What is Autonomy?

A system is autonomous if it uses its own information to modify itself and its environment to enhance its survival, responding to both environmental and internal stimuli to modify its basic functions to increase its viability. Autonomy is the foundation of functionality, intentionality and meaning. Autonomous systems accommodate the unexpected through self-organizing processes, together with some constraints that maintain autonomy. Early versions of autonomy, such as autopoiesis and closure to efficient cause, made autonomous systems dynamically closed to information. This contrasts with recent work on open systems and information dynamics. On our account, autonomy is a matter of degree depending on the relative organization of the system and system environment interactions. A choice between third person openness and first person closure is not required

Density versus quality in health care provision: Using household data to make budgetary choices in Ethiopia

Usage of health facilities in Ethiopia is among the lowest in the world; raising usage rates is probably critical for improving health outcomes. The government has diagnosed the principal problem as the lack of primary health facilities and is devoting a large share of the health budget to building more facilities. But household data suggest that usage of health facilities is sensitive not just to the distance to the nearest facility but also to the quality of health care provided. If the quality of weak facilities were raised to the quality currently provided by the majority of facilities in Ethiopia, usage would rise significantly. National data suggest that, given the current density and quality of service provision, additional expenditure on improving the quality of service delivery will be more cost effective than increasing the density of service provision. The budget allocation rule presented in the article can help local policymakers make decisions about how to allocate funds between improving the quality of care and decreasing the distance to the nearest health care facility.

Density versus Quality in Health Care Provision: Using Household Data to Make Budgetary Choices in Ethiopia

Usage of health facilities in Ethiopia is among the lowest in the world; raising usage rates is probably critical for improving health outcomes. The government has diagnosed the principal problem as the lack of primary health facilities and is devoting a large share of the health budget to building more facilities. But household data suggest that usage of health facilities is sensitive not just to the distance to the nearest facility but also to the quality of health care provided. If the quality of weak facilities were raised to the quality currently provided by the majority of facilities in Ethiopia, usage would rise significantly. National data suggest that, given the current density and quality of service provision, additional expenditure on improving the quality of service delivery will be more cost effective than increasing the density of service provision. The budget allocation rule presented in the article can help local policymakers make decisions about how to allocate funds between improving the quality of care and decreasing the distance to the nearest health care facility.

Models of Christian Education

In early 21st century Australia, proponents of Christian faith are in an Acts (Acts 17:6,22 NIV) situation: we contend amidst the smorgasbord of multiple faiths and designer spiritualities, where any sense that Christian faith is privileged by culture, history or exclusive truth claims, is rapidly eroding. In this multi-faith, pluralistic and the increasingly secular environment, we are ironically surrounded, like Paul in ancient Athens, with many Gods, mostly of a secular nature. The Christian church needs to discover effective ways to communicate the unchanging truth of the Gospel into a society which is undergoing rapid change in its belief systems, methods of communication and modes of learning, and amidst a cacophony of messages and sounds which trumpet different world views

The Role of the Prinicipal: A Multifaceted Role

Principalship in the twenty-first century is complex and diverse. A principal is responsible across the domains of educational leadership, curriculum development, teaching and learning theory and classroom practice, spirituality / values education, student welfare and discipline, including reporting to agencies, school finances and budget, property management, risk mitigation, litigation management, staff welfare and industrial relations, marketing, selection and dismissal of staff and students, strategic planning and vision, outdoor education, and depending, on the governance of the school, reporting to statutory authorities, School Council, Church or denominational hierarchy

Progress In Scientific Revolutions: The Problem Of Semantic Incommensurability

If two successive theories are semantically incommensurable, we have no way to make a complete comparison of their contents. If so, we have no way to verify that the highly confirmed content of the successor is greater than that of its predecessor, and we cannot verify that scientific knowledge has accumulated across the theory change. Thus, incommensurability creates a problem for the justification of the standard cumulative conception of scientific progress.;To resolve this problem, I distinguish irresolvable strong in commensurability from weak incommensurability, which is resolvable. I argue that Kuhn\u27s arguments, insofar as they are sound, support only the latter. Cumulative progress is therefore not only possible, but in principle justifiable. Nonetheless, I support most of Kuhn\u27s claims about the incommensurability of successive paradigms.;My argument for weak incommensurability depends on an interpretation of scientific theories which makes the way a theory is understood an integral part of the theory. Both syntactic and semantic approaches to theories fail to deal with the incommensurability problem because they ignore this pragmatic aspect. I offer a context-dependent semantics based on contemporary pragmatics which can both represent the incommensurability problem and show how it can be resolved