Imperfect identity

Questions of identity over time are often hard to answer. A long tradition has it that such questions are somehow soft: they have no unique, determinate answer, and disagreements about them are merely verbal. I argue that this claim is not the truism it is taken to be. Depending on how it is understood, it turns out either to be false or to presuppose a highly contentious metaphysical claim

Kant, Morality, and Hell

In this paper I argue that, although Kant argues that morality is independent of God (and hence, agrees with the Euthyphro), and rejects Divine Command Theory (or Theological Voluntarism), he believes that all moral duties are also the commands of God, who is a moral being, and who is morally required to punish those who transgress the moral law: "God’s justice is the precise allocation of punishments and rewards in accordance with men’s good or bad behavior." However, since we lack a strict proof of God's existence, we can still fulfill our duties from the motive of duty. if we did know that God exists, then this would undermine our pure moral motivation to do our duty, since we would have an even stronger interest in pleasing God through our good conduct. The effect of undermining our pure moral motivation would be to make us less eligible for divine reward, since God rewards us for doing our duty from the motive of duty

A genome-wide association study demonstrates significant genetic variation for fracture risk in Thoroughbred racehorses

Background: Thoroughbred racehorses are subject to non-traumatic distal limb bone fractures that occur during racing and exercise. Susceptibility to fracture may be due to underlying disturbances in bone metabolism which have a genetic cause. Fracture risk has been shown to be heritable in several species but this study is the first genetic analysis of fracture risk in the horse. Results: Fracture cases (n = 269) were horses that sustained catastrophic distal limb fractures while racing on UK racecourses, necessitating euthanasia. Control horses (n = 253) were over 4 years of age, were racing during the same time period as the cases, and had no history of fracture at the time the study was carried out. The horses sampled were bred for both flat and National Hunt (NH) jump racing. 43,417 SNPs were employed to perform a genome-wide association analysis and to estimate the proportion of genetic variance attributable to the SNPs on each chromosome using restricted maximum likelihood (REML). Significant genetic variation associated with fracture risk was found on chromosomes 9, 18, 22 and 31. Three SNPs on chromosome 18 (62.05 Mb – 62.15 Mb) and one SNP on chromosome 1 (14.17 Mb) reached genome-wide significance (p <0.05) in a genome-wide association study (GWAS). Two of the SNPs on ECA 18 were located in a haplotype block containing the gene zinc finger protein 804A (ZNF804A). One haplotype within this block has a protective effect (controls at 1.95 times less risk of fracture than cases, p = 1 × 10-4), while a second haplotype increases fracture risk (cases at 3.39 times higher risk of fracture than controls, p = 0.042). Conclusions: Fracture risk in the Thoroughbred horse is a complex condition with an underlying genetic basis. Multiple genomic regions contribute to susceptibility to fracture risk. This suggests there is the potential to develop SNP-based estimators for genetic risk of fracture in the Thoroughbred racehorse, using methods pioneered in livestock genetics such as genomic selection. This information would be useful to racehorse breeders and owners, enabling them to reduce the risk of injury in their horses

An international survey of health literacy education within schools of pharmacy

Background: Health literacy (HL) influences patients’ health status, use of the healthcare system and medication-relatedbehaviours. However, the concept is relatively new to pharmacy and its incorporation in academic curricula has notbeen examined.Aims: To explore HL training in pharmacy schools internationally, and academics’ opinions in regards to how it shouldbe taught and assessed.Methods: An anonymous, online survey was administered to academics who teach within pharmacy degree coursesfrom countries where English is the main language.Results: Responses were received from 21 pharmacy schools in seven countries; 20 stated that HL was taught withintheir pharmacy degree, in four as a stand-alone topic. Small-group tutorials were thought to be the most beneficial formof teaching health literacy, best assessed using oral and objective structured clinical examinations.Conclusion: The majority of pharmacy schools taught health literacy and had similar opinions regarding best practiceteaching and assessment

The Role of Maternal Gesture Use in Speech Use by Children with Fragile X Syndrome

Purpose--The purpose of this study was to investigate how maternal gesture relates to speech production by children with fragile X syndrome (FXS). Method--Participants were 27 young children with FXS (23 boys, 4 girls) and their mothers. Videotaped home observations were conducted between the ages of 25 and 37 months (toddler period), and again between the ages of 60 and 71 months (child period). The videos were later coded for types of maternal utterances and maternal gestures that preceded child speech productions. Children were also assessed with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning at both ages Results--Maternal gesture use in the toddler period was positively related to expressive language scores at both age periods, and was related to receptive language scores in the child period. Maternal proximal pointing, in comparison to other gestures, evoked more speech responses from children during the mother-child interactions particularly when combined with wh-questions. Conclusion-- This study adds to the growing body of research on the importance of contextual variables, such as maternal gestures, in child language development. Parental gesture use may be an easily added ingredient to parent-focused early language intervention programs

The Ontology of Intentional Agency in Light of Neurobiological Determinism: Philosophy Meets Folk Psychology

The moot point of the Western philosophical rhetoric about free will consists in examining whether the claim of authorship to intentional, deliberative actions fits into or is undermined by a one-way causal framework of determinism. Philosophers who think that reconciliation between the two is possible are known as metaphysical compatibilists. However, there are philosophers populating the other end of the spectrum, known as the metaphysical libertarians, who maintain that claim to intentional agency cannot be sustained unless it is assumed that indeterministic causal processes pervade the action-implementation apparatus employed by the agent. The metaphysical libertarians differ among themselves on the question of whether the indeterministic causal relation exists between the series of intentional states and processes, both conscious and unconscious, and the action, making claim for what has come to be known as the event-causal view, or between the agent and the action, arguing that a sort of agent causation is at work. In this paper, I have tried to propose that certain features of both event-causal and agent-causal libertarian views need to be combined in order to provide a more defendable compatibilist account accommodating deliberative actions with deterministic causation. The ‘‘agent-executed-eventcausal libertarianism’’, the account of agency I have tried to develop here, integrates certain plausible features of the two competing accounts of libertarianism turning them into a consistent whole. I hope to show in the process that the integration of these two variants of libertarianism does not challenge what some accounts of metaphysical compatibilism propose—that there exists a broader deterministic relation between the web of mental and extra-mental components constituting the agent’s dispositional system—the agent’s beliefs, desires, short-term and long-term goals based on them, the acquired social, cultural and religious beliefs, the general and immediate and situational environment in which the agent is placed, etc. on the one hand and the decisions she makes over her lifetime on the basis of these factors. While in the ‘‘Introduction’’ the philosophically assumed anomaly between deterministic causation and the intentional act of deciding has been briefly surveyed, the second section is devoted to the task of bridging the gap between compatibilism and libertarianism. The next section of the paper turns to an analysis of folk-psychological concepts and intuitions about the effects of neurochemical processes and prior mental events on the freedom of making choices. How philosophical insights can be beneficially informed by taking into consideration folk-psychological intuitions has also been discussed, thus setting up the background for such analysis. It has been suggested in the end that support for the proposed theory of intentional agency can be found in the folk-psychological intuitions, when they are taken in the right perspective

Are the Psychophysical Laws Fine-Tuned?

Neil Sinhababu (2017) has recently argued against the fine-tuning argument for God. They claim that the question of the universe’s fine-tuning ought not be ‘why is the universe so hospitable to life?’ but rather ‘why is the universe so hospitable to morally valuable minds?’ and that, moreover, the universe isn’t so hospitable. For it is metaphysically possible that psychophysical laws be substantially more permissive than they in fact are, allowing for the realisation of morally valuable consciousness by exceptionally simple physical states and systems, rather than the complex states of brains. I reply that Sinhababu’s argument rests upon unsupported claims and that we have reason to doubt that an omnibenevolent God would make the psychophysical laws more permissive than they in fact are

The Impact of Dose and Dose Frequency on Word Learning by Kindergarten Children With Developmental Language Disorder During Interactive Book Reading

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Purpose The goal was to determine whether interactive book reading outcomes for children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were affected by manipulation of dose (i.e., the number of exposures to the target word during a book reading session) and dose frequency (i.e., the number of repeated book reading sessions) and whether pretreatment factors predicted treatment response variation. Method Thirty-four kindergarten children with DLD (aged 5;0–6;2 [years;months]) were taught 1 set of words using the Dose 6 and Dose Frequency 6 format from a prior study (Storkel, Voelmle, et al., 2017) and taught a different set of words using an alternative format, either Dose 4 × Dose Frequency 9 or Dose 9 × Dose Frequency 4, determined through random assignment. Word learning was tracked for each treatment via a definition task prior to, during, and after treatment. Results Results showed that children with DLD learned a significant number of words during treatment regardless of the dose and dose frequency format but that significant forgetting of newly learned words occurred in all formats once treatment was withdrawn. Individual differences in word learning were related to Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Core Language and Understanding Spoken Paragraphs scores. Conclusion When administered at an adequate intensity, variation in the dose and dose frequency of interactive book reading does not appear to influence word learning by children with DLD. Although interactive book reading continues to show promise as an effective word learning intervention for children with DLD, further development is needed to enhance the effectiveness of this treatment approach

Aesthetic experience and spiritual well-being: locating the role of theological commitments

I discuss three accounts of the spiritual significance of aesthetic experience. Two of these perspectives I have taken from the recent literature in theological aesthetics, and the third I have constructed, building on Thomas Aquinas’s conception of the goods of the infused moral virtues. This broadly Thomistic approach occupies, I argue, a middle ground between the other two, on account of its distinctive understanding of the role of theological context in defining spiritually significant goods. These perspectives are not mutually exclusive, but they do present rather different conceptions of the ways in which aesthetic goods can contribute to spiritual well-being, and provide a focus for religious practice