The integration of event-related potential and functional magnetic resonance imaging helps to obtain and study neural networks with high temporal and spatial resolution. EEG/fMRI data proves that in the visual tristimulus oddball paradigm, two P300 potentials induced by target stimulation and novel stimulation are detected at the frontal-middle, center, and mid-apical electrodes. Previous studies have shown that P3a and P3b have different spatial distributions of brain activation, but it is unclear whether they have the same neural mechanism. The purpose of (...) this study is to determine the neuropsychological mechanisms of P3a and P3b, as well as the spatiotemporal differences in neurodynamics between the two ERP subcomponents. In a group of 25 subjects, P300 ERP induced by target stimulation and novel stimulation can be detected at the Fz, Cz, and Pz electrodes. At Cz and Fz, compared with P3b related to the target stimulus, the P3a related to the novel stimulus has a higher amplitude and the waveform declines more slowly. But at Pz, P3b has a higher amplitude than P3a. P3a appeared earlier than P3b at Cz and Fz, but the opposite phenomenon was observed at the Pz electrode. The activated brain regions of P3a included the left frontal-parietal lobe region, left anterior wedge lobe region, and right insula, while the target-driven P3b was significantly associated with BOLD changes in the bilateral fusiform gyrus, the left frontal region, and the bilateral insula. The results showed that the integration of the spatial and temporal information of the two imaging modes, namely, ERP and fMRI, proves the existence of the different brain function processes of the two P300 subcomponents. Through the analysis of the composition of P300, the results further proved that the top-down and bottom-up processing processes have played a role in the occurrence of attention capture. It is just that the modulation effects of the two processing mechanisms are different in different tasks. Therefore, it should be noted that the captured neural mechanism is not a single top-down or bottom-up processing process but should be the result of the interaction between the two. (shrink)

“法律行為”是民法理論中的一個基本概念，是民法基本原則以及民法體系得以建立的基石。本書追溯了這一概念的歷史發展與社會理論基礎，剖析了法律行為傳統概念中以意思表示為核心的缺陷與困境，提出以規範性為核心取 代意思表示重新構建民法體系，才能符合理論與司法實踐的需要。法律行為國內少有研究，以專著形式的探究更是付之闕如，本書填補了近年來的理論空白。.

Why do relationships of friendship and love support partiality, but not relationships of hatred or commitments of racism? Where does partiality end and why? I take the intuitive starting point that important cases of partiality are meaningful. I develop a view whereby meaning is understood in terms of transcending self-limitations in order to connect with things of external value. I then show how this view can be used to distinguish central cases of legitimate partiality from cases of illegitimate partiality and (...) how it puts pressure on the traditional way of thinking about partiality. (shrink)

Several philosophers have argued that ‘constraints’ constrain (and thereby explain) by virtue of being modally stronger than ordinary laws of nature. In this way, a constraint applies to all possible systems, for a variety of possibility that is broader (that is, more inclusive) than the variety we employ when we say that the ordinary laws of nature apply to all physically possible systems. Explanations by constraint are thus more broadly unifying than ordinary causal explanations. Philosophical examples of good candidates for (...) constraints have heretofore been drawn almost exclusively from fundamental physics. This paper argues for the existence of such constraints (even multiple levels of them) in at least one human science (linguistics), not just in physics. (shrink)

Our view is that fundamental appetitive and defensive motivation systems evolved to mediate a complex array of adaptive behaviors that support the organism’s drive to survive—defending against threat and securing resources. Activation of these motive systems engages processes that facilitate attention allocation, information intake, sympathetic arousal, and, depending on context, will prompt tactical actions that can be directed either toward or away from the strategic goal, whether defensively or appetitively determined. Research from our laboratory that measures autonomic, central, and somatic (...) reactions when processing emotional scenes is described which indicates that motivationally relevant cues, whether appetitive or defensive, capture attention preferentially, prompt enhanced perceptual processing and information gathering, and occasion metabolic arousal that mobilizes the organism for coping actions. (shrink)

Not all scientific explanations work by describing causal connections between events or the world's overall causal structure. In addition, mathematicians regard some proofs as explaining why the theorems being proved do in fact hold. This book proposes new philosophical accounts of many kinds of non-causal explanations in science and mathematics.

Williams’s attack on the ‘morality system’ in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy was preceded by his famous but misunderstood essay ‘Moral Luck’. This essay pursues two principal aims. First and foremost, I take a fresh look at Williams’s argument in ‘Moral Luck’, to assess its defensibility. Second, I investigate how Williams’s treatment of moral luck shapes and informs the wider assault on the ‘morality system’ which reached its fullest expression in the later work. We can learn something about both (...) of Williams’s projects—his defence of moral luck, and his attack on the morality system—by seeing how each of these projects contributes to the other. Drawing on Williams’s discussion of Gauguin’s desertion of his family for a life of artistic endeavour in Tahiti, six interpretations of Williams’s argument are suggested. While some of these are better than others, none is completely satisfying or convincing. It is suggested, in conclusion, that the attack on anti-luckism does not make an indispensable contribution to Williams’s attack on the morality system. (shrink)

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by social/communicative difficulties and perseverative behaviours. While research on autism has flourished recently, few studies have been conducted on the disorder in non‐Western contexts. In low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs), biomedical research on autism is required to better understand the needs of the population and to develop contextually appropriate interventions. However, autistic individuals are a vulnerable study population and LMICs present with various considerations. While the presentation of autism is heterogeneous, stigma (...) is a common social consequence affecting research. Drawing specifically on the South African context, the ethical intersections of these issues are discussed, along with the limitations of the current informed consent process. Community engagement is recommended as an adjunct to informed consent to ensure that biomedical research is conducted in a more inclusive way. Practical pointers are provided for implementing systematic support for conducting community engagement alongside biomedical research. (shrink)

A vital step to successfully orienting Deleuze with biosemiotics (and theories of biological complexity overall) is to discover a coherent scientific throughline in his work that also accounts for the aesthetic/creative dimension of his philosophy. This requires the heterodox move (from a Deleuzean point of view) of giving priority to the organism. I argue that Deleuze’s treatment of the organism does more than signal a superficial relation to biological complexity theory that, as a result of his nuanced take on the (...) matter, undermines the value of the organic body to his system. Instead, we can recognize a working theory of autopoiesis in the early Deleuze that scaffolds as well as substantiates his later ethological and biosemiotic observations and reveals a definite, albeit minimal, notion of subjectivity in his work. Most importantly, reorienting his logic of sense as a logic of sense-making, or the context-dependent signification between system and environment (Thompson, 2007), allows us to begin the work of mining a scientific throughline in Deleuze’s work akin to biological complexity theory that is of value to both Deleuze studies and biosemiotics. (shrink)

As sophisticated artificial intelligence software becomes more ubiquitously and more intimately integrated within domains of traditionally human endeavor, many are raising questions over how responsibility (be it moral, legal, or causal) can be understood for an AI’s actions or influence on an outcome. So called “responsibility gaps” occur whenever there exists an apparent chasm in the ordinary attribution of moral blame or responsibility when an AI automates physical or cognitive labor otherwise performed by human beings and commits an error. Healthcare (...) administration is an industry ripe for responsibility gaps produced by these kinds of AI. The moral stakes of healthcare are often life and death, and the demand for reducing clinical uncertainty while standardizing care incentivizes the development and integration of AI diagnosticians and prognosticators. In this paper, we argue that (1) responsibility gaps are generated by “black box” healthcare AI, (2) the presence of responsibility gaps (if unaddressed) creates serious moral problems, (3) a suitable solution is for relevant stakeholders to voluntarily responsibilize the gaps, taking on some moral responsibility for things they are not, strictly speaking, blameworthy for, and (4) should this solution be taken, black box healthcare AI will be permissible in the provision of healthcare. (shrink)

Sir Ernst Gombrich and the Barber from Tuscany In the spirit of Sir Ernst Gombrich, this essay uses an anecdote—a chat between Gombrich and a barber from Tuscany—to illustrate a deeper point, namely, how cultural memory, tradition, and a canon give rise to an implied language of culture and cultural value. Gombrich staunchly defended tradition against relativism. By relativism, he meant something like "radical subjectivism." To his mind, subjectivism (in the cultural and social sense of the term) is not only (...) impossible, since meaning is conferred through culture and society, but it is also dangerous (in the cultural and ethical sense of the term), since it denies the existence of shared values. Against consensus on the one hand and radical subjectivism on the other, Gombrich advocated a middle way: criticism and self-criticism to ensure latitude; the search for "truth" to ensure a limited plurality of interpretations. (shrink)

The pattern of recourse to late medieval church courts suggests how late medieval Christians imagined their Church. Their choice of defendants, crimes, and punishments allowed them to define their communities. In the case of excommunication for debt, the use of procedural excommunications announced from the choir screen after the bidding prayers permitted the exclusion of debtors from the sacramental and economic community. Indeed, failure to pay one’s debts was as uncharitable as usury because the two communities were imperfectly distinguished – (...) until c. 1500. (shrink)

Humboldts texttheoretischer Ansatz, dessen Einfluß auf die moderne (Text-)Linguistik größer ist als bisher wahrgenommen, wird im ersten Teil dieses Bandes erstmals zusammenhängend nachgewiesen.

Ethical approval must be obtained before medical research can start. We describe the differences in EA for an pseudonymous, non-interventional, observational European study. Sixteen European national coordinators of the international study on very old intensive care patients answered an online questionnaire concerning their experience getting EA. N = 8/16 of the NCs could apply at one single national ethical committee, while the others had to apply to various regional ECs and/or individual hospital institutional research boards. The time between applying for (...) EA and the first decision varied between 7 days and 300 days. In 9/16 informed consent from the patient was not deemed necessary; in 7/16 informed consent was required from the patient or relatives. The upload of coded data to a central database required additional information in 14/16. In 4/16 the NCs had to ask separate approval to keep a subject identification code list to de-pseudonymize the patients if questions would occur. Only 2/16 of the NCs agreed that informed consent was necessary for this observational study. Overall, 6/16 of the NCs were satisfied with the entire process and 8/16 were unsatisfied. 11/16 would welcome a European central EC that would judge observational studies for all European countries. Variations in the process and prolonged time needed to get EA for observational studies hampers inclusion of patients in some European countries. This might have a negative influence on the external validity. Further harmonization of ethical approval process across Europe is welcomed for low-risk observational studies. Getting ethical approval for low-risk, non-interventional, observational studies varies enormously across European countries. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose the concept of controversing as an approach for engaging citizens in debates around the datafied city and in shaping responsible smart cities that incorporate diverse public values. Controversing addresses the engagement of citizens in discussions about the datafication of urban life by productively deploying controversies around data. Attempts to engage citizens in the smart city frequently involve ‘neutral’ data visualisations aimed at making abstract sociotechnical issues more tangible. In addition, citizens are meant to gather around (...) issues already defined externally by others. Instead, we focus on how people might become engaged and develop the capacity to shape alternative urban futures. We suggest that making controversial apparently less contentious issues in the smart city allows people to identify their own issues, come together temporarily as a public, imagine alternative possibilities and thus develop capacities for action. In this context, controversies can act as agents of change and open up new spaces for participation and action. We develop the notion of controversing as a deliberate strategy of making datafication controversial, and operationalise the term along the dimensions of recontextualisation, meaning-making and agency. We then look at two cases from the mid-sized city of Amersfoort in the Netherlands, first to test the conceptual potential of controversing to expose how frictions shape citizen engagement, and second to analyse how controversing may frame design-oriented methods aimed at involving diverse participants in discussing datafication and defining public values in the datafied smart city. (shrink)

Worldwide there are substantial differences within and between countries in aggression and violence. Although there are various exceptions, a general rule is that aggression and violence increase as one moves closer to the equator, which suggests the important role of climate differences. While this pattern is robust, theoretical explanations for these large differences in aggression and violence within countries and around the world are lacking. Most extant explanations focus on the influence of average temperature as a factor that triggers aggression, (...) or the notion that warm temperature allows for more social interaction situations in which aggression is likely to unfold. We propose a new model, CLimate, Aggression, and Self-control in Humans, that helps us to understand differences within and between countries in aggression and violence in terms of differences in climate. Lower temperatures, and especially larger degrees of seasonal variation in climate, call for individuals and groups to adopt a slower life history strategy, a greater focus on the future, and a stronger focus on self-control. The CLASH model further outlines that slow life strategy, future orientation, and strong self-control are important determinants of inhibiting aggression and violence. We also discuss how CLASH differs from other recently developed models that emphasize climate differences for understanding conflict. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and societal importance of climate in shaping individual and societal differences in aggression and violence. (shrink)

In his posthumously published Living Up to Death Paul Ricoeur left an impressive testimony on what it means to live at a high old age with death approaching. In this article I present him as a teacher who reminds us of valuable lessons taught by patients in palliative care and their caretakers who accompany them on their way to death, and also as a guide in our search for a modern ars moriendi, after—what many at least experience as—the breakdown of (...) traditional religious belief in a personal afterlife. These lessons can be summarized in the following theses. ‘Living up to death, one cannot experience one’s own death. Therefore, never consider someone dying as moribund’. ‘Though everybody is alone in dying, nobody should die alone.’ ‘The preparation for death is an affirmation of life’. ‘Life experienced as a gift can be given up’. The plausibility of the last thesis, however, may go beyond the confines of austere philosophical thinking. (shrink)

In 1984, Danecki proved that satisfiability in IPDL, i.e., Propositional Dynamic Logic (PDL) extended with an intersection operator on programs, is decidable in deterministic double exponential time. Since then, the exact complexity of IPDL has remained an open problem: the best known lower bound was the ExpTime one stemming from plain PDL until, in 2004, the first author established ExpSpace-hardness. In this paper, we finally close the gap and prove that IPDL is hard for 2-ExpTime, thus 2-ExpTime-complete. We then sharpen (...) our lower bound, showing that it even applies to IPDL without the test operator interpreted on tree structures. (shrink)

In the last five years there have been a number of results about the computable content of the prime, saturated, or homogeneous models of a complete decidable theory T in the spirit of Vaught's "Denumerable models of complete theories" combined with computability methods for degrees d ≤ 0′. First we recast older results by Goncharov, Peretyat'kin, and Millar in a more modern framework which we then apply. Then we survey recent results by Lange, "The degree spectra of homogeneous models," which (...) generalize the older results and which include positive results on when a certain homogeneous model of T has an isomorphic copy of a given Turing degree. We then survey Lange's "A characterization of the 0-basis homogeneous bounding degrees" for negative results about when does not have such copies, generalizing negative results by Goncharov, Peretyat'kin, and Millar. Finally, we explain recent results by Csima, Harizanov, Hirschfeldt, and Soare, "Bounding homogeneous models," about degrees d that are homogeneous bounding and explain their relation to the PA degrees. (shrink)

The ArgumentAmerican eugenics developed out of a cultural tradition independent of medicine. However, the eugenicist Harry Hamilton Laughlin and some legal experts involved in eugenic practice in the United States used medical language in discussing and evaluating enforced eugenic sterilizations. They built on medicine as a model for healing, while at the same time playing down medicine's concern with its traditional client: the individual patient. Laughlin's attitude toward medicine was ambivalent because he wanted expert eugenicists, rather than medical experts, to (...) control eugenic practice. In contrast, legal experts saw eugenics as an integral part of medicine, though one expert challenged basing the judicial system on eugenically minded medicine. All in all, the medicalization of American eugenics involved expanding the scope of medicine to include the mutilation of individuals for the benefit of society. The judicial system was medicalized in that an expanded medicine became the basis of legislation in the thirty states that permitted eugenic sterilizations. (shrink)

It has frequently been argued recently that Jeffrey Conditionalization (JC) does not permit undermining. For JC to be inapplicable in cases where the evidence could be undermined would severely compromise JC’s range. However, this paper contends that the argument fails to show that JC cannot accommodate undermining. This response turns on using the proper partition to capture the direct impact of our evidence in redistributing our credences.