This chapter offers an opinionated introduction to higher-order formal languages with an eye towards their applications in metaphysics. A simply relationally typed higher-order language is introduced in four stages: starting with first-order logic, adding first-order predicate abstraction, generalizing to higher-order predicate abstraction, and finally adding higher-order quantification. It is argued that both β-conversion and Universal Instantiation are valid on the intended interpretation of this language. Given these two principles, it is then shown how we can use pure higher-order logic to (...) ask, and begin to answer, metaphysical questions with non-trivial implications. In particular, while we must reject the popular idea that structural differences between sentences correspond to parallel distinctions in the logical structure of extra-linguistic reality, it may still be possible to give a purely logical characterization of objectual aboutness and related notions. (shrink)

When should you engage with difficult arguments against your cherished controversial beliefs? The primary conclusion of this book is that your obligations to engage with counterarguments are more limited than is often thought. In some standard situations, you shouldn't engage with difficult counterarguments and, if you do, you shouldn't engage with them open-mindedly. This conclusion runs counter to aspects of the Millian political tradition and political liberalism, as well as what people working in informal logic tend to say about argumentation. (...) -/- Not all misleading arguments wear their flaws on their sleeve. Each step of a misleading argument might seem compelling and you might not be able to figure out what's wrong with it. Still, even if you can't figure out what's wrong with an argument, you can know that it's misleading. One way to know that an argument is misleading is, counterintuitively, to lack expertise in the methods and evidence-types employed by the argument. When you know that a counterargument is misleading, you shouldn't engage with it open-mindedly and sometimes shouldn't engage with it at all. You shouldn't engage open-mindedly because you shouldn't be willing to reduce your confidence in response to arguments you know are misleading. And you sometimes shouldn't engage closed-mindedly, because to do so can be manipulative or ineffective. -/- In making this case, Jeremy Fantl discusses echo chambers and group polarization, the importance in academic writing of a sympathetic case for the opposition, the epistemology of disagreement, the account of open-mindedness, and invitations to problematic academic speakers. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce a version of perdurantism called Priority Perdurantism, according to which perduring, four-dimensional objects are ontologically fundamental and the temporal parts of those objects are ontologically derivative, depending for their existence and their identity on the four-dimensional wholes of which they are parts. I argue that by switching the order of the priority relations this opens up new solutions to the too-many-thinkers problem and the personite problem – solutions that are more ontologically robust than standard maximality (...) solutions. I then consider and respond to two initial objections to the view: that it no longer counts as a perdurantist theory and that it reintroduces the problem of temporary intrinsics. I conclude by offering two further advantages of priority perdurantism: that it is consistent with hunky time and with the existence of irreducibly temporally-extended actions, such as those pertaining to deliberative agency. (shrink)

Since his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau's reputation as a thinker has steadily grown both in France and throughout the English-speaking world. His work is extraordinarily innovative and wide-ranging, cutting across issues in historiography, literary and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, theology, philosophy and psychoanalysis. This book represents the first full-length study of Certeau's thought. It is organized around the central theme of interpretation and alterity, which Ahearne uses to illuminate Certeau's work as a whole. The author also examines Certeau's (...) theory and practice of historiography; his reflection on the relations between changing historical forms of writing, reading and orality; and his distinction between the "strategic" programmes of the politically powerful and the "tactics" of the relatively powerless. Ahearne places Certeau's work in its general intellectual context, relating it to the views of important contemporary thinkers, such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, and demonstrating the decisive importance to Certeau's thought of the writings of the early modern mystics and travellers. This book constitutes an excellent critical introduction to Certeau's work, while also providing a comprehensive and nuanced reading for those already familiar with his thought. (shrink)

Intellectualism is the widespread view that practical reason is a species of theoretical reason, distinguished from others by its objects: reasons to act. I argue that if practical reason is a species of theoretical reason, practical judgments by nature have nothing to do with action. If they have nothing to do with action, I cannot act from my representation of reasons for me to act. If I cannot act from those representations, those reasons cannot exist. If they cannot exist, neither (...) can a species of theoretical reason about them. Intellectualism is thus self-undermining. (shrink)

Conditional excluded middle (CEM) is the following principe of counterfactual logic: either, if it were the case that φ, it would be the case that ψ, or, if it were the case that φ, it would be the case that not-ψ. I will first show that CEM entails the identity of indiscernibles, the falsity of physicalism, and the failure of the modal to supervene on the categorical and of the vague to supervene on the precise. I will then argue that (...) we should accept these startling conclusions, since CEM is valid. (shrink)

In a wide range of fields, the word “modular” is used to describe complex systems that can be decomposed into smaller systems with limited interactions between them. This essay argues that mathematical knowledge can fruitfully be understood as having a modular structure and explores the ways in which modularity in mathematics is epistemically advantageous.

Lady Mary Shepherd’s critique of Hume’s account of causation, his worries about knowledge of matters of fact, and the contention that it is possible for the course of nature to spontaneously change relies primarily on three premises, two of which – that objects are merely bundles of qualities and that the qualities of an object are individuated by the causal powers contributed by those qualities – anticipate contemporary metaphysical views in ways that she should be getting credit for. The remaining (...) premise – that it is impossible for an object to begin to exist uncaused – seems more old fashioned. I argue that Shepherd can do without her old-fashioned premise and that she provides the materials for arguing that her remaining premises demonstrate a stronger anti-Humeanism than is maintained even by the contemporary representatives of those views, even though she may have to concede more to Humeanism than she would like. (shrink)

Debates about the ethics and effects of placebos and whether ‘placebos’ in clinical trials of complex treatments such as acupuncture are adequate rage. Yet there is currently no widely accepted definition of the ‘placebo’. A definition of the placebo is likely to inform these controversies. Grünbaum’s characterization of placebos and placebo effects has been touted by some authors as the best attempt thus far, but has not won widespread acceptance largely because Grünbaum failed to specify what he means by a (...) therapeutic theory and because he does not stipulate a special role for expectation effects. Grünbaum claims that placebos are treatments whose ‘characteristic features’ do not have therapeutic effects on the target disorder. I show that with four modifications, Grünbaum’s definition provides a defensible account of placebos for the purpose of constructing placebo controls within clinical trials. The modifications I introduce are: adding a special role for expectations, insisting that placebo controls control for all and only the effects of the incidental treatment features, relativizing the definition of placebos to patients, and introducing harmful interventions and nocebos to the definitional scheme. I also provide guidance for classifying treatment features as characteristic or incidental. (shrink)

Sufism and Early Islamic Piety: Personal and Communal Dynamics. By Arin Shawkat Salamah-Qudsi. Cambridge: camBridge universiTy Press, 2019. Pp. xvii + 315. $99.99, £75 ; $80.

This essay overcomes the division between “principled” and “strategic” approaches to nonviolence studies by demonstrating that ethical analysis is key to understanding movement strategy. I show how the moral phenomenologies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Emmanuel Lévinas, figures usually treated by scholars of principled nonviolence, possess genuine insight for nonviolent strategists. With reference to each thinker and supporting evidence from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, I argue that nonviolent resistance makes a moral appeal through the medium of the body to the (...) conscience of those bearing witness. Analysis of the way King combined moral reflection and strategic action recovers his legacy for the pragmatic tradition of social thought, while Lévinas's theory of the face offers additional considerations for nonviolent practitioners aiming for moral transformation at the local level. Studies that elucidate the complex moral dynamics by which nonviolent movements either succeed or fail will make the field a greater asset to practitioners. (shrink)

In this paper we present a schema for describing dualities between physical theories, and illustrate it in detail with the example of bosonization: a boson-fermion duality in two-dimensional quantum field theory. The schema develops proposals in De Haro : these proposals include construals of notions related to duality, like representation, model, symmetry and interpretation. The aim of the schema is to give a more precise criterion for duality than has so far been considered. The bosonization example, or boson-fermion duality, has (...) the feature of being simple, yet rich enough, to illustrate the most relevant aspects of our schema, which also apply to more sophisticated dualities. The richness of the example consists, mainly, in its concern with two non-trivial quantum field theories: including massive Thirring-sine-Gordon duality, and non-abelian bosonization. This prompts two comparisons with the recent philosophical literature on dualities:--- Unlike the standard cases of duality in quantum field theory and string theory, where only specific simplifying limits of the theories are explicitly known, the boson-fermion duality is known to hold {\it exactly}. This exactness can be exhibited explicitly. The bosonization example illustrates both the cases of isomorphic and {\it non-isomorphic} models: which we believe the literature on dualities has not so far discussed. (shrink)

Regulating affective responses to acute stress has the potential to improve health, performance, and well-being outcomes. Using the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat as an organizing framework, we review how appraisals inform affective responses and highlight research that demonstrates how appraisals can be used as regulatory tools. Arousal reappraisal, specifically, instructs individuals on the adaptive benefits of stress arousal so that arousal is conceptualized as a coping resource. By reframing the meaning of signs of arousal that accompany stress, it (...) is possible to break the link between stressful situations, and malignant physiological responses and experiences of negative affect. Applications of arousal reappraisal for academic contexts and clinical science, and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Hypnosis is considered a unique tool capable of modulating cognitive processes. The extent to which hypnotic suggestions intervenes is still under debate. This study was designed to provide a new insight into this issue, by focusing on an unintentional emotional process: attentional bias. In Experiment 1, highly suggestible participants performed three sessions of an emotional Stroop task where hypnotic suggestions aiming to increase and decrease emotional reactivity towards emotional stimuli were administered within an intra-individual design. Compared to a baseline condition (...) (without hypnotic suggestion), a significant increase in attentional bias was found when a hypnotic suggestion to increase emotional reactivity was administered. In contrast, the bias was eliminated when a suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity was administered. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of session repetition on attentional bias across three successive experimental sessions without hypnosis, and showed that the emotional Stroop effect did not vary across sessions. Hence, session repetition could not account for part of the modulation of attentional bias in Experiment 1. Taken together, the results suggest that specific hypnotic suggestions can influence elicitation of unintentional emotional processing. The implications are discussed regarding the locus of intervention of hypnotic suggestion in cognitive and emotional processes. (shrink)

In this book, Jeremy Kirby analyzes Book Gamma of Aristotle's Metaphysics and introduces the debates such as relativism versus the idea of a ready-made world, the possibility of true contradictions, the nature and possibility of metaphysics, the limits of thought, and logic.

We use model-theoretic methods described in [3] to obtain ordinal analyses of a number of theories of first- and second-order arithmetic, whose proof-theoretic ordinals are less than or equal to Γ0.

The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat posits that resource and demand appraisals interact in situations of acute stress to determine affective responses, and concomitant physiological responses, motivation, and decisions/behaviors. Regulatory approaches that alter appraisals to regulate challenge and threat affective states have the potential to facilitate coping. This reply clarifies the conceptualization of one such regulatory approach, arousal reappraisal, and suggests avenues for future research. However, it is important to note that arousal reappraisal is not a “silver bullet” for (...) improving stress outcomes, nor should this strategy be expected to positively impact all individuals. More work is needed to better elucidate how psychological and biological stress processes interact to shape health. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the long-standing public health practice of contact tracing into the public spotlight. While contact tracing and case investigation have been carefully designed to protect privacy, the huge volume of tracing which is being carried out as part of the pandemic response in the United States is highlighting potential concerns around privacy, legality, and equity. Contact tracing during the pandemic has gained particular attention for the new use of digital technologies—both on the consumer side in the (...) form of Exposure Notification applications, and for public health agencies as digital case management software systems enable massive scaling of operations. While the consumer application side of digital innovation has dominated the news and academic discourse around privacy, people are likely to interact more intensively with public health agencies and their use of digital case management systems. Effective use of digital case management for contact tracing requires revisiting the existing legal frameworks, privacy protections, and security practices for management of sensitive health data. The scale of these tools and demands of an unprecedented pandemic response are introducing new risks through the collection of huge volumes of data, and expanding requirements for more adept data sharing among jurisdictions. Public health agencies must strengthen their best practices for data collection and protection even in the absence of comprehensive or clear guidance. This requires navigating a difficult balance between rigorous data protection and remaining highly adaptive and agile. (shrink)

Using a social exchange perspective of narcissism as the foundation for study hypotheses, this study explored the relationship between leaders’ narcissism and the well-being of both leaders and subordinates at the individual and group levels. Results from a sample of 1017 subordinates working under 424 leaders generally support the hypothesized models finding leaders’ narcissism negatively relates to leader-member exchange, and that LMX subsequently relates to subordinates’ job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion. At the group level, leaders’ narcissism also negatively relates to (...) three forms of leaders’ personal well-being but these relationships go through average LMX. Elaboration on theoretical and empirical implications for business ethics is offered to provide a clearer direction for future research in this area. (shrink)

Warranting further examination is how the nascent philosophical tradition initially spread to this region from its Ionian provenance. Despite numerous ancient attestations that Parmenides of Elea was influenced, or even directly instructed, by the Ionian-born Xenophanes, many modern scholars remain skeptical of this historical association. The extent of this skepticism ranges from cautious uncertainty to outright denial of any historical plausibility. The skeptical grounds similarly vary, from distrusting the historical veracity of late and/or perhaps biased commentators, to understanding these thinkers (...) as involved in radically different projects. This essay aims to challenge the skeptical position, and establish a direct link disseminating Ionian philosophy to Magna Graecia via Xenophanes and Parmenides. The argument is straightforward. First, the ancient geographical and temporal evidence is noted, establishing that it was possible for Parmenides to have been influenced and/or taught by Xenophanes. Next, the metaphysical and epistemological parallels between these thinkers are considered. Despite notable differences, on balance, these close parallels suggest against the skeptical view, making it quite plausible to impute a direct intellectual link between these thinkers. Third, I consider ancient claims that both thinkers were engaging with religious topics, offering a sort of “rational theology.” This evidence for a close intellectual relationship between these thinkers has been entirely ignored by modern scholars, and orthodox interpretative models cannot readily provide a charitable explanation for them. However, by reconsidering the theistic content in Parmenides’s poem, a new interpretative approach is revealed which can. Once this evidence is considered in its totality, the case for imputing a close and direct intellectual heritage from Xenophanes to Parmenides proves quite substantial. (shrink)

The ethical and political dilemmas raised byInformation and Communication Technology (ICT)have only just begun to be understood. Theimpact of centralised data collection, masscommunication technologies or the centrality ofcomputer technology as a means of accessingimportant social institutions, all poseimportant ethical and political questions. As away of capturing some of these effects I willcharacterise them in terms of the type of powerand, more particularly, the ‘Power-over’ peoplethat they exercise. My choice of thisparticular nomenclature is that it allows us todescribe, firstly, how specific (...) technologiesoperate and second, exactly what sorts ofconstraints they impose on people. The reasonfor this focus has to do with a further aim ofthe essay, which is to intervene in aparticular type of debate that is often hadaround the appropriate use and scope oftheories of power that are employed in thinkingabout ICT, especially those theories associatedwith the work of Michel Foucault. There isconsiderable use of his work in computerethics, but my claim will be that despite theproductive uses of his work in the areas ofsurveillance, for instance, it does not exhaustthe larger potential of his work on power and,in part, `government.' I will argue that inorder to properly understand the politicalimpact of some aspects of ICT, especially thedigital divide, one needs an account of howpower operates that includes more traditionaltypes of power-over. To the extent that I willdeal with these concerns, the paper is both acontribution to debates about the nature andscope of Foucault's theory of power and to theissue of the effects of the digital divide. (shrink)

Evidence for a Parmenidean influence on Plato’s Republic typically focuses on content from Bks. V-VI, and the development of Plato’s Theory of Forms. This essay aims to suggest that Plato’s censorship of poetic content in Bks. II-III—particularly the rules for portraying divine nature (376e-383c)—also draw heavily upon the Eleatic tradition, particularly Parmenides’s. Identifying this further Eleatic influence will be enhanced by my own reading of Parmenides. This reading advocates understanding Parmenides in a more Xenophanean-vein—i.e. by taking What-Is to be an (...) explication of the essential qualities of divine nature, and the overall poem as rejecting traditional, mythopoetic accounts of divinity. Recognizing this Eleatic influence on the censorship of poetic content, a tension arises. For Plato infamously censors poetic styles next, concluding that mimetic dialogue may only be rarely employed, and only then in imitation of virtuous persons and actions (392c-398b). This would entail banning all poetic works relying exclusively on mimetic dialogue. Yet, not only do Plato’s own dialogues entirely consist of mimetic dialogue, so does Parmenides’s proto-dialogue. Furthermore, by so closely imitating Parmenides’s thought and language in Republic, has not Plato himself engaged in a type of intellectual and compositional mίμησις? Just as it would be strange to ban the very dialogue (Republic) which outlines and justifies Kallipolis in the first place, it would also be troubling to ban a philosophical work (i.e. Parmenides’s poem) which Republic is so heavily indebted to. Such a ban would also seem strongly at odds with Plato’s general reverence for Parmenides. In an attempt to address these tensions, I suggest that in Republic II-III, Plato’s lack of concern for banning philosophical works along with mimetic poetry should further suggest that he intends the ban to be far narrower than it first appears: as a rejection of performative, rather than compositional, mίμησις. (shrink)

The free will theodicy places significant value on free will: free will is of such substantial value, that God’s gift of free will to humans was justified, even though this gift foreseeably results in the most monstrous of evils. I will argue that when a state criminalizes sin, it can restrict or eliminate citizens’ exercise of metaphysical free will with respect to choosing to partake in or refrain from these activities. Given the value placed on free will in the free (...) will theodicy, theists who endorse this theodicy should thus oppose the criminalization of what I will call Millian sins —that is, actions which are immoral, but which do not directly harm another person. In other words, such theists should oppose legal moralism. (shrink)

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: -/- The main aim of this review will be to assess the effects of changing practitioner empathy or patient expectations for all conditions. The main objective is to conduct a systematic review of randomised trials where the intervention involves manipulating either (a) practitioner empathy or (b) patient expectations, or (c) both.

From ancient times to the beginning of the nineteenth century, mathematics was commonly viewed as the general science of quantity, with two main branches: geometry, which deals with continuous quantities, and arithmetic, which deals with quantities that are discrete. Mathematical logic does not fit neatly into this taxonomy. In 1847, George Boole [1] offered an alternative characterization of the subject in order to make room for this new discipline: mathematics should be understood to include the use of any symbolic calculus (...) “whose laws of combination are known and general, and whose results admit of a consistent interpretation.” Depending on the laws chosen, symbols can just as well be used to represent propositions instead of quantities; in that way, one can consider calculations with propositions on par with more familiar arithmetic calculations. Despite Boole’s efforts, logic has always held an uncertain place in the mathematical community. This can partially be attributed to its youth; while number theory and geometry have their origins in antiquity, mathematical logic did not emerge as a recognizable discipline until the latter half of the nineteenth century, and so lacks the provenance and prestige of its elder companions. Furthermore, the nature of the subject matter serves to set it apart; as objects of mathematical study, formulas and proofs do not have the same character as groups, topological spaces, and measures. Even distinctly mathematical branches of contemporary logic, like model theory and set theory, tend to employ linguistic classifications and measures of complexity that are alien to other mathematical disciplines. The Birth of Model Theory, by Calixto Badesa, describes a seminal step in the emergence of logic as a mature mathematical discipline. As its title suggests, the focus is on one particular result, now referred to as the L¨owenheim-Skolem theorem, as presented in a paper by L¨owenheim in 1915. But the book is, more broadly, about the story of the logic community’s gradual coming to the modern distinction between syntax and semantics, that is, between systems of symbolic expressions and the meanings that can be assigned to them.. (shrink)

On September 6, 2004, using the Isabelle proof assistant, I verified the following statement: (%x. pi x * ln (real x) / (real x)) ----> 1 The system thereby confirmed that the prime number theorem is a consequence of the axioms of higher-order logic together with an axiom asserting the existence of an infinite set. All told, our number theory session, including the proof of the prime number theorem and supporting libraries, constitutes 673 pages of proof scripts, or roughly 30,000 (...) lines. This count includes about 65 pages of elementary number theory that we had at the outset, developed by Larry Paulson and others; also about 50 pages devoted to a proof of the law of quadratic reciprocity and properties of Euler’s ϕ function, neither of which are used in the proof of the prime number theorem. The page count does not include the basic HOL library, or properties of the real numbers that we obtained from the HOL-Complex library. (shrink)

Hilbert’s program: • Formalize abstract, infinitary, nonconstructive mathematics. • Prove consistency using only finitary methods.

In the theory of programming languages, type inference is the process of inferring the type of an expression automatically, often making use of information from the context in which the expression appears. Such mechanisms turn out to be extremely useful in the practice of interactive theorem proving, whereby users interact with a computational proof assistant to constructformal axiomatic derivations of mathematical theorems. This article explains some of the mechanisms for type inference used by the "Mathematical Components" project, which is working (...) towards a verification of the Feit-Thompson theorem. (shrink)

ArgumentIt would have been easy for a less imaginative historian of mathematics than Herbert Mehrtens to have portrayed the work of Hilbert, Hausdorff, and other modernists as pioneers, and those who did not subscribe to their program as people who failed, were not good enough to make the turn, and were eventually and convincingly left behind. That he did not do so is not only because this would have been a shallow, selective view of the facts: it is incompatible with (...) his Foucauldian approach to the relations between knowledge and power. Instead, he defined what I see as the most intriguing category of actor in his Moderne—Sprache—Mathematik (1990), the Gegenmoderner, or counter-moderns. The three men who characterize this position are Felix Klein, Henri Poincaré, and Luitzen Brouwer, and each merits a section in the book.Of the three, Poincaré is the hardest to contain within that category. The range of his work, the nature of his influence, and the shifting standards by which mathematical significance has been evaluated by mathematicians, historians of mathematics, and society at large, all contribute to the problem. After thirty years, the methodological presumptions and aspirations of historians of mathematics have also changed, and I shall suggest that one way to appreciate the richness of Mehrtens’ book, to gain insight into what is meant by mathematical modernism, and to acknowledge a generation of work by other historians since 1990, is to re-examine aspects of Poincaré’s life and work and scholarship about him. Prodded by remarks by Leo Corry, Moritz Epple, and David Rowe, I shall suggest that the simple but useful dichotomy modern/counter-modern must be seen as a way into a more complicated situation, one in which different aspects of mathematics, specifically applied mathematics and the relationship of mathematics to contemporary physics, require fresh accounts of the role of modern mathematics in society. (shrink)

This short article is an introduction to a collection of essays written to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Raymond Aron in 1983. Having briefly examined the recent controversy associated with the publication of Daniel Lindenberg's Le Rappel à l'ordre, it discusses the development of political thinking in France over the last 20 years and the place occupied by the revival of interest in liberalism. It concludes by suggesting that the dominance sometimes attributed to liberalism in contemporary France (...) might be misplaced, citing in particular the manner in which the radical left has been able to transform itself and maintain the rhetoric of anti-capitalism. It cites recent opposition to the war in Iraq as an example of patterns of ideological continuity. To that extent, Aron might well have again found himself in the minority. (shrink)

Both metaethicists and Kant scholars alike use the phrase ‘Kantian constructivism’ to refer to a kind of austere constructivism that holds that substantive ethical conclusions can be derived from the practical standpoint of rational agency as such. I argue that this widespread understanding of Kant is incompatible with Kant’s claim that the Categorical Imperative is a synthetic a priori practical judgement. Taking this claim about the syntheticity of the Categorical Imperative seriously implies that moral judgements follow from extra-logical but necessary (...) principles. These principles have to do not with the laws of practical thinking but the laws of practical thought about an object. I conclude that historical Kant was not what has come to be called a ‘Kantian constructivist’. (shrink)

This essay aims to examine metropolitan cities of Latin America with two aspects of the literature in anthropology, history, and sociology in mind. First, the essay addresses an imbalanced focus on cities in the USA and Canada by sketching the significance of migration, creation, and urban development in four major metropolises of Latin America. Second, in place of a framework of urban imaginaries, which has dominated the sociology of Latin American cities in recent years, I argue for a more precise (...) notion of metropolitan imaginaries that better frames the creativity of particular cities and their level of integration into international and regional networks. With this more precise notion, I distinguish southern cities as highly connected places, which attract migrants and bring economic and cultural traffic to their shores, ports, plazas, and streets. They are lively centers of Atlantic modernity with connections that generate greater magnitude for creativity and, as such, bear international significance as places of architecture and urban design. In their informal settlements, impulses of organic creation further distinguish southern metropolises from their North American counterparts. The quality of international and regional connections distinguishes these cities from other urban centers in Latin America, a point underestimated in the literature on urban imaginaries. In this essay, I examine 19th and 20th-century Buenos Aires, Mexico City, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Each is distinguished from most cities by the magnitude of migration, the diversity of their populations, and the connections they have to global and regional developments. Crucially, each one stands out for the quality and impact of their metropolis-making, particularly in creative architecture and urban design. (shrink)

: In light of information uncovered about human radiation experiments conducted during the Cold War, an important charge for the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was to assess the current state of protections for human research subjects. This assessment was designed to enhance the Committee's ability to make informed recommendations for the improvement of future policies and practices for the protection of research subjects. The Committee's examination of current protections revealed great improvement over those from the past, yet some (...) problems remain. Although the data collected by the Committee highlight specific areas in need of attention, the Committee's work should be viewed in part as the beginning of a series of ongoing assessments of the adequacy and effectiveness of the protections afforded to human subjects. (shrink)