The findings of our experiments showed that social network sites such as Google Plus, Facebook, and Twitter, have the ability to acquire knowledge about their users’ movements not only within SNSs but also beyond SNS boundaries, particularly among websites that embedded SNS widgets such as Google’s Plus One button, Facebook’s Like button, and Twitter’s Tweet button. In this paper, we analysed the privacy implication of such a practice from a moral perspective by applying Helen Nissenbaum’s decision heuristic derived from her (...) contextual integrity framework in order to answer the question of whether or not an online user’s privacy is being violated by this practice. (shrink)

Toward the end of Light in August, in the climactic scene in Chapter 1 where the authorities of justice pursue the elusive Joe Christmas through the streets of Jefferson, William Faulkner introduces a new character, Percy Grimm, a twenty-five-year-old captain in the State National Guard who has relentlessly acquired the rank of a special deputy for the search. As the town closes for the weekend, Grimm keeps vigil at a downtown store where other townsfolk have begun a poker game to (...) stay awake through the night as the search goes on. In their zeal to uphold law and justice, his men revel in their fantastic make-believe that they are doing the work of “a hidden and unsleeping and omnipotent eye watching the doings of men.” The poker game goes on through Saturday night until Christmas is spotted and given chase. As Grimm runs through the streets after the fleeing man, Faulkner presents to us the deputy's stream of thought from an omniscient point of view: “There was nothing vengeful about him either, no fury, no outrage. He was moving again almost before he had stopped, with that lean, swift, blind obedience to whatever Player moved him on the Board” (437). Through the rest of the chapter, Grimm, who has not participated in the poker game at all, thinks and acts as if he is engaged in a chess game, not as a player but as the stake or the pawn in a board game in which Jefferson is the board on which he and Christmas are being moved from place to place by two larger forces, he by the benevolent Providence and Christmas by the powers opposed to God. Finally, when Christmas is cornered and fatally shot in Reverend Hightower's kitchen, this fantasized game seems to end. (shrink)

Every civilized society treasures through its folk tales and folk myths the elements of its native tribal life as points of cultural reference. The tribe not only acts as a foil to our culture, but also sustains its very being and gauges the degree of progress and change in the civilization that we uphold. This interdependence has a vital force: insofar as civilized societies define themselves by the distance they have built up between themselves and their respective primitive societies, a (...) civilized culture without its indigenous tribal past risks the authenticity of its process of change to challenge and doubt. Hence, our adulation of distance in both time and space between ourselves and our tribal forefathers, and our eagerness to recognize, maintain, and even glorify our tribes—a necessary syllogism in our postulation of a self-preserving argument. In a peculiarly chiastic way, we thrive on our existential reliance on the very primitiveness that we seek to repudiate as characteristic of a world past. We celebrate our present by eulogizing our past, and to fit the tribes in the large scheme of our self-definition we iconize them. These idealized images hide a creative mask through which we embrace the romantic myths of our respective origins and progress; the parades we arrange for our tribal history—through performance on our streets, or through semantics in our literature—subtly embody this dependence. (shrink)

This paper reviews the social scientific literature on biometric surveillance, with particular attention to its potential harms. It maps the harms caused by biometric surveillance, traces their theoretical origins, and brings these harms together in one integrative framework to elucidate their cumulative power. Demonstrating these harms with examples from the United States, the European Union, and Israel, I propose that biometric surveillance be addressed, evaluated and reframed as a new form of control rather than simply another means of inspection. I (...) conclude by delineating three features of biometric technologies—complexity, objectivity, and agency—that demonstrate their social power and draw attention to the importance of studying biometric surveillance. (shrink)

Logical Philosophy: A Compendium brings together five works by Avi Sion published in 2002-06, namely: Phenomenology (2003), Volition and Allied Causal Concepts (2004), Meditations (2006), Ruminations (2005), and Buddhist Illogic (2002). These works together define what may be termed 'Logical Philosophy', i.e. philosophical discourse distinguished by its steadfast reliance on inductive and deductive logic to resolve epistemological and ontological issues. This collection does not include work done on The Logic of Causation in the same period (published in 2003, 2005).

This book re-theorizes the relationship between pedagogy and play. The authors suggest that pedagogical play is characterized by conceptual reciprocity (a pedagogical approach for supporting children's academic learning through joint play) and agentic imagination (a concept that when present in play, affords the child's motives and imagination a critical role in learning and development). These new concepts are brought to life using a cultural-historical approach to the analysis of play, supported in each chapter by visual narratives used as a research (...) method for re-theorising play as a pedagogical activity. Whenever a cultural-historical approach is applied to understanding pedagogical play, the whole context of the playful event is always included. Further, the child's cultural environment is taken into account in order to better understand their play. Children from different countries play differently for many reasons, which may include their resources, local cultural beliefs about play and specific pedagogical practices. The inclusion and acknowledgement of social, cultural and historical contexts gives credence and value to understanding play from both child and adult perspectives, which the authors believe is important for the child's learning and development. As such, the relationships that children and adults have with human and non-human others, as well as any connections with artefacts and the material environment, are included in all considerations of pedagogical play. (shrink)

Meditations. A meditation is a voluntary exercise intended to increase awareness, sustained over some time. The main purpose of the present Meditations is to inspire and assist readers to practice meditation of some sort, and in particular ‘sitting meditation’. This includes practices such as: observing the mechanisms of one’s thinking, stopping unnecessary thought, forgetting things about one’s self and one’s life that are irrelevant to the current effort of meditation, dealing with distractions, becoming aware of one’s breath, being here and (...) now. After such practice for some time, one gets to realize the value of meditation, and one’s commitment to it grows. The need for behavioral improvement becomes more and more obvious, and one finds it easy and natural to put more discipline into one’s life. Various recommendations are given in this regard. Prior to such practical guidance, so as to prepare the reader for it, the book reviews the theoretical teachings relating to meditation in the main traditions of mankind. The ultimate goals of meditation, the various methods or techniques used to achieve them, the experiential results of meditation, and the interpretations given to them, are topics treated here. (shrink)

Background Coping with end-of-life issues is a major challenge for governments and health systems. Despite progress in legislation, many barriers exist to its full implementation. This study is aimed at identifying these end-of-life barriers in relation to Israel. Methods Qualitative in-depth interviews using professionals and decision makers in the health-care and related systems were carried out, along with two focus groups based on brainstorming techniques consisting of nurses and social workers. Data was managed and analyzed using Naralyzer software. Results Qualitative (...) analysis showed identification of six primary barriers: 1) law, procedures, and forms; 2) clinical aspects; 3) human aspects; 4) knowledge and skills of medical teams; 5) communication; and 6) resource allocation. These were further divided into 44 sub area barriers. Conclusions This study highlights the role of the family doctor in end-of-life by training physicians in decision-making workshops and increasing their knowledge in the field of palliative medicine. Effectively channeling resources, knowledge, and support for medical teams, by accounting for the structure and response of the units for home treatment will improve patient’s access to information on and support for end-of-life laws, as well as reduce legislative barriers in other countries that face the same issues. (shrink)

This article studies the monotonicity behavior of plural determinersthat quantify over collections. Following previous work, we describe thecollective interpretation of determiners such as all, some andmost using generalized quantifiers of a higher type that areobtained systematically by applying a type shifting operator to thestandard meanings of determiners in Generalized Quantifier Theory. Twoprocesses of counting and existential quantification thatappear with plural quantifiers are unified into a single determinerfitting operator, which, unlike previous proposals, both capturesexistential quantification with plural determiners and respects theirmonotonicity (...) properties. However, some previously unnoticed factsindicate that monotonicity of plural determiners is not always preservedwhen they apply to collective predicates. We show that the proposedoperator describes this behavior correctly, and characterize themonotonicity of the collective determiners it derives. It is proved thatdeterminer fitting always preserves monotonicity properties ofdeterminers in their second argument, but monotonicity in the firstargument of a determiner is preserved if and only if it is monotonic inthe same direction in the second argument. We argue that this asymmetryfollows from the conservativity of generalized quantifiers innatural language. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the impact of CEO and board gender diversity on the risk management decisions of 179 U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) during the 2001–2018 period. Using a bottom-up analysis on the properties in REIT portfolios, we find significant risk reduction associated with gender-diverse REIT leadership. We document that REITs with a woman CEO, in combination with more women on the board, display less active trading and a longer hold period for assets. In addition, REITs with (...) more gender-diverse leadership are more geographically focused, which for REITs is considered a lower risk investment strategy. Finally, REITs with more gender-diverse leadership are more actively investing in environmentally sustainable real estate. We conclude that gender diversity in real estate firms carries real-life implications for U.S. cities, given their key role as developers, owners, and operators of the built world. (shrink)

_NeuroAnalysis _investigates using the neural network and neural computation models to bridge the divide between psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience when diagnosing mental health disorders and prescribing treatment. Avi Peled builds on Freud's early attempts to explain the neural basis of mental health by introducing neural computation as a bridging science to explain psychiatric disorders. Peled describes the brain as a complex system of interconnected units and goes on to suggest that conscious experience, feelings, and mood are emergent properties arising from (...) these complex organisations. This model describes mental health disorders in terms of perturbation to the optimal brain organisation, and demonstrates how particular disorders can be identified through a specific breakdown pattern of the brain’s organisation. This fresh approach to the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders will interest students, professors, and researchers of psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and their related fields. (shrink)

The Epicurean account of the origin of language appealed to eighteenth-century thinkers who tried to reconcile a natural history of language with

the biblical account of Adamic name-giving. As a third way between Aristotelian linguistic conventionality and what was perceived as a Platonic supernatural congruence between words and things, Epicurus’

theory allowed for a measure of contingency to emerge in the evolution of initially natural signs. This hypothesis was taken up by authors as different from one another as Leibniz, Vico, Condillac and (...) Mendelssohn. By integrating the Epicurean account of language into their own theories, however, these authors also revived the tensions inherent in the ancient thesis and had to confront the ensuing difficulties in innovative ways. (shrink)

ALL THE MORE, by Avi Sion, Ph.D., comprises a merged list of 72 qal vachomer arguments in the Tanakh, i.e. of a fortiori arguments in the Hebrew Bible. This listing brings together lists proposed in past rabbinic literature and in more recent studies by the author. The literature research for it was carried out mainly by R. Yaakov Gabay, who looked into works in Hebrew by five rabbis who had proposed lists, namely: R. Shmuel Yaffe Ashkenazi (Yefeh Toar, 1597), R. (...) Zvi Hirsch Katzenellenbogen (Netivot Olam, 1822), R. Zeev Wolf Einhorn (Midrash Tannaim, 1839), R. Mattityahu Strashun (Mattat Yah, 1892), R. Chaim Hirschensohn (Berure HaMidot, 1928). The author of the present essay brought additional information from the Tanakh commentary of R. Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi, 11th Cent.) and an essay by R. Louis Jacobs (2005), as well as from his own past works (Judaic Logic, 1995, and A Fortiori Logic, 2013). The information thus gathered is here presented in a systematic manner, after careful evaluation by the author of each case with reference to narrative context, language used, and logical form. Efforts are made to identify which cases were known to each of the past authors, and to determine who found each case first and whether subsequent listings of the case (if any) were independent or derivative. (shrink)

The Logic of Analogy is a study of the valid logical forms of qualitative and quantitative analogical argument, and the rules pertaining to them. It investigates equally valid conflicting arguments, statistics-based arguments and their utility in science, arguments from precedent used in law-making or law-application, and examines subsumption in analogical terms. Included for purposes of illustration is a large section on Talmudic use of analogical reasoning.

We characterize pairs of monotone generalized quantifiers Q1 and Q2 over finite domains that give rise to an entailment relation between their two relative scope construals. This relation between quantifiers, which is referred to as scope dominance, is used for identifying entailment relations between the two scopal interpretations of simple sentences of the form NP1–V–NP2. Simple numerical or set-theoretical considerations that follow from our main result are used for characterizing such relations. The variety of examples in which they hold are (...) shown to go far beyond the familiar existential-universal type. (shrink)

What is the role of language in human cognition? Could we attain self-consciousness and construct our civilisation without language? Such were the questions at the basis of eighteenth-century debates on the joint evolution of language, mind, and culture. Language and Enlightenment highlights the importance of language in the social theory, epistemology, and aesthetics of the Enlightenment. While focusing on the Berlin Academy under Frederick the Great, Avi Lifschitz situates the Berlin debates within a larger temporal and geographical framework. He argues (...) that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of all forms of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion rather than a feature of the so-called 'Counter-Enlightenment'. -/- Enlightenment authors of different persuasions investigated whether speechless human beings could have developed their language and society on their own. Such inquiries usually pondered the difficult shift from natural signs like cries and gestures to the artificial, articulate words of human language. This transition from nature to artifice was mirrored in other domains of inquiry, such as the origins of social relations, inequality, the arts and the sciences. By examining a wide variety of authors - Leibniz, Wolff, Condillac, Rousseau, Michaelis, and Herder, among others - Language and Enlightenment emphasises the open and malleable character of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. The language debates demonstrate that German theories of culture and language were not merely a rejection of French ideas. New notions of the genius of language and its role in cognition were constructed through a complex interaction with cross-European currents, especially via the prize contests at the Berlin Academy. (shrink)

Abstract:In the spirit of green cultural criminology, which considers the way(s) in which environmental crime, harm, and disaster are constructed, represented, and envisioned by the news media and in popular cultural forms, and narrative criminology, which explores how stories can influence (promote, curb, prevent, or resist) action, including harmful action, this provisional article seeks to intercede (although, perhaps, “intervene,” in the McGregorian sense, is more accurate) in the debate, of sorts, between the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh and the British critic, (...) editor, and theorist Mark Bould. Whereas Ghosh, in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), laments the failure of contemporary literature to engage with climate change, Bould, in The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture (2021), considers whether all stories might be stories about climate change. Taking Salman Rush-die’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) as an example, this article argues that this phantasmagorical tale about the problems of censorship could be applied to and analyzed in the context of climate change. The article considers how we might tell (more, better) stories of climate change and concludes by calling for a marshalling of diverse stories to reflect the most pressing issue of our time. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIs lying in a different language easier or more difficult? The Emotional Distance and the Cognitive Load hypothesis give competing answers. Suchotzki and Gamer measured the time native German speakers needed to initiate honest and deceptive answers to German and English questions. Lie-truth differences in RTs were much smaller for the foreign compared to the native language. In our preregistered replication study in native Dutch speakers, we found that lie-truth differences in RTs were moderately smaller when participants were tested in (...) English than when tested in Dutch. These findings indicate that people struggle with quickly retrieving the truth in another language, and that foreign language use may diminish lie-truth differences. (shrink)

The suspension of major sporting competitions due to the global COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on the sporting industry. As such, a successful and sustainable return to sport will require extensive modifications to the current operations of sporting organizations. In this article we argue that methods from the realm of sociotechnical systems theory are highly suited for this purpose. The aim of the study was to use such methods to develop a model of an Australian Football League club’s (...) football department. The intention was to identify potential modifications to the club’s operations to support a return to competition following the COVID-19 crisis. Subject Matter Experts from an AFL club participated in three online workshops to develop Work Domain Analysis and Social Organization and Cooperation Analysis models. The results demonstrated the inherent complexity of an AFL football department via numerous interacting values, functions and processes influencing the goals of the system. Conflicts within the system were captured via the modeling and included pursing goals that may not fully reflect the state of the system, a lack of formal assessment of core values, overlapping functions and objects, and an overemphasis on specialized roles. The current analysis has highlighted potential areas for modification in the football department, and sports performance departments in general. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 174 - 211 This article explores the metaphysical, epistemological, and mystical aspects of happiness in the Judeo-Arabic _Treatise on Ultimate Happiness_, of which only two chapters have survived from what is thought to have been a more comprehensive text. Although the treatise is attributed to Moses Maimonides, the conception of happiness it presents is clearly that of the Pietists, the Jewish-Sufi circle of thirteenth-century Egypt. The discussion of happiness in this short treatise constitutes (...) an important chapter in the philosophical and mystical discourse about happiness in medieval Jewish-Islamic thought, especially within the Jewish-Sufi mystical stream led by Maimonides’s descendants. (shrink)

From the late seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, an important shift occurred in attitudes to the arbitrariness of the first human words. While authors such as Locke and Pufendorf emphasized linguistic arbitrariness and human liberty, mid-eighteenth-century thinkers highlighted the natural aspects of language and the limited scope of freedom and reason. This change is linked to the contemporary view of the cultural world as a natural artifice, strongly molded by social and environmental factors. The article highlights hitherto (...) neglected similarities between Leibniz’s ideas on language and mid-eighteenth-century theories, by contrast to the usual focus on Locke. (shrink)