Mood and optimism have been demonstrated to influence risk-taking decisions; however, the literature on mood, optimism, and decision-making is mixed and conducted primarily with western samples. This study sought to address this gap in the literature by examining the impact of mood and dispositional optimism on risk-taking and whether these associations differed between undergraduate students from the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Both samples completed a dispositional optimism questionnaire and an autobiographical mood induction task. They were then (...) tasked with choosing to complete the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices reasoning task on easy, medium, or hard difficulty for hypothetical money. Selecting harder difficulties was interpreted as more risk-taking due to a higher chance of failure. More positive mood and higher dispositional optimism were associated with decreased risk-taking, i.e., selecting easier puzzle difficulties, in the American sample but increased risk-taking decisions, i.e., selecting harder difficulties, in the Chinese sample. These findings suggest that the effect of mood and optimism on decision-making may differ by nationality and/or culture. (shrink)

Experimental psychologists in the learning tradition stress the importance of three of the authors' four key variables of experimental design. We review research investigating the roles played by these variables in studies of choice from our laboratory. Supporting the authors' claims, these studies show that the effects of these variables are not fixed and should not be taken for granted.

We agree with Rachlin's argument that altruism is best understood as a case of self-control, and that a behavioral analysis is appropriate. However, the appeal to teleological behaviorism and the value of behavioral patterns may be unnecessary. Instead, we argue that altruism can generally be explained with traditional behavioral principles such as negative reinforcement, conditioned reinforcement, and rule-governed behavior.

We present evidence supporting the target article's assertion that while the presentation of base-rate information in a natural frequency format can be helpful in enhancing sensitivity to base rates, method of presentation is not a panacea. Indeed, we review studies demonstrating that when subjects directly experience base rates as natural frequencies in a trial-by-trial setting, they evince large base-rate neglect.

There are good reasons why social psychologists have emphasized the negative side of human reasoning. They are simply following humans' tendency to pay particular attention to unusual occurrences. Attempts to refocus attention onto a wider range of behavior should include the influence of learning on both normative and non-normative behavior.

Subjects have a rich history of decision making which would be expected to affect reasoning in new tasks. For example, averaging, a strategy that is effectively used in many decisions, may help explain the conjunction fallacy. Before resorting to accounts based on phylogeny, more parsimonious accounts in terms of ontogeny should be explored.

We applaud Domjan et al. for providing an elegant account of Pavlovian feed-forward mechanisms in social behavior that eschews the pitfall of purposivism. However, they seem to imply that they have provided a complete account without provision for operant conditioning. We argue that operant conditioning plays a central role in social behavior, giving examples from fish and infant behavior.

If Tool Theory is buttressed by fundamental concepts of conditioned reinforcement and extinction, a dependence on Drug Theory may not be necessary. (Published Online April 5 2006).

Game-theoretic rationality is not generally observed in human behavior. One important reason is that subjects do not perceive the tasks in the same way as the experimenters do. Moreover, the rich history of cooperation that participants bring into the laboratory affects the decisions they make.

Experimental psychologists in the learning tradition stress the importance of three of the authors' four key variables of experimental design. We review research investigating the roles played by these variables in studies of choice from our laboratory. Supporting the authors' claims, these studies show that the effects of these variables are not fixed and should not be taken for granted.

Grandparental altruism may be partially understood in the same way as other instances of altruism. Acts of altruism often occur in a context in which the actor has a broader sense of cause and effect than is evident in more typical behavioral interactions where cause and effect appear relatively transparent. Many believe that good deeds will ultimately produce good results.

Future economic game research should include: (1) within-culture comparisons between individuals exposed and not exposed to market integration; (2) use of a game (such as the “Sharing Game”) that enables subjects to maximize their earnings while also maximizing those of the other participant; and (3) assessment of performance in a repeated-trials format that might encourage sensitivity to the games' economic contingencies.

Behavioral research suggests that rule-governed behavior should be less sensitive to environmental changes and thus more resistant to extinction (disconfirmation) than contingency-governed behavior. The opposite is implied in Davey's discussion of ontogenetic and phylogenetic contributions to fear development. The generality of the behavioral findings and their apparent inconsistency with the present article should be further explored with more sensitive research paradigms.

Heyman's target article makes a strong case for a behavioral approach to addiction, yet some important assumptions require justification, and promising behavioral alternatives to the author's melioration approach should be considered. In particular, the behavioral economic approach to addiction appears well developed and comprehensive. How does the melioration approach complement or improve on a behavioral economic account?

Pour exprimer la foi chrétienne, certains théologiens n’hésitent pas à reprendre des notions scientifiques comme éléments du discours théologique. L’article s’interroge sur l’apport et l’opportunité de cette pratique à partir d’un exemple, la notion de complémentarité au sens où N. Bohr l’a définie en physique. In order to get a theological discourse adapted to the cultural environment, several theologians take up scientific notions. In this paper are examined the interest and the impact of this way of doing theology considering an (...) example, the complementarity as defined by N. Bohr. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE: To apply component analysis, a structured approach to the ethical analysis of risks and potential benefits in research, to published emergency research using a waiver of/exception from informed consent. The hypothesis was that component analysis could be used with a high degree of interrater reliability, and that the vast majority of emergency research would comply with a minimal-risk threshold. METHODS: A Medline search and manual search were done to identify studies using a waiver of/exception from informed consent published between (...) July 1996 and December 2000. A review panel of physicians and bioethicists independently classified nontherapeutic procedures in each study as minimal risk, probably minimal risk, or probably more than minimal risk. RESULTS: Seventy studies using a waiver of/exception from informed consent were identified. A majority of reviewers classified nontherapeutic procedures in 62 studies (88.6%) as minimal risk. Reviewers classified nontherapeutic procedures in six studies (8.6%) as minimal risk or probably minimal risk. In two studies (2.9%), nontherapeutic procedures were classified as probably more than minimal risk. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.89 (95% CI = 0.85 to 0.93), indicating very high interrater reliability. CONCLUSIONS: Component analysis can be used with high reliability to review emergency research and may improve the consistency of institutional review board review of emergency research. The vast majority of published emergency research performed using a waiver of/exception from consent complies with a properly-applied minimal-risk threshold. A minimal-risk threshold for nontherapeutic procedures protects subjects better than current U.S. regulations while permitting important emergency research to continue. (shrink)

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; and (...) reproductive rights. (shrink)

In Carnap’s autobiography, he tells the story how one night in January 1931, “the whole theory of language structure” in all its ramifications “came to [him] like a vision”. The shorthand manuscript he produced immediately thereafter, he says, “was the first version” of Logical Syntax of Language. This document, which has never been examined since Carnap’s death, turns out not to resemble Logical Syntax at all, at least on the surface. Wherein, then, did the momentous insight of 21 January 1931 (...) consist? We seek to answer this question by placing Carnap’s shorthand manuscript in the context of his previous efforts to accommodate scientific theories and metalinguistic claims within Wittgenstein’s Tractatus theory of meaning. The breakthrough of January 1931 consists, from this viewpoint, in the rejection of the Tractatus theory in favor of the meta-mathematical perspective of Hilbert, Gödel, and Tarski. This was not yet the standpoint of the published Logical Syntax, as we show, but led naturally to the “principle of tolerance” and thus to Carnap’s mature philosophy, in which the inconsistencies between this first view and the principle of tolerance, which survived into the published Syntax, were overcome. (shrink)

Sally Sedgwick presents a fresh account of Hegel's critique of Kant's theoretical philosophy. She argues that Hegel offers a compelling critique of and alternative to the conception of cognition that Kant defended in his 'Critical' period, and explores Hegel's claim to derive from Kantian doctrines clues to a superior form of idealism.

Review of Primary Ousia: An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Z and H, by Michael J. Loux (Cornell University Press: 1991).

This study investigates the variations in the quality and comprehensiveness of 104 corporate social responsibility reports published by the world’s largest financial institutions in 2012. Using a novel measure of CSR report quality, we examine the impact of certain national, legal, and firm-level factors that might explain differences in the overall quality and extent of coverage of various issues in these reports. Our findings show that legal factors and CSR environment in a firm’s country of headquarters play an important role (...) in firms’ CSR reporting quality. Common law countries exhibit systematically higher overall CSR reporting quality than code law countries. Countries with higher CSR standards, policies, and regulations in place also produce significantly higher quality CSR reports. Firm size, on the other hand, has no major impact on the overall quality of CSR reports. In further analysis of the individual aspects of CSR disclosures, namely environment, philanthropy, bribery and corruption, and integrity assurance, we document that larger firms report at a higher quality on philanthropy and bribery and corruption. Bribery and corruption is reported at a higher quality in countries with common law tradition, high-quality legal regimes, and high CSR standards and regulations in place. We also observe higher quality integrity assurance in common law countries. CSR-minded countries and countries with low-quality legal environment also report on philanthropy at a higher quality. Finally, we offer guidelines for companies toward improving the quality of their reports, and suggestions for scholars and researchers for further avenues of research. (shrink)

Aristotle's claim in Metaphysics Z.6 that "each substance is the same as its essence" has long puzzled commentators. For it seems to conflict with two other Aristotelian theses: (1) primary substances are individuals (e.g., Socrates and Callias), and (2) essences are universals (e.g., Man and Horse). Three traditional solutions to this difficulty are considered and rejected. Instead, to make the Z.6 equation consistent with (1) and (2), I propose that it be interpreted to be making something other than a straightforward (...) identity claim. Callias is the same as his essence in the sense that to be identical to Callias is to be the same man as Callias (where Man is the essence of Callias). In general, x is identical to y if, and only if, x and y are the same E (where E specifies the "what it is to be" for x, i.e., the essence of x). So each of Socrates and Callias is the same as his essence, and Man is that essence, but Socrates and Callias are not identical, for they are not the same man. (shrink)

This is an examination of Aristotle's notion of an "accidental being" -- something intermediate between a substance and a property. An accidental being (sometimes called "accidental compound" or "kooky object") is an ephemeral object, typically the compound of a substance and a property, that exists for only as long as its components are united. I set out the role that accidental beings play in Aristotle's solutions to several philosophical problems. I also investigate the similarity between these beings and the individual (...) non-substances of Aristotle's Categories. Finally, I propose that accidental beings can be assimilated into a more contemporary conceptual scheme as events -- the states or conditions that substances are in or undergo. (shrink)

SummaryAn accurate framework for interpreting Kant's theory of knowledge must clearly distinguish between the six terms he uses to describe the various stages in the epistemological development of the‘object’of knowledge. Kant portrays the object transcendentally in the first Critique as passing from an unknowable‘thing in itself through the intermediate stage of being a‘transcendental object’, and finally attaining the ideal status of an‘appearance’. When the object is considered empirically, it passes through three corresponding stages: the‘phenomenon’is the real object as known in (...) experience, the‘negative noumenon’limits our knowledge to its intuitive manifestation, and the‘positive noumenon’is that aspect of the known object which remains ultimately transcendent. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.3, 995a7–8, there are people who will take seriously the arguments of a speaker only if a poet can be cited as a ‘witness’ in support of them. Aristotle's passing observation sharply reminds us that Greek philosophy had developed within, and was surrounded by, a culture which extensively valued the authority of the poetic word and the poet's ‘voice’ from which it emanated. The currency of ideas, values, and images disseminated through familiarity with poetry had always (...) been a force with which philosophy, in its various manifestations, needed to reckon. As a mode of thought and discourse which proclaimed its aspiration to wisdom, philosophy could not easily eschew some degree of dialogue with an art whose practitioners had traditionally been ranked prominently among the sophoi. Even Aristotle, who keeps aloof from the assumption that philosophical contentions stand in need of poetic support, cites and quotes poetry regularly in his own writings in ways which indicate the influence on him of a prevailing mentality that regarded poets and philosophers as pursuers, up to a point at least, of a common wisdom. (shrink)

"In the vast literature of love, The Seducer's Diary is an intricate curiosity--a feverishly intellectual attempt to reconstruct an erotic failure as a pedagogic success, a wound masked as a boast," observes John Updike in his foreword to Søren Kierkegaard's narrative. This work, a chapter from Kierkegaard's first major volume, Either/Or, springs from his relationship with his fiancée, Regine Olsen. Kierkegaard fell in love with the young woman, ten years his junior, proposed to her, but then broke off their engagement (...) a year later. This event affected Kierkegaard profoundly. Olsen became a muse for him, and a flood of volumes resulted. His attempt to set right, in writing, what he feels was a mistake in his relationship with Olsen taught him the secret of "indirect communication." The Seducer's Diary, then, becomes Kierkegaard's attempt to portray himself as a scoundrel and thus make their break easier for her. Matters of marriage, the ethical versus the aesthetic, dread, and, increasingly, the severities of Christianity are pondered by Kierkegaard in this intense work. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.3, 995a7–8, there are people who will take seriously the arguments of a speaker only if a poet can be cited as a ‘witness’ in support of them. Aristotle's passing observation sharply reminds us that Greek philosophy had developed within, and was surrounded by, a culture which extensively valued the authority of the poetic word and the poet's ‘voice’ from which it emanated. The currency of ideas, values, and images disseminated through familiarity with poetry had always (...) been a force with which philosophy, in its various manifestations, needed to reckon. As a mode of thought and discourse which proclaimed its aspiration to wisdom, philosophy could not easily eschew some degree of dialogue with an art whose practitioners had traditionally been ranked prominently among the sophoi. Even Aristotle, who keeps aloof from the assumption that philosophical contentions stand in need of poetic support, cites and quotes poetry regularly in his own writings in ways which indicate the influence on him of a prevailing mentality that regarded poets and philosophers as pursuers, up to a point at least, of a common wisdom. (shrink)

Frank Ebersole's extraordinary investigations of certain key philosophical ideas behind problems in epistemology and metaphysics are the subject of this article-review. I have resisted providing what many readers will expect me to provide, namely, a critical examination of his philosophical methodology. I do question his unwilligness to say why his investigations only yield I negative results, and I do have something to say about classifying him as an ordinary language philosopher. However, my main focus is on trying to engage critically (...) with what he actually does in his work. To this end, I provide a narrative of the investigation he carries out into the possibility of comparing the objects of perception and dreams, and I cite other works of his in support of my understanding of that investigation. Although one of his lengthiest essays seems to be devoted to an anticipation of an objection to his approach, I explain why even there he is not concerned with the question of why he always seems to get negative results. After suggesting why some of his later essays seem to be so hard to read, I conclude by saying something about what I take to be his achievement. (shrink)

Comparative study of the philosophy of Śaṅkaracārya, ca. 700, Hindu philosopher and Kabir, 15th century Hindi religious poet.