Achieving space domain awareness requires the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Storing and leveraging associated space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and collision prediction and avoidance present further challenges. Space objects are characterized according to a variety of parameters including their identifiers, design specifications, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, processes, operational statuses, and associated persons, organizations, or nations. The Space Object Ontology provides a consensus-based realist framework (...) for formulating such characterizations in a computable fashion. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in the Space Object Ontology and stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space domain awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators. This paper presents the core of the Space Object Ontology, discusses its advantages over other approaches to space object classification, and demonstrates its ability to combine diverse sets of data from multiple sources within an expandable framework. Finally, we show how the ontology provides benefits for enhancing and maintaining longterm space domain awareness. (shrink)

Proceedings held May 1989. Topics include temporal logic, hierarchical knowledge bases, default theories, nonmonotonic and analogical reasoning, formal theories of belief revision, and metareasoning. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

The concept of social capital refers to the ways in which people make use of their social networks in "getting ahead." Social capital isn't just about the connections in networks, but fundamentally concerns the distribution of resources on the basis of exchanges. This volume focuses on how social capital interacts with social institutions, based on the premise that markets, communities, and families are the major contexts within which people meet and build up social networks and the foci to create social (...) capital. Featuring innovations in thinking about exchange mechanisms, resource distribution, institutional logics, resource diversity, and the degree of openness or closure of social networks, these chapters present some of the most important advances in this essential field. Paralleling these theoretical developments, the chapters also improve practical methodological work on social capital research, using new techniques and measurement methods for the uncovering of social logics. (shrink)

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Relevance was one of the most important concerns in the philosophy of Alfred Schutz. In a sequence of articles dealing with a number ...

Ethics of Christian Freedom and Discipleship is written for teachers and students of Christian ethics within the English-speaking world. It demonstrates the basis of Christian ethics in Christian theology. Twenty-nine years ago, before leaving the Nigerian theological college where the author had been teaching, Between Two Worlds: An Ethic of Christian Freedom was privately printed. In Kenya, at what became St. Paul's University, the author primarily used copies of this book for eleven years of teaching Christian ethics. Ethics of Christian (...) Freedom and Discipleship manifests continuity with the author's earlier book, but is a distinctly different work. (shrink)

The work of Jacques Ellul as interpreter of the Bible is a warning to the guild of professional exegetes that the historical-critical method can become a technique for mastering the text without being mastered by the subject of the text.

Using the linearized Einstein gravitational field equations and the Maxwell field equations it is shown that the plane of polarization of an electromagnetic wave is rotated by the gravitational field created by the electromagnetic radiation of a ring laser. It is further shown that this gravitational Faraday effect shares many of the properties of the standard electromagnetic Faraday effect. An experimental arrangement is then suggested for the observation of this gravitational Faraday effect induced by the ring laser.

'There is no Nietzsche, just a shifting set of contradictory views' suggests Hayman in this stimulating and provocative guide. Those envious contemporaries who smeared Nietzsche with the mark of madness came closer than they knew in characterising a philosopher in whose thought ambivalence approximated to disintegration of the self. Yet while the nineteenth century's coherent, consistent systems of certainty came crashing down ingloriously at the very first touch of the twentieth, Nietzsche's discourses survived. He was more modern, it seemed, than (...) the moderns. Today is work is more contemporary than ever, his various voices speaking compellingly to a sensibility for which paradox is the only truth. (shrink)

We are developing the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND) to provide a framework to enable representation of aspects of neurological diseases that are relevant to their treatment and study. ND is a representational tool that addresses the need for unambiguous annotation, storage, and retrieval of data associated with the treatment and study of neurological diseases. ND is being developed in compliance with the Open Biomedical Ontology Foundry principles and builds upon the paradigm established by the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) (...) for the representation of entities in the domain of disease and medical practice. Initial applications of ND will include the annotation and analysis of large data sets and patient records for Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and stroke. (shrink)

`Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind Not by the sun's rays, nor the bright shafts of day, Must be dispersed, as is most necessary, But by the face of nature and her laws.' Lucretius' poem On the Nature of the Universe combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour Lucretius demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world (...) and everything in it is governed not by the gods, but by the mechanical laws of nature. By believing this, men can live in peace of mind and happiness. Lucretius bases his argument on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus. His poem explores sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology through acute observation of the beauties of the natural world and with moving sympathy for man's place in it. Sir Ronald Melville's accessible and accurate verse translation is complemented by an introduction and notes situating Lucretius' scientific theories within the thought of 1st century BCE Rome and discussing the Epicurean philosophy that was his inspiration and why the issues Lucretius' poem raisies about the scientific and poetical views of the world continue to be important. (shrink)

Religious views of the future often include detailed expectations of profound changes to nature and humanity. Popular American evangelical Christianity, especially writers like Hal Lindsey, Rick Warren, or Rob Bell, offer extended accounts that provide insight into the views of the future held by many people. In the case of Lindsey, detailed descriptions of future events are provided, along with the claim that forecasted events will occur within a generation. These views are summarized and compared to the secular idea of (...) a coming “intelligence explosion” or technological singularity as advanced by Ray Kurzweil, which is described in terms of its history as an idea and in terms of its specific proposals for the coming transformation of the cosmos, which is also predicted to occur within a generation. While profoundly different in important ways, these two perspectives share many features with each other—for example, in their respective predictions of distinct stages in the unfolding of the future of the cosmos. (shrink)

This book sorts out the confusion created by the use of the term "postmodern" in relation to widely divergent theological positions. Four different types of postmodern theology are distinguished in the preface: constructive, deconstructive, liberationist, and conservative. Two forms of each type are discussed in the book. Writing from a constructive, postmodern perspective, the authors enter into dialogue with the deconstructive postmodernism of Mark C. Taylor and Jean-François Lyotard, with the liberationist postmodernism of Harvey Cox and Cornel West, and with (...) the conservative postmodernism of George William Rutler and John Paul II. (shrink)

A common objection to Russell's theory of descriptions concerns incomplete definite descriptions: uses of (for example) ‘the book is overdue’ in contexts where there is clearly more than one book. Many contemporary Russellians hold that such utterances will invariably convey a contextually determined complete proposition, for example, that the book in your briefcase is overdue. But according to the objection this gets things wrong: typically, when a speaker utters such a sentence, no facts about the context or the speaker's communicative (...) intentions single out a particular description-theoretic proposition as the proposition expressed. However, this is an objection only if it is assumed that successful linguistic communication requires the hearer to identify a proposition uniquely intended by the speaker. We argue that this assumption is mistaken. On our view, no proposition, descriptive or referential, is uniquely intended in such a context; thus, no proposition can nor need be identified as the proposition expressed. One significant upshot is that, once the aforementioned assumption is rejected, incompleteness no longer poses a threat to Russell's theory of descriptions. (shrink)

(2013). Conversational implicature, communicative intentions, and content. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, Essays on the Nature of Propositions, pp. 720-740.

We are causing species to go extinct at extraordinary rates, altering existing species in unprecedented ways and creating entirely new species. More than ever before, we require an ethic of species to guide our interactions with them. In this book, Ronald L. Sandler examines the value of species and the ethical significance of species boundaries and discusses what these mean for species preservation in the light of global climate change, species engineering and human enhancement. He argues that species possess (...) several varieties of value, but they are not sacred. It is sometimes permissible to alter species, let them go extinct and invent new ones. Philosophically rigorous, accessible and illustrated with examples drawn from contemporary science, this book will be of interest to students of philosophy, bioethics, environmental ethics and conservation biology. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the media have repeatedly praised healthcare workers for their ‘heroic’ work. Although this gratitude is undoubtedly appreciated by many, we must be cautious about overuse of the term ‘hero’ in such discussions. The challenges currently faced by healthcare workers are substantially greater than those encountered in their normal work, and it is understandable that the language of heroism has been evoked to praise them for their actions. Yet such language can have potentially negative consequences. Here, I (...) examine what heroism is and why it is being applied to the healthcare workers currently, before outlining some of the problems associated with the heroism narrative currently being employed by the media. Healthcare workers have a clear and limited duty to treat during the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be grounded in a broad social contract and is strongly associated with certain reciprocal duties that society has towards healthcare workers. I argue that the heroism narrative can be damaging, as it stifles meaningful discussion about what the limits of this duty to treat are. It fails to acknowledge the importance of reciprocity, and through its implication that all healthcare workers have to be heroic, it can have negative psychological effects on workers themselves. I conclude that rather than invoking the language of heroism to praise healthcare workers, we should examine, as a society, what duties healthcare workers have to work in this pandemic, and how we can support them in fulfilling these. (shrink)

Grice's (1957) analysis of non-natural meaning generated a huge industry, where new analyses were put forward to respond to successively more complex counterexamples. Davis (2003) offers a novel and refreshingly simple analysis of meaning in terms of the expression of belief, where (roughly) an agent expresses the belief that p just in case she performs a publicly observable action with the intention that it be an indication that she occurrently believes that p. I argue that Davis's analysis fails to capture (...) the essentially overt nature of our meaning-intentions, and with it, a plausible sufficient condition for meaning. (shrink)

ABSTRACT As bioethics emerged in the 1960s and 1970s and began to have enormous impacts on the practice of medicine and research – fuelled, by broad socio‐political changes that gave rise to the struggle of women, African Americans, gay men and lesbians, and the antiauthoritarian impulse that characterised the New Left in democratic capitalist societies – little attention was given to the question of the ethics of public health. This was all the more striking since the core values and practices (...) of public health, often entailing the subordination of the individual for the common good, seemed opposed to the ideological impulses of bioethics. Of what relevance is autonomy‐focused bioethics for public health, with its mix of justifications including those that are either implicitly or explicitly paternalistic or that seek to impose strictures on individuals and communities in the name of collective welfare? To examine the deep divide between the central commitments of bioethics and the values that animate the practice of public health, we focus on a series of controversies implicating the concepts of privacy, liberty, and paternalism. Recognising the role of moral values in decision‐making was a signal contribution of bioethics in its formative period. Over the past three decades a broad array of perspectives emerged under the rubric of bioethics but individualism remains central. As we commence the process of shaping an ethics of public health, it is clear that bioethics is the wrong place to start when thinking about the balances required in defence of the public's health. (shrink)

_Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation_ offers a resolution of one of the most vexing problems in Nietzsche scholarship. As perhaps the most significant predecessor of more recent attempts to formulate a postmetaphysical epistemology and ontology, Nietzsche is considered by many critics to share this problem with his successors: How can an antifoundationalist philosophy avoid vicious relativism and legitimate its claim to provide a platform for the critique of arguments, practices, and institutions? Christoph Cox argues that Nietzsche successfully navigates between relativism and (...) dogmatism, accepting the naturalistic critique of metaphysics and theology provided by modern science, yet maintaining that a thoroughgoing naturalism must move beyond scientific reductionism. It must accept a central feature of aesthetic understanding: acknowledgment of the primacy and irreducibility of interpretation. This view of Nietzsche's doctrines of perspectivism, becoming, and will to power as products of an overall naturalism balanced by a reciprocal commitment to interpretationism will spur new discussions of epistemology and ontology in contemporary thought. (shrink)

Alfred Betschart has claimed that the project of existential Marxism is a contradiction in terms, but this argument, even when supported by many experts and quotes from Sartre’s 1975 interview, misses the point of my Boston Review article, “The Philosophy of Our Time.” I believe the important argument today is not about whether we can prove that Sartre ever became a full-fledged Marxist, but rather about the political and philosophical possibility, and importance today, of existentialist Marxism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 87 c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM RUSSELL AS “SPANISH ASTRONOMER” (A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW) Sheila Turcon Russell Research Centre / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 [email protected] Constance Malleson. The Coming Back. London: Jonathan Cape, 1933. Pp. 328. 7s. 6d. ublished in 1933 and never reprinted, The Coming Back is Constance Malleson’s first novel. She had been publishing shorter fiction as well as articles since (...) 1919.1 Her lover, Bertrand Russell, had encouraged her writing career, assisting with the placement of her first short story in The English Review.2 He thought a writing career preferable to acting. Using the stage name “Colette O’Niel”, she had a successful career on the stage.3 The novel is a fictional account of the love affair between Russell and Colette.They appear as Gregory del Orellano and Konradin Waring. It was not, however, recognized as a roman à clef when it was published, as their affair was not known by anyone except their closest friends and family members. John Slater recognized it for what it was.4 Three of the four Russell biographers mention the novel.5 Presumably all three relied on Slater’s article. Ronald Clark quotes one sentence from the novel, a summation of Gregory’s character by one of the other characters who shared the view of many. Gregory was seen as “a man exhausting other men by his intellect; exhausting women by his intensity; wearing out his friends, sucking them dry, passing from person to person, never giving any real happiness—or finding any” (Coming Back, p. 307; Clark, p. 583). Caroline Moorehead quotes several sentences about the 1 Turcon, “A Bibliography of Constance Malleson” (2012). 2 Malleson, “The End” by “Christine Harte” (1919). 3 Turcon, op. cit., appendix, acting roles, pp. 188–90. 4 John G. Slater, “Lady Constance Malleson, ‘Colette O’Niel’” (1975), pp. 10–11. 5 Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (1975); Moorehead, Bertrand Russell (1992); Monk, Bertrand Russell,Vol. 1 (1996). m= 88 Reviews c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM importance of work to Konradin—work that Gregory deplored (Coming Back, p. 105; Moorehead, p. 264). Only Ray Monk undertakes a detailed description of the novel, even naming the last chapter of The Spirit of Solitude, “The Coming Back”. He identifies, as did Slater, several other characters with their real life counterparts: Ottoline Morrell is Magdalena de Santa Segunda; T. C. Maynard is T. S. Eliot; Jevons is Clifford Allen; Marcus Beazley is Maurice Elvey; Gertrude West is Dora Black. He quotes the sentence that Clark had used earlier (Monk 1: 607). Monk writes that “Russell claimed never to have read The Coming Back (or any of Colette’s other books). Perhaps he knew it would make painful reading” (1: 608). Monk provides no source for this judgment, and in fact it is untrue. Although The Coming Back is not specifically discussed in their correspondence, her other three books are.6 My reading of the novel is coloured by an attempt to identify what is true in the novel. My knowledge of the truth is based on editing their correspondence.The novel is a fascinating portrait of the Russell and Colette relationship, far more revealing to those in the know than her autobiographies, where libel concerns were always at the forefront. Her first autobiography, AfterTenYears, had been published two years earlier, in 1931, to great acclaim. The Coming Back’s dust-jacket reads: Here is the first novel from the author of that vivid and successful autobiography, After Ten Years. And as might be expected, it shows the same vitality, integrity, and the same passion for beauty as the earlier work. Constance Malleson presents a portrait of a young girl of our times, and of her stand for freedom, through all its stages from selfishness to a fine renunciation. Before the novel begins Colette includes four things. She dedicates the book to “Joneen when he is grown up”. Colette was very fond of Russell’s son John, and this may well refer to... (shrink)

From "Materialism and Revolution" through _Hope Now_, Jean-Paul Sartre was deeply engaged with questions about the meaning and justifiability of violence. In the first comprehensive treatment of Sartre’s views on the subject, Ronald Santoni begins by tracing the full trajectory of Sartre’s evolving thought on violence and shows how the "curious ambiguity" of freedom affirming itself against freedom in his earliest writings about violence developed into his "curiously ambivalent" position through his later writings.

Increasingly complex methodological options, as well as growing sophistication of users, means that the formulation of a research design prior to conducting an evaluation study is likely to be more demanding and time-consucting than previously. In fact, one of the most difficult problems in the entire evaluation endeavor is the development of an appropriate design.. But the issue is not only one of complexity—it is also one of the appropriateness of the designs to the questions at hand. The concern of (...) this article is with tightening the linkage between questions asked and answers given—making sure that the design organizes and directs the evaluation efforts to provide relevant information germane to the needs of the policymakers. By tightening this linkage, it is presumed that the findings from evaluation studies can gain increased legitimacy and use. Appropriate uses and abuses of seven program evaluation designs are analyzed, stressing designs that are most appropriate to the types of informational questions asked by policymakers. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that our use of vague language poses an intractable problem for any account of content and communication on which (i) the things we assert are propositions and (ii) understanding an assertion requires recognizing which proposition the speaker asserted. John MacFarlane has argued that this problem concerning vague language is itself a species of an even more general problem for such traditional accounts—the problem posed by “felicitous” underspecification. Repurposing certain ideas from Allan Gibbard, MacFarlane offers a (...) novel theory of vagueness, plan-expressivism, as an account that can handle both vagueness and such underspecification in communication. In this paper, I argue that despite its many virtues, plan-expressivism fails as a general account of meaning and communication. In particular, I show that when it comes to the problem of felicitous underspecification, plan-expressivism fares no better than the more traditional accounts of content and communication it is intended to replace. Along the way, I argue that the problem of felicitous underspecification puts considerable pressure on an assumption that is at the core of both plan-expressivism and the accounts of its more traditionalist rivals – namely, that in cases of successful linguistic communication, we must always be able to find something – whether a propositional content or a conversational update – that the speaker is intending to share with her audience. (shrink)

We develop the theory of layered posets and use the notion of layering to prove a new iteration theorem is κ-cc, as long as direct limits are used sufficiently often. This iteration theorem simplifies and generalizes the various chain condition arguments for universal Kunen iterations in the literature on saturated ideals, especially in situations where finite support iterations are not possible. We also provide two applications:1 For any n≥1, a wide variety of <ωn−1-closed, ωn+1-cc posets of size ωn+1 can consistently (...) be absorbed by quotients of saturated ideals on ωn.2 For any n∈ω, the tree property at ωn+3 is consistent with Chang’s conjecture ↠. (shrink)

The present research was guided by the important need for a diversion from an economistic to a humanistic management perspective of sustainability. It concentrates on the current importance of digital strategic communication, particularly regarding the concept of corporate sustainability in the context of the conflict arena of the oil industry. The focus is on the comparison of the persuasive effectiveness of the framings of corporate versus activist NGO website communications and their impacts on the perception of the triple pillars of (...) sustainability and, corporate greenwashing with respect to a proposed bituminous oil pipeline in Canada. The results of these pro and con messages were analyzed within the Elaboration Likelihood Model demonstrating a “non expert” peripheral route to a positive persuasion from exposure to the corporate communication versus an “expert” central route to a negative persuasion from the activist NGO communication. Subsequent exposure to the opposite website communication further emphasized the predominance of a negative persuasion based on both groups now being motivated as “expert” viewers of these strategic communications, leading to an important perception of greenwashing by participants resulting from vague claims, visual and linguistic contents of the corporate communication versus the mainly verifiable factual ones in that of the activist NGO. (shrink)