Philosophy at Cambridge

Newsletter of the Faculty of Philosophy. Articles: Rae Langton, 'From the Chair'; Arif Ahmed, 'Non-Categorical Thought'; Richard Holton, 'Illness and the Social Self: Richard Holton at the 2018 Uehiro Lectures'; Julia Borcherding and Matthew Leisinger, 'Vitalism in Early Modern Philosophy'; Tim Button, ' Philosophy and Model Theory'; Rae Langton, 'Post-truth as Post-democracy: Rae Langton at the Alumni Festival, September 2018'; Azita Chellappoo, 'Philosophy and Minorities (MAP)'; Maxime Lepoutre, 'Sharon Krause on the Emancipation of Nature'

Conceptual responsibility

Conceptual engineering is concerned with the improvement of our concepts. The motivating thought behind many such projects is that some of our concepts are defective. But, if to use a defective concept is to do something wrong, and if to do something wrong one must be in control of what one is doing, there might be no defective concepts, since we typically are not in control of our concept use. To address this problem, this paper turns from appraising the concepts we use to appraising the people who use them. First, I outline several ways in which the use of a concept can violate moral standards. Second, I discuss three accounts of moral responsibility, which I call voluntarism, rationalism, and psychologism, arguing that each allows us to find at least some cases where we are responsible for using defective concepts. Third, I answer an objection that because most of our concepts are acquired through processes for which we are not responsible, our use of defective concepts is a matter of bad luck, and not something for which we are responsible after all. Finally, I conclude by discussing some of the ways we may hold people accountable for using defective concepts

Importance of patient bed pathways and length of stay differences in predicting COVID-19 hospital bed occupancy in England.

Background: Predicting bed occupancy for hospitalised patients with COVID-19 requires understanding of length of stay (LoS) in particular bed types. LoS can vary depending on the patient’s “bed pathway” - the sequence of transfers of individual patients between bed types during a hospital stay. In this study, we characterise these pathways, and their impact on predicted hospital bed occupancy. Methods: We obtained data from University College Hospital (UCH) and the ISARIC4C COVID-19 Clinical Information Network (CO-CIN) on hospitalised patients with COVID-19 who required care in general ward or critical care (CC) beds to determine possible bed pathways and LoS. We developed a discrete-time model to examine the implications of using either bed pathways or only average LoS by bed type to forecast bed occupancy. We compared model-predicted bed occupancy to publicly available bed occupancy data on COVID-19 in England between March and August 2020. Results: In both the UCH and CO-CIN datasets, 82% of hospitalised patients with COVID-19 only received care in general ward beds. We identified four other bed pathways, present in both datasets: “Ward, CC, Ward”, “Ward, CC”, “CC” and “CC, Ward”. Mean LoS varied by bed type, pathway, and dataset, between 1.78 and 13.53 days. For UCH, we found that using bed pathways improved the accuracy of bed occupancy predictions, while only using an average LoS for each bed type underestimated true bed occupancy. However, using the CO-CIN LoS dataset we were not able to replicate past data on bed occupancy in England, suggesting regional LoS heterogeneities. Conclusions: We identified five bed pathways, with substantial variation in LoS by bed type, pathway, and geography. This might be caused by local differences in patient characteristics, clinical care strategies, or resource availability, and suggests that national LoS averages may not be appropriate for local forecasts of bed occupancy for COVID-19. Trial registration: The ISARIC WHO CCP-UK study ISRCTN66726260 was retrospectively registered on 21/04/2020 and designated an Urgent Public Health Research Study by NIHR.</p

Batı Felsefesi Klasikleri

Bu ders Platon, Aristoteles, Descartes, Hume, Kant, gibi birtakım önemli isimlerin çalışılmasıyla sizin Batı felsefe geleneğine aşina olmanızı sağlayacaktır. Felsefenin başından beri önemli olan sorularını göreceksiniz: aklın veya ruhun tabiatı, Tanrının varlığı, bilginin temelleri, etik ve iyi hayat gibi konulara dair olan sorular. Sözü edilen filozofların argümanlarını değerlendirirken felsefi ve analitik becerilerinizi geliştireceksiniz. Ayrıca, zaman içinde entelektüel alandaki değişimleri ve bilimsel, dini ve siyasi meselelerin felsefi fikirlerin gelişimi üzerine olan etkisini gözlemleme imkânınız olacak. 1-8. ve 16-25. Dersler için ders notları mevcuttur. Descartes'ın Meditasyonlar'ı üzerine olan kısım yani 9.-15. Dersler, için benim ayrıca hazırlamış olduğum Descartes'ın Meditasyonlar'ına bir Çalışma Rehberi'ni, Çalışma Malzemeleri kısmında bulabilirsiniz