A meta-analytic review of studies that experimentally elicited awe and compared the emotion to other conditions (84; 487 effects; 17,801 participants) examined the degree to which experimentally elicited awe (1) affects outcomes relative to other positive emotions (2) affects experience, judgment, behaviour, and physiology, and (3) differs in its effects if the awe state was elicited through positive or threatening contexts. The efficacy of methods that have been used to experimentally elicit awe and the possibility of assessing changes in the (...) state of the self with experimental awe elicitations were also examined. Meta-analyses with robust variance estimation revealed that awe affected outcomes compared to other positive emotions and control conditions; affected experience, judgment, and behaviour; and had similar effects if elicited through positive or threatening contexts. The ability to compare awe to negative emotion states and its effects on physiology was limited by a small number of available effects. Images, videos, autobiographical recall, and naturalistic exposure were effective in eliciting awe. Exploratory analyses suggested that some processes involved in changes in the self can be related to experimental awe elicitations. These findings suggest awe is a discrete emotion and identifies areas for future investigation. (shrink)

Codes of conduct are a conspicuous feature of modern business organization, but doubts have been raised regarding their efficacy in ensuring high standards of behavior. Although some of the issues involved have been discussed at some length in the business ethics literature, the amount of systematic empirical evidence on the impact of codes is very limited. This paper seeks to make a contribution to that body of knowledge by studying the policies and procedures of a sample of banks which have (...) signed a statement on banking and the environment promulgated by the United Nations Development Programme. Although some differences are found when compared with a sample of banks which did not sign the Statement, they are not extensive. The implications of the findings, for codes of conduct and for future empirical studies, are then discussed. (shrink)

Public health advocates, government agencies, and commercial organizations increasingly use nutritional science to guide food choice and diet as a way of promoting health, preventing disease, or marketing products. We argue that in many instances such references to nutritional science can be characterized as nutritional scientism. We examine three manifestations of nutritional scientism: the simplification of complex science to increase the persuasiveness of dietary guidance, superficial and honorific references to science in order to justify cultural or ideological views about food (...) and health, and the presumption that nutrition is the primary value of food. This paper examines these forms of nutritional scientism in the context of biopolitics to address bioethical concerns related to the misuse of scientific evidence to make claims regarding the effect of diet on health. We argue that nutritional scientism has ethical implications for individual responsibility and freedom, concerning iatrogenic harm, and for well-being. (shrink)

When people want to identify the causes of an event, assign credit or blame, or learn from their mistakes, they often reflect on how things could have gone differently. In this kind of reasoning, one considers a counterfactual world in which some events are different from their real-world counterparts and considers what else would have changed. Researchers have recently proposed several probabilistic models that aim to capture how people do (or should) reason about counterfactuals. We present a new model and (...) show that it accounts better for human inferences than several alternative models. Our model builds on the work of Pearl (2000), and extends his approach in a way that accommodates backtracking inferences and that acknowledges the difference between counterfactual interventions and counterfactual observations. We present six new experiments and analyze data from four experiments carried out by Rips (2010), and the results suggest that the new model provides an accurate account of both mean human judgments and the judgments of individuals. (shrink)

They conclude that desireless action is action performed without certain desires; other desires are permissible.In this book, the author surveys the ...

'Correlations without correlata' is an influential way of thinking of quantum entanglement as a form primitive correlation which nonetheless maintains locality of quantum theory. A number of arguments have sought to suggest that such a view leads either to internal inconsistency or to conflict with the empirical predictions of quantum mechanics. Here wew explicate and provide a partial defence of the notion, arguing that these objections import unwarranted conceptions of correlation properties as hidden variables. A more plausible account sees the (...) properties in terms of Everettian relative states. The ontological robustness of entanglement is also defended from recent objections. (shrink)

One common interpretation of the orthodox Indian prohibition on desire is that it is a prohibition on phenomenologically salient desires. The Nyāyasūtra and Brahmasiddhi seem to support this view. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken. The Vedāntins draw a distinction between counting some fact as a reason for acting and counting one's desire as a reason for acting, and prohibit the latter. The Naiyāyikas draw a distinction between desiring to avoid some state of affairs and believing that some state (...) of affairs is unimportant , and advocate the latter. Both deny that the state to which the English word ‘desire’ refers is a necessary condition of acting. (shrink)

Deutsch and Hayden have proposed an alternative formulation of quantum mechanics which is completely local. We argue that their proposal must be understood as having a form of ‘gauge freedom’ according to which mathematically distinct states are physically equivalent. Once this gauge freedom is taken into account, their formulation is no longer local.

Our understanding of how evolution acts on biological networks remains patchy, as is our knowledge of how that action is best identified, modelled and understood. Starting with network structure and the evolution of protein–protein interaction networks, we briefly survey the ways in which network evolution is being addressed in the fields of systems biology, development and ecology. The approaches highlighted demonstrate a movement away from a focus on network topology towards a more integrated view, placing biological properties centre‐stage. We argue (...) that there remains great potential in a closer synergy between evolutionary biology and biological network analysis, although that may require the development of novel approaches and even different analogies for biological networks themselves. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Collective Violence, Sacrifice, and Conflict Resolution in the Works of Paul Claudel Christopher G. Flood University ofSurrey, England Claudel's career as a writer spanned almost seventy years, from the 1880s to the 1950s. The publication of his collected works now runs to twenty-nine large volumes, excluding his correspondence and diaries, so a brief overview of any particular dimension of his writing must necessarily be reductive. On the other (...) hand, Claudel's work lends itself particularly well to discussion in terms of the relationship between violence, sacrifice and religion. In a valuable study published more than twenty years ago under the title, Claudel et l'usurpateur, Jacques Petit drew attention to the recurrence in Claudel's plays, and in many of his non- fictional writings, of a narrative structure hinging on acts of usurpation and counter-usurpation. There is a pattern of conflictual rivalry, domination and coercion, whereby acts of aggression are ultimately legitimized, or in some sense excused, in the light of a positive outcome, providential necessity and/or reconciliation between usurper and victim. Claudel's world is indeed "a world of violence," as Petit puts it (79, ch. title).1 It is also a world ofreligion: after his return to the Catholic Church in 1890, all of Claudel's major dramatic works intermesh the process of usurpation with themes deriving from his religious beliefs, and the same is true of many of his non-fictional writings. My aim is not to reinvent the wheel by going back over all of the terrain mapped out by Petit. Nor do I intend to rework Petit's empirical model wholesale in the light of René Girard's anthropological model of mimetic desire and sacrificial violence, although there are obvious areas of convergence between them. However, I shall draw implicitly on both, in order to Translations throughout this paper are my own. 160Christopher G. Flood argue that the notion of sacrifice, which is central to the resolution of rivalries in Claudel's major plays, is transformed into an idiosyncratic conception of international conflict resolution in various non-fictional writings which emerge from his forty years of experience in his parallel career as a profes sional diplomat.2 1 shall start with a schematic discussion of certain features of the plays. The first point relates to Claudel's assumptions concerning the mechanisms involved in the outbreak of individual or collective violence. It needs to be emphasized that in his plays the path towards violence is always opened by a withdrawal or weakening of temporal and/or spiritual authority. This allows the crystallization, and the direct expression, of latent rivalries which eventually lead to an explosion of aggression. The causes of the violence invariably center on the fact that one individual or group is in possession of an object which is coveted by another individual or group. The question of whether Claudel himself appears to recognize a mimetic element in this pattern of behavior would be too complex, and too fraught with imponderables, to discuss here, but there are some indications that he does so. Whatever the case, in the absence of authority, rivalry and jealousy engender verbal, and usually physical conflict, culminating in usurpation of the desired object. Thus, for example, in Tête d'or, the elderly Emperor of the unnamed kingdom has neither the authority nor the resolution to defend his kingdom against external invasion, or against the man who saves the kingdom only to usurp the throne and murder the Emperor himself.3 Similarly, in the second version of La Ville, neither Besme, the positivistic scientist and plutocrat who has created the godless City, nor his brother Lambert, the former politician, has the will to maintain or defend the society against the tensions emerging within it. Thus, the City dissolves first into immobility, then revolution. Or again, in the family drama of La Jeune Fille Violaine (second version), the obsessional rage andjealousy ofMara towards her elder sister, Violaine, explodes into coercion, slander, and horrific violence when their father absents himself from the farm for an indefinite period, leaving Violaine to marry Jacques Hury: the fact that Hury loves Violaine, but does not love Mara, makes the latter all the... (shrink)

Recently, Brukner and Zeilinger have presented a number of arguments suggesting that the Shannon information is not well defined as a measure of information in quantum mechanics. If established, this result would be highly significant, as the Shannon information is fundamental to the way we think about information not only in classical but also in quantum information theory. On consideration, however, these arguments are found unsuccessful; I go on to suggest how they might be arising as a consequence of Zeilinger`s (...) proposed foundational principle for quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Many contemporary authors argue that since certain Hindu texts and traditions claim that all living beings are fundamentally the same as Brahman (God), these texts and traditions provide the basis for an environmental ethic. I outline three common versions of this argument, and argue that each fails to meet at least one criterion for an environmental ethic. This doesn’t mean, however, that certain Hindu texts and traditions do not provide the basis for an environmental ethic. In the last section of (...) the paper I briefly outline and defend an alternative, according to which all plants and animals have intrinsic value and direct moral standing in virtue of having a good. (shrink)

How should our beliefs change over time? The standard answer to this question is the Bayesian one. But while the Bayesian account works well with respect to beliefs about the world, it breaks down when applied to self-locating or de se beliefs. In this work I explore ways to extend Bayesianism in order to accommodate de se beliefs. I begin by assessing, and ultimately rejecting, attempts to resolve these issues by appealing to Dutch books and chance-credence principles. I then propose (...) and examine several accounts of the dynamics of de se beliefs. These examinations suggest that an extension of Bayesianism to de se beliefs will require some uncomfortable choices. I conclude by laying out the options available, and assessing the prospects of each. (shrink)

Many contemporary authors argue that the Hindu doctrines of karma and/or rebirth entail that both human and nonhuman entities in nature are interconnected, and hence have intrinsic value. These doctrines do not entail that entities in nature are interconnected, however. Even if they did, the interconnectedness of entities cannot establish their intrinsic value. If the interconnectedness of entities did establish their intrinsic value, the account would attribute equal intrinsic value to all things, both natural and non-natural, and hence, fail to (...) meet the “non-vacuity requirement.” The doctrines of karma and/or rebirth do entail that nonhuman entities in nature have intrinsic value, but not because they are interconnected. First, the doctrines entail that distinctions among embodied beings are trivial. If human beings have intrinsic value—as is typically assumed—and if the differences between a human embodiment and an animal or plant embodiment are trivial, then these differences seem less able to explain differences in the intrinsic value of humans, animals, and plants. Second, the best explanation of the connection between the treatment of nonhuman entities and the merit or demerit that arises as a result is that all living beings are intrinsically valuable. Other explanations are circular, or fail to explain the severe punishments that result from harming nonhuman entities. (shrink)

Alfred R. Mele defends a broadly 'Humean' theory of motivation. One common dispute between Humeans and anti-Humeans has to do with whether or not a desire is required to motivate action. For the most part Mele avoids this dispute. He claims that there are reasons to think that beliefs cannot motivate action, but finally allows that it might be that it is a contingent fact that beliefs can motivate action in human beings. Instead Mele argues for the claim that certain (...) kinds of desires - namely action-desires - are 'paradigmatic motivational attitudes', similar in an essential way to intentions, and that beliefs are not. Hence it is a necessary truth that action-desires encompass motivation to act; if beliefs encompass motivation to act, it is not a necessary truth that they do. In this way Mele preserves some of what is intuitively right about the Humean account, while admitting that the arguments normally offered in support of the standard Humean claims are open to objections. I argue that Mele's account is implausible. His argument against the claim that state-desires are essentially motivation-encompassing attitudes is convincing, but the same argument proves that action-desires are not essentially motivation-encompassing either. If this difference between desires and beliefs cannot be maintained, however, then Mele fails to defend any motivationally relevant difference between beliefs and desires. (shrink)

One common interpretation of the orthodox Indian prohibition on desire is that it is a prohibition on phenomenologically salient desires. The Nyāyasūtra and Brahmasiddhi seem to support this view. I argue that this interpretation is mistaken. The Vedāntins draw a distinction between counting some fact as a reason for acting (icchā) and counting one's desire (rāga) as a reason for acting, and prohibit the latter. The Naiyāyikas draw a distinction between desiring to avoid some state of affairs (dveṣa) and believing (...) that some state of affairs is unimportant (vairāgya), and advocate the latter. Both deny that the state to which the English word 'desire' refers is a necessary condition of acting. (shrink)

Roy W. Perrett argues that the Hindu sage, like the western moral saint, seems precluded from pursuing non-moral ends for their own sakes. If he is precluded from pursuing non-moral ends for their own sakes, then he is precluded from pursuing non-moral virtues, interests, activities, relationships, and so on for their own sakes. A life devoid of every such pursuit seems deficient. Hence, the Hindu sage seems to forsake the good life. In response, I adapt a reply that Vanessa Carbonell (...) offers in the context of the moral saint. The Hindu sage might pursue non-moral virtues, interests, activities, relationships, and so on for their own sakes, so long as his motivation to pursue moksa is read de re rather than de dicto. Indeed, this reply is more convincing in the case of the Hindu sage than it is in the case of the moral saint. (shrink)

I argue that there are Leibnizian-style cosmological arguments for the existence of God which start from very mild premises which affirm the mere possibility of a principle of sufficient reason. The utilization of such premises gives a great deal of plausibility to such types of argumentation. I spend the majority of the paper defending three major objections to such mild premises viz., a reductio argument from Peter van Inwagen and William Rowe, which proffers and defends the idea that a necessary (...) proposition cannot explain a contingent one. I, then, turn to an amelioration of the Rowe/van Inwagen argument which attempts to appeal to an entailment relation between explanans and explanandum that is fettered out in terms of relevance logic. Subsequent to dispelling with that worry, I tackle objections to the utilization of weak principles of sufficient reason that depend essentially upon agglomerative accounts of explanation. (shrink)

The new experiments underway at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland may significantly change our understanding of elementary particle physics and, indeed, the universe.

Zusammenfassung Im Beitrag wird untersucht, ob und mit welchen Strategien Athleten sowie Sportorganisationen in Krisen des Sports Soziale Medien in ihrer Krisenkommunikation verwenden. Ausgehend von der Theorie der situationsbezogenen Krisenkommunikation nach Coombs, der bei verschiedenen Krisentypen spezifische Kommunikationsstrategien empfiehlt, werden Facebook-Posts und Tweets/retweets von Spielern und Verbänden bei zwei ausgewählten Krisen während der Fußball-WM 2014 qualitativ analysiert. Den Ergebnissen zufolge werden die Möglichkeiten Sozialer Medien nicht bzw. nur unzureichend genutzt. In beiden Fällen findet keine zeitnahe Krisenkommunikation statt. Bei der Spanien-Krise (...) schätzen die Beteiligten die Krisenschuldzuschreibung durch die Öffentlichkeit und den damit verbundenen Reputationsschaden höher ein als notwendig; im zweiten Fall wird ein individuelles Fehlverhalten trotz vorliegender Krisenhistorie dagegen unterschätzt. (shrink)

This essay argues that unlike many contemporary christological anthropologies that begin with protology or eschatology, T. F. Torrance’s christological anthropology begins with the incarnate Christ as he confronts us in the midst of God’s redemptive act. This approach is labeled Soteriological-Christological Anthropology. Torrance himself does not develop this anthropological method in a sustained manner, therefore, this essay attempts to develop Torrance’s method by examining his doctrine of Christ’s fallen human nature and his epistemology. After developing Torrance’s Soteriological-Christological Anthropology the challenges (...) and prospects of this view are addressed. (shrink)

The Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads characterize the life of the saṃnyāsin as devoid of earthly pleasures. At the same time, these and other texts record confusion and suspicion toward those who would pursue such a life, and disbelief that such severe austerity could be required. To many, the saṃnyāsin seems to forsake the good life in forsaking earthly pleasures. I call this the ‘Precluded Pleasures Objection’ to the saṃnyāsin ideal. A number of replies to the Precluded Pleasures Objection might be drawn from (...) the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads themselves. The first points out that the saṃnyāsin ideal is typically reserved for members of the twice-born classes, and perhaps only brāhmaṇa men, who have reached relative... (shrink)

This concluding section applies the results of the previous part to some important thermodynamical systems. Even if time reversibility is allowed, it is shown that the flow vectors used to derive Onsager reciprocity from time translational invariance is of questionable validity. The fundamental fluctuation dissipation theorem of Callen, Welton, Green and Kubo which underpin descriptions of irreversibility, insofar as they are derived from time translational invariance, is also questioned; from Part I, they cannot be derived properly from time reversal symmetry. (...) The common view of entropy as some type of caloric fluid flow is critiqued as not conforming to the Kelvin Clausius Planck definition. An example of developing reciprocal relations to any order in the coupling indices based on the peculiar physical and defining characteristics of conductive heat is given for the steady state whenever a temperature gradient is present, free from time reversible and translation assumptions. A major challenge in the theory is to extend it to isothermal states. It is concluded that other more deterministic views mediated by authentic work anamnesis may be needed for long term coherence. (shrink)

The literature on Hinduism and the environment is vast, and growing quickly. It has benefitted greatly from the work of scholars in a wide range of disciplines, such as religious studies, Asian studies, history, anthropology, political science, and so on. At the same time, much of this work fails to define key terms and make fundamental assumptions explicit. Consequently, it is at least initially difficult to engage with it philosophically. In the first section of this paper, I clarify a central, (...) implicit assumption that many of the authors working in this area share—namely, the assumption that a plausible environmental ethic must attribute direct moral standing to individual, living, non-human entities in nature, such as animals and plants. In the second section, I offer a preliminary defense of this assumption. In the third section, I respond to objections, and conclude that the argument is at least initially convincing. (shrink)

My thanks to Joydeep Bagchee for his review of my book in this issue of Philosophy East and West. Here I will respond to some of his objections, and offer some points of clarification. First, I want to say something about Bagchee's claim that the earlier papers in which I worked out some of my thoughts on the issue of desireless action are relevant to understanding the book. Bagchee seems to mean this as a criticism, since he says,Each chapter marks (...) a new ingress into the problem. This only becomes clear when one looks at the way Framarin develops the individual approaches in his papers, because he unfortunately does not always spell out the consequences of his moves in the book.I assume that the consequences that .. (shrink)

There is a principle of charity within the Indian philosophical tradition that states that one is justified in reverting to a non-literal interpretation of a text only when a literal reading entails a clear contradiction. Most scholars have argued that a literal interpretation of the Bhagavadgtā's advice to act without desire ought to be abandoned for this reason, because it contradicts the obvious fact that desire is a necessary condition of action. In this paper two often cited arguments for the (...) claim that desire is a necessary condition of action are considered and it is argued that neither is cogent. Consquently, a literal reading of the Bhagavadgtā does not result in a clear contradiction, and the literal reading cannot be abandoned based on the principle of charity. Further, I argue that aside from the unjustified assumption that the text must be in accord with a Humean theory of action, the textual evidence from the Gtā weighs heavily in favor of a literal reading of the advice to act without desire. (shrink)

Medhātithi reduces Manu’s descriptions of the householder as support and source of the āśramas to his performance of the five great sacrifices. Patrick Olivelle characterizes Medhātithi’s interpretation as “radical,” but a strong preliminary case might be made in its favor. Nonetheless, there are a number of reasons to resist Medhātithi’s interpretation. The more plausible interpretation of these passages is also the most straightforward. The householder is the support of the other three āśramas because he is economically productive. He is the (...) source of the āśramas because he has children. The householder is the best of the āśrama, in turn, because the broad benefits that he produces by these means, in particular, are so essentially important. Descriptions of the householder as source and support of the āśramas appear in a wide range of texts. In most of these contexts, they play a central role in justifying the status of the householder. At the same time, these claims often betray the same kind of ambiguity that Medhātithi notes. The fact that Manu counts these descriptions as distinct reasons for the householder’s superiority does not imply that other texts say the same thing. His precedent, however, is worth keeping in mind when interpreting parallel passages in other contexts. (shrink)