I show that unlike her rationalist predecessor Leibniz, Du Châtelet is committed to epistemic causal idealism about natural causes. According to this view, it is constitutive of natural causes that they are in principle knowable by us (i.e. finite intelligent beings). Du Châtelet’s causal idealism stems at least in part from the distinctive theoretical role played by the Principle of Sufficient Reason in her system (as presented in her Institutions de physique), as well as her argument for the Principle of (...) Sufficient Reason. I show that far from merely explicating Leibniz’s metaphysics, Du Châtelet develops a radical and novel rationalism that is in keeping with her core commitment to science. (shrink)

The sharp increase in the human population of Vancouver Island; the urban development policy favoring forest fragmentation and smaller, scattered settlements; and the relatively sizable population of large predatory mammals have contributed to one of the highest human-large predator contact zones in North America. Although some studies have evaluated public attitudes toward larger carnivores from urban/rural, gender, and generational perspectives, few have focused on black bears and cougars on the British Columbia coast. In this study, four hundred people (...) in the densely populated southeast corner of Vancouver Island were interviewed about their attitudes toward black bear and cougar presence and behavior. The majority of interviewees had positive attitudes toward both bears and cougars, and were opposed to the shooting of carnivores, preferring trapping and removal. Contrary to expectation, few respondents saw carnivores as threats to livestock, companion animals, or children. Both black bears and cougars were perceived as serving useful functions as part of the island’s heritage and cultural development. (shrink)

Building on research conducted in feminist organizations in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, this paper explores the role, relationship, and responsibility of advocating for antiracism and social justice in the context of antiracism projects in feminist nonprofit organizations. In doing so this paper asks: What do antiracism projects look like in feminist organizations? And how are these projects informed or interrupted by racialized and Indigenous activists within (...) these spaces? Using critical race theory’s composite counterstory, this paper uses storytelling methodologies to understand how racialized settlers and Indigenous folks can collaborate and thrive – as they have been doing – on occupied unceded territories in Canada. Based on a series of interviews with racialized and Indigenous activists engaging in feminist nonprofit organizations, these stories shed light on contemporary realities of colonization, including collaboration within white settler systems. (shrink)

In British Columbia, Canada, many physicians providing care to individuals with high-risk opioid use disorder adopted safer supply (SS) opioid prescribing in the spring of 2020 with the goal of facilitating public health measures for COVID-19. This prescribing practice continued after measures were lifted. This study aimed to explore prescribers’ perspectives following several years of local experience in prescribing SS opioids, primarily in the form of hydromorphone tablets, and to apply ethical concepts to explore current challenges and ongoing sources (...) of provider distress. Addiction medicine SS prescribers participated in individual or small group semi-structured interviews. Each interview was transcribed and analysed for recurrent themes. Themes were then integrated into a narrative ethics discussion. Eleven addiction medicine physicians practicing in various settings within Vancouver participated in this study. Six themes were identified: clinical assessment, clinician distress, gaps in care, models of safer supply, research, and special populations. Ethical dilemmas in prescribing SS are identified and explored through a discussion of biomedical ethics principles and the physician role. (shrink)

Background: After over 4 years since medical assistance in dying legalization in Canada, there is still much uncertainty about how this ruling has affected Canadian society. Objective: To describe the positive aspects of medical assistance in dying legalization from the perspectives of hospice palliative care providers engaging in medical assistance in dying. Design: In this qualitative descriptive study, we conducted an inductive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with hospice palliative care providers. Participants and setting: Multi-disciplinary hospice palliative care providers in (...) acute, community, residential, and hospice care in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, who have engaged in end-of-life care planning with patients who have inquired about and/or requested medical assistance in dying. Ethical considerations: The research proposal was approved by University of British Columbia Research Ethics Board in Vancouver and University Health Network in Toronto. Participants were informed regarding the research goals, signed a written consent, and were assigned pseudonyms. Results: The 48 participants included hospice palliative care physicians (n = 22), nurses (n = 15), social workers (n = 7), and allied health providers (n = 4). The average interview length was 50 min. Positive aspects of medical assistance in dying legalization were identified at (1) the individual level: (a) a new end-of-life option, (b) patients’ last chance to express control over their lives, (c) patient and family comfort and relief, and (d) a unique learning experience for hospice palliative care providers; (2) the team level: (a) supportive collegial relationships, (b) broadened discussions about end-of-life and palliative care, and (c) team debriefs provide opportunities for education and support; and (3) the institutional level: (a) improved processes to facilitate the implementation logistics. Conclusion: While being involved in the medical assistance in dying process is complex and challenging, this study sheds light on the positive aspects of medical assistance in dying legalization from the hospice palliative care provider’s perspectives. Medical Assistance in Dying legalization has resulted in improved end-of-life conversations between hospice palliative care providers, patients, and their families. Improved communication leads to a better understanding of patients’ end-of-life care plans and bridges some of the existing gaps between hospice palliative care and medical assistance in dying. (shrink)

Abstract Drawing on the features of “practical philosophy” described by Toulmin ( 1990 ), a “practical” ethic for animals would be rooted in knowledge of how people affect animals, and would provide guidance on the diverse ethical concerns that arise. Human activities affect animals in four broad ways: (1) keeping animals, for example, on farms and as companions, (2) causing intentional harm to animals, for example through slaughter and hunting, (3) causing direct but unintended harm to animals, for example by (...) cropping practices and vehicle collisions, and (4) harming animals indirectly by disturbing life-sustaining processes and balances of nature, for example by habitat destruction and climate change. The four types of activities raise different ethical concerns including suffering, injury, deprivation, and death (of individuals), decline of populations, disruption of ecological systems containing animals, and extinction of species. They also vary in features relevant to moral evaluation and decision-making; these include the number of animals affected, the duration of the effects, the likelihood of irreversible effects, and the degree to which the effects can be controlled. In some cases human actions can also provide benefits to animals such as shelter and health care. Four mid-level principles are proposed to make a plausible fit to the features of the four types of human activities and to address the major ethical concerns that arise. The principles are: (1) to provide good lives for the animals in our care, (2) to treat suffering with compassion, (3) to be mindful of unseen harm, and (4) to protect the life-sustaining processes and balances of nature. This “practical” approach arguably makes a better fit to the complex, real-life problems of animal ethics than the single foundational principles that have dominated much recent animal ethics philosophy. Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-26 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9353-z Authors David Fraser, Animal Welfare Program, University of British Columbia, 2357 Main Mall, Vancouver, V6T 1Z4 Canada Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

A recent proposal by Norton (2003) to show that a simple Newtonian system can exhibit stochastic acausal behavior by giving rise to spontaneous movements of a mass on the dome of a certain shape is examined. We discuss the physical significance of an often overlooked and yet important Lipschitz condition the violation of which leads to the existence of anomalous nontrivial solutions in this and similar cases. We show that the Lipschitz condition is closely linked with the time reversibility of (...) certain solutions in Newtonian mechanics and the failure to incorporate this condition within Newtonian mechanics may unsurprisingly lead to physically impossible solutions that have no serious metaphysical implications. ‡I thank Steven Savitt of the Philosophy Department at the University of British Columbia for drawing my attention to the Lipschitz condition, and Alexei Cheviakov of the Mathematics Department at the University of British Columbia for useful discussions. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Jesus' teaching that there are two love commandments, that the commandment to love God is the "first and great" one, but that the second commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself is "like" the first, suggest that we should neither blend their features wholly together nor separate their features entirely. This paper supports the suggestion. It considers three central emphases in the Augustinian legacy that specify normative differences, normative ranking, and normative links between the commandments. The emphases are: "God-intoxication," "The (...) Predominance of the Double Love Commandment," and "A Good World Gone Wrong." Such consideration explains and defends the claim that a faithful life honors both differences and points of correspondence between God's action and our own. This study indicates that we can go wrong in distinctive ways, and that we should distinguish "relationality" and "reciprocity". The conclusions reached may inform exchanges with other religious traditions, above all "God-intoxicated" ones. This article was the Presidential Address, given at the annual meeting of the SCE in Vancouver, British Columbia on January 11, 2002. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between the concept of symmetry and its formalisms. The standard view among philosophers and physicists is that symmetry is completely formalized by mathematical groups. For some mathematicians however, the groupoid is a competing and more general formalism. An analysis of symmetry that justifies this extension has not been adequately spelled out. After a brief explication of how groups, equivalence, and symmetries classes are related, we show that, while it’s true in some instances that groups are (...) too restrictive, there are other instances for which the standard extension to groupoids is too un restrictive. The connection between groups and equivalence classes, when generalized to groupoids, suggests a middle ground between the two. *Received July 2007. †To contact the authors, please write to: Alexandre Guay, UFR Sciences et Techniques, Université de Bourgogne, 9 Avenue Alain Savary, 21078 Dijon Cedex, France; e‐mail: [email protected] ; or to Brian Hepburn, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall E370, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z1; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

NOTES: Based on the book Socrates on trial written by Andrew Irvine and published by the University of Toronto Press. Performed at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, May 31-June 7, 2008. CONTENTS: Trailer, Who was Socrates?, Selected scenes, The production, Credits. UBC Library Catalogue Permanent URL: http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=3956307.

"Proceedings of an International Symposium on Measuring Economic Freedom, held July 28-30, 1988, in Vancouver, British Columbia"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references (p. [174]-175).

This paper describes our study of the emergence of social capital in a job creation framework called the Social Purchasing Portal (SPP), which has evolved over the past five years in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has spread more recently to several other Canadian cities. We provide an overview of the framework of the Social Purchasing Portal and the context in which the SPP wascreated, and define the concept of social capital. Our interviews of the SPP founders in five (...) locations demonstrate the importance of bonded networks within sector groups before attempting to build bridges between the civic and private enterprises. (shrink)

David Rondel’s Pragmatism Egalitarianism offers valuable contributions to both contemporary pragmatist scholarship and contemporary political philosophy. The book was the focus of a discussion at the American Philosophical Association’s Pacific Division meeting in April of 2019 in Vancouver, British Columbia. That discussion forms the basis for the four essays gathered here: three critical responses from Susan Dieleman, Alexander Livingston, and Robert Talisse, as well as David Rondel’s reply to these critics. This brief prefatory essay summarizes the book and (...) its contexts in contemporary pragmatism scholarship and political philosophy. (shrink)

This is a compilation of papers presented at the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, held February 20-22, 1998 in Vancouver, Canada, hosted by the University of British Columbia Department of Linguistics. The conference drew a large number of participants, from around the world. The fifty papers in this volume address theoretical issues in Syntax, Phonology, the Syntax-Semantics and Syntax-Phonology interfaces, and Language Acquisition, and provide an exciting view of current theory in these (...) areas. (shrink)

Eagle Down is Our Law: Witsuwit'en Law, Feasts, and Land Claims. Antonia Mills. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994. 208 pp. $24.95. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. 256 pp. $24.95.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic created considerable challenges for the food supply chain. One of the industries hardest hit was the agricultural and agri-foods industry. This industry has long faced worker shortages and regularly relied on temporary foreign workers. In this case, Roosters, a chicken processing and production company in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, had just come off a very costly 12-day closure following a COVID-19 exposure risk in two of its processing plants. With the company back (...) in operation a new safety policy has been implemented to limit future virus exposure and shutdown risks. The policy, however, targets a small group of temporary foreign workers, one of whom is challenging the lengths the company can go in the name of protecting employees from the virus and the company from losses due to closure. (shrink)

John Woods Department of Philosophy University of British Columbia 1866 Main Mall Vancouver B.C. V6T1Z..

This research is conducted by the Intellectual Property and Policy Research Group at the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia. It is part of the GE3LS component of the Genome Canada Project "Dissecting Gene Expression Networks in Mammalian Organogenesis," MORGEN, which is located principally at the British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The project is involved in upstream, basic genomic research. Part of this work includes the characterization (...) of gene regulatory mechanisms governing organogenesis with a special focus on the heart, liver and pancreas. This paper serves as an introduction to both the MORGEN case study and the role of alternative mechanisms, such as open source. We discuss interim research results as they relate to our broader study of the relationship between open science, commercialization and technology transfer offices. The role of technology transfer offices is central to our analysis and is viewed as a key factor in implementing Genome Canada policies and principles associated with IP and commercialization. (shrink)

This article draws on research at an eco/feminist peace camp set up to facilitate blockades against clear-cut logging in coastal temperate rainforest in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in Canada in the early 1990s. The camp was said to be based on feminist principles and sometimes these were even articulated as eco/feminist principles. The slippage between these terms provides a focus for my discussion. Specifically the article explores the apparent paradox of the sheer vitality of this (...) eco/feminist activism, and in particular its insistence on international connections, in contrast to the widely circulating accounts of the end of feminism, and especially the end of global sisterhood, which emerged in the early 1990s. Thus this article is also necessarily about how recent histories of eco/feminism, including tensions between theory and activism, are narrated. I take as a departure point references to the work of Vandana Shiva and the Chipko movement which circulated in accounts of the camp, and explore ways in which eco/feminists might read such utterances as more than evidence of a naive and problematic universalism. I situate eco/feminism’s internationalism genealogically in feminism and eco/feminism and read this as a counter-narrative to the ending of global sisterhood. Through paying attention to various movements, back and forth, between Clayoquot and Chipko, Canada and India, and drawing on Anna Tsing’s notion of ‘friction’, I offer an account of what has been at stake in disavowals of the possibility of reading Chipko as eco/feminist, and suggest the importance of a more generous reading of eco/feminists’ attention to the Chipko movement. (shrink)

Ian Hacking (born in 1936, Vancouver, British Columbia) is most well-known for his work in the philosophy of the natural and social sciences, but his contributions to philosophy are broad, spanning many areas and traditions. In his detailed case studies of the development of probabilistic and statistical reasoning, Hacking pioneered the naturalistic approach in the philosophy of science. Hacking’s research on social constructionism, transient mental illnesses, and the looping effect of the human kinds make use of historical materials (...) to shed light on how developments in the social, medical, and behavioural sciences have shaped our contemporary conceptions of identity and agency. Hacking’s other contributions to philosophy include his work on the philosophy of mathematics (Hacking, 2014), philosophy of statistics, philosophy of logic, inductive logic (Hacking, 1965, 1979, 2001) and natural kinds (Hacking, 1991, 2007a). (shrink)

In this essay I first provide an analysis of various community concepts. Second, I evaluate two of the most serious challenges to the existence of communities—gradient and paleoecological analysis respectively—arguing that, properly understood, neither threatens the existence of communities construed interactively. Finally, I apply the same interactive approach to ecosystem ecology, arguing that ecosystems may exist robustly as well. ‡I would like to thank to the participants at the Ecology and Environmental Ethics Conference at the University of Utah, the Philosophy (...) of Ecology Conference hosted by the University of Brisbane, and those participants in a session at the Philosophy of Science Association Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia for helpful discussions of this essay. Specific thanks go to Mark Colyvan, Greg Cooper, Steve Downes, Chris Elliott, Marc Ereshefsky, Paul Griffiths, Jesse Hendrikse, Greg Mikkelson, Anya Plutynski, Kate Ritchie, Sahotra Sarkar, Kim Sterelny, and Rob Wilson. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Lewis and Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR 97219; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

"In the great English tradition of the lay specialist, Barfield, a lawyer, modernizes the Platonic dialogue format to focus on the philosophic problems of reality and ways of knowing.. This is the solvent mind at its best-distinguished exchanges giving provocative, open-ended results at every point. Highly recommended. of permanent value." Owen Barfield, who died in 1997 shortly after entering his hundredth year, was one of the seminal minds of the twentieth century, of whom C. S. Lewis wrote "he towers above (...) us all." His books have won respect from many writers other than Lewis, among them T. S. Eliot, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Saul Bellows, and John Lukacs. He was born in North London in 1898 and received his B.A. with first-class honors from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1921. He also earned B.C.L., M.A., and B.Litt. degrees from Oxford and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He served as a solicitor for twenty-eight years until his retirement from legal practice in 1959. Barfield was a visiting professor at Brandeis and Drew Universities, Hamilton College, the University of Missouri at Columbia, UCLA, SUNY-Stony Brook, and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His books include seven others published by The Barfield Press: Romanticism Comes of Age, Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s, Unancestral Voice, Speaker's Meaning, What Coleridge Thought, The Rediscovery of Meaning, and History, Guilt and Habit. (shrink)

"In the great English tradition of the lay specialist, Barfield, a lawyer, modernizes the Platonic dialogue format to focus on the philosophic problems of reality and ways of knowing.. This is the solvent mind at its best-distinguished exchanges giving provocative, open-ended results at every point. Highly recommended. of permanent value." -Choice: Books for College Libraries Owen Barfield, who died in 1997 shortly after entering his hundredth year, was one of the seminal minds of the twentieth century, of whom C. S. (...) Lewis wrote "he towers above us all." His books have won respect from many writers other than Lewis, among them T. S. Eliot, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Saul Bellows, and John Lukacs. He was born in North London in 1898 and received his B.A. with first-class honors from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1921. He also earned B.C.L., M.A., and B.Litt. degrees from Oxford and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He served as a solicitor for twenty-eight years until his retirement from legal practice in 1959. Barfield was a visiting professor at Brandeis and Drew Universities, Hamilton College, the University of Missouri at Columbia, UCLA, SUNY-Stony Brook, and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. His books include seven others published by The Barfield Press: Romanticism Comes of Age, Worlds Apart: A Dialogue of the 1960s, Unancestral Voice, Speaker's Meaning, What Coleridge Thought, The Rediscovery of Meaning, and History, Guilt and Habit. (shrink)

Comments for a paper by Elizabeth Brake (University of Calgary) called "Marriage and Morals," presented at the Summer Workshop on Feminist Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada June 17-18, 2005.

MARGARET LYNN SCHABAS (Toronto, 1954) is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and served as the head of the Philosophy Department from 2004-2009. She has held professoriate positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at York University, and has also taught as a visiting professor at Michigan State University, University of Colorado-Boulder, Harvard, CalTech, the Sorbonne, and the École Normale de Cachan. As the recipient of several fellowships, she has enjoyed visiting terms at (...) Stanford, Duke, MIT, Cambridge, the LSE, and the MPI-Berlin. In addition to her doctorate in the history and philosophy of science and technology (Toronto 1983), she holds a bachelor of science in music (oboe) and the philosophy of science (Indiana 1976), a master’s degree in the history and philosophy of science (Indiana 1977), and a master’s degree in economics (Michigan1985). -/- She has published four books and over forty articles or book chapters in science studies. Some of the journals in which her articles can be found are Isis, Monist, History of Political Economy, Public Affairs Quarterly, Daedaelus, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. Her first book, A world ruled by number (1990) examines the emergence of mathematical economics in the second half of the nineteenth century. Her second book, The natural origins of economics (2005), traces the transformation of economics from a natural to a social science. She also has two co-edited collections, Oeconomies in the age of Newton (2003), with Neil De Marchi, and David Hume’s political economy (2008), with Carl Wennerlind. She is currently writing a monograph on Hume’s economics, as well as articles on the history and philosophy of bioeconomics. She is currently president of the History of Economics Society. -/- EJPE interviewed Margaret Schabas at the University of British Columbia in March 2013. In this interview, she recounts her earliest foray into the history and philosophy of economics, the conceptual trade between economics and natural science, and her most recent undertaking: the history and philosophy of bioeconomics. (shrink)

The idea of enlightenment entails liberty, equality, rationalism, secularism, and the connection between knowledge and human well being. In spite of the setbacks of revolutionary violence, political mass murder, and two world wars, the spread of enlightenment values has become the yardstick by which moral, political, and even scientific advances are measured. Indeed, most critiques of the enlightenment ideal point to failure in implementation rather than principle. By contrast, David Stove, in On Enlightenment, attacks the intellectual roots of enlightenment thought, (...) to define the limitations of its successes and the areas of its likely failures. Stove is not insensitive to the many valuable aspects of enlightenment thought. He champions the use of reason and rationality, and recognizes the falsity of religious claims as well as the importance of individual liberty. What he rejects is the enlightenment's uncritical optimism regarding social progress and its willingness to embrace revolutionary change. What evidence is there that the elimination of superstition will lead to happiness? Or that it is possible to accept Darwinism without Social Darwinism? Or that the enlightenment's liberal, rationalistic outlook will ever lead to the kind of social progress envisioned by its advocates. Despite their best intentions, social reformers who attempt to improve the world as a whole inevitably make things worse. He advocates a conservative "go slow" approach to change, pointing out that today's social structures are so large and complex that any widespread social reform will have innumerable unforeseen consequences. For example, the welfare state may diminish individual initiative, the use of pesticides may increase the food supply while polluting the water supply, the popularizing of university education may lead to a decline in academic standards. Since government has a virtual monopoly on large-scale change, it follows, in Stove's view, that its powers must be limited in order to prevent large-scale damage. Instead, he argues that reforms, when they are to be made at all, must be realistic, local, necessary and never coercive. Writing in the conservative tradition of Edmund Burke with the same passion for clarity and intellectual honesty as George Orwell, David Stove was one of the most precise, articulate, and insightful philosophers of his day. "Never just an academic, Stove was also a prominent, often crotchety, public intellectual of a conservative and, all too often, reactionary bent, many of whose views were extremist on any account, and his targets were many.... For Stove the important question about a belief is not whether it is extreme or mainstream, but whether it is true, or probable, or has sound evidentiary and/or rational credentials. In this he was surely right." -D. D. Todd, Philosophy in Review David Stove taught philosophy at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. He is the author of Against the Idols of the Age and Scientific Irrationalism, both available from Transaction. Andrew Irvine is professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Roger Kimball is managing editor of the New Criterion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2502\REVIEWS.252 : 2006-02-27 11:52  Reviews FREEDOM ISN’T ACADEMIC W B Educational Studies / U. of British Columbia Vancouver, , Canada   .@. Conrad Russell. An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Liberalism. London: Duckworth, . Pp. . £. (hb). Academic Freedom. London and New York: Routledge, . Pp. xi, . £. (pb). ho is the intelligent person of the first title? Is it (...) the brainy reader who Wknows about liberalism, and merely wants to update her knowledge? Is it the clever author who offers a guide out of the goodness of his heart? Or more likely, is it the sharp publisher, who knows a good selling point when he or she sees one? One guesses it is the publisher. But as to the present volume, few will complain of the title’s ambiguity, for it entices readers into an compact, well written, and timely argument on political matters of the first importance. Conrad Russell was the author of Academic Freedom, a well regarded and similarly compressed discussion of academic freedom. Academic Freedom preceded the Guide to Liberalism by six years. It was as though Russell had first to taste and see the awful effects of neo-conservatism in his beloved University of  Conrad Russell has a world reputation as an historian of the English Civil War, of the whole seventeenth century, and of the social history of politics before . His several books and hundreds of articles and reviews show that he had an apparently effortless mastery of most world history since the Reformation. I have been unable to deal with Conrad’s historical output in this review, but have discussed it in a forthcoming biographical essay about Conrad Russell in the Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly, “Conrad Russell as Political Intellectual”, forthcoming in . _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2502\REVIEWS.252 : 2006-02-27 11:52 Reviews  London and then, six years later—after due reflection upon the whole horrid mess—to provide a compelling political remedy to the evil apparatus of Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Major. Academic Freedom, a sister volume to the Guide, dealt with the intellectual and administrative liberty that university teachers must have if their work is to be academically viable and socially valuable. Already in , Academic Freedom offered a sharp attack on the Thatcherite use of league tables and performance indicators, and on high civil servants, vice-chancellors, and government ministers who rely on the numbers. In effect, accountants and managers and long lists of numbers had overtaken much that universities did. Academic Freedom ended with a straightforward prescription: university teachers and (on occasion) responsible administrators should make the hard academic decisions to which they are called—not civil servants, not numbercrunchers, not politicians. This view did not mean elected politicians were released from the burden of honest choice and decision, particularly in regions of governance and public life for which they had direct responsibility and care. But Russell’s point remained: it would be madness if statistical tables replaced responsible and able human beings, or if those human beings accepted that they must become automatic “decision machines”. Conrad Russell died on  October , but must have had a form of prescience. For in , more than thirty academic units and fields were eliminated in United Kingdom universities on grounds of efficiency, ranking in league tables, and performance indication. Each time the administrator concerned threw up her hands, claiming she had no choice, as the league table or the last Research Assessment Exercise “made me do it”. Up the line, politicians have gone further, even rejoicing in the New Management of British higher education and the pleasant prospect of even greater “efficiencies” in the next decade. Conrad Russell well understood that freedom is not just academic. An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Liberalism relies, then, on recent political history to provide its main narrative thrust. By the mid-point of the book, one has the impression that current events have shaped his liberalism, and that his understanding of the history of liberalism is “presentist”. But Conrad Russell starts by saying that he doesn’t pretend to be writing history (or philosophy) in his Guide. To call Conrad Russell “presentist” is to underplay... (shrink)

Over the past decade, Canadian media coverage of street sex work has steadily increased. The majority of this interest pertains to graphic violence against street sex workers, most notably from Vancouver, British Columbia. In this article, the authors analyze newspaper coverage that appeared in western Canadian publications between 2006 and 2009. In theorizing the violence both depicted and perpetrated by newspapers, the authors propose an analytic framework capable of attending to the process of othering in all of its (...) complexity. To this end, the authors supplement a Foucauldian analysis of abjection by considering the work of Judith Butler along with Julia Kristeva's conceptualization of abjection. Using excerpts from western Canadian newspapers, the authors illustrate how the media's discursive practices function as triggers for the process of cultural abjection by inscribing street sex workers with images of defilement. The authors argue that newspaper coverage of street sex workers reinforces the inviolability of normalized life by constantly reiterating the horror reserved for abjected bodies. (shrink)

We advocate and share the same theoretical framework for empirical research in ethics as exemplified in Christina Bicchieri’s The Grammar of Society. Our research differs from Bicchieri’s in our approach to experimentation: where she relies on lab experiments, we have constructed an experimental platform based on an internet survey instrument; where she relies on rational reconstructions, we do not. In this paper we focus on four contrasts in our methods: (1) we provide a space to explore ethical influence and norm (...) transmission between participants, belief and choice revision, and reputation over time; (2) we provide ways for participants to expand the context of their and others’ decisions; (3) we focus on more realistic ethical decisions than is allowed by games; and (4) we explain why Bicchieri’s method of rational reconstructions presents challenges to her theory of social norms. Our methods are complementary to Bicchieri’s, and together we can work toward developing more comprehensive empirically informed ethics. †To contact the authors, please write to Peter Danielson, W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, 227‐6356 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, V6T 1Z2, Canada; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Estamos ante el primer volumen de una serie sobre ciencia cognitiva publicada en Vancouver por la Universidad de British Columbia, con el objeto de tratar interdisciplinariamente, mediante contribuciones originales, los temas de preocupación central actualmente en ciencia cognitiva, como son los relativos a la percepción, aprendizaje, memoria, razonamiento ordinario y, en general, procesamiento de la información y del lenguaje, que corresponden a congresos y reuniones científicas dedicadas a tales campos en Vancouver.

Pierre Wagner (ed.): Carnap’s logical syntax of language . Palgrave-MacMillan, 2009, 288pp, £57.00 HB Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9522-8 Authors Alan Richardson, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall—E370, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 Canada Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Current literature suggests that the adversarial legal system may undergo some changes or may even be transformed by a recent influx of women lawyers into the profession. Such research indicates that women may approach ethical problems differently than men. This paper examines the responses of family law lawyers in Vancouver, British Columbia and the surrounding Lower Mainland to a hypothetical case which requires an assessment of professional responsibilities in light of potential conflicts in personal moral values.

Sixteen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy: Peter Birks; Lord Dacre of Glanton; William Frend; John Gallagher; Philip Grierson; Stuart Hampsire; William McKane; Sir Malcolm Pasley; Ben Pimlott; Robert Pring-Mill; John Stevens, Peter Strawson; Sir William Wade; Alan Williams; Sir Bernard Williams and John Wymer.

Volume 115 of the Proceedings of the British Academy contains 20 obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy and an essay on James Bryce. Memoirs of Fellows have previously been published in the same annual Proceedings volume as that containing the British Academy's Lectures. The Biographical Memoirs are henceforth to be published in a volume of their own, within the Proceedings sequence.

In this paper, I examine Ruth Barcan Marcus's early formal work on modal systems and the deduction theorem, both for the material and the strict conditional. Marcus proved that the deduction theorem for the material conditional does not hold for system S2 but holds for S4. This last result is at odds with the recent claim that without proper restrictions the deduction theorem fails also for S4. I explain where the contrast stems from. For the strict conditional, Marcus proved the (...) deduction theorem for S4 though restricted to arguments with necessary premises. I discuss Marcus's result and analyze her philosophical position on the significance of the deduction theorem for modal systems designed to express the notion of deducibility. (shrink)

Summary Principles Timely support for patients and people close to them, and effective, sensitive communication are essential. Decisions must be based on the individual patient's circumstances and reviewed regularly. Sensitive advance discussion should always be encouraged, but not forced. Information about CPR and the chances of a successful outcome needs to be realistic. Practical matters Information about CPR policies should be displayed for patients and staff. Leaflets should be available for patients and people close to them explaining about CPR, how (...) decisions are made and their involvement in decisions. Decisions about attempting CPR must be communicated effectively to relevant health professionals. In emergencies If no advance decision has been made or is known, CPR should be attempted unless: the patient has refused CPR; the patient is clearly in the terminal phase of illness; or the burdens of the treatment outweigh the benefits. Advance decision making Competent patients should be involved in discussions about attempting CPR unless they indicate that they do not want to be. Where patients lack competence to participate, people close to them can be helpful in reflecting their views. Legal issues Patients' rights under the Human Rights Act must be taken into account in decision making. Neither patients nor relatives can demand treatment which the health care team judges to be inappropriate, but all efforts will be made to accommodate wishes and preferences. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland relatives and people close to the patient are not entitled in law to take health care decisions for the patient. In Scotland, adults may appoint a health care proxy to give consent to medical treatment. Health professionals need to be aware of the law in relation to decision making for children and young people.IntroductionWhy policies are neededCardiopulmonary resuscitation can be attempted on any person whose cardiac or respiratory functions cease. Failure of these functions is part of dying and thus …. (shrink)

1. Aim of the guidelines2. Principles of good practice3. Circumcision for medical purposes4. Non-therapeutic circumcision 4.1. The law 4.1.1. Summary: the law 4.2. Consent and refusal 4.2.1. Children’s own consent 4.2.2. Parents’ consent 4.2.3. Summary: consent and refusal 4.3. Best interests 4.3.1. Summary: best interests 4.4. Health issues 4.5. Standards 4.6. Facilities 4.7. Charging patients 4.8. Conscientious objection5. Useful addresses.

The sunk cost fallacy is a well-established phenomenon where decision makers continue to commit resources, or escalate commitment, because of previously committed efforts, even when they have knowledge that their returns will not outweigh their investment. Most research on the sunk cost fallacy is done using hypothetical scenarios where participants make a single decision to continue with a project or to abandon it. This paradigm has several limitations and has resulted in a relatively limited understanding sunk cost behavior. To address (...) some of these limitations, we created a dynamic repeated choice paradigm where sunk costs are learned over time and opportunity costs are explicit. Over three experiments we show that the sunk cost fallacy depends on the relative a priori importance of the goal being invested in. We observed escalation of commitment only when the sunk cost domain is more important than alternatives, and participants showed de-escalation of commitment to the sunk costs domain otherwise. (shrink)