scholarly journals Consequentialism's Double-Edged Sword

Utilitas ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENJAMIN SACHS
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Consequentialist Theory ◽  
Cast Doubt

Recent work on consequentialism has revealed it to be more flexible than previously thought. Consequentialists have shown how their theory can accommodate certain features with which it has long been considered incompatible, such as agent-centered constraints. This flexibility is usually thought to work in consequentialism's favor. I want to cast doubt on this assumption. I begin by putting forward the strongest statement of consequentialism's flexibility: the claim that, whatever set of intuitions the best non-consequentialist theory accommodates, we can construct a consequentialist theory that can do the same while still retaining whatever is compelling about consequentialism. I argue that if this is true then most likely the non-consequentialist theory with which we started will turn out to have that same compelling feature. So while this extreme flexibility, if indeed consequentialism has it (a question I leave to the side), makes consequentialism more appealing, it makes non-consequentialism more appealing too.

scholarly journals On the Validity of the Saccharum Complex and the Saccharinae Subtribe: A Re-assesment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dyfed Lloyd Evans ◽  
Shailesh Vinay Joshi
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Saccharum Complex ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Complex Species ◽  
Phylogenetic Studies ◽  
Complex Group ◽  
Cast Doubt

AbstractThe ‘Saccharum Complex’ represents an hypothetical collective of species that were supposedly responsible, through interbreeding, for the origins of sugarcane. Though recent phylogenetic studies have cast doubt on the veracity of this hypothesis, it has cast a long shadow over the taxonomics of the Andropogoneae and the Saccharinae subtribe. Though evidence suggests that Saccharum s.s. is comprised of only three true species, according to Kew’s GrassBase there are as many as 34 species in Saccharum s.l. Our recent work has shown that many of these species are millions of years divergent from Saccharum. As the Saccharum complex represents the species that sugarcane breeders attempt to introgress into sugarcane, and as the Saccharinae, in its current form, covers almst 12 million years of Andropogoneae evolution an update on the extents of the Taxonomic and customary groupings is much needed. Based on the latest sequence based phylogenies and the inclusion of traditional taxonomics we develop an integrated view of the Saccharinae + Saccharum complex species in the context of the major groupings within the Andropogoneae. We use this phylogeny to re-circumscribe the limits of both the Saccharinae subtribe and the Saccharum complex group of interbreeding species.

scholarly journals Complexity as L2-difficulty: Implications for syntactic change

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 183-209
Author(s):  
George Walkden ◽  
Anne Breitbarth
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Low German ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Bipartite Negation

Abstract Recent work has cast doubt on the idea that all languages are equally complex; however, the notion of syntactic complexity remains underexplored. Taking complexity to equate to difficulty of acquisition for late L2 acquirers, we propose an operationalization of syntactic complexity in terms of uninterpretable features. Trudgill’s sociolinguistic typology predicts that sociohistorical situations involving substantial late L2 acquisition should be conducive to simplification, i.e. loss of such features. We sketch a programme for investigating this prediction. In particular, we suggest that the loss of bipartite negation in the history of Low German and other languages indicates that it may be on the right track.

Syntactic and semantic data: replication results

1976 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Carden
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Data Replication ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Primary Method ◽  
Semantic Data ◽  
Recent Theoretical Work ◽  
Crucial Problem ◽  
Cast Doubt

Substantially all recent work in syntax and semantics is based on the linguist's introspective judgments of meaning and grammaticality. As is well known (cf. Labov 1972: 197ff.), other linguists often disagree with the original judgments; and such disagreements are, if anything, more common on examples of major theoretical importance. These disagreements cast doubt on introspection as a primary method for data collection, which in turn casts doubt on all the recent theoretical work using this methodology. It is therefore a crucial problem to develop an improved methodology to control or replace the use of the linguist's introspection.

scholarly journals Gross Values: Investigating the role of disgust in bioethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohima Sanyal ◽  
William B McAuliffe ◽  
Oliver Scott Curry
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Multiple Tests ◽  
Medical Technologies ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Moral Attitudes ◽  
Negative Relationships

Abstract What is the role of disgust in moral judgements? Previous research found that disgust increases the severity of judgments; but other more recent work has cast doubt on these findings. Here we investigate roles of induced and trait disgust on moral judgments of controversial biological and medical technologies – bioethics – an area rife with proto-typical disgust cues. Participants (N = 600) viewed disgusting, frightening, or neutral pictures, rated the moral acceptability of biomedical technologies, and completed questionnaire measures of trait disgust. We found a small negative effect of induced disgust (but not fear) on the acceptability of ‘existing’ biotechnology, but not ‘future’, ‘agricultural’, or ‘termination’ biotechnologies. But this effect was too small to change pre-existing opinions and would not have survived a correction for multiple tests. Although trait disgust had mostly negative relationships with moral acceptability of biotechnologies, it did not moderate the effect of observing disgusting photos on biotechnology judgments. The larger, more consistent effects for trait disgust suggest that either (a) measures of trait disgust and moral attitudes share a source of method variance or (b) incidental, visual manipulations are too weak to capture the true effect of disgust on moral judgments.

scholarly journals Gross values: Investigating the role of disgust in bioethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohima Sanyal ◽  
William H. B. McAuliffe ◽  
Oliver Scott Curry
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Multiple Tests ◽  
Medical Technologies ◽  
True Effect ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Moral Attitudes ◽  
Negative Relationships

AbstractWhat is the role of disgust in moral judgements? Previous research found that disgust increases the severity of judgments; but other more recent work has cast doubt on these findings. Here we investigate roles of induced and trait disgust on moral judgments of controversial biological and medical technologies – bioethics – an area rife with proto-typical disgust cues. Participants (N = 600) viewed disgusting, frightening, or neutral pictures, rated the moral acceptability of biotechnologies, and completed questionnaire measures of trait disgust. We found a small negative effect of induced disgust (but not fear) on the acceptability of ‘existing’ biotechnology, but not ‘future’, ‘agricultural’, or ‘termination’ biotechnologies. But this effect was too small to change pre-existing opinions and would not have survived a correction for multiple tests. Although trait disgust had mostly negative relationships with the moral acceptability of biotechnologies, it did not moderate the effect of observing disgusting photos on biotechnology judgments. The larger, more consistent effects for trait disgust suggest that either (a) measures of trait disgust and moral attitudes share a source of method variance or (b) incidental, visual manipulations are too weak to capture the true effect of disgust on moral judgments.

Gurindji nasal cluster dissimilation as trigger deletion

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIET STANTON
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Successful Analysis

Processes of unbounded spreading are often claimed to be myopic (e.g. Wilson 2003, McCarthy 2009): the ability of some feature [F] to spread from some segment z to some segment y does not depend on its ability to spread from y to x. Recent work (e.g. Walker 2010, 2014; Jardine 2016) has however cast doubt on the universality of this claim. This paper contributes to the discussion on (non-)myopia on by suggesting that a kind of non-myopic process, trigger deletion, is attested in Gurindji (Pama–Nyungan, McConvell 1988): when the spreading domain contains a certain kind of blocking segment, the spreading trigger deletes. In order to capture this pattern, as well as the extant typology of non-myopic processes, I argue that any successful analysis of unbounded spreading must allow surface candidates to be globally evaluated.

The evolution of plesiosaur and pliosaur morphotypes in the Plesiosauria (Reptilia: Sauropterygia)

Paleobiology ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Robin O'Keefe
Keyword(s):  
Principal Component Analysis ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Component Analysis ◽  
Body Proportion ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
History Of

The dichotomy between short-necked, large-headed “pliosaurs” and long-necked, small-headed “plesiosaurs” has formed the basis of plesiosaur taxonomy for over one hundred years. Recent work has cast doubt on the taxonomic validity of this dichotomy, suggesting that the pliosaur morphotype may have evolved independently in more than one clade. This paper quantifies the variation in body proportion in the clade Plesiosauria using principal component analysis and demonstrates that the traditional plesiosaur/pliosaur dichotomy is an oversimplified view of the range of morphologies present in the group. The topology of the clade is mapped into the morphospace, demonstrating that the pliosaur morphotype evolved three times from two different regions of morphospace. Both the range of body morphologies displayed by plesiosaurs and the evolutionary history of those morphologies, are more complex than previously supposed.

What sentimentalists should say about emotion

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Kurth
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Multilevel Structure

Abstract Recent work by emotion researchers indicates that emotions have a multilevel structure. Sophisticated sentimentalists should take note of this work – for it better enables them to defend a substantive role for emotion in moral cognition. Contra May's rationalist criticisms, emotions are not only able to carry morally relevant information, but can also substantially influence moral judgment and reasoning.

The Sun as a Magnetic Star

1976 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 457-463
Author(s):  
John M. Wilcox ◽  
Leif Svalgaard
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Rotation Axis ◽  
Polar Field ◽  
Magnetic Star ◽  
Rotational Axis ◽  
Field Variation ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Arbitrary Angle ◽  
Solar Magnetism ◽  
Oblique Rotator

SummaryThe sun as a magnetic star is described on the basis of recent work on solar magnetism. Observations at an arbitrary angle to the rotation axis would show a 22-year polar field variation and a 25-day equatorial sector variation. The sector variation would be similar to an oblique rotator with an angle of 90° between the magnetic and rotational axis.

Microstructural comparison of synthetic bioceramics with natural bioceramics

1991 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 38-39
Author(s):  
Shulin Wen ◽  
Jingwei Feng ◽  
A. Krajewski ◽  
A. Ravaglioli
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Human Tissues ◽  
Main Constituent ◽  
Laboratory Furnace ◽  
Chinese Adult ◽  
Human Enamel ◽  
Biological Compatibility ◽  
Synthetic Hydroxyapatite ◽  
Synthetic Work

Hydroxyapatite bioceramics has attracted many material scientists as it is the main constituent of the bone and the teeth in human body. The synthesis of the bioceramics has been performed for years. Nowadays, the synthetic work is not only focused on the hydroapatite but also on the fluorapatite and chlorapatite bioceramics since later materials have also biological compatibility with human tissues; and they may also be very promising for clinic purpose. However, in comparison of the synthetic bioceramics with natural one on microstructure, a great differences were observed according to our previous results. We have investigated these differences further in this work since they are very important to appraise the synthetic bioceramics for their clinic application.The synthetic hydroxyapatite and chlorapatite were prepared according to A. Krajewski and A. Ravaglioli and their recent work. The briquettes from different hydroxyapatite or chlorapatite powders were fired in a laboratory furnace at the temperature of 900-1300°C. The samples of human enamel selected for the comparison with synthetic bioceramics were from Chinese adult teeth.

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