We discuss five kinds of representations of rationales and provide a formal account of how they can alter disputation. The formal model of disputation is derived from recent work in argument. The five kinds of rationales are compilation rationales, which can be represented without assuming domain-knowledge (such as utilities) beyond that normally required for argument. The principal thesis is that such rationales can be analyzed in a framework of argument not too different from what AI already has. The result is (...) a formal understanding of rationales, a partial taxonomy, and a foundation for computer programs that represent and reason with rationales.The five kinds of rationales are as follows: (c)ompression and (s)pecialization, which yield rules, and (d)isputation, which yields a decision. These are modeled as potentially changing the focus of the dispute. Then there are (f)it, a rationale for rules, and (r)esolution, a rationale for decisions. These cannot be modeled as simply; they force disputation to a meta-level, at least temporarily. (shrink)

Health care professionals often face moral dilemmas. Not dealing constructively with moral dilemmas can cause moral distress and can negatively affect the quality of care. Little research has been documented with methodologies meant to support professionals in care for the homeless in dealing with their dilemmas. Moral case deliberation is a method for systematic reflection on moral dilemmas and is increasingly being used as ethics support for professionals in various health-care domains. This study deals with the question: What is the (...) contribution of MCD in helping professionals in an institution for care for the homeless to deal with their moral dilemmas? A mixed-methods responsive evaluation design was used to answer the research question. Five teams of professionals from a Dutch care institution for the homeless participated in MCD three times. Professionals in care for the homeless value MCD positively. They report that MCD helped them to identify the moral dilemma/question, and that they learned from other people’s perspectives while reflecting and deliberating on the values at stake in the dilemma or moral question. They became aware of the moral dimension of moral dilemmas, of related norms and values, of other perspectives, and learned to formulate a moral standpoint. Some experienced the influence of MCD in the way they dealt with moral dilemmas in daily practice. Half of the professionals expect MCD will influence the way they deal with moral dilemmas in the future. Most of them were in favour of further implementation of MCD in their organization. (shrink)

The 1973 archeological discovery of important documents of classical thought known as the Huang-Lao Boshu coupled with advancements in contemporary jurisprudence make possible a reassessment of the philosophies of pre-Qin and early Han China. This study attempts to elucidate the importance of the Huang-Lao school within the intellectual tradition of China through a comparison of the Boshu's philosophical position, particularly its understanding of the relation between law and morality, with the respective views of major thinkers of the period--Confucius, Han Fei, (...) Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and to a lesser extent, Shen Dao, Shen Buhai and the authors of the Guan Zi and He Guan Zi. So doing reveals Huang-Lao to be a unique and sophisticated social and political philosophy which, until its expulsion from court by Emperor Wu and subsequent adoption by Daoist religion, served as the ideological foundation for the post-Qin reforms of the early Han. (shrink)

Human societies are extraordinarily cooperative compared to those of most other animals. In the vast majority of species, individuals live solitary lives, meeting to only to mate and, sometimes, raise their young. In social species, cooperation is limited to relatives and (maybe) small groups of reciprocators. After a brief period of maternal support, individuals acquire virtually all of the food that they eat. There is little division of labor, no trade, and no large scale conflict. Communication is limited to a (...) small repertoire of self-verifying signals. No one cares for the sick, or feeds the hungry or disabled. The strong take from the weak without fear of sanctions by third parties. Amend Hobbes to account for nepotism, and his picture of the state of nature is not so far off for most other animals. In contrast, people in even the simplest human societies regularly cooperate with many unrelated individuals. Human language allows low-cost honest communication of virtually unlimited complexity. The sick are cared for, and sharing leads to substantial flows of food from the middle aged to the young and old. Division of labor and trade are prominent features of every historically known human society, and archaeology indicates that they have a long history. Violent conflict among sizable groups is common. In every human society, social life is regulated by commonly held moral systems that specify the rights and duties of individuals enforced, albeit imperfectly, by third party sanctions. (shrink)

Many physicists regard the flow of time as an illusion. There is an upper level flow of time, the phenomenon of past/present/future; and there is a lower level flow of time which is really a flow of events. Perceptual completion accounts for the lower level flow of time in a few ways: apparent movement; amodal completion; and dynamic change as exemplified by a newly described modal completion that we called happening. It acts like an illusory percept connecting discrete stimuli in (...) all sensory modalities. The past/present/future distinction cannot exist unless an object is perceived to be the same now as it is then. This cognition requires object persistence. Experiments with object persistence suggest the circumstances when that, too, is an illusory percept. The illusory percepts of object persistence and perceptual completion can account for the entire flow of time. Our findings and conclusions are congruent with a few time theories and cosmologies that suggest that the flow of time is an illusion. (shrink)

Understanding of organizational ethics phenomena requires complex understanding of organizational practices in their real world contexts. We can try to understand and build theory about these complex real world practices from the points of view of: a traditional deductive, ethics literature-based, literature gap formulation approach; or, an inductive, practitioner-based literature gap formulation approach. This consideration of inductive, practitioner-based versus deductive, literature-based literature gap formulation is related to the discussion concerning “engaged scholarship” and relationships and gaps between theory and practice in (...) organization studies [Van De Ven, 2007, Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Research Knowledge ]. However, there is an important difference with respect to the key issue of ethics literature versus practitioner-based literature gap formulation. This article offers examples of the two different approaches and makes comparisons between them. Implications for practice-based organizational ethics theory building, Ph.D. education, and public intellectual work are considered. (shrink)

Interactive technology assessment (iTA) provides an answer to the ethical problem of normative bias in evaluation research. This normative bias develops when relevant perspectives on the evaluand (the thing being evaluated) are neglected. In iTA this bias is overcome by incorporating different perspectives into the assessment. As a consequence, justification of decisions based on the assessment is provided by stakeholders having achieved agreement. In this article, agreement is identified with wide reflective equilibrium to show that it indeed has the potential (...) of justifying decisions. We work out several conditions for this agreement to be achievable and just. (shrink)

Error is protean, ubiquitous and crucial in scientific process. In this paper it is argued that understanding scientific process requires what is currently absent: an adaptable, context-sensitive functional role for error in science that naturally harnesses error identification and avoidance to positive, success-driven, science. This paper develops a new account of scientific process of this sort, error and success driving Self-Directed Anticipative Learning (SDAL) cycling, using a recent re-analysis of ape-language research as test example. The example shows the limitations of (...) other accounts of error, in particular Mayo’s (Error and the growth of experimental knowledge, 1996) error-statistical approach, and SDAL cycling shows how they can be fruitfully contextualised. (shrink)

To whom do sperm and ova belong? Few tissues are produced by the human body with more waste than the germ cells. Yet dominion over the germ cells, and over the early embryo that results from their union in vitro, is behind much of the emotion that modern reproductive intervention can engender. The germ cells differ from other human tissues that can be donated or transplanted because they carry readily utilizable genetic information. Eventual expression of the germ cells' genetic potential (...) is the legitimate concern and responsibility of their donors, although in the right circumstances the responsibility can by agreement be entrusted to institutions administering gamete or embryo donor programmes; these institutions, in turn, may need to assume responsibility for decisions if, in the case of embryo storage, the wishes of the two donors conflict. The fact of sperm and ovum ownership (and the genetic potential that goes with it) before individuals part with these tissues is beyond dispute. Some contentious issues may be clarified if this area of human dominion, namely control over genetic expression among offspring, is acknowledged to be the legitimate persisting concern of those who have produced sperm and ova after storage commences. (shrink)

Aim To explore the views in non-Western cultures about ending the lives of damaged newborns.Method 254 university students from India and 150 from Kuwait rated the acceptability of ending the lives of newborns with genetic defects in 54 vignettes consisting of all combinations of four factors: gestational age ; severity of genetic defect ; the parents’ attitude about prolonging care ; and the procedure used .Results Four clusters were identified by cluster analysis and subjected to analysis of variance. Cluster I, (...) labelled ‘Never Acceptable’, included 4% of the Indians and 59% of the Kuwaitis. Cluster II, ‘No Firm Opinion’, had little variation in rating from one scenario to the next; it included 38% of the Indians and 18% of the Kuwaitis. In Cluster III, ‘Parents’ Attitude+Severity+Procedure’, all three factors affected the ratings; it was composed of 18% of the Indians and 16% of the Kuwaitis. Cluster IV was called ‘Severity+Parents’ Attitude’ because these had the strongest impact; it was composed of 40% of the Indians and 7% of the Kuwaitis.Conclusions In accordance with the teachings of Islam versus Hinduism, Kuwaiti students were more likely to oppose ending a newborn's life under all conditions, Indian students more likely to favour it and to judge its acceptability in light of the different circumstances. (shrink)

It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains--that happiness is (...) not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the traditional reading of Daoism as naturalism and the interpretation of wu wei as “acting naturally.” I argue that such an interpretation is problematic and unhelpful to the would-be Daoist environmental ethicist. I then lay the groundwork for a philosophically viable environmental ethic by elucidating the pragmatic aspects of Daoist thought. While Daoism so interpreted is no panacea for all of our environmental ills, it does provide a methodology that may prove effective in alleviating some (...) of our discomfort. (shrink)

An epistemic logic is built up on the basis of an analysis of two skeptical arguments. the method used is to first construct an inference relation appropriate to epistemic contexts and introduce "a knows that..." as an operator giving rise to sentences closed with respect to this new concept of inference. soundness and completeness proofs are provided using auxiliary three-valued valuations.

What we perceive is the product of an intrinsic process and not part of external physical reality. This notion is consistent with the philosophical position of transcendental idealism but also agrees with physiological findings on the thalamocortical system. -Frequency rhythms of discharge activity from thalamic and cortical neurons are facilitated by cholinergic arousal and resonate in thalamocortical networks, thereby transiently forming assemblies of coherent oscillations under constraints of sensory input and prefrontal attentional mechanisms. Perception and conscious experience may be based (...) on such assemblies and sensory input to thalamic nuclei plays merely a constraining role in their formation. In schizophrenia, the ability of sensory input to modulate self-organisation of thalamocortical activity may be generally reduced. If during arousal thalamocortical self-organisation is underconstrained by sensory input, then attentional mechanisms alone may determine the content of perception and hallucinations may arise. (shrink)

The disappearance of the imperial biographies written by Marius Maximus is one of the more frustrating losses of Latin literature, for various reasons: the well-known testimony of Ammianus, the interest of Marius Maximus' attested contribution to the Historia Augusta, his importance, much in dispute, to the writer of that work, the lack of information on much of the period he covered, and, not least, the fascinating role assigned to him by modern scholars, remodelling a previous duality of sources, of bad (...) biographer in contrast to the good Ignotus. It has recently become common practice for the evidence of Ausonius' Caesares to be used in the search for this biographer. The suggestion goes back to a dissertation of F. della Corte in 1956/7, and was taken up in his edition of Ausonius' works by Pastorino, and discussed in the following year by Cazzaniga who, though uncertain about the dependence of Ausonius on Marius Maximus, does misleadingly assert ‘e certo che l'ultima epigramma tocca Elagabalo, che chiude la silloge’. More recently, della Corte has returned to the question and sketched a possible model for the growth of the whole extant collection of Ausonius' Caesares, on the basis of the manuscript tradition. The same volume contains a contribution to the question by S. d'Elia and includes, by a felicitous piece of editing, an extended footnote in which d'Elia is able to comment on the relevant part of della Corte's paper. Meanwhile, outside Italy, there have been parallel and independent developments. (shrink)

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the works in which Ausonius of Bordeaux and Libanius of Antioch, writing within a few years of each other, recall their long and varied careers is that there is so little resemblance between them; the impressions given by these experienced and successful teachers could hardly be more disparate. The reader of Ausonius finds in his Protrepticus a familiar enough picture of the terrors of the schoolroom; his Professores offer at first sight a series of (...) bland commemorations apparently deficient in the interesting information which might be expected from such an archive. Libanius' many volumes, on the other hand, compared where appropriate with the Vitae Sophistarum of Eunapius, present a situation which is well summarised by the following sentences from Walden's work The Universities of Ancient Greece : ‘There was, among the sophists of the fourth century…little, if any, of that spirit of brotherhood… that usually exists in a community of scholars at the present day. Instead there were jealousy, spite and often unrelenting hatred’. This striking divergence between Ausonius and his Eastern counterparts is unlikely to reflect a basic difference between East and West, or between Latin- and Greek-speaking milieux; the complaints of Augustine about his problems in Africa and Rome warn against such a simple answer. When one adds the evidence provided seven centuries later by the Frenchman Peter Abelard, whose plaintive Historia Calamitatum — an account of the disasters he suffered, not those which he caused — is remarkably similar to the prickly self-justification of Libanius in its account of bitter scheming and almost military manoeuvres in the educational world, one is forced to consider whether the evidence of Ausonius is not a serious anomaly, and to seek an explanation. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders certain questions about Ausonius’ two incomplete works on historical themes, Fasti and Caesares, with particular attention to points raised in a recent article by R. W. Burgess. Of the Fasti we have only a few tantalizing snippets, the packaging and not the core: what did the work look like when it left Ausonius? What was its coverage? was it in verse or prose? The Caesares as we have it breaks off in mid-quatrain, at line 139: did it (...) go beyond Elagabalus? What of the evidence in Giovanni Mansionario that Ausonius treated certain imperatores from Decius to Diocletian? (shrink)

The primary aim of this article is to reveal a number of previously unrecorded appearances of classical Latin poetry in the poems of Ausonius, with a brief assessment of their value in understanding his text, and an incorporation of them into the general picture of his acquaintance with his predecessors; a final section will outline some ways in which his adoptions and adaptations are used. Latin poets now fragmented or lost are not included in this study; for the survival of (...) a Lucilius or an Ennius has generally enjoyed more attention and study than the after-life of better-known authors. It is moreover doubtful if such early writers had a context to offer the borrower in Late Antiquity; while poets of the second and third centuries A.D. , who did, are poorly known today. (shrink)

The cento of Proba has recently enjoyed a remarkable upsurge of scholarly interest. A welcome translation was provided in 1981, and an article of five years later, scrutinizing the evidence for its date and authorship, has aroused much controversy. In two recent contributions vindicating the traditional date new or more precise suggestions have been made about the poem's historical context. In between these, yet another article has argued, without confirming or refuting the revised dating and attribution, that in various ways (...) the work reflects the interest of the aristocratic ladies of the Anician family. And now there is a second article by Danuta Shanzer, repeating many of her early points and adding some interesting new ones. All this sudden attention is not unmerited, for as Herzog observed long ago the work is not of the comic or trivializing kind that Ausonius envisaged in his comments on the genre and does not degrade Vergil but rather, at least in the often quoted words of its prefatory poem, ‘improves’ him. (shrink)

It may seem faintly absurd to claim or imply that a Vergilian cento has suffered unjustified neglect from scholars. These works—of which there are sixteen, covering a period of over three centuries within Late Antiquity—are usually treated at best with amused tolerance, and at worst with angry disdain. Though always ingenious, sometimes funny, and occasionally informative about the reception of Vergil, they are seldom admired. Even among Italian scholars, some of whom have paid much attention to centos, a recession has (...) set in since the annus mirabilis of 1981, which saw two editions of the Medea of Hosidius Geta. Proba has, deservedly, attracted more attention than most; her aims and methods as a Christian poetess were carefully and illuminatingly studied twenty years ago by Reinhard Herzog, and her interest as a female Roman aristocrat has brought her further attention, especially in recent years. The main aim of the present article is to suggest a particular context and a serious purpose for her cento. A postscript will show that it went on to enjoy considerable popularity until the end of the century, and an introductory section will discuss its date, but very briefly, since Matthews has convincingly said most of what needs to be said about a recent attempt to redate it. Proba's preface, much of it not in cento form, calls for detailed treatment from various angles—textual, literary, historical—and will be explored in a separate article. (shrink)

Andrew was a desperately premature baby weighing under two pounds. He died after months of "heroic' efforts in an intensive care facility. The story of his short cruel institutionalised life is a case study in the limits and excesses of modern medicine. The night he told us our son Andrew was about to die the doctor who had taken charge of him six months before also told us we were "intellectually tight' that we had "no feelings only thoughts and words (...) and strategies'. We were "bad parents'. As the parents of a five-year-old daughter we knew the love a mother and father feels for children. Yet as Andrew's parents we were used to condemnation and insult. Andrew was a baby born 15 weeks prematurely weighing only 1lb 12oz and in a state of painful deterioration almost from the start. We wanted him to be allowed to die a natural death. Andrew's story is the story of what can happen when a baby becomes hopelessly entrapped in an intensive care unit where the machinery is more sophisticated than the code of law and ethics governing its use. The letter printed below was sent to the administrator and numerous personnel of the hospital that controlled the life and death of our son. The physician-in-chief of that hospital characterised it as a "carefully documented critique'. The letter appear here somewhat edited and abridged and the names of people and institutions have been changed all but our own. It is the personal record of what happened to our baby and to us. (shrink)

One of the gains to be reckoned from the study of nomenclature in the sepulchral inscriptions of the early empire is the gradual abandonment of attempts to distinguish between slave and freeborn on the basis of personal name or cognomen alone, especially when this is of Latin derivation. Nevertheless, one still finds personal cognomina in undated inscriptions adduced as sole evidence for the origin or status of individuals below senatorial rank. Thus in a standard work on freedmen in the early (...) empire, recently reprinted, names such as Agilis, Amandus, Auctus, Communis, Donatus, Faustus, Felix, etc., are said to be commonly servile, but others such as Aquila, Bassus, Capito, Cams, Celer, Crescens, etc., are taken as ingenuous. The criteria used in making such a distinction are subjective and arbitrary and the statistics based on them are largely valueless. It is the purpose of this note to consider briefly on this question the evidence of the personal nomenclature of the Imperial slaves and freedmen. In this group, the Familia Caesaris, no problem of status arises, and the fact that the majority of their inscriptions can be dated, at least approximately, makes it possible to trace the chronological development of the use of cognomina ingenua by one important group of servile origin from the first to the early third century A.D. Moreover, such a development is useful evidence for change in the social structure of the early empire. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in disruption of work and other social activities of so many people. Some were forced to stay at home and many decided to stay at home for fear of being infected with the virus. This phenomenon brought different reactions and even mental stress to many people. However, there were people who turned this kind of tragedy into creative work. This paper discusses the experiences and insights of known plant lovers in Digos City, Davao del Sur (...) Philippines. Digos City is one of the heavily affected places during the series of earthquakes that jolted Davao del Sur last year. While people are still recovering, COVID-19 added an additional burden to the residents. In this paper, we argue that their decision to focus on gardening was not only to fight boredom and to divert their attention during lockdown but this was their way of maintaining their well-being by participating in the on-going work of creation and recreation and to rise from the tragedy. We further argue that it might be good that this creative work will go beyond home gardening and beyond pots and slowly extend to creative work for environmental protection and preservation through more active engagements into reforestation activities. (shrink)