Humans excel in categorization. Yet from a computational standpoint, learning a novel probabilistic classification task involves severe computational challenges. The present paper investigates one way to address these challenges: assuming class-conditional independence of features. This feature independence assumption simplifies the inference problem, allows for informed inferences about novel feature combinations, and performs robustly across different statistical environments. We designed a new Bayesian classification learning model that incorporates varying degrees of prior belief in class-conditional independence, learns whether or not independence holds, (...) and adapts its behavior accordingly. Theoretical results from two simulation studies demonstrate that classification behavior can appear to start simple, yet adapt effectively to unexpected task structures. Two experiments—designed using optimal experimental design principles—were conducted with human learners. Classification decisions of the majority of participants were best accounted for by a version of the model with very high initial prior belief in class-conditional independence, before adapting to the true environmental structure. Class-conditional independence may be a strong and useful default assumption in category learning tasks. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Tento článek se zabývá dvěma aritmetickými systémy - konkrétně systémem, který představil R. Dedekind a systémem, který vytvořil G. Frege - a paradoxy, které se zde vyskytují - tedy Burali-Fortiho paradoxem (což je vůbec první fomrulace moderního paradoxu), Cantorovým paradoxem a Russellovým paradoxem. Hlavním cílem je ukázat, co mají tyto paradoxy společného a zdůvodnit, že ačkoli se tyto paradoxy vyskytují v různých systémech, mají společné znaky. Na základě studia uvedených systémů, paradoxů i různých řešení těchto paradoxů, autorka dospívá k tvrzení, (...) že zkoumané paradoxy vznikají na stejném základě, a to na základě problému nehierarchizovanosti.V dodatku tohoto článku navíc čtenář nalezne dva zajímavé historické exkurzy. První z nich předkládá v historicky autentické podobě odvození Burali-Fortiho paradoxu Druhý exkurz je věnován Russellovu paradoxu a představuje jej nejen v podobě, jak jej vyjádřil B. Russell, ale také ve formulaci G. Frega. (shrink)

Tento článek se zabývá dvěma aritmetickými systémy - konkrétně systémem, který představil R. Dedekind a systémem, který vytvořil G. Frege - a paradoxy, které se zde vyskytují - tedy Burali-Fortiho paradoxem (což je vůbec první fomrulace moderního paradoxu), Cantorovým paradoxem a Russellovým paradoxem. Hlavním cílem je ukázat, co mají tyto paradoxy společného a zdůvodnit, že ačkoli se tyto paradoxy vyskytují v různých systémech, mají společné znaky. Na základě studia uvedených systémů, paradoxů i různých řešení těchto paradoxů, autorka dospívá k tvrzení, (...) že zkoumané paradoxy vznikají na stejném základě, a to na základě problému nehierarchizovanosti.V dodatku tohoto článku navíc čtenář nalezne dva zajímavé historické exkurzy. První z nich předkládá v historicky autentické podobě odvození Burali-Fortiho paradoxu Druhý exkurz je věnován Russellovu paradoxu a představuje jej nejen v podobě, jak jej vyjádřil B. Russell, ale také ve formulaci G. Frega. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the existing research on Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws in terms of the extent to which it has accounted for gender. In particular, we address (a) what the available evidence suggests are the gender-based impacts of SYG laws and (b) where, how, and why considerations of gender may be missing in available studies.

BackgroundThe EU’s 2006 Paediatric Regulation aims to support authorisation of medicine for children, thus effectively increasing paediatric research. It is ethically imperative to simultaneously establish procedures that protect children’s rights.MethodThis study endeavours (a) to evaluate whether a template consent form designed by the Standing Working Group of the German-Research-Ethics-Committees (AKEK) adequately informs adolescents about research participation, and (b) to investigate associated phenomena like therapeutic misconception and motives for research participation. In March 2016 a questionnaire study was conducted among 279 pupils (...) (mean age 13.1 years) of a secondary school in northern Germany.ResultsA majority of participants showed a general good understanding of foundational research ethics concepts as understood from the AKEK consent form. Nevertheless, our data also suggests possible susceptibility to therapeutic misconception. Own health concerns and pro-social considerations were found to be significant motivational factors for participating in research, while anticipation of pain lessens likelihood of participation. Advice from trusted others is an important decisional influence, too. Furthermore, data security was found to be a relevant aspect of adolescents’ decision-making process.ConclusionBearing in mind adolescents’ generally good understanding, we infer the lack of knowledge about medical research in general to be one source of therapeutic misconception. To further improve the quality of consent we propose a multi-staged approach whereby general research education is completed before an individual becomes a patient or potential participant. To the best of our knowledge this is the first German questionnaire-study addressing issues of informed consent in a large under-age sample. (shrink)

The transcription factor NF‐κB (p65/p50) plays a central role in the coordination of cellular responses by activating the transcription of numerous target genes. The precise role of the dynamics of NF‐κB signalling in regulating gene expression is still an open question. Here, we show that besides external stimulation intracellular parameters can influence the dynamics of NF‐κB. By applying mathematical modelling and bifurcation analyses, we show that NF‐κB is capable of exhibiting different types of dynamics in response to the same stimulus. (...) We identified the total NF‐κB concentration and the IκBα transcription rate constant as two critical parameters that modulate the dynamics and the fold change of NF‐κB. Both parameters might vary as a result of cell‐to‐cell variability. The regulation of the IκBα transcription rate constant, e.g. by co‐factors, provides the possibility of regulating the NF‐κB dynamics by crosstalk. (shrink)

It is important to specify terms – the truth is conformity of a word to a thing or an event, whereas a lie is making the truth unavailable to someone who has the right to it. John Paul II promoted the essential truth that a man is God’s creation; God knows what is good for his creation; human person is God’s image, then should act in such a manner that the image is clear. Faith has moral dimension-it is moral dimension. (...) It is the source of practical involvement which remains in harmony with faith. The principles of one’s conduct are God’s commandments, whereas individualistic ethics, practised in the spirit of illusory freedom, prevents us from discovering the only certain truth-God. Contemporary crisis of society is that faith is rejected and as a result there is breaking off the essential and constitutive bond between the truth and freedom. In economy we can see that the truth in one’s conduct cannot withstand the style of the present geared towards profit. It is proper that the Church supports profit but the profit cannot be the only regulator of a company’s life. There are still human and moral factors. Economic growth should respect human values. Freedom in the economic and social area cannot be torn out from the truth about a human being. The meeting of the Church and the workers’ movement in 1980 showed that it is possible to demand ethics in economy in the name of the truth of a human being-then the civilisation of love is created with its main principles: a person before a thing, more important to be than to have, ethics before technology, mercy before justice, defeat evil with good. Problems existing in this area cannot be disregarded. The matter is important and urging – otherwise, as Pope Leo XIII said in the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, delaying would make evil incurable. (shrink)

Autor wspomina swoje podwarszawskie spotkania z J.F. Drewnowskim. Współtworzył on przed wojną program logicznej melioracji tomizmu, koło krakowskie: J. Salamucha, I.M. Bocheński, a także B. Sobociński, ze wsparciem J. Łukasiewicza i patronatem K. Michalskiego. W filozofii Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego nawiązywano do tego po wojnie, jednak z czasem co raz bardziej krytycznie: najbardziej M.A. Krąpiec czołowy polski tomista egzystencjalny, mniej radykalnie logik i metodolog S. Kamiński; J. Kalinowski nadal „logizował”. Daje to okazję autorowi, adeptowi lubelskiej szkoły filozofii klasycznej do pewnych zapytań, (...) porównawczych uwag i refleksji. (shrink)

Critical accounts over the past years have focused on neoliberalism as a subject of knowledge; there has been a recently growing interest in neoliberalism as an object of knowledge. This article considers the theoretical, epistemological and political implications of the relationship between neoliberalism as an epistemic subject and neoliberalism as an epistemic object. It argues that the ‘gnossification’ of neoliberalism – framing it an epistemic project, and deriving implications for political engagement from this – avoids engaging with numerous ambiguous elements (...) of the production of knowledge. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘scholastic fallacy’ and Boltanski and Chiapello’s work in sociology of critique, the article lays out a framework for the study of the relationship between epistemic, moral, and political elements of critique of neoliberalism, including the conditions of its own production in contemporary academic contexts. (shrink)

Qui est étranger pour un Byzantin du XIe siècle? Pour répondre à cette question, Jacek BONAREK (B.) a analysé la chronique de Jean Skylitzes dans le désir de définir ceux qui sont pour le chroniqueur Romaioi, c'est-à-dire «les nôtres» et ceux qu'il considère comme les étrangers, bien que la notion xenos n'apparaisse pas dans le texte. B. fait souvent référence aux divergences sémantiques des mots. Xenos en est l'un des exemples. Ce mot signifie un visiteur, voire un allié, mais aussi (...) un nouveau venu, un mercenaire. Cette différence se réflète dans la typologie de B. qui distingue les étrangers dans les limites de l'Empire et en dehors de celui-ci. Cette problématique est traîtée dans le dernier chapître de l'ouvrage, le plus intéressant, paraît-il (111–171). Avant d'expliquer qui est étranger pour Skylitzes, ce qui est une tâche difficile, il essaie de définir à qui pense le chroniqueur en utilisant le mot «Romaioi» et il le fait dans le troisième chapître de son livre (50–110). (shrink)

Conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) presents many opportunities in the psychotherapeutic landscape—such as therapeutic support for people with mental health problems and without access to care. The adoption of CAI poses many risks that need in-depth ethical scrutiny. The objective of this paper is to complement current research on the ethics of AI for mental health by proposing a holistic, ethical, and epistemic analysis of CAI adoption. First, we focus on the question of whether CAI is rather a tool or an (...) agent. This question serves as a framework for the subsequent ethical analysis of CAI focusing on topics of (self-) knowledge, (self-)understanding, and relationships. Second, we propose further conceptual and ethical analysis regarding human-AI interaction and argue that CAI cannot be considered as an equal partner in a conversation as is the case with a human therapist. Instead, CAI’s role in a conversation should be restricted to specific functions. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of epistemic positioning to theorize the relationship between identity-based epistemic judgements and the reproduction of social inequalities, including those of gender and ethnicity/race, in the academia. Acts of epistemic positioning entail the evaluation of knowledge claims based on the speaker’s stated or inferred identity. These judgements serve to limit the scope of the knowledge claim, making it more likely speakers will be denied recognition or credit. The four types of epistemic positioning – bounding (reducing a (...) knowledge claim to elements of personal identity), domaining (reducing a knowledge claim to discipline or field associated with identity), non-attribution (using the claim without recognizing the author) and appropriation (presenting the claim as one’s own) – are mutually reinforcing. Given the growing importance of visibility and recognition in the context of increasing competition and insecurity in academic employment, these practices play a role in the ability of underrepresented groups to remain in the academic profession. (shrink)

The past years have witnessed a growing awareness of the role of institutions of knowledge production in reproducing the global climate crisis, from research funded by fossil fuel companies to the role of mainstream economics in fuelling the idea of growth. This essay argues that rethinking knowledge production for post-carbon futures requires engaging with the co-determination of modes of knowing and modes of governing. The ways in which knowledge production is embedded in networks of global capitalism shapes how we (can) (...) think about the future. The essay argues for an attentivity to the material and infrastructural sides of knowledge production, which will enable us to re-think transition to post-carbon futures in ways that recognize the deep structural, spatial and social inequalities underpinning knowledge production. (shrink)

This article examines a frequent assumption of sociological accounts of knowledge: the idea that knowledge acts. The performativity of knowledge claims is here analysed through the prism of ‘sociological excuses’: the idea that sociological explanations can act as ‘excuses’ for otherwise unacceptable behaviour. The article builds on Austin’s distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary effects to discuss the relationship between sociological explanation, sociological justification and sociological critique. It argues that understanding how (and if) sociological explanations can act requires paying attention to (...) social and political conditions of performativity and their transformation in late liberalism. (shrink)

This paper presents a proposal for the description of gesture phases derived from articulatory characteristics observable in their execution. Based on the results of an explorative study examining the execution of gesture phases of ten German speakers, the paper presents two sets of articulatory features, i.e., distinctive and additional features by which gesture phases are characterized from a context-independent and context-sensitive point of view. It will be shown that gesture phases show a particular distribution of the features, thus distinguishing one (...) phase from another. Furthermore, changes in the execution of phases in linear successions can be described by means of features. Contrary to other accounts, whose focus on gesture phases is primarily in relation to speech and/or adjacent phases, this proposal concentrates on the visible physical characteristics of gesture phases. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book offers a thorough technical elaboration and philosophical defense of an objectivist informational interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which its novel content is located in its kinematical framework, that is, in how the theory describes systems independently of the specifics of their dynamics. -/- It will be of interest to researchers and students in the philosophy of physics and in theoretical physics with an interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Additionally, parts of the book may be used (...) as the basis for courses introducing non-physics majors to quantum mechanics, or for self-study by those outside of the university with an interest in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In the first part of his magnum opus Hans Urs von Balthasarpresents his project of theological aesthetics where the experience of art becomes an entrance to a religious act and an ennobling way leading to the contemplation of God. Defining the essence of being human as a spiritual being directed towards God bears a deep ethical meaning in this consideration. H.U. von Balthasar’s reflection over the religious dimension of the essence of art is shaped within theology but at the same (...) time in the opposition to aesthetic theology which is de-scribed as ‘aesthetisation’ of the Mystery of Revelation. The art of music occupies a particular place in this reflection. For this reason Mass in B Minor BWV 232 by Johann Sebastian Bach, which is an emblematic example of the revelation of the glory of the Lord (Herrlichkeit), will be analysed not only from the perspective of philosophical or musicological aesthetics, but also theological aesthetics. This article outlines characteristic features of theological aesthetics specifically developed from traditional philosophical aesthetics whose range was extended by the human being’s relation to God. (shrink)

The relationship between academic freedom and freedom of speech features prominently in public and political discussions concerning the role of universities in Western liberal democracies. Recently, these debates have attracted increased attention, owing in part to media framing of a ‘free speech crisis’, especially in UK and US universities. One type of response is to regulate academic expression through legislation, such as the UK’s 2023 Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. This article offers a critical analysis of the assumptions concerning (...) the performativity of speech in this kind of legal intervention. It extends Judith Butler’s discussion of the concept of ‘harmful speech’ as reported by Butler (Excitable speech: a politics of the performative, Routledge Classics, London, 1997) to conceptualize speech-acts as performative not only when it comes to populations, but also when it comes to institutions. Reconceptualizing universities as producing as well as being constituted by speech-acts, the article argues that the effects of free speech legislation need to be considered in the context of the transformation of universities and other political actors (including governments and student unions) in the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. It argues that legal enforcement of free speech at universities further obscures the distinction between negative and positive liberties identified by Isaiah Berlin (Two Concepts of Liberty, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1958), and considers this shift as part of the reconfiguration of political ontology in late modernity. (shrink)

This review summarizes the research on ethical decision-making from 2004 to 2011. Eighty-four articles were published during this period, resulting in 357 findings. Individual findings are categorized by their application to individual variables, organizational variables, or the concept of moral intensity as developed by Jones :366–395, 1991). Rest’s four-step model for ethical decision-making is used to summarize findings by dependent variable—awareness, intent, judgment, and behavior. A discussion of findings in each category is provided in order to uncover trends in the (...) ethical decision-making literature. A summary of areas of suggested future research is provided. (shrink)

What is the impact of mission on ethical business culture? This question was analyzed through a qualitative case study of a large nonprofit organization in the human services industry with a solid history of ethical business practices and consistent use of a values-based decision-making model. This research explored ethical decision making, ethical business culture, and congruence between enacted and espoused institutional values. Institutional values were identified, and the following pair of research questions was examined: To what extent were incongruent values (...) found between espoused and enacted values? To what extent did incongruent values impact the ethical business culture? Incongruent enacted values were present in the culture, but negative impact was diminished by a larger number of congruent enacted values. Additional findings revealed that an intense commitment to the mission by all employees was the common thread that wound throughout the organization’s ethical business culture and essentially abrogated the undesirable effects of incongruent and negative values. (shrink)

Both in Polish and international literature Duns Scotus’ ethical thought has had a number of conflicting interpretations. The article presents the main elements of Duns Scotus’ ethical thought. The quaestions it tries to answer are the following: a) is Scotus’ ethics voluntaristic; b) if so, what type of voluntarism can one attribute to Scotus. Finding Scotus’ ethics moderately voluntaristic I distinguish and characterize three types of voluntarism that could be attributed to Scotus: psychological voluntarism (Duns finds the will more perfect (...) than the intellect as its acts are more perfect); theological voluntarism (Duns takes the Commandments of the first table to be obligatory in a stronger way than the Commandments of the second table), causal voluntarism (the will is taken to be the primary cause of free action, non determined even by the most perfect good). (shrink)

Contemporary changes in the domain of knowledge production are usually seen as posing significant challenges to ‘the University’. This paper argues against the framing of the university as an ideal-type, and considers epistemic gains from treating universities as assemblages of different functions, actors and relations. It contrasts this with the concept of ‘unbundling’, using two recent cases of controversies around academics’ engagement on social media to show how, rather than having clearly delineated limits, social entities become ‘territorialised’ through boundary disputes. (...) The conclusion extends this discussion to the production of knowledge about social objects in general. (shrink)

Literature on categorization often invokes historical legacies to explain why states adhere to statistical categories that inadequately capture their population, and especially minority groups. The failure of the 2011 German census to produce reliable numbers on the country’s largest religious minority, Muslims, could be viewed as a case in point. However, this ignores the fact that in the late 1980s officials successfully counted Muslims. This article traces how officials changed their approach to Muslim enumeration over the course of designing the (...) 2011 census. Drawing on internal ministerial documents and interviews, I show that the reversal of statistical visibility was the result of a recoupling process. Through this process, old state-religion laws that officials had previously ignored now became rigorously applied to the census. An extra-statistical debate on religious education triggered this recoupling by reviving narrow, legal categories of religion and alerting church representatives and legal experts to imprecise census terms. Using the German case and other empirical examples, I describe a more uneven influence of historical legacies than commonly suggested by research on categorization. Rather than viewing legacies as having a stable, or even growing, influence on categorization, I argue that they only take effect when they become politicized and enforced by powerful actors. I call for a more nuanced analysis of the role historical factors play in determining trajectories of census categorization, especially those that are invoked to explain the reluctance of European states to collect ethno-cultural data. (shrink)

Scientific communities expect early career researchers to become intellectually independent and to develop longer-term research plans. How such programs emerge during the early career phase is still poorly understood. Drawing on semistructured interviews with German ECRs in plant biology, experimental physics, and early modern history, we show that the development of such a plan is a research process in itself. The processes leading to IRPs are conditioned by the fields’ epistemic practices for producing new knowledge. By linking the conditions under (...) which ECRs work to the epistemic properties of their IRPs, we identify mechanisms that produce these programs and conditions facilitating or hindering the operation of these mechanisms. (shrink)

Big social data have enabled new opportunities for evaluating the applicability of social science theories that were formulated decades ago and were often based on small- to medium-sized samples. Big Data coupled with powerful computing has the potential to replace the statistical practice of sampling and estimating effects by measuring phenomena based on full populations. Preparing these data for analysis and conducting analytics involves a plethora of decisions, some of which are already embedded in previously collected data and built tools. (...) These decisions refer to the recording, indexing and representation of data and the settings for analysis methods. While these choices can have tremendous impact on research outcomes, they are not often obvious, not considered or not being made explicit. Consequently, our awareness and understanding of the impact of these decisions on analysis results and derived implications are highly underdeveloped. This might be attributable to occasional high levels of over-confidence in computational solutions as well as the possible yet questionable assumption that Big Data can wash out minor data quality issues, among other reasons. This article provides examples for how to address this issue. It argues that checking, ensuring and validating the quality of big social data and related auxiliary material is a key ingredient for empowering users to gain reliable insights from their work. Scrutinizing data for accuracy issues, systematically fixing them and diligently documenting these processes can have another positive side effect: Closely interacting with the data, thereby forcing ourselves to understand their idiosyncrasies and patterns, can help us to move from being able to precisely model and formally describe effects in society to also understand and explain them. (shrink)

The notion of trust has been discussed among several scientific fields, but it still lacks the joint theory. The goal was to analyze the trust associations of 600 participants and clarify how people associate the word “trust”. Overall, 600 participants produced 1800 associations which were sequentially divided into five domains and 14 categories. The findings imply, that when it comes to trust people tend to associate it mainly with relationships and positive emotions. The fact that associations involved mainly positive emotional (...) states and significant others may show, that trust in itself is something emotional and obviously bound to people we have the strongest bonds with. (shrink)

This article critically reflects on some of the themes and assumptions at stake in the “transracialism” controversy, and connects them to important works in critical race theory: namely Rey Chow's notion of “coercive mimeticism” and Sara Ahmed's critique of white liberal multiculturalism. It argues that the analytic account of “race” that Tuvel draws upon in her article—Sally Haslanger's—is politically problematic, both on its own terms and in light of broader reflections on racialized and gendered power relations. In particular, I critique (...) Haslanger's assumption that all racial identities exist on the same conceptual plane: that a single variable definition of “race” can be applied to any particular racialized group—including white and nonwhite racial identities. This erases racialized power relations, especially where, in liberal “multicultural” nations, whiteness constitutes the implied standard against which an appearance of “racial difference” is conjured. Finally, I extend my argument to the issue of treating “race” and gender analogously. Rejecting this move, I propose an alternative way of conceptualizing these as analytically distinct, yet constitutively interdependent, phenomena. In order to situate the debate historically, I consider an example of “racial transgression” from twentieth‐century China. (shrink)

The concept of dramatization represents a rhetorical and conceptual tension in Deleuze's philosophy in that it refers both to autopoietic ontological processes and to a critical philosophical method. Commentators are wont to refer to either one or the other, saying little about how or if these two fundamentally distinct usages can be thought together; that is what we aim to do here. By unravelling the conceptual transformations of the term, we can gain an appreciation for the double characterisation of dramatization (...) and its centrifugal nature. We begin with the hypothesis that dramatization is linked to actualisation in the first sense and counteractualisation in the second. The fundamental question that we would like to address is: how are these two views to be reconciled? Addressing this question leads us to the conclusion that dramatization becomes an ethical imperative for philosophical subjects to perform certain philosophical exercises, that is, to become worthy of the event. The particular philosophical exercise that is emphasised is the dramatization of a paradoxical thought of death. Ultimately, we suggest that dramatization can be galvanised for both an emancipatory politics and an ethico-aesthetic life practice. (shrink)

This review paper discusses the perspective of complex biological systems as applied to inheritance and ontogeny, focusing on the continuity of genetic, epigenetic and microbiotic inheritance. The informational processuality within this continuity can be used as to exemplify the insufficiency of hierarchical concepts in grasping the complex and integrated nature of biological processes. The argument follows Bruni and Giorgi in emphasizing that while structures and substrates are organized hierarchically, communicational processes are organized heterarchically. The essay also argues the insufficiency of (...) a single, basic, i.e. genetic level of description, which is the prevalent idea of twentieth century biology, to explain all phenotypic variation. I argue that inheritance and development cannot be fully explained by some sub- or super-ordination and that such descriptions are merely heuristic tools that do not reflect the nature of such processes. (shrink)