We propose a domain-level ontology of plays for the facilitation of play-based collaborative autonomy among unmanned and manned-unmanned aircraft teams in the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) mission domain. We define a play as a type of plan that prescribes some pattern of intentional acts that are intended to reliably result in some goal in some competitive context, and which specifies one or more roles that are realized by those prescribed intentional acts. The ontology is well suited to be extended (...) to other types of military and nonmilitary unmanned vehicle operations. (shrink)

Applied ontologies have been used more and more frequently to enhance systems engineering. In this paper, we argue that adopting principles of ontological realism can increase the benefits that ontologies have already been shown to provide to the systems engineering process. Moreover, adopting Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), an ISO standard for top-level ontologies from which more domain specific ontologies are constructed, can lead to benefits in four distinct areas of systems engineering: (1) interoperability, (2) standardization, (3) testing, and (4) data (...) exploitation. Reaping these benefits in a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) context requires utilizing an ontology’s vocabulary when modeling systems and entities within those systems. If the chosen ontology abides by the principles of ontological realism, a semantic standard capable of uniting distinct domains, using BFO as a hub, can be leveraged to promote greater interoperability among systems. As interoperability and standardization increase, so does the ability to collect data during the testing and implementation of systems. These data can then be reasoned over by computational reasoners using the logical axioms within the ontology. This, in turn, generates new data that would have been impossible or too inefficient to generate without the aid of computational reasoners. (shrink)

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

In mid-June 2009, the Obama administration dissolved the President's Council on Bioethics (PCBE), a group established by President George W. Bush in August 2001 and whose nearly eight-year life was marked from beginning to end by controversy. While some will regret the PCBE's passing, others will regard the Council as a failed experiment in doing public bioethics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.4 (2003) 393-406 [Access article in PDF] U.S. Defunding of UNFPA:A Moral Analysis Ronald M. Green Ethical decisions made inside the Beltway sometimes have global consequences. Nowhere is this more true than with respect to the decision by Secretary of State Colin Powell on 21 July 2002 to halt $34 million in U.S. funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Behind this (...) decision lay the forces of America's abortion politics as well as tangled issues in law and bioethics.I became involved in this debate when, in early September 2003, I served as a member of a nine-person delegation of U.S. religious leaders and ethicists that traveled to China to meet with those associated with the UNFPA program there. The delegation was assembled by Frances Kissling, of Catholics for a Free Choice, which also provided support and funding for the necessary travel and administrative services. In China, our contacts included UNFPA administrators, Chinese government officials, and ordinary villagers touched by UNFPA efforts. In the middle of its week-long stay, the delegation left Beijing in three separate groups to travel to remote provincial regions (Hubei, Gansu, and Ningxia). Our goal was to respond to the Bush administration's defunding decision by deepening our understanding of the current Chinese population program and UNFPA's relationship to it. In the course of this enquiry, I encountered challenging questions that drew on my own training in ethics in novel ways. Historical Background UNFPA is the world's largest organization providing family planning and reproductive health services. It was established in 1969 as the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. In 1987, the Economic and Social Council decided to rename it the United Nations Population Fund, but to retain the original abbreviation-acronym. UNFPA works to improve access to and the quality of family planning services in more than 140 of the poorest countries in the world. It is also very active in providing services aimed at preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. It does not provide abortion services, but works to prevent abortion through family planning and to help countries provide services for women suffering from the complications of unsafe abortion. [End Page 393]Although UNFPA is officially an agency of the United Nations, its budget, currently about $200 million per year, comes from voluntary payments by donors, including UN member states. U.S. funding has been irregular. In 1985, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a foreign operations appropriations measure that has come to be known as the "Kemp-Kasten Amendment." This measure, which has been repassed in substantially unchanged form every year since, forbids funding for "any organization or program which, as determined by the President of the United States, supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization."1 From 1986 on, the Reagan and Bush administrations halted all U.S. funding for UNFPA activities around the world on the grounds that the agency's activities in China caused it to be involved in supporting or participating in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization, and, hence, put it in violation of Kemp-Kasten.Efforts by the People's Republic of China to slow the increase of its population date from the early 1970s when, in a striking departure from classical Marxist theory, which had insisted on the positive value of added labor power and denied the need for demographic controls, the government imposed a policy of delayed marriage and birth spacing. In 1979, these efforts intensified with the advent of the "one child policy." (In fact, this name is misleading since the number of children allowed a couple varies significantly from urban to rural areas, with rural residents and members of ethnic minorities permitted to have larger families.) To implement this program, the government established a National Family Planning Commission (now National Population and Family Planning Commission) which, among other things, set up a network of family planning service centers around the country, where birth control... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:At the Vortex of Controversy:Developing Guidelines for Human Embryo ResearchRonald M. Green (bio)Because of the unavoidable time delay between the submission and publication of this article, its readers will have a significant advantage over its writer: You will know whether the recommendations of the Report of the Human Embryo Research Panel, on which I have served as a member since its inception in January of this year, are progressing (...) smoothly as the basis for evaluating future, federally-funded embryo research—or whether any of the recommendations has become stalled in controversy and political dispute. Staid journals like Science already are predicting that the Panel's Report is likely to create a stormy autumn for the National Institutes of Health.The Panel formally presented its Report to NIH Director Harold Varmus on September 27. The Panel's recommendations will be reviewed by the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) until the ACD's next meeting in early December. At that time, the ACD will make formal recommendations to Dr. Varmus, who then will initiate the process of drafting federal regulations that could go into effect by Spring 1995.Historical BackgroundControversy is not new to the area of human embryo research. In the United States, federal regulations enacted in the mid-1970s required any research on the human embryo to be approved by a federally mandated Ethics Advisory Board (EAB). The EAB drafted a significant report that provided ethical guidelines for research on the early, ex utero, human embryo. However, before the report could be acted upon, a new administration, which was opposed to abortion and anything remotely viewed as threatening to prenatal life, came to office, and when the EAB's charter expired in 1980, it was not renewed. In this manner, the Reagan and Bush administrations forestalled any federal support for embryo research in the United States. The next 13 years saw a significant expansion of infertility services in this country, but in the absence of federal funding and [End Page 345] review, there was very little systematic research on either infertility procedures or the human embryo.In January 1993, the U.S. political environment changed again when the Clinton administration fulfilled a campaign promise to remove a nearly five-year-old ban on fetal tissue transplantation research. Although fetal tissue research, which uses the remains of an aborted fetus, significantly differs from embryo research, which involves the developing conceptus ex utero before its transfer to and implantation in a womb, the changed political environment stimulated public discussion of embryo research as well. As a result, in June 1993, Congress nullified the federal regulations requiring EAB review for embryo research. Although this presumably left NIH free to fund embryo research without restrictions, NIH officials felt that guidelines were needed to ensure that such research was conducted in an ethically and socially responsible manner. Accordingly, in January 1994, NIH formed the Human Embryo Research Panel to propose such guidelines.The Panel Begins its WorkChaired by Steven Muller, President emeritus of the Johns Hopkins University, the Panel's 19 members included 7 basic and clinical scientists, 4 ethicists, 2 lawyers, and 6 individuals representing various backgrounds relevant to the making of public policy. Patricia King of the Georgetown University Law Center and Brigid Hogan, a cell biologist at Vanderbilt University, were appointed policy and science co-chairs respectively. Meeting for the first time in early February, the Panel was told by its chair and co-chairs that NIH's need for guidance in the face of pending proposals meant that it had approximately six months—including five one- to two-day meetings each month in Washington—in which to complete its work.In his charge, Dr. Varmus asked the Panel to place the possible areas of research into three categories: (1) acceptable for federal funding; (2) warranting additional review; and (3) unacceptable for federal support. In addition, he asked the Panel to draft guidelines for the review and conduct of the research deemed acceptable.Looking back after months of work, I vividly recall a sense of the enormity of the task facing us. We were being asked, in a short period of time, not only to master... (shrink)

Liberty and freedom are frequently invoked to justify political action. Presidents as diverse as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush have built their policies on some version of these noble values. Yet in practice, idealist agendas often turn sour as they confront specific circumstances on the ground. Demonstrated by incidents at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, the pursuit of liberty and freedom can lead to violence and repression, undermining our trust (...) in universal theories of liberalism, neoliberalism, and cosmopolitanism. Combining his passions for politics and geography, David Harvey charts a cosmopolitan order more appropriate to an emancipatory form of global governance. Political agendas tend to fail, he argues, because they ignore the complexities of geography. Incorporating geographical knowledge into the formation of social and political policy is therefore a necessary condition for genuine democracy. Harvey begins with an insightful critique of the political uses of freedom and liberty, especially during the George W. Bush administration. Then, through an ontological investigation into geography's foundational concepts—space, place, and environment—he radically reframes geographical knowledge as a basis for social theory and political action. As Harvey makes clear, the cosmopolitanism that emerges is rooted in human experience rather than illusory ideals and brings us closer to achieving the liberation we seek. (shrink)

The problem of providing mandated medical care has become commonplace as correctional systems in the United States struggle to manage unprecedented increases in its aging prison population. This study explores older incarcerated women’s perceptions of prison health care policies and their day-to-day survival experiences. Aggregate data obtained from a sample of 327 older women residing in prison facilities in five Southern states were used to identify a baseline of health conditions and needs for this vulnerable group. With an average of (...) 4.2 chronic health conditions, frequently histories of victimization, and high rates of mental health issues, the women’s experiences of negotiating health care was particularly challenging. By incorporating the voices of older women, we expose the contradictions, dilemmas, and obstacles they experience in their attempts to obtain health care. It is clear from the personal accounts shared that, despite court mandates, penal harm practices such as delaying or denying medical treatment as well as occasional staff indifferences are common in women’s prisons. With older women having the greatest need for health care, an age- and gender-sensitive approach is recommended. (shrink)

Many of America's new Buddhists are spreading the idea that they are a "sangha" and that their lay "sangha" movement is the correct adaptation of Buddhism to the American scene. Where does this peculiar and dangerous idea come from?

2.4 The Example: Infants and object-(im)permanence : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 17 2.4.1 Why a contentful account is warranted: Perspectival sensitivity : : : 17 2.4.2 The \searching under a cloth" and \AB" data : : : : : : : : : : : : 24 2.4.3 Two constraints on objectuality : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : (...) : 25.. (shrink)

In October of 2009, Trevor Keezer was terminated by Home Depot for refusing to remove a pin from his uniform declaring “One Nation under God, Indivisible.” Mr. Keezer, a cashier with Home Depot, contended that the button he had worn for over one year before any action was taken by his employer expressed his support for American troops and his Christian faith. Were the actions taken by his employer warranted or was Mr. Keezer the victim of arbitrary religious discrimination unrelated (...) to job performance? Religion is becoming an increasingly polarizing issue in the workplace, forcing retail managers to balance the respective interests of employees, coworkers, and patrons of retail establishments. And from all indications, if legislation pending in Congress is enacted, maintaining the balance will become more problematic. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn April of 2000, Diana Levine went to a clinic in Vermont suffering from a migraine headache. She was given the drug Demerol for the migraine symptoms and Phenergan for nausea. Complications with the administration of Phenergan ultimately resulted in Ms. Levine contracting gangrene, necessitating the amputation of her right arm. Ms. Levine sued the drug maker, Wyeth Pharmaceutical, in state court and prevailed. The lower court's decision was appealed by Wyeth to the state supreme court where the ruling was (...) confirmed. Wyeth next appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which, to the surprise of many observers, affirmed the judgment of the state supreme court. At issue was the fundamental question of the ability of consumers to obtain redress against negligent manufacturers in state courts. Wyeth's arguments to the Court were based upon preemption: Foodand Drug Administration approval of a drug preempts the ability of injured consumers like Ms. Levine to recover in state courts despite years of precedent to the contrary. Ability to recover damages in state courts represents, perhaps, the most important safety net available to consumers injured by defective products. A ruling by the Supreme Court that FDA‐approved labeling of pharmaceuticals preempts the reach of the state courts would have severely compromised the balance of power between consumers and producers. (shrink)

Le Temple d’Hathor à Dendara: Relevés et étude architecturale. By Pierre Zignani. Bibliothèque d’Étude, vol. 146/1. Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2010. Pp. xii + 425, 39 plates.

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)

This article examines some recent work by Berwick and Chomsky as presented in their book Why Only Us? Language and Evolution. As I understand them, Berwick and Chomsky’s overarching purpose is to explain how human language could have arisen in so short an evolutionary period. After articulating their strategy, I argue that they fall far short of reaching this goal. A co-evolutionary scenario linking the mechanisms that realize the language system, both with one other and with cognitive mechanisms capable of (...) exploiting linguistic expressions, is surely unavoidable. And yet this is precisely what Berwick and Chomsky in effect rule out. (shrink)

'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)

What is citizenship? This question goes back to the political philosophy of Aristotle, and how one answers it will be decisive in determining one's vision of political life. In the last ten to fifteen years, the question of citizenship has aroused a renewed set of extremely lively debates within political philosophy, and Iris Marion Young has certainly occupied an important place within these theoretical debates. In particular, Young—especially in her seminal article, Polity and Group Difference: A critique of the ideal (...) of universal citizenship—has presented a sharp challenge to all political theorists who are in some broad sense intellectually nourished by the tradition of civic republicanism and who think about the theme of citizenship under the influence of civic‐republican conceptions. In essence, Young's argument is that the practices of contemporary liberal society show that the implicit normative promise contained in the idea of a universal citizen identity has not been fulfilled, and therefore we must rethink this notion from the ground up. The purpose of my essay is to review the arguments that constitute Young's challenge to the civic‐republican tradition, with a view to clarifying the following questions: Is Young's political theory aimed at a reconstruction of the idea of citizenship on a normatively more sound basis? Or does her project imply a rejection of the idea of citizenship, and its displacement by an alternative understanding of political membership? (shrink)

"Whatever the wind blows is an ambitious evocation through word and image of a stark chapter in the history of America, the settlement of West Texas"--Cover.

Summary. A distinction is made between two senses of the claim “cognition is computation”. One sense, the opaque reading, takes computation to be whatever is described by our current computational theory and claims that cognition is best understood in terms of that theory. The transparent reading, which has its primary allegiance to the phenomenon of computation, rather than to any particular theory of it, is the claim that the best account of cognition will be given by whatever theory turns out (...) to be the best account of the phenomenon of computation. The distinction is clarified and defended against charges of circularity and changing the subject. Several well-known objections to computationalism are then reviewed, and for each the question of whether the transparent reading of the computationalist claim can provide a response is considered. (shrink)

The development and deployment of the notion of pre-objective or nonconceptual content for the purposes of intentional explanation of requires assistance from a practical and theoretical understanding of computational/robotic systems acting in real-time and real-space. In particular, the usual "that"-clause specification of content will not work for non-conceptual contents; some other means of specification is required, means that make use of the fact that contents are aspects of embodied and embedded systems. That is, the specification of non-conceptual content should use (...) concepts and insights gained from android design and android epistemology. (shrink)