The objective of this paper is to outline challenges associated with the inclusion of welfare issues in breeding goals for farm animals and to review the currently available methodologies and discuss their potential advantages and limitations to address these challenges. The methodology for weighing production traits with respect to cost efficiency and market prices are well developed and implemented in animal breeding goals. However, these methods are inadequate in terms of assessing proper values of traits with social and ethical values (...) such as animal welfare, because such values are unlikely to be readily available from the product prices and costs in the market. Defining breeding goals that take animal welfare and ethical concerns into account, therefore, requires new approaches. In this paper we suggest a framework and an approach for defining breeding goals, including animal welfare. The definition of breeding goals including values related to animal welfare requires a multidisciplinary approach with a combination of different methods such as profit equations, stated preference techniques, and selection index theory. In addition, a participatory approach involving different stakeholders such as breeding organizations, food authorities, farmers, and animal welfare organizations should be applied. We conclude that even though these methods provide the necessary tools for considering welfare issues in the breeding goal, the practical application of these methods is yet to be achieved. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Reason and quest for revelation, by P. Tillich.--On the ontological mystery, by G. Marcel.--The problem of non-objectifying thinking and speaking, by M. Heidegger.--The problem of natural theology, by J. Macquarrie.--Metaphysical rebellion, by A. Camus.--Psychoanalysis and religion by E. Fromm.--Why I am not a Christian, by B. Russell.--The quest for being, by S. Hook.--The sacred and the profane; a dialectical understanding of Christianity, by T. J. J. Altizer.--Three strata of meaning in religious discourse by C. Hartshorne.--The theological task, by J. B. (...) Cobb.--Theology and objectivity, by S. A. Ogden.--Can faith validate God-talk? by K. Nielsen.--The logic of God, by J. Wisdom.--Mapping the logic of models in science and theology, by F. Ferré.--On understanding mystery, by I. T. Ramsey.--Teilhard de Chardin; a philosophy of precession, by E. R. Baltazar.--The nature of apologetics, by H. Bouillard.--Metaphysics as horizon, by B. Lonergan.--Deciding whether to believe, by M. Novak. (shrink)

Peckham claims that my "behavior" in dealing with the quotations in Natural Supernaturalism is the same, in methodology and validity, as the interpretative behavior of Booth's waiter. But the great bulk of the utterances in my quotations—and no less, of the utterances constituting Peckham's own essay—do not consist of orders, requests, or commands. Instead, they consist of assertions, descriptions, judgments, exclamations, approbations, condemnations, and many other kinds of speech-acts, the meanings of which are not related to my interpretative behavior, even (...) in the indirect way in which the meaning of Booth's order is related to the future behavior of his waiter. M. H. Abrams, author of Natural Supernaturalism and The Mirror and the Lamp and Class of 1916 Professor of English at Cornell University, responds in this essay to Morse Peckham's "The Infinitude of Pluralism" . Morse Peckham, in his Critical Response, was commenting on issues raised by the forum on "The Limits of Pluralism" , to which M. H. Abrams contributed. Previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "Rationality and Imagination in Cultural History: A Reply to Wayne Booth" and "The Deconstructive Angel". (shrink)

In retrospect, I think I was right to compose Natural Supernaturalism by relying on taste, tact, and intuition rather than on a controlling method. A book of this kind, which deals with the history of human intellection, feeling, and imagination, employs special vocabularies, procedures, and modes of demonstration which, over many centuries of development, have shown their profitability when applied to matters of this sort. I agree with Booth that these procedures, when valid, are in a broad sense rational, and (...) subject to analysis and some degree of definition. But the rules underlying such a discourse are complex, elusive, unsystematic, and subject to innovative modification; they manifest themselves in the intuitive expertise of the historian; and the specification of these rules should not precede, but follow practice. . . . After the fact, nevertheless, a book like Natural Supernaturalism is subject to close critical inquiry about its methods and rationale. I am grateful to Booth for opening up such an inquiry, and for doing so in a way that is not only disarming, but seems to me to be the most promising of useful results. That is, instead of adopting a prosecutorial stance, demanding: "Justify the rationality and probative force of what you have done; it looks dammed suspicious to me," he has adopted the friendly tactic of saying: "Your book, in my experience of it, has yielded discoveries that I want to call knowledge, by methods, however deviant from standard rubrics of valid reasoning, that it seems irrational to call non-rational. Let's set out to clarify what these methods are, and to see what grounds we can find for the claim that they provide warranted knowledge." M.H. Abrams' contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Deconstructive Angel" and "Behaviorism and Deconstruction: A Comment on Morse Peckham's 'The Infinitude of Pluralism'". (shrink)

Festschrift volume in honour of Mohd. Sabir Hussain, b. 1935.

Reflection and martingale principles are central to models of rational learning. They can be justified in a variety of ways. In what follows we study martingale and reflection principles in the con...

In 1826 Americans witnessed the spectacle of President John Quincy Adams and Vice-President John C. Calhoun taking to the press to debate the nature of power and liberty under the pseudonyms "Patrick Henry" and "Onslow". In the course of this exchange some of the most salient issues within American politics and liberty are debated, including the nature of political order, democracy, and the diffusion of political power.

I will divide my discussion into two. In the first part I will discuss Godin and Gingras's delicious claim that the experimenter's regress is anticipated by Sextus Empiricus's formulation of scepticism. In the second part, I will try to deal with Godin and Gingras's ‘critical argument’, that the experimenter's regress would be redundant if we were less concerned with ‘frightening philosophers’.

Sociological system in accordance with modern times.

Beschrijving door de gereformeerde theoloog van de geschiedenis van de 'godgeleerdheid' als leverancier van kennis over God en het einde van die visie na Karl Barth, waarbij hij pleit voor een herijking van de theologie.