There is a large gap between attitude and action when it comes to consumer purchases of ethical food. Amongst the various aspects of this gap, this paper focuses on the difficulty in knowing enough about the various dimensions of food production, distribution and consumption to make an ethical food purchasing decision. There is neither one universal definition of ethical food. We suggest that it is possible to support consumers in operationalizing their own ethics of food with the use of appropriate (...) information and communication technology. We consider eggs as an example because locally produced options are available to many people on every continent. We consider the dimensions upon which food ethics may be constructed, then discuss the information required to assess it and the tools that can support it. We then present an overview of opportunities for design of a new software tool. Finally, we offer some points for discussion and future work. (shrink)

Springer. We find in contemporary culture starkly contrasting estimates of the value of faith. On the one hand, for many people, faith is a virtue or positive human value, something associated with understanding, hope, and love, something to be inculcated, maintained, and cherished. On the other hand, for many people, faith is a vice, something associated with dogmatism, arrogance, and close-mindedness, something to be avoided at all costs. The papers included in this special (double) issue on approaches to faith explore (...) questions about faith in a variety of settings through a diverse range of examples, both secular and religious. The attempt to deepen our understanding of faith in the context of ordinary human relationships (e.g., between parents and children, friends, generals and their armies, business partners, citizens and the state), a commitment to ideals, or the pursuit of significant goals is clearly of general philosophical interest, as is the examination of potential connections between faith and topics such as trust or reliance. (shrink)

Abstract: Rice is one of the most important staple crops in the world and serves as a staple food for more than half of the global population. It is a critical source of nutrition, providing carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals to millions of people, particularly in Asia and Africa. This paper presents a study on using deep learning for the classification of different types of rice. The study focuses on five specific types of rice: Arborio, Basmati, Ipsala, Jasmine, (...) and Karacadag. A dataset of 75,000 images was collected and annotated, consisting of 15,000 images for each of the five types of rice. The deep learning system uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to classify images of rice grains based on their physical characteristics. The performance of the deep learning system was evaluated using metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. The results show that the proposed deep learning system was able to achieve high accuracy in classifying the different types of rice, outperforming traditional image processing techniques. This study provides valuable insights into the potential of deep learning for classifying different types of rice and can be useful for applications such as quality control in rice processing industries and research in crop science. The large size of the dataset, 15,000 images for each type of rice, helped the deep learning system to learn the features of each type of rice, and increase the performance of the classifier. The attained overall accuracy of the proposed model (99.96%), Precision (99.96%), Recall (99.96%) and F1-score (99.96%). Thus, the proposed model proved that it leaned the five categories of rice and it can generalize these categories and it is effective. (shrink)

Background: Food-borne outbreaks have been associated with sourcing unsafe food. Therefore, the first preventative strategy should be to source safe food. Even if the sourced food is safe, measures need to be put in place to ensure that it remains safe during the transfer, storage, preparation and serving activities that follow. An understanding of the ship food supply and transfer chain will help to illustrate the points at which the food can become contaminated en route to the point of consumption. (...) Objectives: The study was conducted in selected sea port in the core Niger Delta to assessed the microbiological quality of food served at different ship galley to crew and passengers and compared it to standard. Methods: Samples of food were taken from three (Port Harcourt Area one (PHSP), Warri (WSP) and Koko (KSP)) seaports within the South-South zone for laboratory analysis to uncover food spoilage microorganisms capable of causing disease outbreak among ship which could result to Transborder diseases. Eleven samples of different ready to eat food were collected from the locations, which included cooked rice; fried fish, irish potato porridge, vegetable soup, griki, pepper soup, fried irish potato, salad and bread were collected randomly. The samples were prepared and analyzed using standard procedures. Mean viable counts of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria were determined, ranging from (13×103cfu/g to 78×104 cfu/g) for ready to eat food. Results: Based on the finding KSP I, KSP J and KSP K food samples had the highest bacterial contamination on food while WSP F, WSP G and WSP H food samples had the least with the following isolates Salmonella spp, Nocardia spp, Shigella spp, Listeria spp, Bacillus cereus, Leuconostoc spp, Acinetobacter spp, Acetobacter spp, campylobacter spp, Clostridium spp and Vibrio spp which revealed that the isolates were susceptible to any of these antibiotics Septrin, Chloramphenicol, Gentamycin, Tarvid, Streptomycin, Reflacin, Augumetin, Ceporex, Nalidixic acid, Ampicillin, Ciproflox, Penicillin and Erythromycin. Conclusion: Thus, ships operators and regulatory body are expected to take all practicable measures to ensure that they do not receive unsafe or unsuitable food and maintain adequate food temperature at all time. (shrink)

If there truly is a proof that shows that no universal halt decider exists on the basis that certain tuples: (H, Wm, W) are undecidable, then this very same proof (implemented as a Turing machine) could be used by H to reject some of its inputs. When-so-ever the hypothetical halt decider cannot derive a formal proof from its input strings and initial state to final states corresponding the mathematical logic functions of Halts(Wm, W) or Loops(Wm, W), halting undecidability has been (...) decided. (shrink)

For decades, student ratings of university faculty have been used by administrators in high stakes faculty employment decisions such as tenure, promotion, contract renewal and reappointment, and merit pay. However, virtually no attention has been paid to the ethical questions of using ratings in employment decisions. Instead, the ratings literature is generally limited to psychometric issues such as whether a given student ratings instrument exhibits the statistical properties of reliability and validity. There is no consensus understanding of teaching effectiveness, the (...) very attribute that students are alleged to “evaluate.” What students are actually doing when they complete a ratings form—whether measuring, evaluating, reporting, judging, opining, etc.—remains unsettled in the ratings literature. If ratings are surveys of student satisfaction, they have no logical or ethical connection with teaching expertise. I argue that the administrative use of student ratings in faculty employment decisions violates basic moral principles including nonmaleficence, beneficence, professional autonomy and clinical independence, and multiple aspects of justice including due care, truthfulness, and equitable treatment. These ethical violations rule against any administrative use of student ratings in faculty employment decisions, including the “use with caution in conjunction with other evaluative methods” deployment of student ratings. My conclusion is that such use should be immediately and universally terminated. Formative use of student questionnaires as part of ordinary instructional communication and feedback between instructor and students is a separate issue and outside of the scope of this paper. (shrink)

The reactive attitude of ‘resentment’ has been gaining increasing attention within contemporary philosophical literature. However, little attention has been given to the conceptions of resentment in Asian philosophy. In recent years, some philosophers have argued that there is a positive account of resentment in Confucian philosophy. This paper brings a recent Mencian account of resentment in conversation with contemporary philosophical discussions. The conversations revolve around aspects of resentment such as exculpatory conditions, payback, transition, and moral cultivation. The conversation not only (...) adds clarity to the Mencian account, it also demonstrates potential contributions this account has to contemporary discussions on resentment. (shrink)

As global business operations expand, managers need more knowledge of foreign cultures, in particular, information on the ethics of doing business across borders. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to share the Islamic perspective on business ethics, little known in the west, which may stimulate further thinking and debate on the relationships between ethics and business, and to provide some knowledge of Islamic philosophy in order to help managers do business in Muslim cultures. The case of Egypt illustrates some (...) divergence between Islamic philosophy and practice in economic life. The paper concludes with managerial implications and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

Hume begins his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by providing a discussion on what an ideal dialogue ought to look like. Many considerations that Hume raises coincide with similar concerns in contemporary social epistemology. This paper examines three aspects of Hume’s social epistemology: epistemic peerhood, inquiry norms and the possibility of rational persuasion. Interestingly, however, I will argue that the conversation between Philo, Cleanthes and Demea falls short of meeting Hume’s articulated standard of what an ideal dialogue ought to look like. (...) From this analysis, I defend the less popular view that Demea’s decision to leave the conversation (in Part XI) was entirely reasonable and suggest an explanation for why Hume decided to make Cleanthes the ‘hero’ of the Dialogues. (shrink)

Permissivism is the view that for some body of evidence E there may be more than one rational doxastic attitude that inquirers may take towards some proposition. This paper examines the aims and processes involved in doing the history of philosophy. It argues that the complexities involved in the process of doing the history of philosophy motivates hermeneutical permissivism.

In this paper, I provide an account of subjective epistemic obligations. In instances of peer disagreement, one possesses at least two types of obligations: objective epistemic obligations and subjective epistemic obligations. While objective epistemic obligations, such as conciliationism and remaining steadfast, have been much discussed in the literature, subjective epistemic obligations have received little attention. I develop an account of subjective epistemic obligations in the context of worldview disagreements. In recent literature, the notion of worldview disagreement has been receiving increasing (...) attention, and I discuss how understanding worldview disagreements through different classes of beliefs might clarify our understanding of subjective epistemic obligations. I first distinguish between three classes of beliefs, by virtue of their justificatory functions within worldviews: fundamental, crucial and incidental. I then discuss four kinds of worldview disagreements based on this account. Finally, I argue that each disagreement results in different subjective epistemic obligations for each disputant. I conclude by discussing some implications this analysis has for issues such as defeat, peerhood, and epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Since its relatively recent publication, there has been little sustained analysis of the Fragment on Evil. In the secondary literature, references to the Fragment tend to be scarce, and only parts of the Fragment are cited at any time. Yet, it seems a valuable endeavour to understand the Fragment in its entirety—to understand its aims, central theses, core arguments, how each section relates to another, and so on. That is the aim of this paper. More specifically, this paper aims at (...) providing an interpretation that emphasizes the argumentative features and overall structure of the Fragment.The Fragment on Evil was acquired by the National Library of Scotland in 1993.2 It was found in a... (shrink)

This country report provides an update on the status of Pre-University Philosophy education in Singapore.

PARC is an "appended numeral" system of natural deduction that I learned as an undergraduate and have taught for many years. Despite its considerable pedagogical strengths, PARC appears to have never been published. The system features explicit "tracking" of premises and assumptions throughout a derivation, the collapsing of indirect proofs into conditional proofs, and a very simple set of quantificational rules without the long list of exceptions that bedevil students learning existential instantiation and universal generalization. The system can be used (...) with any Copi-style set of inference rules, so it is quite adaptable to many mainstream symbolic logic textbooks. Consequently, PARC may be especially attractive to logic teachers who find Jaskowski/Gentzen-style introduction/elimination rules to be far less "natural" than Copi-style rules. The PARC system is also keyboard-friendly in comparison to the widely adopted Jaskowski-style graphical subproof system of natural deduction, viz., Fitch diagrams and Copi "bent arrow" diagrams. (shrink)

In the Fragment on Evil, Hume announces that he “shall not employ any rhetoric in a philosophical argument, where reason alone ought to be hearkened to.” To employ the rhetorical strategy, in the context of the Fragment, just is to “enumerate all the evils, incident to human life, and display them, with eloquence, in their proper colours.” However, in Part 11 of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume employs precisely this rhetorical strategy. I discuss three interpretations that might account for (...) Hume’s decision to employ the strategy in the Dialogues but not the Fragment. The heart of this discussion concerns the relationship between reason and rhetoric. The Dialogues can be understood as part of the education of Pamphilus. Consequently, the three interpretations align with three ways of understanding the roles that reason and rhetoric play in Hume’s views on pedagogy and education (or more specifically, Philo’s attitude towards the education of Pamphilus). (shrink)

Dormandy argues that stubborn counterevidence provides a reason for Evidentialists to form negative beliefs about God. Focusing on ‘horrendous evils’ as a kind of stubborn counterevidence, I discuss two possible interpretations of Dormandy’s account (a stronger and a weaker view). Against the stronger view, I consider the case of a Committed Theistic Evidentialist, that is, an evidentialist who possesses a defeater belief against horrendous evils. I argue that it would be improbable that she would form negative beliefs about God on (...) the basis of horrendous evils alone. I consider the response of a Committed Theistic Evidentialist towards horrendous evils, arguing that for her, ‘honesty’, which results in a psychological struggle, is an excellent-making property of her faith. (shrink)

While the existence of horrendous evils has generally been taken to be evidence against the existence of God, some philosophers have suggested that it may be evidence for the existence of God. This paper introduces three main kinds of theistic arguments from horrendous evils: the argument from objectively horrifying evils, the pragmatic argument from evil, and an argument from reasonable responses. For each of these arguments, I will first reconstruct a standard version of the argument, before suggesting ways the argument (...) may be challenged, or further developed. (shrink)

Abstract:Within various contexts, such as politics and parenting, Confucianism has been criticized on the basis that it endorses 'unquestioning obedience' to authority. In recent years, several philosophers have argued against this view by appealing to textual evidence from Classical Confucian philosophers. This article examines Wang Yangming's views on this subject, arguing that Wang teaches that criticism of those who stand in a socially superior role relation is not only permitted, but encouraged. From this, the implications that Wang's analysis has for (...) contemporary discussions of disagreement between epistemic superiors and inferiors and epistemic peerhood are considered. It will be argued that Wang's position is much closer to the total evidence view than the preemptive view. Relatedly, it is suggested that Wang provides a novel proposal about how to recognize or disregard epistemic 'superiors', especially in the context of moral knowledge. (shrink)

Moral anti-theodicists have posed a consequentialist argument against the theodical enterprise: that theodicies lead to harmful consequences in reality and that this should be sufficient reason to motivate abandoning the practise of theodicising altogether. In this paper, I examine variants of this argument and discuss several prominent responses from theodicists, including the separation thesis. I argue that while these responses are effective in resisting the global conclusion by the anti-theodicist, it still leaves the theodical enterprise vulnerable to a weaker version (...) of the consequentialist critique. In response, I develop an account of ‘theodicies-of-embrace-protest’ which is able to preserve the meaningful strides made in traditional theodicies while taking seriously the criticisms of the moral anti-theodicists. I suggest that sceptical theism fits this bill. (shrink)

Recent work in social psychology suggests that people harbor “implicit race biases,” biases which can be unconscious or uncontrollable. Because awareness and control have traditionally been deemed necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility, implicit biases present a unique challenge: do we pardon discrimination based on implicit biases because of its unintentional nature, or do we punish discrimination regardless of how it comes about? The present experiments investigated the impact such theories have upon moral judgments about racial discrimination. The results (...) show that different theories differ in their impact on moral judgments: when implicit biases are defined as unconscious, people hold the biased agent less morally responsible than when these biases are defined as automatic (i.e., difficult to control), or when no theory of implicit bias is provided. (shrink)

The study primarily aimed at determining and utilizing extent of the Social Science instructors on instructional materials, and framing a capacity development framework to secure the quality of instructional delivery in the changing times. It employed the descriptive design undertaking the purposive sampling which resulted in obtaining 26 respondents from the total population, thus descriptive statistics had been used in analyzing and interpreting the collected data. The results reflected how social sciences are being taught by the 26 purposively sampled respondents (...) and showed that the underlying instructional materials or the non-technological ones remained as top materials that are often and occasionally being utilized, collectively implying that regardless that these are categorized as traditional and commonly used, are still being perceived as efficient and effective, such that optimizing and redesigning them to adapt to the changing landscape of instruction is elucidated in this paper through a capacity development program paradigm, in which the implementation is urgently recommended. (shrink)

The paper discusses five conceptions of knowledge present in texts traditionally associated with the thought of such thinkers as Kongzi, Mozi, Mengzi, Xunzi, Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Hanfeizi. The first three maps onto conceptions of knowledge familiar to contemporary ears: skill knowledge (knowing-how), propositional knowledge (knowing-that) and objectual knowledge (knowing by acquaintance); while the next two map onto less commonly discussed conceptions of knowledge: motivational knowledge (knowing-to) and applied knowledge (knowing-how-to). The discussion aims to complement existing projects in the literature that (...) look at related issues more explicitly from the standpoint of the ‘native’ concepts. The paper concludes with some comments on the early Chinese philosophical concerns with knowledge and its relation to broader conceptions of ‘philosophical’ projects. (shrink)

Following Xiao Gongchuan and F. Mote, this paper discussed the reasons why there is no myth of cosmogony in China. It was written before the tomb excavations that contain some cosmogony essays.

The paper argues that there is a unique from of free will in the Gita based on the universal presence of the ultimate reality.

The veil of ignorance argument was used by John C. Harsanyi to defend Utilitarianism and by John Rawls to defend the absolute priority of the worst off. In a recent paper, Lara Buchak revives the veil of ignorance argument, and uses it to defend an intermediate position between Harsanyi's and Rawls' that she calls Relative Prioritarianism. None of these authors explore the implications of allowing that agent's behind the veil are averse to ambiguity. Allowing for aversion to ambiguity---which is both (...) the most commonly observed and a seemingly reasonable attitude to ambiguity---however supports a version of Egalitarianism, whose logical form is quite different from the theories defended by the aforementioned authors. Moreover, it turns out that the veil of ignorance argument neither supports standard Utilitarianism nor Prioritarianism unless we assume that rational people are insensitive to ambiguity. (shrink)

According to the orthodox treatment of risk preferences in decision theory, they are to be explained in terms of the agent's desires about concrete outcomes. The orthodoxy has been criticised both for conflating two types of attitudes and for committing agents to attitudes that do not seem rationally required. To avoid these problems, it has been suggested that an agent's attitudes to risk should be captured by a risk function that is independent of her utility and probability functions. The main (...) problem with that approach is that it suggests that attitudes to risk are wholly distinct from people's (non-instrumental) desires. To overcome this problem, we develop a framework where an agent's utility function is defined over chance propositions (i.e., propositions describing objective probability distributions) as well as ordinary (non-chance) ones, and argue that one should explain different risk attitudes in terms of different forms of the utility function over such propositions. (shrink)

This book rightly argues for greater inclusion of the natural and social sciences in the humanities, especially philosophy. The author draws from psychology, especially folk psychology, to show that a basic trait of universal human cognition contains a form of weak dualism. It is a dualism based on the embodied awareness that one’s own thoughts are different from external objects, which generates the belief in a mind/body dualism. The book offers a great deal of evidence that the ancient Chinese embraced (...) a weak mind/body dualism. The author criticizes most philosophers who have proposed a mind/body holism. Because the author admits that correlative thinking is also a function of universal human cognition, I propose that what he refers to as weak mind/body dualism is actually a form of mind/body nondualism. The book cites many examples of how cross-culturally people depict the disembodied spirit in a spiritual-bodily or ghostly-apparition form. The author of this review argues that dualism is another form of the Orientalism that the book wants to avoid, and one way to avoid Orientalism-dualism would be to embrace the correlative, nondual mind/body relationship. (shrink)

Jordan agreed to extensive liberalization undertakings under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (“GATS”) that would open some sectors that were previously closed or restricted to foreign suppliers and investors. It undertook horizontal commitments in cross-border movement of individuals and commercial presence covering all types of services.

Both Philip and Andrew are philosophy students whose interests converge around the philosophy of technology broadly understood. Philip's interest is specifically aimed toward the ethics of Transhumanism and depictions of Transhumanism in works of fiction. On the other hand, Andrew finds himself more focused on religious behavior in the technological world. While the two perspectives might not seem that close, there is certain to be an overlap in Andrew and Philip's shared understanding of how technological phenomena play a crucial role (...) concerning religion and society. (shrink)

Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we draw on conceptualizations of TIG outside the psychology of religion to provide a conceptual map for how TIG might be related to theorised predictors and outcomes. Finally, we provide a research (...) agenda for future empirical work in this area, as well as practical applications for counsellors and religious leaders. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the knowledge management processes and their role in achieving competitive advantage at Al-Quds Open University. The study was based on the descriptive analytical method, and the study population consists of academic and administrative staff in each of the branches of Al-Quds Open University in (Tulkarm, Nablus and Jenin). The researchers selected a sample of the study population by the intentional non-probability method, the size of (70) employees. A questionnaire was prepared and supervised by a number (...) of specialists in order to obtain the results of the study. The study concluded that there is a positive direct relationship, that is, the higher the degree of application of knowledge management processes, the greater the degree of competitive advantage. Knowledge Technology came first with a score of 80.02% on all items. Competitive advantage came second with 81.74%. In the third place came "knowledge generation" where the total score on all paragraphs in this area (78.24%). In the fourth place, "knowledge transfer" (77.21%). "Developing and storing knowledge" came in fifth place (77.13%). "Acquisition of knowledge" came in sixth place (76.45%). Knowledge Organization ranked seventh (74.26%). The study recommended that the university should enable the employees to benefit from the experiences and expertise available to help generate knowledge. The University encourages the creation of knowledge through the system of incentives and open the way for creators to apply their creations and spread and invest in excellence and creativity. The university should design work performance levels based on the integration of knowledge and organize it according to policies that support freedom of research. The need for Palestinian universities to adopt a knowledge management approach. The need to adopt a system of incentives that rewards cognitive efforts, and give workers enough freedom to enable them to apply their knowledge. (shrink)

In response to its current crisis, scholars call for the revitalisation of democracy through democratic innovations. While they make ample use of life metaphors describing democracy as a living organism, no comprehensive understanding of ‘life’ has been established within democratic theory. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement articulates the urgency of refocusing on life and its meaning through radical democratic practice. This article employs a grounded theory approach, enriched with participatory methods, to develop a radical democratic concept of life in (...) conversation with BLM. It conceptualises life as the existence of a perspective that constantly transforms through its fundamental interconnectedness. Building on this concept, the article outlines four principles of a living democracy that go beyond the revitalisation discourse. A living democracy (1) safeguards the existence of all humans and nonhumans, (2) nurtures a diversity of perspectives, (3) fosters social and planetary connectivity, and (4) enables self- and collective transformation. (shrink)

Background: A bean is the seed of one of several genera of the flowering plant family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes throughout the world. Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants. Broad beans, also called fava beans, in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. (...) In a form improved from naturally occurring types, Beans were an important source of protein throughout old and new world history, and still are today. Objectives: The main goal of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment. Methods: In this paper, the design of the proposed Expert System was produced to help farmers and those interested in agriculture in diagnosing many of the Bean diseases such as Fusarium wilt, Charcoal rot or ashy stem blight, Bacterial leaf spot and blight, Mung bean yellow mosaic virus, Cercospora leaf spot. The proposed expert system presents an overview of Bean diseases are given, the cause of diseases outlined and the treatment of disease whenever possible is given out. CLIPS Expert System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed Bean diseases diagnosis expert system was evaluated by Agricultural experts and some friends interested in agriculture and they were satisfied with its performance. Conclusions: The proposed expert system is very useful for Farmers and those interested in agriculture. (shrink)

Women in the labor force are at a disadvantage not only because of continuing discrimination in hiring and promotion, but because of factors extrinsic to the labor market hence adjusting conditions within the labor market will not completely eliminate women's disadvantage. Because, unlike most men, most women do not have spouses to take on the major responsibility of running their homes and caring for their children, the costs of working outside the home, particularly in a professional or managerial capacity, are (...) greater for women than they are for men. Thus, even if ongoing discrimination in the labor market were eliminated, through affirmative action policies or other such remedies, women would still be as a disadvantage relative to men.For women, the costs and benefits of behaving like men are different than they are for their male counterparts. To the extent that the costs and benefits of various policies of action are not the same for women as they are for men, men and women are not equal, therefore, arguably, it is not fair to treat them equally. (shrink)

Similarly to other accounts of disease, Christopher Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory (BST) is generally presented and considered as conceptual analysis, that is, as making claims about the meaning of currently used concepts. But conceptual analysis has been convincingly critiqued as relying on problematic assumptions about the existence, meaning, and use of concepts. Because of these problems, accounts of disease and health should be evaluated not as claims about current meaning, I argue, but instead as proposals about how to define and use (...) these terms in the future, a methodology suggested by Quine and Carnap. I begin this article by describing problems with conceptual analysis and advantages of “philosophical explication,” my favored approach. I then describe two attacks on the BST that also question the entire project of defining “disease.” Finally, I defend the BST as a philosophical explication by showing how it could define useful terms for medical science and ethics. (shrink)

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, represents H.L.A. Hart's landmark contribution to the philosophy of criminal responsibility and punishment. Unavailable for ten years, this new edition reproduces the original text, adding a new critical introduction by John Gardner, a leading contemporary criminal law theorist.

ABSTRACT Offsetting is a very ineffective way to do good. Offsetting your lifetime emissions may increase aggregated life expectancy by at most seven years, while giving the amount it costs to offset your lifetime emissions to a malaria charity saves in expectation the life of at least one child. Is there any moral reason to offset rather than giving to some charity that does good so much more effectively? There might be such a reason if your offsetting compensated or somehow (...) benefitted the victims of your emission, since that could mean that you would satisfy the duty not to harm others by emitting and offsetting. But that is typically not true. If your emission harms some person and your offsetting benefits some person, then these are most likely different people. Hence, I conclude, we have a stronger reason to give to effective charities than we have to offset our emissions. (shrink)

The desirability of what actually occurs is often influenced by what could have been. Preferences based on such value dependencies between actual and counterfactual outcomes generate a class of problems for orthodox decision theory, the best-known perhaps being the so-called Allais Paradox. In this paper we solve these problems by extending Richard Jeffrey's decision theory to counterfactual prospects, using a multidimensional possible-world semantics for conditionals, and showing that preferences that are sensitive to counterfactual considerations can still be desirability maximising. We (...) end the paper by investigating the conditions necessary and sufficient for a desirability function to be an expected utility. It turns out that the additional conditions imply highly implausible epistemic principles. (shrink)

(Report assembled for the Workshop of the AMIA Working Group on Formal Biomedical Knowledge Representation in connection with AMIA Symposium, Washington DC, 2005.) Best practices in ontology building for biomedicine have been frequently discussed in recent years. However there is a range of seemingly disparate views represented by experts in the field. These views not only reflect the different uses to which ontologies are put, but also the experiences and disciplinary background of these experts themselves. We asked six questions related (...) to biomedical ontologies to what we believe is a representative sample of ontologists in the biomedical field and came to a number conclusions which we believe can help provide an insight into the practical problems which ontology builders face today. (shrink)

Signing Ceremony of MOU on Professional Legal Diploma, Government of Dubai 2020.

Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I identify (...) four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that indeterminacy and indeterminism make most ordinary counterfactuals false. I argue that a plausible way to avoid such counterfactual skepticism is to postulate the existence of primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims. Moreover, I defend a new theory of ‘might’ counterfactuals, and develop assertability and knowledge criteria to suit such unobservable ‘counterfacts’.

This study aims to identify the strengthening of the global entrepreneurial orientation practice for employees at the University of Palestine, where the researchers used the descriptive and analytical approach, through a questionnaire distributed to a sample of employees at the University of Palestine, where the size of the study population is (234) employees and the sample size is (117) Employees, of whom (90) employees responded. The study found a set of results, the most important of which are: that there is (...) a good degree of global entrepreneurial orientation for employees, as the percentage reached (70.25%), and the results also showed that there are no statistically significant differences in the smart university transformation and their impact on the global entrepreneurial trend according to personal and organizational data. The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: The need to work to enhance the global entrepreneurial orientation of the university's employees. (shrink)

Virtue-based approaches have attracted significant recent interest in argumentation, including a recent anthology of Chinese translations of important articles in the field. In this article, adapted from the introduction to that anthology, we discuss the origins of virtue argumentation and some of the challenges it has faced, as well as attempt to provide an overview of recent work on the virtues and vices relevant to argumentation. In the final section we discuss the articles that were selected and motivate their selection.

This paper advances a theory of disease as domino dysfunction. It is often argued that diseases are biological dysfunctions. However, a theory of disease as biological dysfunction is complicated by some plausible cases of dysfunction, which seem clearly non-pathological. I argue that pathological conditions are not just dysfunctions but domino dysfunctions, and that domino dysfunctions can be distinguished on principled biological grounds from non-pathological dysfunctions. I then show how this theory can make sense of the problem cases; they are not (...) diseases because they are not domino dysfunctions. (shrink)

This book is a translation of W.V. Quine's Kant Lectures, given as a series at Stanford University in 1980. It provide a short and useful summary of Quine's philosophy. There are four lectures altogether: I. Prolegomena: Mind and its Place in Nature; II. Endolegomena: From Ostension to Quantification; III. Endolegomena loipa: The forked animal; and IV. Epilegomena: What's It all About? The Kant Lectures have been published to date only in Italian and German translation. The present book is filled out (...) with the translator's critical Introduction, "The esoteric Quine?" a bibliography based on Quine's sources, and an Index for the volume. (shrink)

Bartha and DesRoches (Synthese 199(3–4):8701–8740, 2021) and Steel and Bartha (Risk Analysis 43(2):260–268, 2023) argue that we should understand the precautionary principle as the injunction to maximise lexical utilities. They show that the lexical utility model has important pragmatic advantages. Moreover, the model has the theoretical advantage of satisfying all axioms of expected utility theory except continuity. In this paper I raise a trilemma for any attempt at modelling the precautionary principle with lexical utilities: it permits choice cycles or leads (...) to paralysis or implies that the smallest value difference that is possible in a context has extreme axiological implications. (shrink)

This essay investigates the demands on adult children to provide care for their elderly/ill parents from a socio-moral perspective. In order to narrow the examination, the question pursued here is agent-relative: What social and moral complexities are involved for the adult child when their parent(s) need care? First, this article examines our society’s expectation that adult children are morally obligated to provide care for their parents. Second, the essay articulates how transgressing against this normative expectation can inure significant moral criticism. (...) The final sections present these tensions within the context of disability. (shrink)

This book is a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Utrecht. It was prepared under the supervision of Prof. Dr. H. Schultink. I would like to express my gratitude to him for his criticisms of earlier versions which led to many improvements, in particular with respect to the exposition of the argument. To my co-referent Dirk van Dalen, reader in the Department of Philo sophy (,Centrale Interfaculteit') of the University of Utrecht, I am greatly indebted (...) for his valuable and fruitful suggestions about problems relevant to both linguistics and logic. Several ideas developed in this study owe their present concrete form to our many discussions. This thesis originates in syntactic research into the Aspects carried out in 1967 under the supervision of Albert Kraak, professor at the University of Nijmegen, who ever since gave much attention to my work in progress. I am very grateful to him for his careful and stimulating criticism as well as for the continuous support he gave me during these years. The present study closely relates to the work of my colleague Wim Klooster with regard to both its theoretical framework and its subject matter. Our joint work on the measurement of duration in Dutch is an integral part of the argument. I have greatly profited from the numerous discussions we have had. (shrink)