Traditional forms of farming, herding, and fishing are remarkably adapted to African conditions but these traditional approaches are being overtaken by modern pressures, particularly population growth. According to a report published by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a nonpartisan analytical support agency of the U. S. Congress, one promising way to help African farmers and herders would be for development assistance organizations to focus more attention on the various forms of low-resource agriculture that predominate in Africa.In keeping with OTA's (...) mission and primary audience, “Enhancing Agriculture in Africa: A Role for U. S. Development Assistance” (1988) is a policy-oriented synthesis of available technical information. The report provides Congress with a range of options that, if pursued, could help Africans enhance agriculture, increase their food security, and improve their lives.This paper is drawn from the larger OTA report, and it focuses on the role technology might play in enhancing low-resource agriculture. Readers should see the full assessment (OTA, 1988) for more information on policy considerations; the specific technologies mentioned; or a complete list of advisory panel members, workshops and participants, and commissioned papers.OTA's report comes at a critical time: for a variety of reasons—ranging from changing values to increased budget constraints—U. S. foreign assistance policy is undergoing a fundamental reevaluation. This review of the potential of low-resource agriculture, and options the United States might pursue to enhance this approach, was intended to aid in this reevaluation. (shrink)

Contemporary educational reformers have claimed that research on social class differences in child raising justifies programs that aim to lift children out of poverty by means of cultural interventions. Focusing on the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Ruby Payne's “aha! Process,” and the Harlem Children's Zone as examples, Amy Shuffelton argues that such programs, besides overstepping the social science research, are ethically illegitimate insofar as they undermine the equitable development of civic agency. Shuffelton invokes Aristotelian civic friendship, particularly as (...) interpreted by Danielle Allen and Sibyl Schwarzenbach, as key to a politics that avoids relations of domination and subordination. She concludes that social justice requires that educators involved with culturally interventionist programs recognize the workings of power within schooling and society, that they accept the limits of their own perspectives, and that they remain open to what is of value in child-raising practices other than those associated with the contemporary middle class. (shrink)

BackgroundClinical ethics consultations can be complex interventions, involving multiple methods, stakeholders, and competing ethical values. Despite longstanding calls for rigorous evaluation in the field, progress has been limited. The Medical Research Council proposed guidelines for evaluating the effectiveness of complex interventions. The evaluation of CEC may benefit from application of the MRC framework to advance the transparency and methodological rigor of this field. A first step is to understand the outcomes measured in evaluations of CEC in healthcare settings. ObjectiveThe primary (...) objective of this review was to identify and map the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC. The secondary objective was to provide a comprehensive overview of CEC structures, processes, and roles to enhance understanding and to inform standardization.MethodsWe searched electronic databases to identify primary studies of CEC involving patients, substitute decision-makers and/or family members, clinicians, healthcare staff and leaders. Outcomes were mapped across five conceptual domains as identified a priori based on our clinical ethics experience and preliminary literature searches and revised based on our emerging interpretation of the data. These domains included personal factors, process factors, clinical factors, quality, and resource factors. ResultsForty-eight studies were included in the review. Studies were highly heterogeneous and varied considerably regarding format and process of ethical intervention, credentials of interventionist, population of study, outcomes reported, and measures employed. In addition, few studies used validated measurement tools. The top three outcome domains that studies reported on were quality, process factors, and clinical factors. The majority of studies examined multiple outcome domains. All five outcome domains were multidimensional and included a variety of subthemes.ConclusionsThis scoping review represents the initial phase of mapping the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC and identifying gaps in the evidence. The confirmed lack of standardization represents a hindrance to the provision of high quality intervention and CEC scientific progress. Insights gained can inform the development of a core outcome set to standardize outcome measures in CEC evaluation research and enable scientifically rigorous efficacy trials of CEC. (shrink)

There are good reasons to want logics, including many-valued logics, to have usable conditionals, and we have explored this in certain logics. However, it turns out that we “accidentally” chose some favourable logics. In this paper, we look at some of the unfavourable logics and describe where usable conditionals can be added and where it is not possible.

The greatest diversity of butterflies and their host plants occurs in tropical regions. Some groups of butterflies in the tropics exhibit monophagous feeding in the larval stage, exploiting only one family of plants; others are polyphagous, feeding on plants in two or more distinct families. The two major types of tropical habitats for butterflies, namely primary and secondary forests, offer very different evolutionary opportunities for the exploitation of plants as larval food. Butterflies are faced with the major logistical problem, as (...) are many other herbivorous insects, of depositing eggs on the correct plant for successful larval feeding. This paper, using the concepts of phenotype set and spatial patchiness of resources, attemps to make some predictions as to the optimal phenotypic systems for monophagous and polyphagous feeding in tropical butterflies, as related to the spatial patchiness of larval host plants in primary and secondary forests. In addition to the secondary compound chemistry of larval host plants as playing a role in the evolution of monophagy and polyphagy, the assumption is made that the spatial patchiness of host plants within and among different families also acts as a major factor in determining optimal ranges of phenotypes for different patterns of larval feeding. Owing to the high spatial patchiness of primary forest species of canopy trees and vines, it is predicted that butterflies exploiting these will be mostly polyphagous, whereas secondary forests having stable formations of fewer plant species and larger patches of these plants, will have mostly monophagous species. Forest understories may have both monophagous and polyphagous species, depending upon the layer of forest and the general type of understory (i.e. palmaceous or dicotyledonous). Field data on some groups of butterflies from tropical America support these predictions. Polyphagous butterflies are predicted to possess a genetic system of mixed morphs with a population being polymorphic as a whole; monophagous butterflies are predicted to have individuals all more or less similar genetically, and with a high amount of genic variation within individuals. Other forms of monophagy may evolve in species that are essentially monomorphic but with various mechanisms (physiological, developmental, behavioral) of phenotypic flexibility at the individual level. Although the environment is essentially coarse-grained for larvae since most are sedentary and polymorphism is an optimal adaptive strategy, the oviposition strategy of the adult must also be considered and some situations (i.e. forest canopy) have resources (host plants) distributed in a fine-grained fashion. Other forms of limited polyphagy may result from monomorphic genetic systems in which there is considerable phenotypic flexibility. (shrink)

Application of egalitarian and prioritarian accounts of health resource allocation in low‐income countries have both been criticized for implying distribution outcomes that allow decreasing/undermining health gains and for tolerating unacceptable standards of health care and health status that result from such allocation schemes. Insufficient health care and severe deprivation of health resources are difficult to accept even when justified by aggregative efficiency or legitimized by fair deliberative process in pursuing equality and priority oriented outcomes. I affirm the sufficientarian argument that, (...) given extreme scarcity of public health resources in low‐income countries, neither health status equality between populations nor priority for the worse off is normatively adequate. Nevertheless, the threshold norm alone need not be the sole consideration when a country's total health budget is extremely scarce. Threshold considerations are necessary in developing a theory of fair distribution of health resources that is sensitive to the lexically prior norm of sufficiency. Based on the intuition that shares must not be taken away from those who barely achieve a minimal level of health, I argue that assessments based on standards of minimal physical/mental health must be developed to evaluate the sufficiency of the total resources of health systems in low‐income countries prior to pursuing equality, priority, and efficiency based resource allocation. I also begin to examine how threshold sensitive health resource assessment could be used in the Philippines. (shrink)

In seeking to determine what place, if any, the concept of moral rights can and/or should have in theological ethics, it is first necessary to clarify the nature of the concept. On this task contemporary moral philosophy is found to be especially helpful. It is then suggested that from a theological standpoint an appeal to moral rights might be justified by reference to (1) the moral fabric of persons under God, (2) the worth of persons as ends, and (3) the (...) inclusiveness of the moral community. The author claims that the concept of moral rights is compatible with belief in a sovereign God who promises his steadfast love, and that it need not imply any "natural" ethic in competition with theological ethics. Finally, the affirmation of moral rights is found to be highly appropriate to an emphasis upon love toward other persons. (shrink)

In this article, I reconsider Gandhi's relationship to liberal democracy. I argue that a properly Gandhian approach to this relationship should emphasize the role of the satyagrahi facilitating conflict resolutions and progress in truth. Above all, this approach calls upon courageous, exemplary individuals to pass over and join the viewpoints of 'unreasonables' marginalized by the liberal state. However, I also argue that contemporary Gandhians should explore cultural adaptations of the satyagrahi-role appropriate to highly materialistic, multicultural liberal-democracies. In these societies, the (...) traditional figure of the ascetic or saint may lack popular cultural resonance. Moreover, moral learning and spiritual insight often derives from popular culture and entertainment as much as religious traditions, or devotional practices. Contemporary Gandhi’s scholars should thus consider the prospects for 'alternative satyagrahis' embracing some materialist values and cultural motifs, as appropriate sources spiritual growth and soul-force. (shrink)

The Life of the Mind culminates Arendt’s life work; a life of inquiry spent largely in the public realm she sought to reclaim. While an expressly philosophical work, it sheds much light on her earlier political formulations. At the least, it makes us re-think them. Her first volume on thinking prompts a re-examination of her characterization of Eichmann. Banality was controversial to many, and inadequate to others.

Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan advocated a critical realism, in which scientific and theological knowledge are products of self-critical phenomenological analysis. Allying his thought with Thomas Aquinas in elaborating a cognitional theory to serve epistemology and metaphysics, Lonergan challenged reigning idealist and empiricist philosophies by understanding the human knower as ordered both to the known world and to divine providence. This paper will sketch four themes in which Lonergan constructs a methodical link between phenomenology and both contemporary science and (...) theology. Lonergan does not embody the frequently cited idea of a rupture in Catholic thought from pre-Vatican II to post-conciliar thought, notably in his treatment of science and religion. (shrink)

An edition of the letters of Erasmus, regarded as one of the greatest humanist writers. All 12 volumes of this work have been reissued, complete with their scholarly apparatus of commentary and notes, as well as plates.

Invention is an investment in which the costs of the Research and Development project balance future returns. Those returns depend on objective factors like wage and capital costs but also on subjective factors because they are future projections. The more optimistic the inventor, the higher are the projected returns. Baumard uses Life History Theory to relate optimism to the affluence of inventors and their societies.

Privacy and technology clash in the courts. I elaborate the example of Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017), an example from the High Court of India, whose sweeping and inclusive jurisprudential style raises starkly the question of the influence that academic philosophers and other scholars have over how legitimate societal interests in exploiting information technology and protecting personal privacy are “balanced” by the courts. Philosophers will be satisfied to see that their theories are acknowledged in a landmark national decision finding (...) that India’s 1.3 billion people have a constitutional, fundamental right to privacy that constrains a challenged government biometric identification system. Some scholars will appreciate the inclusive definition of privacy, which included decisional privacy, combined with the treatment of privacy as a paramount human good meriting the protection of fundamental rights. But some academic philosophers are potentially disappointed that the Court synthesizes rather than differentiates among their competing theories, concepts, and definitions, and, in the end, relies upon liberal Enlightenment ideals that some scholars have argued are singularly ill-suited for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Gandhi scholars agree that he was a critic of capitalism, if not capital or capitalists. Nevertheless, they disagree about his relationship to socialism. Some emphasize Gandhi’s claim that the modern Western canon of socialism is incompatible with the philosophy of nonviolence. Others emphasize his occasional affirmation that he is a socialist, regarding socialism as a beautiful ideal of equality. Gandhi moves back and forth between conditional endorsements of capitalists and socialism’s beautiful ideal. In this article, I ask why Gandhi never (...) specifies any clear economic preference for the philosophy of nonviolence. Is he confused and incapable of reaching practical judgments about what nonviolence demands in terms of economics? I answer this question in two ways. First, I argue that passing back and forth over the partial and fallible viewpoints of capitalists and socialists of various stripes is consistent with Gandhi’s method of experiments in truth. The passing-over method extends from experiments in devotion to constructive experiments in economics, laying the foundation for integrating distinctively human life goals or puruṣārthas. Second, and perhaps more surprisingly, I consider the background to Gandhi’s use of this method as applied to economics in Kauṭilya’s classical Arthaśāstra. Scholars often characterize Kauṭilya as both a socialist and a realist. While establishing the world’s first welfare state, his Arthaśāstra is also tied deeply into the material-spiritual concerns of the puruṣārthas, combining economics with duty, earthly pleasure, and transcendence. In this latter respect, however, Kauṭilya’s realism concedes too much to the contextual realities of his time concerning imperial conquest and caste. Gandhi emerges from this inquiry as another kind of realist in his constructive experiments with diverse economic perspectives, equally attuned to the contextual realities of his age. Gandhi succeeded—where Kauṭilya failed—to integrate economics with the spiritual goals of the puruṣārthas. I contend that Gandhi’s back and forth method in economics provides contemporary Gandhians with a way to address new contextual realities of the digital or “gig” economy through techno-satyagraha. (shrink)