When making decisions, humans can observe many kinds of information about others' activities, but their effects on performance are not well understood. We investigated social learning strategies using a simple problem-solving task in which participants search a complex space, and each can view and imitate others' solutions. Results showed that participants combined multiple sources of information to guide learning, including payoffs of peers' solutions, popularity of solution elements among peers, similarity of peers' solutions to their own, and relative payoffs from (...) individual exploration. Furthermore, performance was positively associated with imitation rates at both the individual and group levels. When peers' payoffs were hidden, popularity and similarity biases reversed, participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered. We conclude that when peers' solutions can be effectively compared, imitation does not simply permit scrounging, but it can also facilitate propagation of good solutions for further cumulative exploration. (shrink)

This provocative study revives a classical idea about rationality by developing analogies between the structure of personality and the structure of society in the context of contemporary work in the philosophy of mind, ehtics, decision theory, and social choice theory.

This book presents three of the works of Abdu'l-Bahá, son of the founder of the Bahá'i Faith, dealing with social and political issues.00In 'The Secret of Divine Civilization' (1875) Abdu'l-Bahá supports the administrative and broader social reforms of Mirzá Hosayn Khán, but looks mainly for organic reform through the efforts of Iranian intellectuals to waken and educate the masses. In this work, Abdu'l-Bahá gives virtuous and progressive Islamic clerics a leading role among these intellectuals, indeed most of his appeals are (...) directed specifically to them. 'A Traveller's Narrative' (1889/90) is an authoritative statement of the broad lines of Bahá'i social and political thinking. 'The Art of Governance' (1892/93) was written as Iran entered a pre-revolutionary phase, and ideas that we recognise today as the precursors of political Islam were spreading. It sets out the principles underlying the ideal relationship between religion and politics and between the government and the people.00In addition to presenting the first parallel text translations of these works, the Persian texts incorporate notes on variants in the early published sources. An introduction outlines the intellectual and political landscape from which Abdu'l-Bahá wrote, and in which his expected readers lived. (shrink)

Sur la toile de fond de la theologie negative, tissee par la discussion des apories que soulevent les notions de l'ineffable et de l'un, Damascius, le dernier diadoque de l'Ecole d'Athenes, elaboreson systeme metaphysique, sans se departir de la rigueur de sa methode aporetique, qui est une critique radicale du langage a l'interieur des coordonnees fixees par le Parmenide de Platon et par les Oracles Chaldaiques. Damascius, dans une enquete unique par son ampleur et son originalite questionne tour a tour (...) Porphyre, Jamblique, Syrianus et Proclus sur les principes; il examine les problemes que pose, en derivation de l'un, la formation de la trinite; de l'un-tout (la limite), du tout-un (l'infini) et de l'unifie (le mixte ou l'etre). Lien a priori entre l'un-tout et le tout-un, l'unifie est le principe de constitution de tout ordre et de toute realite. Damascius etudie sa nature de mixte originaire et autoconstituant, d'etre exemplaire et de premier intelligible. Cette notion lui permet de pas au crible, pour la mieux fonder, la problematique neoplatonicienne de la manence, de la procession et de la conversion. Les divers niveaux d'unification de la pluralite intelligible l'amenent a construire une theorie generale des elements, des parties et des formes Au passage, de nombreux textes, capitaux du point de vue de l'ontologie et de la doctrine de la connaissance, font regretter qu'ils aient ete inconnus du Moyen Age et qu'ils le demeurent pour beaucoup de nos contemporains. (shrink)

The publication of the article “Recent Models of the African Iron Age and the Cattle-Related Evidence” by Hromnik in a journal sponsored by Unesco raises a number of serious issues which we, as members of the International Scientific Committee charged with the responsibility of preparing an up-to-date and scientific history of Africa purged of its mists of racist propaganda, unfounded assertions and misleading and dangerous misinterpretations, cannot ignore. These issues include the scientific accuracy or authenticity of the article.

Three of the four commentators endorse our concerns about intervention by the Roman Catholic church as anamicus curiaein civil litigation, with few reservations. One commentary rejects our arguments in toto. We deal first with the three commentaries that support our arguments; secondly, with the reservations and qualifications in those commentaries, and thirdly, with the commentary that totally rejects our arguments.

The purpose of the article is distinguishing between "internal" and "external" public human through comprehending the phenomenon of Self in its virtual-digital essence as a popular demonstrative-project space "BETWEEN" aggression and harmony. Theoretical basis of the work is based on the study of the phenomenon of modern human aggression in the virtual-digital space and the "project space" of the living environment through understanding the nature of the human "I". The penetration limits of the Self of the public human into the (...) "project space" are comprehended and the nature of the self-realization and self-search models of human through the "transcendent ego" is revealed. Originality is demonstrated through comprehending the Self phenomenon of the public human, which forms new anthropological research direction and represents a conceptual paradigm of relationship of "human I – publicity – human We – the living space of the Other". Conclusions. The Self of the public human as the space "BETWEEN" does not completely "dissolve" in a separate ontological basis, but is the basis for the formation of his/her "I", while only participation in the existence of others reveals the meaning of his/her own existence. Such interaction requires significant human efforts – skills and competencies of public communication, which are able to create a successful self-identification of a public human without aggression and conflict. (shrink)

In the Nouveaux Essais, Leibniz famously declared that he once had “begun to lean towards” Spinozist necessitarianism. In this article, I argue that this remark refers to his modal philosophy anterior to 1677. Leibniz’s mature refutation of Spinoza’s necessitarianism relies on the notion that pure possibility has some sort of reality in God’s mind, because only this allows for a strong notion of divine choice. But I believe that Leibniz only developed this ontology of possibility after 1677. Before this date, (...) he inclined towards the view that non existing possibilities are mere logical abstractions that God never actually conceives. In order to show this, I analyze a series of early texts written between 1668 and 1676. Next, I consider a series of texts from 1677-1678, where Leibniz developed his ontology of possibility and put it to use against Spinozist necessitarianism for the first time. (shrink)

Our purpose in this article is to identify and suggest resolution for two core problematics of grounded theory. First, while grounded theory provides transparency to one part of the conceptualization process, where codes emerge directly from the data, it provides no such systematic or transparent way for gaining insight into the conceptual relationships between discovered codes. Producing a grounded theory depends not only on the definition of conceptual pieces, but the delineation of a relationship between at least two of those (...) pieces. Second, the conceptualization process of grounded theory is done in hierarchical fashion, where individual codes emerge from the data but then are used to generate insight into more general concepts and thematic statements. But various works on grounded theory have failed to provide any systematic way of using data specific levels of scale (the codes) to gain insight into more macro levels of scale (concepts and themes). We offer fractal concept analysis as a means of resolving both of these issues. By using a logic structure generator, fractal concept analysis delineates self-similar conceptual frameworks at various levels of abstraction, yielding a method for linking concepts together within and between levels of scale encountered in the grounded theory coding and categorization process. We conclude that this fractal analytic technique can bolster the aims of grounded theory as a formalized and systematic process for generating theory from empirical data. (shrink)

In the Nouveaux Essais, Leibniz famously declared that he once had “begun to lean towards” Spinozist necessitarianism. In this article, I argue that this remark refers to his modal philosophy anterior to 1677. Leibniz’s mature refutation of Spinoza’s necessitarianism relies on the notion that pure possibility has some sort of reality in God’s mind, because only this allows for a strong notion of divine choice. But I believe that Leibniz only developed this ontology of possibility after 1677. Before this date, (...) he inclined towards the view that non existing possibilities are mere logical abstractions that God never actually conceives. In order to show this, I analyze a series of early texts written between 1668 and 1676. Next, I consider a series of texts from 1677-1678, where Leibniz developed his ontology of possibility and put it to use against Spinozist necessitarianism for the first time. (shrink)

The introduction of novel diagnostic techniques in clinical domains such as genomics and radiology has led to a rich ethical debate on how to handle unsolicited findings that result from these innovations. Yet while unsolicited findings arise in both genomics and radiology, most of the relevant literature to date has tended to focus on only one of these domains. In this article, we synthesize and critically assess similarities and differences between “scanning the body” and “sequencing the genome” from an ethical (...) perspective. After briefly describing the novel diagnostic contexts leading to unsolicited findings, we synthesize and reflect on six core ethical issues that relate to both specialties: terminology; benefits and risks; autonomy; disclosure of unsolicited findings to children; uncertainty; and filters and routine screening. We identify ethical rationales that pertain to both fields and may contribute to more ethically sound policies. Considerations of preserving public trust and ensuring that people perceive healthcare policies as fair also support the need for a combined debate. (shrink)

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

To many it seems obvious that any reduction of the nature of man to purely physical components involves an indirect attack on the doctrine of human immortality. To so reduce human nature, it may be argued, is to eliminate the soul and it is this essential component of man, rather than his body, which is the foundation of his immortality. This seems to me an altogether mistaken notion. My purpose in this paper, therefore, is to clarify the relation of physicalism (...) and immortality and thereby to reveal the error in this alleged incompatibility. (shrink)

In the Nouveaux Essais, Leibniz famously declared that he once had “begun to lean towards” Spinozist necessitarianism. In this article, I argue that this remark refers to his modal philosophy anterior to 1677. Leibniz’s mature refutation of Spinoza’s necessitarianism relies on the notion that pure possibility has some sort of reality in God’s mind, because only this allows for a strong notion of divine choice. But I believe that Leibniz only developed this ontology of possibility after 1677. Before this date, (...) he inclined towards the view that non existing possibilities are mere logical abstractions that God never actually conceives. In order to show this, I analyze a series of early texts written between 1668 and 1676. Next, I consider a series of texts from 1677-1678, where Leibniz developed his ontology of possibility and put it to use against Spinozist necessitarianism for the first time. (shrink)

Taubes, Badiou, Agamben, Žižek, Reinhard, and Santner have found in the Apostle Paul's emphasis on neighbor-love a positive paradigm for politics. By thoroughly reexamining Pauline eschatology, L. L. Welborn suggests that neighbor-love depends upon an orientation toward the messianic event, which Paul describes as the "now time" and which he imagines as "awakening." Welborn compares the Pauline dialectic of awakening to attempts by Hellenistic philosophers to rouse their contemporaries from moral lethargy and to the Marxist idea of class consciousness, emphasizing (...) the apostle's radical spirit and moral relevance. (shrink)