Meat is a multi-billion-dollar industry that relies on people performing risky physical work inside meat-processing facilities over long shifts in close proximity. These workers are socially disempowered, and many are members of groups beset by historic and ongoing structural discrimination. The combination of working conditions and worker characteristics facilitate the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Workers have been expected to put their health and lives at risk during the pandemic because of government and industry pressures to keep (...) this “essential industry” producing. Numerous interventions can significantly reduce the risks to workers and their communities; however, the industry’s implementation has been sporadic and inconsistent. With a focus on the U.S. context, this paper offers an ethical framework for infection prevention and control recommendations grounded in public health values of health and safety, interdependence and solidarity, and health equity and justice, with particular attention to considerations of reciprocity, equitable burden sharing, harm reduction, and health promotion. Meat-processing workers are owed an approach that protects their health relative to the risks of harms to them, their families, and their communities. Sacrifices from businesses benefitting financially from essential industry status are ethically warranted and should acknowledge the risks assumed by workers in the context of existing structural inequities. (shrink)

Facing the possibility of a surge of COVID-19-infected patients requiring ventilatory support in Intensive Care Units, the Singapore Hospice Council and the Chapter of Palliative Medicine Physicians forward its position on the guiding principles that ought to drive the allocation of ICU beds and its role in care of these patients and their families.

In this article, I argue for a distinct and novel right-based account of risks and I call it the Sophisticated High-risk Thesis. I argue that there is a distinction between rights-infringing risk impositions and no-rights-infringing risk impositions. An action imposing a high risk of harm infringes rights, whereas an act imposing a low risk of harm does not. I also suggest three principles that govern the permissibility of highly risky actions. If a highly risky action meets the conditions specified by (...) any of these three principles, it can be justified. These principles are the consent principle*, the prevent disaster principle* and the reciprocity principle**. I show that the Sophisticated High-risk Thesis is, in general, better than the alternative Risk Thesis defended by McCarthy. (shrink)

The decision to trust encompasses evaluation of multiple information cues that are used by evaluators to make inference about the trustee’s qualities and capabilities. The information about the social status of the trustee firm is one of such cues available to evaluators. Yet the relationship between perceived social status of the trustee and the evaluator’s trust remains underexplored. In two experimental studies, we find a non-linear relationship between a firm’s status and the evaluator’s trust, and test theorized mechanisms that can (...) explain this relationship. The paper reveals that firms having low, middle, and high status are not only trusted differently, but are trusted for different reasons: qualities, such as perceived benevolence and integrity, mediate higher trust for middle-status firms, while trust for high-status firms is mediated by ability and integrity. The findings thus suggest that in the assessment of an organization’s trustworthiness, the relative importance of a particular virtue, such as ability, benevolence, or integrity, varies depending on the status position of that organization. (shrink)

At present, there are problems in the construction of the tourism public service system such as poor coordination and coordination among various departments, lack of resource integration mechanism, and low level of information of tourism public services. Therefore, by analysing the problems existing in the tourism public service system in the context of smart cities, this paper puts forward strategies to optimize the tourism public service system. First, we build a smart tourism public service system platform for overall development and (...) optimize the tourism public service platform. Secondly, by focusing on the behaviour of tourists, we construct a big data analysis and management system for the behaviour of smart tourism tourists. Finally, for the traffic situation in the process of tourism, a smart traffic line network based on pheromone ant colony is constructed. The results of the questionnaire survey on tourists show that the optimized public service system platform has achieved great satisfaction. (shrink)

The current WSN is vulnerable to a variety of malicious attacks, resulting in the decline of its comprehensive performance. Multihop routing involves a number of safety and privacy issues. Problems such as snooping, sinkhole, manipulation, cloning, wormhole, spoofing, and so on affect the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of the WSNs. Therefore, this paper mainly studies the mathematical modeling of WSN multiattack behavior discrimination based on the incidence matrix. The WSN node model is used to collect relevant data and mark and (...) map the disguised data, so as to determine the characteristics of multiattack behavior and establish the WSN multiattack behavior discrimination model based on the incidence matrix. The experimental results show that the designed multiattack behavior discrimination model can distinguish the attack type according to the characteristics, has high recognition ability, can spend a short time to effectively distinguish the attack behavior, has a low false positive rate, and can effectively improve the antiattack ability of the WSN. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose to incorporate the local attention in WaveNet-CTC to improve the performance of Tibetan speech recognition in multitask learning. With an increase in task number, such as simultaneous Tibetan speech content recognition, dialect identification, and speaker recognition, the accuracy rate of a single WaveNet-CTC decreases on speech recognition. Inspired by the attention mechanism, we introduce the local attention to automatically tune the weights of feature frames in a window and pay different attention on context information for (...) multitask learning. The experimental results show that our method improves the accuracies of speech recognition for all Tibetan dialects in three-task learning, compared with the baseline model. Furthermore, our method significantly improves the accuracy for low-resource dialect by 5.11% against the specific-dialect model. (shrink)

In the current research, we show that low-power state promotes variety-seeking. We argue that this effect occurs because consumers in low-power state desire control and variety-seeking as a way to restore sense of control. The effect of power on variety-seeking is reduced when consumer knowledge in a certain consumption domain is high because knowledge is an alternative way to retain sense of control. Three experiments provide systematic evidence for this effect across different product categories. These findings contribute to the literature (...) on how variety-seeking can be used as a way to compensate and enhance our understanding of power and consumer knowledge. (shrink)

In order to manage the electricity consumption information of microgrid users, the reliability of electricity information collection is studied in this paper. The normal communication between the acquisition terminal and the smart meter is a key factor affecting the accurate collection of power information; it is the basis for ensuring the operation of the microgrid as well. In order to improve the reliability of the low power line communication between the acquisition terminal and smart meters, this article first uses the (...) static networking method to layer the smart meters and select relays from them and then select the optimal communication path based on integrating communication quality and relay forwarding number dynamically, which could avoid the signal conflict problem caused by simultaneous communication. Finally, by analyzing the influence of the time-varying power line channel on the smart meter communication, a method based on the integrated communication quality and the relay number to consider the time variability of low power line communication is proposed. Choosing the optimal path of the smart meters when the communication path is abnormal can not only establish a new communication path for communication in time, but also avoid communication failures caused by the time-varying channel. Through MATLAB simulation, the time-varying dynamic network of the power line channel is introduced in this paper, which improves the reliability of the smart meter communication and has certain guiding significance for the actual smart meter network construction in microgrid. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives toward internal and external stakeholders can independently contribute to employee attitudes and behaviors. However, little is known about the joint effects of (in)congruent internal-external CSR strategies on employee outcomes. Drawing from social exchange theory, we argue that when employees perceive that their organizations excessively favor CSR efforts to external rather than internal stakeholders, it can trigger a psychological contract breach, resulting in increased employees' turnover intention. We utilized a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method and the (...) data of 511 employee from various industries in the Philippines to investigate the interaction effects. The results revealed that a congruent CSR strategy with high internal and external CSR perceptions is critical in fulfilling employees' psychological contracts and retaining employees. However, for employees with low perceived internal CSR, a high incongruent CSR perception led to a psychological contract breach and ultimately to high turnover intention. Psychological contract breach weakened the negative joint effect of high perceived internal and external CSR on turnover intention and strengthened the positive effect of high perceived incongruent CSR on turnover intention. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Guided by Basic Psychological Need Theory, we investigated the combined associations between need satisfaction and need frustration and their relations with theoretically relevant correlates including mindfulness, physical literacy, physical activity enjoyment, and physical activity. The participants were Singapore-based school students who completed a cross-sectional survey. The results of the latent profile analysis identified four distinct need profiles: profile 1–average satisfaction and frustration ; profile 2–low satisfaction, above average frustration; profile 3–very high satisfaction, very low frustration ; and profile 4–high satisfaction, (...) very high frustration. Among these, profile 3 was the most adaptive one; it had the highest levels of mindfulness, physical literacy, physical activity enjoyment, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Experiences of need satisfaction countered the negative effects of need frustration on these correlates. These findings enhance our understanding of students’ psychological need experiences and highlight the need for investigating the combined associations between need satisfaction and need frustration. (shrink)

Amid the social background of China where the Internet has penetrated into every corner of an adolescent’s life, we were concerned of the role of Internet usage in influencing the educational gap among social classes. We investigated the mediating role of Internet usage preference for entertainment in the relationship between the family socioeconomic status and the adolescent’s academic achievement and explored the moderating role of future orientation in the relationship. A total of 614 junior high school students were recruited to (...) complete a questionnaire survey, including questionnaires for family SES, Internet usage preference, and adolescent future orientation. The results showed that the relationship between family SES and academic achievement was mediated by Internet usage preference for entertainment; the indirect effect was moderated by future orientation, such that the negative association between family SES and Internet usage preference for entertainment was only indicated in adolescents with low future orientation; and the direct association between family SES and Internet usage preference for entertainment was moderated by future orientation. (shrink)

Mismatch negativity of event-related potentials is a biomarker reflecting the preattentional change detection under non-attentional conditions. This study was performed to explore whether high self-related information could elicit MMN in the visual channel, indicating the automatic processing of self-related information at the preattentional stage. Thirty-five participants were recruited and asked to list 25 city names including the birthplace. According to the difference of relevance reported from the participants, we divided names of the different cities into high, medium, and low self-related (...) information. Visual MMN was elicited by high self-related information but not by medium self-related information, with an occipital–temporal scalp distribution, indicating that, under non-attentional condition, high self-related information can be effectively processed automatically in the preattentional stage compared with low self-related information. These data provided new electrophysiological evidence for self-related information processing. (shrink)

Our motor system can generate representations which carry information about the goals of another agent's actions. However, it is not known whether motor representations play a deeper role in social understanding, and, in particular, whether they enable tracking others' beliefs. Here we show that, for adult observers, reliably manifesting an ability to track another's false belief critically depends on representing the agent's potential actions motorically. One signature of motor representations is that they can be disrupted by constraints on an observed (...) agent's action capacities. We therefore used a `mummification' technique to manipulate whether the agent in a visual ball-detection task was free to act or whether he was visibly constrained from acting. Adults' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs only when the agent was free to act on the ball and not when the agent was visibly constrained from acting. Furthermore, it was the agent's constrained action capabilities, rather than any perceptual novelty, that determined whether adult observers' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs. These findings signal that our motor system may underpin more of social cognition than previously imagined, and, in particular, that motor representations may underpin automatic false-belief tracking. (shrink)

Taylor's book Sources of the Self faces the tasks of showing how persons are situated in moral traditions and how these can be used in moral arguments. ?Moral traditions? cover answers to questions of the meaning of life, of the good life and of justice. The first part of this paper deals with the relationship of persons with moral traditions. Do people have to make sense of their lives, do they have to distinguish between worthy and unworthy ways of living? (...) It is argued that people have a strong need to answer these questions; life would be unbearable without biographical narratives; living without orientation towards the good is an existential impossibility. Taylor's theory is evaluative in the sense that his transcendental conditions of personhood are necessary because they fulfil a practical need. The second part of the paper examines the use of articulating moral traditions. It is claimed that they can be useful in practical discourse but that they presuppose the moral point of view. Moral traditions answer the question why people are worthy of respect, but not why we should ask that question. It is argued that a minimal version of the principle of equal respect is built into the structure of communication, so that we have no choice but to ask for the normative justification of relationships. (shrink)

In the present research, we qualitatively document the process by which spiritual leader and leadership emerge in religion-based organizations. Data from 26 participants in three religion-based organizations revealed three cardinal themes that depict the development of spiritual leader and spiritual leadership, the process of developing a spiritual leader and spiritual leadership, and outcomes of spiritual leader and leadership development. Based on the results, we propose a model that depicts the phases involved in the development of spiritual leader/leadership in the religion-based (...) workplace. These phases are proposed to impact the outcomes for the leader, followers, and the organization. The implications of our results are discussed. (shrink)

On the basis of PM2.5 data of the national air quality monitoring sites, local population data, and baseline all-cause mortality rate, PM2.5-related health economic benefits of the Air Improvement Action Plan implemented in Wuhan in 2013–2017 were investigated using health-impact and valuation functions. Annual avoided premature deaths driven by the average concentration of PM2.5 decrease were evaluated, and the economic benefits were computed by using the value of statistical life (VSL) method. Results showed that the number of avoided premature deaths (...) in Wuhan are 21,384 (95% confidence interval (CI): 15,004 to 27,255) during 2013–2017, due to the implementation of the Air Improvement Action Plan. According to the VSL method, the obtained economic benefits of Huangpi, Wuchang, Hongshan, Xinzhou, Jiang’an, Hanyang, Jiangxia, Qiaokou, Jianghan, Qingshan, Caidian, Dongxihu, and Hannan District were 8.55, 8.19, 8.04, 7.39, 5.78, 4.84, 4.37, 4.04, 3.90, 3.30, 2.87, 2.42, and 0.66 billion RMB (1 RMB = 0.1417 USD On 14 October 2019), respectively. These economic benefits added up to 64.35 billion RMB (95% CI: 45.15 to 82.02 billion RMB), accounting for 4.80% (95% CI: 3.37% to 6.12%) of the total GDP of Wuhan in 2017. Therefore, in the process of formulating a regional air quality improvement scheme, apart from establishing hierarchical emission-reduction standards and policies, policy makers should give integrated consideration to the relationship between regional economic development, environmental protection and residents’ health benefits. Furthermore, for improving air quality, air quality compensation mechanisms can be established on the basis of the status quo and trends of air quality, population distribution, and economic development factors. (shrink)

We prove here:Theorem. LetT be a countable complete superstable non ω-stable theory with fewer than continuum many countable models. Then there is a definable groupG with locally modular regular generics, such thatG is not connected-by-finite and any type inG eq orthogonal to the generics has Morley rank.Corollary. LetT be a countable complete superstable theory in which no infinite group is definable. ThenT has either at most countably many, or exactly continuum many countable models, up to isomorphism.

Towards the end of Book 2 of Tacitus' Annals, Germanicus, great-nephew of Augustus, grandson of Mark Antony, and nephew, adopted son and heir of the emperor Tiberius, falls ill and dies at Antioch. His travels in the eastern Mediterranean in a.d. 18 thus reach a sad conclusion. They had begun when, after being recalled from the wars of conquest in Germany described in detail in the opening books of the Annals, he was sent from Rome by Tiberius to preside over (...) the installation of a new king of Armenia. (shrink)

Although emotion research and positive psychology have recently gained strong momentum in the field of second language acquisition, theoretical models linking language emotion and PP research, which offer insights for both research and intervention practice are lacking. To address this gap, the present article first introduces the origin, concept, and research around PP. Next, it summarizes recent research on PP and emotions in SLA. Finally, by triangulating emotion theories and research in the fields of psychology, education, and SLA, we propose (...) a new model, which merges the three pillars of PP with the antecedents, outcomes, and interventions of second language emotions. The value of the model to L2 pedagogy and research is highlighted in the context of the importance of integrating PP into the area of emotions and instructed SLA. (shrink)

The literature has shown that different types of moral dilemmas elicit discrepant decision patterns. The present research investigated the role of uncertainty in contributing to these decision patterns. Two studies were conducted to examine participants' choices in commonly used dilemmas. Study 1 showed that participants’ perceived outcome probabilities were significantly associated with their moral choices, and that these associations were independent from the dilemma type. Study 2 revealed that participants had significantly less preference for killing the individual when the outcome (...) probabilities were stated using the modal verb ‘will’ than when they were stated using the numerical phrasing of ‘100%’. Our findings illustrate a discord between experimenter and participant in the interpretation of task instructions. (shrink)

This article investigates the theoretical assumptions and implications of de Ste. Croix’s approach to interstate politics in The Origins of the Peloponnesian War. It suggests that two approaches can be identified in the work: one which sees a fundamental connection between political systems within a state and that state’s conduct of interstate politics, and another, closer to conventional ‘Realist’ theories, which sees a clear dividing line between domestic and interstate politics, and in which interstate relations need to be understood according (...) to a distinct analytical framework. Although this tension was probably not a particular concern to de Ste. Croix himself, it does have a bearing on ongoing debates in International Theory; the final part of the article briefly explores the possibility that the concept of ‘compulsion’, important to both Thucydides’ and de Ste. Croix’s understanding of the causes of the Peloponnesian War, might provide a way of reconciling these two approaches. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a method to design the pseudorandom number generator using three kinds of four-wing memristive hyperchaotic systems with different dimensions as multientropy sources. The principle of this method is to obtain pseudorandom numbers with good randomness by coupling XOR operation on the three kinds of FWMHSs with different dimensions. In order to prove its potential application in secure communication, the security of PRNG based on this scheme is analyzed from the perspective of cryptography. In addition, PRNG (...) has passed the NIST 800.22 and ENT test, which shows that PRNG has good statistical characteristics. Finally, an image encryption algorithm based on PRNG is adopted. In the encryption algorithm, the optimized Arnold matrix scrambling method and the diffusion processing based on XOR are used to obtain the final encrypted image. Through the evaluation of encryption performance, it is concluded that there is no direct relationship between the pristine image and encrypted image. The results show that the proposed image encryption scheme has good statistical output characteristics and security performance in line with cryptography. (shrink)

There have been two Japanese Nobel laureates in chemistry, three in physics, and one in the category of medicine or physiology. This relatively small number has been attributed to shortcomings in Japanese science. The award of the Physics Prize in 1949 to Hideki Yukawa and to his colleague Sin'itirô Tomonaga in 1965 gave public evidence of how Japanese could make outstanding individual contributions to science. Paradoxically, the Prize also reinforced a belief that such men formed part of a traditional hierarchical (...) system. This essay examines how the Nobel Prize has been represented in Japan. (shrink)

The primary concem of this essay is the similarity and difference between Merleau-Ponty’s early (Phenomenology of Perception) and late (The Visible and the lnvisible) philosophy of language. While some argue that Merleau-Ponty’s late work breaks with the earlier text and foreshadows poststructuralist and deconstructionist philosophy of language, I argue (with others) that there is no significant break in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. The similarities discovered between the early and late philosophy of language are 1.) that the body opens onto a world that (...) is shared by all, 2.) that human gestures (of an individual and between individuals) interpenetrate and aim at the same world, and 3.) that the visual field that is already structured by the body/world interaction provides the basis for more abstract linguistic expression. The most fundamental difference discovered between these texts is that Merleau-Ponty abandons his earlier concept of the tacit cogito for the reflexivity of the body. Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to relate this reflexivity to language will also be discussed.Since there is such confusion and debate about the continuity of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, especially with respect to his philosophy of language, I have cast the essay in the form of a comprehensive exposition. The detailed textual exposition serves two purposes. First, it provides a comprehensive essay length introduction to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language, and secondly, it reveals Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts in his own words, thus reducing the possibility of misinterpretation. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide detailed evidence for Charles Taylor’s claim that both Hegel and Merleau-Ponty follow Kant’s refutation of idealism in an effort to take a stand against Modernism’s claim that human knowledge of the world is reducible to a conceptual representation of it. For both the Hegel of Phenomenology of Mind and Merleau-Ponty throughout his career, human consciousness and knowledge must embrace and make sense of a world that is always already there. This stand will be made against (...) Postmodernism as well. (shrink)

Behavioral ecology, based in the theory of natural selection, predicts that certain behaviors are likely to differ consistently between the sexes in humans as well as other species: aggression, resource striving, information content of sexual signalling. These differences, though of course open to modification by cultural practice, arise because male and female humans, like males and females of other mammal species, typically optimize their reproductive lifetimes through different behaviors: males specializing in mating effort (which has a high fixed cost, and (...) is not offspring-specific), and females in parental effort (which has more linear reproductive returns, and is offspring-specific). The resulting patterns are reviewed. (shrink)

This paper questions claims that the Japanese may have succeeded in testing an atomic weapon shortly before the end of World War II. Historical and empirical evidence is examined which suggests that the lack of scientific expertise in nuclear physics hampered the development of an atomic bomb, the most qualified scientists generally being unwilling to become actively involved in the Japanese project. The paper looks at the wartime mobilization of Japanese scientists; outlines the Japanese atomic bomb project; examines claims that (...) Japan succeeded in completing an atomic weapon; and concludes with a look at the ramifications of the historiography. (shrink)

The primary concem of this essay is the similarity and difference between Merleau-Ponty’s early (Phenomenology of Perception) and late (The Visible and the lnvisible) philosophy of language. While some argue that Merleau-Ponty’s late work breaks with the earlier text and foreshadows poststructuralist and deconstructionist philosophy of language, I argue (with others) that there is no significant break in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. The similarities discovered between the early and late philosophy of language are 1.) that the body opens onto a world that (...) is shared by all, 2.) that human gestures (of an individual and between individuals) interpenetrate and aim at the same world, and 3.) that the visual field that is already structured by the body/world interaction provides the basis for more abstract linguistic expression. The most fundamental difference discovered between these texts is that Merleau-Ponty abandons his earlier concept of the tacit cogito for the reflexivity of the body. Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to relate this reflexivity to language will also be discussed.Since there is such confusion and debate about the continuity of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, especially with respect to his philosophy of language, I have cast the essay in the form of a comprehensive exposition. The detailed textual exposition serves two purposes. First, it provides a comprehensive essay length introduction to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language, and secondly, it reveals Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts in his own words, thus reducing the possibility of misinterpretation. (shrink)

With the advent of new technology and imaging techniques that measure brain activity and with the development of the computer as a model for human thinking, it is not surprising to find many authors currently addressing issues regarding brain function and themind/body problem. What is perhaps surprising, given the absence of these techniques at the time, is that Merleau-Ponty addresses these same issues with a rigor and insight that equals, and perhaps even exceeds, most current philosophical studies. Merleau-Ponty’s frequently ignored (...) early work, The Structure of Behavior, contains a wealth of analysis still relevant to current biological and neurophysiological studies and to the philosophical consequences frequently drawn from them. Merleau-Ponty critically addresses not only theories that attempt to understand human behavior as the linear calculation of discrete physiological events but also theories that would explain human behavior simply by appealing to abstract conceptual analysis. His theory of emergent materialism focuses on the human body as a concrete organic whole that can be reduced neither to linear physical events nor to abstract conceptual relations. Understanding the human being requires a theory that recognizes the human body as an original whole, that is, that recognizes a body that intimately integrates mind and matter. It is this theory that Merleau-Ponty first articulates in The Structure of Behavior. It is the main themes of this theory that I will attempt to reveal here. (shrink)

Our work represents the culmination of a study that is a search for a method. It is a search that has led us away from the remnants of Cartesianism that are found in Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, which we do not deal with here, and toward a comparative study of Karl Marx and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which we do take up in detail. The present manuscript argues, in fact, that both Marx and Merleau-Ponty operate with a method that may be (...) called an existential dialectic.By means of careful and extended analysis of The Structure of Behavior we attempt to uncover Merleau-Ponty’s method, calling special attention to its sometimes ignored dialectical character. We then proceed to argue that Marx is operating with a type of phenomenological/existential method, and this is true not only of the young Marx but also of the mature Marx of the Grundrisse and Capital. Finally, with the assistance of Lukacs’ History and Class Consciousness, we point up the dialectical character of Marx’s method. Thus, it is by uncovering this approach in the text of each of these thinkers and by comparing the method of each man with that of the other that we show that both Marx and Merleau-Pontyoperate with an existential dialectical method.This in depth methodological comparison of Marx and Merleau-Ponty represents the first study of its kind. It is hoped that “The Existential Dialectic of Marx and Merleau-Ponty” will contribute to the on-going and important dialogue between Marxists and existentialists. (shrink)

Our work represents the culmination of a study that is a search for a method. It is a search that has led us away from the remnants of Cartesianism that are found in Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, which we do not deal with here, and toward a comparative study of Karl Marx and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which we do take up in detail. The present manuscript argues, in fact, that both Marx and Merleau-Ponty operate with a method that may be (...) called an existential dialectic.By means of careful and extended analysis of The Structure of Behavior we attempt to uncover Merleau-Ponty’s method, calling special attention to its sometimes ignored dialectical character. We then proceed to argue that Marx is operating with a type of phenomenological/existential method, and this is true not only of the young Marx but also of the mature Marx of the Grundrisse and Capital. Finally, with the assistance of Lukacs’ History and Class Consciousness, we point up the dialectical character of Marx’s method. Thus, it is by uncovering this approach in the text of each of these thinkers and by comparing the method of each man with that of the other that we show that both Marx and Merleau-Pontyoperate with an existential dialectical method.This in depth methodological comparison of Marx and Merleau-Ponty represents the first study of its kind. It is hoped that “The Existential Dialectic of Marx and Merleau-Ponty” will contribute to the on-going and important dialogue between Marxists and existentialists. (shrink)

Our motor system can generate representations which carry information about the goals of another agent's actions. However, it is not known whether motor representations play a deeper role in social understanding, and, in particular, whether they enable tracking others' beliefs. Here we show that, for adult observers, reliably manifesting an ability to track another's false belief critically depends on representing the agent's potential actions motorically. One signature of motor representations is that they can be disrupted by constraints on an observed (...) agent's action capacities. We therefore used a `mummification' technique to manipulate whether the agent in a visual ball-detection task was free to act or whether he was visibly constrained from acting. Adults' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs only when the agent was free to act on the ball and not when the agent was visibly constrained from acting. Furthermore, it was the agent's constrained action capabilities, rather than any perceptual novelty, that determined whether adult observers' reaction times reliably reflected the agent's beliefs. These findings signal that our motor system may underpin more of social cognition than previously imagined, and, in particular, that motor representations may underpin automatic false-belief tracking. (shrink)