George Berkeley is known as “The Good Bishop,” a name celebrating his faith, pastoral ministry and earnest commitment to his philosophical views. To mathematicians, he is known for his agitated performance in his 1734 critique of fluxions, The Analyst. That work and its petulant tone were occasioned by (i) his “philo-mathematical” opponents’ alleged admonitions on religious mysteries’ lack of logical respectability and (ii) what Berkeley saw as a related public appetite for reformist and deist religious movements. This paper questions Berkeley’s (...) saintly reputation by outlining the hostility and flippancy in his handling of Jacob Walton’s contributions to the debate. Berkeley’s interactions with Walton bear many of the hallmarks of contemporary “trolling” culture and this paper emphasises and explains these parallels. Finally, given Berkeley’s theological and political agenda in his mathematical interactions, I argue that we should not read his mathematical rhetoric as straightforwardly representing his philosophical views. (shrink)

The decision making process is an important aspect of the managerial function that is becoming increasingly complex due to technological and global impacts. It is essential, therefore, to understand why various managers approach the decision making process differently. One area that is related to how managers perceive and process the information that is associated with decision making, is that of decision style.It is not enough, however, to explore decision style in isolation, as some of the decisions that managers make often (...) entail ethical components concerning the ability to balance the interests of diverse groups. Moral reasoning is therefore important for every manager, and could impact the decision style that is employed by such managers. The relationship between managerial decision style and moral development is one that could provide unique insights into the area of decision making, yet it is an area that has remained relatively unexplored. (shrink)

The same research proposal was submitted to 24 district health authority (DHA) research ethics committees in different parts of the country. The objective was to obtain permission for a multi-centre research project. The study of neonatal care in different types of unit (regional, subregional and district), required that four health authorities were approached in each of six widely separated health regions in England. Data were collected and compared concerning aspects of processing, including application forms, information required, timing and decision-making. The (...) key finding was that ethics committees received and processed the applications variably, reflecting individual factors and local problems. To improve consensus and facilitate multicentre studies, standard forms and instructions are suggested and the establishment of a national committee or advisory group advocated. (shrink)

Progress -- Loss -- Return -- Amenability -- Citation tactics -- Affective subjects.

Clare Chambers argues that marriage violates both equality and liberty and should not be trecognized by the state. She shows how feminist and liberal principles require creation of a marriage-free state: one in which private marriages, whether religious or secular, would have no legal status.

Autonomy is fundamental to liberalism. But autonomous individuals often choose to do things that harm themselves or undermine their equality. In particular, women often choose to participate in practices of sexual inequality—cosmetic surgery, gendered patterns of work and childcare, makeup, restrictive clothing, or the sexual subordination required by membership in certain religious groups. In this book, Clare Chambers argues that this predicament poses a fundamental challenge to many existing liberal and multicultural theories that dominate contemporary political philosophy. Chambers argues (...) that a theory of justice cannot ignore the influence of culture and the role it plays in shaping choices. If cultures shape choices, it is problematic to use those choices as the measure of the justice of the culture. Drawing upon feminist critiques of gender inequality and poststructuralist theories of social construction, she argues that we should accept some of the multicultural claims about the importance of culture in shaping our actions and identities, but that we should reach the opposite normative conclusion to that of multiculturalists and many liberals. Rather than using the idea of social construction to justify cultural respect or protection, we should use it to ground a critical stance toward cultural norms. The book presents radical proposals for state action to promote sexual and cultural justice. (shrink)

In _Considering Emma Goldman_ Clare Hemmings examines the significance of the anarchist activist and thinker for contemporary feminist politics. Rather than attempting to resolve the tensions and problems that Goldman's thinking about race, gender, and sexuality pose for feminist thought, Hemmings embraces them, finding them to be helpful in formulating a new queer feminist praxis. Mining three overlapping archives—Goldman's own writings, her historical and theoretical legacy, and an imaginative archive that responds creatively to gaps in those archives —Hemmings shows (...) how serious engagement with Goldman's political ambivalences opens up larger questions surrounding feminist historiography, affect, fantasy, and knowledge production. Moreover, she explores her personal affinity for Goldman to illuminate the role that affective investment plays in shaping feminist storytelling. By considering Goldman in all her contradictions and complexity, Hemmings presents a queer feminist response to the ambivalences that also saturate contemporary queer feminist race theories. (shrink)

In clinical ethics consultations, clinical ethicists bring moral reasoning to bear on concrete and complex clinical ethical problems by undertaking ethical deliberation in collaboration with others. The reasoning process involves identifying and clarifying ethical values which are at stake or contested, and guiding clinicians, and sometimes patients and families, to think through ethically justifiable and available courses of action in clinical situations. There is, however, ongoing discussion about the various methods ethicists use to do this ethical deliberation work. In this (...) paper, we make visible and accessible seven steps of facilitation used in the critical dialogue method of ethics consultation.We describe how the facilitation techniques serve two overall purposes. First, to identify ethically justified responses to ethical questions. Second, to assist participants to gain greater moral clarity, understanding and confidence to respond to ethical challenges as independent moral agents.By describing in detail facilitation steps for clinical ethics consultation, we aim to advance the scholarship of ‘clinical ethics facilitation methods’ and to demystify the ethical deliberation work undertaken by clinical ethicists. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, (...) if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter? In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships. (shrink)

Together, DNA repair and checkpoint responses ensure the integrity of the genome. Coordination of cell cycle checkpoints and DNA repair are especially important following genotoxic radiation or chemotherapy, during which unusually high loads of DNA damage are sustained. In mammalian cells, the checkpoint kinase, Cds1 (also known as Chk2) is activated by ATM in response to DNA damage. The role of Cds1 as a checkpoint kinase depends on its ability to phosphorylate cell cycle regulators such p53, Cdc25 and Brca1. A (...) role for Cds1 in repair is suggested by the finding that it interacts with the Holliday junction resolving activity Mus81. This review focuses on the many questions generated by recent progress in understanding the function and regulation of human Cds1. BioEssays 24:502–511, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Particular ethical tensions and dilemmas emerge when conducting qualitative educational research. This is further compounded where the predominant approach to research ethics is underscored by a dominant principalism which construes ethical rules as both universal and absolute. This article focuses on the ‘perfect ethical storm’ which is arguably created when ethnographic design, covert observation and practitioner research collide. Drawing on a doctoral study into therapeutic education, this analysis shows how such research may be ethically feasible when the qualitative researcher adopts (...) a more flexible approach to research ethics based on Aristotelian notions of virtue. In this article, I also demonstrate how the field diary can be a valuable tool in enabling the qualitative researcher to develop certain dispositions, notably reflexivity, which are central to becoming a virtuous researcher. (shrink)

The following text is the de-identified and edited transcript of an invited presentation by Professor Clare Delany on the topic of ‘How clinical ethics discussions can be a model for accommodating and incorporating plural values in paediatric and adult healthcare settings.’ Professor Delany’s presentation formed part of the Conference on Accommodating Plural Values in Healthcare and Healthcare Policy, which was held in Melbourne, Australia, on Monday, October 30, 2023. This conference was a key output of the Australian Research Council (...) Discovery Project grant DP190101597, ‘Religion, pluralism, and healthcare practice: A philosophical assessment’. Professor Delany’s presentation was introduced by Doctor Lauren Notini, Research Fellow and Lecturer at Monash Bioethics Centre, Monash University. (shrink)

This paper considers what olfactory experience can tell us about the controversy over qualia and, in particular, the debate that focuses on the alleged transparency of experience. The appeal to transparency is supposed to show that there are no qualia—intrinsic, non-intentional and directly accessible properties of experience that determine phenomenal character. It is most commonly used to motivate intentionalism—namely, the view that the phenomenal character of an experience is exhausted by its representational content. Although some philosophers claim that transparency holds (...) for all of the sense modalities, any detailed discussion of it focuses on vision. But transparency seems unintuitive for olfactory experience. This paper argues that olfactory experience is indeed transparent and that explanations of what transparency is have been obscured by a reliance on the visual model. In this way, the paper clarifies and advances the debate about transparency. (shrink)

'Philosophy in a world of women. I reflected, talking with Mary, Pip and Elizabeth, how much I love them.' Two brilliant young scholars uncover the major philosophical contributions of four women whose ideas could have changed the course of twentieth-century thought. Written with energy, expertise and panache, The Quartet is a page-turning blend of research and recovery, storytelling, and a call to arms. Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley and Elizabeth Anscombe were great friends and comrades in the intellectual trenches, (...) rethinking the possibilities of moral philosophy when the men 'left the room' and taking on the establishment, ultimately embodied by President Truman. Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman bring these women out of the shadows and into vivid colour. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack discuss the possible function of meta-representations in temporal cognition but ultimately take an agnostic stance. Here we outline the fundamental role that we believe meta-representations play. Because humans know that their representations of future events are just representations, they are in a position to compensate for the shortcomings of their own foresight and to prepare for multiple contingencies.

Catharine MacKinnon's fundamental claim is that the violence and abuse routinely inflicted on women by men is not treated with the same seriousness accorded to a human rights violation, or torture, or terrorism, or a war crime, or a crime against humanity, or an atrocity.

Real Language Series General Editors:Jennifer Coates, Jenny Cheshire, Euan Reid This is a sociolinguistics series about the relationships between language, society and social change. Books in the series draw on natural language data from a wide range of social contexts. The series takes a critical approach to the subject, challenging current orthodoxies, and dealing with familiar topics in new ways. Gender and Discourse offers a critical new approach to the study of language and gender studies. Women moving into the public (...) domains of power traditionally monopolised by men are creating new identities for themselves, and the language that is used by them and about them offers an insight into gender roles. Clare Walsh reviews the current dominance/difference debates, and proposes a new analytical framework which combines the insights of critical discourse and feminist perspectives on discourse to provide a new perspective on the role of women in public life. A superbly accessible book designed for students and researchers in the field, the book features: - topical case studies from the arenas of politics, religion and activism- a new analytical framework, also summarised in chart form so the reader can apply their own critical analyses of texts. - written and visual text types for the reader's own linguistic and semiotic analysis. 'This important book takes up a neglected question in the study of language and gender - what difference women make to the discourse of historically male-dominated institutions - and brings to bear on it both the insights of feminist scholarship and evidence from women's own testimony. Clare Walsh's analysis of the dilemmas women face is both subtle and incisive, taking us beyond popular 'Mars and Venus' stereotypes and posing some hard questions for fashionable theories of language, identity and performance. (shrink)

Companion Animal Ethics explores the important ethical questions and problems that arise as a result of humans keeping animals as companions. The first comprehensive book dedicated to ethical and welfare concerns surrounding companion animals Scholarly but still written in an accessible and engaging style Considers the idea of animal companionship and why it should matter ethically Explores problems associated with animals sharing human lifestyles and homes, such as obesity, behavior issues, selective breeding, over-treatment, abandonment, euthanasia and environmental impacts Offers insights (...) into practical ways of improving ethical standards relating to animal companions. (shrink)

In this study, Clare Palmer challenges the belief that the process thinking of writers like A.N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne has offered an unambiguously positive contribution to environmental ethics. She compares process ethics to a variety of other forms of environmental ethics, as well as deep ecology, and reveals a number of difficulties associated with process thinking about the environment.

How do people understand questions about cause and prevent? Some theories propose that people affirm that A causes B if A's occurrence makes a difference to B's occurrence in one way or another. Other theories propose that A causes B if some quantity or symbol gets passed in some way from A to B. The aim of our studies is to compare these theories' ability to explain judgements of causation and prevention. We describe six experiments that compare judgements for causal (...) paths that involve a mechanism, i.e. a continuous process of transmission or exchange from cause to effect, against paths that involve no mechanism yet a change in the cause nevertheless brings about a change in the effect. Our results show that people prefer to attribute cause when a mechanism links cause to effect. In contrast, prevention is sensitive both to the presence of an interruption to a causal mechanism and to a change in the outcome in the absence of a mechanism. In this sense, ‘prevent’ means something different than ‘cause not'. We discuss the implications of our results for existing theories of causation. (shrink)

I explore how some aspects of Foucoult’s work on power can be applied to human/animal power relations. First, I argue that because animals behave as “beings that react” and can respond in different ways to human actions, in principle at least, Foucoult’s work can offer insights into human/animal power relations. However, many of these relations fall into the category of “domination,” in which animals are unable to respond. Second, I examine different kinds of human power practices, in particular, ways in (...) which humans construct animal constitutions and animal subjectivities. Finally, I use a case study of a pet cat to show how such power practices may come together in a single instance. (shrink)

Clare Carlisle's innovative and moving biography writes Kierkegaard's remarkable life as far as possible from his own perspective, conveying what it was like to be this Socrates of Christendom.

For Aristotle, excellence is not an act but a habit, and Hume regards habit as ‘the great guide of life’. However, for Proust habit is problematic: ‘if habit is a second nature, it prevents us from knowing our first.’ What is habit? Do habits turn us into machines or free us to do more creative things? Should religious faith be habitual? Does habit help or hinder the practice of philosophy? Why do Luther, Spinoza, Kant, Kierkegaard and Bergson all criticise habit? (...) If habit is both a blessing and a curse, how can we live well in our habits? In this thought-provoking book Clare Carlisle examines habit from a philosophical standpoint. Beginning with a lucid appraisal of habit’s philosophical history she suggests that both receptivity and resistance to change are basic principles of habit-formation. Carlisle shows how the philosophy of habit not only anticipates the discoveries of recent neuroscience but illuminates their ethical significance. She asks whether habit is a reliable form of knowledge by examining the contrasting interpretations of habitual thinking offered by Spinoza and Hume. She then turns to the role of habit in the good life, tracing Aristotle’s legacy through the ideas of Joseph Butler, Hegel, and Félix Ravaisson, and assessing the ambivalent attitudes to habit expressed by Nietzsche and Proust. She argues that a distinction between habit and practice helps to clarify this ambivalence, particularly in the context of habit and religion, where she examines both the theology of habit and the repetitions of religious life. She concludes by considering how philosophy itself is a practice of learning to live well with habit. (shrink)

This paper examines the temporality of agency in Judith Butler's and Saba Mahmood's writing. I argue that Mahmood moves away from a performative understanding of agency, which focuses on relations of signification, to a corporeal understanding, which focuses on desire and sensation. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's reading of Henri Bergson, I show how this move involves a changed model of becoming: whereas Butler imagines movement as a series of discontinuous beings, in Mahmood's case, we get an understanding of becoming.

"What is the pervasive character of the world? The answer is force." But, as Heidegger asks next: "What is force?" Connors sets out to answer this question, tracing a genealogy of the idea of force through the writings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida. These thinkers try to pin down what force is, but know too that it is something which cannot be neutrally described. Their vigorously literary writings must therefore be read as much for the stylistic and rhetorical ways (...) in which they render force's powerful elusiveness as for the content of their arguments. And it is perhaps literature, rather than philosophy, which best engages with force. Certainly, for Connors, these philosophical positions are foreshadowed in remarkable detail by Shakespeare's Henry V - a play shot through with forces, imaginary, military, rhetorical and bodily. (shrink)

A comprehensive introduction to the theory of knowledge, this work explores what it is to be a rational, sentient human being.

It is generally accepted that women have the right to participate in the workplace, although only if replicating the traditional male mode of working. To this extent, the right to formal equality with men is generally agreed to be a legitimate goal for legislation. However, where the limitations of such assimilation to a male norm come into sharp focus, as they do in the context of pregnancy, the restrictions placed on improving the position of women are evident. The courts seek (...) to accept the arguments of employers that some limitation on the rights of women to participate fully in the workplace is necessary, with the unarticulated assumption that pregnancy constitutes a real difference between the sexes, incompatible with their notion of (formal) equality. Thus, it is argued, that the advances so far gained in the relation to pregnancy dismissals do not represent a cultural shift in attitudes towards accommodating pregnant women and women with children into the workplace. They have been adopted only reluctantly by the UK courts and legislature, with limitations still being placed on their effect particularly in respect of dismissals on account of pregnancy-related illness. The rights of women not to be discriminated against solely on the basis of their biological ability to give birth must continue to be advocated and given attention; complacency will likely see those rights progressively restricted. (shrink)

Much of the philosophical work on perception has focused on vision. Recently, however, philosophers have been turning their attention to the ‘other modalities’. In a pair of entries, I consider olfaction—a sense modality that, along with gustation, has been largely overlooked by philosophers. In this first entry, I consider the challenge that olfactory experience presents to upholding a representational view of the sense modalities. It is common for philosophers to think that visual experience is world‐directed and, in particular, that it (...) is representational. World‐directed views contrast with subjectivist views—views according to which experiences are raw feels or mere sensations. Unlike visual experience, olfactory experience doesn't obviously support a representational view. Indeed, given its phenomenology, a subjectivist view of olfactory experience might seem unavoidable. But it is not. Once we begin to unravel ourselves from the dominant visual model of perception, we see that there is a representational view available that honors the phenomenology of olfactory experience. In turn, we learn that although there are some basic similarities between visual experience and olfactory experience, there are significant differences that prevent us from making easy generalizations from the visual case. (shrink)

Michel Clare est né le 21 février 1927 à Sceaux. Études secondaires, bachelier. Résistance et séjour au Maquis de Lorris à dix-sept ans. Puis sport pour guérir des déceptions d’après la Libération : athlétisme, champion de France du 800 mètres en 1949. De nombreuses fois international. Entre à l’Equipe en 1953 où il occupe les fonctions de grand reporter et spécialiste du ski. Auteur d’un livre sur le Ski (La table ronde). Lauréat de l’Académie des Sports pour une enquête (...) sur les universités américaines et du concours du meilleur article du journalisme sportif. A couvert tous les Jeux olympiques d’hiver et d’été de cette dernière décennie. Collabore, de façon épisodique, à Esprit. (shrink)

In philosophical discussions of the secondary qualities, color has taken center stage. Smells, tastes, sounds, and feels have been treated, by and large, as mere accessories to colors. We are, as it is said, visual creatures. This, at least, has been the working assumption in the philosophy of perception and in those metaphysical discussions about the nature of the secondary qualities. The result has been a scarcity of work on the “other” secondary qualities. In this paper, I take smells and (...) place them front and center. I ask: What are smells? For many philosophers, the view that colors can be explained in purely physicalistic terms has seemed very appealing. In the case of smells, this kind of nonrelational view has seemed much less appealing. Philosophers have been drawn to versions of relationalism—the view that the nature of smells must be explained (at least in part) in terms of the effects they have on perceivers. In this paper, I consider a contemporary argument for this view. I argue that nonrelationalist views of smell have little to fear from this argument. (shrink)

This paper examines Flix Ravaisson's account of habit, as presented in his 1838 essay _Of Habit_, and considers its significance in the context of moral practice. This discussion is set in an historical context by drawing attention to the different evaluations of habit in Aristotelian and Kantian philosophies, and it is argued that Kant's hostility to habit is based on the dichotomy between mind and body, and freedom and necessity, that pervades his thought. Ravaisson (...) argues that the phenomenon of habit challenges these dualisms, and at least in this respect anticipates the discussions of habit in the work of twentieth-century phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur.

The paper outlines Ravaisson's account of habit in general, showing how his analysis of the “double law” of habit develops from the work of Maine de Biran, and highlighting the way in which Ravaisson offers a new and original philosophical interpretation of the phenomena of habit. Whereas Maine de Biran remains within a dualistic framework, and finds that habit is problematic within this framework, Ravaisson uses habit to demonstrate continuity between mind and body, will and nature. Then the focus is narrowed to consider how this analysis of habit is applied to a specifically moral context, and how it illuminates traditional Aristotelian theories of virtue. The paper ends by considering several practical consequences of the foregoing discussion of habit and the moral life. (shrink)

Social scientists have drawn attention to the role of hype and optimistic visions of the future in providing momentum to biomedical innovation projects by encouraging innovation alliances. In this article, we show how less optimistic, uncertain, and modest visions of the future can also provide innovation projects with momentum. Scholars have highlighted the need for clinicians to carefully manage the expectations of their prospective patients. Using the example of a pioneering clinical team providing deep brain stimulation to children and young (...) people with movement disorders, we show how clinicians confront this requirement by drawing on their professional knowledge and clinical expertise to construct visions of the future with their prospective patients; visions which are personalized, modest, and tainted with uncertainty. We refer to this vision-constructing work as recalibration, and we argue that recalibration enables clinicians to manage the tension between the highly optimistic and hyped visions of the future that surround novel biomedical interventions, and the exigencies of delivering those interventions in a clinical setting. Drawing on work from science and technology studies, we suggest that recalibration enrolls patients in an innovation alliance by creating a shared understanding of how the “effectiveness” of an innovation shall be judged. (shrink)

Hospitals are places where patients are unwell, where patients and their families may be upset, confused, frustrated, in pain, and vulnerable. The likelihood of these experiences and emotions manifesting in anger and aggressive behaviour is high. In this paper, we describe the involvement of a clinical ethics service responding to a request to discuss family aggression within a rehabilitation department in a large paediatric hospital in Australia. We suggest two key advantages of involving a clinical ethics service in discussions about (...) how to respond to family aggression. First, the process of ethics deliberation provides an opportunity for clinicians to be involved in the solution by articulating their perspectives, tolerance levels, and general concerns about the effects of family aggression towards staff. Second, supporting clinicians to articulate and identify the impact of parental aggression directly counters the disadvantages of the more blunt zero-tolerance policy response, which is necessarily imposed from the top down. (shrink)

This essay considers the tension between political liberalism and gender equality in the light of social construction and multiculturalism. The tension is exemplified by the work of Martha Nussbaum, who tries to reconcile a belief in the universality of certain liberal values such as gender equality with a political liberal tolerance for cultural practices that violate gender equality. The essay distinguishes between first? and second?order conceptions of autonomy, and shows that political liberals mistakenly prioritise second?order autonomy. This prioritisation leads political (...) liberals to seek to limit state interference in individuals' choices. However, the essay argues that if options, choices and the preferences which lead to them are socially influenced or constructed, it is no longer clear that state non?interference secures autonomy. Instead, it becomes a matter of justice what the content of the social or state influence is, which options are open to people, and political liberalism cannot deal with many forms of injustice. Rather than emphasising state neutrality, liberals should endorse state prohibition of practices which cause significant harm to those who choose them, if they are chosen only in response to unjust norms. (shrink)

Contract cheating, or plagiarism via paid ghostwriting, is a significant academic ethical issue, especially as reliable methods for its prevention and detection in students’ assignments remain elusive. Contract cheating in academic assessment has been the subject of much recent debate and concern. Although some scandals have attracted substantial media attention, little is known about the likely prevalence of contract cheating by students for their university assignments. Although rates of contract cheating tend to be low, criminological theories suggest that people who (...) employ ghostwriters for their assignments are likely to re-offend, and little is known about re-offence rates in this form of academic misconduct. We combined previously-collected datasets and conducted additional, and previously-unreported, analyses on self-report measures of contract cheating prevalence. We found that few students, on aggregate, ever engaged in contract cheating but this varied substantially among samples. Of those who ever engaged in contract cheating, 62.5% did so more than once. The data also suggested that engagement in contract cheating is influenced by opportunity. These figures may help policy makers, and researchers who are creating contract cheating detection methods, to estimate base rates of contract cheating and the likelihood of re-offence. (shrink)

When people think about how a situation might have turned out differently, they tend to imagine counterfactual alternatives to their actions. We report the results of three experiments which show that people imagine alternatives to actions differently when they know about a reason for the action. The first experiment ( n = 36) compared reason - action sequences to cause - effect sequences. It showed that people do not imagine alternatives to reasons in the way they imagine alternatives to causes: (...) they imagine an alternative to an action more than an effect, and to a cause more than a reason. The second experiment ( n = 214) and the third experiment ( n = 190) both show that different sorts of reasons have different sorts of effects on how people imagine alternatives to actions. People imagine an alternative to an action (the protagonist went to a ball) less often when they know the reason for the action was an obligation (he had to participate in fundraising) compared to when they know about a weaker reason (he wanted to meet a famous violinist) or no reason. The second experiment shows the effect for a social obligation and the third experiment replicates and extends it to a health obligation. We interpret the results in terms of the possibilities that people keep in mind about actions and their reasons. (shrink)

In a recent unit of study in an undergraduate Health Sciences pathway course, we identified a set of essays which exhibited similarity of content but demonstrated the use of bizarre and unidiomatic language. One of the distinct features of the essays was the inclusion of unusual synonyms in place of expected standard medical terminology.We suspected the use of online paraphrasing tools, but were also interested in investigating the possibility of the use of online language translation tools. In order to test (...) the outputs of these tools, we used as a seed document a corpus of text which had been provided to the students as prompt for the essay. This document was put through six free online paraphrasing tools and six separate iterative language translations through the online Google Translate™ tool.The results demonstrated that free online paraphrasing tools did not identify medical terminology as standardised or accepted nomenclature and substituted synonyms, whereas Google Translate™ largely preserved medical terminology.We believe that textual indicators such as the absence of standard discipline-based terminology may be of assistance in the identification of machine paraphrased text. (shrink)