Intractability and optimality are two sides of one coin: Optimal models are often intractable, that is, they tend to be excessively complex, or NP-hard. We explain the meaning of NP-hardness in detail and discuss how modem computer science circumvents intractability by introducing heuristics and shortcuts to optimality, often replacing optimality by means of sufficient sub-optimality. Since the principles of decision theory dictate balancing the cost of computation against gain in accuracy, statistical inference is currently being reshaped by a vigorous new (...) trend: the science of simplicity. Simple models, as we show for specific cases, are not just tractable, they also tend to be robust. Robustness is the ability of a model to extract relevant information from data, disregarding noise.Recently, Gigerenzer, Todd and the ABC Research Group (1999) have put forward a collection of fast and frugal heuristics as simple, boundedly rational inference strategies used by the unaided mind in real world inference problems. This collection of heuristics has suggestively been called the adaptive toolbox. In this paper we will focus on a comparison task in order to illustrate the simplicity and robustness of some of the heuristics in the adaptive toolbox in contrast to the intractability and the fragility of optimal solutions. We will concentrate on three important classes of models for comparison-based inference and, in each of these classes, search for that to be used as benchmarks to evaluate the performance of fast and frugal heuristics: lexicographic trees, linear modes and Bayesian networks. Lexicographic trees are interesting because they are particularly simple models that have been used by humans throughout the centuries. Linear models have been traditionally used by cognitive psychologists as models for human inference, while Bayesian networks have only recently been introduced in statistics and computer science. Yet it is the Bayesian networks that are the best possible benchmarks for evaluating the fast and frugal heuristics, as we will show in this paper. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of recent results on lexicographic, linear, and Bayesian models for paired comparison from a cognitive psychology perspective. Within each class, we distinguish subclasses according to the computational complexity required for parameter setting. We identify the optimal model in each class, where optimality is defined with respect to performance when fitting known data. Although not optimal when fitting data, simple models can be astonishingly accurate when generalizing to new data. A simple heuristic belonging to the class (...) of lexicographic models is Take The Best (Gigerenzer & Goldstein (1996) Psychol. Rev. 102: 684). It is more robust than other lexicographic strategies which use complex procedures to establish a cue hierarchy. In fact, it is robust due to its simplicity, not despite it. Similarly, Take The Best looks up only a fraction of the information that linear and Bayesian models require; yet it achieves performance comparable to that of models which integrate information. Due to its simplicity, frugality, and accuracy, Take The Best is a plausible candidate for a psychological model in the tradition of bounded rationality. We review empirical evidence showing the descriptive validity of fast and frugal heuristics. (shrink)

Preparing people for dealing with hazards, diseases and disasters requires teaching them statistics, and ideally doing so by means of good representation formats in a dynamic fashion. Translating these dynamics to simple communication is what governments need from scientists.

The notion of “bounded rationality” was introduced by Simon as an appropriate framework for explaining how agents reason and make decisions in accordance with their computational limitations and the characteristics of the environments in which they exist (seen metaphorically as two complementary scissor blades).We elaborate on how bounded rationality is usually conceived in psychology and on its relationship with logic. We focus on the relationship between heuristics and some non-monotonic logical systems. These two categories of cognitive tools share fundamental features. (...) As a step further, we show that in some cases heuristics themselves can be formalized from this logic perspective. We have therefore two main aims: on the one hand, to demonstrate the relationship between the bounded rationality programme and logic, understood in a broad sense; on the other hand, to provide logical tools of analysis of already known heuristics. This may lead to results such as the characterization of fast and frugal binary trees in terms of their associated logic program here provided. (shrink)

Bank customers are not financial experts, and yet they make high-stakes decisions that can substantively affect personal wealth. Sooner or later, every individual has to take relevant investment decisions. Using data collected from financial advisors, bank customers and university students in Italy, this paper aims to reveal new insights about the decision processes of average non-expert investors: their investment goals, the information sets they consider, and the factors that ultimately influence decisions about investment products. Using four portfolio choice tasks based (...) on data collected directly from financial advisors and their clients, we find that most subjects used a limited set of information, ignoring factors that conventional economic models usually assume drive investor behavior. Furthermore, we suggest that non-compensatory decision-tree models, which make no trade-offs among investment features, are parsimonious descriptions of investor behavior useful for improving the organization of financial institutions and in policy contexts alike. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

Business orientation toward sustainable development goals and the circular economy are relevant research topics today in business theory and practice. The waste recycling sector is a key industry in the circular economy framework for promoting clean production and environmental sustainability. This study analyzes business performance in the recycling sector, focusing on efficiency indicators. The associations between firm efficiency and risk variables were also evaluated. The study goes through several methodological stages, including a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) multistage method and multivariate (...) modeling: tobit regression, bootstrap models, and generalized method of moments (GMM). The main results indicate that the average efficiency of waste recycling firms is at a medium level. Large-sized firms achieve higher levels of efficiency than medium-sized and small firms, supporting the economies of scale hypothesis. The evidence also suggests that risk variables (rating score and Zscore) and capital structure are key determinants of firm efficiency in the waste recycling industry. (shrink)

As library collections and services have increasingly moved from print to digital, much of the work that used to be done by libraries themselves with regard to creating, maintaining, and managing the systems that hold collections and facilitate user access to them is now done primarily by vendors. This change to the information services landscape for academic libraries is the occasion not only of technical and procedural challenges, but also some internal conflicts concerning the ethical demands of the library profession. (...) This essay examines the ways in which these conflicts become acute and obvious when attention is paid to the way in which attempts to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are undermined by the handover of library services to vendors, even when—or perhaps especially when—those vendors use their control of content and platforms to commodify diverse content instead of making the necessary systemic changes required by truly effective EDI efforts. (shrink)

GraphicalThe need to encourage individuals as active change agents for sustainability transitions has led researchers across disciplines to conceptualize over 70 constructs to assess relevant dispositions to environmental protection and green consumption behaviors. The generated knowledge is, however, fragmented by an unconsolidated set of constructs developed within parallel literature streams. We, hence, use an integrative review method to capture conceptual and operational similarities and distinctiveness of constructs across disciplines in the literature, attempting to unify the knowledge base. Thereby, we identify (...) 34 conceptually distinct constructs relevant for the thematic synthesis on individual-level constructs framing contributions to environmental measures and issues. We followingly propose a taxonomy, systemizing constructs based on their concept type and contextual scope of the environmental challenge addressed. We capture these dimensions in critically assessing relevant and salient conceptual and operational features. We thus create a consolidated picture of extant constructs capturing individual-level environmental sustainability by which we intend a three-fold contribution to the interdisciplinary field. First, the taxonomy and guiding framework for the choice of constructs should assist substantive researchers in identifying appropriate constructs of interest. Second, the systematic integration of similar concepts available in parallel literature streams should assist future endeavors aiming at integrating substantive findings with regard to antecedents, consequences, and other relevant variables. Finally, the taxonomy revealed that conceptualizations mainly scatter around specific combinations of types and scopes while others remain unaddressed. Based on our critical assessment of the relevant features and resulting taxonomy, we identify avenues for future research dedicated to enhancing conceptual rigor and measurement quality in the field and introducing concepts addressing missing but potentially valuable combinations of types and scopes. We conclude that researchers engaging in the proposed avenues with conceptual, methodological, or empirical contributions should consider four critical aspects to advance knowledge accumulation and prevent fragmentation in the interdisciplinary field. We thereby hope to pave the way for a collective, interdisciplinary knowledge base of concepts used to describe and assess individual’s pro-environmental dispositions and practices of green consumption. (shrink)

In this comprehensive new study of human free agency, Laura Waddell Ekstrom critically surveys contemporary philosophical literature and provides a novel account of the conditions for free action. Ekstrom argues that incompatibilism concerning free will and causal determinism is true and thus the right account of the nature of free action must be indeterminist in nature. She examines a variety of libertarian approaches, ultimately defending an account relying on indeterministic causation among events and appealing to agent causation only in (...) a reducible sense. Written in an engaging style and incorporating recent scholarship, this study is critical reading for scholars and students interested in the topics of motivation, causation, responsibility, and freedom. In broadly covering the important positions of others along with its exposition of the author’s own view, Free Will provides both a significant scholarly contribution and a valuable text for courses in metaphysics and action theory. (shrink)

The orthodox view of anger takes desires for revenge or retribution to be central to the emotion. In this paper, I develop an empirically informed challenge to the retributive view of anger. In so doing, I argue that a distinct desire is central to anger: a desire for recognition. Desires for recognition aim at the targets of anger acknowledging the wrong they have committed, as opposed to aiming for their suffering. In light of the centrality of this desire for recognition, (...) I argue that the retributive view of anger should be abandoned. I consider and dismiss two types of moves that can be made on the part of a proponent of the orthodox view in response to my argument. I propose that a pluralist view, which allows for both retribution and recognition in anger, is to be preferred. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that impaired emotion regulation may play an important role in the development of youth psychopathology. However, little research has explored the effects of ER strategies on affect in early adolescents. In Study 1, we examined if early adolescents are able to use distraction and whether the effects of this strategy are similar to talking to one’s mother. In Study 2, we compared the effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination. In both studies, participants received instructions on (...) how to regulate their emotions after a standardised negative mood induction. In general, the results indicated that distraction, but also cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, had promising short-term effects on positive and negative affect in early adolescents. These findings suggest that targeting adaptive ER skills, such as distraction, acceptance, and cognitive reappraisal, may be an important strategy to prevent or treat psychological pro... (shrink)

While various definitions of moral distress have been proposed, some agreement exists that it results from illegitimate constraints in clinical practice affecting healthcare professionals’ moral agency. If we are to reduce moral distress, instruments measuring it should provide relevant information about such illegitimate constraints. Unfortunately, existing instruments fail to do so. We discuss here several shortcomings of major instruments in use: their inability to determine whether reports of moral distress involve an accurate assessment of the requisite clinical and logistical facts (...) in play, whether the distress in question is aptly characterized as moral, and whether the moral distress reported is an appropriate target of elimination. Such failures seriously limit the ability of empirical work on moral distress to foster appropriate change. (shrink)

"This book focuses on arguments from suffering against the existence of God and on a variety of issues concerning agency and value that they bring out. The central aim is to show the extent and power of arguments from evil. The book provides a close investigation of an under-defended claim at the heart of the major free-will-based responses to such arguments, namely that free will is sufficiently valuable to serve as the good, or prominently among the goods, that provides a (...) God-justifying reason for permitting evil in our world. Offering a fresh examination of traditional theodicies, it also develops an alternative line the author calls a divine intimacy theodicy. It makes an extended case for rejection of the position of skeptical theism. The book expands upon an argument from evil concerning a traditional doctrine of hell, which reveals a number of interesting issues concerning fault, agency, and blameworthiness. In response to recent work contending that the problem of evil is defanged since God's baseline attitude toward human beings is indifference, the book defends the essential perfect moral goodness of God. Finally it takes up the question of whether or not it makes sense to live a religious life as an agnostic or as an atheist"--. (shrink)

Outlaw emotions are emotions that stand in tension with one’s wider belief system, often allowing epistemic insight one may have otherwise lacked. Outlaw emotions are thought to play crucial epistemic roles under conditions of oppression. Although the crucial epistemic value of these emotions is widely acknowledged, specific accounts of their epistemic role(s) remain largely programmatic. There are two dominant accounts of the epistemic role of emotions: The Motivational View and the Justificatory View. Philosophers of emotion assume that these dominant ways (...) of accounting for the epistemic role(s) of emotions in general are equipped to account for the epistemic role(s) of outlaw emotions. I argue that this is not the case. I consider and dismiss two responses that could be made on behalf of the most promising account, the Justificatory View, in light of my argument, before sketching an alternative account that should be favoured. (shrink)

Anger is often an appropriate reaction to harms and injustices, but is it a politically beneficial one? Martha Nussbaum (Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1), 41–56, 2015, Anger and Forgiveness. Oxford University Press, 2016) has argued that, although anger is useful in initially recruiting agents for action, anger is typically counterproductive to securing the political aims of those harmed. After the initial shockwave of outrage, Nussbaum argues that to be effective at enacting positive social change, groups and individuals (...) alike, must move quickly out of the state of anger. Feminist theorists (Frye, The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983; Lorde, 1997; Narayan, Hypatia 3 (2): 31–48, 1988) on the other hand have for long highlighted the efficacy of anger, as well as its moral and epistemic value, in fighting against the oppressive status quo. It might be thought therefore that for political action to be effective, a continued state of anger is preferable. Protestors must after all create and sustain a sense of moral obligation and justice. A main way of doing so is to promote successive moral shocks that trigger outrage (Jasper, Emotion Review 6 (3): 208–213, 2014). I present a novel, empirically informed defense of anger’s efficacy in political action. Nussbaum holds a traditional view on the nature of anger, inherited from Aristotle and the Stoics, which holds that anger constitutively involves a desire for retribution. The view that anger is counterproductive falls out of this and is dominant in academic work as well as in our personal and political lives. Based on work in social psychology, I argue that we need to reconsider this. In doing so, I highlight anger’s aim for recognition, rather than retribution, as key. Furthermore, I uncover conditions for anger’s political efficacy, as well as reasons for why the traditional view of anger has been so pervasive. (shrink)

In this article I argue that characterizations of anger as a hostile emotion may be mistaken. My project is empirically informed and is partly descriptive, partly diagnostic. It is descriptive in that I am concerned with what anger is, and how it tends to manifest, rather than with what anger should be or how moral anger is manifested. The orthodox view on anger takes it to be, descriptively, an emotion that aims for retribution. This view fits well with anger being (...) a hostile emotion, as retribution is punitive. I will argue that a different view of anger deserves our attention. On this alternative view, anger aims for recognition of harms done, rather than for the punishment of those who have committed them. I argue that we have reason to favour a strong view that excludes retribution from anger’s main aims. In addition, I offer a diagnosis of the reasons that led the retributive view of anger to become, and remain, orthodoxy. This diagnosis provides indirect reason to give my descriptive proposal serious consideration, for it highlights that the orthodox view has dominated folk and philosophical conceptions of anger for reasons that do not speak in favour of the view’s veracity. The view that anger is a hostile emotion will therefore emerge as in need of serious scrutiny. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its compelling presence “across (...) fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)

In this paper I lay the foundations for the construction of an affective quality space. I begin by outlining what quality spaces are, and how they have been constructed for sensory qualities across different perceptual modalities. I then turn to tackle four obstacles that an affective quality space might face that would make an affective quality space unfeasible. After showing these obstacles to be surmountable, I propose a number of conditions and methodological constraints that should be satisfied in attempts to (...) construct an affective quality space. Before concluding, I detail the high explanatory pay-off such a project promises. (shrink)

Naked Science is about contested domains and includes different science cultures: physics, molecular biology, primatology, immunology, ecology, medical environmental, mathematical and navigational domains. While the volume rests on the assumption that science is not autonomous, the book is distinguished by its global perspective. Examining knowledge systems within a planetary frame forces thinking about boundaries that silence or affect knowledge-building. Consideration of ethnoscience and technoscience research within a common framework is overdue for raising questions about deeply held beliefs and assumptions we (...) all carry about scientific knowledge. We need a perspective on how to regard different science traditions because public controversies should not be about a glorified science or a despicable science. Contributors are: Ward Goodenough, Eloisa and Brent Berlin, Colin Scott, Jean Lave, Emily Martin, Troy Duster, Hugh Gusterson, Charles Schwartz, Joan Fujimura, Sharon Traweek, Estellie Smith, Ellen Bielawaski, David Jacobon, Charles Ziegler, Pamela Asquith. (shrink)

Anti-individualists claim that concepts are individuated with an eye to purely external facts about a subject's environment about which she may be ignorant or mistaken. This paper offers a novel reason for thinking that anti-individualistic concepts are an ineliminable part of commonsense psychology. Our commitment to anti-individualism, I argue, is ultimately grounded in a rational epistemic agent's commitment to refining her own representational practices in the light of new and surprising information about her environment. Since anti-individualism is an implicit part (...) of responsible epistemic practices, we cannot abandon it without compromising our own epistemic agency. The story I tell about the regulation of one's own representational practices yields a new account of the identity conditions for anti-individualistic concepts. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation is a well-accepted treatment for movement disorders and is currently explored as a treatment option for various neurological and psychiatric disorders. Several case studies suggest that DBS may, in some patients, influence mental states critical to personality to such an extent that it affects an individual’s personal identity, i.e. the experience of psychological continuity, of persisting through time as the same person. Without questioning the usefulness of DBS as a treatment option for various serious and treatment refractory (...) conditions, the potential of disruptions of psychological continuity raises a number of ethical and legal questions. An important question is that of legal responsibility if DBS induced changes in a patient’s personality result in damage caused by undesirable or even deviant behavior. Disruptions in psychological continuity can in some cases also have an effect on an individual’s mental competence. This capacity is necessary in order to obtain informed consent to start, continue or stop treatment, and it is therefore not only important from an ethical point of view but also has legal consequences. Taking the existing literature and the Dutch legal system as a starting point, the present paper discusses the implications of DBS induced disruptions in psychological continuity for a patient’s responsibility for action and competence of decision and raises a number of questions that need further research. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new relational account of concepts and shows how it is particularly well suited to characterizing normative concepts. The key advantage of our ‘connectedness’ model is that it explains how subjects can share the same normative concepts despite radical divergences in the descriptive or motivational commitments they associate with them. The connectedness model builds social and historical facts into the foundations of concept identity. This aspect of the model, we suggest, reshapes normative epistemology and provides new resources (...) for a vindication of realism in ethics. (shrink)

This paper presents a conception of the self partially in terms of a particular notion of preference. It develops a coherentist account of when one's preferences are "authorized", or sanctioned as one's own, and presents a coherence theory of autonomous action. The view presented solves certain problems with hierarchical accounts of freedom, such as Harry Frankfurt's.

For those who maintain that free will is incompatible with causal determinism, a persistent problem is to give a coherent characterization of action that is neither determined by prior events nor random, arbitrary, lucky or in some way insufficiently under the control of the agent to count as free action. One approach—that of Roderick Chisholm and others—is to say that a third alternative is for an action to be caused by an agent in a way that is not reducible to (...) event causal terms. A different approach than the Chisholmian appeal to primitive substance causation is one that, instead, involves causal relations purely among events. This paper presents a particular event-causal indeterminist account of free action, describing both its attractions and recent objections to it, and then proposes a revised version, with the aim of supporting the plausibility of an event-causal indeterminist approach to free will. (shrink)

How does violence shape citizens’ preferences for conflict termination? The existing literature has argued that violence either begets sympathy for more violence or drives support for making peace. Focusing on the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement, this article finds that victimhood dissociation strongly shapes these preferences. With victimhood dissociation, a discrepancy exists between objective and subjective victimization, and the effect of violence on peace attitudes depends on citizens’ subjective interpretations of their personal experiences of violence. Citizens who do not experience violence (...) often see themselves as victims of the conflict and vice versa. Victimhood dissociation is linked to cultural stereotypes of victimhood as portrayed in elite narratives concerning the conflict. In Colombia, political leaders framed victimhood around rurality, business entrepreneurship, kidnapping, extortion, and disappearance. In 2016, this widespread narrative was instrumental for politicians opposing the peace agreement. Citizens who disassociated their personal experiences of violence from their self-understanding as victims were instrumental to the failure of the peace plebiscite. (shrink)

: Although "brain death" and the dead donor rule—i.e., patients must not be killed by organ retrieval—have been clinically and legally accepted in the U.S. as prerequisites to organ removal, there is little data about public attitudes and beliefs concerning these matters. To examine the public attitudes and beliefs about the determination of death and its relationship to organ transplantation, 1351 Ohio residents ≥18 years were randomly selected and surveyed using random digit dialing (RDD) sample frames. The RDD telephone survey (...) was conducted using computer-assisted telephone interviews. The survey instrument was developed from information provided by 12 focus groups and a pilot study of the questionnaire. Three scenarios based on hypothetical patients were presented: "brain dead," in a coma, or in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Respondents provided personal assessments of whether the patient in each scenario was dead and their willingness to donate that patient's organs in these circumstances. More than 98 percent of respondents had heard of the term "brain death," but only one-third (33.7%) believed that someone who was "brain dead" was legally dead. The majority of respondents (86.2%) identified the "brain-dead" patient in the first scenario as dead, 57.2 percent identified the patient in a coma as dead (Scenario 2), and 34.1 percent identified the patient in a PVS as dead (Scenario 3). Nearly one-third (33.5%) were willing to donate the organs of patients they classified as alive for at least one scenario, in seeming violation of the dead donor rule. Most respondents were not willing to violate the dead donor rule, although a substantial minority was. However, the majority of respondents were unaware, misinformed, or held beliefs that were not congruent with current definitions of "brain death." This study highlights the need for more public dialogue and education about "brain death" and organ donation. (shrink)

It's widely accepted that social facts about an individual's linguistic community can affect both the reference of her words and the concepts those words express. Theorists sympathetic to the internalist tradition have sought to accommodate these social dependence phenomena without altering their core theoretical commitments by positing deferential reference-fixing criteria. In this paper, we sketch a different explanation of social dependence phenomena, according to which all concepts are individuated in part by causal-historical relations linking token elements of thought.

Two-dimensional (2D) semantics is a formal framework that is used to characterize the meaning of certain linguistic expressions and the entailment relations among sentences containing them. 2D semantics has also been applied to thought contents. In contrast with standard possible worlds semantics, 2D semantics assigns extensions and truth-values to expressions relative to two possible world parameters, rather than just one. So a 2D semantic framework provides finer-grained semantic values than those available within standard possible world semantics, while using the same (...) basic model-theoretic resources. The 2D framework itself is just a formal tool. To develop a semantic theory for someone’s language, a proponent of 2D semantics must do three things: (i) explain what exactly the two possible world parameters represent, (ii) explain the rules for assigning 2D semantic values to a person’s words and sentences, and (iii) explain how 2D semantic values help in understanding the meanings of the person’s words and sentences. (shrink)

Over the last decade, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been defined first as a concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and cleaner environment and, second, as a process by which companies manage their relationship␣with stakeholders (European Commission, 2001. Nowadays, CSR has become a priority issue on governments’ agendas. This has changed governments’ capacity to act and impact on social and environmental issues in their relationship with companies, but has also affected the framework in which CSR (...) public policies are designed: governments are incorporating multi-stakeholder strategies. This article analyzes the CSR public policies in European advanced democracies, and more specifically the EU-15 countries, and provides explanatory keys on how governments have understood, designed and implemented their CSR public policies. The analysis has entailed the classification of CSR public policies taking into consideration the actor to which the governments’ policies were addressed. This approach to the analysis of CSR public policies in the EU-15 countries leads us to observe coinciding lines of action among the different countries analyzed, which has enabled us to propose a ‹four ideal’ typology model for governmental action on CSR in Europe: Partnership, Business in the Community, Sustainability, and Citizenship, and Agora. The main contribution of this article is to propose an analytical framework to analyze CSR public policies, which provide a perspective on the relationships between governments, businesses, and civil society stakeholders, and enable us to incorporate the analysis of CSR public policies into a broader approach focused on social governance. (shrink)

Laura Nader is a towering figure as anthropologist, teacher, and public intellectual. Her letters give a glimpse of academic life mostly unseen by academics and by the general public. The collection includes letters from academic colleagues, but it also contains correspondence from lawyers, politicians, citizens, people on death row, Peace Corps workers, members of the military, scientists, and more.

This paper proposes a reconciliation between libertarian freedomand causal indeterminism, without relying on agent-causation asa primitive notion. I closely examine Peter van Inwagen''s recentcase for free will mysterianism, which is based in part on thewidespread worry that undetermined acts are too chancy to befree. I distinguish three senses of the term chance I thenargue that van Inwagen''s case for free will mystrianism fails,since there is no single construal of the term change on whichall of the premises of his argument for (...) free will–causalindeterminism incompatibilism are true. By use of a particularevent-causal indeterminist account of free action, I support thecase for free will–indeterminism compatibilism. (shrink)

In this paper the exclusive focus on large firms in the field of business ethics is challenged. Some of the idiosyncrasies of small firms are explained, and links are made between these and potential ethical issues. A review of the existing literature on ethics in small firms demonstrates the lack of appropriate research, so that to date we can draw no firm conclusions in relation to ethics in the small firm. Recommendations are made as to the way forward for small (...) firm business ethics research. Questions for investigation are suggested using micro, meso and macro perspectives. Much exploratory work needs to be done to lay the groundwork for this important area of social and commercial research in the future. (shrink)

A characteristic form of philosophical inquiry seeks to answer ‘what is x?’ questions. In this paper, we ask how philosophers do and should adjudicate debates about the correct answer to such questions. We argue that philosophers do and should rely on a distinctive type of pragmatic and meta-representational reasoning – a form of rationalizing self-interpretation – in answering ‘what is x?’ questions. We start by placing our methodological discussion within a broader theoretical framework. We posit a necessary connection between epistemic (...) methodology and metasemantics. In our view, the correct semantic assignment for a representation must be justifiable from the epistemic perspective of the subject herself, given suitable empirical information and cognitive powers. So the upshot of your own ideal, fully informed epistemic methods will determine the correct answers to ‘what is x?’ questions. The bulk of the paper is devoted to articulating and defending our rationalizing self-interpretation account of philosophical methodology. By working through a specific example, we seek to isolate the relevant inputs into deliberation and the methods for adjudicating between competing answers to a ‘what is x?’ question. We suggest that the self-interpretive methods we isolate generalize across the board as a way of identifying the real nature of familiar topics. We also explain how these methods undercut the case for a priori conceptual analysis. (shrink)