The problem of rational moral enlistment

How can one bring children to recognize the requirements of morality without resorting only to non-rational means of persuasion (i.e. what rational ground can be offered to children for their moral enlistment)? Michael Hand has recently defended a foundationalist approach to answering this question and J. White has responded by a) criticizing Hand’s solution to the Problem of Rational Moral Enlistment, and b) attempting to circumvent the problem by suggesting a Humean route which understands moral enlistment as grounded in sentiment. While I do not accept Hand’s preferred solution to the Problem of Rational Moral Enlistment, I am also unpersuaded by White’s attempt to circumvent it. Instead, making use of work by Ben Spiecker and Jan Steutel (2001), I attempt a different solution to the Problem of Rational Moral Enlistment – one appealing to reflective equilibrium rather than to ethical foundationalism as Hand’s does. Whereas Hand hopes to ground rational moral enlistment in a single, self-evident foundational justification of some moral standards, I instead hope to facilitate rational moral enlistment through a rational procedure which starts with students’ existing moral commitments and attempts to revise or expand them through a certain kind of critical reflection

The Role of Reservations and Declarations before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: The Las Hermanas Serrano Cruz Case and the Future of Inter-American Justice

Las Hermanas Serrano Cruz is a landmark case in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights because it excludes a large body of arguably valid claims from meaningful adjudication within the inter-American system. In the Las Hermanas Serrano Cruz decision on preliminary objections, the Court upheld El Salvador’s restriction to rationae temporis. Although the State’s restriction was improper both substantively and procedurally, the Court held it to be valid under the American Convention on Human Rights by misclassifying it as a declaration rather than a reservation. This mistake not only proved detrimental to the Las Hermanas Serrano Cruz decision, but also to the future of human rights claims within the inter-American system. This paper will closely evaluate the inconsistencies within the Court’s reasoning, and suggest that at a minimum, the Court amend its procedural allowances for reservations and declarations. In the preferred alternative, serious consideration should be given to prohibiting reservations and declarations to the American Convention in their entirety

When to teach for belief : a tempered defence of the epistemic criterion

Michael Hand has defended the “epistemic criterion” for “directive and nondirective teaching” in his 2008 Educational Theory article, “What Should We Teach as Controversial? A Defense of the Epistemic Criterion,” as well as subsequent pieces. Here, John Tillson defends use of the epistemic criterion in the case of what he calls “momentous propositions,” but he rejects two of Hand's key arguments in support of the criterion. This rethinking comes in light of important contributions to the debate made by Bryan Warnick and D. Spencer Smith and by Maughn Rollins Gregory, also published in this journal. Tillson begins the article with an elucidation of the directive/nondirective distinction, and then discusses some limitations of defining the distinction in terms of intention. Next, he draws attention to the problems with the “soft-directive teaching” method that Warnick and Smith advocate. Finally, Tillson provides an additional argument in favor of the epistemic criterion, an argument also grounded in work by Hand, which places emphasis on imparting knowledge alongside cultivating rationality among our educational aims

The mitochondrial genome of the venomous cone snail conus consors

Cone snails are venomous predatory marine neogastropods that belong to the species-rich superfamily of the Conoidea. So far, the mitochondrial genomes of two cone snail species (Conus textile and Conus borgesi) have been described, and these feed on snails and worms, respectively. Here, we report the mitochondrial genome sequence of the fish-hunting cone snail Conus consors and describe a novel putative control region (CR) which seems to be absent in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of other cone snail species. This possible CR spans about 700 base pairs (bp) and is located between the genes encoding the transfer RNA for phenylalanine (tRNA-Phe, trnF) and cytochrome c oxidase subunit III (cox3). The novel putative CR contains several sequence motifs that suggest a role in mitochondrial replication and transcription

The Research Informed Teaching Project at Staffordshire University 2013-2016: Conference Paper: Enhancing Students’ Skills Development in Contract Law through an Online Simulation (MLX)

Description of Session & Abstract. In this session at the Association of Law Teachers (ALT) annual conference 2016, members of the RiT project team and colleagues from Pearson Education, notably Kerry George and Prof. Stephen Gomez - who have been working with the SU RiT team - presented preliminary finding from a collaborative study of the use of a new digital, online learning resource called MyLegalExperience (MLX) to assist student learning in Contract Law. The presentation drew on the work of Judith Tillson, lead researcher for the work being done with Pearson on MLX, and Prof Stephen Gomez. The session started with some background, describing the challenges faced with traditional teaching methods of applying Contract Law to practical advice needs for clients; and then explaining the use of an online system to address these challenges. Emphasis was placed on how collaboration between tutor, student and content provider can be facilitated through technology. As well as a demonstration, questions from delegates were taken by the presenters. Abstract. The RiT project has been interested in a range of issues since it started in 2013, including the support that Law students get from on-line systems and services which support their research, teaching, and learning, and the application of knowledge. Previous presentations by the team at ALT conferences, including those at Nottingham and Cardiff, have been concerned with the use of on-lines systems and the development and deployment of research and research-related skills, and assessment aspects. The MLX project focuses on the problems students can have with putting their knowledge into practice, for instance when advising clients about legal matters. The context is that students are requesting more opportunities to practice and to obtain greater feedback, including more individual, personalised comments from tutors. With the increase in student numbers, all these requirements have an impact on tutor workload. New internet technologies have the potential for addressing these issues but lecturers either do not have the time or web skills to produce sophisticated online systems at a standard expected by their students who are used to professional software on the internet. The RiT project team, notably Judith Tillson, have teamed up with Pearson, the education publishers, to consider these challenges, and to trial MLX. The MLX system provides an online simulation designed to support students’ engagement and skills development in Contract Law across 6 topics. However, only two topics have been used in this particular trial, as it has been managed by Judith. In each topic, students play a legal advisory role, and complete practical tasks in response to the issues raised by a fictional client. Each topic consists of four scaffolded activities that build up in complexity as students work through them. The activities are: 1. Issue spotting - students answer a series of self-assessed MCQs (multiple choice questions) to identify the legal issues and legal principles from the facts related to Contract Law. 2. Analysing the Law - students fill in the blanks to identify the legal issues and legal principles from the facts. 3. Applying legal advice – this involves a practical task designed to put knowledge into practice by students uploading a piece of work which is then marked by the lecturer who gives feedback to be used to feed forward as assessment for learning as the basis of the fourth activity below. 4. Reflection- model answer and reflective MCQs to compare work completed in activity 3 to the model answer to facilitate self-assessment as a link to self-organised learning. Judith and the team have been exploring the effectiveness or efficacy of MLX in supporting learning through a simulation in the manner described above. Though we are using a specific learning resource (i.e. MLX) in the study, it is intended that we will establish a pedagogy that can be applied in other contexts. The project has been run by Judith in a live module in 2015-16 using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to assess students’ attitudes and perspectives, as well as data analytics to measure student engagement and performance both in MLX and in summative module assignments. Judith has also been using an innovative Twitter approach to charting student attitudes throughout their usage of MLX. Project Findings. Preliminary findings were provided in the course of the presentation. Further work is being undertaken by Judith and Christine, and it is hoped the results will feature in an article in The Law Teacher in 2017-18 and in other outputs

An Examination of Three Transitional Events in the Substance Misuse Trajectories of Women With Criminal Legal System Involvement

Research has consistently demonstrated that criminal legal system (CLS)-involved women are distinct from men in initiation and course of drug use, with important differences on biological, environmental, and sociocultural levels. Thus, the unique pathways and transitions into and out of drug use for women with CLS involvement are critical to consider from a research perspective, but also from a need to develop and support evidence-based, women-centered services in correctional contexts. This dissertation project uses a three-paper format to investigate three aims: (1) to understand CLS-involved women’s initiations to injection drug use and their experiences providing injection initiation assistance (IIA) to others; (2) to explore unique correlates of CLS-involved women’s experiences with overdose and overdose reversal, including relationships between overdose and traumatic stress; and (3) to examine community reentry and recurrences of drug use post-incarceration for women who have completed corrections-based substance use treatment services. This project utilizes secondary data from two studies. Aim 1 includes cross-sectional data from the Women’s Intervention to Stop HIV/HCV, conducted with women incarcerated in rural Appalachia. Aims 2 and 3 use data from the Criminal Justice Kentucky Treatment Outcome Study (CJKTOS), a longitudinal state-funded evaluation of corrections-based substance use treatment in Kentucky. Aim 2 is conducted using baseline CJKTOS data collected from women at treatment entry, describing their experiences during the 12 months prior to incarceration. Aim 3 uses a mixed-methods analysis of follow-up CJKTOS data collected from a stratified random sample of women who graduated from corrections-based treatment, 12 months after their release to the community. Collectively, findings from the three papers contribute to a complex portrait of factors that are associated with CLS-involved women’s risk of substance misuse-related harm. Specifically, findings from Aim 1 suggest that women who exhibit trajectories of drug use characterized by faster transitions and more severe patterns, and who are more enmeshed in social networks of others who use drugs, are more likely to have provided IIA. Results from Aim 2 indicate that witnessing and/or experiencing overdose is common among treatment-seeking incarcerated women and independently associated with mental health issues, although knowledge of where to obtain naloxone is also related to lower odds of meeting PTSD criteria among women who have witnessed overdose. Finally, findings from Aim 3 show that, across factors at all social ecological levels, employment demonstrates the strongest relationship to abstinence from drug use after release from incarceration. However, women’s qualitative appraisals of risk and protective factors emphasized internal/individual qualities (e.g., motivation), complex relational influences, and environmental triggers as critical for recovery. The use of multilevel theoretical models to guide selection of variables across all three papers emphasizes the need to frame substance misuse transitions not just from an individual-level perspective, but also from interpersonal, community, and intersectional standpoints. Implications for prevention, intervention, and recovery support services for CLS-involved women are also discussed, as well as the value of comparing quantitative findings alongside women’s subjective understanding of events

Hamilton college Library Home Notes

House of David Basketball Team Photo