A chain-closed field is defined as a chainable field which does not admit any "faithful" algebraic extension, and can also be seen as a field having a Henselian valuation $\nu$ such that the residue field $K/\nu$ is real closed and the value group $\nu K$ is odd divisible with $|\nu K/2\nu K| = 2$. If $K$ admits only one such valuation, we show that $f \in K$ is in $\mathbf{\Sigma} K^{2n} \operatorname{iff}$ for any real algebraic extension $L$ of $K, "f (...) \subseteq \mathbf{\Sigma}L^{2n}"$ holds. The conclusion is also true for $K = \mathbf{R})$, and in the case $n = 1$ it holds for several variables and any real field $K$. (shrink)

Advances in medicine in the latter half of the twentieth century have dramatically altered human bodies, expanding choices around what we do with them and how they connect to other bodies. Nowhere is this more so than in the area of reproductive technologies. Reproductive medicine and the laws surrounding it in the UK have reconfigured traditional boundaries surrounding parenthood and the family. Yet culture and regulation surrounding RTs have combined to try to ensure that while traditional boundaries may be pushed, (...) they are reconstructed in similar ways. This paper looks at the most recent RT to be permitted in the UK, mitochondria replacement therapy. Despite controversial media headlines surrounding the technique, MRT is in fact an example of how science and regulation seek to expand models of traditional relatedness in a way that doesn’t challenge the existing order. Yet, like other RTs, while attempts are made to ensure it doesn’t push traditional boundaries too far, fissures and inconsistencies appear in law and culture, which give interesting insights into how genetics, parentage and identity are being mediated in new but familiar ways. (shrink)

Poor ethical decision–making costs industry billions of dollars a year and damages the images of corporations. Thus, by answering the question ‘Why do individuals behave as they do when confronted with ethical issues?’ ethical theory can provide businesses with a means to create a more ethical climate and a more successful operation. This study tested the Ethical Decision–Making Model with accountability (Beu & Buckley 2001), which uses theory that suggests that ethical behavior is influenced by the individual, the issue, social (...) relationships (accountability), and the organization in which the employee is embedded (Brass, Butterfield & Skaggs 1988; Frink & Klimoski 1998). The results showed that individuals’ thought processes (cognitive moral development), personalities (locus of control, hostility and aggression, Machiavellianism), and gender influence how they respond to ethical dilemmas, as well as the salience of the moral issue (moral intensity) and the environmental context (work/school). (shrink)

One Laptop per Child attempts to bridge the "digital divide" between the rich and the poor, especially in third-world countries. In order to accomplish this, OLPC must introduce twenty-first century technology to the poverty-stricken, which can lead to more efficient means of education. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC, explains that in his opinion, "whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education". The first step to improving education in (...) poverty-stricken countries, according to OLPC, is providing children with an inexpensive yet functional laptop, informally known as the $100 laptop. (shrink)

There is a growing literature demonstrating a link between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and poorer neuroanatomical health, such as smaller total and regional gray and white matter volumes, as well as greater white matter lesion volumes. Little is known, however, about the relation between SES and white matter integrity. Here we examined the relation between SES and white matter integrity of the brain’s primary cortical regions, and evaluated potential moderating influences of age and self-identified race. Participants were 192 neurologically intact, (...) community-dwelling African American and White adults (mean age = 52 years; 44% male, 60% White, low SES = 52%) from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) SCAN study. Participants underwent 3.0-T cranial magnetic resonance imaging. Diffusion tensor imaging was used to estimate regional fractional anisotropy (FA) to quantify the brain’s white matter integrity and trace to capture diffusivity. Multiple regression analyses examined independent and interactive associations of SES, age, and race with FA of the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes bilaterally. Sensitivity analyses assessed the influence of several biopsychosocial risk factors on these associations. Exploratory analyses examined these relations with trace and using additional SES indicators. Results indicated there were no significant interactions of SES, age, and race for any region. Individuals with low SES had lower FA in all regions, and higher trace in the right and left frontal, right and left temporal, and left occipital lobes. Findings remained largely unchanged after inclusion of sensitivity variables. Older age was associated with lower FA and greater trace for all regions, except for the right temporal lobe with FA. No main effects were found for race in FA, and Whites had higher trace values in the parietal lobes. Novel findings of this study indicate that relative to the high SES group, low SES was associated with poorer white matter integrity and greater diffusivity. These results may, in part, reflect exposures to various biopsychosocial risk factors experienced by those of lower SES across the lifespan, and may help explain the preponderance of cognitive and functional disparities between socioeconomic groups. (shrink)

_Why Plato Wrote_ argues that Plato was not only the world’s first systematic political philosopher, but also the western world’s first think-tank activist and message man. Shows that Plato wrote to change Athenian society and thereby transform Athenian politics Offers accessible discussions of Plato’s philosophy of language and political theory Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011.

Danielle Macbeth offers a new account of mathematical practice as a mode of inquiry into objective truth, and argues that understanding the nature of mathematical practice provides us with the resources to develop a radically new conception of ourselves and our capacity for knowledge of objective truth.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Against Writing The Hole in the Argument Spotting the Defense of Philosophical Writing A Sociology of Symbols The Psychological Power of Symbols.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Discovering a Defensible Kind of Philosophical Writing Imitators vs. Constitution‐Painters The Necessary and Sufficient Criterion of Philosophical Writing.

The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Wiley Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations.

Newman was a profoundly skilled communicator of Christian faith who provides a model for an efficacious elucidation of the doctrinal content and transformative power of Christianity. His exemplarity resides in his three-dimensional approach to theological communication: (1) the communicator’s personal investment in faith’s import; (2) faith’s threefold nature that includes its doctrinal content, its demand for personal involvement, and its reasonableness; and (3) the audience’s active contribution to the process of faith-transmission. Although repeated emphasis upon subjective commitment goes against the (...) modern penchant for objectivity, it is precisely this subjective component, which requires open minds and open hearts, that plays a decisive role in the concomitant adherence to the objective reality and reliability of faith’s wisdom. (shrink)

Cognitivist motivational internalism is the thesis that, if one believes that 'It is right to ϕ', then one will be motivated to ϕ. This thesis—which captures the practical nature of morality—is in tension with a Humean constraint on belief: belief cannot motivate action without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. When defending cognitivist motivational internalism it is tempting to either argue that the Humean constraint only applies to non-moral beliefs or that moral beliefs only motivate ceteris paribus . But (...) succumbing to the first temptation places one under a burden to justify what is motivationally exceptional about moral beliefs and succumbing to the second temptation saddles one with a thesis that fails to do justice to the practicality intuition that cognitivist motivational internalism is suppose to capture. In this paper, I offer a way of defending cognitivist motivational internalism, which does not require accepting that there is anything motivationally unusual about moral beliefs. I argue that no belief satisfies the Humean constraint: all beliefs are capable of motivating without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:While tone at the top is widely regarded as an important predictor of ethical behavior in organizations, we argue that recent research overlooks the various conflicting ethical tones present in many multi-organizational work settings. Further, we propose that the resolution processes promulgated in many firms and professional associations to reconcile this conflict reinforce the tone at the bottom or a tone at the top of the employee’s organization, and that both of these approaches can conflict with the tone at the (...) top of other important organizations such as professional and regulatory organizations. Here we adapt Integrative Social Contract Theory’s priority rules to propose a multi-tone reconciliation process which prioritizes conflicting ethical tones based upon features of the organization and the effects on society. Using three contextualizations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the multi-tone reconciliation process over current processes. We conclude with recommendations for future research and implications for practice. (shrink)

Ethicists have long recognized that two necessary features of ethical research are scientific validity and social value. Yet despite a significant literature surrounding the validity component of this dictate, until recently there has been little attention paid to unpacking what the social value component might require. This article introduces a framework for assessing the social value of research, and in particular, for determining whether a given research program is likely to have significant social value of the kind necessary to fulfill (...) the social value requirement. The article goes on to illustrate how this framework can provide a clearer account of the responsiveness requirement, an ethical dictum that is oft-repeated but whose content and value as a guideline in international research remains contested. Although I introduce this conception of social value in the context of the responsiveness requirement, the account offered can, and is intended to, stand alone as a tool for the assessment of the social value of research. As such it can be usefully applied to discussions about the value of comparative effectiveness trials, the assessment of the continued proliferation of me-too drugs and the research done to develop them, the demand for public access to study-generated data, and persistent deficits in the publication of negative results. (shrink)

Previous research demonstrates how activists who do not identify as feminist sometimes engage in “implicitly feminist practices.” In this paper, I extend this research by asking: Do self-identified feminists also employ such implicit strategies in the course of their activist efforts? If so, why would they “do” feminism implicitly? Based on participant observation and semistructured interviews at Girls Rock! Midwest—a week-long summer day camp program that aims to empower girls through rock music production—I develop the concept of implicit feminism. I (...) define implicit feminism as a strategy practiced by feminist activists within organizations that are operating in an anti- and postfeminist environment in which they conceal feminist identities and ideas while emphasizing the more socially acceptable angles of their efforts. My research demonstrates how feminist-identified activists employ implicitly feminist practices as a strategic response to feminist dilemmas stemming from competing organizational demands, how they envision the possibilities and drawbacks of such a strategy, and what this suggests for the shape and future of feminist politics. (shrink)

Within contemporary debates on civil disobedience, Hannah Arendt’s work offers an alternative to both moral and legal approaches by offering a political view of disobedience based on what she terms a principle of dissent at the heart of constitutional democracies. In this sense, she separates disobedience from the moral claims of individual conscience as well as the restrictions imposed by legalistic conceptions. In this article, I first consider Arendt’s views on conscience and the arguments she makes for a Socratic notion (...) of conscience understood as a by-product of thinking, as well as her arguments against conscience-based versions of disobedience such as that developed by Kimberley Brownlee. Second, I consider Arendt’s defence of a political notion of disobedience and her arguments against legal approaches such as those advocated by John Rawls and William Scheuerman. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gaia, Gender, and Sovereignty in the AnthropoceneDanielle SandsIn a 2011 lecture addressing ecological crisis, sociologist Bruno Latour advanced James Lovelock’s Gaia model as a way of re-conceptualizing nature in an Anthropocene or “postnatural” (Latour 2011, 9) world.1 For Latour, Gaia, a mythological goddess reinvented by Lovelock as a scientific metaphor, embodies the collision between discourses, “this mix up of science and politics” (Latour 2011, 8), which the Anthropocene represents. (...) In its deviation from benevolent images of Mother Nature, Gaia provides an alternative account of the human relationship with the natural world, one that implies that our response to the Anthropocene crisis should not derive from a solely scientific framework. Latour seizes upon the image of Gaia with fervor, celebrating “her” not only as an assemblage of different discourses, but, in “her” disunity and non-sovereignty, as an alternative political paradigm. Of less political interest for Latour is the gendering of Gaia; like Lovelock before him, Latour regards the feminizing of Gaia as an affective metaphorical device and not a political issue.2It is hard not to view Latour’s “Gaia politics” (Latour 2004, 5) as part of a broader tendency to revivify conservative frameworks in the face of crisis, here a crisis of a hitherto unknown scale.3 As Claire Colebrook wryly notes of post-apocalyptic narratives: “it is easier to imagine the end of the world […] than it is to think outside the structuring fantasies of gender.” Where Latour stops short—just—of endorsing what Colebrook calls “an active male heroism driven by a female fragility that appears to hold the promise of the future” [End Page 287] (Colebrook 2014 v.2, 150), his restraint does not extend to all advocates of Gaia-led theories. Witness, for example, Eileen Crist’s feverish call to arms: “[T]his is our moment. It is the moment to face the root of the terrible trouble we have unleashed for the biosphere and for ourselves: our expansionism, arrogance, and domination within the biosphere. In acts of beauty, and without fear, this is our moment to put Gaia first” (Crist 2010, 330). In Crist’s hands, Gaia—and the Anthropocene framework that is presupposed but here disavowed—not only offers an alibi for apocalyptic language and discredited narratives, but more importantly, unwittingly endorses the very worldview—uncritical, narcissistic, and heavily gendered—that it purports to replace.4The Anthropocene compels us to question the literal and metaphorical place of the human. In projecting human maternity onto the earth, the figure of Gaia and that of Mother Earth before her restrict thought to an immobile narcissism. In this article, I shall first address the way in which a purportedly progressive feminized figure of Gaia actually absents woman, denying female agency in favor of male sovereignty. I shall frame this discussion both within ecofeminist debates and in light of recent Anthropocene rhetoric. Secondly, I shall contextualize Gaia within the broader problem of figuring the female, asking whether an Anthropocene framework necessarily inclines us toward the replication of gender stereotypes.Gendering Gaia and the Woman-Nature ConnectionA clear aim of James Lovelock’s adoption of the name Gaia as a metaphor for “the living planet” earth (Lovelock 1988, 19) was to stimulate humans to accept their previously neglected environmental responsibilities. By according Gaia an identity, one that chimed both with ancient narratives and 1970s sensibilities, Lovelock invited humans to acknowledge that there was a living victim of their environmental misdemeanors. For Lovelock, speaking of the earth as Gaia counters proprietorial conceptions stemming from the damaging notion of human stewardship and undermines the notion of earth as a passive or inert object upon which human agents act. Assessing Lovelock’s approach, Mary Midgley asks: “Was it necessary to use language that apparently personified the earth?” (Midgley 2007, 8) and concludes affirmatively, asserting that the concept of a mechanistic universe is so deeply ingrained in human thought that Lovelock needed to name the earth in order to facilitate such an imaginative leap.By framing the earth as female, Lovelock capitalized on age-old tensions in the concept of the female: Gaia is nurturing but ruthless, fragile... (shrink)

Ethical oversight of clinical research is one of the primary means of ensuring that human subjects are protected from the natural bias of researchers and research institutions in favor of experimentation. At a minimum, effective oversight should ensure that risks are minimized and reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits, protect vulnerable subjects from potential coercion or undue influence, ensure full and informed consent, and promote the equitable distribution of the risks and benefits of research. Because these assessments often involve value (...) judgments for which there are no agreed-upon objective standards, we rely on deliberative procedures thought to have the greatest likelihood of producing the right or best outcomes. Concerns about the potential for improperly functioning IRBs to waste scarce human and institutional resources and impede biomedical progress have motivated a surge in empirical research assessing their procedures and outcomes. Yet within this literature, there has been minimal attention paid to the social scientific evidence regarding how individuals and deliberating groups make decisions, nor how those data might inform IRB practice. This essay seeks to fill that gap, locating recent empirical data on IRB composition and process within the context of data regarding what I call “deliberative pathologies,” or instances when deliberation fails to live up to one or more aspect of the deliberative ideal because of systematic biases in the ways participants interact. The paper goes on to make evidence-based recommendations to reduce the vulnerability of IRB deliberations to the kinds of pathologies discussed and indicate directions for future research. (shrink)

The most enlightening examination to date of the developments of Frege's thinking about his logic, this book introduces a new kind of logical language, one that ...

In light of the growth in the conduct of international clinical research in developing populations, this paper seeks to explore what is owed to developing world communities who host international clinical research. Although existing paradigms for assigning and assessing benefits to host communities offer valuable insight, I criticize their failure to distinguish between those benefits which can justify the conduct of research in a developing world setting and those which cannot. I argue that the justification for human subjects research is (...) fundamentally grounded in the social value of knowledge, and that this value is context-dependent in a manner which should inform our ethical evaluation of the conduct of research in specific settings. I propose a new framework for the assessment of research benefits assigned to developing world host communities, a natural implication of which is to limit the types of research projects which may permissibly be conducted in developing world settings. (shrink)

The term “medium independence” has different meanings. One sense maps onto “abstract-as-abstracta” descriptions while the other maps onto “abstract-as-omission” descriptions. Both senses have been deployed when it comes to understanding the nature of physical computation. However, because medium independence is a polysemic term, the sense being used should be clearly stated. If the sense is not clearly stated, then those who wish to engage in debates regarding medium independence and physical computation run the risk of conflating different but related issues (...) which can have consequences when it comes to thinking about physical computation across contexts. (shrink)

Departing from theories of distributive justice and their relation with the distribution of health care within society, especially egalitarianism and libertarianism, this paper aims at demonstrating that the approach taken by the European Court of Justice regarding the application of the Internal Market principles (or the market freedoms) to the field of health care services has introduced new values which are more concerned with a libertarian view of health care. Moreover, the paper also addresses the question of how these new (...) values introduced by the Court may affect common principles of European health systems, such as equity and accessibility. (shrink)

Offering a critical examination of Lewis Gordon’s work by international scholars engaging in radical epistemological transformation for social change, this volume explores the importance of radical theory and thinkers to push for projects of change in the area of Black Existentialism.