Background: Overnutrition, undernutrition, and micronutrient deficiency present a major global public health challenge due to food insecurity. Micronutrient deficiencies are prevalent among children and result in impaired intellectual growth. Policy guidelines at the national level are essential for the success of micronutrient supplementation programs for children during school feeding. Aim: This study aims to analyze how various national policies guiding the school meal programs—such as those related to school feeding, nutrition, health, food safety, agriculture, and the private sector—associate with the (...) implementation of in-school micronutrient supplementation among countries with school meals programs. Methods: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework, combining the reasoning strengths of Mindsponge Theory and inference advantages of Bayesian analysis, was employed on a dataset of 126 government representatives who manage large-scale school meal programs in 126 different countries. Results: Findings showed that school feeding policies were positively associated with in-school micronutrient supplementation, while nutrition policy had a negative association with these practices. Both associations were only moderately reliable. Policies on health, food safety, agriculture, and the private sector had ambiguous relationships with micronutrient supplementation among countries implementing school meal programs. Conclusions: Findings highlight the evidence of school feeding policy’s positive association with micronutrient supplementation in school meal programs, indicating effective policy guidance on these practices. There is a need to re-assess the implemented nutrition policy due to its negative association with these practices. Enhancing and strengthening the national policies on health, food safety, agriculture, and the private sector may increase their potencies in supporting in-school micronutrient supplementation among countries implementing school meal programs. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 or Gemini, which are now incorporated in a wide range of products and services in everyday life. Importantly, it considers some of their hidden human costs. First, is the question of who is left behind by the further infusion of LLMs in society. Second, is the issue of social inequalities between lingua franca and those which are not. Third, LLMs will help disseminate scientific concepts, but their (...) meanings' dissemination is at risk. Fourth, is the issue of information security and how nations and individuals might adapt. Fifth, is the issue of the environmental cost of LLMs for future generations. At the dawn of the conversational AI era, it would be wise to ponder what inequalities and empowerments will be co-created with LLMs. (shrink)

Research integrity is a well-established term used to talk and write about ethical issues in research. Part of its success might be its broad applicability. In this paper, we suggest that this might also be its Achilles heel, since it has the potential to conceal important value conflicts. We identify three broad domains upon which research integrity is applied in the literature: (1) the researcher (or research group), (2) research, and (3) research-related institutions and systems. Integrity in relation to researchers (...) concerns character, although it remains to specify precisely what character traits are the desirable ones in this context and what values researchers should endorse. Integrity in relation to research concerns correct and sufficient description of the research process, data, results, and overall ‘research record’. Hence, it concerns the quality of research. However, whether or not this notion of research integrity covers all ethical aspects of research depends on whether one endorses a wider or a narrower interpretation of the ‘research process’. Integrity in relation to research-related institutions and systems leaves open whether they should be understood as agents in their own right or merely as means to research integrity. Besides the potential lack of clarity that our analysis reveals, we point to how this variety in uses might lead to concealment of value conflicts and propose an open discussion of central values. (shrink)

A self-fulfilling prophecy in neuroprognostication occurs when a patient in coma is predicted to have a poor outcome, and life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn on the basis of that prediction, thus directly bringing about a poor outcome for that patient. In contrast to the predominant emphasis in the bioethics literature, we look beyond the moral issues raised by the possibility that an erroneous prediction might lead to the death of a patient who otherwise would have lived. Instead, we focus on the (...) problematic epistemic consequences of neuroprognostic SFPs in settings where research and practice intersect. When this sort of SFP occurs, the problem is that physicians and researchers are never in a position to notice whether their original prognosis was correct or incorrect, since the patient dies anyway. Thus, SFPs keep us from discerning false positives from true positives, inhibiting proper assessment of novel prognostic tests. This epistemic problem of SFPs thus impedes learning, but ethical obligations of patient care make it difficult to avoid SFPs. We then show how the impediment to catching false positive indicators of poor outcome distorts research on novel techniques for neuroprognostication, allowing biases to persist in prognostic tests. We finally highlight a particular risk that a precautionary bias towards early withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment may be amplified. We conclude with guidelines about how researchers can mitigate the epistemic problems of SFPs, to achieve more responsible innovation of neuroprognostication for patients in coma. (shrink)

Most people know precious little about the risks and benefits of participating in a clinical trial--a medical research study involving some innovative treatment for a medical problem. Yet millions of people each year participate anyway. Patients at Risk explains the reality: that our current system intentionally hides much of the information people need to make the right choice about whether to participate. Witness the following scenarios: -Hundreds of patients with colon cancer undergo a new form of keyhole surgery at leading (...) cancer centersnever -Tens of thousands of women at high risk of developing breast cancer are asked to participate in a major research study. They are told about the option of having both breasts surgically removed but not told about the option of taking a standard osteoporosis pill that might cut the risk of getting breast cancer by one-half or more. Patients at Risk written by two nationally prominent experts, is the first book to reveal the secrets that many in the research establishment have fought long and hard to keep from patients. It shows why options not commonly knownincluding getting a new treatment outside of a research studycan often be the best choice. It explains how patients can make good decisions even if there is only limited information about a treatments effect. And it does this through the eye-opening stories of what is happening daily to thousands of people. Day after day, we are learning how little we know about what really works. Headlines regularly announce that a previously unquestioned treatmenthormone replacement therapy, drugs such as Vioxx or Celebrexmay now be much riskier than we thought. The latest book in a surge of recent books criticizing the medical establishment (but the first to look at clinical trials specifically), Patients at Risk helps to empower patients to survive in a world of medical uncertainty, and makes positive recommendations for systemic reform. (shrink)

Aesthetic preservation is the idea of sparing natural areas from development because of their aesthetic value. In this article I discuss a problem for aesthetic preservation that I call the ‘hidden gems problem’: in certain cases, the natural area under consideration is so remote and/or fragile that few people can actually experience it. In these cases, it becomes unclear how nature's aesthetic value can justify its preservation when development promises practical human benefits. After rejecting some potential responses to the (...) hidden gems problem, I offer a different solution. I argue that we have an aesthetic reason to preserve nature's hidden gems because they are required to produce ‘true judges’ of aesthetic value, who are capable of improving the general quality of taste for landscape. I develop this argument using the example of recent preservationist efforts to save the isolated landscape of Sable Island, Nova Scotia. (shrink)

I BEGIN WITH A PUZZLE of sorts. Time is one; space is two—at least two. Time comes always already unified, one time. Thus we say “What time is it now?” and not “Which time is it now?” We do not ask, “What space is it?” Yet we might ask: “Which space are we in?”. Any supposed symmetry of time and space is skewed from the start. If time is self-consolidating—constantly gathering itself together in coherent units such as years or hours (...) or semesters or seasons— space is self-proliferating. Take, for example, the dimensionality of space. One dimension in space is represented by a point or a line, whose radically reduced format mocks the extensiveness of cosmic space. Two dimensions, as in a plane figure, also falls far short of our sense that space spreads out indefinitely far beyond the perceiving subject. Only with three dimensions do we begin to approach an adequation between the structure and the sense of space. For then the subject is surrounded by something sufficiently roomy in which to live and move. Indeed, as Aristotle, Kant, and Merleau-Ponty all remark, the three-dimensionality of space directly reflects our bodily state, that is, the fact that as upright beings three perpendicular planes implicitly meet and intersect in us. Even here, proliferation abounds: our bilateral symmetry means that each dimension is doubled: one vertical plane bifurcates into “up” and “down,” the other vertical plane into “front” and “back,” and the horizontal plane into “right” and “left.” Thus subject-centered space is triple, only to be redoubled. Further, if we think of spatiality not as body-based but as locatory—as determined by landmarks and other locales in the environment—the proliferation is more striking still. There are the four cardinal directions, which themselves split easily into the thirty two points of a compass. Nor need we be so arithmetically well-rounded. Even apart from fancy mathematical models of n –dimensional space, and recent technological instantiations of virtual space, there is no end to the number or ways in which we can be oriented in space—in accordance with what Deleuze and Guattari call “the variability, the polyvocity of directions” by which we can move in any given spatial scene. Beyond direction, however, is place. Heidegger remarks that “space has been split up into places.” The fact is that we continually find ourselves immersed in a multiplex spatial network whose nodal points are supplied by particular places. If space is infinitely large, place is indefinitely many. (shrink)

Vidkun Quisling, who after World War II was executed as a traitor to his country/Norway, offers an unusual opportunity to reach the deepest layers of a Nazi mind-set, for he was also a closet philosopher. Was Quisling a genius, as some revisionists will have it? What did the original Quisling think? How did he think? A Nazi Interior deals with Quisling's own all-embracing philosophy, which he called « Universism. The author identifies Quisling's sources from early Christianity to the twentieth century (...) and analyses his very mode of thought. Barth is the first philosopher to deal with this matter. This book is constructed around twenty-eight basic themes central to Quisling's thought. Many of the conclusions come as a surprise. The author offers clear surveys of the elements of Quisling's mind-set and shows the effects of their interaction. (shrink)

Brussen, Kerri Anne On 29 November 2012, one of the Standing Committees of the Commonwealth House of Representatives released a report on the prevention, diagnosis and management of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders in Australia. This article explores the findings and recommendations of this report. The Commonwealth parliamentary committee noted that FASD is a serious health issue in Australia. It therefore called for a National Plan of Action, education for health professionals, and public awareness campaigns to encourage women not to drink (...) when pregnant or when planning a pregnancy. Other recommendations included better management of FASD within education, disability services, and the criminal justice system. (shrink)

Size-from-shadow arguments requires tinkering in many a case as the geometry of the situation is often not determinate. I then make a remark about the availability of indications about size in perceptual content.

'This man of our destiny': Moses Mendelssohn, Nathan the Wise, and the emergence of a liberal Jewish ethos -- Diasporic visions: the emergence of liberal Judaism -- Abraham Geiger -- Hermann Cohen's prophetic Judaism -- Ernst Cassirer and the ethical legacy of Hermann Cohen -- Ernst Cassirer: the enlightenment as counter-history -- Hannah Arendt: the task of the historian -- Hannah Arendt: a question of character.

The paper strives to clarify the essential structures of productive imagination using the resources of Husserlian phenomenology. According to my working hypothesis, productive imagination is a relative term, whose meaning derives from its opposition to reproductive imagination. One thus first needs to clarify what makes imagination into a reproductive mode of consciousness, and in this regard, Husserl’s phenomenology proves exceptionally fruitful. My analysis unfolds in four steps. First, I fix the sense in which phantasy is an essentially reproductive mode of (...) consciousness. Secondly, I argue that phantasy cannot be conceived as an ingredient of perceptual consciousness. Thirdly, I show that both memory and phantasy generate patterns of sense, which can subsequently be transcribed into the field of positional experience. Finally, I conclude with a suggestion that the plurality of cultural worlds can be conceived as diverse configurations of sense, which are the constitutive accomplishments of productive imagination. (shrink)

For over two decades, the philosophical literature on divine hiddenness has been concerned with just one problem about divine hiddenness that arises out of one very particular concept of God. The problem - I'll call it the Schellenberg problem - has J. L. Schellenberg as both its inventor and its most prominent defender. The concept of God in question construes God as a perfect heavenly parent, and seems to be the product of perfect being theology deployed within the constraints imposed (...) by modern ideals of parenthood. In this paper, I argue that the Schellenberg problem is an attack on a straw deity. More specifically, I argue that Schellenberg's argument against the existence of God depends on certain theological claims that are not commitments of traditional Christian theology and that would, furthermore, be repudiated by many of the most important and influential theologians in the Christian tradition. I close with some very brief remarks about the implications of this conclusion for what I take to be the real import of the Schellenberg problem. (shrink)

Is there something that lies beneath the surface of our ordinary ways of speaking? Philosophy sometimes encourages the all-too-human thought that reality lies just outside our ordinary grasp, hidden beneath the surface of our experience and language. The present discussion concentrates initially on a few connected paragraphs of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein leads the reader to the view that meaning is there in the surface of the expression. Yet how adequate is Wittgenstein’s treatment of the sounds and ink-marks, the (...) materiality of the sign? With some reference to Emerson, Stanley Cavell, and Jacques Derrida, my discussion explores how far a more adequate account of the sign can coincide with the claim that nothing is hidden. It exposes phony obsessions with transparency, which in a culture of accountability have had a distorting effect on education and the wider social field. It endorses confidence in the reality of ordinary words. (shrink)

The incompleteness of formal systems for arithmetic has been a recognized fact of mathematics. The term “incompleteness” suggests that the formal system in question fails to offer a deduction which it ought to. This chapter focuses on the status of a formal system, Peano Arithmetic, and explores a viewpoint on which Peano Arithmetic occupies an intrinsic, conceptually well-defined region of arithmetical truth. The idea is that it consists of those truths which can be perceived directly from the purely arithmetical content (...) of a categorical conceptual analysis of the notion of natural number. The chapter explores its conceptual stability in light of the apparently destabilizing effect, through extensibility, of the phenomenon of incompleteness. It also offers heuristic and conceptual support for the viewpoint that Peano Arithmetic is the strongest natural first-order system for arithmetic, and that there is a sense in which it is complete with respect to purely arithmetical truth. (shrink)

The visible human body is composed of _flesh and bones_ for the most part, yet an invisible orchestra of sensations and perceptions creates a virtual or _phantom body_ that behaves like a shadow following every movement and gesture of its anatomical complement. This shadow becomes only “visible” to the individual when bodily integrity is affected, anatomically or cognitively. _Phantom limbs_ have been known for a long time. They refer to the felt presence of a missing hand, leg, or other body (...) part as if it was still in place. Reciprocally and of a supposedly cognitive origin, phantom extremities are reported by some patients that feel the virtual presence of a supernumerary limb – signifying anatomical “overcompleteness.” However, other patients feel as one of their limbs does not belong to their body – signifying “foreignness”. Various shades of the so-called _body integrity identity disorder_ exemplify the assumed complex signification processes within the human body. The Peircean theory of signs and the Uexküllian concept of endosemiosis are combined to approach the still poorly understood phantom phenomena in light of representation and embodiment. (shrink)

Motivated by a paper by Barut and Meystre, Bohm's EPR gedanken experiment performed with classical and spin-s particles is considered, and the applicability of Bell's theorem to these cases is discussed. The classical model presented by Barut and Meystre is modified to become a stochastic local hidden-variable model reproducing the results of an EPR experiment of the type performed by Aspect et al.

We construct a local \-epistemic hidden-variable model of Bell correlations by a retrocausal adaptation of the originally superdeterministic model given by Brans. In our model, for a pair of particles the joint quantum state \\rangle \) as determined by preparation is epistemic. The model also assigns to the pair of particles a factorisable joint quantum state \\rangle \) which is different from the prepared quantum state \\rangle \) and has an ontic status. The ontic state of a single particle (...) consists of two parts. First, a single particle ontic quantum state \|i\rangle \), where \\) is a 3-space wavepacket and \ is a spin eigenstate of the future measurement setting. Second, a particle position in 3-space \\), which evolves via a de Broglie–Bohm type guidance equation with the 3-space wavepacket \\) acting as a local pilot wave. The joint ontic quantum state \\rangle \) fixes the measurement outcomes deterministically whereas the prepared quantum state \\rangle \) determines the distribution of the \\rangle \)’s over an ensemble. Both \\rangle \) and \\rangle \) evolve via the Schrodinger equation. Our model exactly reproduces the Bell correlations for any pair of measurement settings. We also consider ‘non-equilibrium’ extensions of the model with an arbitrary distribution of hidden variables. We show that, in non-equilibrium, the model generally violates no-signalling constraints while remaining local with respect to both ontology and interaction between particles. We argue that our model shares some structural similarities with the modal class of interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Looks at similarities between Eastern philosophy and Western physics, the connection between cell communicatioin and the immune system, and linguistic properties of the genetic code.

In this article, we present findings from a qualitative study examining how young women experience being long‐term bedridden with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), during childhood and adolescence. The aim is to explore how young women who fell ill with ME/CFS during childhood and adolescence look back on their lived experience of being long‐term bedridden from the vantage point of being fully or partially recovered. Informed by a phenomenological theoretical perspective, the researchers applied a narrative (...) methodological approach involving the analysis of interviews with 13 women, aged 16–29 years at the time of the interview. Attention was particularly paid to how participants structured their narratives and to the events (telling moments) they identified as important. Four major storylines were developed: Ambivalent responses to the presence of others; A body on the edge of life; An eternity in the dark; and Recasting painful memories of being bedridden and alone. Based on our findings, we argue that the experience of being long‐term bedridden with ME/CFS during childhood and adolescence can be understood and communicated as a plot in which individuals find themselves pushed to the extreme limit of suffering and loneliness. (shrink)

BOOK REVIEWS 473 Chapter 4 concerns Peirce's "pragmatic metaphysics" and is the culmination of the development of Rosenthal's pluralism thesis. Together with the observation that the categories are categories of process, and through a close examination of the category of Firstness, she emphasizes the importance of sense-qualities that are inseparable from negative and positive possibilities Cmay-bes" and "would-bes") and their relevance to the controversies over whether Peirce is a realist, an idealist, or a phenomenalist. She says that Peirce did not (...) see that the language he had available from the tradition was not adequate; thus, he proposed that objective idealism is the best answer to the question of whether the universe is mind or matter, even though he in fact repudiated objective idealism. In considering Peirce's cosmology, Rosenthal draws on Peirce's discussions of the law of mind, considering the ineradicable place of spontaneity in the emergence of new intelligibility or the evolution of laws. She concludes with a reiteration of the point that although knowledge involves convergence, convergences are always within a common world that inquirers partially but continually remake. Rosenthal's book is far too rich to do it justice in this short space. It challenges the reader to see why Peirce's thought is particularly relevant to contemporary debates, not only over how to interpret Peirce but, more importantly, about how his philosophy may help.. (shrink)