Using a large sample of retail investors as well as experimental data we find that risk and ambiguity aversion are positively correlated. We provide evidence that a common link is decision mode: intuitive thinkers tolerate more risk and ambiguity than effortful reasoners. One interpretation is that intuitive thinking confers an advantage in risky or ambiguous situations. We present supporting lab and field evidence that intuitive thinkers outperform others in uncertain environments. Finally, we find that risk and ambiguity aversion vary with (...) individual characteristics and wealth. The wealthy are less risk averse but more ambiguity averse, which has implications for financial puzzles. (shrink)

The explanatory value of niche construction can be strengthened by firm footing in semiotic theory. Anthropologists have a unique perspective on the integration of such diverse approaches to human action and evolutionary processes. Here, we seek to open a dialogue between anthropology and biosemiotics. The overarching aim of this paper is to demonstrate that niche construction, including the underlying mechanism of reciprocal causation, is a semiotic process relating to biological development as well as cognitive development and cultural change. In making (...) this argument we emphasize the semiotic mechanisms underlying the niche concept. We argue that the “niche” in ecology and evolutionary biology can be consistent with the Umwelt of Jakob von Uexkull. Following John Deely we therefore suggest that investigations into the organism—environment interface constituting niche construction should emphasize the semiotic basis of experience. Peircean signs are pervasive and allow for flexible interpretations of phenomena in relation to the perceptual and cognitive capacities of the behaving organism, which is particularly pertinent for understanding the relation of proximate/ultimate selective forces as co-productive. Additionally, theoretical work by Kinji Imanishi on the evolution of daily life and Gregory Bateson’s relational view of evolution both support the linkage between proximate and ultimate evolutionary processes of causation necessitated by the niche construction perspective. We will then apply this theoretical framework to two specific examples: 1) hominin evolution, including uniquely human cultural behaviors with niche constructive implications; and 2) the multispecies and anthropocentric niche of human-dog coevolution from which complex cognitive capacities and semiotic relationships emerged. The intended outcome of this paper is the establishment of concrete semiotic mechanisms and theory underlying niche constructive behavior which can then be applied to a broad spectrum of organisms to contextualize the reciprocal relation between proximate and ultimate drivers of behavior. (shrink)

Considered together, Butler and Whitehead draw from a wide palette of disciplines to develop distinctive theories of becoming, of syntactical violence, and creative opportunities of limitation. The contributors of this volume offer a unique contribution to and for the humanities in the struggles of politics, economy, ecology, and the arts.

This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary "crisis of journalism." Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments (...) rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these "objective" changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms. (shrink)

: Urban bioethics seeks to broaden the traditional focus of bioethics to encompass questions about the interplay of individuals with family, group, community, and society. Urban bioethics will need to deal with cultural diversity, issues of equity, and the conflict between individual rights and the public good. Encouraging a multicultural ethical discernment, fostering an appreciation of the political, economic, sociological, and psychological issues that inform the question of urban moral choice, urban bioethics is essentially a multi-disciplinary, synthesizing enterprise. Several theoretical (...) models including social contract, rule utilitarian, communitarian, and feminist paradigms offer complementary conceptual frameworks. This paper is offered as a proposal, a road map for future study to place current bioethical analysis into a broader context. (shrink)

Urban bioethics seeks to broaden the traditional focus of bioethics to encompass questions about the interplay of individuals with family, group, community, and society. Urban bioethics will need to deal with cultural diversity, issues of equity, and the conflict between individual rights and the public good. Encouraging a multicultural ethical discernment, fostering an appreciation of the political, economic, sociological, and psychological issues that inform the question of urban moral choice, urban bioethics is essentially a multi-disciplinary, synthesizing enterprise. Several theoretical models (...) including social contract, rule utilitarian, communitarian, and feminist paradigms offer complementary conceptual frameworks. This paper is offered as a proposal, a road map for future study to place current bioethical analysis into a broader context. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 414-425, April 2022.

By 1910 the Cambridge University physiology department had become the kernel of British physiology. Between 1909 and 1914 an astonishing number of young and talented scientists passed through the laboratory. The University College department was also a stimulating place of study under the dynamic leadership of Ernest Starling.I have argued that the reasons for this metropolitan axis within British physiology lie with the social structure of late-Victorian and Edwardian higher education. Cambridge, Oxford, and University College London were national institutions attracting (...) students from all over England and Wales. In contrast, the provincial colleges drew their clientele from relatively narrow geographic radii. Generally, also, these institutions were regarded as socially inferior to the longer-established universities.A brief survey of the biographies of some British physiologists demonstrates how physiology, as an occupation, became, over the later decades of the century, socially elite. The scientists who achieved full-time posts in the 1870s generally came from somewhat marginal backgrounds. Foster, like his mentors T. H. Huxley and William Sharpey, came from a non-conformist family. Edward Schäfer was also a dissenter and, like Foster, began his professional career as a general practitioner.Physiologists of the succeeding generation, however, came from wealthy families with established intellectual traditions. John Scott Haldane, nephew of John Burdon Sanderson, was the brother of the politician R. B. Haldane and uncle of the historian A. R. B. Haldane.71 Joseph Barcroft was one of the most affluent of all physiologists.72 His family's wealth derived from linen manufacturing. He attended the Ley's School Cambridge, where his schoolmates included Henry Dale, later Director of the National Institute for Medical Research; F. A. Bainbridge, who eventually became Professor of Physiology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and the Cambridge historian J. H. Clapham. A. V. Hill, Professor of Physiology at Manchester and, subsequently, London, married Margaret Keynes, sister of John Maynard Keynes and niece of Sir Walter Langdon Brown, Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Margaret Keynes's younger brother, the surgeon Sir Geoffrey Keynes, married a granddaughter of Charles Darwin; their son Richard Keynes also became a physiologist at Cambridge.These families were part of a new class emerging during the late Victorian period, descendants of the great reforming radicals of the 1830s, who had begun to achieve power through positions in the universities, the professions, and the civil service. Their social prestige rested upon their intellectual expertise. Physiology was an appealing research discipline to these groups because of its clear dissociation from industry and commerce. And because physiology's “practical” face was medicine, its acceptability was reinforced by professional ties.The nature of the Physiological Society confirms this image of physiology as an elite science. By the turn of the century the Society had taken on some of the characteristics of a dining club. The scientific meetings were generally followed by dinner: if the Society met at Oxford, they were entertained at Burdon Sanderson's college, Magdalen.73 Through a “black ball” system, unwanted candidates could be excluded. In 1912, when the question of admitting foreigners was discussed, E. H. Starling wrote to Edward Schäfer: “the Society has very much in it the nature of a club, and a certain amount of personal knowledge of the candidate is always desirable.”74.The developing institutional structure of physiology in late Victorian Britain indicates, therefore, that we must look beyond the achievements of individuals and departments to understand why physiology flourished. The discipline became part of a new social order in which the professional middle classes assumed increasing power. These groups valued intellectual skill, especially in the pure scienes, as forces both for self-advancement and for progress within society. (shrink)

Richard Gale, in On the Nature and Existence of God, offers several reasons why an “historical-cum-indexical” theory of reference cannot be appropriate in explaining how people refer to God. The present paper identifies five distinct lines of argument in Gale, attempts to clarify several important desiderata for a successful theory of reference, and argues that Gale fails to discharge the burden of proof he has assumed, leaving the most important features of Alston’s “direct reference” theory untouched. Nevertheless, it is conceded (...) that some consequences of Alston’s theory are quite counter-intuitive. The paper therefore concludes with a consideration of two alternatives: either taking a hard, Alstonian line in conflict with people’s linguistic intuitions, or striking a compromise with descriptivism along lines similar to those found in Gareth Evans’s paper, “The Causal Theory of Names.”. (shrink)

Trait emotional intelligence concerns people’s perceptions of their emotional functioning. Two studies investigated this construct in surgeons and comparison occupations. We hypothesized that trait EI profiles would differ both within surgical specialties as well as between them and other professions. Study 1 compared the trait EI profiles of four different surgical specialties. There were no significant differences amongst these specialties or between consultant surgeons and trainees in these specialties. Accordingly, the surgical data were combined into a single target sample that (...) was compared against samples of engineers, executives and senior managers, lawyers, junior military managers, nurses, and salespeople. Surgeons scored significantly higher on global trait EI than junior military managers, but lower than executives and senior managers, salespeople, and nurses. There were no significant differences vis-à-vis engineers or lawyers. A MANOVA confirmed a similar pattern of differences in the four trait EI factors. Global trait EI scores correlated strongly with single-question measures of job satisfaction and job performance in the surgical sample. These findings suggest that interventions to optimize the trait EI profiles of surgeons can be helpful in relation to job satisfaction, job performance, and overall psychological wellbeing. (shrink)

This report describes the rationale, approaches, organization, and resource development leading to a large-scale deletion bin map of the hexaploid wheat genome. Accompanying reports in this issue detail results from chromosome bin-mapping of expressed sequence tags representing genes onto the seven homoeologous chromosome groups and a global analysis of the entire mapped wheat EST data set. Among the resources developed were the first extensive public wheat EST collection. Described are protocols for sequencing, sequence processing, EST nomenclature, and the assembly of (...) ESTs into contigs. These contigs plus singletons were used for selection of distinct sequence motif unigenes. Selected ESTs were rearrayed, validated by 5′ and 3′ sequencing, and amplified for probing a series of wheat aneuploid and deletion stocks. Images and data for all Southern hybridizations were deposited in databases and were used by the coordinators for each of the seven homoeologous chromosome groups to validate the mapping results. Results from this project have established the foundation for future developments in wheat genomics. (shrink)

Freedom and the Rule of Law takes a critical look at the historical beginnings of law in the United States, and how that history has influenced current trends regarding law and freedom. Anthony Peacock has compiled articles that examine the relationship between freedom and the rule of law in America. The rule of law is fundamental to all liberal constitutional regimes whose political orders recognize the equal natural rights of all.

State Medical Boards (SMBs) can take severe disciplinary actions (e.g., license revocation or suspension) against physicians who commit egregious wrongdoing in order to protect the public. However, there is noteworthy variability in the extent to which SMBs impose severe disciplinary action. In this manuscript, we present and synthesize a subset of 11 recommendations based on findings from our team’s larger consensus-building project that identified a list of 56 policies and legal provisions SMBs can use to better protect patients from egregious (...) wrongdoing by physicians. (shrink)

Host-microbiome interactions (HMIs) are critical for the modulation of biological processes and are associated with several diseases, and extensive HMI studies have generated large amounts of data. We propose that the logical representation of the knowledge derived from these data and the standardized representation of experimental variables and processes can foster integration of data and reproducibility of experiments and thereby further HMI knowledge discovery. A community-based Ontology of Host-Microbiome Interactions (OHMI) was developed following the OBO Foundry principles. OHMI leverages established (...) ontologies to create logically structured representations of microbiomes, microbial taxonomy, host species, host anatomical entities, and HMIs under different conditions and associated study protocols and types of data analysis and experimental results. (shrink)

Theologians and philosophers have argued against an interventionist view of divine action for centuries. Although God could intervene in the natural order, they believe that God does not and will not. This chapter first considers the arguments against the traditional, interventionist view of divine action. There are five main reasons why divine intervention has come under fire in recent decades: (i) an incompetent god; (ii) a capricious or inconsistent god; (iii) the problem of evil; (iv) the god of the gaps; (...) and (v) conflicts with science. The chapter then presents a brief discussion of the laws of nature, some specific noninterventionist models, and an assessment of the most popular such model based on quantum mechanics. It ends with a reexamination of the motives for noninterventionism and a new way to understand what the fight is about. (shrink)

In conventional identity politics subjective differences are understood negatively, as gaps to be overcome, as lacks of sameness, as evidence of failed or incomplete unity. In _Alterity Politics _Jeffrey T. Nealon argues instead for a concrete and ethical understanding of community, one that requires response, action, and performance instead of passive resentment and unproductive mourning for a whole that cannot be attained. While discussing the work of others who have refused to thematize difference in terms of the possibility or impossibility (...) of sameness—Levinas, Butler, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Zizek, Jameson, Heidegger, Bakhtin—Nealon argues that ethics is constituted as inexorable affirmative response to different identities, not through an inability to understand or totalize the other. _Alterity Politics_ combines this theoretical itinerary with crucial discussions of specific and diverse sites of literary and cultural production—the work of William S. Burroughs, Amiri Baraka, Andy Warhol, Ishmael Reed, Rush Limbaugh, and Vincent Van Gogh—along with analyses of the social formation of subjects as found in identity politics, and in multicultural and whiteness studies. In the process, Nealon takes on a wide variety of issues including white male anger, the ethical questions raised by drug addiction, the nature of literary meaning, and the concept of “becoming-black.” In seeking to build an ethical structure around poststructuralist discourse and to revitalize the applied use of theoretical concepts to notions of performative identity, _Alterity Politics_ marks a decisive intervention in literary theory, cultural studies, twentieth-century philosophy, and performance studies. (shrink)

A question dating to Mardešić and Prasolov’s 1988 work [S. Mardešić and A. V. Prasolov, Strong homology is not additive, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 307(2) (1988) 725–744], and motivating a considerable amount of set theoretic work in the years since, is that of whether it is consistent with the ZFC axioms for the higher derived limits [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text] of a certain inverse system [Formula: see text] indexed by [Formula: see text] to simultaneously vanish. An equivalent formulation (...) of this question is that of whether it is consistent for all [Formula: see text]-coherent families of functions indexed by [Formula: see text] to be trivial. In this paper, we prove that, in any forcing extension given by adjoining [Formula: see text]-many Cohen reals, [Formula: see text] vanishes for all [Formula: see text]. Our proof involves a detailed combinatorial analysis of the forcing extension and repeated applications of higher-dimensional [Formula: see text]-system lemmas. This work removes all large cardinal hypotheses from the main result of [J. Bergfalk and C. Lambie-Hanson, Simultaneously vanishing higher derived limits, Forum Math. Pi 9 (2021) e4] and substantially reduces the least value of the continuum known to be compatible with the simultaneous vanishing of [Formula: see text] for all [Formula: see text]. (shrink)