In the past decades, reductionism has dominated both research directions and funding policies in clinical psychology and psychiatry. The intense search for the biological basis of mental disorders, however, has not resulted in conclusive reductionist explanations of psychopathology. Recently, network models have been proposed as an alternative framework for the analysis of mental disorders, in which mental disorders arise from the causal interplay between symptoms. In this target article, we show that this conceptualization can help explain why reductionist approaches in (...) psychiatry and clinical psychology are on the wrong track. First, symptom networks preclude the identification of a common cause of symptomatology with a neurobiological condition; in symptom networks, there is no such common cause. Second, symptom network relations depend on the content of mental states and, as such, feature intentionality. Third, the strength of network relations is highly likely to depend partially on cultural and historical contexts as well as external mechanisms in the environment. Taken together, these properties suggest that, if mental disorders are indeed networks of causally related symptoms, reductionist accounts cannot achieve the level of success associated with reductionist disease models in modern medicine. As an alternative strategy, we propose to interpret network structures in terms of D. C. Dennett's (1987) notion ofreal patterns, and suggest that, instead of being reducible to a biological basis, mental disorders feature biological and psychological factors that are deeply intertwined in feedback loops. This suggests that neither psychological nor biological levels can claim causal or explanatory priority, and that a holistic research strategy is necessary for progress in the study of mental disorders. (shrink)

Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics deals with these problems is reviewed. A new interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, the transactional interpretation, is presented. The basic element of this interpretation is the transaction describing a quantum event as an exchange of advanced and retarded waves, as implied by the work of Wheeler and Feynman, Dirac, and others. The transactional interpretation is explicitly nonlocal and thereby consistent with recent tests of the Bell inequality, yet is relativistically invariant and fully causal. (...) A detailed comparison of the transactional and Copenhagen interpretations is made in the context of well-known quantum-mechanical Gedankenexperimenre and "paradoxes." The transactional interpretation permits quantum-mechanical wave functions to be interpreted as real waves physically present in space rather than as "mathematical representations of knowledge" as in the Copenhagen interpretation. The transactional interpretation is shown to provide insight into the complex character of the quantum-mechanical state vector and the mechanism associated with its "collapse." It also leads in a natural way to justification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Born probability law (P = ii iij*), basic elements of the Copenhagen interpretation. (shrink)

This book shines bright light into the dim recesses of quantum theory, where the mysteries of entanglement, nonlocality, and wave collapse have motivated some to conjure up multiple universes, and others to adopt a "shut up and calculate" mentality. After an extensive and accessible introduction to quantum mechanics and its history, the author turns attention to his transactional model. Using a quantum handshake between normal and time-reversed waves, this model provides a clear visual picture explaining the baffling experimental results that (...) flow daily from the quantum physics laboratories of the world. To demonstrate its powerful simplicity, the transactional model is applied to a collection of counter-intuitive experiments and conceptual problems. (shrink)

The pivotal problem of comorbidity research lies in the psychometric foundation it rests on, that is, latent variable theory, in which a mental disorder is viewed as a latent variable that causes a constellation of symptoms. From this perspective, comorbidity is a (bi)directional relationship between multiple latent variables. We argue that such a latent variable perspective encounters serious problems in the study of comorbidity, and offer a radically different conceptualization in terms of a network approach, where comorbidity is hypothesized to (...) arise from direct relations between symptoms of multiple disorders. We propose a method to visualize comorbidity networks and, based on an empirical network for major depression and generalized anxiety, we argue that this approach generates realistic hypotheses about pathways to comorbidity, overlapping symptoms, and diagnostic boundaries, that are not naturally accommodated by latent variable models: Some pathways to comorbidity through the symptom space are more likely than others; those pathways generally have the same direction (i.e., from symptoms of one disorder to symptoms of the other); overlapping symptoms play an important role in comorbidity; and boundaries between diagnostic categories are necessarily fuzzy. (shrink)

The frame concept from linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence is a theoretical tool to model how explicitly given information is combined with expectations deriving from background knowledge. In this paper, we show how the frame concept can be fruitfully applied to analyze the notion of mathematical understanding. Our analysis additionally integrates insights from the hermeneutic tradition of philosophy as well as Schmid’s ideal genetic model of narrative constitution. We illustrate the practical applicability of our theoretical analysis through a case (...) study on extremal proofs. Based on this case study, we compare our analysis of proof understanding to Avigad’s ability-based analysis of proof understanding. (shrink)

This article investigates how companies make sense of CSR. It is based on an explorative comparative case study of 18 companies in the Netherlands using background information, interviews and annual reports. Initially, the sensemaking process of CSR is guided and coordinated by change agents who are specifically appointed to explore the implementation of CSR in their company. These change agents initiate the CSR process within their own organisations. The meaning they develop stems from their personal and organisational values and frames (...) of reference. By attuning the vocabulary of CSR to the language of their colleagues, they aim to gain support for this undertaking in their organisation. This sensemaking procedure can be divided into pragmatic, external, procedural, policy‐oriented and value‐driven processes. The capability of an organisation to embed CSR is the result of trial and error, personal preferences and the use of language by the change agent that fits the (dynamic) situation at hand. Thus, each organisation needs a tailor‐made approach to implement CSR successfully. (shrink)

This paper provides preliminary insights into the process of sense-making and developing meaning with regard to corporate social responsibility (CSR) within 18 Dutch companies. It is based upon a research project carried out within the framework of the Dutch National Research Programme on CSR. The paper questions how change agents promoting CSR within these companies made sense of the meaning of CSR. How did they use language (and other instruments) to stimulate and underpin the contextual essence of CSR? Why did (...) they do that in this particular way? What were the consequences of this approach for shaping the process of CSR in their company? Did their efforts contribute to a new way of thinking and acting or was it merely putting old wine in new barrels? A preliminary conclusion is that change agents use above all linguistic artefacts (words and notions) and carry out practical projects while constructing meaning. Still, the meaning of meaning itself remains highly intangible, situational and personality related. (shrink)

This article investigates how companies make sense of CSR. It is based on an explorative comparative case study of 18 companies in the Netherlands using background information, interviews and annual reports. Initially, the sensemaking process of CSR is guided and coordinated by change agents who are specifically appointed to explore the implementation of CSR in their company. These change agents initiate the CSR process within their own organisations. The meaning they develop stems from their personal and organisational values and frames (...) of reference. By attuning the vocabulary of CSR to the language of their colleagues, they aim to gain support for this undertaking in their organisation. This sensemaking procedure can be divided into pragmatic, external, procedural, policy‐oriented and value‐driven processes. The capability of an organisation to embed CSR is the result of trial and error, personal preferences and the use of language by the change agent that fits the (dynamic) situation at hand. Thus, each organisation needs a tailor‐made approach to implement CSR successfully. (shrink)

The problem of the direction of electromagnetic time, i.e., the complete dominance of retarded electromagnetic radiation over advanced radiation in the universe, is considered in the context of a generalized form of the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory in an open expanding universe with a singularity atT=0. It is shown that the application of a four-vector reflection boundary condition at the singularity leads to the observed dominance of retarded radiation; it also clarifies the role of advanced and retarded waves in the emission (...) of very weakly absorbed radiation such as neutrinos. (shrink)

Scientific research in the formal sciences comes in multiple degrees of formality: fully formal work; rigorous proofs that practitioners know to be formalizable in principle; and informal work like rough proof sketches and considerations about the advantages and disadvantages of various formal systems. This informal work includes informal and semi-formal debates between formal scientists, e.g. about the acceptability of foundational principles and proposed axiomatizations. In this paper, we propose to use the methodology of structured argumentation theory to produce a formal (...) model of such informal and semi-formal debates in the formal sciences. For this purpose, we propose ASPIC-END, an adaptation of the structured argumentation framework ASPIC+ which can incorporate natural deduction style arguments and explanations. We illustrate the applicability of the framework to debates in the formal sciences by presenting a simple model of some arguments about proposed solutions to the Liar paradox, and by discussing a more extensive—but still preliminary—model of parts of the debate that mathematicians had about the Axiom of Choice in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

We extend the results of Laver on using inverse limits to reflect large cardinals of the form, there exists an elementary embedding Lα → Lα. Using these inverse limit reflection embeddings directly and by broadening the collection of U-representable sets, we prove structural results of L under the assumption that there exists an elementary embedding j : L → L. As a consequence we show the impossibility of a generalized inverse limit X-reflection result for X ⊆ Vλ+1, thus focusing the (...) study of L generalizations on L. (shrink)

School gardens and garden-based learning continue to gain great popularity in the United States, and their pedagogical potential, and ability to impact students’ fruit and vegetable consumption and activity levels have been well-documented. Less examined is their potential to be agents of food system reskilling and transformation. Though producer and consumer are inextricably linked in the food system, and deskilling of one directly influences the other, theorists often focus on production-centered and consumption-centered deskilling separately. However, in a school garden, the (...) production/consumption disconnect is erased, by virtue of the design of the site itself and how it is utilized by the actors within it. School gardens provide the critical component of education in alternative food networks, and contribute to the producer/consumer reskilling that is a necessary part of food system transformation. We conducted a case study of an established school garden program during its transition from autonomous non-profit to official, district-funded program of a rural school district in the Midwest. By participating in the full “seed to plate” life cycle of a garden crop, students in the garden were actively involved in the reconnection of producer and consumer, while educators were fostering in students an appreciation for fresh, healthy foods and actively challenging the “McDonaldization” of both students’ diets and education. Based upon these findings, we argue that school gardens in rural areas could leverage the dominant role of rural America in developing and shifting food system paradigms. (shrink)

The plane of the present is a concept that is useful for discussing the various paradigms of time. Here by ‘plane of the present’ we mean the temporal interface that represents the present instant and that forms the boundary between the past and the future. We use the geometrical term ‘plane’ to indicate an extended surface in the space-time continuum, as opposed to a ‘point’ on some time axis. This point/plane dichotomy is intended to raise issues of extension and simultaneity (...) and to examine the degree to which these are meaningful concepts from various physical viewpoints. We will show by example in the present work that the plane of the present is a pivotal concept that offers considerable power in differentiating between various views of the nature of time. The concept of time within the main stream of physics thinking has followed a rather convoluted path over the past three millennia. Anticipating the modern motion picture, Zeno of Elea (c.490-c.430 B.C) questioned whether time should appropriately be viewed as a continuously flowing river, or should more properly be considered as a rapid sequence of stop-motion ‘freeze-frames’, in effect rendering geometrical each instant as a separate infinitesimal point on the line of time. Adopting this view, he asked how physical motion could occur. He argued paradoxically that motion is not possible, since it appears to happen only between the frozen frames of time instants.1 From the viewpoint of Zeno, the plane of the present would be simply the last and most recent in this sequence of freeze-frames. It would be that frozen instant, spanning the universe, which changes progressively as the instant we call ‘now’ becomes the frozen past and future possibility freezes into the ‘now’ of present reality. We note that the plane of the present as a concept does not resolve the arrow paradox that Zeno raised. It only provides a way of thinking about it. (shrink)

EPR experiments demonstrate that standard quantum mechanics exhibits the property of nonlocality , the enforcement of correlations between separated parts of an entangled quantum systems across spacelike separations. Nonlocality will be clarified using the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the possibility of superluminal effects (e.g., faster-than-light communication) from nonlocality and non-linear quantum mechanics will be examined.

The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics is summarized and various points concerning the transactional interpretation and its relation to the Copenhagen interpretation are considered. Questions concerning mapping the transactional interpretation onto the Copenhagen interpretation, of advanced waves as solutions to proper wave equations, of collapse and the quantum formalism, and of the relation of quantum mechanical interpretations to experimental tests and results are discussed.

The Paris Climate Agreement is an important step for international climate policy, but the compensation for negative effects of climate change based on clear assignment of responsibilities remains highly debated. From both a policy and a science perspective, it is unclear how responsibilities should be defined and on what evidence base. We explore different normative principles of justice relevant to climate change impacts, and ask how different forms of causal evidence of impacts drawn from detection and attribution research could inform (...) policy approaches in accordance with justice considerations. We reveal a procedural injustice based on the imbalance of observations and knowledge of impacts between developed and developing countries. This type of injustice needs to be considered in policy negotiations and decisions, and efforts strengthened to reduce it. (shrink)

Taboo terms offer a playground for linguistic creativity in language after language, and sign languages form no exception. The present paper offers the first investigation of taboo terms in sign languages from a cognitive linguistic perspective. We analyze the linguistic mechanisms that introduce offense, focusing on the combined effects of cognitive metonymy and iconicity. Using the Think Aloud Protocol, we elicited offensive or crass signs and dysphemisms from nine signers. We find that German Sign Language uses a variety of linguistic (...) means to introduce and enhance offense, many of which rely on iconic properties of the taboo sign. In conjunction with cross-linguistically common metonymic word-formation strategies, the degree of visual explicitness of a sign increases its potential to offend. Semantically similar taboo signs based on the same metonymic anchor but differing in their degree of iconicity also differ in offensiveness. This allows for creating dysphemisms and euphemisms via phonological changes to a sign. We further show that embodiment creates modality-enhanced ‘vicarious embarrassment’ in the viewer that results in the respective signs being judged obscene or offensive. Further, lexical blending and non-manual enhancement play a role in the creation of dysphemisms in DGS. Lastly, we propose that iconicity as a cognitive structuring principle of linguistic expressions constrains the possible semantic extensions of iconic taboo terms. (shrink)

East Asians and Westerners differ in various aspects of perception and cognition. For example, visual memory for East Asians is believed to be more influenced by the contextual aspects of a scene than is the case for Westerners (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). There are also differences in visual search: for Westerners, search for a long line among short is faster than for short among long, whereas this difference does not appear to hold for East Asians (Ueda et al., submitted). However, (...) it is unclear how these group-level differences originate. To investigate the extent to which they depend upon environment, we tested visual search and visual memory in East Asian immigrants who had lived in Canada for different amounts of time. Recent immigrants were found to exhibit no search asymmetry, unlike Westerners who had spent their lives in Canada. However, immigrants who had lived in Canada for more than two years showed performance comparable to that of Westerners. These differences could not be explained by the general analytic/holistic processing distinction believed to differentiate Westerners and East Asians, since all observers showed a strong holistic tendency for visual recognition. Results instead support the suggestion that exposure to a new environment can significantly affect the particular processes used to perceive a given stimulus. (shrink)

We address the commentaries on our target article in terms of four major themes. First, we note that virtually all commentators agree that mental disorders are not brain disorders in the common interpretation of these terms, and establish the consensus that explanatory reductionism is not a viable thesis. Second, we address criticisms to the effect that our article was misdirected or aimed at a straw man; we argue that this is unlikely, given the widespread communication of reductionist slogans in psychopathology (...) research and society. Third, we tackle the question of whether intentionality, extended systems, and multiple realizability are as problematic as claimed in the target article, and we present a number of nuances and extensions with respect to our article. Fourth, we discuss the question of how the network approach should incorporate biological factors, given that wholesale reductionism is an unlikely option. (shrink)

Agendanken experiment is proposed for distinguishing between two models accounting for the macroscopic arrow of time. The experiment involves the veloeity revesal of components of an isolated system, and the two models give contrasting predictions as to its behavior.

This paper discusses and criticizes Joseph Nye’s account of soft power. First, we set the stage and make some general remarks about the notion of social power. In the main part of this paper we offer a detailed critical discussion of Nye’s conception of soft power. We conclude that it is too unclear and confused to be of much analytical use. However, despite this failure, Nye is aiming at explaining an important but also neglected form of social power: the power (...) to influence the will and not just the behavior of other agents. In the last part of this paper we briefly discuss Steven Lukes’ alternative view of a “third dimension” of power and end with a sketch of a more promising way to account for this neglected form of power. (shrink)

I live in Seattle, the city which last Fall was host to two major international conferences of interest to science fiction readers: The Annual International IEEE Symposium on Virtual Reality (VRAIS- 93) and The 5th ACM Conference on Hypertext (Hypertext-93). I was able to attend both conferences, and I'll use this column to provide an overview of what I learned there.

One of the central critiques of the bourgeois conception of public holds that, in its implicit claim to universality, it fails to account for the material particularities of social groups and for the variety of possible rationalities. Some theorists have aimed to solve this problem by describing particular publics and particular rationalities based on racial, ethnic, gender, or political identities. While particularist public models represent difference in protest of the totalizing and counterfactual valence of a bourgeois conceptualization of public, they (...) fail to acknowledge that glossing difference is fundamental to the function of and the authorizing power of public, as it is marshalled by speakers. By analogizing Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's universal audience with public, this paper (a) introduces the public metonym, a rhetorically productive counterfactual totality that glosses the material particularities of social groups, (b) critiques the particularist approach to the paradox of public, (c) introduces the resistance metonym as a rhetorically-minded alternative, and (d) clarifies distinctions among projects that claim to address a common object called pUblic. (shrink)

In this study, we ask whether consensus testimony affects children’s judgments of the possibility of improbable and impossible events. Fifty-six U.S. and Chinese 8-year-olds made possibility judgments before and after hearing three speakers affirm or deny the possibility of improbable and impossible events. Results indicated that whereas both U.S. and Chinese children altered their judgments in the direction of the consensus testimony, this effect was stronger for Chinese children. U.S. children were particularly receptive to consensus for improbable events and when (...) the consensus provided correct information, whereas Chinese children were similarly willing to change their judgment regardless of event type and the validity of the testimony. We propose that the extent of the influence of testimony on possibility judgments varies based on cultural setting. Our findings have potential applications for domains that require evaluation of counterintuitive claims, like religious and scientific education. (shrink)

This column is about a new alternative to standard Big Bang cosmology that reaches back in time to the era before the Big Bang in an effort to remove some of the arbitrary assumptions from the model. It's in part the work of Gabriele Veneziano, a theorist at CERN, and it is called pre-Big-Bang cosmology. We'll begin by reviewing the standard scenario of the origin of the universe.

This column is about experimental tests of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. The question at issue is whether we can perform experiments that can show whether there is an "observer-created reality" as suggested by the Copenhagen Interpretation, or a peacock’s tail of rapidly branching alternate universes, as suggested by the Many-Worlds Interpretation, or forward-backward in time handshakes, as suggested by the Transactional Interpretation? Until recently, I would have said that this was an impossible task, but a new experiment has (...) changed my view, and I now believe that the Copenhagen and Many-Worlds Interpretations (at least as they are usually presented) have been falsified by experiment. (shrink)

Lindquist et al. present a strong case for a constructionist account of emotion. First, we elaborate on the ramifications that a constructionist account of emotions might have for psychiatric disorders with emotional disturbances as core elements. Second, we reflect on similarities between Lindquist et al.'s model and recent attempts at formulating psychiatric disorders as networks of causally related symptoms.

”Quantum entanglement”, a phrase first coined by Erwin Schr¨ odinger1, describes a condition of the separated parts of the same quantum system in which each of the parts can only be described by referencing the state of other part. This is one of the most counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics, because classically one would expect system parts out of speed-of-light contact to be completely independent. Thus, entanglement represents a kind of quantum connectedness in which measurements on one isolated part of (...) an entangled quantum system have non-classical consequences for the outcome of measurements performed on the other (possibly very distant) part of the same system. This quantum connectedness that enforces the measurement correlation and state-matching in entangled quantum systems has come to be called quantum nonlocality. (shrink)

Patronizing the Public is the first detailed and comprehensive examination of how American philanthropy has transformed culture, communication, and the humanities. Drawing on an impressive range of archival and secondary sources, the chapters in the volume shed light on philanthropic foundations have shaped numerous fields, including film, television, radio, journalism, drama, local history, museums, as well as art and the humanities in general.

Les textes présentés dans ce volume sont ceux des conférences prononcées en séance plénière dans le cadre du XXVIe Congrès international de Philosophie de Langue Française , consacré, pour marquer le quatrième centenaire de la naissance de Descarte, au thème général « L’esprit cartésien », et organisé du 30 août au 3 septembre 1996, en Sorbonne et au Palais de l’UNESCO, par la Société Française de Philosophie.Le volume est complété par une version en langue française des contributions à un Hommage (...) international à Descartes, prononcées, dans leurs langues respectives, lors de la séance de clôture du Congrès.Un CD-Rom présentant la version intégrale des Actes du Congrès est joint à ce volume, dont il constitue le complément nécessaire. (shrink)

Strawson, P. F. Semantics, logic and ontology.--Tugendhat, E. Existence in space and time.--Geuss, R. Quine und die Unbestimmtheit der Ontologie.--Bittner, R. Zu Quines These der ontologischen Relativität.--Hintikka, J. Die Intentionen der Intentionalität.

'Uncertainty and chance' is a subject with a broad span, in that there is no academic discipline or walk of life that is not beset by uncertainty and chance. In this book a range of approaches is represented by authors from varied disciplines: natural sciences, mathematics, social sciences and medical sciences. At one extreme, this volume is concerned with the foundations of probability. At the other extreme, we have scholars who acknowledge the concept of chance and uncertainty but do not (...) cope with it by means of systematic measurement or quantative analysis. (shrink)