The placebo effect is a common phenomenon in therapy and research but has received very little attention as such in nursing research. This article reviews some of the literature which shows the placebo effect, which can be positive or negative, is a significant force. Then it is argued that, while all health professionals have a general obligation to benefit their patients, nursing has a special, specific obligation to enhance the placebo effect, to maximize a positive effect and minimize a negative (...) effect. Nursing education, current policy statements, and circumstances of clinical practice explain this obligation. Nursing research is needed to clarify the multiple ways in which the social and physical environment can trigger a placebo effect. As nursing expands its knowledge of this effect, it can begin to educate patients to the self-care implications of this pervasive but misunderstood phenomenon. Keywords: ethics, placebo, placebo effect, self care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The received view of Kant’s moral philosophy is that it precludes all moral luck. But I offer a plausible interpretation according to which Kant embraces moral luck in circumstance and constitution. I interpret the unconditioned nature of transcendental freedom as a person’s ability to do the right thing no matter how she is inclined by her circumstantial and constitutive luck. I argue that various passages about degrees of difficulty relating to circumstantial and constitutive luck provide a reason to accept a (...) pro-moral luck interpretation of Kant. (shrink)

According to the Free Will Explanation of a traditional view of hell, human freedom explains why some people are in hell. It also explains hell’s punishment and finality: persons in hell have freely developed moral vices that are their own punishment and that make repentance psychologically impossible. So, even though God continues to desire reconciliation with persons in hell, damned persons do not want reconciliation with God. But this moral vice explanation of hell’s finality is implausible. I argue that God (...) can and would make direct or indirect alterations in their character to give them new motivational reasons that re-enable their freedom to repent. Subsequently, I argue that it is probable that each damned person will be saved eventually, because there is a potential infinity of opportunities for free repentance. Thus, if the Free Will Explanation’s descriptions of hell and divine love are correct, it is highly probable that each person in hell escapes to heaven. (shrink)

According to the character condition, a person is morally responsible for an action A only if a character trait of hers non-accidentally motivates her performing A. But that condition is untenable according to the out of character objection because people can be morally responsible for acting out of character. We reassess this common objection. Of the seven accounts of acting out of character that we outline, only one is even a prima facie counterexample to the character condition. And it is (...) not obvious that people act out of character in that sense. We argue that whether the out of character objection succeeds ultimately depends on the unnoticed methodological commitment that cases that may not resemble human life provide good data for theorizing about moral responsibility. But even if such cases provide good data, the forcefulness of the objection is at least deflated given that its persuasive power is supposed to come from clear real-life cases. (shrink)

Education has significant and far-reaching effects not only on individuals, but also on the societies in which they live and to which they contribute. The education level of a population affects how a country supports itself and others and the degree to which it can participate in the global field. While everyone from politicians to policymakers to celebrities has stressed the importance of education, there has not been-until now-a vigorous yet comprehensible examination of data to support what has long been (...) common knowledge: education matters. In Education Matters: Global Gains from the 19th to the 21st Century, renowned economists Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee present a revolutionary new data set on education in 146 countries since 1870 and projected through 2040. With case studies from the United States, China, and Korea, Barro and Lee evaluate schooling both quantitatively and qualitatively, and assess the role of education in economic and political development. In this comprehensive study, the authors establish the critical role that education plays - particularly for women and girls - in economic growth, fertility, and democracy. The book also addresses sensitive and controversial topics, such as international disparities in education, and the role of education in modernization and development. Both challenging and enlightening, Education Matters has exciting implications for the future of education and promises to be a ground-breaking work in the fields of economics and educational attainment. Engaging and informative, Education Matters is a compelling read for students, scholars, and anyone with a passion for education. (shrink)

The task of speaking the truth is an infinite labor: to respect it in its complexity is an obligation that no power can afford to shortchange, unless it would impose the silence of slavery (Foucault 1989, p. 308).... the attainment of truth is the outcome of the development of complex and elaborate methods of searching, methods that... in many respects go against the human grain, so they are adopted only after long discipline in a school of hard knocks (Dewey [1925] (...) 1988, pp. 234-35). (shrink)

Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988), Fodor and McLaughlin (1990) and McLaughlin (1993) challenge connectionists to explain systematicity without simply implementing a classical architecture. In this paper I argue that what makes the challenge difficult for connectionists to meet has less to do with what is to be explained than with what is to count as an explanation. Fodor et al. are prepared to admit as explanatory, accounts of a sort that only classical models can provide. If connectionists are to meet the (...) challenge, they are going to have to insist on the propriety of changing what counts as an explanation of systematicity. Once that is done, there would seem to be as yet no reason to suppose that connectionists are unable to explain systematicity. (shrink)

The verse hinc subitae mortes atque intestata senectus has long fuelled considerable debate and discussion among classical scholars. This hexameter occurs in the passage of the first satire that describes the aspect of the patron-client relationship where the rich patron, ignoring the plight of his poor and hungry clients, enjoys a sumptuous but deadly feast. After dining on delicacies such as boar and peacock, he bathes on a bloated stomach, causing him to die suddenly and apparently intestate, and causing those (...) angry at being deprived of their legacy to cheer at his funeral :quanta est gula quae sibi totosponit apros, animal propter conuiuia natum!poena tamen praesens, cum tu deponis amictusturgidus et crudum pauonem in balnea portas.hinc subitae mortes atque intestata senectus.it noua nec tristis per cunctas fabula cenas;ducitur iratis plaudendum funus amicis. (shrink)

Thomas' theory of sin is a specification of his general theory of metaphysical evil. Both his theory of evil in general and his theory of moral evil specifically provide an understanding that constitutes a scientia, for both theories consist of an explanation of the four causes of evil. As a contrary of good, evil can be explained by means of its causes, for the scientia of good includes the understanding of the contrary of good. Thus sin can be understood precisely (...) as it is opposed to the good proper to rational creatures. ;The fact that Thomas's theory of evil consists of an explanation of its four causes is most evident in his Disputed Questions De malo. Thomas' explanation of moral evil parallels his explanation of metaphysical evil, as it demonstrates the four causes of sin in a similar fashion. Further, Thomas' theory of metaphysical evil provides the foundation for his explanation of moral evil; thus Thomas will apply the principles established concerning evil in general to the particular difficulties that arise in regard to the evil found in the rational creature. ;In his general theory of evil, Thomas determined that evil itself was not a thing, for there is no form or end proper to an evil nature. Evil can be understood according to the form that it opposes, and it is only found in some subject that properly possesses that form. Something that acts according to its end as a final cause may be the efficient cause of evil, either deficiently as it or the matter it acts upon is deficient, or as the good it acts for is accidentally an evil to another. The particular good that the efficient cause of evil intends or acts for, then, is a particular good that is in some way contrary to the particular good of some creature. In the case of sin, the will is the efficient cause of evil, as it intends something good, but there is some evil joined to it either accidentally or through its deficiency. Moral evil, then, is known by way of these causes. (shrink)

"The Natural System" is the abstract notion of the order in living diversity. The richness and complexity of this notion is revealed by the diversity of representations of the Natural System drawn by ornithologists in the Nineteenth Century. These representations varied in overall form from stars, to circles, to maps, to evolutionary trees and cross-sections through trees. They differed in their depiction of affinity, analogy, continuity, directionality, symmetry, reticulation and branching, evolution, and morphological convergence and divergence. Some representations were two-dimensional, (...) and some were three-dimensional; n-dimensional representations were discussed but never illustrated. The study of diagrammatic representations of the Natural System is made difficult by the frequent failure of authors to discuss them in their texts, and by the consequent problem of distinguishing features which carried meaning from arbitrary features and printing conventions which did not. Many of the systematics controversies of the last thirty years have their roots in the conceptual problems which surrounded the Natural System in the late 1800s, problems which were left unresolved when interest in higher-level systematics declined at the turn of this century. (shrink)

William Whewell (1794–1866), polymathic Victorian scientist, philosopher, historian, and educator, was one of the great neologists of the nineteenth century. Although Whewell's name is little remembered today except by professional historians and philosophers of science, researchers in many scientific fields work each day in a world that Whewell named. "Miocene" and "Pliocene," "uniformitarian" and "catastrophist," "anode" and "cathode," even the word "scientist" itself—all of these were Whewell coinages. Whewell is particularly important to students of the historical sciences for another word (...) he coined, one that was unfortunately not as successful as many of his others because it is difficult to pronounce. This word, "palaetiology," was the name Whewell gave to the class of sciences that are concerned with historical causation: the class we might today refer to as historical sciences. Although the disciplines Whewell included under the heading of palaetiology might seem to cut across conventional academic boundaries of his day and ours—his exemplary palaetiological sciences were geology and comparative philology—all these fields may be examined together, Whewell argued, because of their common interest in reconstructing the past. ¶ This paper is an essay in the palaetiological sciences, dedicated to Whewell on the bicentennial of his birth, an essay that examines some of the principles, maxims, and rules of procedure that these sciences have all in common. Its first purpose is to demonstrate the continuing validity of Whewell's classification of these sciences through a study of historical representation in three different palaetiological fields: systematics, historical linguistics, and textual transmission. Its second purpose is to continue the development of an extended analogy between historical representation and cartographic representation that I began in an earlier paper (O'Hara, 1993, Systematic Biology), an analogy that makes especially clear the common representational practices that are found throughout palaetiology. (shrink)

Classifications of animals and plants have long been represented by hierarchical lists of taxa, but occasional authors have drawn diagrammatic versions of their classifications in an attempt to better depict the "natural relationships" of their organisms. Ornithologists in 19th-century Britain produced and pioneered many types of classificatory diagrams, and these fall into three groups: (a) the quinarian systems of Vigors and Swainson (1820s and 1830s); (b) the "maps" of Strickland and Wallace (1840s and 1850s); and (c) the evolutionary diagrams of (...) the post-Darwin authors (1860 on). The quinarians distinguished between affinity and analogy and used both in their classifications, whereas Strickland rejected the quinarians' belief in numerical regularity and their use of analogy. Wallace's "maps" are easily given an evolutionary interpretation, and his approach was taken up and modified by later evolutionary anatomists. Sharpe returned to Strickland's methods and merely appended a superficial evolutionary interpretation. Contrary to common belief systematics has a rich conceptual history, and many of the conceptual developments in 19th-century systematics were made by ornithologists. (shrink)

Social and regional inequality remained of secondary importance in the 2017 House of Representatives election, especially in comparison to national security and constitutional reform. Still, the election victory of the coalition between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Kōmeitō was also due to its ability to shape the debate concerning Japan’s political-economic model of growth and inequality. Abenomics and regional revitalization were the dominating policies, which opposition parties criticized without having a real counter-model. A more detailed analysis shows, however, that (...) Abenomics has not yet fulfilled its promise of shared growth, and that the governing coalition’s discursive control over the political-economic agenda has significantly weakened. This creates opportunities for opposition parties in the future. (shrink)

Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was a watershed event when it was published in 1962, upending the previous understanding of science as a slow, logical accumulation of facts and introducing, with the concept of the “paradigm shift,” social and psychological considerations into the heart of the scientific process. More than fifty years after its publication, Kuhn’s work continues to influence thinkers in a wide range of fields, including scientists, historians, and sociologists. It is clear that The Structure (...) of Scientific Revolutions itself marks no less of a paradigm shift than those it describes. In Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” at Fifty, leading social scientists and philosophers explore the origins of Kuhn’s masterwork and its legacy fifty years on. These essays exhume important historical context for Kuhn’s work, critically analyzing its foundations in twentieth-century science, politics, and Kuhn’s own intellectual biography: his experiences as a physics graduate student, his close relationship with psychologists before and after the publication of Structure, and the Cold War framework of terms such as “world view” and “paradigm.”. (shrink)

We discuss two kinds of quotation, namely indirect quotation and pure quotation. With respect to each, we have both a negative and a positive plaint. The negative plaint is that the strict Davidsonian treatment of indirect and pure quotation cannot be correct. The positive plaint is an alternative account of how quotation of these two sorts works. /// Discutimos dos tipos de citas, a saber, citas indirectas y citas puras. Hacemos dos planteamientos, uno positivo y otro negativo, con respecto a (...) cada una. El negativo es que el tratamiento estrictamente davidsoniano de las citas indirectas y puras no puede ser correcto. El positivo consiste en dar una explicatión alternativa de cómo funcionan estos dos tipos de citas. (shrink)

John Henry Newman wrote the “Theses de Fide” in Rome as a seminary student in 1846/1847, and the text represents a key point in the development of his thought. Newman wrote the “Theses” in an attempt to grapple with scholastic categories on faith, a question that had occupied him in the Anglican Church for years. Although the “Theses” were not published in Newman’s life, he returned to these reflections often over the course of his Roman Catholic career. This edition and (...) partial translation of the “Theses de Fide” is to aid general readers in understanding this moment in Newman’s life, and to assist specialists in approaching the manuscript record of the “Theses” themselves. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead 's treatise Universal Algebra classifies algebras as either non-numerical or numerical according to whether they satisfy the law of idempotency, a + a = a. We undertake a technical critique of this classification scheme and examine how its flaws may reflect certain mathematical and philosophical biases in Whitehead 's outlook. We argue further that Whitehead 's presumption of immutable foundations for mathematics and his early commitment to the priority of objects over relations may in part account for (...) his relative obscurity as a mathematician. (shrink)

Ancient Chinese philosophical conceptions of intelligence differ markedly from those in the ancient Western tradition, and also from contemporary Western conceptions. Understanding these ancient Chinese conceptions of intelligence may help us better understand how a very important culture—Chinese culture—influences people's thinking and behavior, and may also help us broaden, deepen, as well as re-examine our own conceptions of intelligence. This article reviews two ancient Chinese conceptions of intelligence–the Confucian and Taoist– and discusses their ramifications for current thinking about intelligence and (...) its role in the world. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

James's ethical thought could frequently be consequentialist, but it could also on occasion show a deontological side, or "streak," as I contended in "William James on the Courage to Believe". This shows up when he speaks of the "strenuous" as against the "easy-going" moral mood, in "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life," and it preserves the precursive intervention of our "passional natures" in "The Will to Believe" from lapsing into "wishful thinking." Toned down slightly, perhaps, in "Varieties of Religious (...) Experience", it reasserts itself in "Pragmatism", and, it could be shown, in James's succeeding works as well. (shrink)

The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is a research topic with both theoretical and practical significance. However, the ethical and moral aspects of conceptual, ontological, semantic, and knowledge modeling, more specifically, and which are sometimes found in AI applications, is not being given sufficient attention. I argue that it should. Whether considering using or developing these meaning-focused models, there are ethical aspects. This paper offers a preliminary outline about this potentially new research field, discussing: some questions and areas of concern, (...) their significance; scenarios of ethical import, and initial ethical guidelines. A focus area, potential case study, and lens through which to see the ethical significance at hand, is ontologies, with emphasis on the most abstract ontologies (so-called generic, foundational, top-level or upper ontologies). This would aim to show the ethical import of highly abstract (often philosophical) ontological choices, assumptions, and their effects on data, developers, users, and society. In particular, I stress the need for critical examination of such models, their content, their intended meanings, assumptions, ideologies, as well as the development process. Both the ethics of, and ethics in, these activities are, therefore, of interest. Topics in the ethics of AI that are relevant include: transparency, bias, data-sharing, privacy, control over data, etc. This paper thereby contributes to the ethics of AI, as well as the ethics of information, of knowledge managment and relevant topics by developing and discussing the ethics of ontology (and similar systems). Future development will refine and add to the ideas expressed in this paper. (shrink)

Recently Díaz, Hössjer and Marks (DHM) presented a Bayesian framework to measure cosmological tuning (either fine or coarse) that uses maximum entropy (maxent) distributions on unbounded sample spaces as priors for the parameters of the physical models (https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2021/07/020). The DHM framework stands in contrast to previous attempts to measure tuning that rely on a uniform prior assumption. However, since the parameters of the models often take values in spaces of infinite size, the uniformity assumption is unwarranted. This is known as (...) the normalization problem. In this paper we explain why and how the DHM framework not only evades the normalization problem but also circumvents other objections to the tuning measurement like the so called weak anthropic principle, the selection of a single maxent distribution and, importantly, the lack of invariance of maxent distributions with respect to data transformations. We also propose to treat fine-tuning as an emergence problem to avoid infinite loops in the prior distribution of hyperparameters (common to all Bayesian analysis), and explain that previous attempts to measure tuning using uniform priors are particular cases of the DHM framework. Finally, we prove a theorem, explaining when tuning is fine or coarse for different families of distributions. The theorem is summarized in a table for ease of reference, and the tuning of three physical parameters is analyzed using the conclusions of the theorem. (shrink)

This book explores the principal issues involved in bridging the gap between the pure theory of consumer behavior and its empirical implementation. The authors focus upon the structure of preferences, the treatment of demographic variables, the treatment of dynamics, and the specification of the stochastic structure of the demand system.

We study a class of representation mechanisms, based on reports made by a random subset of agents, called representatives, in a collective choice problem with quasi-linear utilities. We do not assume the existence of a common prior probability describing the distribution of preference types. In addition, there is no benevolent planner. Decisions will be carried out by an individual who cannot be assumed impartial, a self-interested executive. These assumptions impose new constraints on Mechanism Design. A robust mechanism is defined as (...) maximizing expected welfare under a vague prior probability distribution, and over a set of mechanisms which is at the same time immune from opportunistic manipulations by the executive, and compatible with truthful revelation of preferences by representatives. Robust mechanisms are characterized and their existence is shown. Sampling Groves mechanisms are shown to be robust. (shrink)

"Teaching College Students How to Solve Real-Life Moral Dilemmas" will speak to the sometimes confounding, real-life, moral challenges that quarterlife students actually face each and every day of their lives. It will spell out an original, all-inclusive approach to thinking about, and applying, ethical problem-solving that takes into consideration people's acts, intentions, circumstances, principles, background beliefs, religio-spiritualities, consequences, virtues and vices, narratives, communities, and the relevant institutional and political structures. This approach doesn't tell students exactly what to do as much (...) as it evokes important information in order to help them think more deeply and expansively about ethical issues in order to resolve actual ethical dilemmas. There is no text like it on the market today. "Teaching College Students How to Solve Real-Life Moral Dilemmas" can be used in a variety of ethics courses. (shrink)

In an increasingly competitive higher education environment, America's public universities are seeking ways to differentiate themselves. This book suggests that a hopeful vision of what a university should be lies in a reexamination of the "land-grant mission," the common system of values originally set forth in the Morrill Land Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890, which established a new system of practically oriented higher learning across the United States. While hard to define, these values are often expressed by the one (...) hundred or so institutions that currently define themselves as "land grants" under the three pillars of research, teaching, and engagement/extension.In order to understand the unique character of a modern land-grant institution, this book focuses especially but not exclusively on the multiple components of a single organization, Oklahoma State University, founded in 1890 and currently enrolling 35,000 students across five campuses. Contributors from across the university focus on what the land-grant mission means to them in their daily endeavors, whether that be crafting the undergraduate academic experience, stimulating research, or engaging with the community through extension activities. The twenty contributions are divided into four parts, exploring in turn the core mission of the modern land-grant university, the university environment, the university's public value, and its accountability. The volume ends with an epilogue by the editor, which summarizes the values underlying the activities of land-grant institutions. In a time of uncertainty in higher education, this volume provides a helpful overview of the many different types of value public universities bring to American society. It also offers a powerful vision of a future founded on land-grant ideas that will be inspiring to university administrators and trustees, other educational policymakers, and faculty and staff, especially those fortunate enough to be part of land-grant institutions. (shrink)