Expanded universal carrier screening (EUCS) entails a population‐wide screening offer for multiple disease‐causing mutations simultaneously. Although there is much debate about the conditions under which EUCS can responsibly be introduced, there seems to be little discussion about its aim: providing carrier couples with options for autonomous reproductive choice. While this links in with current accounts of the aim of foetal anomaly screening, it is different from how the aim of ancestry‐based carrier screening has traditionally been understood: reducing the disease burden (...) in the population. The reasons why the aim of EUCS is presented in terms of ‘autonomy’ rather than ‘prevention’ have not been spelled out in the literature. This paper seeks to fill this gap by considering the morally relevant similarities and dissimilarities between foetal anomaly screening, ancestry‐based carrier screening and EUCS. When carrier screening is performed in the prenatal period, enhancing autonomy appears the most appropriate aim of EUCS, as the alternative of ‘prevention through selective abortion’ would urge women to terminate wanted pregnancies. However, when screening is conducted in the preconception period, carrier couples can avoid the birth of affected children by other means than selective abortion, for instance preimplantation genetic diagnosis. To the extent that this increased control over passing on a genetic disorder raises questions of parental responsibility, it seems necessary that the account of the aims of EUCS is wider than only in terms of enhancing reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

Expanded universal carrier screening (EUCS) entails a population‐wide screening offer for multiple disease‐causing mutations simultaneously. Although there is much debate about the conditions under which EUCS can responsibly be introduced, there seems to be little discussion about its aim: providing carrier couples with options for autonomous reproductive choice. While this links in with current accounts of the aim of foetal anomaly screening, it is different from how the aim of ancestry‐based carrier screening has traditionally been understood: reducing the disease burden (...) in the population. The reasons why the aim of EUCS is presented in terms of ‘autonomy’ rather than ‘prevention’ have not been spelled out in the literature. This paper seeks to fill this gap by considering the morally relevant similarities and dissimilarities between foetal anomaly screening, ancestry‐based carrier screening and EUCS. When carrier screening is performed in the prenatal period, enhancing autonomy appears the most appropriate aim of EUCS, as the alternative of ‘prevention through selective abortion’ would urge women to terminate wanted pregnancies. However, when screening is conducted in the preconception period, carrier couples can avoid the birth of affected children by other means than selective abortion, for instance preimplantation genetic diagnosis. To the extent that this increased control over passing on a genetic disorder raises questions of parental responsibility, it seems necessary that the account of the aims of EUCS is wider than only in terms of enhancing reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

This contribution explores Grotian Moments in the practice of the UN Security Council in three different but closely related subject areas. The three areas are, in turn, the way the Security Council interprets the concept of ‘threat to the peace’ or more generally ‘international peace and security’, the law-making by the Security Council, and the subjects – in the sense of legal or natural persons – that the Security Council chooses to address. It turns out that the interpretation by the (...) Security Council of the UN Charter has been remarkably flexible, expanding the scope of action of the Council considerably. Whether its interpretation of the UN Charter also deserves to be labelled ‘Grotian’, however, is rather a matter of rhetoric than law. (shrink)

A theoretical interpretation of the observed periodicity of large-scale (∼128 Mpc) correlations of galaxies is proposed as due to eigenvibrations of the closed expanding universe. Eigensolutions of the equations of motion for a scalar field in an inflationary model allow one to compute the energy density, interpreted as matter density. Isotropic eigensolution give rise to a matter density distribution having a periodic structure centered at the north pole of the closed Robertson-Walker universe represented by S3/Z2. It is able to (...) reproduce well the striking periodicity of the observational data, in the galactic north-south directions. The dipole and quadrupole eigensolutions and the location of the co-moving observer in a point of S3/Z2 different from the center of the vibrational structure would imply, in a theoretically well predictable way, a decrease of the observed periodicity in some other directions. (shrink)

In the seventy-five years since the end of World War II, pairs of countries have entered into over a thousand bilateral labor agreements to regulate the cross-border flow of workers. These agreements have received little public or academic attention. This is likely, in part, because there is limited data or easily available information on BLAs. This Article hopes to change that by introducing three new resources: a dataset documenting the formation of over 1,200 BLAs; a corpus including the texts of (...) over 800 BLAs; and a dataset coding whether over 500 BLAs mention twenty topics that the ILO has identified as best practices for these agreements. Using this data, we show that, unlike some other forms of bilateral agreements, the rate of BLAs being signed has remained relatively high during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Additionally, we also show evidence that, although many BLAs were formed during this period, relatively few agreements include various worker protections advocated for by activists, scholars, and NGOs. (shrink)

One of the few authors to have explicitly connected the physical issue of the expansion of the universe with the philosophical topic of the metaphysical status of space is Gerald James Whitrow. This paper examines his view and tries to highlight its strong and weak points, thereby clarifying its obscure aspects. In general, this really interesting philosophical approach to one of the most important phenomena concerning our universe, and therefore modern cosmology, has been very rarely tackled. This unicity increases the (...) value, from a physical, philosophical and historical point of view, of Whitrow’s attempt and calls for new research. (shrink)

What constitutes a scientific discovery? What role do discoveries play in science, its dynamics and social practices? Must every discovery be attributed to an individual discoverer (or a small number of discoverers)? The paper explores these questions by first critically examining extant philosophical explications of scientific discovery—the models of scientific discovery, propounded by Kuhn, McArthur, Hudson, and Schindler. As a simple, natural and powerful alternative, we proffer the “change-driver model”: in a nutshell, it takes discoveries to be cognitive scientific results (...) that have epistemically advanced science. The model overcomes the shortcomings of its precursors, whilst preserving their insights. We demonstrate its intensional and extensional superiority, especially with respect to the link between scientific discoveries and the dynamics of science, as well as the award system of science. Both as an illustration, and as an application to a recent scientific and political controversy, we apply the considered models of discovery to one of the most momentous discoveries of science: the expansion of the universe. We oppose the 2018 proposal of the International Astronomers’ Union as too simplistic vis-`a-vis the historical complexity of the episode. The change- driver model yields a more nuanced and circumspect verdict: (i) The redshift-distance relation shouldn’t be named the “Hubble-Lemaître Law”, but “Slipher-Lundmark-Hubble-Humason Law”; (ii) Its interpretation in terms of an expanding universe, however, Lemaître ought to be given credit for; but (iii) The establishment of the expansion of the universe, as an evidentially sufficiently warranted result, is a communal achievement, emerging in the 1950s or 1960s. (shrink)

Mr. Cohen's political geography is unexpectedly topical. His conception of political philosophy is not so advanced; however Cohen's disposition is all for forward movement. Insisting perhaps too strongly upon the etymology of "political," Cohen would even have us cease doing "political philosophy"; for, he says, there are no longer any truly sovereign and autonomous states left in the world. The era of the nation-state has vanished quite as definitely into the past as the era of the city-state. We live in (...) a "polycentric" world community, under a regime of law, though the world community is not itself a sovereign state, nor are there any sovereign states that are a part of it. The members of the world community are people, obliged to support whatever international laws and agencies of international collaboration there are, and there are many of them. To assert that there is a world community is to imply that there are no sovereign national states to impose obligations equally eminent or superior. (shrink)

The object of this cosmological inquiry is to determine, on the basis of a given line element, the behavior of test-particles and light-signals, the results of observations of them, and inferences drawn therefrom. The author describes, by means of a single geometrical model, the relationship between the expanding and contracting spherical frame, the static frame, and the expanding flat frame, as various representations of the de Sitter universe. The reversibility objection to the elliptical interpretation of the de Sitter (...) universe is answered with the argument that irreversible laws can be based on the statistics of microscopically reversible systems on condition that the statistical theory be autonomous in defining time's arrow. Assuming that test particles and light-signals are time-like and null geodesics, respectively, Schrödinger then considers their behavior in more general expanding universes. He asks not whether the geodesic assumption is a consequence of the field equations of gravitation, but whether it follows from the wave theory of light and matter. Thus the book concludes by complementing the treatment of light and matter in expanding universes from the particle point of view with a treatment from the wave point of view. The exposition is forceful and clear; no snares will beset the reader familiar with the rudiments of Einstein's general theory. --M. F. (shrink)

From the discovery of distant galaxies and black holes to the tiny interstices of the atom, here is the very best on physics and astronomy from the New York Times! The newspaper of record has always prided itself on its award-winning science coverage, and these 125 articles from its archives are the very best, covering more than a century of breakthroughs, setbacks, and mysteries. Selected by former science editor Cornelia Dean, they feature such esteemed and Pulitzer Prize-winning writers as Malcolm (...) W. Browne on teleporting, antimatter atoms, and the physics of traffic jams; James Glanz on string theory; George Johnson on quantum physics; William L. Laurence on Bohr and Einstein; Dennis Overbye on the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson; Walter Sullivan on the colliding beam machine; and more. (shrink)

Our aim is to solve a quite old question on the difference between expandability and compact expandability. Toward this, we further investigate the logic of countable cofinality.

Despite all the attention given to Kant’s universalizability tests, one crucial aspect of Kant’s thought is often overlooked. Attention to this issue, I will argue, helps us resolve two serious problems for Kant’s ethics. Put briefly, the first problem is this: Kant, despite his stated intent to the contrary, doesn’t seem to use universalization in arguing for duties to oneself, and, anyway, it is not at all clear why duties to oneself should be grounded on a procedure that envisions a (...) world in which everyone wills the contrary of those duties. The second, more global problem is that if we follow Barbara Herman in holding that Kantian ethics can provide a structure for moral deliberation, we need an interpretation of the universalization procedure that unproblematically allows it to generate something like prima facie duties to guide that deliberation; but it is not at all clear that we have such an interpretation. I argue here that if we expand our limited way of thinking about universalization, we can solve the first problem and work towards a solution to the second. We can begin by recalling that Kant’s ‘Law of Nature’ formulation (FLN) of the Categorical Imperative obligates us to ‘act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature’ (G, 421). (shrink)

Our love of art, writes John Barrow, is the end product of millions of years of evolution. How we react to a beautiful painting or symphony draws upon instincts laid down long before humans existed. Now, in this enhanced edition of the highly popular The Artful Universe, Barrow further explores the close ties between our aesthetic appreciation and the basic nature of the Universe. Barrow argues that the laws of the Universe have imprinted themselves upon our thoughts and actions in (...) subtle and unexpected ways. Why do we like certain types of art or music? What games and puzzles do we find challenging? Why do so many myths and legends have common elements? In this eclectic and entertaining survey, Barrow answers these questions and more as he explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color. Barrow casts the story of human creativity and thought in a fascinating light, considering such diverse topics as our instinct for language, the origins and uses of color in nature, why we divide time into intervals as we do, the sources of our appreciation of landscape painting, and whether computer-generated fractal art is really art. Drawing on a wide variety of examples, from the theological questions raised by St. Augustine and C.S. Lewis to the relationship between the pure math of Pythagoras and the music of the Beatles, The Artful Universe Expanded covers new ground and enters a wide-ranging debate about the meaning and significance of the links between art and science. (shrink)

In [5], Béziau provides a means by which Gentzen’s sequent calculus can be combined with the general semantic theory of bivaluations. In doing so, according to Béziau, it is possible to construe the abstract “core” of logics in general, where logical syntax and semantics are “two sides of the same coin”. The central suggestion there is that, by way of a modification of the notion of maximal consistency, it is possible to prove the soundness and completeness for any normal logic. (...) However, the reduction to bivaluation may be a side effect of the architecture of ordinary sequents, which is both overly restrictive, and entails certain expressive restrictions over the language. This paper provides an expansion of Béziau’s completeness results for logics, by showing that there is a natural extension of that line of thinking to n-sided sequent constructions. Through analogical techniques to Béziau’s construction, it is possible, in this setting, to construct abstract soundness and completeness results for n-valued logics. (shrink)

This article explores the very limited cases historically in the twentieth century when human rights was used in American policy debate as a defending principle for the provision of government-guaranteed universal healthcare. It discusses these cases and examines various reasons as to why this is so, noting the major emphasis in American political culture on negative rather than positive liberty. It examines the shift in political culture from the Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson eras that embraced social and economic rights and (...) defined them as such to the post-Reagan era when conservative ideologies were ascendant. These ideologies reject the legitimacy of social and economic rights and remain dominant in the United States. It comparatively situates the American refusal to consider universal healthcare a human right with European affirmations of such a right and to those found in various treaties of international law. Finally, it analyzes how Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—while not adopting the rhetoric of human rights does, functionally, enable as a matter of public policy an entitlement to healthcare. (shrink)

In, Béziau provides a means by which Gentzen’s sequent calculus can be combined with the general semantic theory of bivaluations. In do- ing so, according to Béziau, it is possible to construe the abstract “core” of logics in general, where logical syntax and semantics are “two sides of the same coin”. The central suggestion there is that, by way of a modification of the notion of maximal consistency, it is possible to prove the soundness and completeness for any normal logic. (...) However, the reduction to bivaluation may be a side e ff ect of the architecture of ordinary sequents, which is both overly restrictive, and entails certain expressive restrictions over the language. This paper provides an expansion of Béziau’s completeness results for logics, by showing that there is a natural extension of that line of thinking to n -sided sequent constructions. Through analogical techniques to Béziau’s construction, it is possible, in this setting, to construct abstract soundness and completeness results for n -valued logics. (shrink)

The subject matter of the article is a standard cosmological model of the Universe. Contemporary opinion regarding origin, structure, and evolution of the Universe is of great interest. The answer to the question of the Universe origin is given by the Big Bang Theory. Is it possible to be sure in this theory correctness, which persuading of the Universe origination from the singularity fluctuation, when the World had appeared from nowhere, that is from abstract nothingness, further accelerated expansion of the (...) Universe following the Big Bang, and its development up to present with inexplicable source of energy for that. However, in the extreme end of the meta-universe the speed of stellar formations runaway is about the light velocity. Further, there is a new problem, the finiteness of the Universe. There are two counter-opinions, if the expanding Universe is finite or infinite. A very important question arises here, the question regarding isolatedness of the Universe as a system. The problem of the Universe heat death is closely connected with it. For this reason it is the time to discuss the Universe entropy. There is a short description of notions and problems with reference to this branch of knowledge, as well as of Doppler and Ritz effects alongside with Habble Law. The authors’ detailed interpretation of an entropy is also suggested. The analysis of the existing model is followed by the idea of the authors about the Universe organization. The style of the article is popular-science. In the first part of the article the existing concept of the Expanding Universe Theory and the dynamical Friedmann-Lemaitre models are described; it deals with the existing concept of the Big Bang Theory as well as the dark energy and the dark matter notions. In the second part the author gives detailed interpretation of an entropy. In the last part the problem of theoretical basis and fact nonconformity within the Expanding Universe Model Theory and the authors’ idea about the Universe organization are considered. (shrink)

Universal Basic Income (UBI) can serve as a beneficial public policy to reduce poverty and inequality, yet a great challenge is how to fund it. This article offers a roadmap for fully funding UBI in a manner that: eliminates poverty; bolsters the middle-class; eliminates the stigma and government bureaucracy of social welfare programs; reduces ever-expanding inequality; initiates a path to meeting climate change goals; reduces speculation; and increases fairness and opportunity in the tax code. As stand-alone policies, these revenue (...) proposals are valuable correctives in their own right. If the entire package of UBI and funding sources were in effect, society (and American capitalism) would be on a more stable, equitable, and environmentally sustainable footing. (shrink)

Book Symposium on Don Ihde’s Expanding Hermeneutics: Visualism in Science Content Type Journal Article Category Book Symposium Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0060-5 Authors Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen Friis, University of Copenhagen, Nørre Farimagsgade 5 A, Room 10.0.27, 1014 Copenhagen, Denmark Larry A. Hickman, The Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA Robert Rosenberger, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, DM Smith Building, 685 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0345, USA Robert C. Scharff, University of (...) New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824-3574, USA Don Ihde, Stony Brook University, Harriman Hall 221, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3750, USA Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

Publication date: 2 May 2019 Source: Author: Oleg Tarnopolsky The article discusses an innovative course taught to students majoring in English at Ukrainian universities. The course called “Specific Features of the English Language and English-Speaking Nations’ Cultures in the Context of International Communication” was designed to eliminate the lack of a number of issues that must be included in the curriculum of English language and culture studies to be learned by such students but which are ordinarily not included there because (...) each of them cannot make the subject matter of a separate university course and does not fit into the traditionally taught courses. The issues in question embrace: the specific role of English among other languages of international communication; World Englishes, International English and English as a lingua franca and how to choose the variety of English to be taught as a foreign language; the specifics of business negotiations in English in intercultural contexts, business presentations in English, and business telephoning in English in such contexts; communicative behavioral etiquette in intercultural communication in English; lifestyle communicative behavioral patterns of the English-speaking nations. The paper shows how teaching these issues enriches and improves the English language and culture education of English major students expanding that education and relevant practical training to fit much better the international and intercultural contexts of communication in English. (shrink)

The question of whether the universe is expanding or contracting serves as a model for current questions facing the medical humanities. The medical humanities might aptly be described as a metamedical multiverse encompassing many separate universes of discourse, the most prominent of which is probably bioethics. Bioethics, however, is increasingly developing into a new interdisciplinary discipline, and threatens to engulf the other medical humanities, robbing them of their own distinctive contributions to metamedicine. The philosophy of medicine considered as a (...) distinct field of study has suffered as a result. Indeed, consensus on whether the philosophy of medicine even constitutes a legitimate field of study is lacking. This paper presents an argument for the importance of a broad conception of the philosophy of medicine and the central role it should play in organizing and interpreting the various fields of study that make up the metamedical multiverse. (shrink)

This article intends to summarise the content of my book Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity and expand the meaning of the term ‘universality’. Universality is not defined in abstract legal terms or by juxtaposition vis-à-vis a common enemy. Instead, I clarify the meaning of a more concrete and open practice of universality through historical examples and theories that I excavate from social practices.

Susan D. McCammon and Nicole M. Piemonte offer a thoughtful and thorough commentary on our manuscript entitled “Expanding the use of Continuous Sedation Until Death.” In this reply we attempt to clarify and further defend our position. We show how continuous sedation until death is not a “first resort” but rather a legitimate option among many that should available to terminally ill patients whose life expectancy is less than six months. We also attempt to show that we do not (...) equivocate the meaning of palliative care as the commentators suggested. We argue that the traditional notion of palliative care should move beyond relief of “experienced suffering” to relief of potential suffering for those whose life expectancy is less than six months. Lastly, we challenge the commentator’s position that the realm of ordinary medicine” should be the guide to care, by showing how the notion of ordinary medicine has been successfully challenged in both bioethical scholarship and the courts in a way that shows ordinary medicine to be an evolving concept rather than a static, universal guide. (shrink)

The title of Nicole Hassoun’s recently-published book, Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations, is a bit misleading. It implies that the book will demonstrate that globalization is leading to increased interconnectedness and interdependence , and that as a result a more demanding set of principles of justice have become applicable in the global context . But while the book does address questions of globalization and global justice, its primary contribution is a novel argument for the existence of (...) positive rights for the world’s poor. It secondary contribution is a proposal for advancing these rights on a global level.Globalization and Global Justice consists of two parts. Part I offers a philosophical argument. Hassoun refers to this argument as the Autonomy Argument at one point and as the Legitimacy Argument at another . The two arguments are virtually identical, however, and so should b .. (shrink)

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Among other things, it found that states may refuse to expand Medicaid to all individuals earning less than 133% of the federal poverty line. In this article, I evaluate the strongest conservative objection to the Medicaid expansion, which runs as follows: "Defenders of the ACA promised that the Medicaid expansion (and all other parts of the ACA) would be paid for with compensating (...) cuts. However, it’s arguable that that claim is false and that the government is likely to follow its well-worn pattern of charging at least some of the increased spending to the national debt. Debt is already at dangerous levels, and adding to it increases the risk of a serious fiscal crisis. We should therefore oppose the Medicaid expansion." After laying out this argument, I evaluate its central claims and draw three main conclusions. First, some people could reasonably believe the assumptions behind the fiscal objection, and thus reasonably oppose the Medicaid expansion as well. Second, despite the fact that reasonable critics could hold those assumptions, most critics do not, and so they should not reject the Medicaid expansion on these fiscal grounds. Third, supporters of the ACA and the Medicaid expansion can reasonably reject the assumptions behind the fiscal objection, and thus the objection itself. (shrink)

SummaryThe writings of the very popular American poet Robert Frost (1874–1963) reveal an unusually specific and detailed knowledge of science. This was particularly evident among the poems of his penultimate volume, Steeple Bush, of 1947. Several of these poems confronted with basic insights issues raised by the period's ‘new physics’. Among those, especially Frost's epigram ‘A Wish to Comply’ wittily confronted an important epistemological difficulty in particle physics. Such science must induce a belief in the fundamental importance of entities invisible (...) to any physical human senses except those aided by complex apparatus used in abstruse experiments. Recondite scientific issues are confronted in other poems published in Steeple Bush such as ‘Skeptic’ (which meditates on the ‘red shift’ evidence for an expanding universe), but these poems are clearly derived from popular theoretical expositions, not practical experience. ‘A Wish to Comply’, on the other hand, clearly records an actual experience of a failed Millikan ‘oil drop’ experiment. This event evidently led to the poet to fake a report of his own observation of an electrically charged oil droplet, for reasons of social pressure. In meditating on these circumstances the epigram opens questions relating to scientific ‘systematic error’, the suppression, ‘trimming’ or ‘cooking’ of experimental data, and a bias toward confirmation of highly respected opinions. Although Frost did not live to know it, two of these questions have been latterly opened in regard to Millikan's own reports of his original oil drop experimental data. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between the university and fair trade coffee campaigns in North America. In recent years, fair trade coffee sales internationally have increased substantially but have still not grown large enough to meet the needs of fair trade producers in the South. In consequence, fair trade activists have sought to expand the market by pressuring public institutions to adopt fair trade purchasing policies. In North America, the university has emerged as a central focus of fair trade coffee (...) campaigns. Thus far, university administrators have been reluctant to support fair trade. This paper explores this reluctance and asserts that the university has a moral responsibility to support fair trade. However, it also argues that the potential exists for administrators to employ fair trade as an ethical fig leaf to mask the growing corporatization of the university under the weight of neoliberal reforms. This has become a common strategy of many neoliberal institutions in the North. Contrary to the assumptions of much of the emerging literature, it cannot be assumed that the impact of fair trade will necessarily be beneficial in the North unless activists work to ensure fair trade does not become employed as an ethical fig leaf. (shrink)