An attempt to state the general laws derived from many subsidiary studies of social life in religion, politics, economics, psychology and the rest.

The complexity of biobank research raises concerns about individuals’ understanding of the information conveyed in the consent process for such research.. We report the results of a qualitative, cognitive interview study with an ethnically, linguistically, and educationally diverse sample of 43 respondents to assess the clarity and utility of a multimedia tool developed for a biobank. Using weighted randomization, respondents were assigned to either view the multimedia tool or read a written consent document . The study illustrates the utility of (...) cognitive interviews for gaining insights from prospective research participants about the clarity of informed consent tools. Findings suggest that a multimedia tool is useful for communicating key messages but should be combined with a written consent document and personal interaction with the study staff. We recommend that the potential value of multimedia tools should be more rigorously tested in a randomized controlled trial. (shrink)

An influential position in the scholarship on Longus is that the narrator of Daphnis and Chloe is dissociated from, and ironized by, the author. Two articles by John Morgan, in particular, have propounded this interpretation. Morgan argues that Longus’ narrator relates the story with simplicity and naivety, and in ignorance of the more complex subtleties to which only Longus and the more discerning reader have access: ‘Daphnis and Chloe is told by its narrator as if it were a simpler and (...) more conventional story than it really is, and invites its reader to read it in the same way. One way to describe this textual duplicity is to think in terms of a surface “narrator's text” and a deeper “author's text”. We can conceive the narrator, as established by the prologue, as a distorting and simplifying lens between the story and us. As readers we effectively have the choice of accepting what we see through the lens or of correcting it and reading around the narrator.’ This type of separation of author and narrator is identifiable in Petronius’ Satyrica, in which the first-person narrator Encolpius who tells his story in hindsight is ridiculed and his narration destabilized by the hidden author who ‘is also listening, along with the reader, to Encolpius’ narrative—and along with the reader is smiling at it’. (shrink)

In der folgenden Übersicht wird versucht, die wissenschaftstheoretischen Tätigkeiten in den Niederlanden, insbesondere auf den Gebieten der Logik und Grundlagenforschung, Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften, Philosophie der Geschichtswissenschaft und der Sozialwissenschaften zu skizzieren. In einer Schlußbetrachtung werden die allgemeinen methodologischen Fragestellungen und die daraus sich ergebenden neuen Möglichkeiten einer Wissenschaftstheorie erörtert.

In this paper we study the systemsP andP * (see Arruda and da Costa,O paradoxo de Curry-Moh Shaw-Kwei, Boletim da Sociedade Matemtica de São Paulo 18 (1966)) and some related systems. In the last section, we prove that certain set theories havingP andP * as their underlying logics are non-trivial.

Although the concept of psychopathy retains its currency in British psychiatry, apparently being meaningful as well as useful to practitioners (1), it is often taken to refer to a purely legal category with social control functions rather than a medical diagnosis with treatment implications. I wish, in this brief article, to suggest that it is essentially, and most usefully, an ethical category which stands outside the diagnostic framework of present-day psychiatry.

In this volume C.A. (Chet) Bowers, whose pioneering work on education and environmental and sustainability issues is widely recognized and respected around the world, brings together a carefully curated selection of his seminal work on the ideological, cultural, and linguistic roots of the ecological crisis; misconceptions underlying modern consciousness; the cultural commons; a critique of technology; and educational reforms to address these pressing concerns. In the World Library of Educationalists, international scholars themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to (...) be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions - so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field, as well as the development of the field itself. Contributors to the series include : Michael Apple, James A. Banks, Joel Spring, William F. Pinar, Stephen J. Ball, Elliot Eisner, Howard Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, Peter Jarvis. (shrink)

In this response to Jonny Anomaly’s ‘Is Obesity a Public Health Problem?’ I argue, contra the author that public health actually increases individuals’ abilities to choose actions that further their health goals, specifically in the case of obesity. The intractability of obesity as an individual medical problem combined with the health benefits of modest (5–10 per cent of body weight) weight loss suggest that public health measures helping people make small changes in eating habits improve population health. I argue that (...) such measures are available to public health via behavioral economic research and policy proposals from libertarian paternalists. I respond to author’s claim that obesity does not constitute a public health problem because: (i) it is not an epidemic and (ii) obesity reduction is not a public good. I argue that epidemic status is not required for classification as a public health problem, but that obesity does have the status of an epidemic. I also point out flaws in author’s reasoning about obesity, public health and social costs. I conclude by suggesting that public health, in partnership with stakeholders and other areas of government, is poised to help create conditions for modest weight loss and increased population health overall. (shrink)

The Three Papers comprising this series, together with my earlier [34] also published in this journal, constitute an attempt to set out the major issues in the theoretical domain of reduction and to develop a general theory of theory reduction. The fourth paper, [34], though published separately from this trio, is integral to the presentation and should be read in conjunction with these papers. Even so, the presentation is limited in scope – roughly, to intertheoretic reduction among empirical theories – (...) and informal in presentation – not least because a satisfying formal account of theories has yet to be offered. And despite the length, the treatment is still condensed; often corroborating and/or intuitively helpful detail has had to be consigned to footnotes or omitted. I approach the problem from within my own naturalistic realist philosophy of science and formal analysis of abstract hierarchy in theory. The sources for the former are [25], [29], [31], and [32] and those for the latter essentially [27] and [30]. Hierarchical notions played a significant role in the already published [34]. (shrink)

Part I of this trilogy, Historical and Scientific Setting, set out a general context for selecting a certain subclass of inter-theoretic relations as achieving appropriate explanatory and ontological unification – hence for properly being labelled reductive. Something of the complexity of these relations in real science was explored. The present article concentrates on the role which identity plays in structuring the reduction relation and so in achieving ontological and explanatory unification.

I argue that beliefs about what appears possible are justified in much the same way as beliefs about what appears actual. I do so by chisholming, and then modalizing, the epistemic principle associated with phenomenal conservatism. The principle is tested against a number of examples, and it gives the intuitively correct results. I conclude by considering how it can be used to defend two controversial modal arguments, a Cartesian argument for dualism and an ontological argument for the existence of God.