Expert testimony, law and epistemic authority

© Society for Applied Philosophy, 2016 This article discusses the concept of epistemic authority in the context of English law relating to expert testimony. It distinguishes between two conceptions of epistemic authority (and epistemic deference), one strong and one weak, and argues that only the weak conception is appropriate in a legal context, or in any other setting where reliance on experts can be publicly justified. It critically examines Linda Zagzebski's defence of a stronger conception of epistemic authority and questions whether epistemic authority is as closely analogous to practical authority as she maintains. Zagzebski elucidates a kind of deference that courts generally, and rightly, try to avoid. Her concept of ‘first person reasons’, however, does capture an important aspect of the deliberations of conscientious legal actors

TODAY - March 17, 2010

Inside this issue: -- 17th annual foundation gala raises $675,000 for heart care at Loma Linda University Children\u27s Hospital-- Loma Linda University\u27s unexpected Palestinian connection-- Occupational therapy students to work at East Campus-- OT department sends students into community outreach programs-- School of Nursing student wins a car for regularly donating blood since age 17-- Innovative mural in library lobby depicts Jesus in multi-ethnic context-- Laura Willes closes her accounts after 39 years-- Loma Linda Chamber of Commerce honors prominent LLU physicians-- LLU School of Nursing establishes faculty and staff exercise program-- School of Pharmacy students practice whole-person care-- School of Religion hosts an evening with spoken word artist Asia-- Stroke research is alive and well at Loma Linda Universityhttps://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/today/1080/thumbnail.jp

A Linda-based Platform for the Parallel Execution of Out-place Model Transformations

Context: The performance and scalability of model transformations is gaining interest as industry is progressively adopting model-driven techniques and multicore computers are becoming commonplace. However, existing model transformation engines are mostly based on sequential and in-memory execution strategies, and thus their capabilities to transform large models in parallel and distributed environments are limited. Objective: This paper presents a solution that provides concurrency and distribution to model transformations. Method: Inspired by the concepts and principles of the Linda coordination language, and the use of data parallelism to achieve parallelization, a novel Javabased execution platform is introduced. It offers a set of core features for the parallel execution of out-place transformations that can be used as a target for high-level transformation language compilers. Results: Significant gains in performance and scalability of this platform are reported with regard to existing model transformation solutions. These results are demonstrated by running a model transformation test suite, and by its comparison against several state-of-the-art model transformation engines. Conclusion: Our Linda-based approach to the concurrent execution of model transformations can serve as a platform for their scalable and efficient implementation in parallel and distributed environments.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Moral exemplars in education: a liberal account

This paper takes issue with the exemplarist strategy of fostering virtue development with the specific goal of improving its applicability in the context of education. I argue that, for what matters educationally, we have good reasons to endorse a liberal account of moral exemplarity. Specifically, I challenge two key assumptions of Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory (2017), namely that moral exemplars are exceptionally virtuous agents and that imitating their behavior is the main strategy for acquiring the virtues. I will introduce and discuss the notions of enkratic exemplars and injustice illuminators and show that we have good reasons to consider them moral exemplars although they fail to satisfy (either of) the key assumptions

The Treatment of Rape in Women's Performance Art and Sarah Kane's 'Blasted'.

This was a Master's thesis, produced as part of the MA in Writing for Performance course at the University of Huddersfield, 2007-8. the dissertation was submitted and passed in April 2008, and was produced under Dr Linda Taylor. It situates Sarah Kane's work in a context and heritage of feminist performance art from the 1950s onwards. It discusses how performance artists such as Ana Mendieta, Yoko Ono, Suzanne Lacy, Judy Chicago, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Valerie Export, the Womanhouse project, Tracey Emin, Karen Finley and Jenny Holzer worked with the theme of rape, before analysing how Sarah Kane treated this in her 1995 play 'Blasted'

LIME: A Coordination Middleware Supporting Mobility of Agents and Hosts

LIME (Linda in a Mobile Environment) is a middleware supporting the development of applications that exhibit physical mobility of hosts, logical mobility of agents, or both. LIME adopts a coordination perspective inspired by work on the Linda model. The context for computation, represented in Linda by a globally accessible, persistent tuple space, is refined in LIME to transient sharing of identically-named tuple spaces carried by individual mobile units. Tuple spaces are also extended with a notion of location and programs are given the ability to react to specified states. The resulting model provides a minimalist set of abstractions that promise to facilitate rapid and dependable development of mobile applications. In this paper, we illustrate the model underlying LIME, provide a formal semantic characterization for the operations it makes available to the application developer, present its current design and implementation, and discuss lessons learned in developing applications that involve physical mobility

LIME: A Middleware for Physical and Logical Mobility

LIME is a middleware supporting the development of applications that exhibit physical mobility of hosts, logical mobility of agents, or both. LIME adopts a coordination perspective inspired by work on the Linda model. The context for computation, represented in Linda by a globally accessible, persistent tuple space, is represented in LIME by transient sharing of the tuple spaces carried by each individual mobile unit. Linda tuple spaces are also extended with a notion of location and with the ability to react to a given state. The hypothesis underlying our work is that the resulting model provides a minimalist set of abstractions that enable rapid and dependable development of mobile applications. In this paper, we illustrate the model underlying LIME, present its current design and implementation, report about its initial evaluation in applications that involve physical mobility, and discuss lessons learned and future enhancements that will drive its evolution

An Examination of the Factors That Facilitate and Hinder the Care Planning Process for Very Young Children in Scotland

The study reported here by Linda Davidson and Karen McKenzie examined the care planning process for very young children in Scotland using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Data were gathered from existing case files on 18 looked after children aged 0–2 years. A qualitative approach was used to explore the views of six randomly selected social workers about current practice in relation to care planning. The social workers identified a number of factors which both facilitated and hindered the care planning process and in a number of cases the same factor was identified as doing both. The most commonly identified factor was waiting for an expert assessment. This could cause serious delays but once completed, was often the catalyst for change. The participants identified a further number of factors which they felt could improve the process, including additional training. Their responses are discussed in the context of recent legislative changes in Scotland

An Examination of the Factors That Facilitate and Hinder the Care Planning Process for Very Young Children in Scotland

The study reported here by Linda Davidson and Karen McKenzie examined the care planning process for very young children in Scotland using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Data were gathered from existing case files on 18 looked after children aged 0–2 years. A qualitative approach was used to explore the views of six randomly selected social workers about current practice in relation to care planning. The social workers identified a number of factors which both facilitated and hindered the care planning process and in a number of cases the same factor was identified as doing both. The most commonly identified factor was waiting for an expert assessment. This could cause serious delays but once completed, was often the catalyst for change. The participants identified a further number of factors which they felt could improve the process, including additional training. Their responses are discussed in the context of recent legislative changes in Scotland

The Challenge of Comparative Civil Procedure

This Essay reviews Civil Litigation in Comparative Context (West 2007), by Oscar G. Chase, Helen Hershkoff, Linda Silberman, Yasuhei Taniguchi, Vincenzo Varano, and Adrian Zuckerman. It also identifies some areas of exceptionalist American civil procedure that recently have been converging towards global norms and argues that those convergences, if they continue, could render comparative studies particularly meaningful