How people pay is critically important to consumers and businesses alike. Many consumers are choosing to pay for goods and services from an increasing number of options. Tech‐savvy urbanites buy coffee by tapping their phone on a reader. Parents returning from a night out use peer‐to‐peer payment apps, such as Venmo, to pay the sitter. The recent explosion of financial innovations promises faster, more efficient, and cheaper transactions. These increasing digital payment options coincide with decreased number and volume of cash (...) transactions. However, vulnerable populations face more constrained payment choices and often rely exclusively on cash. Without experience, devices, or acceptable credit histories, vulnerable populations may have little access to digital transactions. The advantages of falling digital costs and other benefits thus accrue to the digitally connected. At the same time, those who must transact in coins and paper money are likely to find their relative costs increasing. This paper highlights payment trends and the potential impact on vulnerable populations in the United States as we move toward a cashless society. This paper should stimulate discussions of public policy initiatives to mitigate digital payment issues for vulnerable people. (shrink)

Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease is a fatal, transmissible, neurodegenerative disorder for which there is currently no effective treatment. vCJD arose from the zoonotic spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. There is now compelling evidence for human to human transmission through blood transfusions from presymptomatic carriers and experts are warning that the real epidemic may be yet to come. Imperatives exist for the development of reliable, non-invasive presymptomatic diagnostic tests. Research into such tests is well advanced. In this article the ethical implications of (...) the availability of these tests are elaborated and comparisons drawn with predictive genetic testing for Huntington’s disease and screening for HIV. Paramount to considerations is the issue of whom to test, weighing up respect for personal autonomy against obligations to benefit and protect society. A paradigm is proposed similar to that used for HIV screening but with unique features: compulsory testing of all blood/organ donors and individuals undergoing surgery or invasive procedures who have a significant risk of disease transmission. (shrink)

Although many of Edmund Burke's speeches and writings contain prominent economic dimensions, his economic thought seldom receives the attention it warrants. Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke's Political Economy stands as the most comprehensive study to date of this fascinating subject. In addition to providing rigorous textual analysis, Collins unearths previously unpublished manuscripts and employs empirical data to paint a rich historical and theoretical context for Burke's economic beliefs. Collins integrates Burke's reflections on trade, taxation, and revenue within (...) his understanding of the limits of reason and his broader conception of empire. Such reflections demonstrate the ways that commerce, if properly managed, could be an instrument for both public prosperity and imperial prestige. More importantly, Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke's Political Economy raises timely ethical questions about capitalism and its limits. In Burke's judgment, civilizations cannot endure on transactional exchange alone, and markets require ethical preconditions. There is a grace to life that cannot be bought. (shrink)

The story of Epaminondas' trial has come down to us in two divergent traditions, which differ as to the occasion, the ground, and the result of the action. One group of authors, of whom Plutarch may be taken as the chief representative, gives the following data: The trial took place after Epaminondas' first campaign in Peloponnesus— i.e. in spring 369 b.c. The charge preferred against Epaminondas was that he had outstayed his term of office as boeotarch. The trial resulted in (...) his acquittal. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor argues that the massive modularity thesis – the claim that (human) cognition is wholly served by domain specific, autonomous computational devices, i.e., modules – is a priori incoherent, self-defeating. The thesis suffers from what Fodor dubs the input problem: the function of a given module (proprietarily understood) in a wholly modular system presupposes non-modular processes. It will be argued that massive modularity suffers from no such a priori problem. Fodor, however, also offers what he describes as a really (...) real input problem (i.e., an empirical one). It will be suggested that this problem is real enough, but it does not selectively strike down massive modularity – it is a problem for everyone. (shrink)

This is an encyclopedia article about epistemic closure principles. The article explains what they are, their various philosophical uses, how they are argued for or against, and provides an overview of the related literature.

In this paper, we will explain and analyse a phenomenological distinction between two kinds of actions. The distinction we have in mind is the difference between those actions that actors try, or are satisfied, to carry out, in like situations, ‘in the same way’, and all other actions. We call the first kind ‘mimeomorphic actions’ and the second kind ‘polimorphic actions’. We will define these two kinds of actions, and their species, on the basis of their characteristic intentions and experiences, (...) and thus our inquiry falls broadly into the phenomenology of action. The latter has been defined by D. W. Smith as the “description of the experience of acting, or doing something”. (shrink)

The focus of this small contribution to studies in the history of philosophy of American education falls upon the backside of the cultural upheaval between 1880 and 1920. The general purpose is to relate aspects of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy of education to pedagogical principles in the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, a document of the National Education Association’s Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, published in 1918. An attempt is made to implement this purpose by analyzing the educational principles (...) in the NEA report, by clarifying Spencer’s educational principles in relationship to the report, and by explaining Spencer’s philosophical principles and relating them to the CRSE document. In addition to similarities between specific Spencerian principles and the 1918 report, especially noted is the ideological proximity of the “spirit” of Spencer’s evolutionary naturalism and empiricism to the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. (shrink)

Temporal externalism (TE) is the thesis (defended by Jackman (1999)) that the contents of some of an individual’s thoughts and utterances at time t may be determined by linguistic developments subsequent to t. TE has received little discussion so far, Brown 2000 and Stoneham 2002 being exceptions. I defend TE by arguing that it solves several related problems concerning the extension of natural kind terms in scientifically ignorant communities. Gary Ebbs (2000) argues that no theory can reconcile our ordinary, practical (...) judgments of sameness of extension over time with the claim that linguistic usage determines word extensions. I argue that Ebbs shows at most that no theory other than TE can effect this reconciliation. Furthermore, while Ebbs’ argument undermines Jessica Brown’s solutions to two closely related problems about natural kind term extensions (Brown 1998), TE can solve both problems without difficulty. Some criticisms of TE are briefly addressed as well. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe Spatial Learning Task of Lhermitte and Signoret is an object-location arbitrary associative learning task. The task was originally developed to evaluate adults with severe amnesia. It is currently used in populations where the memory system either is not yet fully developed or where it has been compromised (e.g. epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, electroconvulsive therapy, cerebrovascular disease and dementia). Normative data have been published for paediatric cohorts and for older adults, however no data exist for the intervening adult years.MethodHere, we (...) address this gap, collecting normative data from 101 adults aged 18–45.ResultsOur data indicate that performance on the Spatial Learning Task is not influenced by age, gender, level of education or overall IQ. Less than 10% of the variance in learning scores is associated with variability in verbal memory. Ninety percent of participants achieved perfect scores on two successive trials (T2Cr) within five or fewer trials on the Spatial Learning Task. A T2Cr score of 6 is suggestive of impairment and a T2Cr score of 7 or more is statistically abnormal.ConclusionThese data expand the clinical utility of the Spatial Learning Task in the adult population. Future work should examine performance in lower IQ cohorts, including intellectual disability, and explore sensitivity to disease factors such as laterality of mesial temporal lobe damage. (shrink)

We propose that middle childhood female ambivalent attachment, given the adaptive problem of uncertainty of future investment, is designed to evoke immediate investment from current caregivers, rather than new investment sources. We suggest greater specificity of strategic attachment solutions to adaptive problems that differ by sex, time, and relationship type.

It is a familiar story that on April 5, 56 B.C., Cicero made a motion in the Senate concerning Caesar's Campanian land law, and that this action of his was one of the reasons for the conference of Luca. Query: What were the terms of the motion?

Among the shining examples of the panhellenic spirit of Athens in the spacious days of the Persian Wars, which Attic orators of the fourth century were fond of parading before their degenerate audiences, was an act of the Athenian Ecclesia, by which one Arthmius of Zeleia was declared an outlaw in the territory of Athens and her allies, ‘for that he had brought the gold from Media into Peloponnesus.’ This Psephisma is cited twice over in the speeches of Demosthenes. On (...) the principle that the Devil may quote Scripture, Aeschines cast it back into Demosthenes' teeth. From Aeschines we learn further that Arthmius had visited Athens in the course of his errand, and that he had narrowly escaped execution at the hands of the irate citizens. The proceedings against Arthmius were also recorded by Dinarchus, by Plutarch and by Aelius Aristides. (shrink)

Stephen Law developed a challenge to theism, known as the evil-god challenge (Law (2010) ). The evil-god challenge to theism is to explain why the theist’s responses to the problem of evil are any better than the diabolist’s – who believes in a supremely evil god – rejoinders to the problem of good, when all the theist’s ploys (theodicy, sceptical theism, etc.) can be parodied by the diabolist. In the first part of this article, I extend the evil-god challenge by (...) showing that additional theist replies to the problem of evil (more theodicies, the privation view of evil, and others) also may be appropriated, with just as much plausibility, in support of the diabolist position. In the second part of the article, I defend the evil-god challenge against several objections. (shrink)

In the opinion of Aristotle and Plutarch the growth of latifundia and consequent decline of the citizen population at Sparta were due to the absence of restrictions on gifts and bequests of land. According to Plutarch this freedom of gift and bequest, so far as it applied to the κλροι or entailed estates, was introduced by the τρα of an ephor named Epitadeus, who removed the ban on gift and bequest imposed by Lycurgus.

The peace concluded between Athens and Persia at the close of the Persian Wars , and usually known as the Peace of Callias, has been the subject of a new investigation by Wade-Gery, which is clearly destined to serve as the basis of further discussion of its problems. In the present article I shall confine myself to one point of special interest arising out of a novel clause which Wade-Gery reads into the treaty and formulates, exempli gratia, as follows: ‘In (...) the area west of Sardis inhabited by Greeks, the King shall send no functionaries nor exercise any authority: his sole right shall be a yearly tribute of a fixed amount based on the survey of Artaphernes in 493.’. (shrink)

Peer review of grant applications, it has been suggested, might be distorted by what is popularly termed old boyism, cronyism, or particularism. We argue that the existing debate emphasizes the more uninteresting aspects of the peer review system and that the operation of old boyism, as currently understood would have little effect on the overall direction of science. We identify a phenomenon of cognitive particularism, which we consider to be more important than the institutional cronyism analyzed in previous studies. We (...) illustrate with material drawn from observation of grant-awarding commit tees of the Science and Engineering Research CounciL In the concluding discussion, we explore some of the possible implications for the peer review system. (shrink)

The new historical inscription from Epidaurus has provided us with a unique piece of documentary evidence on Greek federal constitutions. In this article I propose to study the principal points of constitutional interest contained in it. I have based my text on that of Professor Wilcken and M. Kougeas; and I follow Professor Wilcken and Mr. Tarn in identifying the new document with the constitution which Demetrius Poliorcetes imposed upon his pan-Hellenic League in 303–2 B.C.

Deprivation accounts of death's badness, such as Feldman’s (1992), that purport to avoid questionable life-death comparatives Silverstein warns against (1980) by comparing only the values of various alternative life-wholes, implicitly depend upon assigning greater comparative value to periods of these life-wholes (for the person who lives) than is assigned to periods when the person is not alive, and thus are simply special cases of the problematic life-death comparative. Life-death comparatives undermine any deprivation account if (1) there is no way things (...) are (good or bad) for one who does not exist, and (2) values are comparative in the way specified by VC. Rejecting VC is not an option for the standard deprivation account, since this account uses VC to show that since continued life is good for the person who continues to live, death must be worse for that person. The non-standard deprivation account, dubbed by McMahan the reconciliation strategy, does not employ VC, but it also fails to vindicate common sense attitudes towards matters of life and death, and is in the main a capitulation to the Epicurean position. The remaining option for one who wishes to defend the view that death is typically bad for the person who dies is to directly target the Epicurean starting point, that things cannot be good or bad for a person when he does not exist. (shrink)

Polybius II. 39. 9: ο μν λλá γε καί πεр тŵν μφσβηтοтμΈνων πÉрεψαν θηβαîοι καί λακεδαιμόνιοι μόνοις рŵν Έλλήνων Χαιοας, ο πρòς рήν δùναμν ἀποβλÉψανрες, σΧÉδον γαρ λαΧασрην рòрε γεрων έλλήνωνεîΧον рó δÉ πλεαον, εας νήν πασрν καα λην καλοκαγαθααν Strabo VIII.