Social networks play a significant role in learning and thus in farmers’ adoption of new agricultural technologies. This study examined the effects of social network factors on information acquisition and adoption of new seed varieties among groundnut farmers in Uganda and Kenya. The data were generated through face-to-face interviews from a random sample of 461 farmers, 232 in Uganda and 229 in Kenya. To assess these effects two alternative econometric models were used: a seemingly unrelated bivariate probit model and a (...) recursive bivariate probit model. The statistical evaluation of the SUBP shows that information acquisition and adoption decisions are interrelated while tests for the RBP do not support this latter model. Therefore, the analysis is based on the results obtained from the SUBP. These results reveal that social network factors, particularly weak ties with external support, partially influence information acquisition, but do not influence adoption. In Uganda, external support, gender, farm size, and geographic location have an impact on information acquisition. In Kenya, external support and geographic location also have an impact on information acquisition. With regard to adoption, gender, household size, and geographic location play the most important roles for Ugandan farmers, while in Kenya information from external sources, education, and farm size affect adoption choice. The study provides insight on the importance of external weak ties in groundnut farming, and a need to understand regional differences along gender lines while developing agricultural strategies. This study further illustrates the importance of farmer participation in applied technology research and the impact of social interactions among farmers and external agents. (shrink)

Critical Theory and Animal Liberation is the first collection to look at the human relationship with animals from the critical or 'left' tradition in political and social thought. The contributions in this volume highlight connections between our everyday treatment of animals and other forms of oppression, violence, and domination. Breaking with past treatments that have framed the problem as one of 'animal rights,' the authors instead depict the exploitation and killing of other animals as a political question of the first (...) order. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Modern Song: curious title, a curious book. If you bought it, as I did, because you are a devoted Dylan fan, hoping to find new Dylan songs inside, or at least new Dylan prose, you will be disappointed. In the photo of three musicians on the cover, none of them is Dylan. The one on the left is Little Richard. Who are the other two? Nowhere are we told their names, nor the names of the people in (...) any of the other photos, except for the sixty-six featured artists, though we will recognize many. The photo on the back cover might or might not be of the interior of Izzy Young's “Folklore Center,” reminiscent of Dylan's early days in Greenwich Village in the Sixties, when, together with my guitarist husband, I got to hear him perform after hours at the Gaslight and knew him well enough to say Hi when passing on the street.The basis for selecting the sixty-six songs anthologized and commented on is not immediately obvious. This is not a collection of Dylan's underappreciated favorites, though the taste represented is certainly eclectic and the choices are often surprising. The title does not help the reader who has not yet got her bearings... Philosophy? As if to justify his use of the word, Dylan eventually offers a lengthy comment on Albert Camus, but how relevant is that comment to these songs? And the word modern, too, means so many things—a sudden divergence from the past in the arts and literature; up-to-date and therefore good. These songs are not that kind of modern. If anything, the book looks backward, across the years of Dylan's long life to his musical awakening. Because we are almost the same age, I recognize the hodgepodge of styles and influences assembled here as belonging mostly to the early Fifties, when, like Bob, I was entering my teens by listening to, even dancing to, songs on the radio before I fell asleep at night. Enough about me! But no more apt basis for classifying these songs is suggested. They are not arranged alphabetically or chronologically.As for the anthologized songs, each one, once named, receives a commentary, and every commentary is called a chapter, and every chapter is divided into two parts, spelled out in letters as bold as a movie marquee. We are given the title of each song, the date of its release, and the name of the songwriter. The first part of each commentary consists of a paraphrase of “events” in the song, told almost exclusively in the second-person you rather than the more conventional I or the third-person he or she. Here is a passage from Dylan's paraphrase of “Blue Suede Shoes” by Carl Perkins: You get on well with most people, and you put up with a lot, and you hardly get caught off guard, but your shoes are something else. Minor things may annoy you, but you rise above them. Having your teeth kicked in, being pounded senseless, being dumped on and discredited, but you don't put any weight on that, none of it is as real to you as your shoes. They're priceless and beyond monetary worth.The paraphrase goes on for almost six pages, and to what end? The second half of each commentary, indicated by changes in the type, takes a few steps back to consider the sociological implications of the song in the context of its time. For instance, from the second half of the commentary on “Blue Suede Shoes”: “Shoes reveal character, station, and personality.” But Dylan does not use the opportunity to talk about his own character, station, personality. His associations with Carl Perkins and “Blue Suede Shoes” morph into an anecdote about a man called “Iron Felix, trusted consort to Lenin and Stalin.”A lengthy list of all required photo credits fills the two back pages but is printed in type so small it is almost illegible. If you want more information, and more importantly if you want to experience the songs discussed, your best bet is to search for the recordings on YouTube and to follow along, reading Dylan's commentary, one song at a time, while listening. Or, I hear rumors that we will need to purchase another book, the audio version of Philosophy of Modern Song, not yet released.Every song has its commentary, but nothing about this organization is stable, and as soon as the reader/listener thinks she has discovered a rationale for the order of the works selected, she is met with an exception. Basically, these seem to be songs about which Dylan has something anecdotal to say. More usefully, perhaps, they are organized around certain themes—those that have always preoccupied him: man's inhumanity to man, injustice, self-deception, the human situation. The anonymous author of the blurb on the jacket promises a master class in songwriting, but, if it exists at all, that lecture is exhausted in one or two observations, such as: “ ‘El Paso’ is built on five stanzas, each one two verses and a bridge and then returning to the next stanza.... ”It was almost fifty pages into the book that the sense of something missing overcame me. It was not only the words of the songs and the music that were missing; it was the author, the central intelligence that I love, the singer and songwriter whose name is credited on the cover but who never appears in the book, not even in a photograph. What I missed was Dylan. He had removed himself from his book's pages, except perhaps for a single instance: “You're an eighty-year old man, being wheeled around in a home for the elderly, and the nurses are getting on your nerves.... ”Has Bob Dylan grown weary of himself and all of his creations? The commentaries are not about Bob. In the whole book, the line quoted above may be the only exception. Does he refuse the “first person singular in the hopes of transcending ego”? Maybe; but we want to hear our master's voice. As for the philosophy of song? Besides the remarks on Camus, there is only one commentary in which Dylan explicitly states anything like a philosophy, and that is the one on “Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me,” written and performed by Joe Shaver. The song has a philosophical point of view: “Keep moving, it's better, let the train keep on rolling.”. (shrink)

A widespread view among physicists is that Bell’s theorem rests on an implicit assumption of “classicality,” in addition to locality. According to this understanding, the violation of Bell’s inequalities poses no challenge to locality, but simply reinforces the fact that quantum mechanics is not classical. The paper provides a critical analysis of this view. First we characterize the notion of classicality in probabilistic terms. We argue that classicality thus construed has nothing to do with the validity of classical physics, nor (...) of classical probability theory, contrary to what many believe. At the same time, we show that the probabilistic notion of classicality is not an additional premise of Bell’s theorem, but a mathematical corollary of locality in conjunction with the standard auxiliary assumptions of Bell. Accordingly, any theory that claims to get around the derivation of Bell’s inequalities by giving up classicality, in fact has to give up one of those standard assumptions. As an illustration of this, we look at two recent interpretations of quantum mechanics, Reinhard Werner’s operational quantum mechanics and Robert Griffiths’ consistent histories approach, that are claimed to be local and non-classical, and identify which of the standard assumptions of Bell’s theorem each of them is forced to give up. We claim that while in operational quantum mechanics the Common Cause Principle is violated, the consistent histories approach is conspiratorial. Finally, we relate these two options to the idea of realism, a notion that is also often identified as an implicit assumption of Bell’s theorem. (shrink)

The large swinging bell Gloriosa, cast in 1497 for Erfurt Cathedral by Gherardus de Wou, ranks as an outstanding masterpiece of Gothic bell-founding art. Its musical quality and formal aesthetics became an object of emulation for generations of succeeeding bell founders and there have been repeated attempts to discover the hidden deisgn of the bell's profile. An early drawing is based on measurements made in 1865 by Sorge and consistent or modified reproductions of it were subsequently published by several authors. (...) Since 1985, a new admeasure of the bell's profile has been available. From these data a shape-fitting reconstruction was obtained by means of computer aided design (CAD) but following the traditional principles of bell design. With the aid of the finite element method (FEM) the frequencies of the partials of a bell can be calculated from its material and its profile. They make up the inner harmony as an important part of euphony, namely the purity of sound. Calculated values for the most important partials are given in terms of deviation from ideal harmonic intervals and are compared with acoustically ascertained values and modern standards. A further part of euphony, i.e. reverberation and sonority, is related to the bell metal, makingGloriosa highly resonant. As a piece of luck with a singular coincidence of perfect profile and excellent material.Gloriosa will remain the undefeatable prototype of western bells. (shrink)

C’est grâce à son essai Politische Romantik, publié en 1919, que Carl Schmitt fait une entrée remarquée sur la scène intellectuelle allemande. L’ouvrage se présente comme une charge systématique et radicale contre la tradition allemande du « romantisme politique », et fut vivement discuté dans les années qui suivirent sa publication. Mais aujourd’hui il se trouve relégué parmi les œuvres de jeunesse de Schmitt et reste rarement étudié par la recherche, qui le lit au mieux comme une belle (...) contribution à l’histoire culturelle du xixe siècle.Pourtant, une étude approfondie de l’essai, ainsi que du contexte historique dans lequel il s’insère, fait apparaître que ce n’est pas dans une telle perspective que Politische Romantik manifeste toute sa portée : bien plus qu’une étude historique, cet essai constitue un élément de réponse à la crise du conservatisme allemand tel qu’il apparaît dans l’après-guerre. Le rejet du « romantisme politique » marque la rupture de Schmitt avec l’idéal « apolitique » des intellectuels allemands de l’époque, et par là constitue le premier moment du projet schmittien, tel qu’il se verra développé de manière croisée dans son étude sur le catholicisme et sa Théologie politique. (shrink)

In this book, leading theorists present new contributions and reviews addressing longstanding challenges and ongoing progress in spacetime physics. In the anniversary year of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, developed 100 years ago, this collection reflects the subsequent and continuing fruitful development of spacetime theories. The volume is published in honour of Carl Brans on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Carl H. Brans, who also contributes personally, is a creative and independent researcher and one of the founders (...) of the scalar-tensor theory, also known as Jordan-Brans-Dicke theory. In the present book, much space is devoted to scalar-tensor theories. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Brans has worked on new models of spacetime, collectively known as exotic smoothness, a field largely established by him. In this Festschrift, one finds an outstanding and unique collection of articles about exotic smoothness. Also featured are Bell's inequality and Mach's principle. Personal memories and historical aspects round off the collection. (shrink)

A central problem in applying logical knowledge representation formalisms to traditional robotics is that the treatment of belief change is categorical in the former, while probabilistic in the latter. A typical example is the fundamental capability of localization where a robot uses its noisy sensors to situate itself in a dynamic world. Domain designers are then left with the rather unfortunate task of abstracting probabilistic sensors in terms of categorical ones, or more drastically, completely abandoning the inner workings of sensors (...) to black-box probabilistic tools and then interpreting their outputs in an abstract way. Building on a first-principles approach by Bacchus, Halpern and Levesque, and a recent continuous extension to it by Belle and Levesque, we provide an axiomatization that shows how localization can be realized wrt a basic action theory, thereby demonstrating how such capabilities can be enabled in a single logical framework. We then show how the framework can also enable localization for multiple agents, where an agent can appeal to the sensing already performed by another agent and the knowledge of their relative positions to localize itself. (shrink)

The manuscript UCLA 170/624 contains Galileo’s proof of the center of gravity of the frustum of a cone, which was ultimately published as Theoremata circa centrum gravitatis solidorum in Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze. The UCLA copy opens the possibility of giving a fuller account of Theoremata dating and development, and it can shed light on the origins of this research by the young Galileo. A comparison of the UCLA manuscript with the other extant copies is (...) carried out to propose a new dating for the composition of the Theoremata. This dating will then be reconsidered in light of the mathematical content. The paper ends with a complete description of the content of the UCLA manuscript and the edition of Galileo’s text there contained. (shrink)

Philosophers of neuroscience have traditionally described interfield integration using reduction models. Such models describe formal inferential relations between theories at different levels. I argue against reduction and for a mechanistic model of interfield integration. According to the mechanistic model, different fields integrate their research by adding constraints on a multilevel description of a mechanism. Mechanistic integration may occur at a given level or in the effort to build a theory that oscillates among several levels. I develop this alternative model using (...) a putative exemplar of reduction in contemporary neuroscience: the relationship between the psychological phenomena of learning and memory and the electrophysiological phenomenon known as Long-Term Potentiation. A new look at this historical episode reveals the relative virtues of the mechanistic model over reduction as an account of interfield integration. (shrink)

As a field spanning interests among researchers and business professionals, business ethics aims to provide guidance on what can be considered morally right, socially acceptable and legally transparent dealings in the human activity of providing goods or services for trade. Yet, cohesive theory of the ethics of business is lacking, and current ethical practices often fall victim to fluctuating business conditions and circumstances. Thus, stewardship theory is proposed as a more enduring and empowering orientation to more mindful business ethics that (...) is borne out of organizational character, and knowledge stewardship is introduced as a set of practices that can support improved ethical behavior in organizations from an ethos-driven perspective. A definition of knowledge stewardship is provided in this article, and its associated outcomes of authenticity, authority and advocacy are highlighted. Practical recommendations are put forward to assist organizations in their development of stronger stewardship behavior, and exploratory research questions that heighten attentiveness to knowledge stewardship are presented. (shrink)

In the 21st century, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) remains one of the key figures in the field of analytical psychology - and Psychological Types, or The Psychology of Individuation, published in 1921, is one of his most influential works. It was written during the decade after the publication of Psychology of the Unconscious (1912), which effectively ended his friendship and collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Whereas the earlier work had clearly marked Jung's psychoanalytical divergence from Freud it is the Psychology (...) of Types that fully clarifies and presents the nature, quality and characteristics of his analytical psychology. The work, which was in part a consequence of his need to reconcile the competing theories of Freud, whom he regarded as extraverted, and Alfred Adler, whom he saw as introverted, develops his concept of descriptive categories for understanding the human mind in terms of the two essential attitude types: introversion and extraversion. These basic attitudes operate in tandem with four principal interacting functions of consciousness which Jung identifies as sensation and intuition, which are functions of perception, and thinking and feeling, which are functions of judgment. The eight resulting psychological types are then explored, described, identified, characterised and explained in considerable detail, with a soaring range of examples drawn from the whole of human history, culture and experience. In his efforts to explore and illuminate the nature of the unconscious mind and indeed the collective unconscious, he investigates the problems posed by the differing psychological types and how these have manifested from classical and medieval times to the 20th century. His observations range from Aristotle, Socrates and Plato to Tertullian and Origen, and from Abélard and Master Eckhart to Martin Luther and the problem of transubstantiation. Jung takes the listener on an odyssey of human thinking. He considers the problem of types in the works of Schiller and Goethe, and Spitteler and his treatment of the Prometheus myth. He contrasts idealism and realism, the Apollonian and the Dionysian in Nietzsche, and explores a host of philosophical and religious sources from the Bible to Taoism to Brahminism. He considers the nature of the reconciling symbol in Spitteler before analysing the nature of types in modern philosophy, aesthetics and biography, giving detailed consideration to William James' characteristic pairs of opposites and Furneaux Jordan's 'character sketch of the emotional types'. Jung goes on to fully identify and describe the characteristic differences between the extraverted and introverted types and provides an extensive chapter on definitions to fully clarify the meaning of the language he employs and make his meaning more accessible. Authoritatively read by Martyn Swain for Ukemi Audiobooks, Psychological Types is an inexhaustible treasure chest of ideas and creative inspiration worth listening to time and time again. (shrink)

In “What Makes a Scientific Explanation Distinctively Mathematical?” (2013b), Lange uses several compelling examples to argue that certain explanations for natural phenomena appeal primarily to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In such explanations, the core explanatory facts are modally stronger than facts about causation, regularity, and other natural relations. We show that Lange's account of distinctively mathematical explanation is flawed in that it fails to account for the implicit directionality in each of his examples. This inadequacy is remediable in each (...) case by appeal to ontic facts that account for why the explanation is acceptable in one direction and unacceptable in the other direction. The mathematics involved in these examples cannot play this crucial normative role. While Lange's examples fail to demonstrate the existence of distinctively mathematical explanations, they help to emphasize that many superficially natural scientific explanations rely for their explanatory force on relations of stronger-than-natural necessity. These are not opposing kinds of scientific explanations; they are different aspects of scientific explanation. (shrink)

The distinction between discovery and justification is ambiguous. This obscures the debate over a logic of discovery. For the debate presupposes the distinction. Real discoveries are well established. What is well established is justified. The proper distinctions are three: initial thinking, plausibility, and acceptability. Logic is not essential to initial thinking. We do not need good supporting reasons to initially think of an hypothesis. Initial thoughts need be neither plausible nor acceptable. Logic is essential, as Hanson noted, to both plausibility (...) and acceptability. An hypothesis needs good supporting reasons to be either plausible or acceptable. Such reasons need not be relative to the particular scientific theory undergoing test at the time. There is no fundamental difference between reasons relevant to plausibility and acceptability. The difference is one of degree. Acceptability requires more than plausibility. (shrink)

Henry at Work invites readers to rethink how we work today by exploring an aspect of Henry David Thoreau that has often been overlooked: Thoreau the worker. John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle overturn the popular misconception of Thoreau as a navel-gazing recluse who was scornful of work and other mundanities. In fact, Thoreau worked hard—surveying land, running his family’s pencil-making business, writing, lecturing, and building his cabin at Walden Pond—and thought intensely about work in its many dimensions. And (...) his ideas about work have much to teach us in an age of remote work and automation, when many people are reconsidering what kind of working lives they want to have. -/- Through Thoreau, readers will discover a philosophy of work in the office, factory, lumber mill, and grocery store, and reflect on the rhythms of the workday, the joys and risks of resigning oneself to work, the dubious promises of labor-saving technology, and that most vital and eternal of philosophical questions, “How much do I get paid?” In ten chapters, including “Manual Work,” “Machine Work,” and “Meaningless Work,” this personal, urgent, practical, and compassionate book introduces readers to their new favorite coworker: Henry David Thoreau. (shrink)

Let HF be the collection of the hereditarily finite well-founded sets and let the primitive language of set theory be the first-order language which contains binary symbols for equality and membership only. As announced in a previous paper by the authors, "Truth in V for ∃*∀∀-sentences is decidable," truth in HF for ∃*∀∀-sentences of the primitive language is decidable. The paper provides the proof of that claim.

BackgroundCountries are increasingly devoting significant resources to creating or strengthening research ethics committees, but there has been insufficient attention to assessing whether these committees are actually improving the protection of human research participants.DiscussionResearch ethics committees face numerous obstacles to achieving their goal of improving research participant protection. These include the inherently amorphous nature of ethics review, the tendency of regulatory systems to encourage a focus on form over substance, financial and resource constraints, and conflicts of interest. Auditing and accreditation programs (...) can improve the quality of ethics review by encouraging the development of standardized policies and procedures, promoting a common base of knowledge, and enhancing the status of research ethics committees within their own institutions. However, these mechanisms focus largely on questions of structure and process and are therefore incapable of answering many critical questions about ethics committees' actual impact on research practices.The first step in determining whether research ethics committees are achieving their intended function is to identify what prospective research participants and their communities hope to get out of the ethics review process. Answers to this question can help guide the development of effective outcomes assessment measures. It is also important to determine whether research ethics committees' guidance to investigators is actually being followed. Finally, the information developed through outcomes assessment must be disseminated to key decision-makers and incorporated into practice. This article offers concrete suggestions for achieving these goals.ConclusionOutcomes assessment of research ethics committees should address the following questions: First, does research ethics committee review improve participants' understanding of the risks and potential benefits of studies? Second, does the process affect prospective participants' decisions about whether to participate in research? Third, does it change participants' subjective experiences in studies or their attitudes about research? Fourth, does it reduce the riskiness of research? Fifth, does it result in more research responsive to the local community's self-identified needs? Sixth, is research ethics committees' guidance to researchers actually being followed? (shrink)

In this paper I argue against one variety of contextualism about aesthetic predicates such as “beautiful.” Contextualist analyses of these and other predicates have been subject to several challenges surrounding disagreement. Focusing on one kind of contextualism— individualized indexical contextualism —I unpack these various challenges and consider the responses available to the contextualist. The three responses I consider are as follows: giving an alternative analysis of the concept of disagreement ; claiming that speakers suffer from semantic blindness; and claiming that (...) attributions of beauty carry presuppositions of commonality. I will argue that none of the available strategies gives a response which both satisfactorily explains all of the disagreement -data and is plausible independent of significant evidence in favor of contextualism. I conclude that individualized indexical contextualism about the aesthetic is untenable, although this does not rule out alternative contextualist approaches to the aesthetic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to try to clarify the nature and justification of respect for the law. In section I, I try to clarify the nature of respect for a legal system and distinguish it from related concepts. In the next section, I consider problems justifying the attitude of respect toward a legal system. In section III, I discuss the extent to which one has duties to behave respectfully toward and to try to adopt an attitude of respect (...) toward a reasonably just legal system. One consequence is that it is difficult to show that one has a duty to obey the law because it is respect-worthy. In the last section, I sketch further consequences of preceding sections and suggest that respect for the law properly understood is neither the boon of oppression nor the bane of conscientious moral agents. (shrink)

Building Better Health Care Leadership for Canada explains the development and implementation of the Executive Training in Research Application program. Managed and funded by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation in partnership with the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nursing Association, and the Canadian College of Health Care executives, EXTRA is a two-year national fellowship program that uses the principles of adult learning theory as well as practical projects to educate senior health care leaders in making more consistent use of (...) research evidence in their management roles. Fellows apply the theory learned in residency sessions and educational activities to projects within their home organizations. The authors identify the imperative for better use of evidence, outline the core elements of the curriculum, and capture the real-world experience of regional leaders and fellows involved in making specific changes informed by research-based evidence within their organization. Contributors include Jean-Louis Denis, Terrence Sullivan, Owen Adams, Malcolm Anderson, Lynda Atack, Robert Bell, Sam G Campbell, Sylvie Cantin, Ward Flemons, Dorothy Forbes, J. Sonja Glass, Paula Goering, Karen Golden-Biddle, Jeffrey S. Hoch, Paul Lamarche, Ann Langley, John N. Lavis, Jonathan Lomas, Margo Orchard, Raynald Pineault, Brian D. Postl, Christine Power, Trish Reay, Jean Rochon, Denis A. Roy, Andrea Seymour, Samuel B. Sheps, Micheline Ste-Marie, Nina Stipich, David Streiner, Carl Taillon, and Muriah Umoquit. (shrink)

Machine learning (ML) techniques have become pervasive across a range of different applications, and are now widely used in areas as disparate as recidivism prediction, consumer credit-risk analysis, and insurance pricing. Likewise, in the physical world, ML models are critical components in autonomous agents such as robotic surgeons and self-driving cars. Among the many ethical dimensions that arise in the use of ML technology in such applications, analyzing morally permissible actions is both immediate and profound. For example, there is the (...) potential for learned algorithms to become biased against certain groups. More generally, in so much that the decisions of ML models impact society, both virtually (e.g., denying a loan) and physically (e.g., driving into a pedestrian), notions of accountability, blame and responsibility need to be carefully considered. In this article, we advocate for a two-pronged approach ethical decision-making enabled using rich models of autonomous agency: on the one hand, we need to draw on philosophical notions of such as beliefs, causes, effects and intentions, and look to formalise them, as attempted by the knowledge representation community, but on the other, from a computational perspective, such theories need to also address the problems of tractable reasoning and (probabilistic) knowledge acquisition. As a concrete instance of this tradeoff, we report on a few preliminary results that apply (propositional) tractable probabilistic models to problems in fair ML and automated reasoning of moral principles. Such models are compilation targets for certain types of knowledge representation languages, and can effectively reason in service some computational tasks. They can also be learned from data. Concretely, current evidence suggests that they are attractive structures for jointly addressing three fundamental challenges: reasoning about possible worlds + tractable computation + knowledge acquisition. Thus, these seems like a good starting point for modelling reasoning robots as part of the larger ecosystem where accountability and responsibility is understood more broadly. (shrink)