Developmental Coordination Disorder and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder are unique neurodevelopmental disorders with overlaps in executive functions and motor control. The conditions co-occur in up to 50% of cases, raising questions of the pathological mechanisms of DCD versus ADHD. Few studies have examined these overlaps in adults with DCD and/or ADHD. Therefore, to provide insights about executive functions and motor control between adults with DCD, ADHD, both conditions, or typically developed controls, this study used a stop-signal task and parallel EEG measurement. We (...) assessed executive performance via go accuracy and go reaction time, as well as motor response inhibition via stop-signal reaction time. This was complemented with analysis of event-related potentials. Based on existing investigations of adults with DCD or ADHD, we expected groups would not differ in behavioral performance on stop and go trials, but differences in ERPs, particularly in components N200 and P300 would be evident. The sample included N = 50 adults with DCD, ADHD, DCD + ADHD, and control participants. We replicated that there were no between-group differences for behavioral-level executive performance and motor response inhibition. However, on a physiological level, ERP components N200 and P300 differed between groups, particularly during successful response inhibition. These ERPs reflect potential endophenotypic differences not evident in overt behavior of participants with ADHD and/or DCD. This suggests a disorder specific employment of inhibition or general executive functions in groups of adults with DCD, DCD + ADHD, ADHD, or control participants. (shrink)

After having defined the KARO logic for specifying intelligent agents in earlier work we now turn to the question how to realise agents specified in the KARO framework. To this end we look at agent programming languages that we have defined, and investigate how programs in these languages can be linked to the KARO logic.

This paper traces the development of parental rights to accept or to refuse treatment for a defective newborn infant in the United Kingdom and in the United States of America; its main purpose is to explore the common trends from which an acceptable policy may be derived. It is probable that the British law on parental decision-making in respect of infants suffering from Down's syndrome is to be found in the civil case of In Re B rather than in the (...) criminal case of R v Arthur. United States court decisions are strongly influenced by constitutional law and reflect the right to personal privacy. The position on each side of the Atlantic seems very similar but this similarity includes a sense of uncertainty as to legal responsibility. There is a case for agreed guidelines and a suggested format is offered for consideration. (shrink)

The logic RM and its basic fragments (always with implication) are considered here as entire consequence relations, rather than as sets of theorems. A new observation made here is that the disjunction of RM is definable in terms of its other positive propositional connectives, unlike that of R. The basic fragments of RM therefore fall naturally into two classes, according to whether disjunction is or is not definable. In the equivalent quasivariety semantics of these fragments, which consist of subreducts of (...) Sugihara algebras, this corresponds to a distinction between strong and weak congruence properties. The distinction is explored here. A result of Avron is used to provide a local deduction-detachment theorem for the fragments without disjunction. Together with results of Sobociski, Parks and Meyer (which concern theorems only), this leads to axiomatizations of these entire fragments — not merely their theorems. These axiomatizations then form the basis of a proof that all of the basic fragments of RM with implication are finitely axiomatized consequence relations. (shrink)

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism. James Griffin and Yael Tamir raise questions concerning Raz's notion of group rights and its application to claims of cultural and political autonomy, while Will Kymlicka and Bernhard Peters examine Raz's theory of multicultural society. Lukas Meyer investigates (...) the applicability of the notion of harm in the intergenerational context. Other papers are devoted to fundamental theoretical tenets of Raz's work. Hillel Steiner and Andrei Marmor examine Raz's account of value pluralism and incommensurability in light of what these authors consider to be goods whose equal distribution must be valued for its own sake. Robert Alexy and Timothy Endicott discuss traditional issues of jurisprudence and legal philosphy with special attention to Raz's contribution. Rüdiger Bittner, Bruno Celano, and J. E. Penner discuss and criticize aspects of Raz's theory of practical reason. Jeremy Waldron presents a critique of Raz's interpretation of authority.This volume concludes with a chapter by Joseph Raz in which he responds to arguments in the foregoing essays. (shrink)

Examines the relationship between making objects and knowing nature in Europe from the mid-15th to mid-19th centuries.

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

In this paper a formal framework is proposed in which variousinformative actions are combined, corresponding to the different ways in whichrational agents can acquire information. In order to solve the variousconflicts that could possibly occur when acquiring information fromdifferent sources, we propose a classification of the informationthat an agent possesses according to credibility. Based on this classification, we formalize what itmeans for agents to have seen or heard something, or to believesomething by default. We present a formalization of observations,communication actions, (...) and the attempted jumps to conclusions thatconstitutes default reasoning. To implement these informative actionswe use a general belief revision action which satisfies theAGM postulates; dependent on the credibility of the incominginformation this revision action acts on one or more parts ofthe classified belief sets of the agents. The abilities of agents formalizeboth the limited capacities of agents to acquire information, and the preference of one kind of information acquisition to another. A very important feature of our approach is that it shows how to integratevarious aspects of agency, in particular the (informational) attitudesof dealing with information from observation, communication and defaultreasoning into one coherent framework, both model-theoretically andsyntactically. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

A 'Kripke-style' semantics is given for combinatory logic using frames with a ternary accessibility relation, much as in the Tourley-Meyer semantics for relevance logic. We prove by algebraic means a completeness theorem for combinatory logic, by proving a representation theorem for 'combinatory posets.' A philosophical interpretation is given of the models, showing that an element of a combinatory poset can be understood simultaneously as a set of states and as a set of actions on states. This double interpretation allows (...) for one such element to be applied to another . Application turns out to be modeled the same way as 'fusion' in relevance logic.We also introduce 'dual combinators' that apply from the right. We then explore relationships to some well-known substructural logics, showing that each can be embedded into the structurally free. non-associative Lambek calculus, with the embedding taking a theorem ω to a statement of the form Γ ⊨ ω, where Γ is some fusion of the combinators needed to justify the structural assumptions of the given substructural logic. This builds on earlier ideas from Belnap and Meyer about a Gentzen system wherein structural rules are replaced with rules for introducing combinators. We develop such a system and prove a cut theorem. (shrink)

Certain species of fish have recently become important model systems in comparative genomics and in developmental biology, in certain instances because of their small genome sizes (e.g., in the pufferfish) and, in other cases, because of the opportunity they provide to combine an easily accessible and experimentally manipulable embryology with the power of genetic approaches (e.g., in the zebrafish). The resulting accumulation of genomic information indicates that, surprisingly, many gene families of fish consist of more members than in mammals. Most (...) modern fish, including the zebrafish and medakka, are diploid organisms; however, the greater number of genes in fish was possibly caused by additional ancient genome duplications which happened in the lineage leading to modern ray-finned fishes but not along the lineage leading to tetrapods. Since these two lineages shared their last common ancestor (in the Devonian about 360 million years ago) individual duplicated members of gene families were later lost in fish. Interestingly, comparative data indicate that, in some cases, genes in mammals even serve somewhat different functions than their homologues in fish, highlighting that the degree of evolutionary relatedness of genes is not always a reliable predictor of their evolutionary conservation and their similarity of function. Since fish are phenotypically probably not more complex than mammals, it is possible that evolution took alternative paths to the “economics of genomics” through alternative solutions to gene regulation. It is suggested that the more complex genomic architecture of fish permitted them to adapt and speciate quickly in response to changing selective regimes. BioEssays 20:511–515, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This paper argues that patients' duties are derivable from the idea which typically grounds the idea of patients' rights: patient autonomy. The autonomous patient, joined in partnership with the health care professional, has self-regarding obligations and obligations to others, including health care professionals. Patients' duties include, but are not limited to: a duty to be honest about why the patient seeks care; a duty to collect information on available treatments and likely side-effects; a duty for a patient who has an (...) infectious condition to act on that information which can best prevent further transmission. Keywords: autonomy, duty, paternalism, patient, rights, self-care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article discusses relations among the multiple levels of analysis present in macro-sociological explanation—i.e., relations of individual, structural, and institutional processes. It also criticizes the doctrinal insistence upon single-level individualistic explanation found in some prominent contemporary sociological theory. For illustrative material the article returns to intellectual uses of Weber's "Protestant Ethic thesis," showing how an artificial version has been employed as a kind of proof text for the alleged scientific necessity of individualist explanation. Our alternative exposition renders the discussion of (...) Protestantism and capitalism in an explicitly multilevel way, distinguishing possible individual-level, social-organizational, and institutional linkages. The causal processes involved are distinct ones, with the more structural and institutional forms neither captured nor attainable by individual-level thinking. We argue more generally that "methodological individualisms" confuse issues of explanation with issues about microfoundations. This persistent intellectual conflation may be rooted in the broader folk models of liberal individualism. (shrink)

The report of the President's Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity, addresses the central ethical, political, and policy issue in human embryonic stem cell research: the moral status of extracorporeal human embryos. The Council members were in sharp disagreement on this issue and essentially failed to adequately engage and respectfully acknowledge each others' deepest moral concerns, despite their stated commitment to do so. This essay provides a detailed critique of the two extreme views on the Council (i.e., embryos (...) have full moral status or they have none at all) and then gives theoretical grounding for our judgment about the intermediate moral status of embryos. It also supplies an account of how to address profound moral disagreements in the public arena, especially by way of constructing a middle ground that deliberately pays sincere respect to the views of those with whom it has deep disagreements. (shrink)