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Topic Review
Basic Properties of Ethics
Ethics is a discipline concerned with good and bad moral values and norms that can be right and wrong. Norms define standards of acceptable behavior by groups. Specific ethical systems, through their norms (computable conventions), constrain and partially solve the problem of life. The importance of ethics for society is paramount, as no social group can stay cohesive and in existence if there are no constraints on the behavior of individuals. For example, frequent, reasonless escalations and attacks with killing or injuring others would dissolve any group. Hence, the problem that ethics tries to solve is improving group performance in a setting that is multi-criteria, dynamic, and poised by uncertainties. It operates on a large societal scale, making for a complex setting in which adaptability is crucial. Ethics emerged collaterally through cultural evolution on a longer time scale where all changes have been slow and gradual.
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  • 29 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Neutral Powers During World War II
The neutral powers were countries that remained neutral during World War II. Some of these countries had large colonies abroad or had great economic power. Spain had just been through its civil war, which ended on 1 April 1939 (five months prior to the Invasion of Poland)—a war that involved several countries that subsequently participated in World War II. During World War II, the neutral powers took no official side, hoping to avoid attack. However, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland all helped the Allies by supplying "voluntary" brigades to the United Kingdom , while Spain avoided the Allies in favor of the Axis, supplying them with its own voluntary brigade, the Blue Division. Ireland generally favoured the Allied side, as with the United States. The United States remained neutral until 8 December 1941, a day following the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor. The Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Vatican, signed in 1929, required that the Pope maintain "perpetual neutrality in international relations"—making the Vatican City a neutral state. Several countries suffered invasions in spite of their efforts to be neutral. These included Nazi Germany's invasion of Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940—then Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940. On the same day, 10 May 1940, the British, having already invaded the Faroe Islands in April, invaded Iceland and established an occupying force (subsequently replaced by the then-neutral United States). The Soviet Union invaded Lithuania on 15 June 1940 and Latvia and Estonia on 17 June. In the Balkans, the Italo-Greek War began on 28 October 1940 and Yugoslavia was invaded in April 1941. Iran was also attacked and occupied by Britain and the Soviet Union in August 1941. See also the histories of Afghanistan, Andorra, Guatemala, Liechtenstein, Saudi Arabia and Yemen during this period.
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  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Envy-Free Item Assignment
Envy-free item assignment (EF assignment) is a fair item assignment problem, in which the fairness criterion is envy-freeness - each agent should receive a bundle that he believes to be at least as good as the bundle of any other agent. Since the items are indivisible, an EF assignment may not exist. The simplest case is when there is a single item and at least two agents: if the item is assigned to one agent, the other will envy. Therefore, the division procedures provide various kinds of relaxations.
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Topic Review
Constructivist Epistemology
Constructivist epistemology is a branch in philosophy of science maintaining that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, who seek to measure and construct models of the natural world. Natural science therefore consists of mental constructs that aim to explain sensory experience and measurements. According to constructivists, the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction. Constructivism opposes the philosophy of objectivism, embracing the belief that a human can come to know the truth about the natural world not mediated by scientific approximations with different degrees of validity and accuracy. According to constructivists there is no single valid methodology in science, but rather a diversity of useful methods.
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  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Fault (Legal)
Fault, as a legal term, refers to legal blameworthiness and responsibility in each area of law. It refers to both the actus reus and the mental state of the defendant. The basic principle is that a defendant should be able to contemplate the harm that his actions may cause, and therefore should aim to avoid such actions. Different forms of liability employ different notions of fault, in some there is no need to prove fault, but the absence of it. In criminal law, the mens rea is used to decide if the defendant has criminal intent when he commits the act and, if so, he is therefore liable for the crime. However, this is not necessary for strict liability offences, where no particular state of mind is required to satisfy the burden of proof.
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Topic Review
Phenomenology
Phenomenology (from Greek φαινόμενον, phainómenon "that which appears" and λόγος, lógos "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany . It then spread to France , the United States , and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work. Phenomenology is not a unified movement; rather, the works of different authors share a 'family resemblance' but with many significant differences. Gabriella Farina states:Phenomenology, in Husserl's conception, is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and study of the structures of consciousness and the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness. Phenomenology can be clearly differentiated from the Cartesian method of analysis which sees the world as objects, sets of objects, and objects acting and reacting upon one another. Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticized and developed not only by him but also by students and colleagues such as Edith Stein, Max Scheler, Roman Ingarden, and Dietrich von Hildebrand, by existentialists such as Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre, by hermeneutic philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur, by later French philosophers such as Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida, by sociologists such as Alfred Schütz and Eric Voegelin, and by Christian philosophers, such as Dallas Willard.
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  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Medical Psychology
Medical psychology, or Medico-psychology, is the application of psychological principles to the practice of medicine, primarily drug-oriented, for both physical and mental disorders. A medical psychologist who holds prescriptive authority for specific psychiatric medications and other pharmaceutical drugs must first obtain specific qualifications in psychopharmacology. A trained medical psychologist, or clinical psychopharmacologist who has prescriptive authority, is equated with a mid-level provider who has the authority to prescribe psychotropic medication such as antidepressants for mental health disorders. However, a medical psychologist does not automatically equate with a psychologist who has the authority to prescribe medication. In fact, most medical psychologists do not prescribe medication and do not have the authority to do so. Medical psychologists apply psychological theories, scientific psychological findings, and techniques of psychotherapy, behavior modification, cognitive, interpersonal, family, and lifestyle therapy to improve the psychological and physical health of the patient. Psychologists with postdoctoral specialty training as medical psychologists are the practitioners with refined skills in clinical psychology, health psychology, behavioral medicine, psychopharmacology, and medical science. Highly qualified and postgraduate specialized doctors are trained for service in primary care centers, hospitals, residential care centers, and long-term care facilities and in multidisciplinary collaboration and team treatment.
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Topic Review
Fair Item Assignment
Fair item assignment is a kind of a fair division problem in which the items to divide are indivisible. The items have to be divided among several partners who value them differently, and each item has to be given as a whole to a single person. This situation arises in various real-life scenarios: The indivisibility of the items implies that a fair division may not be possible. As an extreme example, if there is only a single item (e.g. a house), it must be given to a single partner, but this is not fair to the other partners. This is in contrast to the fair cake-cutting problem, where the dividend is divisible and a fair division always exists. In some cases, the indivisibility problem can be mitigated by introducing monetary payments or time-based rotation, or by discarding some of the items.:285 But such solutions are not always available. An item assignment problem has several ingredients: These ingredients are explained in detail below.
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Biography
Thomas Farrell
Major General Thomas Francis Farrell (3 December 1891 – 11 April 1967) was the Deputy Commanding General and Chief of Field Operations of the Manhattan Project, acting as executive officer to Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr. Farrell graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in civil engineering in 1912. During World War I, he served with the 1st Engineers on the Wester
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Topic Review
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state actors also), in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. Truth commissions are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship. In both their truth-seeking and reconciling functions, truth commissions have political implications: they "constantly make choices when they define such basic objectives as truth, reconciliation, justice, memory, reparation, and recognition, and decide how these objectives should be met and whose needs should be served". According to one widely cited definition: "A truth commission (1) is focused on the past, rather than in ongoing events; (2) investigates a pattern of events that took place over a period of time; (3) engages directly and broadly with the affected population, gathering information on their experiences; (4) is a temporary body, with the aim of concluding with a final report; and (5) is officially authorized or empowered by the state under review". The term used in the Australian context of reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples is truth telling.
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