Unlike the bulk of electronic media the computer game or video game is a distinctly gendered medium. All investigations confirm that we are dealing with a medium which almost exclusively appeals to and is used by, boys and young men. Therefore, the video games and computer games are very suited for investigating the form of entertainment, the pleasure, that appeals to men, i.e. the specific ‘masculine pleasure’.The paper deals with questions such as: What do computer games mean? What does violence (...) in computer games signify? Why do computer games, especially the violent ones, mean something special to a certain group of men? These questions are discussed from the perspective of semiotics, media and control studies.Finally, the paper discusses the connections between women and the male dominated video games, and attempts to explain why, nevertheless, some girls and women do play these games. (shrink)

The study’s main thesis is that respect for some moral values is a condition for methodologically rational decisions, namely, decisions which do not satisfy the condition are either not methodologically rational at all, or not fully rational. The paper shows supporting arguments for the thesis in terms of the philosophical theories by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Max Weber, Jean-Paul Sartre and some other thinkers. Their presentation undergoes phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of decision making.

Collected and edited by Noah Levin -/- Table of Contents: -/- UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION 1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin) 2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba) 3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr) 4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin) 5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge) 6 The Ethics of our (...) Digital Selves (Noah Levin) -/- UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD” 7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas) 8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge) 9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis) 10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin) 11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) 12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) -/- UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS 13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar) 14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies) 15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman) 16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin) 17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar) 18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes) -/- UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS 19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh) 20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill) 21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge) 22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin) 23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) 24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill) -/- UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY 25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato) 26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant) 28 The Virtues (Aristotle) 29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko). (shrink)

This text analyzes the concept of philosophical superstition according to Joseph Maria Bocheński. It specifies sufficient conditions for beliefs and statements to be a philosophical superstition. Philosophical superstitions consist in specific contradictions in beliefs or statements: (a) Superstitions assume or contain contradictory beliefs or statements or/and (b) they are inconsistent with direct experiences or (c) beliefs of their followers, or/and (d) without sufficient reasons superstitions contradict what has already been sufficiently justified or/and (e) they contradict semantic rules of reference of (...) a language in which they are formulated. (shrink)

The study discusses the three roles of normative assumption in the theory and practice of innovation management: (1) they define the value of innovation, (2) specify its luck, and (3) determine some goals and methodologies of managing the luck of innovations. The crucial questions of the investigation are as follows: What does ‘luck’ mean in theories of innovation management?, and What is luck in the practice of innovation management? The conceptual analyses present logical links which occur between the normative premises (...) of some canonical theories of metaethics and definitions of luck. In the context of these analyses the study discusses some prerequisites for responsible decisions relating to innovations. The paper illustrates some ways of using philosophical methods in the theory of innovation management. (shrink)

The recent progress in the development of autonomous cars has seen ethical questions come to the forefront. In particular, life and death decisions regarding the behavior of self-driving cars in trolley dilemma situations are attracting widespread interest in the recent debate. In this essay we want to ask whether we should implement a mandatory ethics setting for the whole of society or, whether every driver should have the choice to select his own personal ethics setting. While the consensus view seems (...) to be that people would not be willing to use an automated car that might sacrifice themselves in a dilemma situation, we will defend the somewhat contra-intuitive claim that this would be nevertheless in their best interest. The reason is, simply put, that a PES regime would most likely result in a prisoner’s dilemma. (shrink)

We present a study of unpublished fragments of Jan F. Drewnowski’s manuscript from the years 1922–1928, which contains his own axiomatics for mereology. The sources are transcribed and two versions of mereology are reconstructed from them. The first one is given by Drewnowski. The second comes from Leśniewski and was known to Drewnowski from Leśniewski’s lectures. Drewnowski’s version is expressed in the language of ontology enriched with the primitive concept of a (proper) part, and its key axiom expresses the so-called (...) weak super-supplementation principle, which was named by Drewnowski “the postulate of the existence of subtractions”. Leśniewski’s axiomatics with the primitive concept of an ingrediens contains the axiom expressing the strong super-supplementation principle. In both systems the collective class of objects from the range of a given non-empty concept is defined as the upper bound of that range. From a historical point of view it is interesting to notice that the presented version of Leśniewski’s axiomatics has not been published yet. The same applies to Drewnowski’s approach. We reconstruct the proof of the equivalence of these two systems. Finally, we discuss questions stemming from their equivalence in frame of elementary mereology formulated in a modern way. (shrink)

The essays both represent a variety of epistemological approaches, including those of the humanities, social studies, natural science, sociology, psychology, ...

The essays both represent a variety of epistemological approaches, including those of the humanities, social studies, natural science, sociology, psychology, and engineering sciences and reflect a diversity of philosophical traditions such ...

This paper addresses the role of time scales in conceptualizing biological hierarchies. So far, the concept of hierarchies in philosophy of science has been dominated by the idea of composition and parthood, respectively. However, this view does not exhaust the diversity of hierarchical descriptions in the biosciences. Therefore, we highlight a type of hierarchy usually overlooked by philosophers of science. It distinguishes processes based on the different time scales (i.e. rates, frequencies, and rhythms) on which they occur. These time scale (...) hierarchies often are connected with assumptions defended in process ontology. Due to their ability to describe interlevel dynamics of various kinds, we call these hierarchies ‘dynamic hierarchies.’ In order to highlight and discuss their organization, explanatory roles, and epistemic virtues we focus on dynamic hierarchies in developmental biology and evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). In these fields, dynamic hierarchies offer crucial complementary information to descriptions of compositional hierarchies. (shrink)

The nature of envy has recently been the subject of a heated debate. Some researchers see envy as a complex, yet unitary construct that despite being hostile in nature can lead to both hostile and...

In an effort to explain pro-environmental behavior, environmental sociologists often study environmental attitudes. While much of this work is atheoretical, the focus on attitudes suggests that researchers are implicitly drawing upon attitude theory in psychology. The present research brings sociological theory to environmental sociology by drawing on identity theory to understand environmentally responsive behavior. We develop an environment identity model of environmental behavior that includes not only the meanings of the environment identity, but also the prominence and salience of the (...) environment identity and commitment to the environment identity. We examine the identity process as it relates to behavior, though not to the exclusion of examining the effects of environmental attitudes. The findings reveal that individual agency is important in influencing environmentally responsive behavior, but this agency is largely through identity processes, rather than attitude processes. This provides an important theoretical and empirical advance over earlier work in environmental sociology. (shrink)

Financial economics, and the calculations of time and uncertainty derived from it, are playing an increasingly important role in non-finance areas, such as monetary and environmental economics. In this 2001 book, Professors Le Roy and Werner supply a rigorous yet accessible graduate-level introduction to this subfield of microeconomic theory and general equilibrium theory. Since students often find the link between financial economics and equilibrium theory hard to grasp, they devote less attention to purely financial topics such as calculation of derivatives, (...) while aiming to make the connection explicit and clear in each stage of the exposition. Emphasis is placed on detailed study of two-date models, because almost all of the key ideas in financial economics can be developed in the two-date setting. In addition to rigorous analysis, substantial sections of discussion and examples are included to make the ideas readily understandable. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

This paper presents the idea of a decision-support system for a livestock farm, called “ethical accounting”, to be used as an extension of traditional cost accounting. “Ethical accounting” seeks to make available to the farmer information about how his decisions affect the interests of farm animals, consumers and future generations. Furthermore, “ethical accounting” involves value-based planning. Thus, the farmer should base his choice of production plan on reflections as to his fundamental objectives, and he should make his final decision only (...) after having seriously considered the various consequences for the affected parties. (shrink)

In this volume specialists of medieval music and philosophy put the medieval 'musica' into the context of ideas and institutions in which it existed. The significance of 'musica' cannot be understood from a modern point of view since 'music' does not match the medieval 'musica'.

A test of Jensen effects is of nil value as a diagnostic instrument when various good-sized meta-analyses show Jensen effects appear for both genetic effects and environmental effects. Using thought experiments, Flynn claims that some schooling gains yield Jensen effects, which should not be the case for an environmental effect. However, a meta-analysis of schooling gains shows no Jensen effect. Real data trump thought experiments, so it is concluded there is no empirical proof of anomalous (...) class='Hi'>Jensen effects for schooling gains. (shrink)

Paleokarst originates from the collapse, degradation, and infill of karstified rock, and it typically features spatially heterogeneous elements such as breakdown products, sediment infills, and preserved open cavities on all scales. Paleokarst may further contain aquifer or hydrocarbon reservoirs and may pose a drilling hazard during exploration. Seismic characterization of paleokarst reservoirs therefore remains a challenging and important task. We have determined how the application of 2D spatial convolution operators, referred to as point-spread functions, allows for seismic modeling of complex (...) and heterogeneous paleokarst geology at a cost equivalent to conventional repeated 1D convolution. Unlike the latter, which only considers vertical resolution effects, PSF-based convolution modeling yields simulated prestack depth-migrated images accounting for 3D resolution effects vertically and laterally caused by acquisition geometries, frequency-band limitations, and propagation effects in the overburden. We confirm the validity of the approach by a comparison of modeled results to results obtained from a published physical modeling experiment. Finally, we present four additional separate case studies to highlight the usability and flexibility of the approach by assessing different issues and challenges pertaining to characterizing and interpreting seismic features of paleokarst. Through PSF-based convolution modeling, geoscientists working with paleokarst seismic data may be better able to understand how various acquisition and modeling parameters affect seismic images of paleokarst geology. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Background To allow patients to reflect about a decision to participate in a clinical trial, guidelines suggest a 24-h delay from when they are informed about the trial to when they give consent. In certain clinical settings, this is likely to hamper recruitment. Method After oral and written information about the trial has been given in person, the patient signs the declaration of consent knowing that they will be asked again after 24 h whether they confirm or regret the decision. (...) This procedure can be done by SMS. The investigators must document the response. The procedure was tried in a study in which the doctors were randomly assigned to receive a clinical communication skills course, and encounters with patients were videotaped before and after the course. Results 553 patients were approached, 530 (95.8%) gave initial consent, eight of these later regretted their consent. Discussion The low level of regrets suggests this is an acceptable procedure for patients. Trial registration The RCT was registered before initiation – registration # ISRCTN22153332. (shrink)