) and compare other potential metrics using a simulation study. We provide an application of our proposed balance metric to the 2013 Los Angeles (LA) Firearm Study [9]. Using Uniform Crime Report data, we apply the SCM to obtain a counterfactual for the LA firearm-related crime rate based on a weighted combination of control units in a donor pool of cities. We use this counterfactual to estimate the effect of the LA Firearm Study intervention and explore the impact of changing the donor pool and pre-intervention duration period on resulting matches and estimated effects. We demonstrate how decision-making about the quality of a synthetic control can be improved by using ASMD. The mean and max ASMD clearly differentiate between poor matches and good matches. Researchers need better guidance on what is a meaningful imbalance between synthetic control and treated groups. In addition to the use of gap plots, the proposed balance metric can provide an objective way of determining fit. (shrink)

Cellular dedifferentiation is an important developmental response to perturbations in morphogenesis. In the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum this process gives cells the flexibility, when multicellular development is disrupted, to respond to nutrients and reinitiate vegetative growth. Recent studies in D. discoideum described by Soll and colleagues(1) show that genes previously thought to be expressed only during spore germination are also expressed during induced dedifferentiation, suggesting that similar molecular mechanisms are involved in these two developmental processes. It should now be (...) possible to determine whether the developmental programs that control dedifferentiation during spore germination also control conversion of cell types in the multicellular organism. (shrink)

In Western countries a considerable number of older people move to a residential home when their health declines. Institutionalization often results in increased dependence, inactivity and loss of identity or self-worth (dignity). This raises the moral question as to how older, institutionalized people can remain autonomous as far as continuing to live in line with their own values is concerned. Following Walker's meta-ethical framework on the assignment of responsibilities, we suggest that instead of directing all older people towards more autonomy (...) in terms of independence, professional caregivers should listen to the life narrative of older people and attempt to find out how their personal identity, relations and values in life can be continued in the new setting. If mutual normative expectations between caregivers and older people are not carefully negotiated, it creates tension. This tension is illustrated by the narrative of Mr Powell, a retired successful public servant now living in a residential home. The narrative describes his current life, his need for help, his independent frame of mind, and his encounters with institutional and professional policies. Mr Powell sees himself as a man who has always cared for himself and others, and who still feels that he has to fulfil certain duties in life. Mr Powell's story shows that he is not always understood well by caregivers who respond from a one-sided view of autonomy as independence. This leads to misunderstanding and an underestimation of his need to be noticed and involved in the residential community. (shrink)

The pioneering anthology Home Girls features writings by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides a fresh assessment of how Black women's lives have changed-or not-since the book was first published. Contributors are Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Julie Carter, (...) Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willie M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita Weems. (shrink)

_Learning to Teach Religious Education in the Secondary School_ draws together insights from current educational theory and the best contemporary classroom teaching and learning, and suggests tasks, activities, and further reading designed to enhance the quality of initial school experience for the student teacher. It aims to support teachers in developing levels of religious and theological literacy, both of individual pupils and the society as a whole. Practising teachers and students will appreciate this comprehensive and accessible introduction to the craft (...) of teaching Religious Education in the secondary school. (shrink)

In his famous essay „Der Essay als Form“ („The Essay as Form"), Adorno accuses Descartes of committing science to the ideal of absolute certainty (“zweifelsfreie Gewissheit”), thereby preluding the modern organized science (“organisierte Wissenschaft”), which in Adorno’s view has become alienated from real intellectual experience (“geistige Erfahrung”). In my essay, I criticize Adorno’s critique, showing that what Descartes in fact thinks about task and method of science comes much closer to the programmatical essayism of Critical Theory than Adorno supposed.

In destructing traditional metaphysics, Heidegger accuses German Idealism of eliminating the finite in favour of the infinite. Particularly Hegel is criticized for ignoring the true finitude of Dasein and thereby misinterpreting being as infinite absolute. The paper explores this criticism in three steps. First, the main features of Heidegger’s early metaphysics of finite Dasein as developed in Being and Time will be traced, followed, second, by an examination of Heidegger’s claim that Hegel’s absolute has a temporal-finite origin. Taking a closer (...) look at Heidegger’s alternative, true finitude, leads finally to a reflection on some difficulties in Heidegger’s critique of Hegel. (shrink)

Many philosophers find the prospect of working with researchers in the social and behavioral sciences exciting, in part because they hope that these researchers might be able to measure well-being as the philosopher conceives of it. In this chapter, I consider how the measurement of well- being, as it is conceived of by philosophers, might feasibly be facilitated. I propose that existing scales can be employed to measure well-being as philosophers conceive of it. I support this conclusion through an in-depth (...) discussion of an example. I explain how the scale of psychological well- being developed by Carol Ryff and validated in more than 750 empirical studies (Ryff, 2016, 2018) may be employed to measure the extent to which a person has realized an ostensible basic good. This discussion will be illustrative of the general method that may be employed to bring empirical researchers and philosophers into contact in a way that will facilitate the measurement of well-being as philosophers conceive of it. (shrink)

Ce chapitre discute de la justification des croyances testimoniales, c’est-à-dire de la justification des croyances que nous adoptons en nous appuyant sur le témoignage d’autrui. Plus précisément, la question à laquelle cette contribution s’intéresse est celle des conditions nécessaires et suffisantes de la justification des croyances testimoniales. Il y a deux manières classiques, et soi-disant antagonistes, d’y répondre: la réponse réductionnisme et la réponse non-réductionniste. L’objectif de ce chapitre est d’une part de présenter ces deux réponses, d’autre part, d’expliquer pourquoi (...) ce prétendu antagonisme n’en est pas un. Le plan est le suivant. La première partie de ce chapitre est consacrée à distinguer les croyances testimoniales des croyances perceptuelles (section 1. et 1.1). Dans la seconde partie (section 2 à 2.3), nous présentons la réponse réductionniste et la réponse non-réductionniste ainsi que quelques-unes des objections les plus importantes adressées à chacune d’elles. La troisième partie explique pourquoi le prétendu antagonisme entre le réductionnisme et le non-réductionnisme n’en est pas un en exploitant ce que nous appelons « la thèse du malentendu » (3 à 3.2). (shrink)

This article argues that “justification” denotes distinct technical properties in contemporary epistemology. It is structured as follows. Section 1 spells out a distinction between two ways of tackling the traditional question: “what is a justified belief?”. Sections 2 and 3 exploit some of the upshots of section 1 in order to show that classical reliabilism, accessibilism and presumably many other accounts of justification use the predicate “justified” in distinct technical ways. As we shall see, the careful vindication of the latter (...) claim turns out to be a complex matter. (shrink)

A new emphasis on diversity and difference is displacing older myths of nation or community. A new attention to gender, race, language or religion is disrupting earlier preoccupations with class. But the welcome extended to heterogeneity can bring with it a disturbing fragmentation and closure. Can we develop a vision of democracy through difference: a politics that neither denies group identities nor capitulates to them? In this volume, Anne Phillips develops the feminist challenge to exclusionary versions of democracy, citizenship (...) and equality. Relating this to the crisis in socialist theory, the growing unease with the pretensions of Enlightenment rationality, and the recent recuperation of liberal democracy as the only viable politics, she builds on debates within feminism to address general questions of difference. When democracies try to wish away group difference and inequality, they fail to meet their egalitarian promise. When yearnings towards an undifferentiated unity become the basis for radical politics and change, too many groups drop out of the picture. Through her critical discussions of recent feminist and socialist theory Anne Phillips rejects this democracy of denial. She also warns, however, of the dangers on the other side. The simpler celebrations of diversity risk freezing group differences as they are, encouraging a patchwork of local identities from which people can speak only to themselves. Her arguments then combine in a powerful restatement of the case for a more active and participatory democracy. It is only through enhanced communication and discussion that people can respect and learn from their differences. (shrink)

Multinational enterprises are aware of their responsibility to protect human rights now more than ever, but severe human rights violations, including physical integrity abuses, continue unabated. To explore this puzzle, we engage theoretically with the means-ends decoupling literature to examine if and when oil and gas firms’ policies and practices prevent severe human rights abuse. Using an original dataset, we identify two pathways to mitigate means-ends decoupling: while human rights policies alone do not reduce human rights abuses, firms with a (...) high-quality human rights policy over the long-term reduce severe human rights abuses; firms that combine preparedness—which we define as a firm’s capabilities, practices, and engagement—with a long-term human rights policy also reduce the likelihood of human rights abuses. Preparedness, we argue, can lead to reinforcement dynamics between long-term policy efforts and additional capabilities that provide a more holistic understanding of firm behavior. (shrink)

The handbook is a partial survey of multiple areas of food ethics: conventional agriculture and alternatives to it; animals; consumption ethics; food justice; food workers; food politics and policy; gender, body image, and healthy eating; and, food, culture and identity. -/- Food ethics, as an academic pursuit, is vast, incorporating work from philosophy as well as anthropology, economics, environmental sciences and other natural sciences, geography, law, and sociology. This Handbook provides a sample of recent philosophical work in food ethics. This (...) philosophical work addresses ethical issues with agricultural production, the structure of the global food system, the ethics of personal food consumption, the ethics of food policy, and cultural understandings of food and eating, among other issues. The work in this Handbook draws on multiple literatures within philosophy, including practical ethics, normative ethics, and political philosophy, as well as drawing on non-philosophical work. Part I considers ethical issues concerning the industrial model of farming that dominates in developed countries, looking most closely at industrial crop farming and its environmental effects. Part II concerns the ethics of animal agriculture. Part III concerns the ethics of consumption: is it morally permissible to consume various products? Part IV concerns justice—including racial, social, and economic justice—in the food system. Part V discusses some ethical and legal issues with specific kinds of food policies, including healthy eating policies, food labeling, and agricultural guest worker programs. Part VI includes four essays taking a critical eye to our public discourse about, and personal experiences of, dieting, healthy eating, and obesity prevention. Lastly, the essays in Part VII concern the personal, social, and moral significance of food. (shrink)

Cartographies of art: from literature to the image -- Critical and clinical -- The affect of force -- The body without organs -- The critique of interpretation and the machine -- Minor art -- Rhizomes and lines -- The violence of sensation -- Art and immanence -- Conclusions.

Un commerce intime, tantot exalte, tantot inavouable, entre l'oeuvre de Proust et celles de Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Deleuze ou Barthes se joue au coeur des annees 1950-1970, au moment ou sont renouvelees les facons d'envisager la production theorique. Si le romancier les a particulierement captives, c'est que son oeuvre venait amplifier ou heurter non seulement leur pratique reflexive, mais le sens meme de leur existence et de leur engagement dans l'ecriture. Du roman au traite, de la vie de l'un a la (...) vie de l'autre, nait une etrange erotique des pensees, ou se creent des partages sereins, des negociations passionnees, des appariements effrayants. Trafics de Proust opere un enfoncement dans la duree longue de ces echanges, de ces prets sur gages et de ces resiliations. Son enjeu est de rendre compte des strategies qui menent un penseur lisant Proust a construire ou deconstruire ses cadres cognitifs, a s'articuler, dans la fluidite du jeu ou le coincement grincant, a une vie de la pensee ou (de)raison, emotion et fiction consonnent avec individuation. Sont ainsi restituees des pensees sensibles, comme autant de formes de soi traversees par le romanesque. (shrink)

Colombia padece la imagen de que, desde sus inicios como colonia española hasta el presente, el país ha sido controlado por la oligarquía. Este ensayo examinará las evidencias que apuntan a esta alegación y confirmará que en sus inicios la Nación sí fue dominado por un grupo élite y reducido. Sin embargo, en años modernos, la oligarquía persiste pero que un grupo más extendido--una para-oligarquía o el Establecimiento--tiene mayor incidencia en las determinaciones en el progreso del país a través de (...) los factores psico-sociales de cooptación y transfuguismo. (shrink)

Medical issues affecting health care have become everyday media events. In response to mounting public concern, growing numbers of bioethicists are being appointed to medical school faculties and public policy panels. However the ideas voiced in these forums are seldom informed by feminist perspectives. In this important book, a distinguished group of feminist scholars and activists discuss crucial bioethics topics in a feminist light. Among the subjects explored are the care/justice debates, transforming bioethics, practice, and reproduction. The book also covers (...) less commonly discussed issues, such as culturally appropriate responses to reproductive health problems in developing countries. (shrink)

Hans Christian Andersen is a cultural icon, and his fairy tales are famous around the world. But despite the positive ring to this description, his status as a canonized author poses a challenge when he is passed on to new generations of readers. In this article, we show examples of how this challenge reveals itself in Danish primary school teaching where Andersen is an obligatory figure in the subject Danish where he is frequently framed as a national romantic author of (...) morally unambiguous texts. Taking the current use of “The Ugly Duckling” (1844) in primary school teaching materials as a point of departure, we aim to show Andersen’s potential to be presented as an element in primary school teaching that draws on dialogic inquiries rooted in Philosophy with Children. Philosophical inquiries are characterized by an open mindset that incite teachers as well as school children to engage with the rich ethical themes and literary qualities of Andersen’s fairy tales. We conclude the article with our own inquiry manual to “The Ugly Duckling” to illustrate a way to overcome the current hegemonic framing of Andersen and reopen his fairy tale for future discussions and interpretations. (shrink)

Centering Theory (CT) as articulated by Grosz et al. (1995) is a theory intended to model some of the factors that influence local coherence in a discourse. The idea is that at any one time there are a number of entities that are at the center of attention. Each utterance n that makes up a discourse potentially has two sorts of discourse ‘centers’, an ordered set of forward-looking centers, Cf(uttn), that provide potential links to upcoming utterances, and a single backward-looking (...) center, Cb(uttn), that links back to the previous utterance, in the sense that it is identical to one of the members of the set of forward-looking centers of the previous utterance. Roughly, one can think of Cb(uttn) as the current topic of the conversation. The members of the set Cf(uttn) on the other hand are the entities mentioned in the utterance and which are candidates to become the next topic of conversation. The members of Cf(uttn) are ranked in order of their salience. The most highly ranked member of Cf(uttn) is the preferred center, Cp(uttn), and ideally it will become the backward-looking center of the next utterance, Cb(uttn+1). When Cb(uttn) is the most highly ranked member of Cf(uttn), this indicates that it will continue to be the topic of conversation in the next utterance. If this does indeed happen, we have what is known in CT as a CONTINUE transition. When some entity other than Cb(uttn) is the most highly ranked member of Cf(uttn), an upcoming topic shift is signaled. This situation is known in CT as a RETAIN. A topic shift following a RETAIN will be a SMOOTH SHIFT. If the topic shifts to an entity that is neither the preferred center of the current nor of the previous utterance, then the shift will be a ROUGH.. (shrink)

Malapropisms and slips of tongue represent ways in which expression meaning can come apart from speaker meaning. Another way is when a speaker engages in some form of implicit communication, conveying a meaning other than the meaning of the words or sentences she utters. Such implicit meaning can be intended either in addition to or instead of the explicit meaning. Some regard utterance meaning as a species of speaker meaning; others regard it as a distinct level of meaning. According to (...) the speech-act centred conception of meaning, speaker meaning has priority over expression meaning. In contrast, the expression-centred conception regards semantic properties as intrinsic to expressions. This latter view is disputed by those who (like Grice) wish to reduce expression meaning to speaker meaning or who (like Searle) regard expression meaning as depending on a Background of human practices. (shrink)

Focusing on the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason, historical and contemporary critics of Kant's rationalist ethical theory accuse him of holding an impoverished moral psychology and an inadequate account of character and virtue. Kant's sharp contrast between duty and inclination and his claim that only action from duty possesses moral worth appear to imply that pro-moral inclination is unnecessary for, if perhaps compatible with, a good will. On traditional accounts of virtue, however, having a good will and possessing (...) virtue require pro-moral emotions and inclinations. Thus, Kant's moral psychology seems at odds with the common view that emotions and appetites are constituent elements within virtue. Kant's defenders have argued that an adequate assessment of these charges must address his theory of virtue, as it is set out in The Doctrine of Virtue, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, and the Lectures on Ethics. Yet the prospect for reconstructing a plausible Kantian account of virtue from these tests may appear bleak when we see that Kant conceives of virtue as moral strength of will over recalcitrant inclinations, and characterizes virtue in terms of the autocracy of pure practical reason. For autocracy may seem to require the extirpation or suppression of feelings and inclinations. Indeed, it might seem difficult to distinguish the autocratic agent from the agent who, in Aristotle's terms, is merely continent, or who, in Schiller's terms, possesses dignity, but not grace. But these objections misunderstand autocracy. In the thesis, I argue that the self-mastery constitutive of Kantian virtue involves the cultivation of sensibility according to reason and that emotions and appetites modified and regulated by a proper conception of the moral law play a constructive role within Kantian virtue. (shrink)

Against a widely-held interpretation of Kant’s political philosophy, according to which Kant holds that all finite rational beings have an innate right to freedom as well as a duty to enter into a civil condition governed by a social contract in order to preserve that freedom, Robert Hanna contends that Kant is in fact an anarchist. Hanna’s argument for his novel thesis that Kant ultimately views the State as an unjustifiably coercive institution that should be eliminated depends heavily on the (...) claim there is an outright conflict between Kant’s political theory in The Doctrine of Right and Kant’s ethics. I argue that we should resist Hanna’s provocative claim that Kant’s ethics directly falsifies his official political theory. Further, I suggest that even morally autonomous Kantian angels need the State to guarantee the protection of their external freedom and to promote justice. (shrink)

An initial distinction is made between two ways of referring in thought to a particular object. One can think of an object in virtue of having a descriptive condition in mind which uniquely denotes that object. Alternatively, one can think about a particular in a more direct way. It is with the nature of this more direct sort of reference that the subsequent discussion is primarily concerned. ;It has been argued that the relation of direct reference is purely causal in (...) nature. A number of difficulties are raised for this causal view. A diagnosis of these difficulties suggests that the causal view ignores the cognitive aspects of direct reference. ;The idea that direct reference is a cognitive relation is not new. Bertrand Russell's notion of knowledge by acquaintance can be thought of as involving the idea of a relation of reference which is direct and cognitive. A good place to begin an exploration of the cognitive dimensions of direct reference is with Russell's notion of acquaintance. Thus this notion is analysed in some depth. ;An objection to the effect that acquaintance is a relation incapable in principle of playing a role in an account of reference is shown to be unfounded. This clears the way for an extended discussion of the nature of acquaintance. This discussion suggests that we should posit a special demonstrative way in which objects can be presented to us. This demonstrative way of being presented with an object is in turn explored by way of an extended metaphor, in which it is suggested that becoming acquainted with an object should be thought of as the opening of a mental file of a special sort for that object. ;Some indirect support for this account of demonstrative modes of presentation and the associated account of direct reference comes from the fact that these notions can help solve the problem of cognitive significance that has been thought to pose a serious threat to theories that somehow treat reference as direct. ;Finally, some potential counterexamples are examined and shown not to seriously threaten the acquaintance theory of direct reference. (shrink)