The novel COVID-19 infection has spread all over the world and is still generating a lot of issues at different levels. There is a lack of control in disease early diagnosis and rapid evolution, which impacts both the medical and the economic system. Young gastroenterologists should adapt to overcome current difficulties and continue their life and general training. This is a multi-center national study, which aims to assess the general perspective of young gastroenterologists from six university centers in Romania regarding (...) their current training and the psychological effect the pandemic has on their life and job. An online survey with 58 items was distributed using Google Forms, and quality of life and anxiety were assessed. The validated instruments 15D and endler multidimensional anxiety scales were used. All analyses were performed using SPSS 25. Of the 174 gastroenterologists approached, 96 responded. A majority of the respondents were residents in gastroenterology, and 40.6% were male. The pandemic influenced the number of examined patients as well as young gastroenterologists’ endoscopy training. Health-related quality of life was negatively associated with the level of anxiety generated by the cognitive component of anxiety as a state, the new and ambiguity of the state, and how threatened the respondent felt. The level of anxiety was moderate, and no difference was found between the physicians working in a designated hospital or not. General caution should be considered for young gastroenterologists’ training, and continuous observation should be done to ensure better mental health on the current evolution. These findings would need to be verified in larger-sample studies and in different types of specialties. (shrink)

I take it that the following is a desideratum of our theories in the philosophy of mind. A theory in the philosophy of mind should help us better understand ourselves as agents and aid in our theorizing about the nature of action and agency. In this paper I discuss a strategy adopted by some defenders of nonreductive physicalism in response to the problem of causal exclusion. The strategy, which I refer to as “intralevelism,” relies on treating mental causation as intra (...) level mental to mental causation, rather than as involving any inter level mental to physical causation. I raise problems for intralevelist theories of mental causation that stem from action-theoretic considerations. Specifically, I focus on the failure of intralevelist proposals to account for the problem of basic causal deviance in the etiology of action. To the extent that intralevelism fails to make room for basic causal deviance, the strategy fails to satisfy the aforementioned desideratum, viz ., that our theories in the philosophy of mind should be of use in theorizing about action and agency. The upshot is that intralevelism is a less promising strategy for nonreductive physicalists than it appears at first glance. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as an effective way for firms to create favorable attitudes among consumers. Although prior research has addressed the direct influence of proactive and reactive CSR on consumer responses, this research hypothesized that consumers’ perceived organizational motives (i.e., attributions) will mediate this relationship. It was also hypothesized that the source of information and location of CSR initiative will affect the motives consumers assign to a firms’ engagement in the initiative. Two experiments were conducted to test (...) these hypotheses. The results of Study 1 indicate that the nature of a CSR initiative influences consumer attribution effects and that these attributions act as mediators in helping to explain consumers’ responses to CSR. Study 2 suggests that the source of the CSR message moderates the effect of CSR on consumer attributions. The mediating influence of the attributions as well as the importance of information source suggests that proper communication of CSR can be a viable way to inculcate positive corporate associations and purchase intentions. (shrink)

Cultural schemas are a central cognitive mechanism through which culture affects action. In this article, we develop a theoretical model of cultural schemas that is better able to support empirical work, including inferential, sensitizing, and operational uses. We propose a multilevel framework centered on a high-level definition of cultural schemas that is sufficiently broad to capture its major sociological applications but still sufficiently narrow to identify a set of cognitive phenomena with key functional properties in common: cultural schemas are socially (...) shared representations deployable in automatic cognition. We use this conception to elaborate the main theoretical properties of cultural schemas, and to provide clear criteria that distinguish them from other cultural or cognitive elements. We then propose a series of concrete tests empirical scholarship can use to determine if these properties apply. We also demonstrate how this approach can identify potentially faulty theoretical inferences present in existing work. Moving to a lower level of analysis, we elaborate how cultural schemas can be algorithmically conceptualized in terms of their building blocks. This leads us to recommend improvements to methods for measuring cultural schemas. We conclude by outlining questions for a broader research program. (shrink)

Generic statements (e.g., “Birds lay eggs”) express generalizations about categories. In this paper, we hypothesized that there is a paradoxical asymmetry at the core of generic meaning, such that these sentences have extremely strong implications but require little evidence to be judged true. Four experiments confirmed the hypothesized asymmetry: Participants interpreted novel generics such as “Lorches have purple feathers” as referring to nearly all lorches, but they judged the same novel generics to be true given a wide range of prevalence (...) levels (e.g., even when only 10% or 30% of lorches had purple feathers). A second hypothesis, also confirmed by the results, was that novel generic sentences about dangerous or distinctive properties would be more acceptable than generic sentences that were similar but did not have these connotations. In addition to clarifying important aspects of generics’ meaning, these findings are applicable to a range of real-world processes such as stereotyping and political discourse. (shrink)

We propose that human reasoning relies on an inherence heuristic, an implicit cognitive process that leads people to explain observed patterns (e.g., girls wear pink) in terms of the inherent features of their constituents (e.g., pink is an inherently feminine color). We then demonstrate how this proposed heuristic can provide a unified account for a broad set of findings spanning areas of research that might at first appear unrelated (e.g., system justification, nominal realism, is–ought errors in moral reasoning). By revealing (...) the deep commonalities among the diverse phenomena that fall under its scope, our account is able to generate new insights into these phenomena, as well as new empirical predictions. A second main goal of this paper, aside from introducing the inherence heuristic, is to articulate the proposal that the heuristic serves as a foundation for the development of psychological essentialism. More specifically, we propose that essentialism—which is the common belief that natural and social categories are underlain by hidden, causally powerful “essences”—emerges over the first few years of life as an elaboration of the earlier, and more open-ended, intuitions supplied by the inherence heuristic. In the final part of the paper, we distinguish our proposal from competing accounts (e.g., Strevens' K-laws) and clarify the relationship between the inherence heuristic and related cognitive tendencies (e.g., the correspondence bias). In sum, this paper illuminates a basic cognitive process that emerges early in life and is likely to have profound effects on many aspects of human psychology. (shrink)

According to traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism, God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect agent. This volume shows that philosophy of religion needs to take seriously alternative concepts of the divine, and demonstrates the considerable philosophical interest that they hold.

Mainstream political liberals hold that state coercion is legitimate only if it is justified on the grounds of reasons that all may reasonably be expected to accept. Critics argue that this public justification principle is self-defeating, because it depends on moral justifications that not all may reasonably be expected to accept. To rebut the self-defeat objection, I elaborate on the following disjunction: one either agrees or disagrees that it is wrong to impose one’s morality on others by the coercive power (...) of the state. Those who disagree reject PJP, they understand politics as war. Those who agree accept PJP, they understand politics as competition. Political competitors abide by PJP to avoid politics as war, by enforcing PJP on political combatants they engage in a war that is unavoidable. In both cases their exercise of political power has a justification that is reasonably acceptable to all. (shrink)

Some philosophers working on the metaphysics of agency argue that if agency is understood in terms of settling the truth of some matters, then the power required for the exercise of intentional agency is an irreducible two-way power to either make it true that p or not-p. In this paper, the focus is on two-way powers in decision-making. Two problems are raised for theories of decision-making that are ontologically committed to irreducible two-way powers. First, recent accounts lack an adequate framework (...) for explaining decisions by the reasons of agents. Second, accepting ontologically irreducible two-way powers into one’s metaphysic of agency implies an ontological commitment to substance dualism. An ontologically less-costly alternative to irreducible two-way powers is offered. It is argued that a reductive account of two-way powers in terms of what George Molnar called “derivative powers” should be accepted. The reductive account can provide us with the truthmakers for talk about two-way powers. Moreover, the reductive account does not share the liabilities of accepting irreducible two-way powers. (shrink)

This book, a history of a religious category of ancient philosophy, is the first synthesis on the notion of daimōn in the Platonic tradition. It focuses on the relationship between demonology and, respectively, cosmology, the philosophical hermeneutics of religion and theories of the soul. Histoire d’une catégorie religieuse de la philosophie ancienne, ce livre représente la première synthèse sur la notion de daimōn dans la tradition platonicienne. Il étudie les relations de la démonologie avec la cosmologie, l’herméneutique philosophique de la (...) religion et les théories de l’âme. (shrink)

This Element focuses on some core conceptual and ontological issues related to pantheistic conceptions of God by engaging with recent work in analytic philosophy of religion on this topic. The conceptual and ontological commitments of pantheism are contrasted with those of other conceptions of God. The concept of God assumed by pantheism is clarified and the question about what type of unity the universe must exhibit in order to be identical with God receives the most attention. It is argued that (...) the sort of unity the universe must display is the sort of unity characteristic of conscious cognitive systems. Some alternative ontological frameworks for grounding such cognitive unity are considered. Further, the question of whether God can be understood as personal on pantheism is explored. (shrink)

The standard liberal egalitarian approach to religious exemptions from generally applicable laws implies that such exemptions may be necessary in the name of equal respect for each citizen’s conscience. In each particular case this approach requires balancing the claims of devout believers against the countervailing claims of other citizens. I contend, firstly, that under the conditions of deep moral and ideological disagreement the balancing procedure proves to be extremely inconclusive. It does not provide an unequivocal solution even in the imaginary (...) case based on the biblical story of Abraham’s sacrifice, not to speak of real-life cases that are far less suggestive. Secondly, I argue that it is possible to consider demands for religious exemptions respectfully, without even challenging the way they are justified, but still reject them for principled reasons—namely, because these demands cannot be met without arbitrarily bending popular sovereignty to the dictate of religious doctrines. (shrink)

It has become increasingly popular to argue that legal positivism is actually a normative theory, and that it cannot be purely descriptive and morally neutral as H.L.A. Hart has suggested. This article purports to disprove this line of thought. It argues that legal positivism is best understood as a descriptive, morally neutral, theory about the nature of law. The article distinguishes between five possible views about the relations between normative claims and legal positivism, arguing that some of them are not (...) at odds with Hart’s thesis about the nature of jurisprudence, while the others are wrong, both as expositions of legal positivism or as critiques of it. Legal positivism does not necessarily purport to justify any aspect of its subject matter, nor is it committed to any particular moral or political evaluations. (shrink)

In her recent paper, “A Defense of Substance Causation,” Ann Whittle makes a case for substance causation. In this paper, assuming that causation is a generative or productive relation, I argue that Whittle’s argument is not successful. While substances are causally relevant in causal processes owing to outcomes being counterfactually dependent upon their role in such occurrences, the real productive work in causal processes is accomplished by the causal powers of substances.

This paper examines the ability of countries in Central and Eastern Europe to ensure appropriate protection of research participants in the field of increasingly globalizing biomedical research. By applying an analytical framework for identifying gaps in policies and programs for human subjects protection to four countries of CEE—Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, substantial gaps in the scope and content of relevant policies and major impediments to program performance have been revealed. In these countries, public policies on the protection of research (...) participants lack consistency and reliable mechanisms for their implementation. Impediments to program performance most often relate to inadequacies in the national research ethics systems with regard to organizational structure, budgetary support, supervision, and training. The level of research ethics capacity varies from country to country and depends on socio-economic and political factors of post-communist transition. The breadth and depth of the problems identified suggest that the current level of protection for research participants in CEE might be inadequate to the challenges posed by the globalization of biomedical research. In CEE countries, there is a need for strengthening research ethics capacity through modification of relevant policies and improvement of program management. The differences among the countries call for further research on identifying the best approaches for filling the gaps in the policies and programs aimed at ensuring effective protection of research participants. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Defending the distinction between believing and accepting a proposition, I argue that cases where agents allegedly exercise direct voluntary control over their beliefs are instances of agents exercising direct voluntary control over accepting a proposition. The upshot is that any decision to believe a proposition cannot result directly in one’s acquiring the belief. Accepting is an instrumental mental action the agent performs that may trigger belief. A model of the relationship between acceptance and belief is sketched and defended. The (...) consequences of the distinction between belief and acceptance, and the model of belief control sketched are then applied to the recent case made by Carl Ginet in defense of the conceptual and psychological possibility of agents exercising direct voluntary control over their beliefs. n. (shrink)

The article analyzes the possibilities and limitations of artificial intelligence. The article considers the subjectivity of artificial intelligence, determines its necessity for solving intellectual problems depending on the possibility of representing the real world as a deterministic system. Methodological limitations of artificial intelligence, which is based on the use of big data technologies, are stated. These limitations cause the impossibility of forming a holistic representation of the objects of cognition and the world as a whole. As a tool for deterministic (...) description of the universe it is proposed to use empirical-metaphysical general theory of systems, which is an extension of existing general theories of systems due to ontological justification of the phenomenon of isomorphism and definition of a limited set of laws, rules, patterns and primitives of forms and relations of objects in the universe. The distinction of natural (human) and artificial intelligence is considered, including the realization of multisystem integration of intelligence in physical, biological, social and spiritual systems. A philosophically grounded approach to ensuring the evolutionary properties of artificial intelligence is formulated, based on the inclusion of non-equilibrium mechanisms through which stability is realized. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza la poesía de Leonel Lienlaf, poeta mapuche, desde una óptica ecocrítica. Para ello, se toman varias poesías del poemario Se ha despertado el ave de mi corazón (autotraducidas al español por el autor) con el fin de subrayar la importancia de la relación hombre-naturaleza. La dimensión simbólica utilizada por el autor se conecta directamente con la dimensión etnocultural del pueblo mapuche que, si bien no es el objeto principal del análisis, será igualmente importante considerarla. El artículo quiere (...) destacar el diálogo con la naturaleza queLienlaf pone de manifiesto en sus poesías y que se convierte, en última instancia, en una coexistencia con el medio ambiente. (shrink)

Review of Mihnea S. Stoica, Populismul în Europa. Dezvoltare istorică, discurs politic ş i sus ţ inători ai dreptei radicale.

This article analyses the concept of “the loss of time” in the essays of Mircea Eliade. This concept is shown to be an instrument of knowledge and a form of freedom that saves the human being from falling into historicity, and opens a point of access towards authenticity. The article critically discusses the temporal alternatives of the modern human being: capitalized time, free time, and personal time. The loss of time is subsequently shown to be both a technique for obtaining (...) salvation, and a domination technique de- scribed in scientific works. Finally, the invitation of losing time is seen as a re-activation of an a priori structure that makes possible the “humanitarian engagement” of Eliade in order to re-actualize the sacred at the conscious level of the modern human being, as well as an attempt at revalorization of parusia for the religious Christian. (shrink)

he article analyzes The Letters for a Provincial, addressed by Mircea Eliade to a hypothetical provincial in order to prepare access to the capital city. The letters are written so as to dislocate the provincial from a cultural model built on fake values and prejudices. From a mere pretext, the letters are turned into a symbolic act through which the historian of religions assumes, on the one hand, the destiny of a messenger of a new humanism, and, on the other (...) hand, transforms the modern areligious man into a destination point for whom the provincial is the archetype. Thus, in all of Eliade’s works one can trace the same pattern of dislocation of the partial man, disconnected from archetypes and milestones, in order to re-install him on the road towards the Center, through anthropology structured on cosmic reintegration, alchemy or androgyny in the books of the Romanian period, recovery of the eternal recursion in the Western treatises, and also through the theory of the irecognoscibility of the miracle, in his last essays. The end of the article proposes an answer from the present provincial, who for Eliade was still in the future, an answer showing that the messages of the historian of religions are not reaching him, because he has lost the road towards the Center; moreover, he is situated in an ill-fated extraterritoriality, that is made possible through the great integrations at a horizontal level, and his chance would be the return to the story. (shrink)

The ways in which we exercise intentional agency are varied. I take the domain of intentional agency to include all that we intentionally do versus what merely happens to us. So the scope of our intentional agency is not limited to intentional action. One can also exercise some intentional agency in omitting to act and, importantly, in producing the intentional outcome of an intentional action. So, for instance, when an agent is dieting, there is an exercise of agency both with (...) respect to the agent’s actions and omissions that constitute her dieting behavior and in achieving the intended outcome of losing weight. In our mental lives we exercise intentional agency both in performing mental actions and when we intentionally produce certain outcomes at which our mental actions are aimed. The nature and scope of our intentional agency in our mental lives with respect to controlling the acquisition of mental states such as belief, desire, and intention is a topic that is of interest in its own right. In this essay, I will focus solely on our control over coming to believe. Understanding what sort of control we have our beliefs has far-reaching implications. For instance, theorizing about self-deception and wishful thinking is aided by theorizing about what if any intentional agency we can exercise with respect to acquiring beliefs. Another often mentioned concern that motivates thinking about doxastic agency comes from religion (when conversion requires a change of belief). We also hold persons morally and epistemically responsible for beliefs they have or fail to have. Finally, some deontological theories of epistemic justification require that agents be able to exercise a robust form of doxastic control. Fruitful work on any of these problems requires that we have an account of our intentional agency in acquiring beliefs. There are at least three loci of doxastic control. The first is over acquiring beliefs. The second is over maintaining beliefs. The third is over how we use our beliefs. I am chiefly concerned with the first locus of doxastic control in this essay, but I will say something about the second locus along the way. Also, I will only consider one way we might exercise control over acquiring beliefs. Specifically, I will present an argument against direct doxastic voluntarism (DDV). By “DDV” I mean to refer to the thesis that it is conceptually possible for agents to consciously exercise the same sort of direct voluntary control over coming to acquire a doxastic attitude—such as belief, suspension of belief, and disbelief—that they exercise over uncontroversial basic actions. If DDV is correct, then coming to believe can be a basic action-type. DDV, or something very close to it, was Bernard Williams’ target in his 1973 paper, “Deciding to Believe.” Williams’s argument is widely regarded as having been a failure. But I think that Williams was on to something in his paper. Hence, in this paper, while I do not attempt to resurrect Williams’s argument, I develop and defend a revised argument for a thesis that is quite close to Williams’s. I will proceed as follows. First, I will discuss Bernard Williams’ (1973) failed attempt at showing that DDV is conceptually impossible. This will be followed by a discussion of some constraints on our belief-forming activities. I will then clarify my target a bit more than Williams does in his original paper. Finally, I will present my own argument against the conceptual possibility of DDV. (shrink)

There are various ways to describe the type of society that developed, at least in America and Europe, over the last two centuries. One of the better known ones is the civilization of money. Different people, depending on their world view, can judge this fact differently: to deny it, however, is impossible. This is especially obvious now, when the most grandiose and stubborn attempt at liberating society from the power of money – allegedly in order to subordinate money to higher (...) ideals – has ended in total failure. (shrink)

Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837) occupies a special place in the development of Russian culture. He was at the same time a great poet, the reformer of Russian literary language, a historian and a political thinker. In the enormous mass of work devoted to Pushkin, a certain number of articles are concerned with his ideas on economics and the reflection of socio-economic problems in his writing. Until now, however, this theme has been studied in only a fragmentary way and less from the (...) point of view of the professional economist than from that of a literary historian. In an attempt to enlarge and complete the idea we may have of Pushkin's economic views, I propose also to show the importance the politico-economic thought of Western Europe had for his work. One person comes to the fore when we study the subject from this angle: Nikolai Turgenev, a Decembrist, one of the “masters” of the poet's youth, who played an important role in the rapprochement of Russian and Western European cultures. (shrink)

This paper will look at Kant’s views of the aesthetic experience, in relationship to Buddhist philosophical and political discussions of art and social organization. The primary focus in Kantian literature explores the relationship between free and dependent beauty, as well as Kant’s paradox of taste. The central argument of the Kantian portion is going to navigate the paradox of taste via Graham Priest’s epistemic and conceptual distinction pertaining to the limits of thought. Secondly, I shall contextualize the debate with similar (...) argumentation found in medieval Tibetan literature, by thinkers such as Tsongkhapa and Drakpa Gyaltsen. Lastly, I shall look at the political and artistic state of affairs in Yuan and Ming Dynasties and assert the applicability of both Kantian and Tibetan discussions of effibility in the context of Tibetan poetry and Thangkas. (shrink)

Каково состояние исследований Марксовой и марксистской мысли в постсоветской России последнего десятилетия? У сторонников марксистской мысли есть своя аудитория; они работают, прежде всего, в области политической философии, однако их труды занимают в ней лишь скромнее место. Заслуживает упоминания школа «критического марксизма» во главе с экономистом А.В.Бузгалиным, которая претендует быть современной версией марксизма. Близок к этой школе социолог и политический теоретик Б.Ю.Кагарлицкий. Проблемы философии истории и теории культуры находят оригинальную трактовку в работах В.М.Межуева. В целом современные исследования марксистской ориентации, отличающиеся яростной (...) критикой советского периода, используют марксистские понятия для изучения актуальных социальных проблем, как в России, так и в мире в целом. Quel est l’état des recherches marxiennes et marxistes dans la Russie postsoviétique de la dernière décennie? Les marxistes y ont encore une audience ; ils relèvent de la philosophie politique de la Russie contemporaine, mais leurs travaux y ont une place très modeste. L’école qui mérite le plus de retenir l’attention est celle du « marxisme critique », dirigée par l’économiste A. V. Bouzgaline ; elle a l’ambition de représenter la forme contemporaine du marxisme. Proche d’elle est le sociologue et théoricien de la science politique B. Y. Kagarlitski. Ce marxisme critique est sévère à l’égard de l’époque soviétique, mais également à l’égard du capitalisme contemporain. Les problèmes de philosophie de l’histoire et de théorie de la culture trouvent un traitement original dans les travaux de V. M. Mejouïev. Globalement, les recherches marxisantes actuelles, très véhémentes dans leur critique de la période soviétique, utilisent des concepts marxistes pour étudier les problèmes sociaux actuels, tant en Russie que dans le monde en général. How can we describe the status of both Marxian and Marxist research in post-Soviet Russia in the last decade? Marxists still have an audience; they are part of the political philosophy of contemporary Russia, but their works enjoy very limited attention. The school that deserves most attention is that of “critical Marxism”, whose leader is the economist A. V. Buzgalin, which aims at representing the contemporary form of Marxism. It is close to the sociological approach of the political science theorist B. Y. Kagarlitsky. This critical Marxism is ruthless towards the Soviet era, but also tough on contemporary capitalism. The problems adressed by the philosophy of history and of theory of culture receive an original treatment in V. M. Mezhuev. More globally, contemporary Marxist researches, however vehement in their criticism of the Soviet period, use Marxist concepts to study current social issues, both in Russia and in the world in general. (shrink)

Bekenstein proposed that the spectrum of horizon area of quantized black holes must be discrete and uniformly spaced. We examine this proposal in the context of spherically symmetric charged black holes in a general class of gravity theories. By imposing suitable boundary conditions on the reduced phase space of the theory to incorporate the thermodynamic properties of these black holes and then performing a simplifying canonical transformation, we are able to quantize the system exactly. The resulting spectra of horizon area, (...) as well as that of charge are indeed discrete. Within this quantization scheme, near-extremal black holes (of any mass) turn out to be highly quantum objects, whereas extremal black holes do not appear in the spectrum, a result that is consistent with the postulated third law of black hole thermodynamics. (shrink)