Sociopolitical attitudes are often the root cause of conflicts between individuals, groups, and even nations, but little is known about the origin of individual differences in sociopolitical orientation. We test a combination of economic and evolutionary ideas about the degree to which the mating market, sex, age, and income affect sociopolitical orientation. We collected data online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk from 1108 US participants who were between 18 and 60, fluent in English, and single. While ostensibly testing a new (...) online dating website, participants created an online dating profile and described people they would like to date. We manipulated the participants’ popularity in the mating market and the size of the market and then measured participants’ sociopolitical attitudes. The sociopolitical attitudes were reduced to five dimensions via Principal Components Analysis. Both manipulations affected attitudes toward wealth redistribution but were largely not significant predictors of the other dimensions. Men reported more unrestricted sociosexual attitudes, and more support for benevolent sexism and traditional family values, than women did, and women supported wealth redistribution more than men did. There was no sex difference in accepting nonconforming behaviors. Younger people and people with lower incomes were more liberal than older people and people with higher incomes, respectively, regardless of sex. Overall, effects were largely not interactive, suggesting that individual differences in sociopolitical orientation may reflect strategic self-interest and be more straightforward than previously predicted. (shrink)

Function talk is a constant across different life sciences. From macro-evolution to genetics, functions are mentioned everywhere. For example, a limb’s function is to allow movement and RNA polymerases’ function is to transcribe DNA. Biochemistry is not immune from such a characterization; the biochemical world seems to be a chemical world embedded within biological processes. Specifically, biochemists commonly ascribe functions to biomolecules and classify them accordingly. This has been noticed in the recent philosophical literature on biochemical kinds. But while a (...) lot has been written on biological and psychological functions, little has been said explicitly about biochemical fuctions. Here, I explore functional attribution to biochemical molecules. I argue that if we accept this attribution, then biochemical functions are constituted by chemical dispositional properties that causally contribute to selected biological processes. In section 2, I discuss the controversy concerning the characterization of biochemical functions. In section 3, I consider whether a biological or a chemical under- standing of function can be applied to biochemical functions, illustrating the account with the example of vitamin B12. The result is that none of the theories on their own provides an adequate characterization. In section 4, I present an account of biochemical functions. In section 5, I assess this account taking into consideration common requirements for a theory of functions and an objection. (shrink)

In the field of psychology, the topic of everyday life as a specific subject of inquiry has been afforded little attention. Indeed, everyday life has recently been analyzed mainly in psychological studies that examine people's ways of behaving and thinking when they act in situations termed as mundane and ordinary. These studies are mainly carried out in two fields of social psychology which we refer to in general terms as Social Cognition and Social Representation Theory. The aim of this (...) paper is to examine how both these fields treat some of the features commonly attributed to everyday life. In particular, the features of familiarization, continuity and stability over time and automaticity are discussed in order to try to figure out meeting points between the two fields mentioned. (shrink)

In the field of psychology, the topic of everyday life as a specific subject of inquiry has been afforded little attention. Indeed, everyday life has recently been analyzed mainly in psychological studies that examine people's ways of behaving and thinking when they act in situations termed as mundane and ordinary. These studies are mainly carried out in two fields of social psychology which we refer to in general terms as Social Cognition and Social Representation Theory. The aim of this (...) paper is to examine how both these fields treat some of the features commonly attributed to everyday life. In particular, the features of familiarization, continuity and stability over time and automaticity are discussed in order to try to figure out meeting points between the two fields mentioned. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 44, no. 2. © 2018 by Francesca T. Royster 503 Francesca T. Royster Stories We Tell After Orlando We are in Laila’s backyard for a Sunday barbecue, a cool and windy Chicago June day that immediately followed one of the very hottest days so far this year. My partner Annie and I have brought our fouryear -old daughter Cece and her best friend Gilda to (...) the barbecue, and they’ve dressed themselves in layers, with leggings and hoodies and dresses, girlie but survivalist at the same time in their sequins and metallic purple, discowear for preschoolers. We are at the end of a daylong play date, and we’ve already survived two playgrounds and several tearful standoffs, the ups and downs that come with friends so young. So Annie and I come hungry for some time with our adult friends. The closely packed, brick, three-flat apartment buildings on either side of Laila’s yard provide us with some protection from the wind for a good part of the afternoon. But as the sun goes down and the light dims, we pile on more jackets and scarves over our T-shirts and shorts. Gusts of wind randomly fan the flames until they’re visible over the lid of the grill as Laila cooks. I look out for Laila at the grill while Annie plays catch with the little girls. But I have to do so in stealth, because Laila is as stubborn as she is glamorous. She has insisted on wearing a jacket with green flowing sleeves as she tends the fire, and while she has put her long, graying blond hair up in a chop-sticked bun, she has also pulled out long wispy strands to achieve high femme style. It flies around her face in the wind, flirting with the flames. 504 Francesca T. Royster We are all getting together because later this week Laila will be boarding a plane for the twelve-hour flight home to spend time with her aging mother and father for the summer. “Home” is Lebanon, and we have already experienced losing Laila for a several months in 2006 during a visit home when Israel and Lebanon’s tensions grew into a violent series of bombings that came very close to her Beirut apartment. At the nadir of that time, Laila sent us frantic group letters conveying her worry, sometimes her despair, and her flashbacks to her childhood experiences in wartime Beirut in the 1970s and also in the war of 1982. For a few agonizing weeks her letters stopped coming altogether. The afternoon of our barbecue was the same day as the early morning shootings in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where forty -nine people were killed, and at least fifty others were wounded. The victims were all killed while practicing a rite that all of us considered as sacred and necessary as going to church might be for some—dancing the night away in a gay nightclub. This morning we had woken up to this news, blinking still without our glasses, the magnitude of the news headline hard to fathom as it flashed across the screens of our phones. It’s wrong that mass shootings have become part of the fabric of our lives, and probably will be for the lives of Cece and Gilda. The story feels both shocking and sadly familiar: the apparently easy availability of weapons and a pattern of anger taken to the next outrageous step. And then there’s the gay part. Even when I first heard that the shooting took place at a gay bar, I wondered if the killer, Omar Mateen might be gay himself. “Why Orlando?” I thought. Why a mostly unknown dance club? I thought of the messy, red-hot fury of hate and desire when they get mixed up together. As Annie and I talked about the shooting in hushed voices on the playground that morning, we thought of Matthew Shepard. We thought of the recent theory that Shepard most likely knew his killers; that he hung out with them, maybe did drugs with them. Some have written that the narrative that Mateen is gay only confirms the... (shrink)

We present two eye-tracking experiments on the interpretation of sentences like “The tall girl is the only one that …,” which are ambiguous between the anaphoric and the exophoric interpretation. These interpretations differ in informativeness: in a positive context, the exophoric reading entails the anaphoric, while in a negative context the entailment pattern is reversed and the anaphoric reading is the strongest one. We tested whether adults rely on considerations about informativeness in solving the ambiguity. The results show that participants (...) interpreted one exophorically in both positive and negative contexts. Given these findings, we cast doubts on the idea that Informativeness plays a role in ambiguity resolution and proposes a Principle of Maximal Exploitation: When a context is provided, adults extend their domain of evaluation to include the whole scenario, independently from truth-conditional considerations about informativity and strength. (shrink)

Ethnomethodology research has systematically investigated discursive practices of categorisation, looking at the various ways by which social actors ascribe both themselves and others to identity categories to accomplish various kinds of social actions. Drawing on a data corpus of oncological visits collected in an Italian hospital, involving both native and non-native patients, the present work analyses how participants in these intercultural medical encounters invoke and make relevant social identity categories by the marking of collective pronouns in their talk. Our results (...) showed that whilst institutional identities prevailed, categorial formulations related to cultural or linguistic identities were rarely displayed in interactions with non-native patients. Conversational participants made very little of their linguistical or cultural background and when they did so, their cultural and linguistic identities were deployed for rhetorical and pragmatical aims, such as testing and negotiating common knowledge and epistemic authority. This study shows how even speakers’ minimal lexical choices, such as marked pronouns, impact the negotiation of meanings and activities in life-saving sites such as oncological visits. (shrink)

Hugo Grotius’s Philosophorum sententiae de fato et de eo quod in nostra est potestate has, so far, received little scholarly attention, even though it provides us with an interesting insight into Grotius’s philosophical interests. This text, published posthumously in 1648 by Grotius’s wife, Maria van Reigensberg, contains translations of texts from various philosophers on the question of fate. The aim of this article is to 1) place the debate on fate, in which Grotius was actively involved throughout all his (...) life and career, in the wider context of the theological and philosophical debates on free will and divine foreknowledge; 2) acknowledge the importance played by Grotius’s psf, a gnomological collection of philosophical sources ranging from Pythagorean philosophers to early patristic authors all providing different, although converging arguments in favor of the existence of free will; and 3) suggest that debates on fate are distinctively linked by Grotius with those on the importance of law and punishment as a guarantee of order. This “legalistic” interpretation of fate ultimately allows Grotius to reconcile divine decrees with human liberty. (shrink)

Most of the logics of grounding that have so far been proposed contain grounding axioms, or grounding rules, for the connectives of conjunction, disjunction and negation, but little attention has been dedicated to the implication connective. The present paper aims at repairing this situation by proposing adequate grounding principles for relevant implication. Because of the interaction between negation and implication, new grounding principles concerning negation will also arise.

We live in times of 'apology mania', says Lee Taft, or at least 'national conversation' about the role and meaning of apologies. Roy Brooks talks of an 'age of apology'. Some 10 years after these pronouncements, little has changed. Apologies are ubiquitous and debated in the public and political domain. And they continue to be used and imported into legal jurisdictions. For instance, legislation removes civil liability for saying 'sorry' in certain contexts and may reward apologies in mitigation of (...) sentence. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on possible boosting factors for the sense of we-agency in joint actions. My aim is to shed light on a factor that, until now, has received little or no consideration at all, and that I call vitality attunement. I argue that vitality attunement stands between two other boosting factors for the sense of we-agency—i.e., rhythmic alignment and emotional attunement. Investigating two examples of joint action, i.e., dancing and joint musical performances, I show that vitality (...) attunement is not reducible to either of the other two boosting factors and that it deserves to be studied on its own as a distinctive boosting factor for the sense of we-agency. In order to argue for my thesis, I first introduce some of the most crucial aspects of the sense of we-agency in joint actions, then I analyze how rhythmic alignment and emotional attunement have been argued to foster such an experience, and finally I introduce vitality attunement, describing how it too can be a boosting factor for the sense of we and of we-agency. (shrink)

The phenomenon of defeasibility has long been a central theme in legal literature. This essay aims to shed new light on that phenomenon by clarifying some fundamental conceptual issues. First, the most widespread definition of legal defeasibility is examined and criticized. The essay shows that such a definition is poorly constructed, inaccurate and generates many problems. Indeed, the definition hides the close relationship between legal defeasibility and legal interpretation. Second, this essay argues that no new definition is needed. I will (...) show that from an interpretative standpoint, there is nothing special about legal defeasibility. Contrary to what some authors maintain, no unique or privileged source of legal defeasibility exists, nor are there privileged arguments to justify it. Specifically, legal defeasibility refers to interpretative outcomes deriving from interpretative arguments that, on the one hand, are very different from one another, and, on the other, are often employed to justify different interpretative outcomes. In the legal field, the problems related to defeasibility have little in common with the problems that this label covers in other areas—such as logic or epistemology—and they are nothing but the well-known problems related to legal interpretation. In conclusion, this paper argues that as far as legal argumentation is concerned, the notion of legal defeasibility lacks explanatory power, and it should be abandoned. (shrink)

Problem solving can be readily described as one of the key activities regularly performed by professionals in any workplace setting. Despite its importance, however, there is relatively little linguistic research which looks at the complex ways in which problems are constructed in discourse. This article sees the enactment of a ‘problem’ as a discursive phenomenon with fluid boundaries. It draws on business meeting data recorded in multinational companies in Europe and focuses on excerpts identified by the participants as having (...) a PbS function. The data show that problem solving processes and practice are anchored to the structure of the organizations, the local history and employees’ shared perceptions of professional practices and hierarchies in their workplace. The analysis also shows two focal points in the PbS talk of the participants in this study, namely identification of a problem and its ownership. These, however, are not predetermined starting points but rather locally constructed in relation to the status, expertise and shared/past history of the interactants. (shrink)

BackgroundNeuroimaging studies have shown a complex pattern of brain activation during perception of a pleasant odor and during its olfactory imagery. To date, little is known regarding changes in motor cortex excitability during these tasks. Bergamot essential oil is extensively used in perfumes and cosmetics for its pleasantness. Therefore, to further our understanding of the human sense of smell, this study aimed to investigate the effect of perception and imagery of a pleasant odor on motor cortex using Transcranial magnetic (...) stimulation.Materials and MethodsWe examined the primary motor cortex excitability during perception of a pleasant odor or perception of odorless saline. Furthermore, we tested the effect of olfactory imagery of BEO on corticospinal excitability. The increase in motor evoked potential amplitude was correlated with personality dimensions scores, pleasantness, vividness, and general imagery ability.ResultsThe results indicate that the corticospinal excitability changed after both perception and imagery of a pleasant odor. The correlation analysis shows an association with neuroticism personality trait and with general olfactory imagery ability.ConclusionBoth perception of a pleasant odor and its olfactory imagery modulate motor cortex excitability. The enhanced brain activation is affected by specific individual characteristics. Overall, our findings provide physiological evidence for a complex interaction between the olfactory and motor systems. (shrink)

Cognitive reflection is recognized as an important skill, which is necessary for making advantageous decisions. Even though gender differences in the Cognitive Reflection test appear to be robust across multiple studies, little research has examined the source of the gender gap in performance. In Study 1, we tested the invariance of the scale across genders. In Study 2, we investigated the role of math anxiety, mathematical reasoning, and gender in CRT performance. The results attested the measurement equivalence of the (...) Cognitive Reflection Test – Long, when administered to male and female students. Additionally, the results of the mediation analysis showed an indirect effect of gender on CRT-L performance through mathematical reasoning and math anxiety. The direct effect of gender was no longer statistically significant after accounting for the other variables. The current findings suggest that cognitive reflection is affected by numerical skills and related feelings. (shrink)

Background:Collaboration between physicians and nurses is key to improving patient care. We know very little about collaboration and interdisciplinary practice in African healthcare settings.Research question/aim:The purpose of this study was to explore the ethical challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in clinical practice and education in Botswana Participants and research context: This qualitative descriptive study was conducted with 39 participants (20 physicians and 19 nurses) who participated in semi-structured interviews at public hospitals purposely selected to represent the three levels of hospitals (...) in Botswana (referral, district, and primary).Ethical considerations:Following Institutional Review Board Approval at the University of Pennsylvania and the Ministry of Health in Botswana, participants’ written informed consent was obtained.Findings:Respondents’ ages ranged from 23 to 60 years, and their duration of work experience ranged from 0.5 to 32 years. Major qualitative themes that emerged from the data centered on the nature of the work environment, values regarding nurse–doctor collaboration, the nature of such collaboration, resources available for supporting collaboration and the smooth flow of work, and participants’ views about how their work experiences could be improved.Discussion:Participants expressed concerns that their work environment compromised their ability to provide high-quality and safe care to their patients. The physician staffing structure was described as consisting of a few specialists at the top, a vacuum in the middle that should be occupied by senior doctors, and junior doctors at the bottom—and not a sufficient number of nursing staff.Conclusion:Collaboration between physicians and nurses is critical to optimizing patients’ health outcomes. This is true not only in the United States but also in developing countries, such as Botswana, where health care professionals reported that their ethical challenges arose from resource shortages, differing professional attitudes, and a stressful work environment. (shrink)

Objects of knowledge exist within material, immaterial, and conceptual worlds. Once the world is conceived from the perspective of others, the physical ontology of modern science no longer functions as a standard by which to understand other orderings of reality, whether from ethnographical or historical sources. Because premodern and non-western sources attest to a plurality of sciences practiced in accordance with different ways of worldmaking from that of the modern West, their study belongs to the history of science, the philosophy (...) of science, and the sociology of science, as well as the anthropology of science. In Worldmaking and Cuneiform Antiquity, Francesca Rochberg extends an anthropology of science to the historical world of cuneiform texts of ancient Babylonia. Exploring how Babylonian science has been understood, she proposes a new direction for scholarship by recognizing the world of ancient science, not as a less developed form of modern science, but as legitimate and real in its own right. (shrink)

In his examination of the concepts of evil and impermanence, entitled “Evil and the Problem of Impermanence in Medieval Japanese Philosophy”, Yujin Nagasawa addresses four responses to the problem of impermanence, arguing that the only satisfactory response to the problem leads to an implication about supernaturalism. As Nagasawa puts it, “the problem of impermanence can be construed as a partial argument for supernaturalism and against naturalism”. In response to Nagasawa, I will take up the challenge of naturalism by trying to (...) deconstruct the arguments against indifferentism in order to reformulate and thus strengthen Nagasawa’s response to the problem of impermanence. I will then turn to the radicalization of this thesis by drawing out implications through a comparison with Dōgen’s thought. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed a growing number of states around the world relying on border control measures, such as immigration detention, to govern human mobility and control the movements of those classified as “unauthorised non-citizens.” In response to this, an increasing number of scholars from several disciplines, including psychologists, have begun to examine this phenomenon. In spite of the widespread concerns raised, few studies have been conducted inside immigration detention sites, primarily due to difficulties in gaining access. This body of (...) research becomes even scanter when it comes to the experiences of detained women. This study is the first of its kind to have surveyed 93 women confined in an Italian immigration detention facility. A partial mediation model with latent variables was tested through partial least structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings revealed the negative impact that unfair immigration procedures have on detained women’s human dignity, which in turn negatively affects their self-rated physical and mental health. Overall, our study sheds light on the dehumanisation and damage to human dignity that immigration detention entails, as well as its negative impact on the health of those affected. This evidence reinforces the image of these institutions as sites of persistent injustice, while stressing the need to envision alternative justice-oriented forms to address human mobility. (shrink)

This paper employs the interpretative lens provided by stakeholder theory to garner novel insights for research and managerial practices within the framework of high-reliable organizations (HROs). It proposes an interpretative matrix for analyzing and explaining how stakeholders’ behaviors and interactions can transition from a “strategic” to a “responsibility” approach in the context of risk management. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology based on a case study of the Italian Civil Protection—an HRO—during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the analysis of institutional sources (...) and reports, we apply two theoretical frameworks to examine how the organization's engagement strategy changed in response to an unexpected event. This case serves to illuminate the main implications and practical applications of shared conceptual reflections. The principal implications are traced in terms of theory, practice, and policy, focusing on the joint examination of organizational reliability and stakeholder engagement theory, the potential utility of the proposed case study, and the feasible policy actions. The main limitations of this study lie in the purely qualitative methodology employed, the nature of the organization analyzed, and the territorial scope of the study. Future works will address an empirical investigation of the theoretical relations uncovered herein, as well as the expansion of the spectrum of analysis (e.g., private organizations) and a cross-country widening of the level of analysis. (shrink)

Criminal liability for acts committed by AI systems has recently become a hot legal topic. This paper includes three different contributions. The first contribution is an analysis of the extent to which an AI system can satisfy the requirements for criminal liability: accomplishing an actus reus, having the corresponding mens rea, possessing the cognitive capacities needed for responsibility. The second contribution is a discussion of criminal activity accomplished by an AI entity, with reference to a recent case involving an online (...) bot, the Random Darknet Shopper. This discussion will provide the context for the analysis of commonalities and differences between criminal activities by humans and by artificial systems. The third contribution concerns the evaluation of different ways of addressing criminal activities by AI systems in a regulatory perspective. (shrink)

In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...) other. (shrink)

Metaphor has been considered as a cognitive process, independent of the verbal versus visual mode, through which an unknown conceptual domain is understood in terms of another known conceptual domain. Metaphor might instead be viewed as a cognitive process, dependent on the mode, which leads to genuinely new knowledge via ignorance. First, I argue that there are two main senses of ignorance at stake when we understand a metaphor: we ignore some existing properties of the known domain in the sense (...) that we disregard or neglect them; we ignore some “non-existing” properties of the known domain in the sense that they are not a piece of information belonging to the known domain, but emerge in metaphor interpretation. Secondly, I consider a metaphor as a reasoning device, guiding the interpreters along a path of inferences to a conclusion, which attributes to the target some properties of the source. In this path, interpreters might discover the ignored existing properties of the known domain and/or recover the “non-existing” properties, inferring or imagining the missing piece of information. Finally, I argue that, especially in visual metaphors, this process is guided by a “sentiment of rationality”, tracking a disruption of existing familiar conceptualisations of objects and/or actions and a recovery of ignored properties. (shrink)

In this paper, I interview Francesca De Vecchi (Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in Vita-Salute San Raffaele University) about her qualitative ontology and its social and normative implications. If at the foundation of our lifeworld there are significantly qualitative experiences, phenomenology can investigate the most important contemporary issues, such as gender disparity, socio-virtuality depersonalizations and political urgencies.