Discusses questions such as, what is knowledge, what qualifies as knowledge, and what does not; what does it mean to say, "I know, I understand," what is truth, ...

Objective: Ethical guidelines are designed to ensure benefits, protection and respect of participants in clinical research. Clinical trials must now be registered on open-access databases and provide details on ethical considerations. This systematic survey aimed to determine the extent to which recently registered clinical trials report the use of standard of care and post-trial obligations in trial registries, and whether trial characteristics vary according to setting. Methods: We selected global randomized trials registered on http://www.clinicaltrials.gov and http://www.controlled-trials.com. We searched for intervention (...) trials of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis from 9 October 2004, the date of the most recent version of the Helsinki Declaration, to 10 April 2007. Results: We collected data from 312 trials. Fifty-eight percent (58%, 95% CI = 53 to 64) of trial protocols report informed consent. Fifty-eight percent (58%, 95% CI = 53 to 64) of trials report active controls. Almost no trials (1%, 95% CI = 0.5 to 3) mention post-trial provisions. Most trials measure surrogate outcomes. Twenty percent (20%, 95% CI = 16 to 25) of trials measure patient-important outcomes, such as death; and the odds that these outcomes are in a low income country are five times greater than for a developed country (odds ratio (OR) 5.03, 95% CI = 2.70 to 9.35, p = < 0.001). Pharmaceutical companies are involved in 28% (CI = 23 to 33) of trials and measure surrogate outcomes more often than nonpharmaceutical companies (OR 2.45, 95% CI = 1.18 to 5.09, p = 0.31). Conclusion: We found a large discrepancy in the quality of reporting and approaches used in trials in developing settings compared to wealthier settings. (shrink)

Although the best-known Hegelian objection against Kant's moral philosophy is the charge that the categorical imperative is an ‘empty formalism’, Hegel's criticisms also include what we might call the realizability objection. Tentatively stated, the realizability objection says that within the sphere of Kantian morality, the good remains an unrealizable ‘ought’ – in other words, the Kantian moral ‘ought’ can never become an ‘is’. In this paper, I attempt to come to grips with this objection in two steps. In the first (...) section of the paper, I provide an initial reading of the objection, according to which Hegel agrees with Kant's formulation of the realizability problem but disagrees with the specific Kantian solution, namely, with the Kantian idea of the highest good and the doctrine of the postulates. In the second section, I go on to argue that this reading is potentially too superficial and offer a more far-reaching interpretation whereby Hegel is ultimately targeting fundamental distinctions of Kant's moral theory. I end by employing these more far-reaching results of Hegel's objection to sketch some features of Hegel's alternative ethical view. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is Hegel’s claim in the Philosophy of Right that, within the modern social world, human needs tend to be endlessly expanded. Unlike the role that the system of needs plays in the formation of its participants’ psychological makeup and the problem of poverty and the rabble, the topic of the expansion of needs remains underdiscussed in the recent Hegel literature on the virtues and vices of civil society. My discussion of the topic aims to answer (...) the following two sets of questions: How does it come to pass that individuals’ needs are endlessly expanded in this way? And is that expansion a phenomenon to be applauded or condemned? In particular, does the endless expansion of needs aid or obstruct the realization of social members’ freedom? In answer to the first question, I argue that for Hegel the endless expansion of needs results from the level of specialization and division of labor distinctive of the modern market economy, the human capacity for a certain kind of abstraction, and the desire to be recognized by other participants in the market system. In answer to the second set of questions, and despite Hegel’s own apparent ambivalence, I argue on his behalf that the endless expansion of needs represents an obstacle to the realization of freedom, and is on that ground a phenomenon to be condemned, for the following two reasons: First, the endless expansion of needs increases the influence or “pressure” of desire on the members of civil society that are subject to that expansion. Second, that expansion leads to widespread frustration, understood as the inability on the part of the members of civil society to ever fully realize their ends or satisfy their desires. I end by briefly considering two Hegelian solutions to the pernicious effects of the endless expansion of needs. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show that and how animal organisms are appropriate subjects of normative evaluation, on Hegel's view. I contrast my reading with the interpretive positions of Sebastian Rand and Mark Alznauer. I disagree with Rand and agree with Alznauer that animal organisms are normatively evaluable for Hegel. I substantiate my disagreement with Rand, and supplement Alznauer's interpretation, by spelling out the role that the ‘generic process’ or ‘genus process [Gattungsprozess]’ plays within Hegel's account of animal (...) organisms and their normative evaluability. In the course of my discussion, I highlight the main differences that Hegel purports to identify between animal and vegetable organisms and suggest that the upshot of those differences is that some but not all plants are normatively evaluable, by his lights. I also situate Hegel's discussion of theGattungsprozesswithin the debate on biological functions in the philosophy of biology over the last few decades. (shrink)

We prove that the existence of a measurable cardinal is equivalent to the existence of a normal space whose modal logic coincides with the modal logic of the Kripke frame isomorphic to the powerset of a two element set.

It is a landmark theorem of McKinsey and Tarski that if we interpret modal diamond as closure, then \ is the logic of any dense-in-itself metrizable space. The McKinsey–Tarski Theorem relies heavily on a metric that gives rise to the topology. We give a new and more topological proof of the theorem, utilizing Bing’s Metrization Theorem.

The topic of this paper is Hegel's claim in the Philosophy of Right that, within the modern social world, human needs tend to be endlessly expanded. Unlike the role that the system of needs plays in the formation of its participants' psychological makeup and the problem of poverty and the rabble, the topic of the expansion of needs remains underdiscussed in the recent Hegel literature on the virtues and vices of civil society. My discussion of the topic aims to answer (...) the following two sets of questions: How does it come to pass that individuals' needs are endlessly expanded in this way? And is that expansion a phenomenon to be applauded or condemned? In particular, does the endless expansion of needs aid or obstruct the realization of social members' freedom? In answer to the first question, I argue that for Hegel the endless expansion of needs results from the level of specialization and division of labor distinctive of the modern market economy, the human capacity for a certain kind of abstraction, and the desire to be recognized by other participants in the market system. In answer to the second set of questions, and despite Hegel's own apparent ambivalence, I argue on his behalf that the endless expansion of needs represents an obstacle to the realization of freedom, and is on that ground a phenomenon to be condemned, for the following two reasons: First, the endless expansion of needs increases the influence or “pressure” of desire on the members of civil society that are subject to that expansion. Second, that expansion leads to widespread frustration, understood as the inability on the part of the members of civil society to ever fully realize their ends or satisfy their desires. I end by briefly considering two Hegelian solutions to the pernicious effects of the endless expansion of needs. (shrink)

Within ZFC, we develop a general technique to topologize trees that provides a uniform approach to topological completeness results in modal logic with respect to zero-dimensional Hausdorff spaces. Embeddings of these spaces into well-known extremally disconnected spaces then gives new completeness results for logics extending S4.2.

In this paper, I offer a novel reconstruction of Hegel’s argument for his mysterious claim that “self-consciousness is desire itself.” In section I, I motivate two interpretive constraints, which I refer to as the practicality constraint and the continuity constraint. According to the former, the kind of desire that Hegel argues is a necessary condition of self-consciousness involves a practical (and so not merely theoretical or contemplative) relation between subject and object. According to the latter, Hegel’s argument takes as its (...) sole starting point a shape of consciousness that has itself as object or, as Hegel puts it, a shape that consists in “a distinguishing of what is not distinct.” I argue that recent influential interpretations openly or tacitly violate either the practicality constraint or the continuity constraint. In section II, I piece together my own, alternative interpretation of Hegel’s argument, which heeds the two constraints in a way that fits Hegel’s text more closely than do other interpretations. I thus hope to shed new light on Hegel’s view that the I or consciousness can have itself as its object only if it also relates to external objects in a desirous, destructive way. (shrink)

Jean-François Kervégan’s The Actual and the Rational is a detailed study of the bulk of Hegel’s social and political philosophy, as we find it in the published text of the Philosophy of Right, the...

In this paper, I argue that, despite his remarks to the effect that freedom consists in the ‘movement’ away from nature, Hegel conceives of the will as a natural power or capacity of sorts. I articulate and defend this thesis in two steps. In section I of the paper, I sketch a reading of Hegel’s account of practical freedom in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right as a capacity to respond to ethical requirements or duties. In section II, I (...) argue that the will, on that account, qualifies for Hegel as natural in the following two respects: First, in the good or virtuous case, our responsiveness to ethical requirements exhibits features similar to the lawlike behavior of subhuman denizens of the natural world and other law-governed natural processes. Second, our capacity for practical freedom emerges through processes of habituation from the exercises of capacities that we share with other animals. Although the second thesis is the more important of the two for the purposes of naturalizing Hegel’s account of the will, I believe it has not yet been the focus of satisfactory scholarly attention. I thus hope to help remedy what I take to be a gap in the recent literature. Published on 2022-10-14 10:55:29. (shrink)

The following paper focuses on the problem of the beginning of Hegelian science. By means mainly of a reading of the preface and the introduction to the Phenomenology of spirit, on the one hand, and the introduction and the text that opens the first book of the Science of logic, on the other, the arguments in favor of a phenomenological beginning and a directly logical beginning are presented. The conclusion reached is that the problem is not only a problem inherent (...) to the Hegelian notion of science, but one unsolvable within the Hegelian System. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to make sense of Hegel’s repeated comparisons between the biological and the social by articulating and defending the claim that social members and the institutions in which they participate are normatively evaluable, for him, in a manner analogous to that of animal organisms and their parts. In arguing for this interpretive thesis, I hope to bring together two Hegelian views (namely, what I shall refer to as his normative essentialism about animal organisms and his organicism (...) about social institutions) and the two corresponding strands in the Hegel literature. On the reading I propose here, Hegel’s normative essentialism is not restricted to animal organisms. The pattern of normative evaluation that applies to animal organisms applies also, in remarkably similar ways, to the sphere of ‘Objective Spirit’ and ‘Ethical Life’ as well. I end by raising and answering the objection that Hegel’s organicism, as I portray it, has conservative, even reactionary political implications. (shrink)

It is a landmark theorem of McKinsey and Tarski that if we interpret modal diamond as closure, then $$\mathsf S4$$ S4 is the logic of any dense-in-itself metrizable space. The McKinsey–Tarski Theorem relies heavily on a metric that gives rise to the topology. We give a new and more topological proof of the theorem, utilizing Bing’s Metrization Theorem.

Educational reformers all around the globe are continuously searching for ways to make schools more effective and efficient. In Germany, this movement has led to reforms that reduced overall school time of high track secondary schools from 9 to 8 years, which was compensated for by increasing average instruction time per week in lower secondary school. Based on prior research, we assumed that this reform might increase gender disparities in STEM-related outcomes, stress, and health because it required students to learn (...) similar content in less amount of time. Therefore, we investigated how the school time reform affected gender disparities at the end of upper secondary school between 2011 and 2013. Specifically, we considered representative data of the last two cohorts who completed lower secondary school before the reform and the first two cohorts after the reform from the National Educational Panel Study. Potential differences in gender disparities were investigated for upper secondary school outcomes of subject-specific standardized test performance, self-concept, and interest in mathematics, biology and physics, as well as outcomes of school-related stress and health. Overall, we found substantial disparities between girls and boys, which seemed to change little after the reform. Exceptions were the statistically significant gender × reform interactions for one stress dimension and two health dimensions which increased for both boys and girls, but more strongly for girls. (shrink)

Background: The field of voice and speech analysis has become increasingly popular over the last 10 years, and articles on its use in detecting neurodegenerative diseases have proliferated. Many studies have identified characteristic speech features that can be used to draw an accurate distinction between healthy aging among older people and those with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Speech analysis has been singled out as a cost-effective and reliable method for detecting the presence of both conditions. In this research, (...) a systematic review was conducted to determine these features and their diagnostic accuracy.Methods: Peer-reviewed literature was located across multiple databases, involving studies that apply new procedures of automatic speech analysis to collect behavioral evidence of linguistic impairments along with their diagnostic accuracy on Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment. The risk of bias was assessed by using JBI and QUADAS-2 checklists.Results: Thirty-five papers met the inclusion criteria; of these, 11 were descriptive studies that either identified voice features or explored their cognitive correlates, and the rest were diagnostic studies. Overall, the studies were of good quality and presented solid evidence of the usefulness of this technique. The distinctive acoustic and rhythmic features found are gathered. Most studies record a diagnostic accuracy over 88% for Alzheimer's and 80% for mild cognitive impairment.Conclusion: Automatic speech analysis is a promising tool for diagnosing mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. The reported features seem to be indicators of the cognitive changes in older people. The specific features and the cognitive changes involved could be the subject of further research. (shrink)

Processing and recognizing facial expressions are key factors in human social interaction. Past research suggests that individuals with autism spectrum disorder present difficulties to decode facial expressions. Those difficulties are notably attributed to altered strategies in the visual scanning of expressive faces. Numerous studies have demonstrated the multiple benefits of exposure to pet dogs and service dogs on the interaction skills and psychosocial development of children with ASD. However, no study has investigated if those benefits also extend to the processing (...) of facial expressions. The aim of this study was to investigate if having a service dog had an influence on facial expression processing skills of children with ASD. Two groups of 15 children with ASD, with and without a service dog, were compared using a facial expression recognition computer task while their ocular movements were measured using an eye-tracker. While the two groups did not differ in their accuracy and reaction time, results highlighted that children with ASD owning a service dog directed less attention toward areas that were not relevant to facial expression processing. They also displayed a more differentiated scanning of relevant facial features according to the displayed emotion. Results from the present study suggest that having a service dog and interacting with it on a daily basis may promote the development of specific visual exploration strategies for the processing of human faces. (shrink)

Healey et al. use experiments with chat dialogues to test the hypothesis that language co‐ordination is driven by ‘running repairs’. They replace signals of understanding such as “okay” with weaker, ‘spoof’ signals like “ummm”, and replace specific requests for clarification like “on the left?” with signals that suggest a higher degree of misunderstanding like “what?”. The latter manipulation causes participants to switch rapidly to more abstract forms of referring expression.

Healey et al. introduce the special issue with a brief overview of work on communication in the Cognitive Sciences and some of the historical and conceptual influences that have marginalized the study of miscommunication. Drawing on more recent work in Cognitive Science and Conversation Analysis they argue that miscommunication is in fact a highly structured, ubiquitous phenomenon that is fundamental to human interaction.

Social robots have limited social competences. This leads us to view them as depictions of social agents rather than actual social agents. However, people also have limited social competences. We argue that all social interaction involves the depiction of social roles and that they originate in, and are defined by, their function in accounting for failures of social competence.

We propose a new point of view for interpreting Newton’s and Einstein’s theories of gravity. By taking inspiration from Continuum Mechanics and its treatment of anisotropies, we formulate new gravitational actions for modified theories of gravity. These models are simple and natural generalisations with many interesting properties. Above all, their precise form can, in principle, be determined experimentally.

Four studies explore the role of perceptual fluency in attenuating bullshit receptivity, or the tendency for individuals to rate otherwise meaningless statements as “profound”. Across four studies, we presented participants with a sample of pseudoprofound bullshit statements in either a fluent or disfluent font and found that overall, disfluency attenuated bullshit receptivity while also finding little evidence that this effect was moderated by cognitive thinking style. In all studies, we measured participants’ cognitive reflection, need for cognition, faith in intuition, and (...) superstitious beliefs. Superstition strongly predicted bullshit receptivity regardless of fluency. Inconclusive results were found for the remaining scales. Potential links for the role of perceptual disfluency in promoting analytic thinking are discussed. (shrink)

Using a combination of network analysis and descriptive statistics, this study examines the extent to which six important and longstanding policy-oriented nonprofit organizations — foundations, think tanks, and policy-discussion groups — were connected via their directors with the 250 largest corporations in the United States in 1935–1936 and 2010–2011. The results demonstrate that the six nonprofit organizations included in the study were well integrated into corporate networks in both periods, and had an even greater integrative role in 2010–2011 than they (...) did in 1935–1936. This finding supports the hypothesis that policy-oriented nonprofit organizations allow the corporate community to develop proposals, and to reach consensus, on major policy issues. This hypothesis is further supported by an overview of existing studies that illustrate the success of these organizations in shaping policy outcomes on a range of issues. Based on the overall results, the longstanding claim that corporations influence government primarily or solely at the “interest-group” level can be supplemented by the conclusion that policy-oriented nonprofits support a policy-planning process that links the corporate community to government on general issues. In addition, the findings cast doubt on the claim that the corporate community has lost its capacity for policy cohesion in recent decades, due primarily to a “fracturing” caused by a decline in bank centrality. Since general policies have been created within the policy-planning process since at least the mid-1930s, the decline in bank centrality is irrelevant to the corporate community’s ability to formulate general policy proposals. (shrink)