1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

In language, recombination of a discrete set of meaningless building blocks forms an unlimited set of possible utterances. How such combinatorial structure emerged in the evolution of human language is increasingly being studied. It has been shown that it can emerge when languages culturally evolve and adapt to human cognitive biases. How the emergence of combinatorial structure interacts with the existence of holistic iconic form-meaning mappings in a language is still unknown. The experiment presented in this paper studies the role (...) of iconicity and human cognitive learning biases in the emergence of combinatorial structure in artificial whistled languages. Participants learned and reproduced whistled words for novel objects with the use of a slide whistle. Their reproductions were used as input for the next participant, to create transmission chains and simulate cultural transmission. Two conditions were studied: one in which the persistence of iconic form-meaning mappings was possible and one in which this was experimentally made impossible. In both conditions, cultural transmission caused the whistled languages to become more learnable and more structured, but this process was slightly delayed in the first condition. Our findings help to gain insight into when and how words may lose their iconic origins when they become part of an organized linguistic system. (shrink)

The acceptance of the idea of basic equality is widely recognized as one of the most significant achievements of modernity. However, what exactly does it mean to say that we are one another’s equals in some fundamental sense? How can it possibly be true, given that we are unequals in almost every other aspect of our lives? And, who, exactly, is meant to fall within its scope? In this introductory chapter, we outline the most significant challenges that theories of basic (...) equality must face in answering these questions, as well as introducing some conceptual distinctions that clarify important aspects of this debate. This, in turn, provides background for understanding the questions that the essays in this book seek to answer. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 50-51.

Musing in Florence in June of 1858, Nathaniel Hawthorne said of himself, "I am sensible that a process is going on--and has been, ever since I came to Italy--that puts me in a state to see pictures with less toil, and more pleasure, and makes me more fastidious, yet more sensible of beauty where I saw none before." This is a book devoted to the reflective analysis of the enterprise in which many of us, like Hawthorne, find ourselves engaged: the (...) cultivation of our taste. Charles Wegener writes for and from the standpoint of thoughtful amateurs, those who, loving the beautiful and the sublime, wish to become more fully the sort of person to whom these goods reliably disclose themselves. Here traditional aesthetic analysis is redirected to a search for the norms that tell us how we use our intelligence, our imagination, and our senses in becoming "more fastidious, yet more sensible," exploring such concepts as disinterestedness, catholicity, communicability, austerity, objectivity, and authority. Finally, Wegener discusses questions about the relation of our aesthetic lives to other activities, norms, and human goods, arguing that taste, far from being a mere grace or luxury, is a necessary expression of that freedom which is at once the fruit and the condition of all culture. "This book should be required reading for anyone concerned with aesthetic education, for this is exactly what it is about, and I have come across no more searching investigation of the topic."--Hugo Meynell, Journal of Aesthetic Education "Using the analysis of aesthetic experience found in Kant's Critique of Judgment as a point of departure, Wegener has written a remarkably intelligent book which presents meaningful encounter with art as the "discipline of taste and feeling. The book reads not simply as an exposition but as a conversation in which the author thoughtfully and meticulously explores with the reader those norms that structure and define aesthetic experience. . . . The book occupies an important place in contemporary aesthetic discussion."--M. Feder-Marcus, Choice. (shrink)

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and Use" by Charles Henry Brent. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

As an introduction to this cluster of four essays on Buddhist ethics contributed by David Chappell, Charles Hallisey and Anne Hansen, Damien Keown, and Joe Bransford Wilson, I offer an overview of the developing scholarship in the field of Buddhist ethics, suggest the benefits of a shift- ing attention away from the vinaya tradition toward a fuller consideration of sila and its applications, and offer some summary comments concerning the contribution made by each of the essays that follow.

In interviews, it may happen that a respondent gives an answer which seems well formatted, but is not receipted as acceptable by the interviewer. In this article I examine one way in which interviewers display their diagnosis of the problem and act to bring about its solution. In the cases I describe, the interviewers defer revision of the question until they have established a new, more personalized basis for it, informed by their knowledge of the respondents' circumstances. There are three (...) things of interest. The first is how this actually works conversationally; it seems to be structured as an insertion sequence and played out by presequential turns which are highly projective of the respondent's agreement. The second is that the scenario that the interviewer inserts is a positive example of what would have been an answer to the `failed' original question. The third is that there is a difference between the original, general question and its subsequent, specific revision. I argue that all these features manifest interviewers' solution of their dilemma in choosing between literal and sensitive questioning. (shrink)

Positive psychology is about fostering strength and living well-about how to do a good job at being human. Charles Hackney connects this still-new movement to foundational concepts in philosophy and Christian theology. He then explores topics such as subjective states, cognitive processes, and the roles of personality, relationships, and environment.

Non-factive representing is what makes room for truth and falsehood. In the ontologically central aspect of the verb it comes in two forms: allorepresenting (saying-that), and autorepresenting (taking-that). Each form relates thinkers to thinkables in its proprietary way. Autorepresenting invites a certain sort of misunderstanding. It may seem to call for enabling in a particular determinate way. Just here psychologism despite oneself may strike. Allorepresenting rests on capacities of a different sort. It relates itself, and thereby its author, to a (...) thinkable in what seems at first sight a manifestly different way than does autrorepresenting, one perhaps less likely to invite psychologism. In doing this it throws light on autorepresenting which, if rightly understood, I suggest, may undo the compulsion to psychologise this last. Armed with this tool I suggest a better picture of what autorepresenting is. (shrink)

The Mississippi River flows through American history and culture as a mythic waterway brimming with tragedy and hope, and awash in passionate ambitions and harsh realities. In 1953, a young Charles Dee Sharp traveled twice down the Mississippi to make a documentary film of it, taking black-and-white photographs of the river, its communities, and its people. While Sharp’s documentary never came to fruition, the striking images he captured survived as moving and evocative historical testaments to a lost era, now (...) collected in his new book The Mississippi in 1953. These images create a vivid portrait of America’s heartland a half century ago, and they are enriched with excerpts from Sharp’s original trip journal, intriguing anecdotes from the people he encountered along his journey, and an engaging environmental history of the river by historian John O. Anfinson. The Mississippi in 1953 offers an original and poignant look at the living artery of the American landscape and how it molded the United States into the nation it is today. (shrink)

This presentation addresses these questions: • “Upon what ethical grounds may the physician offer RCT enrollment to a patient?” • Which is the preferred moral basis of the RCT?

This three-volume history of England from before the Roman conquest through to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words between 1851 and 1853. The text was published in book form in the same period, although each volume was post-dated to the following year. Dickens dedicated the work to his own children, intending it to be a stepping stone to more substantial histories. The volumes were popular with readers for decades, and were used (...) in British schools well into the twentieth century. Dickens employs his signature style to bring events and personalities to life, making use of vivid similes, unabashedly partisan language and direct speech, as well as the occasional moral lesson. Volume 2 covers the period from the reign of Henry III through to the death in 1485 of the 'usurper and murderer' Richard III. (shrink)

This three-volume history of England from before the Roman conquest through to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words between 1851 and 1853. The text was published in book form in the same period, although each volume was post-dated to the following year. Dickens dedicated the work to his own children, intending it to be a stepping stone to more substantial histories. The volumes were popular with readers for decades, and were used (...) in British schools well into the twentieth century. Dickens employs his signature style to bring events and personalities to life, making use of vivid similes, unabashedly partisan language and direct speech, as well as the occasional moral lesson. Volume 1 covers the period from the campaigns of Julius Caesar up to the close of the reign of the 'miserable brute' King John. (shrink)

First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book presents the current thinking of some of the most famous people in the intellectual world. Two opening essays by Lewis Mumford and Robert Theobald dis­cuss the role of technology in history, man and technology, and technological possi­bilities for the future. Other contributors include such well-known figures as Max Lerner, Edgar Z. Friedenberg, Seymour Melman, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Ash­ley Montagu. Essays center around key is­sues in the study of technology, its rela­tionship to authority or leadership elites, its potential (...) impact on forms of social organization, its effect in producing counter-culture alternatives and its relationship to humanism. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.