After revelations of participation by psychiatrists and psychologists in interrogation of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and Central Intelligence Agency secret detention centers, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association adopted Position Statements absolutely prohibiting their members from participating in torture under any and all circumstances, and, to a limited degree, forbidding involvement in interrogations. Some interrogations utilize very aggressive techniques determined to be torture by many nations and organizations throughout the world. This paper explains why psychiatrists and psychologists (...) involved in coercive interrogations violate the Geneva Conventions and the laws of the United States. Whether done with ignorance of professional ethical obligations or not, these psychiatrists and psychologists have crossed an ethical barrier that may best be averted from re-occurring by teaching medical students and residents in all medical specialties about the ethics principles stemming from the 1946–1947 Nuremberg trials and the Geneva Conventions, together with the Ethics Codes of the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association; and, with regard to psychiatric residents and psychological trainees, by the teaching about The Principles of Medical Ethics With Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry and the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, respectively. In this way, all physicians and psychologists will clearly understand that they have an absolute moral obligation to "First, do no harm" to the human beings they professionally encounter. (shrink)

A central theme of the unified framework for addiction advanced by Redish et al. is that there exists a common value or incentive process controlling Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning. Here we briefly review evidence from a variety of sources demonstrating that these incentive processes are in fact independent. Clearly the influence of Pavlovian predictors and goal values on choice offer distinct potential targets for pathologies of decision-making.

An award-wining biologist takes us on the dramatic expeditions that unearthed the history of life on our planet. Just 150 years ago,most of our world was an unexplored wilderness.Our sense of how old it was? Vague and vastly off the mark. And our sense of our own species’ history? A set of fantastic myths and fairy tales. Fossils had been known for millennia, but they were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. In the tradition of The (...) Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Sean Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more amazing true story of how our world evolved. Carroll recounts the most important discoveries in two centuries of national history — from Darwin’s trip around the world to CharlesWalcott’s discovery of pre-Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon; from Louis and Mary Leakey’s investigation of our deepest past in East Africa to the trailblazers in modern laboratories who have located a time clock in our DNA. Join him in a rousing voyage of discovery, from the epic journeys of pioneering naturalists to the breakthroughs making headlines today. (shrink)

The appendages of the adult fruit fly and other insects and Arthropods develop from secondary embryonic fields that form after the primary anterior/posterior and dorsal/ventral axes of the embryo have been determined. In Drosophila, the position and fate of the different fields formed within each segment are determined by genes acting along both embryonic axes, within individual segments, and within specific fields. Since the major architectural differences between most Arthropod classes and orders involve variations in the number, type and morphology (...) of body appendages, the elucidation of the embryology and molecular genetics of the origin and patterning of insect limb fields may help to facilitate an understanding of both the mechanism of appendage formation and some of the major steps in the morphological evolution of the Arthropods. In this review, we will discuss recent studies that have advanced our understanding of both the origin and patterning of Drosophila leg and wing secondary fields. These results provide fresh insights into potentially general mechanisms of how body parts develop and evolve. (shrink)

Evolutionary changes in traits that affect both ecological divergence and mating signals could lead to reproductive isolation and the formation of new species. Insect cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) are potential examples of such dual traits. They form a waxy layer on the cuticle of the insect to maintain water balance and prevent desiccation, while also acting as signaling molecules in mate recognition and chemical communication. Because the synthesis of these hydrocarbons in insect oenocytes occurs through a common biochemical pathway, natural or (...) sexual selection on one role may affect the other. In this review, we explore how ecological divergence in insect CHCs can lead to divergence in mating signals and reproductive isolation. We suggest that the evolution of insect CHCs may be ripe models for understanding ecological speciation. (shrink)

Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oxford, 2012 under title Moral theological method in the theological ethics of Martin Luther and Arthur Rich, with particular reference to their economic ethics.

A common finding in the study of emotion and decision making is the tendency for fear and anxiety to decrease risk taking. The current meta-analysis summarises the strength and variability of this...

In this study, we examined students' attitudes toward cheating and whether they would report instances of cheating they witnessed. Data were collected from three educational institutions in Singapore. A total of 518 students participated in the study. Findings suggest that students perceived cheating behaviors involving exam-related situations to be serious, whereas plagiarism was rated as less serious. Cheating in the form of not contributing one's fair share in a group project was also perceived as a serious form of academic misconduct, (...) although a majority of the students admitted having engaged in such behavior. With regard to the prevalence of academic cheating, our findings suggest that students are morally ambivalent about academic cheating and are rather tolerant of dishonesty among their peers. On the issue of whether cheating behaviors should be reported, our findings revealed that a majority of students chose to take the expedient measure of ignoring the problem rather than to blow the whistle on their peers. Implications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

In addition to facing the known competitors in the formal economy, entrepreneurs must also be concerned with rivalry emanating from the informal economy. The informal economy is characterized by actions outside the normal scope of commerce, such as unsanctioned payments and gift-giving, as means of influencing competition. Scholars and policy makers alike have an interest in mitigating the impacts of such informal activity in that it might present an obstacle for legitimate commerce. Received theory suggests that country institutions can enable (...) and constrain productive activity, and, in doing so, influence competitive obstacles in a country. Leveraging 13,670 responses from entrepreneurs distributed across 59 countries, we provide evidence that two particular types of enabling institutions, countries’ property rights regulations and cooperative actions, are useful for lowering the obstacles presented by informal activity. We also find evidence that two constraining institutions, economic and financial regulations lead to more obstacles presented by informal activity. We describe implications for entrepreneurs, policy makers, and future researchers stemming from these findings. (shrink)

Management plays an important role in reinforcing ethics in organizations. To support this aim, managers must use incentive and goal programs in ethical ways. This study examines experimentally the potential ethical costs associated with incentive-driven and goal-induced employee behavior from a managerial perspective. In a quasi-experimental setting, 243 MBA students with significant professional work experience evaluated a hypothetical employee’s ethical behavior under incentive pay systems modeled on a business case. In the role of the employee’s manager, participants evaluated the ethicality (...) of the employee’s incentive-driven and goal-induced ethical/unethical behavior and the outcomes of behavior, with consequences that were either favorable or unfavorable to the organization. The results indicated that participants discounted the ethical considerations of incentive-driven and goal-induced behavior when consequences were favorable to the organization. Participants’ morals and outcome orientations were also significantly related to their ethical judgments and intentions to intervene. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundElectronic patient record (EPR) technology is a key enabler for improvements to healthcare service and management. To ensure these improvements and the means to achieve them are socially and ethically desirable, careful consideration of the ethical implications of EPRs is indicated. The purpose of this scoping review was to map the literature related to the ethics of EPR technology. The literature review was conducted to catalogue the prevalent ethical terms, to describe the associated ethical challenges and opportunities, and to identify (...) the actors involved. By doing so, it aimed to support the future development of ethics guidance in the EPR domain.MethodsTo identify journal articles debating the ethics of EPRs, Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed academic databases were queried and yielded 123 eligible articles. The following inclusion criteria were applied: articles need to be in the English language; present normative arguments and not solely empirical research; include an abstract for software analysis; and discuss EPR technology.ResultsThe medical specialty, type of information captured and stored in EPRs, their use and functionality varied widely across the included articles. Ethical terms extracted were categorised into clusters ‘privacy’, ‘autonomy’, ‘risk/benefit’, ‘human relationships’, and ‘responsibility’. The literature shows that EPR-related ethical concerns can have both positive and negative implications, and that a wide variety of actors with rights and/or responsibilities regarding the safe and ethical adoption of the technology are involved.ConclusionsWhile there is considerable consensus in the literature regarding EPR-related ethical principles, some of the associated challenges and opportunities remain underdiscussed. For example, much of the debate is presented in a manner more in keeping with a traditional model of healthcare and fails to take account of the multidimensional ensemble of factors at play in the EPR era and the consequent need to redefine/modify ethical norms to align with a digitally-enabled health service. Similarly, the academic discussion focuses predominantly on bioethical values. However, approaches from digital ethics may also be helpful to identify and deliberate about current and emerging EPR-related ethical concerns. (shrink)

Both fairness and efficiency are important considerations in market design and regulation, yet many regulators have neither defined nor measured these concepts. We develop an evidencebased policy framework in which these are both defined and measured using a series of empirical proxies. We then build a systems estimation model to examine the 2003–2011 explosive growth in algorithmic trading on the London Stock Exchange and NYSE Euronext Paris. Our results show that greater AT is associated with increased transactional efficiency and reduced (...) information leakage in top quintile stocks. For less liquid stocks, manipulation at the close declines. We also document the tradeoff between reduced spreads and increased manipulation or information leakage following the introduction of MiFID1. (shrink)

Participants were asked to draw inferences about correlation from single x,y observations. In Experiment 1 statistically sophisticated participants were given the univariate characteristics of distributions of x and y and asked to infer whether a single x, y observation came from a correlated or an uncorrelated population. In Experiment 2, students with a variety of statistical backgrounds assigned posterior probabilities to five possible populations based on single x, y observations, again given knowledge of the univariate statistics. In Experiment 3, statistically (...) naïve participants were given a problem analogous to that given in Experiment 1, framed verbally. Experiment 4 replicated Experiment 3 but added an “impossible to determine” response option. Models that rely on computing sample correlations make no predictions about these investigations. From a Bayesian perspective, participants’ inferences in all four experiments tended to make probabilistically valid inferences as long as the single datum was directional. The results are discussed in light of the Brunswikian notion of vicarious functioning. (shrink)

BackgroundThis manuscript presents a framework to guide the identification and assessment of ethical opportunities and challenges associated with electronic patient records (EPR). The framework is intended to support designers, software engineers, health service managers, and end-users to realise a responsible, robust and reliable EPR-enabled healthcare system that delivers safe, quality assured, value conscious care.MethodsDevelopment of the EPR applied ethics framework was preceded by a scoping review which mapped the literature related to the ethics of EPR technology. The underlying assumption behind (...) the framework presented in this manuscript is that ethical values can inform all stages of the EPR-lifecycle from design, through development, implementation, and practical application.ResultsThe framework is divided into two parts: context and core functions. The first part ‘context’ entails clarifying: the purpose(s) within which the EPR exists or will exist; the interested parties and their relationships; and the regulatory, codes of professional conduct and organisational policy frame of reference. Understanding the context is required before addressing the second part of the framework which focuses on EPR ‘core functions’ of data collection, data access, and digitally-enabled healthcare.ConclusionsThe primary objective of the EPR Applied Ethics Framework is to help identify and create value and benefits rather than to merely prevent risks. It should therefore be used to steer an EPR project to success rather than be seen as a set of inhibitory rules. The framework is adaptable to a wide range of EPR categories and can cater for new and evolving EPR-enabled healthcare priorities. It is therefore an iterative tool that should be revisited as new EPR-related state-of-affairs, capabilities or activities emerge. (shrink)

Perceived size is a function of viewing distance, retinal images size, and various contextual cues such as linear perspective and the size and location of neighboring objects. Recently, we demonstrated that illusion magnitudes of classic visual size illusions may be greatly enhanced or reduced by adding dynamic elements. Specifically, a dynamic version of the Ebbinghaus illusion (classically considered a “size contrast” illusion) led to a greatly enhanced illusory effect, whereas a dynamic version of the Corridor illusion (a “size constancy” illusion) (...) led to a greatly diminished illusory effect. Although these differences may arise from the different processes underlying these illusions (size contrast vs. size constancy), the dynamic variants we tested in our previous work also differed in the nature of the dynamic elements; specifically, whereas the Dynamic Ebbinghaus included a moving target and inducers that changed size and position, the Dynamic Corridor only included a moving target on a static background. Here, we explore further dynamic versions of the Ebbinghaus illusion and the Corridor and Ponzo illusions by separately manipulating three types of dynamic elements: target motion, context translation, and dynamic changes in context. Across five experiments examining 21 dynamic illusory configurations, adding target motion or a dynamically changing context separately resulted in little-to-no illusory effect. In contrast, the combination of target motion and a dynamically changing context led to a robust size illusion, consistent with an interactive effect. However, illusory effects that exceeded the matched classic, static illusory configuration were only observed for the dynamic versions of the Ebbinghaus illusion and the Revealed Ponzo illusions, in which the contextual elements changed size. We conclude that the combination of target motion and a dynamically changing context are necessary to produce dynamic size illusions, but that enhancement above and beyond static illusions may be largely specific to size contrast effects. Our results have important implications for the integration of motion signals, a ubiquitous environmental stimulus, in the perception of object size. (shrink)

Competitor intelligence gathering involves the aggregation of competitive information to facilitate strategic development and a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, companies are sometimes willing to carry out questionable gathering practices to collect such information. An ethical decision making framework for competitor intelligence gathering is presented in this paper that outlines the impact of several strengthening and weakening factors on individual ethical reasoning. Dialogue is provided about the management of intelligence gathering from various viewpoints, and the implications of these managerial suggestions are discussed.

In 2012, a U.S. Institute of Medicine report called for a different approach to health care: “Left unchanged, health care will continue to underperform; cause unnecessary harm; and strain national, state, and family budgets.” The answer, they suggested, would be a “continuously learning” health system. Ethicists and researchers urged the creation of “learning health organizations” that would integrate knowledge from patient‐care data to continuously improve the quality of care. Our experience with an ongoing research study on atrial fibrillation—a trial known (...) as IMPACT‐AFib—gave us some insight into one of the challenges that will have to be dealt with in creating these organizations. Although the proposed educational intervention study placed no restrictions on what providers and health plans could do, the oversight team argued that the ethical principle of beneficence did not allow the researchers to be “bystanders” in relation to a control group receiving suboptimal care. In response, the researchers designed a “workaround” that allowed the project to go forward. We believe the experience suggests that what we call “bystander ethics” will create challenges for the kinds of quality improvement research that LHOs are designed to do. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Both fairness and efficiency are important considerations in market design and regulation, yet many regulators have neither defined nor measured these concepts. We develop an evidencebased policy framework in which these are both defined and measured using a series of empirical proxies. We then build a systems estimation model to examine the 2003–2011 explosive growth in algorithmic trading on the London Stock Exchange and NYSE Euronext Paris. Our results show that greater AT is associated with increased transactional efficiency and reduced (...) information leakage in top quintile stocks. For less liquid stocks, manipulation at the close declines. We also document the tradeoff between reduced spreads and increased manipulation or information leakage following the introduction of MiFID1. (shrink)

Integrating large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 into medical ethics is a novel concept, and understanding the effectiveness of these models in aiding ethicists with decision-making can have significant implications for the healthcare sector. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of GPT-4 in responding to complex medical ethical vignettes and to gauge its utility and limitations for aiding medical ethicists. Using a mixed-methods, cross-sectional survey approach, a panel of six ethicists assessed LLM-generated responses to eight (...) ethical vignettes.The main outcomes measured were relevance, reasoning, depth, technical and non-technical clarity, as well as acceptability of GPT-4’s responses. The readability of the responses was also assessed. Of the six metrics evaluating the effectiveness of GPT-4’s responses, the overall mean score was 4.1/5. GPT-4 was rated highest in providing technical (4.7/5) and non-technical clarity (4.4/5), whereas the lowest rated metrics were depth (3.8/5) and acceptability (3.8/5). There was poor-to-moderate inter-rater reliability characterised by an intraclass coefficient of 0.54 (95% CI: 0.30 to 0.71). Based on panellist feedback, GPT-4 was able to identify and articulate key ethical issues but struggled to appreciate the nuanced aspects of ethical dilemmas and misapplied certain moral principles.This study reveals limitations in the ability of GPT-4 to appreciate the depth and nuanced acceptability of real-world ethical dilemmas, particularly those that require a thorough understanding of relational complexities and context-specific values. Ongoing evaluation of LLM capabilities within medical ethics remains paramount, and further refinement is needed before it can be used effectively in clinical settings. (shrink)

In this paper I develop an account of member obligation: the obligations that fall on the members of an obligated collective in virtue of that collective obligation. I use this account to argue that unorganized collections of individuals can constitute obligated agents. I argue first that, to know when a collective obligation entails obligations on that collective’s members, we have to know not just what it would take for each member to do their part in satisfying the collective obligation, but (...) also what they should do if they cannot do their part because others will not do theirs. I go on to argue (contra recent proposals) that it is not good enough for members in this situation to reasonably believe that others will not do their part. Rather, for a member of an obligated collective to permissibly escape doing her part in a collective obligation, she must both reasonably doubt that others will do their part and stand ready to act in case others do as well. -/- This necessary condition for collective obligation points the way to plausible sufficient conditions – conditions that, I argue, allow unstructured collectives to bear obligations. For (a) if a collective’s members are individually obligated to be ready to do their part, in a given collective action, and (b) if that individual readiness makes it sufficiently likely that the collective will in fact act, then it is hard to see what could block an attribution of collective obligation. In particular, in that case there ought to be no additional objection that there is no existing, organized “agent” on which the obligation might fall. For agents are, simply, things that can act. To be able to act is just to be able to succeed by trying. Unstructured collectives try to do something, I argue, when each member acts on their willingness to do their part in that thing if others do theirs; sometimes they succeed, producing a collective action. Some unstructured collectives, therefore, can succeed by trying; therefore, they can act; therefore they are agents. (shrink)

In 2012, a U.S. Institute of Medicine report called for a different approach to health care: “Left unchanged, health care will continue to underperform; cause unnecessary harm; and strain national, state, and family budgets.” The answer, they suggested, would be a “continuously learning” health system. Ethicists and researchers urged the creation of “learning health organizations” that would integrate knowledge from patient‐care data to continuously improve the quality of care. Our experience with an ongoing research study on atrial fibrillation—a trial known (...) as IMPACT‐AFib—gave us some insight into one of the challenges that will have to be dealt with in creating these organizations. Although the proposed educational intervention study placed no restrictions on what providers and health plans could do, the oversight team argued that the ethical principle of beneficence did not allow the researchers to be “bystanders” in relation to a control group receiving suboptimal care. In response, the researchers designed a “workaround” that allowed the project to go forward. We believe the experience suggests that what we call “bystander ethics” will create challenges for the kinds of quality improvement research that LHOs are designed to do. (shrink)

Recent data breaches underscore the importance of organizational cybersecurity. However, the high costs of such security can force chief financial officers (CFOs) to make difficult financial and ethical trade-offs that have both business and societal implications. We employ a 2 × 2 randomized experiment that varies both an observed scenario CFO’s investment decision (invest/not invest in security) and organizational outcomes (positive/negative) to investigate these trade-offs. Participant managers assess the observed CFO’s investment behavior and indicate their own intentions to invest. Results (...) indicate that when the observed scenario CFO invests in security, managers primarily follow their peers when making investment decisions. However, when the observed CFO does not invest in security, managers make their own decisions by engaging in more in-depth reasoning that includes assessment of the seriousness of consequences, as well as the ethical and societal considerations. Moderated mediation findings further deconstruct and corroborate these relationships. (shrink)

Management plays an important role in reinforcing ethics in organizations. To support this aim, managers must use incentive and goal programs in ethical ways. This study examines experimentally the potential ethical costs associated with incentive-driven and goal-induced employee behavior from a managerial perspective. In a quasi-experimental setting, 243 MBA students with significant professional work experience evaluated a hypothetical employee’s ethical behavior under incentive pay systems modeled on a business case. In the role of the employee’s manager, participants evaluated the ethicality (...) of the employee’s incentive-driven and goal-induced ethical/unethical behavior and the outcomes of behavior, with consequences that were either favorable or unfavorable to the organization. The results indicated that participants discounted the ethical considerations of incentive-driven and goal-induced behavior when consequences were favorable to the organization. Participants’ morals and outcome orientations were also significantly related to their ethical judgments and intentions to intervene. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores how fair trade social enterprises manage paradoxes in stakeholder-oriented governance models. We use narrative accounts from board members, at governance events and board documents to report an exploratory study of paradoxes in three FTSEs which are partly farmer-owned. Having synthesized the key social enterprise governance literature and framed it alongside the broader paradox theory, we used narratives to explore how tensions are articulated, how they can be applied within an adapted paradox framework, and how governance actors seek (...) to mitigate paradoxes. The paper contributes to current debates in social enterprise scholarship concerning hybridity :455–476, 2010; in Institutional logics in action, Part B, 2012), hybrid organizing :397–441, 2014) and operational tensions :407–442, 2013) by illustrating empirically how the central social/enterprise paradox manifests in FTSEs governance arrangements. We build on the paradox categories proposed by Lüscher and Lewis :221–240, 2008) and adapted in Smith et al. :407–442, 2013) by developing a recursive model of legitimacy-seeking governance processes, conceptualizing how boards seek to mitigate, but not necessarily resolve, paradoxes. (shrink)

Emotional hardcore and other music genres featuring screamed vocals are puzzling for the appreciator. The typical fan attaches appreciative value to musical screams of emotional pain all the while acknowledging it would be inappropriate to hold similar attitudes towards their sonically similar everyday counterpart: actual human screaming. Call this the screamed vocals problem. To solve the problem, I argue we must attend to the anti-sublimating aims that get expressed in the emotional hardcore vocalist’s choice to scream the lyrics. Screamed vocals (...) help us see the value in rejecting (a) restrictive social norms of emotional expressiveness and (b) restrictive artistic norms about how one ought to express or represent pain in art, namely that if one is going to do so they must ensure the pain has been ‘beautified’. In developing this second point I argue that emotional hardcore is well-suited (though not individually so) for putting pressure on longstanding views in the history of aesthetics about the formal relationship between art and human pain. (shrink)

A number of authors have argued recently that the content of perceptual experience can, and even must, be characterized in conceptual terms. Their claim, more precisely, is that every perceptual experience is such that, of necessity, its content is constituted entirely by concepts possessed by the subject having the experience. This is a surprising result. For it seems reasonable to think that a subject’s experiences could be richer and more fine-grained than his conceptual repertoire; that a subject might be able, (...) for example, to discriminate in experience more shades of colors than he has color concepts. The key move in their argument, therefore, is to articulate the conceptual content of experience using demonstrative, instead of general, concepts. For instance, these authors argue that the content of my perceptual experience of a particular shade of green is properly characterized in terms of the concept expressed by the linguistic utterance “that shade”. Even if I don’t possess a general concept for the shade I’m seeing—a concept of the kind typically expressed using color names like ‘chartreuse’ or ‘lime’—nevertheless, these authors argue, the content of the experience can still be characterized conceptually using a demonstrative concept that I do possess. (shrink)

Abstract According to Russellianism, the content of a Russellian thought, in which a person ascribes a monadic property to an object, can be represented as an ordered couple of the object and the property. A consequence of this is that it is not possible for a person to believe that a is F and not to believe b is F, when a=b. Many critics of Russellianism suppose that this is possible and thus that Russellianism is false. Several arguments for this (...) claim are criticized and it is argued that Russellians need not appeal to representational notions in order to defeat them. Contrary to popular opinion, the prospects for a pure Russellianism, a Russellianism without representations, are in fact very good. (shrink)

Philosophical writing on gratitude displays a pronounced preference for targeted gratitude (A’s being grateful to B for x) over propositional gratitude (A’s being grateful that p), treating the latter as a poor, less interesting cousin of the former, when it treats it at all. This paper challenges and attempts to rectify the relegation of propositional gratitude to second-class status. It argues that propositional gratitude is not only not reducible to targeted gratitude but indeed is more basic than it and that (...) propositional gratitude is morally important because of its conceptual connections to the virtue of humility. (shrink)

Riemer’s recent paper on the perception of time discusses a neglected yet important topic in the psychological literature: the consequences for psychology (and psychophysics) from the ‘anisotropy’ of time. The paper presents an argument that there are unique kinds of challenges for psychophysics from such temporal anisotropy: (a) Challenges because the psychological experience of time has temporal anisotropy and the physical concept of time does not have temporal anisotropy. (b) Challenges for experimental research which are unique to temporal anisotropy. -/- (...) Although it is important to consider temporal anisotropy, I think there are reasons to deny the force of both kinds of challenges. (shrink)

Different ways of thinking about presence can have significant consequences for one's thinking about temporal experience. Temporal presence can be conceived of as either absolute or relative. Relative presence is analogous to spatial presence, whereas absolute presence is not. For each of these concepts of presence, there is a theory of time which holds that this is how presence really is. For the A-theory, temporal presence is absolute; it is a special moment in time, a time defined by events in (...) what has been called the A-series. For the B-theory, temporal presence is relative ; it is itself defined relative to moments in time, a time defined by events in the B-series. Many A-theorists go further to claim that the present is the only real moment in time; the past and future are unreal. One can have different sets of problems depending on whether one thinks in terms of absolute presence or relative presence. For example, there is the concept of the 'specious' present – a duration many theorists claim that we perceptually experience. It is argued in this paper that the specious present has problems given absolute presence, which it does not have given relative presence. Many of the problems are avoided by having an extended present. However, A-theory, the standard theory of time which advocates absolute presence, cannot have an extended present. Further, the best solution for absolute presence which is extended, durational presentism, involves denying the standard theories in the philosophy of time. (shrink)

In this introduction to contemporary conceptions of time and change, I investigate what our experience of time, that is, our experience of change, seems to be and ask whether or not we can say that how it seems could match the reality. My conclusion is that more recent contemporary conceptions of time can do this but that more intuitive or traditional conceptions cannot. Thus, the more contemporary conceptions are preferable for research into time consciousness.

The authors investigated whether college students possess abstract rules concerning the applicability conditions for three spatial diagrams that are important tools for thinking—matrices, networks, and hierarchies. A total of 127 students were asked to select which type of diagram would be best for organising the information in each of several short scenarios. The scenarios were written using three different story contexts: (a) neutral, presenting a real-life situation but not cueing a particular representation; (b) abstract, presenting only variable names and relations; (...) and (c) incongruent, in which the context and informational structure cued different representations. The results indicated above-chance performance on the abstract scenarios, as well as comparable performance on the abstract and neutral context scenarios. In a follow-up study in which eight students thought out loud while selecting diagrams for the abstract scenarios, there were almost no references to concrete examples. The results of these studies suggest that students possess abstract rules concerning the applicability conditions for matrices, networks, and hierarchies. (shrink)

The Denjoy integral is an integral that extends the Lebesgue integral and can integrate any derivative. In this paper, it is shown that the graph of the indefinite Denjoy integral f↦∫xaf is a coanalytic non-Borel relation on the product space M[a,b]×C[a,b], where M[a,b] is the Polish space of real-valued measurable functions on [a,b] and where C[a,b] is the Polish space of real-valued continuous functions on [a,b]. Using the same methods, it is also shown that the class of indefinite Denjoy integrals, (...) called ACG∗[a,b], is a coanalytic but not Borel subclass of the space C[a,b], thus answering a question posed by Dougherty and Kechris. Some basic model theory of the associated spaces of integrable functions is also studied. Here the main result is that, when viewed as an ℝ[X]-module with the indeterminate X being interpreted as the indefinite integral, the space of continuous functions on the interval [a,b] is elementarily equivalent to the Lebesgue-integrable and Denjoy-integrable functions on this interval, and each is stable but not superstable, and that they all have a common decidable theory when viewed as ℚ[X]-modules. (shrink)