There have been many famine incidents in the human history. Some of these have resulted in the disaster of the people. Muslims have also suffered from these famines. There have been countless famine examples from the time of the Prophet. One of the most significant of these famines is the famine incident that was effective in Madinah and its surroundings during the khalīfat of Umar bin al-Hattab (d. 23/644). This famine, corresponding to the 6th year of the khalīfat of Umar, (...) had negative consequences. In this period when the rains were not falling and the soil almost turned to ash, creatures were harmed, and some deaths occurred. When the opportunities in the city were insufficient to eliminate the shortage, the khalif asked for help from the surrounding provinces. The coming help eased the situation for the people. In this famine year, which is known as the Remade year, Umar did not collect zakat from the public, nor applied a sentence to theft in this period. Umar did everything in his power but as the effects of the famine did not lessen, Umar went to the rain prayer for the drought to disappear. When the rain came, life took its normal course and the people who came to Madinah from the rural parts due to the famine were sent back home by the khalīfa.Summary: There have been famine incidences in different geographies throughout human history. The Hejaz region in Saudi Arabia was also affected by these natural disasters. Mecca, which has a particularly dry climate, has witnessed countless famines from pre-Islamic times to the present day. Madinah, which became a center of attraction with the Prophet's migration, struggled with famines in the times of the Prophet as well as in later periods. Among these famines, the famine experienced during the khalīfat of Umar had considerably heavy consequences.The year of the famine in Madinah was recorded as Amurremade, which means the year was given that name because there was no rain at all, and the soil turned int the color of ash and was swept easily by the wind. The famine, which began in the late 17th year of the Hejira and continued until the beginning of the 18th year, lasted approximately nine months. During this time, the soil dried up, the crops did not grow green and the animals perished. The public was exposed to starvation and misery and had nothing in their hands. The bazaars and markets got empty, there was nothing left to buy and sell. People dug in the ground to find food and ate the lizards and moles they found.The famine had an harder impact on the rural areas of Madinah. Those living in the desert had to take refuge in Madinah when they could not find anything to eat. The severe drought even caused deaths in some tribes. The survivors had to eat whatever they could to stay alive. The animals they butchered had no meat, too. Thus, people removed the skins of dead animals and cooked them and gnawed on them or broke the bones of dead animals and ate the crumbs.When the famine continued for a long time, the living conditions of many people changed. Khalif Umar took some precautions to overcome the troubles of the people. First, he gave the food in the central treasury (Beytulmal) in Madinah to the service of those who suffered from famine. When the food in the Beytulmal did not suffice, he called for his governors to send aid to Madinah and its surroundings. The call was answered. Abundant aid was sent to Madinah from Damascus, Kufah, Basra, Egypt and Yemen. Thanks to the help sent, people were relieved. The aid sent from the provinces was planned to be distributed equally to both the people of Madinah and the people who came from outside and settled around Madinah. For this, Umar tried to determine the number of people in need by assigning some people. After the number of people was determined, he prepared a list showing the names and needs of those who suffered from famine. Documents bearing the seal of Umar were given to the public so that they could buy food. The aid also helped to decrease the prices. Because the prices of almost everything, particularly the basic necessities, had reached very high levels.Khalif Umar thanks to donations supported by governors founded also flour silos for those in need. Those who came to Madinah got food such as flour, bread, dates, grapes etc. In addition, some days, twenty camels were butchered and those who suffered from the famine were invited to get hot meals. For those who could not come, food was sent. This practice was continued regularly every month until the famine ended. When Umar could not find anything to distribute, he designated one family that had food to host another family that could not find food. After the rains started, the Khalif sent the Arabs, who came to Madinah in time of the famine back to their countries. He also funded them form treasury so that they could reach their homes comfortably. The Arab tribes were delighted and thanked for the good treatment Umar showed during the famine.Umar did not collect zakah from the goods during the drought period. However, when famine weakened, he took the zakat of two years together. In the same way, he did not apply the punishment to those who fed themselves illegally because of necessity.Umar worked hard to resolve the people's hardship and took all precautions in the famine period. However, the famine maintained its hard impact. Therefore, Umar decided to go for rain prayer and asked his governors to go to rain prayer, too. When people learned that Umar would pray for the rain, they all joined him. Caliph Umar, taking Abbas with him, wished forgiveness from Allah. The prayers were accepted and plenty of rain came down in and around Madinah. So, the famine came to an end and the people took a breath.Umar, the ruler of the Muslims, did not eat anything different from the people during the famine and sometimes was in a worse situation than the others. Many times, he preferred the benefit of others until the famine ended. For this, he was often hungry. This seriously threatened the Caliph Umar's health. These conditions were not limited to the caliph's person but also affected his family. Because Umar’s family members lived in more misery than other families. The conditions continued in this way until the famine lost its effect. (shrink)

This systematic review aims to develop a conceptual framework to identify nursing‐sensitive indicators for preventing and managing pressure ulcers. The first step involves defining evidence‐based indicators critical to effective prevention and management. The second step examines the relationships influencing the management of these indicators, using insights derived from scientific research findings. This review is guided by a conceptual framework rooted in Structural State Theory and uses a methodological approach. A total of 956 articles were identified through a search of original (...) references from Medline/PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL, covering the period from 2012 to 2023. A systematic review of 29 studies identified 241 relationships between dependent and independent variables. A theoretical conceptual framework highlighted nursing‐sensitive indicators (independent variables) related to patients, nurses, pressure injury/ulcer management, organizational structure, and their association with pressure injury/ulcer outcomes (dependent variables). The analysis showed that patient‐focused studies had the highest frequency of relationships. This review highlights the complexity of managing pressure injuries/ulcers and the essential role of nursing care practices and interventions in shaping outcomes. The findings highlight the need for specialized wound care nurses and further research on nursing interventions, urging hospitals to invest in structural changes and nurse education. (shrink)

The question of how we can know anything about ideal entities to which we do not have access through our senses has been a major concern in the philosophical tradition since Plato's Phaedo. This article focuses on the paradigmatic case of mathematical knowledge. Following a suggestion by Gödel, we employ concepts and ideas from Husserlian phenomenology to argue that mathematical objects – and ideal entities in general – are recognized in a process very closely related to ordinary perception. Our analysis (...) combines Husserl's insights into the nature of perception and the phenomena of evidence and justification with case studies of the role of intuition in axiomatic set theory. (shrink)

Recently, research on uncertainty modeling is progressing rapidly and many essential and breakthrough stud ies have already been done. There are various ways such as fuzzy, intuitionistic and neutrosophic sets to handle these uncertainties. Although these concepts can handle incomplete information in various real-world issues, they cannot address all types of uncertainty such as indeterminate and inconsistent information. Also, plithogenic sets as a generalization of crisp, fuzzy, intuitionistic fuzzy, and neutrosophic sets, which is a set whose elements are characterized by (...) many attributes’ values. In this paper, our aim is to demonstrate and review the history of fuzzy, intuitionistic and neutrosophic sets. For this purpose, we divided the paper as: section 1. History of Fuzzy Sets, section 2. History of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets and section 3. History of Neutrosophic Theories and Applications, section 4. History of Plithogenic Sets. (shrink)

Muitas expectativas povoam nosso coração de discípulos e missionários, às vésperas da Conferência de Aparecida. Uma delas diz respeito ao diálogo inter-confessional nas suas duas vertentes: ecumênica (com as Con) ssões cristãs) e inter-religiosa (com as demais religiões). Alguns, convictos do valor desta importante diretriz do Concílio Vaticano II, indagam se o diálogo estará devidamente presente nos debates da V Conferência.

William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, initially preached in Methodist Churches, later left this position and formed a social and religious formation called the "Christian Mission". This movement was named "Salvation Army" in 1878. The Salvation Army, organized in many countries, has established nursing homes for elderly, women and children and continues to attract attention and increase its reputation both locally and internationally with aid organizations, rehabilitation of prisoners, natural disasters, fight against human trafficking and aid to refugees. (...) In every region where The Salvation Army is located, there is an administrative centre known as the regional headquarters. Headquarters are headed by the district commander at the international headquarters in London. Smaller districts are run by colonels, larger districts by commissars. Resembling the Catholic Church due to its episcopal structure, the Salvation Army accepts the same beliefs as this church at the point of belief. Although the movement has also the appearance of a Protestant and evangelical church, it approaches the sacraments from a different aspect. In this research, the history, organizational structure, activities, belief principles and practices of the Salvation Army have been tried to be revealed. Descriptive, comparative and chronological methods have been used while conveying the aforementioned issues in order of importance. In addition, the literature was scanned and various sources belonging to the emergence period of the Salvation Army and especially those belonging to them were examined. (shrink)

Our investigation is concerned with the finite model property with respect to admissible rules. We establish general sufficient conditions for absence of fmp w. r. t. admissibility which are applicable to modal logics containing K4: Theorem 3.1 says that no logic λ containing K4 with the co-cover property and of width > 2 has fmp w. r. t. admissibility. Surprisingly many, if not to say all, important modal logics of width > 2 are within the scope of this theorem–K4 itself, (...) S4, GL, K4.1, K4.2, S4.1, S4.2, GL.2, etc. Thus the situation is completely opposite to the case of the ordinary fmp–the absolute majority of important logics have fmp, but not with respect to admissibility. As regards logics of width ≤ 2, there exists a zone for fmp w. r. t. admissibility. It is shown that all modal logics A of width ≤ 2 extending S4 which are not sub-logics of three special tabular logics have fmp w.r.t. admissibility. (shrink)

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as well (...) as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

This article argues that, under likely empirical conditions, sufficientarianism leads not to an easily achievable duty to maintain a social minimum but to the onerous duty of maintaining a social maximum at the sufficiency level. This happens because sufficientarians ask us to give no weight at all to small benefits for people above the sufficiency level if the alternative is to relieve the suffering of people below it. If we apply this judgment in a world where there are rare diseases (...) and hard-to-prevent accidents that cause people to fall below the sufficiency threshold, all of our discretionary spending will have to be devoted to bringing harder and harder cases up to sufficiency. Nothing will be left for anyone to consume above the sufficiency level. (shrink)

When the policies and activities of one country or generation harm both other nations and later generations, they constitute serious injustices. Recognizing the broad threat posed by anthropogenic climate change, advocates for an international climate policy development process have expressly aimed to mitigate this pressing contemporary environmental threat in a manner that promotes justice. Yet, while making justice a primary objective of global climate policy has been the movement's noblest aspiration, it remains an onerous challenge for policymakers. -/- Atmospheric Justice (...) is the first single-authored work of political theory that addresses this pressing challenge via the conceptual frameworks of justice, equality, and responsibility. Throughout this incisive study, Steve Vanderheiden points toward ways to achieve environmental justice by exploring how climate change raises issues of both international and intergenerational justice. In addition, he considers how the design of a global climate regime might take these aims into account. Engaging with the principles of renowned political philosopher John Rawls, he expands on them by factoring in the needs of future generations. Vanderheiden also demonstrates how political theory can contribute to reaching a better understanding of the proper human response to climate change. By showing how climate policy offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, he illustrates the ways in which applying normative theory to policy allows us to better understand both. -/- Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Atmospheric Justice makes an important step toward providing us with a set of carefully elaborated first principles for achieving environmental justice. (shrink)

According to immunology’s prevailing paradigm, immunity is based on self/nonself discrimination and thus requires a construction of identity. Two orientations vie for dominance: The original conception, conceived in the context of infectious diseases, regards the organism as insular and autonomous, an entity that requires defense of its borders. An alternate view places the organism firmly in its environment in which both benign and onerous encounters occur. On this latter relational account, active tolerance allows for cooperative relationships with other organisms in (...) the larger ecological economy. These contending orientations —one derived from biomedicine and the other from the ecological sciences— have drawn the attention of social scientists and culture critics. On the one hand, feminists have portrayed immune theory as based upon borrowed social notions of identity that reflect male aggressive values and thus distort more balanced accounts of immunity; and, on the other hand, other commentary projects immune theory as a framework in which analysis of Western societies putatively reveals analogous patterns of ‘self’ and ‘other’ interactions, where autoimmunity and immunization are understood as expressions of the insular understanding of identity. Here, a meta-interpretation is presented that shows how these critiques place the immune self on a spectrum stretching from its formulation as an autonomous agent, a modernist conception of the independent individual, to a postmodern portrayal in which this conception of selfhood has been deconstructed. Accordingly, immunology is drawn into a wide-ranging debate about agency, where differing interpretations of immunity serves as a template in which competing understandings of human social intercourse is modeled.Según el paradigma dominante en inmunología, la inmunidad está basada en la discriminación entre yo/noyo y requiere, por tanto, una construcción de la identidad. Dos orientaciones compiten por dominar: la concepción original, concebida en el contexto de las enfermedades infecciosas contempla al organismo como aislado y autónomo, como una entidad que necesita defender sus fronteras. Una visión alternativa sitúa firmemente al organismo en su entorno, en el cual suceden tanto encuentros beneficiosos como costosos. En este enfoque relacional, la tolerancia activa permite relaciones cooperativas con otros organismos en una economía ecológica más amplia. Estas orientaciones en liza —una derivada de la biomedicina y otra de las ciencias ecológicas— han llamado la atención de los científicos sociales y de los críticos de la cultura. Por una parte, el feminismo ha descrito la teoría inmunológica como basada en nociones sociales prestadas de identidad que reflejan los valores agresivos del macho y que, de este modo, impiden una explicación más equilibrada de la inmunidad. Por otra parte, otro comentario proyecta la teoría inmunológica como un marco en el que el análisis de las sociedades occidentales revela aparentemente patrones análogos de interacciones ‘yo’ y ‘otros’, en las que la autoinmunidad y la inmunización son entendidas como expresiones de la comprensión insular de la identidad. Se ofrece aquí una meta-representación que muestra cómo estas críticas sitúan al yo inmune en un espectro que va desde su formulación cómo un agente autónomo, una concepción modernista del individuo independiente, a una visión postmoderna en la que esta concepción de la identidad ha sido deconstruida. De acuerdo con esto, la inmunología recoge un amplio debate sobre la agencia en el que diferentes interpretaciones de la inmunidad sirven como molde en el que se modelan comprensiones competidoras de la comprensión de las relaciones sociales humanas. (shrink)

Should cognitive scientists be any more embarrassed about their lack of a discipline-fixing definition of cognition than biologists are about their inability to define “life”? My answer is “no”. Philosophers seeking a unique “mark of the cognitive” or less onerous but nevertheless categorical characterizations of cognition are working at a level of analysis upon which hangs nothing that either cognitive scientists or philosophers of cognitive science should care about. In contrast, I advocate a pluralistic stance towards uses of the term (...) ‘cognition’ that eschews the urge to treat cognition as a metaphysically well-defined “natural” kind. (shrink)

Critics have argued that human-controlled avatar interactions fail to facilitate the kinds of expressivity and social understanding afforded by our physical bodies. We identify three claims meant to justify the supposed expressive limits of avatar interactions compared to our physical interactions. First, “The Limited Expressivity Claim”: avatars have a more limited expressive range than our physical bodies. Second, “The Inputted Expressivity Claim”: any expressive avatarial behaviour must be deliberately inputted by the user. Third, “The Decoding Claim”: users must infer or (...) figure out the expressive meaning of human-controlled avatars’ behaviour through cognitively onerous processes. With the aim of critically assessing all three claims, we analyze data collected through observations of and interviews with expert players of the avatar-based video game League of Legends. Focusing on Daniel Stern’s (2010) notion of vitality, we analyze the participants’ descriptions of seeing and interacting with other avatars during performance. Our analysis shows that the informants experience human-based avatarial interactions as qualitatively different than interactions with bots, that the informants see the movements of other players’ avatars as having different expressive styles, and that the informants actively use and manipulate this avatarial expressivity during performance. The results of our analysis, we argue, provide reasons for loosening or resisting the three claims concerning the limits of avatarial expressivity. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Huw Price’s widely read “Truth as Convenient Friction” overstates the onerousness, and underrates the utility, of the ontological commitments involved in Charles S. Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth. This argument comes in three parts. First, I briefly explain Peirce’s view of truth, and relate it to his account of assertion. Next, I articulate what I take Price’s grievance against Peirce’s view to be, and suggest that this criticism misses the target. Finally, (...) I argue that Peirce’s version of the pragmatist account of truth has greater explanatory power than the narrowly linguistic version put forward by Price, such that even the ontology-averse should accept it. (shrink)

This paper argues that, if we are committed to a Pro-choice stance with regard to selective abortion for disability, we will be unable to justify the prohibition of sex-selective abortion (SSA), for two reasons. First, familiar Pro-choice arguments in favour of a woman’s right to select against fetal impairment also support, by parity of reasoning, a right to choose SSA. Second, rejection of the criticisms of selective abortion for disability levelled by disability theorists also disposes, by implication, of the key (...) objections to SSA, as developed, most notably, by feminists. The paper, then, consists of a conditional defence of SSA, under which SSA should be available, and protected by a right, if selective abortion for disability is. Opponents of SSA might respond by conceding additional restrictions on selection against disabled fetuses. It should become clear throughout the paper, however, that any such new restrictions would be unacceptably onerous for women. (shrink)

The distinction between causal role and selected effect functions is typically framed in terms of their respective explanatory roles. However, much of the controversy over functions in genomics takes place in an investigative, not an explanatory context. Specifically, the process of component-driven functional investigation begins with the designation of some genetic or epigenetic element as functional —i.e. not junk— because it possesses properties that, arguably, suggest some biologically interesting organismal effect. The investigative process then proceeds, in a bottom-up fashion, to (...) search for those effects. I argue that this process encounters a problem reminiscent of one that Gould and Lewontin associated with the adaptationist program. Just as their stereotypical adaptationst became trapped in the myopic pursuit of one selectionist hypothesis after another, so can the investigation of CR functions in genomics lead to an unending series putative organism-level CR functions for junk DNA. This is an acute problem for genomics, because eukaryotic genomes are littered with transposable elements and their deactivated descendants which often masquerade as interesting CR-functional components and it is experimentally onerous to determine whether they lack such a function. I further argue that selectionist reasoning about TE-host coevolutionary dynamics can greatly streamline the investigative process. Importantly, selectionist hypotheses need not be well confirmed to be illuminating in this context. Informed selectionist reasoning about the strategic roles of TEs in the genome offers a corrective to the idea that most of our DNA is somehow CR functional for the organism. (shrink)

When a plaintiff has been negligent in the sense that he should have acted otherwise, should the same criterion of negligence apply that would apply if he were creating risks only to others? Indeed, are there any persuasive reasons not to apply a radically different criterion of negligence? Moreover, should the plaintiff's recovery be diminished, outside the category of assumption of risk, even when the plaintiff has not been negligent? What are the justifiable criteria and limits of such plaintiff strict (...) responsibility? There are reasons for caution before concluding that a victim's self-regarding conduct is negligent. A victim often deserves special sympathy in the light of his special predicament, choosing between two evils, the immediate costs of which he must personally bear. Indeed, it might appear that the law is unfair or unduly onerous when it places significant demands on a victim with respect to his own self-regarding behavior. On the other hand, we should not forget that the victim's “duty” to use reasonable care is merely conditional: it applies only in case the victim seeks a remedy against the tortfeasor. (shrink)

Vaccine refusal occurs for a variety of reasons. In this article we examine vaccine refusals that are made on conscientious grounds; that is, for religious, moral, or philosophical reasons. We focus on two questions: first, whether people should be entitled to conscientiously object to vaccination against contagious diseases ; second, if so, to what constraints or requirements should conscientious objection to vaccination be subject. To address these questions, we consider an analogy between CO to vaccination and CO to military service. (...) We argue that conscientious objectors to vaccination should make an appropriate contribution to society in lieu of being vaccinated. The contribution to be made will depend on the severity of the relevant disease, its morbidity, and also the likelihood that vaccine refusal will lead to harm. In particular, the contribution required will depend on whether the rate of CO in a given population threatens herd immunity to the disease in question: for severe or highly contagious diseases, if the population rate of CO becomes high enough to threaten herd immunity, the requirements for CO could become so onerous that CO, though in principle permissible, would be de facto impermissible. (shrink)

This book is a clear and concise introduction to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. His one major surviving work, often titled 'meditations' but literally translated simply as 'to himself', is a series of short, sometimes enigmatic reflections divided seemingly arbitrarily into twelve books and apparently written only to be read by him. For these reasons Marcus is a particularly difficult thinker to understand. His musings, framed as 'notes to self' or 'memoranda', are the exhortations of an earnest, conscientious Stoic (...) burdened with the onerous responsibilities of ruling an entire, enormous empire. William O. Stephens lucidly sketches Marcus Aurelius' upbringing, family relations, rise to the throne, military campaigns, and legacy, situating his philosophy amidst his life and times, explicating the factors shaping Marcus' philosophy, and clarifying key themes in the Memoranda. Specifically designed to meet the needs of students seeking a thorough understanding of this key figure and his major work, Marcus Aurelius: A Guide for the Perplexed is the ideal guide for understanding this Stoic author - the only philosopher who was also an emperor. (shrink)

The notion that all the world's peoples constitute a "brotherhood of man" is not a given among all human beings--it is rather the product of history. So suggests acclaimed philosopher Alain Finkielkraut in _In the Name of Humanity,_ an unsettling reflection on the twentieth century in its twilight hours in which he asks us to rethink our assumptions about universalism and humanism. While many people look to humanist ideals as a deterrent to nationalist chauvinism, Finkielkraut challenges the abstract idea of (...) universalism by describing the terrible crimes "civilized" Europe has committed in its name. At the same time as it challenges the inhumanity of our century's great universalistic solutions, _In the Name of Humanity_ also confronts the more onerous elements of unreflective nationalism--clearly condemning the dangerous use of claims for ethnic purity. However, the book does not put forth a standard-issue polemic against the multitude of nationalistic currents that continue to plague the international arena. Indeed, even as he deplores the violence that seems to go hand in hand with nationalism, Finkielkraut defends its underlying cause--the need to belong. Eloquently quoting the experiences of refugees from Hitler's Germany, he shows the reader why we must heed the call of this irreducible need. Finkielkraut reminds us that the concept of cultural relativism--indeed, the very idea of tolerating other cultures--is a relatively recent development in Western history. As he looks for answers he interrogates the differences between historical racism and the racism embedded in the philosophies of this century's genocidal movements, showing how modern racist ideologies like National Socialism look not to sin within the self as the stumbling block of human advancement but to a clandestine conspiracy by a particular, identifiable element of human society. What this form of radical racist thought eliminates is the notion of personal responsibility--instead of finding the answers to misfortune within the self, modern racism suggests that evil can be identified in others and summarily eliminated. Lucidly connected to the ideas of past thinkers, from Plato to Levinas to Hannah Arendt, Finkielkraut's latest work is a troubling indictment of our century that refuses to back away from the "messiness" of human life and culture. In his willingness to abjure simple solutions, he offers a glimmer of hope. (shrink)

In this paper, I critique two conceptions of mechanisms, namely those put forth by Stuart Glennan (Erkenntnis 44:49–71, 1996; Philosophy of Science 69:S342–S353, 2002) and Machamer et al. (Philosophy of Science 67:1–25, 2000). Glennan’s conception, I argue, cannot account for mechanisms involving negative causation because of its interactionist posture. MDC’s view encounters the same problem due to its reificatory conception of activities—this conception, I argue, entails an onerous commitment to ontological dualism. In the place of Glennan and MDC, I propose (...) a “modified conception” of mechanisms, which (a) obviates the problem of negative causation by reinterpreting MDC’s activities according to a “descriptivist” account, and (b) avoids MDC’s problem by postulating a monistic ontology of entities. Thus, by solving these problems, my modified conception offers a cogent, more adequate alternative to Glennan’s and MDC’s conceptions of mechanisms. (shrink)

In pragmatic theories, the notion of inference plays a central role, together with the communicative act in which it is activated. Although some scholars, such as Levinson, Sperber and Wilson, propose detailed and accurate analyses of this notion, we will maintain that these analyses can be better systematized if seen through Peirce’s notion of abduction. We will try to maintain that the variety of inferential processes in play in a linguistic act is mostly of an abductive nature. Moreover, we will (...) maintain that the typological tripartition of abductions discussed by Eco allows to account for a significant part of the mechanisms involved in the comprehension of an utterance, ranging from quasi-immediate and spontaneous levels of understanding to processes that draw on creative resources. In our proposal the vast majority of our linguistic activities implies the automatic retrieval of a habit of action. In the other cases we need more onerous processes. We might need to identify, among a range of possibilities, the appropriate rule to be applied to the contextual situation or, depending on the context and on our background knowledge, we might be forced to create ex novo a new linguistic routine. In our view, this typology of abductive inferences provides us with all the necessary tools to account for the different inferential demands entailed by different levels of the process of language comprehension. On the basis of this typology we can, develop a fine-grained model of linguistic inferences and, thus, simplify the terms of some problematic nodes debated within contextualist approaches.The benefits of this fine-grained model is that it provides a unitary framework in which all the levels of the process of language comprehension are shown to be inferential and have the same logic structure. At the same time, it is also able to account for all the different inferential efforts entailed by different linguistic processes. Thus, this model gives us both a unitary account of the structure of linguistic inferences and a fine-grained description of the differences existing between them. (shrink)

To understand better why evidence of student cheating is often ignored, a national sample of psychology instructors was sampled for their opinions. The 127 respondents overwhelmingly agreed that dealing with instances of academic dishonesty was among the most onerous aspects of their profession. Respondents cited insufficient evidence that cheating has occurred as the most frequent reason for overlooking student behavior or writing that might be dishonest. A factor analysis revealed 4 other clusters of reasons as to why cheating may be (...) ignored. Emotional reasons included stress and lack of courage. Difficult reasons included the extensive time and effort required to deal with cheating students. Fear reasons included concern about retaliation or a legal challenge. Denial reasons included beliefs that cheating students would fail anyway and that the worst offenders do not get caught. The reasons why instances of academic dishonesty should be proactively confronted are presented. (shrink)

Miles Little is an Australian surgeon, poet, and philosopher whose published work spans diverse topics in surgery, medicine, philosophy, and bioethics. In 1974 he co-authored a survey that included an analysis of interviews conducted with amputees. This was his first foray into qualitative research. Twenty years later he established a research centre at the University of Sydney that initiated a programme of qualitative research in cancer medicine. For twenty years after that, the centre acted as a hub for research that (...) applied qualitative methods from the social sciences to study the experiences of people who endure illness and onerous treatments and to reveal their evaluations of what medicine does to and for them. This essay explains why Little turned to qualitative research instead of pursuing two other research paradigms that were better established in the 1990s, namely, evidence-based medicine and quality-of-life research. It also notes a development in qualitative research methods that Little’s legacy helps to explain, one which can augment the symbolic power of socially marginalized individuals and groups. With reference to a current controversy in surgery, I argue that Little’s survey of amputees models a laudable response to criticism, and in this respect, it is still relevant today. (shrink)

Contemporary official parenting advice about disciplining children can be boiled down to ‘Be nice’. I first expand on this claim, drawing on primarily Birth to Five and secondarily Parentchannel.tv, showing that ‘Be nice’ breaks down into the absence of punishment and the expansion of both positive reinforcement and leading by example, these three components comprising an approach that is popularly described as positive parenting. Second, I examine the ways in which such apparently innocuous advice could be damaging: positive parenting is (...) arduous if not impossible, thereby setting parents up to fail, and partly because of this onerousness, it is arguably destructive of the spontaneity of the parent–child relationship. However, the difficulties of upholding a whole-heartedly spontaneous approach to parenting have led critics to endorse a model of the good parent as the reflective parent, and in conclusion I warn that this is just as coercive as the positive parenting model that it is designed to replace. (shrink)

Using digital technology, in particular social media, is often associated with envy. Online, where there is a tendency for people to present themselves in their best light at their best moments, it can feel like we are unable to turn without being exposed to people living out their perfect lives, with their fancy achievements, their beautiful faces and families, their easy wit, and wide social circles. In this paper, I dive into the relationship between envy and digital technology. I offer (...) an enriched account of envy that aims to establish both the situated nature of envy, as well as (more controversially) the possibility of self-envy. I explore how features of digital technology not only increase the frequency with which we might experience envy directed at others, but also envy directed at other versions of one’s self. For online, we not only encounter idealized versions of others but digitally idealized versions of our selves. Moreover, I argue that digital technology does not only increase the likelihood of experiencing self-envy but makes the experience less cognitively onerous. I conclude by considering how current digital technology shapes what we envy. (shrink)

For the complex or boundary objects in which I am interested . . . dimensions implode . . . they collapse into each other . . . story telling . . . is a fraught practice . . . In no way is story telling opposed to materiality, [sic] But materiality itself is tropic; it makes us swerve, it trips us; it is a knot of the textual, technical, mythic/oneric [sic], organic, political and economic.

There is a long-standing philosophical discussion about the relationship between love and choice. The most simplistic versions see love as something one “falls” into, without any choice at all. A more sophisticated account of love would accommodate some degree of indirect choice: I feel an initial interest, and choose to seek her out more. I can also choose to create and sustain the conditions that support love, for example, by avoiding infidelity and long commutes. However, such indirect choices are relatively (...) discrete or time-limited. In contrast, I want to explore a more temporally extended kind of choice, which starts when I take responsibility for the other. This is an attitude involving a prospective commitment, an achievement of the imagination, and an active concern. I argue that one essential requirement of longer-term adult romantic and friendly love is precisely that the lover takes responsibility for meeting the beloved’s unpredictable and possibly onerous needs in the future. (shrink)

The use of context can considerably facilitate reasoning by restricting the beliefs reasoned upon to those relevant and providing extra information specific to the context. Despite the use and formalization of context being extensively studied both in AI and ML, context has not been much utilized in agents. This may be because many agents are only applied in a single context, and so these aspects are implicit in their design, or it may be that the need to explicitly encode information (...) about various contexts is onerous. An algorithm to learn the appropriate context along with knowledge relevant to that context gets around these difficulties and opens the way for the exploitation of context in agent design. The algorithm is described and the agents compared with agents that learn and apply knowledge in a generic way within an artificial stock market. The potential for context as a principled manner of closely integrating crisp reasoning and fuzzy learning is discussed. (shrink)

The notion that all the world's peoples constitute a "brotherhood of man" is not a given among all human beings -- it is rather the product of history. So suggests acclaimed philosopher Alain Finkielkraut in _In the Name of Humanity,_ an unsettling reflection on the twentieth century in its twilight hours in which he asks us to rethink our assumptions about universalism and humanism. While many people look to humanist ideals as a deterrent to nationalist chauvinism, Finkielkraut challenges the abstract (...) idea of universalism by describing the terrible crimes "civilized" Europe has committed in its name. At the same time as it challenges the inhumanity of our century's great universalistic solutions, _In the Name of Humanity_ also confronts the more onerous elements of unreflective nationalism -- clearly condemning the dangerous use of claims for ethnic purity. However, the book does not put forth a standard-issue polemic against the multitude of nationalistic currents that continue to plague the international arena. Indeed, even as he deplores the violence that seems to go hand in hand with nationalism, Finkielkraut defends its underlying cause -- the need to belong. Eloquently quoting the experiences of refugees from Hitler's Germany, he shows the reader why we must heed the call of this irreducible need. Finkielkraut reminds us that the concept of cultural relativism -- indeed, the very idea of tolerating other cultures -- is a relatively recent development in Western history. As he looks for answers he interrogates the differences between historical racism and the racism embedded in the philosophies of this century's genocidal movements, showing how modern racist ideologies like National Socialism look not to sin within the self as the stumbling block of human advancement but to a clandestine conspiracy by a particular, identifiable element of human society. What this form of radical racist thought eliminates is the notion of personal responsibility -- instead of finding the answers to misfortune within the self, modern racism suggests that evil can be identified in others and summarily eliminated. Lucidly connected to the ideas of past thinkers, from Plato to Levinas to Hannah Arendt, Finkielkraut's latest work is a troubling indictment of our century that refuses to back away from the "messiness" of human life and culture. In his willingness to abjure simple solutions, he offers a glimmer of hope. (shrink)

It is suggested that, pace Michael Golby, recourse to metaphor has little role to play in enabling governing bodies to come to terms with their new and onerous responsibilities. The better way forward is a clearer appreciation of what is demanded of them by law.

As the new director of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World, I have no deep sense of departure from Philosophy in the Contemporary World. I am simply losing a task that has at times been, in all honesty, difficult and onerous. As with childbirth, I am told, however, memory of the pain gives way to memory of the glory. And it is to the birth of children I would compare each successive issue of the journal since 1997. The (...) journal is healthy, increasing in subscriptions, and looking ahead to being administered and published by the Philosophy Documentation Center. It is a source of pride for the society's members, who indeed form a multitude of parents. Jim Sauer is an able new shepherd, and will take the journal to heights I could not. In ways I feel like I can be more supportive of the journal, and its editor, now that I am not doing the work myself. I am strongly committed to that support. (shrink)

In The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism, George H. Smith focuses his thematic approach regarding the study of classical liberal political philosophy on both natural-rights philosophers, in what Smith deems the “Lockean Paradigm,” and nineteenth-century utilitarian liberals. Smith does not merely provide an overview of the history of this theory—rather, he attempts to discover how and why liberal theory had faced major challenges in the nineteenth-century with regard to both its theoretical foundations and its level (...) of public support. Concluding, along with Herbert Spencer, that following positive results in innovation and in the economic sphere, which were achieved through the reduction of government power, “most people, seeing that these beneficial results had something to do with government, failed to differentiate between the repeal of onerous laws and the passing of new laws” (p. 213), Smith attempts to discover why liberals were unsuccessful in clai. (shrink)

This paper serves as introduction to a significantly longer paper in progress. It argues that, within the ethics community, the wider philosophical establishment and society in general, people have been far too lax about what to accept as morally “right” behaviour – far too quick to let themselves and, all too often, each other off the hook. By drawing comparisons to artefactual behaviour and the objections people raise to calling that behaviour the morally acceptable behaviour of authentic moral agents, this (...) paper lays out a framework by which human ethics and meta-ethics can more fruitfully be approached. An earlier paper of ours argued that, for an action to be morally right, one must have a convergence of the right motivations, the right means, and the right consequences. The underlying insight is that deontological, virtue-ethics-based, and consequentialist accounts all have their necessary role to play, but each tends to get too focused on itself and its merits to the loss of the bigger picture; while utilitarian accounts, as perhaps the most prominent division within consequentialism, face the further problem of failing to allow for those occasions where the needs of the few, or the one, outweigh the needs of the many, as Ursula K. LeGuin so devastatingly addressed. Although the requirement to align motivations, means, and consequences may seem impossibly onerous, it need not be, provided one is prepared to allow that moral behaviour is far more difficult to achieve, either for artefacts or human beings, than it might seem at first glance. Mistakes will be made. Perhaps it matters more to take responsibility for those mistakes than to assure oneself, despite reasonable argument to the contrary, that one has avoided them. It is time to hold artefactual and natural agent alike to a higher standard. (shrink)

A wealth of evidence supports the idea that the circuitry of the developing nervous system is gradually elaborated under the instructive influence of neural activity. Some care must be taken, however, not to handicap the acceptance of this useful perspective with too onerous a theoretical superstructure.

J’aimerais commencer par une expression italienne qui décrit très bien, grâce à une assonance efficace, mes sentiments actuels, à savoir, je sens tutto l’onore e l’onere de la charge qui m’a été confiée. D’un côté, c’est évidemment un grand honneur de pouvoir présenter précisément au Centre Léon Robin mes remarques sur le nouveau recueil de textes de la tradition « présocratique » édité par André Laks et Glenn Most : et je tiens à remercier ici M. Gourinat en tant que (...) Directeur du Centre Léo... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.4 (2001) 343-354 [Access article in PDF] "Always a Third Party Who Says 'Me'": Rhetoric and Alterity 1 Bradford Vivian In his thoughtful and provocative response to my essay, "The Threshold of the Self" (Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4: 303-18), Philip Lewin offers a series of related critiques concerning my discussion of the affinities between rhetoric and subjectivity. In that essay I posited that a revised understanding (...) of rhetoric allows us to account for the formation of subjectivity without the lingering influence of Cartesian ideals. Lewin, however, argues that my use of self-persuasion to explain the aesthetic formation of subjectivity "suggests a kind of autonomy and self-transparency in self-formation that has discouragingly Cartesian overtones" (335). He cites my thesis that "In order to compose and cultivate one's being in the world, one must persuade one's self to choose and orchestrate certain styles of life from among those available into an entire aesthetics of being" (316-17). Subsequently, Lewin asks, "How does this process of self-persuasion actually take place? What aspect or agency of psyche is doing the persuading?" (336) In short, Lewin argues that the notion of self-persuasion necessarily, even if unwittingly, preserves a valorization of subjective consciousness--a governing seat of intuitive reason. There is a sense in which I agree with the general critique offered here. Although I attempted to advance an account of thought that affirmed the ways in which consciousness is engendered by power relations and regimes of truth, the notion of self-persuasion remains too evocative of an ideal and rationally governed subject, too vulnerable to Lewin's claim that it "reintroduce[s] several of the cogito's essential features" (4), for it to define the affiliation between rhetoric and subjectivity.If Lewin and I agree that the master concept of self-persuasion proves untenable, we nevertheless reach this conclusion by different means. In fact, I argue that the manner in which Lewin arrives at this conclusion [End Page 343] ironically endorses the sort of imperatives for which he indicts my essay. Neither Lewin's nor my implicit endorsement of such imperatives should be cause for lament, however. Rather, I would like to suggest that there is much to learn from the distinct ways in which both Lewin and I have yet to overcome certain values and ideals.Instead of simply defending my previous essay, then, I attempt in the majority of what follows to respond to Lewin's critiques as a way of provoking still further discussion of rhetoric and subjectivity. Before doing so, I first comment upon Lewin's response in order to clarify my essay's guiding aspirations and explore the ways in which they may have been comprised. Thereafter, I propose a discourse on rhetoric and subjectivity whose revised methodology seeks to realize the aspirations of my previous essay in a more convincing fashion.Lewin's objections concerning my use of self-persuasion serve to remind us that the critical transformation of our language and conceptuality is fundamentally constrained by the history and grammar of that language and conceptuality. Simply put, a concept like self-persuasion may carry too much Cartesian baggage to accomplish the task for which I selected it. The onerous weight of such baggage is evinced less by the precision of Lewin's critique and more by the fact that the language of my essay could be made to support that critique.Therefore, let me briefly review the aspirations of my inquiry. I intended to initiate a rethinking of rhetoric and subjectivity that acknowledged the formative influence of historical subject positions on the self without reducing the life of the self to those subject positions. Instead of measuring subjectivity against the ideal of a transcendent and essential subject position influenced only by the transparency of reason, I sought to offer a discourse on subjectivity that affirmed the principles of difference, multiplicity, becoming, and variation in the formation of the self. Such a discourse, as I imagined it, would not deny that reason, agency, or essence come to pass... (shrink)

Institutions represent a solid basis to organize and stabilize human life in diferent social contexts. They are external events in the world, but they also have a strong anchorage in the mind and in last years many scholars tried to explore their cognitive ground. Starting from the original attempt of Douglass C. North, who at the end of his career tried to establish a program called “Cognitive Institutionalism”, we discuss the merits and the limits of this approach. First, we show (...) that his statements are cognitively onerous as they imply the notions of mental models and beliefs. Instead, we argue that shared institutions do not require such a convergence and that coordination takes place in the form of social practices and habits. Second, we clarify some aspects of North’s cognitive theory avoiding the ontological reading, i.e. explaining in what sense institutions might depend on the human mind and how people are joined into a practice made possible via institutions. (shrink)