(1996). The contribution of communist states to the proscription of racist speech. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 801-811.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended in-person public education across the United States, a critical infrastructure of care that parents—especially mothers—depend on to work. To understand the nature and magnitude of school closures across states, we collected detailed primary data—the Elementary School Operating Status database —to measure the percentage of school districts offering in-person, remote, and hybrid instruction models for elementary schools by state in September 2020. We link these data to the Current Population Survey to evaluate the association between school (...) reopening and parents’ labor force participation rates, comparing 2020 labor force participation rates to those observed prepandemic in 2019. We find that, across states, the maternal labor force participation rate fell to a greater extent than that of fathers. In 2019, mothers’ rate of labor force participation was about 18 percentage points lower than fathers’. By 2020, this gap grew by 5 percentage points in states where schools offered primarily remote instruction. We show that schools are a vital source of care for young children, and that without in-person instruction, mothers have been sidelined from the labor force. The longer these conditions remain in place, the more difficult it may be for mothers to fully recover from prolonged spells of nonemployment, resulting in reduced occupational opportunities and lifetime earnings. (shrink)

The moral nature of humanity has been debated and discussed by philosophers, theologians, and others for centuries. Only recently have neuroscientists and neuropsychologists joined the conversation by publishing a number of studies using newer brain scanning techniques directed at regions of the brain related to social behavior. Is it possible to relate particular brain structures and functions to the behavior of people, deemed evil, who violate all the tenets of proper behavior laid down by ancient and holy texts, prohibiting lying, (...) cheating, stealing, and murder? Is it possible that the recently discovered “mirror neurons” in the brain are the basis for empathy and that deficits in these brain cells lead to severe difficulty in relating socially to other people, including parents and siblings? What do we make of reports that the fusiform face area in the temporal lobe of the brain is specialized for the perception of faces and that defects in this region are seen regularly in individuals who are psychopathic. (shrink)

Disney's computer‐animated musical film, Moana tells the tale of Moana, the daughter of Tui, the chief of a Polynesian island, Motunui. Bound by the legendary tradition of her ancestors, Moana is expected to follow her lineage and take over as chief when she grows up. As the authors dig beneath the surface level of the story, they find a metaphorical and philosophical level to Moana's journey. The story of Moana has layers. First, it is literally a tale of Moana's voyage (...) outside beyond the reef so that she can restore the heart of Te Fiti and save the people of Motunui. She closes this tale with a happy ending as she simultaneously lives the life that she freely chooses, becomes the leader of her people (by saving them) as her parents wanted, and honors her tradition insofar as she restores her ancestors' tradition of wayfinding. (shrink)

In this essay I advance major criticisms of recent work on the concept of liberty by, Among others, I berlin, G maccallum, H j mccluskey, S I benn, And f oppenheim. Emerging from these critical analyses is a new definition of 'liberty, In the spirit of negative liberalism', Which differentiates it from the related but distinct goods of human autonomy, Opportunity, Ability, Power, And self-Development.

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

Canonically, ‘classic’ tests of general relativity (GR) include perihelion precession, the bending of light around stars, and gravitational redshift; ‘modern’ tests have to do with, _inter alia_, relativistic time delay, equivalence principle tests, gravitational lensing, strong field gravity, and gravitational waves. The orthodoxy is that both classic and modern tests of GR afford experimental confirmation of that theory _in particular_. In this article, we question this orthodoxy, by showing there are classes of both relativistic theories (with spatiotemporal geometrical properties different (...) from those of GR) and non-relativistic theories (in which the lightcones of a relativistic spacetime are ‘widened’) which would also pass such tests. Thus, (a) issues of underdetermination in the context of GR loom much larger than one might have thought, and (b) given this, one has to think more carefully about what exactly such tests in fact _are_ testing. (shrink)

The degradation of modern sport--its commercialization, trivialization, widespread cheating, cult of athletic stars and celebrities, and manipulation by the media--has led to calls for its transformation. William J. Morgan constructs a critical theory of sport that shores up the weak arguments of past attempts and points a way forward to making sport more humane, compelling, and substantive. Drawing on the work of social theorists, Morgan challenges scholars and fans alike to explore new spaces in sport culture and imagine the (...) rich cultural and political possibilities to be found in the pastimes we follow with such passion. (shrink)

This essay re-examines Meinong's "Über Gegenstandstheorie" and undertakes a clarification and revision of it that is faithful to Meinong, overcomes the various objections to his theory, and is capable of offering solutions to various problems in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. I then turn to a discussion of a historically and technically interesting Russell-style paradox (now known as "Clark's Paradox") that arises in the modified theory. I also examine the alternative Meinong-inspired theories of Hector-Neri Castañeda and Terence Parsons.

There are many branches of philosophy called “the philosophy of X,” where X = disciplines ranging from history to physics. The philosophy of artificial intelligence has a long history, and there are many courses and texts with that title. Surprisingly, the philosophy of computer science is not nearly as well-developed. This article proposes topics that might constitute the philosophy of computer science and describes a course covering those topics, along with suggested readings and assignments.

The ‘default mode’ network refers to cortical areas that are active in the absence of goal-directed activity. In previous studies, decreased activity in the ‘default mode’ has always been associated with increased activation in task-relevant areas. We show that the induction of hypnosis can reduce anterior default mode activity during rest without increasing activity in other cortical regions. We assessed brain activation patterns of high and low suggestible people while resting in the fMRI scanner and while engaged in visual tasks, (...) in and out of hypnosis. High suggestible participants in hypnosis showed decreased brain activity in the anterior parts of the default mode circuit. In low suggestible people, hypnotic induction produced no detectable changes in these regions, but instead deactivated areas involved in alertness. The findings indicate that hypnotic induction creates a distinctive and unique pattern of brain activation in highly suggestible subjects. (shrink)

This paper argues that we ought to conceive of the Dark Energy problem—the question of how to account for observational data, naturally interpreted as accelerated expansion of the universe—as a crisis of underdetermined pursuit-worthiness. Not only are the various approaches to the Dark Energy problem evidentially underdetermined; at present, no compelling reasons single out any of them as more likely to be true than the other. More vexingly for working scientists, none of the approaches stands out as uncontroversially preferable over (...) its rivals in terms of its rationally warranted promise, i.e. the reasons to further work on, explore, and develop it. We demonstrate this claim by applying a Peircean economic model of pursuit-worthiness in terms of a cognitive cost/benefit estimate—with the instantiation of theory virtues as key indicators of cognitive gains—to the four main Dark Energy proposals (the cosmological constant approach, modified gravity, quintessence, and inhomogeneous cosmologies). According to our analysis, these approaches do not admit of an unambiguous, or uncontroversial, ranking with respect to which ansatz deserves distinguished attention and research efforts. The overall methodological counsel that our analysis underwrites recommends a pragmatic double research strategy forward: to encourage and foster theory pluralism and the search for tests—with the goal of enhancing the testability of the \(\Lambda \) CDM model and “testing it to destruction". (shrink)

Critical Review of Searle's Minds, Brains and Science.

This essay examines the role of non-existent objects in "epistemological ontology" — the study of the entities that make thinking possible. An earlier revision of Meinong's Theory of Objects is reviewed, Meinong's notions of Quasisein and Außersein are discussed, and a theory of Meinongian objects as "combinatorially possible" entities is presented.

An outline is given of the proof that the consistency of a κ⁺-Mahlo cardinal implies that of the statement that I[ω₂] does not include any stationary subsets of Cof(ω₁). An additional discussion of the techniques of this proof includes their use to obtain a model with no ω₂-Aronszajn tree and to add an ω₂-Souslin tree with finite conditions.

The author identifies the structure of Sharon Street's skeptical challenge to non-naturalist, normative epistemic realism as an argument that NNER is liable to reliability defeat and then argues that Street's argument fails, because it itself is subject to reliability defeat. As the author reconstructs Street's argument, it is an argument that the normative epistemic judgments of the realist could only be probabilistically sensitive to normative epistemic truths by sheer chance. The author then recaps Street's own naturalist translation of normative epistemic (...) judgments into purely descriptive, contingent probability statements, and argues that, on her own terms, the reasoning that leads her to rationally believe in evolutionary theory could only be probabilistically sensitive to the relevant purely descriptive, contingent probabilities by sheer chance. The author's argument is addressed to Street, but it applies to all evolutionary naturalist accounts of epistemic rationality. The author explains how his argument differs from Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism and shows how it avoids the objections to Plantinga's EAAN. The author closes with the outline of an explanation of how evolution could have made human reasoning probabilistically sensitive to metaphysically necessary normative epistemic standards, even though those standards did not exert and, indeed, could not have exerted any kind of causal influence on the evolutionary process. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Adam Wodeham, OFM (d.) has received only passing mention in the textbooks on the history of medieval philosophy. Although recognized as a major ...

Alexius Meinong developed a notion of defective objects in order to account for various logical and psychological paradoxes. The notion is of historical interest, since it presages recent work on the logical paradoxes by Herzberger and Kripke. But it fails to do the job it was designed for. However, a technique implicit in Meinong's investigation is more successful and can be adapted to resolve a similar paradox discovered by Romane Clark in a revised version of Meinong's Theory of Objects due (...) to Rapaport. One family of paradoxes remains, but it is argued that they are unavoidable and relatively harmless. (shrink)

Against the background of changing assessments of Nominalism and its meanings before Ockham, this book examines the reception of Ockham's thought at Oxford and ...

A brief introduction to Meinong, his theory of objects, and modern interpretations of it. Sections include: The Theory of Objects, Castañeda's Theory of Guises, Parsons,'s Theory of Nonexistent Objects, Rapaport's Theory of Meinongian Objects, Routley's Theory of Items.

We believe that clinical ethics consultants (CECs) should offer advice, options, and recommendations to attending physicians and their teams. In their article in this issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics, however, Kornfeld and Prager give CECs a somewhat different role. The CEC they describe may at times be more aptly understood as a medical interventionist who appropriates the roles of the attending physician and the medical team than as a traditional CEC. In these remarks, we distinguish the role of (...) the CEC from that of the physician, in contrast to some of these authors’ recommendations, which confuse the two roles. (shrink)

I argue that George Nakhnikian's analysis of the logic of cogito propositions (roughly, Descartes's 'cogito' and 'sum') is incomplete. The incompleteness is rectified by showing that disjunctions of cogito propositions with contingent, non-cogito propositions satisfy conditions of incorrigibility, self-certifyingness, and pragmatic consistency; hence, they belong to the class of propositions with whose help a complete characterization of cogito propositions is made possible.

The philosophy of religion as a distinct discipline is an innovation of the last two hundred years, but its central topics--the existence and nature of the divine, humankind's relation to it, the nature of religion and its place in human life--have been with us since the inception of philosophy. Philosophers have long critically examined the truth of (and rational justification for) religious claims, and have explored such philosophically interesting phenomena as faith, religious experience and the distinctive features of religious discourse. (...) The second half of the twentieth-century has been an especially fruitful period, with philosophers using new developments in logic and epistemology to mount both sophisticated defenses of, and attacks on, religious claims. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion contains newly commissioned chapters by 21 prominent experts who cover the field in a comprehensive but accessible manner. Each chapter is expository, critical, and representative of a distinctive viewpoint. The Handbook is divided into two sections. The first, "Problems," covers the most frequently discussed topics, among them arguments for God's existence, the problem of evil, and religious epistemology. The second is called "Approaches" and contains four essays assessing the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of practicing philosophy of religion. The Handbook offers contributors of high stature who present substantive and in-depth treatment of the most central topics. It is a must-have reference for anyone with an interest in philosophy and religion. (shrink)

This book is unified by three broad concerns: the rationality of belief in God, the relation between religion and morality, and the explication of the concept of God. The essays are, however, marked by diversity. Some focus on historical figures, such as Aquinas and Locke; others bring recent epistemological and metaphysical developments to bear on problems of religious belief. Some of the papers explore neglected issues central to religious practice, such as the question of how total devotion to God can (...) permit other deep commitments; others apply philosophical distinctions from within a religious tradition, for example, in setting out a Christian approach to the problem of evil. (shrink)

The increasing role played by medical ethicists in the clinical setting both as teachers and consultants has brought with it a demand for new methodologies that speak more precisely to the multiple problems encountered in actual attempts at case resolution. Some of these moves have to do with a revival of the truly classic case study approach to ethics, casuistry. This approach is anchored in the revelatory text of Jonsen and Toulmin, TheAbuseofCasuistry. A fine example of this methodology is an (...) article in TheJournalofClinicalEthics, Conjoined to this approach is a renewed interest in virtue ethics. The groundwork for this was laid by MacIntyre's masterful history of its demise in AfterVirtue. A clear and concise application of this ancient but always new approach is given in Pellegrino and Thomasma's book TheVirtuesinMedicalPractice. This way of doing ethics is particularly congenial to the practice of healthcare ethics in that it understands that virtue is just a rather fancy name for a good habit or skill. Since the practice of clinical medicine is quintessentially the learning and application of a range of often highly complex patterns of professional abilities and skills, a virtue ethics approach will allow for the concomitant development of a whole set of ethical skills. But both casuistry and virtue ethics may well be seen to be operative in a larger context now known as narrative ethics. (shrink)

John H. Evans’s views on the multiple roles of healthcare ethics consultants are based on his claim that bioethics is a “distinct profession” that has a “system of abstract knowledge.” This response to Professor Evans disputes both of his claims. It is argued that clinical ethicists are consultants but not professionals. Their roles as consultants require more than one abstract form of knowledge (principlism). Instead, clinical ethicists rely upon a variety of ethical perspectives and other skills to help resolve conflicts (...) and facilitate healthcare decisions and policy making, whether it is in clinical, research, policy, or organizational contexts. The credibility and effectiveness of clinical ethicists depend upon their knowledge of ethics, their practical experience, and personal abilities, not one form of abstract knowledge. (shrink)

Persons who commit crimes involving sexual abuse of children exploit their victims in several ways. Sex offenders use their power and authority over vulnerable children to whom they have easy access. Teachers, coaches, clergy, family members and childcare workers have been exposed as sex offenders. The Pennsylvania State University football coach, Jerry Sandusky, is now in prison for his many crimes. The widespread cover up of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the USA and other countries is a horrendous scandal. (...) It is not surprising that law enforcement, mental health professionals, victims and their families are outraged. It is no surprise that radical interventions such as chemical or surgical castration are a response to the public pressure to protect children from molestation.I agree with Professor John McMillan's thoughtful discussion and nuanced analysis of surgical castration.1i He concludes that surgical castration of sex offenders is ethically permissible if these conditions are met: Castration should be requested by the sex offender. Informed consent from a competent sex offender is required. Consent to castration must not be coerced via threats or inducements.He also says that “castration might be useful for the reconfiguring of a life that has gone badly awry.”To supplement his discussion I will describe a state law in Texas2 that permits voluntary surgical castration for repeat child molesters while they are incarcerated as …. (shrink)

The claim that glycogen contains protein was first made exactly 100 years ago and has been the subject of contention ever since. It has now been established that rabbit‐muscle glycogen contains a covalently bound protein of Mr 37,000, present in equimolar proportion to glycogen. The protein, named glycogenin, is joined to muscle glycogen via a novel linkage involving the hydroxyl group of tyrosine, a fact of possible significance in the light of insulin's message being transmitted by tyrosine phosphorylation. The protein (...) is seen as the biogenetic precursor of glycogen. Its existence suggests an additional mode of regulation of glycogen metabolism since the amount, turnover and cellular location of glycogenin will influence the corresponding parameters for glycogen. A protein “primer” is suggested for the biogenesis of storage polysaccharides in general. (shrink)

The idea of role‐playing makes some people nervous – even some people who play role‐playing games (RPGs). So the idea of immersion is central to understanding how Dungeons Dragons and other aspects of participatory culture work. Phenomenology is a kind of “philosophy of mind” associated with the works of twentieth‐century philosophers Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean‐Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, among others. The domain of phenomenology encompasses the entire range of experiences in the world, paying attention to what Husserl called (...) “intentionality,” or how our consciousness is directed toward particular objects in the world. The fact that this is presented as an atypical approach to play, or at least one that requires some effort, invites us to ask about typical modes of play if visualization of in‐game events is not that mode. This chapter concluded by scratch the surface of a complete phenomenological description of role‐playing. (shrink)

Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism. By Andrzej Walicki. A History of Russian Philosophy, Edited by Valery A. Kuvakin.