Jurors customarily do their work with very little by way of instruction from the court, other than about the law. This suggests that they enter the jury room with the relevant cognitive and interactional tools at the ready, drawn from everyday life. This paper focuses on a specific conversational device jurors use to do their work: conditional-contrastive inculpations, whereby the defendant’s actions are compared unfavorably to what a normal, innocent person would have done, with the implication that the discrepancy indicates (...) guilt. We examine the logic, variants, sequential precursors, and immediate consequences of this phenomenon in two real-life American criminal juries deliberating the same charges. This study offers a rare glimpse into the operation of real juries, and specifically the way in which they appropriate a practice from ordinary conversation in order to perform the unordinary work demanded of them by the legal system. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. This paper considers two sets ethical obligations owed by a firm and its management to stockholders and employees with respect to layoffs. Literature and research from ethics and agency are used to frame ethical issues that pertain to age discrimination in layoffs. An actual court case provides an example for focus, analysis, and discussion. Points of discussion include management''s obligations to employees and factors of injustice related to prejudice against age.

Variable responses to transcranial direct current stimulation protocols across individuals are widely reported, but the reasons behind this variation are unclear. This includes tDCS protocols meant to improve attention. Attentional control is impacted by top-down and bottom-up processes, and this relationship is affected by state characteristics such as anxiety. According to Attentional Control Theory, anxiety biases attention towards bottom-up and stimulus-driven processing. The goal of this study was to explore the extent to which differences in state anxiety and related measures (...) affect visual attention and category learning, both with and without the influence of tDCS. Using discovery learning, participants were trained to classify pictures of European streets into two categories while receiving 30 min of 2.0 mA anodal, cathodal, or sham tDCS over the rVLPFC. The pictures were classifiable according to two separate rules, one stimulus and one hypothesis-driven. The Remote Associates Test, Profile of Mood States, and Attention Networks Task were used to understand the effects of individual differences at baseline on subsequent tDCS-mediated learning. Multinomial logistic regression was fit to predict rule learning based on the baseline measures, with subjects classified according to whether they used the stimulus-driven or hypothesis-driven rule to classify the pictures. The overall model showed a classification accuracy of 74.1%. The type of tDCS stimulation applied, attentional orienting score, and self-reported mood were significant predictors of different categories of rule learning. These results indicate that anxiety can influence the quality of subjects’ attention at the onset of the task and that these attentional differences can influence tDCS-mediated category learning during the rapid assessment of visual scenes. These findings have implications for understanding the complex interactions that give rise to the variability in response to tDCS. (shrink)

Medical technologies and assistive devices such as ventilators and power wheelchairs are designed to sustain life and/or improve functionality but they can also contribute to stigmatization and social exclusion. In this paper, drawing from a study of ten men with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we explore the complex social processes that mediate the lives of persons who are dependent on multiple medical and assistive technologies. In doing so we consider the embodied and emplaced nature of disability and how life is lived (...) through bodies coupled with technologies and experienced as 'techno-body-subjects in situ'. Normative implications for theory and research, including bioethics research, are discussed. (shrink)

A key component of research on human sentence processing is to characterize the processing difficulty associated with the comprehension of words in context. Models that explain and predict this difficulty can be broadly divided into two kinds, expectation‐based and memory‐based. In this work, we present a new model of incremental sentence processing difficulty that unifies and extends key features of both kinds of models. Our model, lossy‐context surprisal, holds that the processing difficulty at a word in context is proportional to (...) the surprisal of the word given a lossy memory representation of the context—that is, a memory representation that does not contain complete information about previous words. We show that this model provides an intuitive explanation for an outstanding puzzle involving interactions of memory and expectations: language‐dependent structural forgetting, where the effects of memory on sentence processing appear to be moderated by language statistics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that dependency locality effects, a signature prediction of memory‐based theories, can be derived from lossy‐context surprisal as a special case of a novel, more general principle called information locality. (shrink)

Background: Demand for organisational ethics capacity is growing in health organisations, particularly among managers. The role of clinical ethicists in, and perspective on, organisational ethics has not been well described or documented in the literature. Objective: To describe clinical ethicists’ perspectives on organisational ethics issues in their hospitals, their institutional role in relation to organisational ethics, and their perceived effectiveness in helping to address organisational ethics issues. Design and Setting: Qualitative case study involving semi-structured interviews with 18 clinical ethicists across (...) 13 health organisations in Toronto, Canada. Results: From the clinical ethicists’ perspective, the most pressing organisational ethics issues in their organisations are: resource allocation, staff moral distress linked to the organisation’s moral climate, conflicts of interest, and clinical issues with a significant organisational dimension. Clinical ethicists were consulted in particular on issues related to staff moral distress and clinical issues with an organisational dimension. Some ethicists described being increasingly consulted on resource allocation, conflicts of interest, and other corporate decisions. Many clinical ethicists felt they lacked sufficient knowledge and understanding of organisational decision-making processes, training in organisational ethics, and access to organisational ethics tools to deal effectively with the increasing demand for organisational ethics support. Conclusion: Growing demand for organisational ethics expertise in healthcare institutions is reshaping the role of clinical ethicists. Effectiveness in organisational ethics entails a re-evaluation of clinical ethics training to include capacity building in organisational ethics and organisational decision-making processes as a complement to traditional clinical ethics education. (shrink)

Organisations have implemented intensive home-based teleworking in response to global COVID-19 lockdowns and other pandemic-related restrictions. Financial pressures are driving organisations to continue intensive teleworking after the pandemic. Understanding employees’ teleworking inclinations post COVID-19, and how these inclinations are influenced by different factors, is important to ensure any future, more permanent changes to teleworking policies are sustainable for both employees and organisations. This study, therefore, investigated the relationships between the context of home-based teleworking during the pandemic, productivity perceptions during home-based (...) teleworking, and employees’ future teleworking inclinations beyond the pandemic. Specifically, the study examined whether pandemic-teleworking conditions related to the job, and the physical and social environments at home, influenced employees’ FTI, and if perceptions of improved or reduced productivity mediated these relationships. Data were collected during April and May 2020 with a cross-sectional online survey of teleworkers in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and other countries during the first COVID-19 lockdowns. Reported FTI were mixed. Most participants reported wanting to telework more post-pandemic compared to before the pandemic; however, 18% wanted to telework less. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that some teleworking conditions were positively associated with FTI. Other teleworking conditions were not associated with FTI. Perceived changes in productivity mediated the relationship between work privacy fit and FTI. Findings highlight the role of work privacy fit and job demands in influencing pandemic productivity perceptions and teleworking inclinations post-pandemic. Results raise questions about the suitability and sustainability of home-based teleworking for all staff. As organisations plan to increase the proportion of teleworking post-pandemic, this study suggests there is a need to support employees who perceived their productivity to be poor while home-working during the pandemic. (shrink)

Françoise Proust’s essential points of reference are Kant and Walter Benjamin. Alain Badiou ignores the extraordinary and sometimes beautiful dark power of Proust’s work on Benjamin. As is clear, however, from both Daniel Bensaïd’s interview with Proust and the title of Élizabeth Lemirre and Catherine Perret’s memorial volume (Une philosophie de la résistance: Françoise Proust), the concept of Proust that is most likely to become the dominant one is not Badiou’s, but rather the concept of her as above all a (...) philosopher of `resistance’. (shrink)

This article identifies a papyrus in Warsaw, P.Vars. 6, as a fragment of the large Latin–Greek glossary known as Ps.-Philoxenus. That glossary, published in volume II of G. Goetz's Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum on the basis of a ninth-century manuscript, is by far the most important of the bilingual glossaries surviving from antiquity, being derived from lost works of Roman scholarship and preserving valuable information about rare and archaic Latin words. It has long been considered a product of the sixth century (...) a.d., but the papyrus dates to c.200, and internal evidence indicates that the glossary itself must be substantially older than that copy. The Ps.-Philoxenus glossary is therefore not a creation of Late Antiquity but of the Early Empire or perhaps even the Republic. Large bilingual glossaries in alphabetical order must have existed far earlier than has hitherto been believed. (shrink)

Nature of the problem: Testimony from scientists. Reflex action and theism (1881) by W. James. The organization of thought (1916) by A.N. Whitehead. The changing scientific scene 1900-1950 (1952) by J.B. Conant. A note on methods of analysis (1943) by H.J. Muller. The way things are (1959) by P.W. Bridgman. A definition of style (1948) by J.R. Oppenheimer.--Consequences of the problem: Testimony from artists and writers. Existentialism (1947) by J.-P. Sartre. The testimony of modern art (1957) by W. Barrett. Parts (...) of speech and punctuation (1935) by G. Stein. The waves (1931) by V. Woolf. The imperfect paradise, by W. Stevens. A note on style and the limits of language, by W. Gibson. (shrink)

Current workflows in academic ecology rarely allow an engagement of ecologists with philosophers, or with contemporary philosophical work. We argue that this is a missed opportunity for enriching ecological reasoning and practice, because many questions in ecology overlap with philosophical questions and with current topics in contemporary philosophy of science. One obstacle to a closer connection and collaboration between the fields is the limited awareness of scientists, including ecologists, of current philosophical questions, developments and ideas. In this article, we aim (...) to overcome this obstacle and trigger more collaborations between ecologists and philosophers. First, we provide an overview of philosophical research relevant to ecologists. Second, we use examples to demonstrate that many ecological questions have a philosophical dimension and point to related philosophical work. We elaborate on one example – the debate around the appropriate level of complexity of ecological models – to show in more detail how philosophy can enrich ecology. Finally, we provide suggestions for how to initiate collaborative projects involving both ecologists and philosophers. (shrink)

A collection of personal narratives and essays, Living Professionalism is designed to help medical students and residents understand and internalize various aspects of professionalism. These essays are meant for personal reflection and above all, for thoughtful discussion with mentors, with peers, with others throughout the health care provider community who care about acting professionally.

In his introduction, Loriaux cites a passage from Etienne Gilson's L'être et l'essence, p. 30, in which Plato is represented as the typical "essentialist" thinker; i.e., a thinker who, when he talks about "being," is really talking about "essences." It is Loriaux's main contention that when Plato talks about being, or οὐσία, he refers to "the intelligible Form explicitly considered as Being and as existing in itself". It is important to see just what the issue is. It is not whether (...) Plato means, when he says "being," what the rest of us would call "essence;" he clearly thinks of whatever it is he is thinking about, just as "being." The question is whether, from his account of it, it is such that, in the light of later distinctions, we should have to call it "essence." This is the question which after an exhaustive study of the relevant dialogues Loriaux answers in the negative. (shrink)

Alan Gibson has invited me to discuss publicly some of the issues I raised in my referee's report for History of Political Thought on his article ‘Ancients, Moderns and Americans: The Republicanism- Liberalism Debate Revisited’. I gladly accepted, not least because a dialogue on views of the American Founding is fitting both for the subject and Gibson's instructive characterization of it. The Federalist opens by identifying candid debate as a fundamental achievement for young America, giving hope that reflection (...) and choice, not just accident and force, can govern humans. Similarly, Gibson's argument that America's formative political thought comprises ‘multiple traditions’ — including Lockean liberalism, the republicanism of English opposition writings, and other influences — seems to define the Founding as not a monologue but a lively dialogue. I agree that complexity and not a single, pure strain of thought defines America's Founding, but this is not to say there are no fundamental principles for which the Founding stands. In the spirit of candid exchange, I will not discuss the many points in Dr Gibson's article with which I agree but those where one might interpret the American Founding differently or find an important dimension overlooked. (shrink)

Resumo Os “Borboletas Azuis” de Campina Grande/PB alcançaram destaque nacional devido à propagação de uma profecia que afirmava a ocorrência de um dilúvio para o dia 13 de maio de 1980. O movimento é uma contestação às transformações da Igreja Católica Romana a partir do Concílio Vaticano II, onde foram tomadas medidas em favor de liturgias mais adequadas às culturas locais e em idioma próprio, assim como mudanças significativas nos textos e na linguagem utilizados na missa e na administração dos (...) sacramentos. A proposta do movimento é resgatar o modelo do cristianismo primitivo, em sua espera messiânica de instauração de uma nova “idade de ouro”. A identidade religiosa do movimento se constitui numa ‘bricolagem’ do cristianismo com o espiritismo, sendo sua excentricidade o motivo para os conflitos com a Igreja Católica e a imprensa local. O presente estudo analisa a trajetória dos “Borboletas Azuis” caracterizando-o como movimento messiânico-milenarista, tomando como perspectiva teórica os estudos da religião realizados por Delumeau, Queiroz, Negrão, Giddens, Weber e Andrade. Nossa metodologia consistiu a realização de entrevistas com remanescentes do movimento e análise de reportagens de jornais e documentos produzidos pela liderança. Palavras-chave: Messianismo; Milenarismo; Luta Simbólica.The "Borboletas Azuis" of Campina Grande city / PB achieved national prominence due to the spread of a prophecy that to asserted a deluge, for the day 23 de may of 1980. The movement is a challenge to the Roman Catholic Church of Vatican II, from where measures have been taken in favor of liturgies more appropriate to local culture and language, as well as significant changes in the texts and languages used in the Mass and in the administration of the sacraments. The Borboletas Azuis proposes a revival of the model of primitive Christianity, in its messianic hopes to introduce a new "golden age". The religious identity of the movement is constituted of ‘bricolage’ of Christianity with spiritism. Because of its "eccentricities", ended generating a huge controversy that culminated in a double conflict: one with the Catholic Church and other with the local press. This study analyzes the imaginary of the "Borboletas Azuis”, adopting a theoretical perspective inspired on studies about religion done by Delumeau, Queiroz, Negrão, Giddens, Weber e Andrade . The methodology we used consisted in open interviews carried out with remaining believers and the analysis of local press articles and documents produced by their leaders. Keywords : Messianism; Millenarism; Symbolic Fight. (shrink)

Paul Grobstein, Eleanor A. Bliss Professor of Biology at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA passed away Tuesday, June 28, 2011. Since Paul came to Bryn Mawr in 1986, he taught courses ranging from "Introductory Biology" and "Philosophy of Science" to "Evolution of Stories" and "The Brain and Education." Paul founded the Summer Institutes for K-12 Teachers, which brought hundreds of local educators to campus to consider new ways of teaching science and math. He served as chair of the Biology (...) Department and was instrumental in the establishment and success of the Center for Science in Society at Bryn Mawr College. (shrink)