Theological ethics of H. Richard Niebuhr

The purpose of this study is to give a critical exposition of the theological and ethical thought of H. Richard Nlebuhr (1894-1962). After a brief introduction to "the man and his work" (Chapter I) the theoretical structure of his thought is set forth. A relational theory of value centering on the concept of "the center of value" (Chapter II) and a relational theory of action centering on the concept of "responsibility" (Chapter III) are distinguished and described. Two main criticisms of the relational theory of value are offered. First, it is argued that an unexceptionally relational theory of value is Incompatible with Niebuhr's primary theological interest in maintaining the absolute priority and Independence of the being and value of God to all contingent being and value. Second, it is argued that Niebuhr's radically monotheistic value theory need not entail (as he thinks it does) the complete relativity of all finite values and value systems. There is nothing in his relational theory as such that requires the prohibition of normative ethical principles so necessary for providing guidance for moral decision making. Furthermore, this prohibition seems to be contradicted by other statements made by Nlebuhr, and it is also inconsistent with his advocacy of such principles for the construction of a viable Protestant ethic.Niebuhr developed his relational theory of moral agency—the theory of "responsibility"—by way of a comparative analysis of teleological and deontological ethics. His chief dissatisfaction with these two traditional ways of conceiving human moral agency lay at the point of the view of man which each presupposes. Both theories accept a view of man that is too individualistic, nonhistorical and intellectualistic. The theory of responsibility accredits itself as a more adequate conceptual scheme insofar as it embodies a view of man that avoids these defects. Beyond this, according to Niebuhr, both teleological and deontological theorists understand the primary moral relation to be between the self-as-will and previously cognized moral principles, rules or demands. For the ethics of responsibility, on the other hand, the Tightness or wrongness of specific moral actions is not determined by universal moral principles or norms, but by the self's "Interpretation" of the objective moral character of that infinite Being upon which the self and all finite beings are absolutely dependent.Both Niebuhr's relational theory of value and of action deny any place for general moral principles or rules in a theological ethic. The absence of such rules or principles is directly related to, and in part occasioned by, his understanding of the limitations Imposed on all knowledge of God by his acceptance of 1) a modified version of Kant's distinction between theoretical and practical reason and of 2) the historically relative character of all knowledge (Chapter IV).In the final chapter two theological principles are identified which structure Niebuhr's ethics. The principle of "radical monotheism" and the principle of "transformation" or "conversion" represent Niebuhr's positive answer to two questions that must be asked and answered by any ethic that makes a serious claim to be a theological ethic. First, "How is God known, and what may be known of him?" Second, "What are the consequences of this knowledge for understanding and ordering moral experience and action?" Both questions are explored further by means of a critical analysis of an important essay in which Nlebuhr deals with each. The answer which he gives to the first question raises two other critical issues.First, it is argued that Niebuhr falls to maintain the priority of the being and value of God to all human being and value—a failure which he himself argued was the major weakness of all post-Kantian liberal theologies—so long as he also maintains that a sufficient criterion for distinguishing experience of God from experience of any other being is the satisfaction of the constitutive human need to know that life is worth living. When Niebuhr stresses the relational and valuatlonal aspects of his religious eplstemology, his description of knowledge of God is anthropomorphic. On the other hand, when he addresses himself to the question of what it means to affirm that God reveals himself in historical events, he so stresses the objectivity and otherness of God that his description of knowledge of God is agnostic. It this is the case, then the legitimacy, or at least the adequacy of the "personal-encounter" model of revelation is called in question.Finally, attention is given to Nlebuhr's description of the transformation that all our natural religion and morality undergo as a result of receiving the gift of radical faith in the one God present in all events. Revelation is that event through which the self is given a new image of God as an absolute unity of power and goodness by means of which 1t is enabled progressively to reinterpret all the events of its individual and social existence, past, present and future, as related in a meaningful universe

Mobilization of the platinum group elements by low-temperature fluids: Implications for mineralization and the iridium controversy

Geochemical investigations on the widely dispersed Late Proterozoic Acraman impact ejecta horizon and its host marine shales in the Adelaide Geosyncline provide strong evidence for low-temperature mobilization of the platinum group elements (PGE), including Ir. The ejecta horizon was formed when the middle Proterozoic dacitic volcanics in the Gawler Ranges, central South Australia, were impacted by a very large (ca. 4 km) meteorite. The resulting structure, now represented by Lake Acraman, is Australia's largest meteorite impact structure. Debris from the impact was blasted for many hundreds of kilometers, some falling into the shallow sea of the Adelaide Geosyncline, some 300 km to the east of the impact site

CCLV.?The isomerism of metallic oxides. Part I. Lead monoxide

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An Adaptive User Interface in Healthcare

AbstractHealthcare is a broad subject with many different challenges, yet it is important and relatable to everyone. The aging Baby Boomer generation is an important healthcare issue today. In Canada, and many other developed nations, the number of citizens reaching the age of retirement and seniority is growing faster than the rate of citizens working and providing health related services. As people age they tend to require more frequent checkups and health services, ultimately putting a bigger resource drain on healthcare infrastructure. New advancements in Computer Science and Engineering are allowing the development of next generation applications with the purpose of providing healthcare services in a cost effective and efficient way. This paper proposes a multi-agent system for tracking and monitoring health data for patients. Furthermore, agents within the system use reinforcement learning techniques to build an adaptive user interface for each human user. The actions and behaviour of users are monitored and used to modify their respective user interface over time. To demonstrate the feasibility of the architecture, two scenarios are provided. We conclude with several possible future directions for this research

Dynamic Healthcare Interface for Patients

AbstractCanadian healthcare is a fundamental part of society. Challenges such as the aging baby boomer generation require the healthcare industry to meet higher demands while using fewer resources. Computer systems designed to record and report physical health properties of an individual personcan be used in part to accomplish this task. In this paper, we present the architecture of a hypothetical multi-agent system designed to provide healthcare information about specific patients through continuous monitoring. The resulting data from the system is accessible by the patient to whom it belongs as well as his or her healthcare professional. Furthermore, the proposed system utilizes an adaptive user interface for the purpose of improving the overall experience for users with poor vision or motor skills. Specifically, we focus on the implementation of several of the key components involved in the adaptive user interface: learning component and the user model. To demonstrate the feasibility of the implementation two scenarios are provided. We conclude with several possible future directions for this research

Statistical variable selection: an alternative prioritization strategy during the nontarget analysis of LC-HR-MS data

Liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HR-MS) has been one of the main analytical tools for the analysis of small polar organic pollutants in the environment. LC-HR-MS typically produces a large amount of data for a single chromatogram. The analyst is therefore required to perform prioritization prior to nontarget structural elucidation. In the present study, we have combined the F-ratio statistical variable selection and the apex detection algorithms in order to perform prioritization in data sets produced via LC-HR-MS. The approach was validated through the use of semisynthetic data, which was a combination of real environmental data and the artificially added signal of 31 alkanes in that sample. We evaluated the performance of this method as a function of four false detection probabilities, namely: 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, and 0.1%. We generated 100 different semisynthetic data sets for each F-ratio and evaluated that data set using this method. This design of experiment created a population of 30 000 true positives and 32 000 true negatives for each F-ratio, which was considered sufficiently large enough in order to fully validate this method for analysis of LC-HR-MS data. The effect of both the F-ratio and signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) on the performance of the suggested approach were evaluated through normalized statistical tests. We also compared this method to the pixel-by-pixel as well as peak list approaches. More than 92% of features present in the final feature list via the F-ratio method were also present in the conventional peak list generated by MZmine. However, this method was the only approach successful in the classification of samples, and thus prioritization, when compared to the other evaluated approaches. The application potential and limitations of the suggested method are discussed.acceptedVersio

Monetary control in theory and practice

This item was digitized by the Internet Archive. Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston Universityhttps://archive.org/details/monetarycontroli00ful

Laboratory and field partial discharge measurement in HVDC power cables

A range of experimental and field measurements of partial discharge (PD) activity under high voltage direct current (HVDC) conditions have been conducted with the goal of developing effective monitoring techniques for PD in HVDC cables and ancillary equipment, particularly in offshore renewable energy HVDC grid installations. Laboratory measurements on insulation test objects and cross linked polyethylene (XLPE) cable samples have been conducted to better understand the characteristics of PD activity under direct current (DC) stress in comparison with AC. In addition, long-term PD measurements carried out at both an HVDC cable aging laboratory and an in-service HVDC interconnector circuit are presented together with a description of the monitoring system architecture

Functional assessment of peripheral mechanisms controlling energy homeostasis in the domestic chicken

Heavily-selected livestock production traits rarely come without compromise; altered physiology arising from intensive selection often gives rise to concern of a welfare trade-off. A particularly clear example of welfare challenge caused by genetic selection in chickens is the ‘broiler-breeder paradox’, wherein breeding populations of broiler-type birds selected for fast growth are feed-restricted in order to reduce growth and maintain reproductive viability at sexual maturity. In order to better-inform management and breeding strategies for alleviating reproductive problems resulting from genetic selection for growth, it is essential to develop a better understanding of the physiological processes underpinning growth. Whereas the molecular mechanisms governing energy balance in mammals have been relatively welldescribed, analogous avian systems have not received as much research attention and remain somewhat poorly understood. The broad aim of this doctoral project was to contribute to understanding of avian energy balance, particularly in the context of selection for high growth. Using an advanced broiler-layer intercross chicken line (AIL), high- and low-growth haplotypes at the locus encoding the cholecystokinin A receptor (CCKAR), underlying the most significant QTL for growth in chickens, were characterised. Of over 300 variations detected, a select panel spaced across the CCKAR locus were tested for prediction of bodyweight in a diverse cohort of chicken populations. One intronic SNP was found to be significant (p<0.05) and proximal to transcription factor binding sites. The effect of this locus on gross bodyweight remained significant into the 20th AIL generation (~20% at 10wk, p<0.05). In this otherwise effectively genetically homogeneous population, several specific physiological traits were predicted by CCKAR haplotype alone, yielding some clues as to the significance of perturbed cholecystokinin (CCK) signalling in broiler strains. While birds with high-growth CCKAR haplotype (HG) did not appear to consume more, feed conversion efficiency (FCE) was improved, at least for males, compared to low-growth (LG) (p<0.05). Visceral organ anatomies were morphologically disparate, with HG individuals exhibiting ~1/3 less gallbladder mass (p<0.01), and ~10% shorter GI tract (p<0.01) and metatarsal bone (p<0.05). Further gaps in knowledge of the expression of peripheral satiety hormones in chicken are addressed in this thesis. Tissue distributions for expression of CCK, gastrin, pancreatic polypeptide (PPY) and peptide YY (PYY), were mapped and their respective dynamic responses to nutritive state examined. CCK was found to be most highly expressed in the brain, whereas PYY, PPY and gastrin were far more abundant in distinct regions of the periphery. Interestingly, peripheral CCK was not responsive to short-term (<10h) satiety in experimental populations where PYY and gastrin were. PYY expression was found to be greatest in the pancreas and consistently upregulated within hours after feeding (p<0.01), whereas gastrin expression was confined to the gastric antrum and paradoxically highest in fasting birds (p<0.01). PPY expression is strictly limited to the pancreas and appears dependent on longerterm energy state. These results highlight similarities and differences to mammalian systems; notably, the avian pancreas seems to fulfil an exceptional role as a site of signal integration, perhaps unsurprising considering its disproportionate size compared to mammals. Indeed, pancreatic PYY appears to act as a primary peripheral short-term satiety hormone in birds. This body of work contributes to the understanding of avian energy balance and growth. An invaluable foundation for future research is formed by the identification of the major locations of production, and basic nutrient-responsive trends, for several peripheral avian hormones. Information on the growth role of CCKAR is consolidated and expanded upon, demonstrating a clear genetic contribution to maintenance organ morphology and overall growth. Such knowledge can be used to reliably assess and advise on selection and management of chickens to stem welfare concerns without compromising production. Comparisons between avian and other vertebrate endocrine systems make for interesting insight into the adaptive role of energy homeostatic mechanisms in divergent evolution of mammals and non-mammalian vertebrates. In some aspects, birds might better represent the ancestral phenotype from which each vertebrate clade arose