ABSTRACT Between April 1820 and April 1822, stimulated by the restoration of the Cádiz Constitution, Bentham devoted himself to writing a number of works on the constitutional reform and colonial rule of Spain, which have been sources of a scholarly debate over Bentham's views on colony. By examining those works, this essay aims to supplement the scholarly debate by drawing attention to a thesis that Bentham developed in his criticism and evaluation of the Cádiz Constitution: a thesis concerning the irreconcilable (...) incompatibilities of liberal constitution and colonisation. I focus on Bentham's critical analyses of the Constitution, and indicate that Spain's colonial rule of Ultramaria not only intensified the weaknesses of the Constitution, but also rendered its merits useless, if not harmful, to the public in both hemispheres. Moreover, I explore the tension that Bentham detected between liberal constitutionalism and colonialism. I maintain that, in Bentham's observation, the civil rights granted by the Cádiz Constitution to the Ultramarians stood to facilitate the enlightenment of citizens and the formation of civil society. As a consequence, the delusion of the Spanish ruling few would be exposed, and the Ultramarians’ discontent with exploitation by such foreign rulers would sow the seeds of disobedience and resistance. (shrink)

This newly edited volume is a significant addition to the study of modern political thought. The volume includes an introduction co-authored by the two editors and 11 chapters covering early modern...

One of the greatest problems facing luxury goods firms in a globalizing market is that of counterfeiting. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the different types of counterfeiting that take place in thefashion industry and the ethical issues raised. We argue that the problem partly lies in the industry itself. Copying of designs is endemic and condoned, which raises several ethical dilemmas in passing judgment on the practice of counterfeiting. We analyze the ethical issues in a number of (...) different types of counterfeiting encountered in the fashion industry. We conclude with some observations on the general implications for ethics in intellectual property rights. (shrink)

Five experiments investigated how people use categories to make inductions about objects whose categorisation is uncertain. Normatively, they should consider all the categories the object might be in and use a weighted combination of information from all the categories: bet-hedging. The experiments presented people with simple, artificial categories and asked them to make an induction about a new object that was most likely in one category but possibly in another. The results showed that the majority of people focused on the (...) most likely category in making inductions, although there was a group of consistently normative responders who used information from both categories (about 25% of our college population). Across experiments the overall pattern of results suggests that performance in the task is improved not by understanding the underlying principles of bet-hedging but by increasing the likelihood that multiple categories are in working memory at the time of the induction. We discuss implications for improving everyday inductions. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

This paper presents an autobiographical narrative of two aspects of my history; two events that permeated my moral consciousness and influenced my political development and a sequence of changes in my dominant theoretical and epistemological perspectives. The two events were, as a teenager, the intense experience of briefly witnessing Apartheid culture and, as a young adult, becoming deeply engaged in feminist activism. My intellectual journey began in cognitive developmental theory and progressed to a cultural, discursive perspective in which the role (...) of affect is seen as integrated. The paper explores the intersection of these two strands of my moral and intellectual development and concludes with a preliminary model of action and engagement. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

Ontologies, as the term is used in informatics, are structured vocabularies comprised of human- and computer-interpretable terms and relations that represent entities and relationships. Within informatics fields, ontologies play an important role in knowledge and data standardization, representation, integra- tion, sharing and analysis. They have also become a foundation of artificial intelligence (AI) research. In what follows, we outline the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), which covers multiple areas in the domain of coronavirus diseases, including etiology, transmission, epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, (...) prevention, and treatment. We emphasize CIDO development relevant to COVID-19. (shrink)

Current COVID-19 pandemic and previous SARS/MERS outbreaks have caused a series of major crises to global public health. We must integrate the large and exponentially growing amount of heterogeneous coronavirus data to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechanisms, in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs. Ontologies have emerged to play an important role in standard knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. We have initiated the development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). (...) As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is an open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. In this article, the general architecture and the design patterns of the CIDO are introduced, CIDO representation of coronaviruses, phenotypes, anti-coronavirus drugs and medical devices (e.g. ventilators) are illustrated, and an application of CIDO implemented to identify repurposable drug candidates for effective and safe COVID-19 treatment is presented. (shrink)

COVID-19 often manifests with different outcomes in different patients, highlighting the complexity of the host-pathogen interactions involved in manifestations of the disease at the molecular and cellular levels. In this paper, we propose a set of postulates and a framework for systematically understanding complex molecular host-pathogen interaction networks. Specifically, we first propose four host-pathogen interaction (HPI) postulates as the basis for understanding molecular and cellular host-pathogen interactions and their relations to disease outcomes. These four postulates cover the evolutionary dispositions involved (...) in HPIs, the dynamic nature of HPI outcomes, roles that HPI components may occupy leading to such outcomes, and HPI checkpoints that are critical for specific disease outcomes. Based on these postulates, an HPI Postulate and Ontology (HPIPO) framework is proposed to apply interoperable ontologies to systematically model and represent various granular details and knowledge within the scope of the HPI postulates, in a way that will support AI-ready data standardization, sharing, integration, and analysis. As a demonstration, the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework were applied to study COVID-19 with the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO), leading to a novel approach to rational design of drug/vaccine cocktails aimed at interrupting processes occurring at critical host-coronavirus interaction checkpoints. Furthermore, the host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) relevant to COVID-19 were predicted and evaluated based on prior knowledge of curated PPIs and domain-domain interactions, and how such studies can be further explored with the HPI postulates and the HPIPO framework is discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Distance of Irish Modernism: Memory, Narrative, Representation by John GreaneyXiaojing Chen and Hamid FarahmandianThe Distance of Irish Modernism: Memory, Narrative, Representation, John Greaney; 248 pp. London: Blooms-bury Academic, 2022.In his thought-provoking book The Distance of Irish Modernism, John Greaney embarks on a metacritical journey to unravel the paradoxical nature of Irish modernist fictions. The book delves into the enigma of how these works serve as vessels (...) for national and transnational histories while simultaneously presenting themselves as elusive and peculiar in terms of their temporal and geographical settings. Greaney skillfully examines the complexities of Irish modernism in the twenty-first century through close reading, formal analysis, narratology, philosophical accounts of literature, historicist and materialist approaches, and postcolonial and world literature paradigms. The result is a groundbreaking narrative that challenges existing notions of Irish modernism and offers a fresh perspective on the cultural memories they portray.IThe book's introduction, "The Vicinities of Irish Modernism," sets the stage for an engaging exploration of the subject matter. Greaney adeptly frames the paradox inherent in Irish modernist fictions and introduces the central question of how these texts function as mirrors of historical events and realities. By drawing attention to the proximities and distances between modernist aesthetic practices and the history of modernity in Ireland and beyond, the introduction lays the foundation for the subsequent chapters' analysis.In chapter 1, "Samuel Beckett and the Contexts of Modernism," Greaney evaluates the works of the renowned Irish author. Greaney meticulously examines Beckett's literary legacy, probing the contexts that shaped his artistic expression. Through comprehensive scrutiny, Greaney highlights how Beckett's writings transcend conventional boundaries and invite interpretations that go beyond the historical and geographical confines of Ireland. This chapter masterfully [End Page 251] combines textual analysis with an exploration of Beckett's broader contributions to the modernist movement."Brian, Flann, Myles and the Origins of Irish Modernism," the second chapter, delves into the works of one man—but three pivotal figures—in Irish literature: Brian O'Nolan, who wrote under the pen names Flann O'Brien and Myles na gCopaleen. Greaney uncovers the origins of Irish modernism through the lens of this iconic author, shedding light on his creative methodology and his impact on the Irish literary landscape. By situating his works within the broader modernist context, Greaney reveals the ways in which this writer revolutionized Irish literature and paved the way for the future generations of Irish modernists.Chapter 3, "Elizabeth Bowen's Modernist History," focuses on well-known novelist Elizabeth Bowen. Greaney conducts an in-depth analysis of Bowen's modernist approach to historical events, providing an intriguing investigation of how her texts intertwine with the collective memory of Ireland. Bowen's unique style and intricate narratives come under scrutiny, offering readers a profound understanding of her role in shaping Irish modernism and her contribution to the literary canon.Moving forward, "Kate O'Brien's 'Flawed' Modernism" explores the works of another significant figure in Irish literature. Greaney examines the perceived flaws in O'Brien's modernist approach, challenging conventional criticism and reevaluating her contributions to the Irish modernist tradition. By deftly analyzing O'Brien's works, the chapter seeks to reposition her within the context of Irish modernism, enriching the reader's comprehension of this multifaceted literary movement.The subsequent chapter, "John McGahern and the Limits of Irish Modernism," centers on an author whose writings have earned him a prominent place in Irish literature. Greaney investigates the boundaries and constraints of Irish modernism as portrayed in McGahern's oeuvre. By unraveling the complexities of McGahern's narratives, the chapter sheds light on how his works both align with and challenge the conventions of Irish modernism. This nuanced exploration opens up new perspectives on the extent of Irish modernist expression in the literary realm.The epilogue serves as a captivating conclusion, drawing together the threads of the preceding chapters to present a cohesive reflection on the book's core themes. Greaney reinforces the idea that the examination of Irish modernism necessitates a multifaceted approach, one that embraces various critical lenses and paradigms. The epilogue encourages readers to reevaluate their perceptions of Irish modernism, urging them... (shrink)

Cosmopolitans including Charles Beitz, David Richards, Brian Barry, Thomas Pogge and Gillian Brock propose the device of an original global position to work out global principles of justice. However, John Rawls does not agree with this kind of proposal. In this paper, I add two key original contributions, which go beyond previous arguments by cosmopolitans and advance the current debates. First, to argue against Rawls’s objection to the global original position, I demonstrate the importance of the distinction between accepting (...) a particular substantive principle and accepting the original position procedure. Second, in order to respond to cultural pluralism, I take a unique approach to show that the idea of the person as free and equal is a fundamental part of the global public culture by examining the most fundamental legal documents: the proto-constitutional documents in international law and the constitutions of the major states. I apply Samuel Huntington’s classification of civilisations to identify the major civilisations and their core states and show that the idea of the person as free and equal is implicit in the constitutions of most influential countries even though these countries are categorised in different civilisations. (shrink)

In a quantum universe with a strong arrow of time, we postulate a low-entropy boundary condition to account for the temporal asymmetry. In this paper, I show that the Past Hypothesis also contains enough information to simplify the quantum ontology and define a unique initial condition in such a world. First, I introduce Density Matrix Realism, the thesis that the quantum universe is described by a fundamental density matrix that represents something objective. This stands in sharp contrast to Wave Function (...) Realism, the thesis that the quantum universe is described by a wave function that represents something objective. Second, I suggest that the Past Hypothesis is sufficient to determine a unique and simple density matrix. This is achieved by what I call the Initial Projection Hypothesis: the initial density matrix of the universe is the normalized projection onto the special low-dimensional Hilbert space. Third, because the initial quantum state is unique and simple, we have a strong case for the \emph{Nomological Thesis}: the initial quantum state of the universe is on a par with laws of nature. This new package of ideas has several interesting implications, including on the harmony between statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics, the dynamic unity of the universe and the subsystems, and the alleged conflict between Humean supervenience and quantum entanglement. (shrink)

A strongly deterministic theory of physics is one that permits exactly one possible history of the universe. In the words of Penrose (1989), "it is not just a matter of the future being determined by the past; the entire history of the universe is fixed, according to some precise mathematical scheme, for all time.” Such an extraordinary feature may appear unattainable in a world like ours. In this paper, I show that it can be achieved in a simple way and (...) discuss its implications for metaphysics and philosophy of science, including natural properties, free will, explanation, and modality. First, I propose a precise definition of strong determinism. Next, I discuss its philosophical ramifications and a toy example. Finally, I provide a realistic example of a strongly deterministic (and simple) physical theory---the Everettian Wentaculus. A surprising consequence is that whether or not our world is strongly deterministic may be empirically underdetermined. (shrink)

If the Past Hypothesis underlies the arrows of time, what is the status of the Past Hypothesis? In this paper, I examine the role of the Past Hypothesis in the Boltzmannian account and defend the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law of nature. Such a view is known to be compatible with Humeanism about laws, but as I argue it is also supported by a minimal non-Humean "governing'' view. Some worries arise from the non-dynamical and time-dependent (...) character of the Past Hypothesis as a boundary condition, the intrinsic vagueness in its specification, and the nature of the initial probability distribution. I show that these worries do not have much force, and in any case they become less relevant in a new quantum framework for analyzing time's arrows---the Wentaculus. Hence, the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate fundamental law should be more widely accepted than it is now. (shrink)

The mathematical structure of realist quantum theories has given rise to a debate about how our ordinary 3-dimensional space is related to the 3N-dimensional configuration space on which the wave function is defined. Which of the two spaces is our (more) fundamental physical space? I review the debate between 3N-Fundamentalists and 3D-Fundamentalists and evaluate it based on three criteria. I argue that when we consider which view leads to a deeper understanding of the physical world, especially given the deeper topological (...) explanation from the unordered configurations to the Symmetrization Postulate, we have strong reasons in favor of 3D-Fundamentalism. I conclude that our evidence favors the view that our fundamental physical space in a quantum world is 3-dimensional rather than 3N-dimensional. I outline lines of future research where the evidential balance can be restored or reversed. Finally, I draw lessons from this case study to the debate about theoretical equivalence. (shrink)

Two of the most difficult problems in the foundations of physics are (1) what gives rise to the arrow of time and (2) what the ontology of quantum mechanics is. I propose a unified 'Humean' solution to the two problems. Humeanism allows us to incorporate the Past Hypothesis and the Statistical Postulate into the best system, which we then use to simplify the quantum state of the universe. This enables us to confer the nomological status to the quantum state in (...) a way that adds no significant complexity to the best system and solves the ''supervenient-kind problem'' facing the original version of the Past Hypothesis. We call the resultant theory the Humean unification. It provides a unified explanation of time asymmetry and quantum entanglement. On this theory, what gives rise to time's arrow is also responsible for quantum phenomena. The new theory has a separable mosaic, a best system that is simple and non-vague, less tension between quantum mechanics and special relativity, and a higher degree of theoretical and dynamical unity. The Humean unification leads to new insights that can be useful to Humeans and non-Humeans alike. (shrink)

Problems in moral philosophy and philosophy of religion can take on new forms in light of contemporary physical theories. Here we discuss how the problem of evil is transformed by the Everettian "Many-Worlds" theory of quantum mechanics. We first present an Everettian version of the problem and contrast it to the problem in single-universe physical theories such as Newtonian mechanics and Bohmian mechanics. We argue that, pace Turner (2016) and Zimmerman (2017), the Everettian problem of evil is no more extreme (...) than the Bohmian one. The existence and multiplicity of (morally) terrible branches in the Everettian multiverse in contrast to the mere possibility of them in the Bohmian universe does not entail there is "more evil" in the former than in the latter. Low probability in the Bohmian case and low branch weight in the Everettian case should modulate how we respond to them in exactly the same way. We suggest that the same applies to the divine decision of creating an Everettian multiverse. For an empirically adequate Everettian quantum mechanics that justifies the Born rule, there is no special problem of evil. In order for there to be a special Everettian problem of evil, the Everettian interpretation must already have been exposed to decisive refutation. In the process, we hope to show how attention to the details of physical and metaphysical theories can and should impact the way we think about problems in moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The persistent challenge of formulating ontic structuralism in a rigorous manner, which prioritizes structures over the entities they contain, calls for a transformation of traditional logical frameworks. I argue that Univalent Foundations (UF), which feature the axiom that all isomorphic structures are identical, offer such a foundation and are more attractive than other proposed structuralist frameworks. Furthermore, I delve into the significance in the case of the hole argument and, very briefly, the nature of symmetries.

According to the algebraic approach to spacetime, a thoroughgoing dynamicism, physical fields exist without an underlying manifold. This view is usually implemented by postulating an algebraic structure (e.g., commutative ring) of scalar-valued functions, which can be interpreted as representing a scalar field, and deriving other structures from it. In this work, we point out that this leads to the unjustified primacy of an undetermined scalar field. Instead, we propose to consider algebraic structures in which all (and only) physical fields are (...) primitive. We explain how the theory of natural operations in differential geometry—the modern formalism behind classifying diffeomorphism-invariant constructions—can be used to obtain concrete implementations of this idea for any given collection of fields. For concrete examples, we illustrate how our approach applies to a number of particular physical fields, including electrodynamics coupled to a Weyl spinor. (shrink)

English uses the horizontal spatial metaphors to express time (e.g., the good days ahead of us). Chinese also uses the vertical metaphors (e.g., 'the month above' to mean last month). Do Chinese speakers, then, think about time in a different way than English speakers? Boroditsky [Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers' conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1-22] claimed that they do, and went on to conclude that 'language is a powerful tool in shaping habitual (...) thought about abstract domains' (such as time). By estimating the frequency of usage, we found that Chinese speakers actually use the horizontal spatial metaphors more often than the vertical metaphors. This offered no logical ground for Boroditsky's claim. We were also unable to replicate her experiments in four different attempts. We conclude that Chinese speakers do not think about time in a different way than English speakers just because Chinese also uses the vertical spatial metaphors to express time. (shrink)

As it has become more and more urgent to solve the problems of environmental protection, we consider it necessary to conduct multilevel studies to examine the impact of business strategy on both employees’ and firms’ performances in environmental protection. Synthesizing the perspectives of strategic orientation, corporate strategy, and firm performance, we propose a comprehensive theoretical model linking market orientation and environmental performance. Based on a survey of 134 matched chief executive officers, senior marketing managers and frontline workers from Chinese firms, (...) we found that market orientation positively affects environmental strategy which, in turn, influences both environmental product quality and employees’ environmental involvement. These latter two variables consequently have a positive influence on environmental performance. At the same time, environmental commitment moderates the link between market orientation and environmental strategy. (shrink)

What exists at the fundamental level of reality? On the standard picture, the fundamental reality contains (among other things) fundamental matter, such as particles, fields, or even the quantum state. Non-fundamental facts are explained by facts about fundamental matter, at least in part. In this paper, I introduce a non-standard picture called the "cosmic void” in which the universe is devoid of any fundamental material ontology. Facts about tables and chairs are recovered from a special kind of laws that satisfy (...) strong determinism. All non-fundamental facts are completely explained by nomic facts. I discuss a concrete example of this picture in a strongly deterministic version of the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics. I discuss some philosophical and scientific challenges to this view, as well as some connections to ontological nihilism. (shrink)

The book offers an interdisciplinary perspective on finance, with a special focus on stock markets. It presents new methodologies for analyzing stock markets’ behavior and discusses theories and methods of finance from different angles, such as the mathematical, physical and philosophical ones. The book, which aims at philosophers and economists alike, represents a rare yet important attempt to unify the externalist with the internalist conceptions of finance.

Banks play a unique role in society. They not only maximize profits but also consider the interests of stakeholders. We investigate whether banks consider firms’ pollution records in their lending decisions. The evidence shows that banks offer significantly higher loan spreads, higher total borrowing costs, shorter loan maturities, and greater collateral to firms with higher levels of chemical pollution. The costly effects are stronger for borrowers with greater risk and weaker corporate governance. Further, the results show that banks with higher (...) social responsibility account for their borrowers’ environmental performance and charge higher loan spreads to those with poor performance. These results support the idea that banks with higher social responsibility can promote the practice of business ethics in firms. (shrink)

The gaze cueing effect is characterized by faster attentional orienting to a gazed-at than a non-gazed-at target. This effect is often enhanced when the gazing face bears an emotional expression, though this finding is modulated by a number of factors. Here, we tested whether the type of task performed might be one such modulating factor. Target localization and target discrimination tasks are the two most commonly used gaze cueing tasks, and they arguably differ in cognitive resources, which could impact how (...) emotional expression and gaze cues are integrated to orient attention. In a within-subjects design, participants performed both target localization and discrimination gaze cueing tasks with neutral, happy, and fearful faces. The gaze cueing effect for neutral faces was greatly reduced in the discrimination task relative to the localization task, and the emotional enhancement of the gaze cueing effect was only present in the localization task and only when this task was performed first. These results suggest that cognitive resources are needed for gaze cueing and for the integration of emotional expressions and gaze cues. We propose that a shift toward local processing may be the mechanism by which the discrimination task interferes with the emotional modulation of gaze cueing. The results support the idea that gaze cueing can be greatly modulated by top-down influences and cognitive resources and thus taps into endogenous attention. Results are discussed within the context of the recently proposed EyeTune model of social attention. (shrink)

Policies promoted and adopted for allocating ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic have often prioritised healthcare workers or other essential workers. While the need for such policies has so far been largely averted, renewed stress on health systems from continuing surges, as well as the experience of allocating another scarce resource—vaccination—counsel revisiting the justifications for such prioritisation. Prioritising healthcare workers may have intuitive appeal, but the ethical justifications for doing so and the potential harms that could follow require careful analysis. Ethical (...) justifications commonly offered for healthcare worker prioritisation for ventilators rest on two social value criteria: instrumental value, also known as the ‘multiplier effect’, which may preserve the ability of healthcare workers to help others, and reciprocity, which rewards past usefulness or sacrifice. We argue that these justifications are insufficient to over-ride the common moral commitment to value each person’s life equally. Institutional policies prioritising healthcare workers over other patients also violate other ethical norms of the healthcare professions, including the commitment to put patients first. Furthermore, policy decisions to prioritise healthcare workers for ventilators could engender or deepen existing distrust of the clinicians, hospitals and health systems where those policies exist, even if they are never invoked. (shrink)

Background: Although ethics consultation has been introduced to clinical practice for many years, the results of empirical studies to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation are still controversial. The design of randomised controlled trials is considered the best research design to evaluate the effect of a clinical practice on the outcomes of interests. In order to understand the effects of ethics consultation, we conducted this search for studies with the design of randomised controlled trials to evaluate ethics consultation.Objective: To provide (...) an integrated review of studies with the design of randomised controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation.Methods: PubMed was used to search for studies using the randomised controlled trial design to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation. The search term used was “ethics consultation”. The selection criterion was limited to “randomised controlled trial”.Results: Four articles that met both search criteria were retrieved. One of these articles reported a study that did not actually use the design of a randomised controlled trial and is excluded from the following discussion.Conclusions: To apply randomised controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of ethics consultation is extremely difficult as long as two issues are not resolved: the standardisation of ethics consultation and a placebo for ethics consultation to eliminate the placebo effect. Thus, the results generated by the design of randomised controlled trials are always problematic. Furthermore, as long as the two issues exist, the results generated by the design of quantitative research methods always pose problems. (shrink)

In this paper, I will identify two problems of trust in an AI-relevant context: a theoretical problem and a practical one. I will identify and address a number of skeptical challenges to an AI-relevant theory of trust. In addition, I will identify what I shall term the ‘scope challenge’, which I take to hold for any AI-relevant theory of trust that purports to be representationally adequate to the multifarious forms of trust and AI. Thereafter, I will suggest how trust-engineering, a (...) position that is intermediate between the modified pure rational-choice account and an account that gives rise to trustworthy AI, might allow us to address the practical problem of trust, before identifying and critically evaluating two candidate trust-engineering approaches. (shrink)

I propose a theory of space with infinitesimal regions called smooth infinitesimal geometry based on certain algebraic objects, which regiments a mode of reasoning heuristically used by geometricists and physicists. I argue that SIG has the following utilities. It provides a simple metaphysics of vector fields and tangent space that are otherwise perplexing. A tangent space can be considered an infinitesimal region of space. It generalizes a standard implementation of spacetime algebraicism called Einstein algebras. It solves the long-standing problem of (...) interpreting smooth infinitesimal analysis realistically, an alternative foundation of spacetime theories to real analysis, 277–392, 1980). SIA is formulated in intuitionistic logic and is thought to have no classical reformulations. Against this, I argue that SIG is such a reformulation. But SIG has an unorthodox mereology, in which the principle of supplementation fails. (shrink)

Could translation be fully automated? We must first acknowledge the complexity, ambiguity, and diversity of natural languages. These aspects of natural languages, when combined with a particular dilemma known as the computational dilemma, appear to imply that the machine translator faces certain obstacles that a human translator has already managed to overcome. At the same time, science has not yet solved the problem of how human brains process natural languages and how human beings come to acquire natural language understanding. We (...) will then distinguish between the task of translation and the responsibility of the translator. Thereafter, we will conduct a survey of the methods of machine translation (viz. RBMT, SMT, NMT, foundation models or large language models). These methods will then be critically evaluated both in general and relative to Bar-Hillel’s hypothesis about the impossibility of fully automatic, high-quality machine translation (Fahqmt). Some concluding remarks will be made about the scope, prospects, and limits of machine translation. (shrink)

Having enjoyed remarkable economic success, China’s natural environment is being increasingly degraded, and with it, the quality of life. Researchers and environmentalists have responded by...

The current public health crisis has exposed deep cracks in social equality and justice for marginalised and vulnerable communities around the world. The reported rise in the number of ‘do not resuscitate’ orders being imposed on people with disabilities has caused particular concerns from a human rights perspective. While the evidence of this is contested, this article will consider the human rights implications at stake and the dangers associated with using ‘quality of life’ measures as determinant of care in medical (...) decision-making and triage assessments. (shrink)

The rapid development of the Internet has granted college students easy access to vast amount of online resources, and to some degree has increased the chances of plagiarism problems. A number of studies have suggested that both faculty’s and students’ perceptions toward plagiarism are found to be influential on students’ plagiarizing behaviors, and limited research has been done to explore the perceptional differences between these two roles. This study aims to respond to the growing educational concerns about plagiarism by comparing (...) the perceptions held by faculty and college students. A total of 229 faculty and 634 college students in Taiwan completed the Perceptions of Student Plagiarism Questionnaire designed for the study. The results reveal that faculty held stricter standards than those of students. Results also indicate various causes of plagiarism, such as no interest in the learning subjects, lack of citation knowledge, or lack of research ability. Furthermore, significant disciplinary differences were shown to contribute to students’ plagiarism perception; the results reveal that most students with an Arts or Communication major held a relatively adverse thinking toward plagiarism. Last, this study provides research-based strategies for school and faculty to reduce the likelihood of plagiarism. (shrink)

Item response theory (IRT) is a modern psychometric framework for estimating respondents’ latent traits (e.g., ability, attitude, and personality) based on their responses to a set of questions in psychological tests. The current study adopted an item response tree (IRTree) method, which combines the tree model with IRT models for handling the sequential process of responding to a test item, to score individual moral inclination for the CNI test—a broadly adopted model for examining humans’ moral decision-making with three parameters generated: (...) sensitivity to moral norms, sensitivity to consequences, and inaction preference. Compared to previous models for the CNI test, the resulting EIRTree-CNI Model is able to generate individual scores without increasing the number of items (thus, less subject fatigue or compromised response quality) or employing a post hoc approach that is deemed statistically suboptimal. The model fits the data well, and the subsequent test also supported the concurrent validity and the predictive validity of the model. Limitations are discussed further. (shrink)

Background: Moral distress occurs when nurses experience ethical dilemmas. Issues related to these dilemmas are addressed in some nursing education courses. Nurses’ reaction to dilemma such as moral distress is relatively less noticed. Objective: This study aimed to identify and describe the various types of perceptions of moral distress exhibited by nurses. Research design: This study applied Q methodology to explore the perspectives of nurses regarding moral distress. Data were collected in two stages. First, in-depth interviews were conducted to collect (...) nurses’ opinions. Sentences that best fit the concepts of moral distress were extracted for the construction of Q statements. Second, nurses subjectively ranked these Q statements so that the relevant severity of moral distress could be determined using Q sorts. The study participants were nurses at a regional teaching hospital in northeast Taiwan. A total of 60 participants were invited to rank 40 moral distress Q statements. Ethical considerations: The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of National Yang-Ming University Hospital. Only the participants who signed an informed consent form participated in the study. The respondents’ right to withdraw from the study was respected. Findings: Five types of responses were identified regarding the nurses’ perspectives. These types were “conflict with personal values,” “excessive of workload,” “curbing of autonomy,” “constraint engendered by organizational norms,” and “self-expectation frustration.” Conclusion: The findings regarding nurses’ experiences of moral distress can be used to construct multifaceted policies and solutions and to incorporate ethical education in training programs. (shrink)

We expect the laws of nature that describe the universe to be exact, but what if that isn't true? In this popular science article, I discuss the possibility that some candidate fundamental laws of nature, such as the Past Hypothesis, may be vague. This possibility is in conflict with the idea that the fundamental laws of nature can always and faithfully be described by classical mathematics. -/- [Bibliographic note: this article is featured on the magazine website under a different title (...) as "The fuzzy law that could break the idea of a mathematical universe" and on the magazine cover as "The Flaw at the Heart of Reality: Why precise mathematical laws can never fully explain the universe." It is a popular version of the article "Nomic Vagueness" that can be found on arXiv: 2006.05298.]. (shrink)

The study of dialectical logic has a history of nearly one hundred years in China. It is significant for understanding both the growth of Chinese logic and the Sinicization of Marxism to review dialectical logic in the context of introducing the study of Marxism in China. Debates about dialectical logic in Chinese academic circles involve not only the problems of logic itself, but more importantly the understanding of Marxist philosophy. In the 1920s and 1930s, some Marxist researchers in China were (...) influenced by the philosophers and logicians of the former Soviet Union, and they came very close to equating dialectical logic with Marxist dialectics. They also identified the formal logic originating from ancient Greece as metaphysics, praising the former and criticizing the latter. In the upsurge of Marxist philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s, Chinese logicians carried out normal and formal academic research on dialectical logic. During the period from the end of 1970s to the end of 1990s, the research and teaching of dialectical logic in China reached its heyday, and logicians performed comprehensive and detailed research on some critical issues, including the basic laws of dialectical logic, which they tried to formalize. Since the beginning of the 21st century, dialectical logic has ceased to prosper and has faded from the core field of the discipline of logic, although some honorable scholars still persist in studying it. (shrink)