This paper presents two proposals to improve the text of an important passage in Manilius’ Astronomica, 1.456–68, in which the poet explains natura's rationale for arranging the stars in such a way as to create only a partial, rather than a full, representation of the constellation figures. The text of line 464 is repunctuated in order to give proper emphasis to natura's parsimonious disposition of the stars. Scholars have noted that the sentence atque ignibus ignes | respondent in 466–7 is (...) not consistent with the poet's account of how the constellation figures were delineated nor with what an observer sees in the heavens. The conjecture insignibus (neuter plural), for the transmitted atque ignibus in line 466, is offered to indicate that it is the distinctive features (insignia) of the figures to which specific stars correspond and by means of which the figures are described. Attention is also drawn to a striking paronomasia in 466–7, designat … insignibus ignes, which creates a meaningful phonetic constellation of celestial fire (ignis), sign (signum) and insigne (distinctive feature) and thus provides evidence, on the linguistic level, of natura's providentia. (shrink)

The transmitted text of line 13, ‘inter geminas…frontes’, has long presented an anomaly in the description of the decorated papyrus roll. If, in the context of book production, frons means the flat, round cross section located at either end of the rolled up book and if cornu means an ornamental projection attached to the ends of the umbilicus and extending beyond the plane of the frons, then the transmitted text is a physical impossibility. For it is the frontes that lie (...) between the cornua and not the other way round. In the words of Heyne's paraphrase: ‘geminae frontes inter duo cornua, non duo cornua inter geminas frontes.’ Emendation is required not only because an author is unlikely to be inaccurate or imprecise about the physical details of his book but also because the transmitted text can be salvaged only by recourse to tortuous theories about the meaning of cornu and frons, about their locations with respect to one another, and about the interpretation of inter with geminas. (shrink)

At strategic moments in his very didactic letter to the church in Rome, Paul moves to poetic language and displays a sense of wonder at the heart of his doctrine of salvation.

How does our understanding of what it means to be rational affect our interpretation of the world around us? ... Essayists discuss the nature and extent of rationality - its content, focus, and the intrinsic guidelines for using the term "rational" when describing persons or actions. The distinguished contributors to this collection include Max Black, Steven J. Brams, James H. Bunn, Christopher Cherniak, Murray Clarke, Marjorie Clay, Paul Diesing, Antony Flew, John T. Kearns, D. Mark Kilgour, Hilary Kornblith, (...) Charles H. Lambros, Duncan MacIntosh, Alistair MacLeod, Robert G. Meyers, Erwin Segal, Zeno G. Swijtink, Brice R. Wachterhauser, and Paul Weirich. (shrink)

Multi-winner elections, for example, the election of members to a committee, are now quite common, and include the interesting subclass of elections with a variable number of winners, or VNW elections. In VNW elections, voters determine how many winners there are, as well as which candidates win. Common VNW elections include elections to bestow honorary status, such as enshrinement in a hall of fame, and elections to determine a shortlist of, say, job candidates for interviews. Such elections are VNW elections (...) whenever the number of winners is not specified in advance. Multi-winner elections are often conducted by adapting standard procedures for single-winner elections. Approval balloting is particularly appropriate for multi-winner elections, as every ballot, and the set of winners, are subsets of the set of all candidates. Many methods of counting approval ballots appropriate to VNW elections are reviewed and illustrated, and their properties—desirable and undesirable—discussed. (shrink)

This paper develops an incomplete information model of extended deterrence relationships. It postulates players who are fully informed about the costs of war and all other relevant variables, save for the values their opponents place on the issues at stake, i.e., the pawn. We provide consistent and intuitively satisfying parallel definitions for two types of players, Hard and Soft, in terms of the parameters of our model. We also answer several particular questions about the strategy choices of players in an (...) extended deterrence relationship and, by identifying all the Perfect Bayesian Equilibria of the game model we construct, specify typical behavior patterns.Our most general finding is that an Extended Deterrence Game always has a unique Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium with a rather simple form. A challenger initiates for certain if the pawn is valuable enough to it and never challenges otherwise, Likewise, a defender always resists if the pawn is valuable enough and never resists otherwise. (shrink)

Spatial asymmetries are an intriguing feature of directed attention. Recent observations indicate an influence of temperament upon the direction of these asymmetries. It is unknown whether this influence generalises to visual orienting behaviour. The aim of the current study was therefore to explore the relationship between temperament and measures of spatial orienting as a function of target hemifield. An exogenous cueing task was administered to 92 healthy participants. Temperament was assessed using Carver and White's (1994) Behavioural Inhibition System and Behavioural (...) Activation System (BIS/BAS) scales. Individuals with high sensitivity to punishment and low sensitivity to reward showed a leftward asymmetry of directed attention when there was no informative spatial cue provided. This asymmetry was not present when targets were preceded by spatial cues that were either valid or invalid. The findings support the notion that individual variations in temperament influence spatial asymmetries in visual orienting, but only when lateral targets are preceded by a non-directional (neutral) cue. The results are discussed in terms of hemispheric asymmetries and dopamine activity. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Causation is one of philosophy's most venerable and thoroughly-analyzed concepts. However, the study of how ordinary people make causal judgments is a much more recent addition to the philosophical arsenal. One of the most prominent views of causal explanation, especially in the realm of harmful or potentially harmful behavior, is that unusual or counternormative events are accorded privileged status in ordinary causal explanations. This is a fundamental assumption in psychological theories of counterfactual reasoning, and has been transported to philosophy by (...) Hitchcock and Knobe (2009). A different view--the basis of the culpable control model of blame (CCM)--is that primary causal status is accorded to behaviors that arouse negative evaluative reactions, including behaviors that stem from nefarious motives, negligence or recklessness, a faulty character, or behaviors that lead to harmful or potentially harmful consequences. This paper describes four empirical studies that show consistent support for the CCM. (shrink)

Suppose two players wish to divide a finite set of indivisible items, over which each distributes a specified number of points. Assuming the utility of a player’s bundle is the sum of the points it assigns to the items it contains, we analyze what divisions are fair. We show that if there is an envy-free (EF) allocation of the items, two other desirable properties—Pareto-optimality (PO) and Maximinality (MM)—can also be satisfied, rendering these three properties compatible. But there may be no (...) EF division, in which case some division must satisfy a modification of Bentham’s (1789/2017) “greatest satisfaction of the greatest number” property, called maximum Nash welfare (MNW), that satisfies PO. However, an MNF division may be neither MM nor EFX, which is a weaker form of EF. We conjecture that there is always an EFX allocation that satisfies MM, ensuring that an allocation is maximin, precisely the property that Rawls (1971/1999) championed. We discuss four broader philosophical implications of our more technical analysis. (shrink)

If libertarianism is true, then there is a sense in which agents have it within their power to bring it about that some world is actual. Against recent arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, I offer an account of power over the past which takes this implication of libertarianism into consideration. I argue that the resulting account is available to Ockhamists and that it is immune to recent criticisms of the notion of counterfactual power over the (...) past. But I contend that it is not an option for Molinists and that this fact leaves that position vulnerable to incompatibilist arguments. (shrink)

Stability definitions for describing human behavior under conflict when coalitions may form are generalized within the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution and algebraic formulations of these definitions are provided to allow computer implementation. The more general definitions of coalitional stabilities relax the assumption of transitive graphs capturing movements under the control of decision makers, either independently or cooperatively, and allow the convenient expansion to the case of coalitions of the four basic individual stabilities consisting of Nash stability, general metarationality, symmetric (...) metarationality, and sequential stability. To permit the various coalitional stabilities to be efficiently calculated and conveniently encoded within a decision support system, algebraic expressions for the coalitional stabilities are provided in this research. Furthermore, a range of the theorems establish the mathematical credibility of employing the innovative algebraic approach to conflict resolution when coalitions are present. Finally, a conflict over the proposed exportation of bulk water from Lake Gisborne within the Canadian Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is modelled and analyzed to illustrate the practical application of the different coalitional stabilities and the strategic insights they provide. (shrink)

Summary Harry Alpert (1912–1977), the US sociologist, is best-known for his directorship of the National Science Foundation's social science programme in the 1950s. This study extends our understanding of Alpert in two main ways: first, by examining the earlier development of his views and career. Beginning with his 1939 biography of Emile Durkheim, we explore the early development of Alpert's views about foundational questions concerning the scientific status of sociology and social science more generally, proper social science methodology, the practical (...) value of social science, the academic institutionalisation of sociology, and the unity-of-science viewpoint. Second, this paper illuminates Alpert's complex involvement with certain tensions in mid-century US social science that were themselves linked to major transformations in national science policy, public patronage, and unequal relations between the social and natural sciences. We show that Alpert's views about the intellectual foundations, practical relevance, and institutional standing of the social sciences were, in some important respects, at odds with his NSF policy work. Although remembered as a quantitative evangelist and advocate for the unity-of-science viewpoint, Alpert was in fact an urbane critic of natural-science envy, social scientific certainty, and what he saw as excessive devotion to quantitative methods. (shrink)

I argue in this article that there is a mistake in Searle's Chinese room argument that has not received sufficient attention. The mistake stems from Searle's use of the Church-Turing thesis. Searle assumes that the Church-Turing thesis licences the assumption that the Chinese room can run any program. I argue that it does not, and that this assumption is false. A number of possible objections are considered and rejected. My conclusion is that it is consistent with Searle's argument to hold (...) onto the claim that understanding consists in the running of a program. (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)

ABSTRACT Prior studies have examined the impacts of sensemaking processes, such as forecasting, on ethical decision making but only a few have considered how aspects of the ethical issue itself, such as social consensus and magnitude of consequences, might interact with sensemaking processes to influence EDM. The present effort examines both forecasting and moral intensity, as well as their interactions, during the EDM process. Participants in this study were given an ethical scenario with either a high or low degree of (...) social consensus as well as a greater or smaller magnitude of consequences. They were then asked to forecast either many or few potential outcomes stemming from their actions before coming up with a final plan of action. Responses were rated for quality of forecasting, use of metacognitive reasoning strategies, perceived moral intensity, and ethicality. Results indicate that social consensus may not be beneficial for EDM if the magnitude of consequences is low or individuals are not engaged in extensive forecasting. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

We show that the fundamental legal structure of a well-written financial contract follows a state-transition logic that can be formalized mathematically as a finite-state machine (specifically, a deterministic finite automaton or DFA). The automaton defines the states that a financial relationship can be in, such as “default,” “delinquency,” “performing,” etc., and it defines an “alphabet” of events that can trigger state transitions, such as “payment arrives,” “due date passes,” etc. The core of a contract describes the rules by which different (...) sequences of events trigger particular sequences of state transitions in the relationship between the counterparties. By conceptualizing and representing the legal structure of a contract in this way, we expose it to a range of powerful tools and results from the theory of computation. These allow, for example, automated reasoning to determine whether a contract is internally coherent and whether it is complete relative to a particular event alphabet. We illustrate the process by representing a simple loan agreement as an automaton. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has caused shortages of life-sustaining medical resources, and future waves of the virus may cause further scarcity. The Yale New Haven Health System developed a triage protocol to allocate scarce medical resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the primary goal of saving the most lives possible, and a secondary goal of making triage assessments and decisions consistent, transparent, and fair. We outline the process of developing the protocol, summarize the protocol, and discuss the major ethical challenges (...) encountered, along with our answers to the challenges. These challenges include (1) the role of age and chronic comorbidities; (2) evaluating children and pregnant patients; (3) racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health; (4) prioritization of healthcare workers; and (5) balancing clinical judgment versus protocolized assessments.We conclude with a review of the limitations of our protocol and the lessons learned. We hope that a robust public discussion of such protocols and the ethical challenges they raise will result in the fairest possible processes, less need for triage, and more lives saved during future waves of the pandemic and similar public health emergencies. (shrink)

A cornerstone of game theory is backward induction, whereby players reason backward from the end of a game in extensive form to the beginning in order to determine what choices are rational at each stage of play. Truels, or three-person duels, are used to illustrate how the outcome can depend on (1) the evenness/oddness of the number of rounds (the parity problem) and (2) uncertainty about the endpoint of the game (the uncertainty problem). Since there is no known endpoint in (...) the latter case, an extension of the idea of backward induction is used to determine the possible outcomes. The parity problem highlights the lack of robustness of backward induction, but it poses no conflict between foundational principles. On the other hand, two conflicting views of the future underlie the uncertainty problem, depending on whether the number of rounds is bounded (the players invariably shoot from the start) or unbounded (they may all cooperate and never shoot, despite the fact that the truel will end with certainty and therefore be effectively bounded). Some real-life examples, in which destructive behavior sometimes occurred and sometimes did not, are used to illustrate these differences, and some ethical implications of the analysis are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond the Ethics of Wealth and a World of Economic InequalityMark D. WoodAnalyzing the ethics of wealth and the relationship between the dominant ethics of wealth and economic inequality is vital to creating a humane mode of global life. We are living during a period in which the unequal concentration of wealth—which is to say, the unequal concentration of the resources that make human existence, development, and fulfillment possible—has (...) never been greater.1 The World Bank reports that almost “1.3 billion people remain below the extreme poverty line with an income of US $1.25 or less a day. Close to 2.5 billion—more than one-third of the world’s population—live on less than US $2 a day, another common measurement of deep deprivation,”2 and a staggering 80 percent of the world’s population struggles to survive on less than US $10 dollars a day.3 Credit Suisse’s 2012 Global Wealth Report indicates “the bottom half of the global population [or more than 3.5 billion persons] possess barely 1 percent of total wealth... In sharp contrast, the richest 10 percent own 86 percent of the world’s wealth, with the top 1 percent alone accounting for 46 percent of global assets.”4 Given the history of international colonial and neocolonial relations, it comes as no surprise that wealth is highly concentrated in Western Europe and North America, while the overwhelming majority of individuals living in poverty are concentrated in Africa, India, Asia, and Central and South America.5The wealth gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 90 percent is, however, also reaching record levels in developed nations. While in 2012, the United States had the seventh highest average wealth holdings per adult in the world, “among nations with at least a quarter-million adults, only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon are more unequal” than the United States.6 A Reuters investigative report published in 2012 reveals that “inequality has risen not just in plutocratic hubs such as Wall Street and Silicon Valley, but also in virtually every corner of the world’s richest nation: Inequality has increased in 49 of 50 states since 1989,” with Mississippi being the only exception, even as it still “ranks worst in the nation on both counts.”7 In 2010, “the top 1 percent of households (the upper class) owned 35.4 percent of all privately held wealth, and the next 19 percent (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5 percent, which means that just 20 percent of the people owned a remarkable 89 percent, leaving only 11 percent of the wealth for the bottom 80 percent [End Page 125] (wage and salary workers).”8 In The Price of Inequality (2012), Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz indicates that the “six heirs to the Walmart empire command wealth of $69.7 billion dollars, which is equivalent to the entire wealth of the bottom 30 percent of U.S. society.”9 In short, six individuals possess more wealth than do ninety-six million individuals—though this figure is misleading inasmuch as most of the ninety-six million own almost nothing but mounting debt. Most significantly, the top 10 percent own between 81 percent and 94 percent of all stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80 percent of non-home real estate.10 G. William Domhoff makes the vital point that inasmuch as “financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets,” that is, control of the means of producing wealth, “we can say that just 10 percent of the people own the United States of America.”11 Meanwhile, according to the latest census, fifty million Americans qualify as poor and another 100 million qualify as low income.12The concentration of the lion’s share of wealth in the hands of a tiny fraction of humanity is devastating for the majority of people living on the planet and ultimately for everyone. On the ground, capitalism’s champagne glass–shaped distribution of wealth means that hundreds of millions of persons have barely enough of the basics necessary to exist. Between 24,000... (shrink)

Deterrence means threatening to retaliate against an attack in order to deter it in the first place. The central problem with a policy of deterrence is that the threat of retaliation may not be credible if retaliation leads to a worse outcome - perhaps a nuclear holocaust - than a side would suffer from absorbing a limited first strike and not retaliating. - The optimality of deterrence is analyzed by means of a Deterrence Game based on Chicken, in which each (...) player chooses a probability (or level) of preemption, and of retaliation if preempted. The Nash equilibria, or stable outcomes, in this game are compared with those in a Star Wars Game, in which the preemption and retaliation levels are constrained by the defensive capabilities of each side. Unlike threats in the Deterrence Game, which can always stabilize the cooperative outcome, mutual preemption emerges as an equilibrium in the Star Wars Game, underscoring the problem - particularly if defensive capabilities are unbalanced - that deterrence will be subverted by the development of Star Wars. (shrink)

Issues that arise in using game theory to model national security problems are discussed, including positing nation-states as players, assuming that their decision makers act rationally and possess complete information, and modeling certain conflicts as two-person games. A generic two-person game called the Conflict Game, which captures strategic features of such variable-sum games as Chicken and Prisoners'' Dilemma, is then analyzed. Unlike these classical games, however, the Conflict Game is a two-stage game in which each player can threaten to retaliate (...) — and carry out this threat in the second stage — if its opponent chose noncooperation in the first stage.Conditions for the existence of different pure-strategy Nash equilibria, or stable outcomes, are found, and these results are extended to situations in which the players can select mixed strategies (i.e., make probabilistic threats or choices). Although the Conflict Game sheds light on the rational foundations underlying arms races, nuclear deterrence, and other strategic situations, more detailed assumptions are required to tie this generic game to specific conflicts. (shrink)

1. Introduction The policy of deterrence, at least to avert nuclear war between the superpowers, has been a controversial one. The main controversy arises from the threat of each side to visit destruction on the other in response to an initial attack. This threat would seem irrational if carrying it out would lead to a nuclear holocaust – the worst outcome for both sides. Instead, it would seem better for the side attacked to suffer some destruction rather than to retaliate (...) in kind and, in the process of devastating the other side, seal its own doom in an all-out nuclear exchange. Yet, the superpowers persist in their adherence to deterrence, by which we mean a policy of threatening to retaliate to an attack by the other side in order to deter such an attack in the first place. To be sure, nuclear doctrine for implementing deterrence has evolved over the years, with such appellations as “massive retaliation,” “flexible response,” “mutual assured destruction”, and “counterforce” giving some flavor of the changes in United States strategic thinking. All such doctrines, however, entail some kind of response to a Soviet nuclear attack. They are operationalized in terms of preselected targets to be hit, depending on the perceived nature and magnitude of the attack. Thus, whether U.S. strategic policy at any time stresses a retaliatory attack on cities and industrial centers or on weapons systems and armed forces, the certainty of a response of some kind to an attack is not the issue. (shrink)

Is it rational to strive for the unattainable? In this short and provocative study, Nicholas Rescher vigorously defends both the rationality and practicality of seriously pursuing impossible dreams.

Mandating psychiatric evaluation for patients who request physician‐assisted suicide may not offer the clearcut protection from possible coercion or other abuse that proponents assert. Competence itself is a complex concept and determinations of decisionmaking capacity are not straightforward, nor is the relationship between mental illness and decisionmaking capacity in dying patients clearly understood. And casting psychiatrists as gatekeepers in end‐of‐life decisions poses risks to the profession itself.

During periods of scarcity, or the fear of it, many health systems create or adopt triage protocols to determine how to best allocate limited resources. Interest in such protocols has become acute...

This book explores the steady decline in the status of the individual in recent years and addresses common misunderstandings about the concept of individuality. Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, technology, economics, philosophy, politics, and law, White explains how and why the individual has been devalued in the eyes of scholars, government leaders, and the public. He notes that developments in science have led to doubts about our cognitive competence, while assumptions made in the humanities have led to questions about our moral (...) competence. In this book, White goes on to argue that both of these views are mistaken and that they stem from overly simplistic ideas about how individuals make choices, however imperfectly, in their interests, which are multifaceted and complex. In response, he proposes a new way to look at individuals that preserves their essential autonomy while emphasizing their responsibility to others, inspired by the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the legal and political philosophy reflected in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. This book explains how individuality combines both rights and responsibilities, reconciles the popular yet false dichotomy between individual and society, and provides the basis for a humane and respectful civil society and government. This book is part of White's trilogy on the individual and society, which includes The Manipulation of Choice and The Illusion of Well-Being. (shrink)

Prior research has studied the antecedents of beliefs regarding ethics and social responsibility (ESR). However, few studies have examined how individual well‐being may be related to such beliefs. In this exploratory study, we assessed the relationship between perceived importance of ESR – both individually and of one's company – and indicators of physical and psychological well‐being. Results demonstrated that perceived importance of ESR was associated with three aspects of well‐being: exuberance for life, sleep problems, and job stress. The results are (...) discussed in terms of future directions for research, and the need for a conceptual framework connecting individual and organizational perceptions of ESR and outcomes of well‐being. (shrink)

Clinical bioethics is big business. There are now hundreds of people who bioethics in community and university hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation and home care settings, and some who play the role of clinical ethics consultant to transplant teams, managed care companies, and genetic testing firms. Still, there is as much speculation about what clinically active bioethicists actually do as there was ten years ago. Various commentators have pondered the need for training standards, credentials, exams, and malpractice insurance for ethicists engaged (...) in clinical consultation. Much of the discussion seems to accept an implicit presumption that all clinical ethics consultation practices look pretty much alike. But is this accurate? What do clinical ethicists do, how and where do they do it, and what kind of clinical ethics is useful in the hospital and in other settings? (shrink)