Summary James Watt (1736–1819) is best known as an engineer who dramatically improved the efficiency of the steam engine. What we take to be his chemical interests are conventionally seen as peripheral to his main line of work. He is usually treated as a chemist in three main contexts: his ‘practical’ chemical work relating to chlorine bleaching, varnishes, pottery, and so on; his work with Thomas Beddoes on the medicinal uses of various ‘airs’; his, much disputed, claim as a (...) chemical discoverer in the case of the composition of water. In this paper, I argue that Watt himself, and his contemporaries, saw the centrepiece of his steam engine work—the separate condenser—as a chemical invention. I also suggest more broadly that Watt understood the steam engine as a chemical device. For Watt and his Scottish friends, the study of steam and heat was a chemical enquiry. The subsequent changes in the place of heat in chemical enquiry in the early nineteenth century led to a reclassification of Watt's chemical investigations as ‘physics’. This, in turn, produced the sharp separation of his chemical and engineering activities characteristic of modern historiography. Watt's steam engine, which is usually placed in the lineage of machines understood as heat engines, and explained by the laws of thermodynamics, is better seen in context as a chemical device. Watt's ‘indicator diagram’ is reassessed in the light of this. (shrink)

Contention about who discovered the compound nature of water (the 'water controversy') occurred in two phases. During the first phase, in the 1780s, the claimants to the discovery (Antoine Lavoisier, Henry Cavendish, and James Watt) produced the work on which their claims were based. This phase of controversy was relatively short and did not generate much heat, although it was part of the larger debates surrounding the 'chemical revolution'. The second phase of controversy, in the 1830s and 1840s, saw (...) heated exchanges in Britain between advocates of Watt on the one hand and of Cavendish on the other. This paper concentrates on this second phase. The concern is not to arbitrate the contest but to delineate the pattern of advocacy and the arguments used to support the opposing cases. 'Discovery' is not treated as an event but as the outcome of an after-the-fact process of attribution of credit. Apart from identifying the opposing argumentative strategies employed in making different attributions, the paper also seeks to explain why there was so much concern about this priority dispute long after the deaths of the protagonists. It is shown that while Scottish-English rivalries were important they were not the only or most significant impetus. Ideological struggles over the nature of science provided a context in which the attribution of discovery to Cavendish or to Watt was of major import. These ideological struggles are shown to have roots in the politics of early Victorian science that ultimately lay behind the second phase of the water controversy and shaped the course that it took. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Vivoscape, from Latin ‘vivo’ and the English ‘scape’ is presented as a new ecosemiotic agency that integrates the interactions between biological and ecological components of a taxon with the environment. According to this model, the interactions between species and the environment are fused into a new functional unity driven by external and internal events. Sensorial and relational channels are used by a taxon to sense external energy gradients, matter, information and to return actions and proactions in an external operational environment. (...) The eco-field model is suggested as the functional ecosemiotic mechanism associated with each vivoevent. (shrink)

This work presents an annotated text of the most comprehensive and detailed arguments in Erasmus's conflict with the Catholic, conservative, scholastic theologians, the Declarationes. It also shows the contrast between the scholastic/ /logical and the humanist/rheorical approach to Scripture and to theological questions.

This is an excellent collection of critical essays on Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. David Miller provides a comprehensive and lucid introduction to Walzer’s views on justice, and Walzer offers a brief—perhaps too brief—response to his critics. Contributors are drawn from philosophy, political science, and sociology, and include Judith Andre, Richard Arneson, Brian Barry, Joseph Carens, Jon Elster, Amy Gutmann, David Miller, Susan Moller Okin, Michael Rustin, Adam Swift, and Jeremy Waldron.

In a development of the ecosemiotic vivo-scape concept, a ‘safety eco-field’ is proposed as a model of a species response to the safety of its environment. The safety eco-field is based on the ecosemiotic approach which considers environmental safety as a resource sought and chosen by individuals to counter predatory pressure. To test the relative safety of different locations within a landscape, 66 bird feeders (BF) were deployed in a regular 15 × 15 m grid in a rural area, surrounded (...) by shrubs, small trees, hedgerows, and buildings. On each of 48 days in November 2021 and February and March 2022, dried mealworms were placed on each BF and counts of larvae at each BF were made at noon and dusk. The European robin (Erithacus rubecula) and the great tit (Parus major) were the most regular visitors to the BFs. Land cover at each BF was recorded. Bird behaviour at the BFs was noted from direct video recordings of the birds at nine selected BFs, totalling 32 daily sessions in March. The different behaviours of the European robin and the great tit were observable. The safety eco-field changed according to the month and the time of day. The distance of the BF from the woodland edges seemed to be important only in the morning. In the afternoon, BFs that were more distant from the woodland edges received the highest number of visits. Weather conditions were found to influence the number of mealworms removed, but this requires further investigation. A significant relationship between land cover and the number of mealworm larvae removed from the BFs was observed. Within the grid of BF, three regions were distinguishable which were related to land cover in the safety eco-field process. The experimental framework confirms the adequacy, at least for birds that have cryptic predators, to map the landscape as a proxy of safety resource. From the video recordings it was noted that the European robin visits were distributed throughout the day without apparent temporal preferences, while the great tit visits were concentrated in the central part of the day. This result has the limitation of the short period of observation (March) and should be extended to the entire period of the experiment to eventually capture seasonal variation. The experimental evidence obtained confirms that the ecosemiotic-based models of safety eco-field are an efficient approach to explain bird feeding preferences and behaviours. (shrink)

Summary A dissertation is an integral part of Higher National Diploma (HND), Bachelor of Science with Honours (BSc(Hons)) and taught Master of Science (MSc) programmes and should reflect differences in learning styles as appropriate to each level. The dissertation requirements and assessment procedures within ten environment?related undergraduate and postgraduate programmes were examined using the ?framework? approach. Two themes were examined in detail: a quantitative evaluation of characteristics which define the physical dimensions of the dissertation; and a qualitative analysis of the (...) academic rationale, aims, objectives and learning outcomes, as well as the associated assessment criteria. It is possible to differentiate between levels in terms of these two themes. There were greater similarities between the dissertations at HND and BSc(Hons) levels than between BSc(Hons) and MSc levels. Each dissertation occupies a separate, distinct place along a progressive development of a deep learning style. (shrink)

This work presents an annotated text of the most comprehensive and detailed arguments in Erasmus's conflict with the Catholic, conservative, scholastic theologians, the _Declarationes_. It also shows the contrast between the scholastic/logical and the humanist/rhetorical approach to Scripture and to theological questions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 39.4 (2006) 333-339MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]On Persuasion, Identification, and Dialectical SymmetryKenneth BurkeEdited with introduction by James ZappenNote: This untitled paper was found in two typed copies among the books and papers in Kenneth Burke's personal library in July 2006—one copy folded into a heavily used Loeb edition of Aristotle's Rhetoric, the other in a small file cabinet in the library.1 The two copies are (...) nearly identical carbon copies, probably typed by Burke's wife Libby; the original has not been found.2 The paper includes brief discussions of persuasion, identification, and dialectical symmetry (hence the current title), plus brief critiques of behaviorism and general semantics, with specific reference to Alfred Korzybski's notion of the structural differential. It was probably written in the mid-1940s, after the second edition of Korzybski's Science and Sanity and The Philosophy of Literary Form, both published in 1941; perhaps at roughly the same time as the more extended discussions of behaviorism and Korzybski in A Grammar of Motives, published in 1945; and before the full development of Burke's ideas about persuasion, identification, and dialectical symmetry in A Rhetoric of Motives, published in 1950. The paper might have been prepared for a public lecture or for circulation among Burke's literary friends, as a brief commentary on some of the key concepts in A Rhetoric of Motives, while he was completing A Grammar of Motives or perhaps shortly following its publication. If so, then it might have been written as late as 1947.3This paper suggests that Burke's concept of identification was in part a creative response to current issues in behaviorism and general semantics, formulated in sympathy with George Herbert Mead's observations on identification, communication, and community in Mind, Self, and Society and The Philosophy of the Act and in opposition to Korzybski's general semantics and his structural differential. Moreover, and more important, this paper suggests that the final section of A Rhetoric of Motives, titled simply "Order," is essential to a complete understanding of Burke's ideas about persuasion and identification since only in this last section does Burke show how competing points of view [End Page 333] might be reconciled in an ultimate identification via the dialectical symmetry that he traces through the long history of Platonic thought.4James P. Zappen Department of Language, Literature, and Communication Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute* * *What, in sum, would be the salient traits of Aristotle's Rhetoric?5 And what would be our attitude towards them?His "art" is constructed about his stress upon persuasion as the purpose of rhetoric. Hence he surveys the resources of rhetoric, to the end that one might use the best means available for a given situation. To narrow down the choice of means, he makes a division into kinds of oratory: deliberative (concerned with the expediency of steps still to be taken); forensic (concerned with the justice or injustice of past acts); and demonstrative or epideictic (concerned with praise and blame, primarily involving the present). But to be effective in any of these kinds, one must appeal to the opinions of one's audience—hence the lists of "topics" reviewing such opinions. First he considers the components of happiness, on the grounds that all men aim at happiness, hence this topic figures in all persuasion and dissuasion. For deliberative oratory specifically, he lists the topics naming men's opinions as to the good, the expedient, and their opposites (along with relevant observations on different forms of government). His topics for epideictic, dealing with praise and blame, comprise the things men consider virtuous and vicious. And his list of forensic topics has to do with the motives and effects of just and unjust acts. Also, there are such general topics as the possible and impossible, the more and the less, the likely and the unlikely.Enthymemes (deductions based on opinion) fit well with forensic, he says. Rhetorical induction (example) best suits the deliberative. And to epideictic, amplification (auxesis... (shrink)

_The Opportunity Gap_ aims to shift attention from the current overwhelming emphasis on schools in discussions of the achievement gap to more fundamental questions about social and educational opportunity. The achievement gap looms large in the current era of high-stakes testing and accountability. Yet questions persist: Has the accountability movement—and attendant discussions on the achievement gap—focused attention on the true sources of educational failure in American schools? Do we need to look beyond classrooms and schools for credible accounts of disparities (...) in educational outcomes? The essays in this book reintroduce the overlooked central issue in educational inequity: the lack of opportunity that many social groups face in our common quest for educational attainment. In a series of wide-ranging and carefully nuanced essays, _The Opportunity Gap_ casts much-needed light on the vexed relationship between society and education—and on the crucial, persistent role that education plays in addressing social ills. Contributors include Gilberto Q. Conchas, Raewyn Connell, Pat English-Sand, Linda May Fitzgerald, Patresa Hartman, Jeff Howard, Mieko Kamii, Rafa M. Kasim, Christopher Kliewer, Robert A. LeVine, Sarah E. LeVine, Jodi Meyer-Mork, Robert Parris Moses, Sonia Nieto, Donna Raschke, Stephen W. Raudenbush, Ray C. Rist, Beatrice Schnell-Anzola, Irene Serna, Susan McAllister Swap, and Amy Stuart Wells; with an afterword by Ronald F. Ferguson. (shrink)

This paper presents the treatment of anaphora in generative grammar. After a broad review of of the different theories covered under the term, it provides an overview of the history of the treatment of anaphora in generative grammar. It then discusses Ariel’s theory of accessibility and shows how it can account for the choice of some of the anaphoric expressions provided in the text. In a final section, the paper presents the author’s recent work on the choice between verbal anaphors. (...) It is shown that accessibility can account for some aspects of the choice but is not sufficient. Further constraints on the choice are proposed in terms of the notion of Question Under Discussion, for which experimental evidence is adduced. (shrink)

This paper defends Flatland—the view that there exist neither determination nor dependence relations, and that everything is therefore fundamental—from the objection from explanatory inefficacy. According to that objection, Flatland is unattractive because it is unable to explain either the appearance as of there being determination relations, or the appearance as of there being dependence relations. We show how the Flatlander can meet the first challenge by offering four strategies—reducing, eliminating, untangling and omnizing—which, jointly, explain the appearance as of determination relations (...) where no such relations obtain. Since, plausibly, dependence relations just are asymmetric determination relations, we argue that once we come mistakenly to believe that there exist determination relations, the existence of other asymmetries (conceptual and temporal) explains why it appears that there are dependence relations. (shrink)

The purpose of this quantitative study of 401 students is to identify common motivations for Chinese students to plagiarize on written English assignments and ultimately to demystify and understand the mindset of Chinese students who do plagiarize. According to a regression analysis of these data, the most significant factor relating to likelihood to self-report plagiarism for Chinese students is the belief in a “standard answer,” which represents the correct answer to a given question. The regression results also suggest that students (...) who believe that imitation of experts is important to learning are more likely to self-report plagiarism, and that business students are more likely to self-report than non-business students. The other factors examined in our model, such as English writing ability; ability to express one’s self in English writing; embarrassment about English writing ability; concern for accuracy of English writing; and concerns about grade point average, were not significant predictors of self-reported plagiarism. These results give a key insight into the English writing plagiarism behaviors of Chinese students studying in Western higher education. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a new characterisation of what makes a dispute merely verbal. This new characterisation builds on the framework initially outlined by Jenkins and additionally makes use of Stalnaker's notion of ‘common ground’. I argue that this ‘common ground account’ can better classify disputes as merely verbal, and can better explain cases of playing devil's advocate. (Paper published Open Access).

Cet article discute l’analyse en termes de DP qui domine actuellement dans la grammaire générative chomskienne, à savoir, l’idée que la tête du groupe nominal est le déterminant, plutôt que le nom. Nous commençons par une discussion des notions de tête et de dépendance et passons en revue différents critères classiques permettant de décider quel élément est la tête dans une construction donnée. Sur base de ceux-ci, nous proposons une série d’arguments suggérant que la position classique est en réalité la (...) bonne et que c’est bien le nom qui est la tête du groupe nominal. Nous étudions ensuite une série d’arguments et d’analyses spécifiques qui ont été avancés en faveur de l’analyse en termes de DP et montrons pourquoi nous ne les considérons pas comme convaincants. En conclusion, nous notons que le choix entre les analyses NP et DP n’est peut-être pas une question empiriquement décidable si l’on s’autorise les représentations syntaxiques très abstraites qui sont actuellement en vogue dans le cadre de la linguistique générative chomskienne. (shrink)

I argue that Schmidtet al, while correctly diagnosing the serious racial inequity in current ventilator rationing procedures, misidentify a corresponding racial inequity issue in alternative ‘unweighted lottery’ procedures. Unweighted lottery procedures do not ‘compound’ (in the relevant sense) prior structural injustices. However, Schmidtet aldo gesture towards a real problem with unweighted lotteries that previous advocates of lottery-based allocation procedures, myself included, have previously overlooked. On the basis that there are independent reasons to prefer lottery-based allocation of scarce lifesaving healthcare resources, (...) I develop this idea, arguing that unweighted lottery procedures fail to satisfy healthcare providers’ duty to prevent unjust population-level health outcomes, and thus that lotteries weighted in favour of Black individuals (and others who experience serious health injustice) are to be preferred. (shrink)

'The interpretours of Plato,' wrote Sir Thomas Elyot in The Governour, 'do think that the wonderful and incomprehensible order of the celestial bodies, I mean sterres and planettes, and their motions harmonicall, gave to them that intensifly and by the deepe serche of raison beholde their coursis, in the sondrye diversities of number and tyme, a forme of imitation of a semblable motion, which they called daunsigne or sltation.' The image of the planets and stars engaged in an ordered and (...) measured dance is an ancient one. Plato articulated it in a passage in the Timaeus, where he likened the apparent motions of the planets and stars to 'choreiai'. Through the centuries the analogy has challenged Plator's interpreters to define and elaborate the image. Miller has examined a range of poetic and philosophical texts influenced by Plato cosmology, and has discovered frequent comparisons of the cosmic order to 'daunsigne.' He suggests that the vision of the cosmic dance did not develop at random in Western intellectual history but originated in a specific philosophical context and passed through stages of evolution that reflect Gnostic, Christian, Stoic, and Neoplatonic responses to Plato. He argues that the historical variations of the image were often closely related to adaption or criticisms of Plato's theories of visual perception and intellectual vision. The dance, in conjunction with images such as the Great chain of Being and the Lyre of the Heavens, became the dominant image of a peculiarly Late Antique world-view which Miller has called the 'poetic universe'; a world where metaphors, metonymies, and personifications could exist in fact as well as in word. The result of Miller's analysis is vast in scope. The nine chapters of the book each present a thesis on a particular author, but all function together like links in a chain. Miller has been described as 'an historian of visions'; the book has been likened to Auerbach's Mimesis. It is a remarkable contribution to an understanding of the complex interaction of ideas and images in time. (shrink)

Eric C. Ip has recently argued that seriously anorexic service users ought to be assumed to be legally incapacitous to refuse life‐saving artificial nutrition unless they can demonstrate otherwise, reversing the ordinary legal presumption in place to protect patients’ liberty and values. In this response, I argue against this proposal on two grounds. Firstly, the proposal is wrongfully discriminatory; it would expose service users to serious harm, and wrong them in numerous ways, on the basis of their diagnosis alone, without (...) significantly benefitting them in any way relative to the status quo. Secondly, he is unable to show that a large majority of such service users actually are incapacitous to refuse life‐saving artificial nutrition. This means that his proposal would likely involve declaring a large number of actually capacitous patients to be incapacitous, without even the requirement of a formal assessment, and burdening them with the responsibility of proving their clinical team wrong if they wish to avoid deprivation of liberty and/or compelled treatment. Given this, his proposal is indefensible. (shrink)

I explain the notion of contributory injustice, a kind of epistemic injustice, and argue that it occurs within psychiatric services, affecting those who hear voices. I argue that individual effort on the part of clinicians to avoid perpetrating this injustice is an insufficient response to the problem; mitigating the injustice will require open and meaningful dialogue between clinicians and service user organisations, as well as individuals. I suggest that clinicians must become familiar with and take seriously concepts and frameworks for (...) understanding mental distress developed in service user communities, such as Hearing Voices Network, and by individual service users. This is especially necessary when these concepts and frameworks explicitly conflict with medical or technical understandings of users’ experiences. I defend this proposal against three objections. (shrink)

Although the metaphysics of words remains a relatively understudied domain, one of the more discussed topics has been the question of how to account for the apparent sameness of words. Put one way, the question concerns what it is that makes two word- instances (or tokens) instances of the same word. In this paper, I argue that the existing solutions to the problems all fail as they take the problem of sameness of word to be a problem about how one (...) object relates to another. I propose an alternative solution to the problem of sameness of word which is instead focused on the intrinsic nature of the properties possessed by words. The result is a more thoroughgoing version of nominalism than is currently defended in the literature. (shrink)

The essay considers the relevance of Daoism to thinking about the place of human beings in the world in the light of global climate change.

Are humans free, or are we determined by our genes and the world around us? The question of freedom is not only one of philosophy’s greatest conundrums, but also one of the most fundamental questions of human existence. It’s particularly pressing in societies like ours, where our core institutions of law, ethics, and religion are built around the belief in individual freedom. Can one still affirm human freedom in an age of science? And if free will doesn’t exist, does it (...) make sense to act as though it does? These are the issues that are presented, probed, and debated in the following chapters. A dozen experts―specialists in medicine, psychology, ethics, theology, and philosophy—grapple with the multiple and often profound challenges presented by today’s brain science. After examining the arguments against traditional notions of free will, several of the authors champion the idea of a chastened but robust free will for today, one that allows us still to affirm the value of first-person experience. (shrink)