Mandarin Chinese exhibits two paradigms of conditionals with indefinite wh-words that have the semantics of donkey sentences, represented by ‘bare conditionals’ on the one hand and ruguo- and dou-conditionals on the other. The bare conditionals require multiple occurrences of wh-words, disallowing the use of overt or covert anaphoric elements in the consequent clause, whereas the ruguo- and dou-conditionals present a completely opposite pattern. We argue that the bare conditionals are cases of unselective binding par excellence (Heim 1982, Kamp 1981) while (...) the ruguo- and dou-conditionals are most naturally accounted for with the traditional E-type pronoun strategy of Evans (1980). We thus argue partly for a return to the E-type strategy (along with Heim 1990) but maintain the need for unselective binding in UG (cf. Kratzer 1989, Chierchia 1992). It is further shown that these two paradigms do not differ with respect to the proportion problem and the distribution of symmetric and asymmetric readings of Kadmon (1987), though they differ with respect to ∀ and ∃ readings (discussed in Chierchia 1992) in a non-trivial way that provides further support for the proposed approach. Finally, evidence is given that the bare conditionals should be kept apart from correlative constructions in languages like Hindi, and treated differently from the latter. (shrink)

Conflict adaptation reflects the increase in cognitive control after previous conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. Tonic arousal elicited by emotional words e...

Drees makes a strong case for the importance of the humanities in the university, providing an excellent resource for anyone in the Western Academy. Its usefulness for those who want to work outside the West is limited, however, because he does not engage with literature that challenges its methods and disciplines. If we are to have a positive global impact, we need to do more than clarify existing boundaries, we need to blur them, beginning with an examination of inherent biases (...) reflected in its history, structure, and content. This article focuses on one critique, a decolonial critique of the Western view that ontology precedes epistemology (an external reality produces knowledge). Outside the modern Western Academy, epistemologies create ontologies (epistemic creations/stories about the world give us a sense of the world and its materiality). I describe a relational understanding of knowledge and how this changes our understanding of the humanities and our epistemic responsibilities. (shrink)

This article examines the emphasis on facts and data in public discourse, and the belief that they provide a certainty necessary for public judgment and collective action. The heart of this belief is what I call the “myth of the Absolute,” which is the belief that by basing our judgment and actions on an Absolute we can avoid errors and mistakes. Myths of the Absolute can help us deal with wicked problems such as climate change, but they also have a (...) downside. This article explores the experience behind these myths, to better understand how they describe and mediate our experiences of uncertainty, then relates these myths to debates about climate change. I conclude by describing how to engage these myths in a way that promotes better public discourse—and thus better public judgment and collective action—by telling these stories in such a way that we poke and prod wherever the story is not. (shrink)

Following John Rawls, nonideal theory is typically divided into: (1) “partial-compliance theory” and (2) “transitional theory." The former is concerned with those circumstances in which individuals and political regimes do not fully comply with the requirements of justice, such as when people break the law or some individuals do not do their fair share within a distributive scheme. The latter is concerned with circumstances in which background institutions may be unjust or may not exist at all. This paper focuses on (...) issues arising in transitional theory. In particular, I am concerned with what Rawls’ has called “burdened societies," that is, those societies that find themselves in unfavorable conditions, such that their historical, social or economic circumstances make it difficult to establish just institutions. The paper investigates exactly how such burdened societies should proceed towards a more just condition in an acceptable fashion. Rawls himself tells us very little, except to suggest that societies in this condition should look for policies and courses of action that are morally permissible, politically possible and likely to be effective. In this paper I first try to anticipate what a Rawlsian might say about the best way for burdened societies to handle transitional problems and so move towards the ideal of justice. Next, I construct a model of transitional justice for burdened societies. Ultimately, I argue for a model of transitional justice that makes use of a nonideal version of Rawls’ notion of the worst-off representative person. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712286; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 821-835.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 835.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

We examine change across U.S. cohorts born between 1920 and 2000 in their probability of having had sex with same-sex partners in the last year and since age 18. Using data from the 1988–2018 General Social Surveys, we explore how trends differ by gender, race, and class background. We find steep increases across birth cohorts in the proportion of women who have had sex with both men and women since age 18, whereas increases for men are less steep. We suggest (...) that the trends reflect an increasingly accepting social climate, and that women’s steeper trend is rooted in a long-term asymmetry in gender change, in which nonconformity to gender norms is more acceptable for women than men. We also find evidence that, among men, the increase in having had sex with both men and women was steeper for black than for white men, and for men of lower socioeconomic status; we speculate that the rise of mass incarceration among less privileged men may have influenced this trend. (shrink)

Joan McGregor argues that “colleges and universities should adopt as part of their core mission the development of skills of civil discourse” rather than engaging in the practice of restricting controversial speakers from making presentations on campuses. I agree with McGregor concerning the need for increased civil discourse. However, this does not mean universities should welcome speakers to publicly present any material they wish without restriction or oversight. In this paper, I make three main arguments: (i) Colleges and universities have (...) a duty to protect members of the campus community from the harm and exclusion resulting from hateful or harmful speech, in the same way that they must protect them from sexual assaults and concussions. (ii) In the vast majority of cases, this duty can be fulfilled by holding speakers to standards of discourse that prevail in academic debate, and insisting on a number of procedural requirements. (iii) We should be wary of conservative arguments framed in terms of free speech, because they can be deployed to undermine important functions of the university in a democratic society, namely, to teach students how to be discerning citizens, and to protect thinkers willing to be critical of the government and the ruling classes. (shrink)

Citizens of liberal, affluent societies are regularly encouraged to support reforms meant to improve conditions for badly-off people in the developing world. Our economic and political support is solicited for causes such as: banning child labor, implementing universal primary education, closing down sweatshops and brothels, etc. But what if the relevant populations or individuals in the developing world do not support these particular reforms or aid programs? What if they would strongly prefer other reforms and programs, or would rank the (...) various benefits that might be offered differently than seems reasonable to the Western, liberal supporters of these campaigns and organizations? What is the proper liberal response here? I argue that the proper liberal response is to support those programs and reforms that the global poor most value. The bulk of the paper is devoted to arguing against the popular liberal argument which states that we can safely disregard the preferences of the oppressed when they seem very unreasonable because these individuals suffer from “adaptive preferences.” This typically is taken to mean that their preferences are “not their own” in an important sense. I put forward various different proposals for why adaptive preferences can be safely dismissed, but ultimately argue that they are not persuasive. And if it is no longer legitimate to appeal to adaptive preferences as a basis for disregarding what oppressed people want, then I argue that to do so is straightforward paternalism, and so is unjustifiable in all but the most extreme cases. Finally, I argue for the following concrete recommendations: Given that resources are not infinite, we should (1) Support programs that give oppressed people increased access to information, such as access to technology, (2) support those reforms and aid programs that the oppressed themselves regard as most important, with special emphasis on those opportunities for education that they deem valuable, and (3) refrain from supporting coercive policies intended to thwart adaptive preferences. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 48-49.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 5, Page 11-12, May 2012.

In response to calls for research to improve human-machine teaming, we present a “perspective” paper that explores techniques from computer science that can enhance machine agents for human-machine teams. As part of this paper, we summarize the state of the science on critical team competencies identified for effective HMT, discuss technological gaps preventing machines from fully realizing these competencies, and identify ways that emerging artificial intelligence capabilities may address these gaps and enhance performance in HMT. We extend beyond extant literature (...) by incorporating recent technologies and techniques and describing their potential for contributing to the advancement of HMT. (shrink)

Moral problems often prompt emotional responses that invoke intuitive judgments of right and wrong. While emotions inform judgment across many domains, they can also lead to ethical failures that could be avoided by using a more deliberative, analytical decision-making process. In this article, we describe joint evaluation as an effective tool to help decision makers manage their emotional assessments of morality.

Academic integrity establishes a code of ethics that transfers over into the job force and is a critical characteristic in scientists in the twenty-first century. A student’s perception of cheating is influenced by both internal and external factors that develop and change through time. For students, the COVID-19 pandemic shrank their academic and social environments onto a computer screen. We surveyed science students in the United States at the end of their first COVID-interrupted semester to understand how and why they (...) believed their peers were cheating more online during a pandemic. Almost 81% of students indicated that they believed cheating occurred more frequently online than in-person. When explaining why they believed this, students touched on proctoring, cheating influences, and extenuating circumstances due to COVID-19. When describing how they believed cheating occurred more frequently online, students touched on methods for cheating and surreptitious behavior. The student reasonings were associated with four theories that have been used to examine academic dishonesty. Our results can aid institutions in efforts to quell student concerns about their peers cheating during emergencies. Interestingly, most student beliefs were mapped to planned behavior theory while only a few students were mapped to neutralization theory, suggesting it was a novel modality of assessment rather than a pandemic that shaped student perceptions. (shrink)

Results: We analyzed 1,402 surveys and 15 in-depth interviews. Many (32%) CL participants reported greater difficulty refilling medications and a minority (14%) reported greater difficulty accessing HIV care during the pandemic. Most (99%) Opt4Mamas participants reported no difficulty refilling medications or accessing HIV/pregnancy care. Among the CL participants, older women were less likely (aOR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.92–0.98) and women with more children were more likely (aOR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.00–1.28) to report difficulty refilling medications. Only 2% of (...) CL participants reported greater difficulty managing FP and most (95%) reported no change in likelihood of using FP or desire to get pregnant. Qualitative analysis revealed three major themes: (1) adverse organizational/economic implications of the pandemic, (2) increased importance of pregnancy prevention during the pandemic, and (3) fear of contracting COVID-19. (shrink)

In contrast to the views put forth by Stein & Glasier, we support the use of inbred strains of rodents in studies of the immunobiology of neural transplants. Inbred strains demonstrate homology of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Virtually all experimental work in transplantation immunology is performed using inbred strains, yet very few published studies of immune rejection in intracerebral grafts have used inbred animals.

The effect of oxytocin on cognitive bias was investigated in rats in a modified conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. Fifteen male rats were trained to discriminate between two different cue combinations, one paired with palatable foods (reward training), and the other paired with unpalatable food (aversive training). Next, their reactions to two ambiguous cue combinations were evaluated and their latency to contact the goal pot recorded. Rats were injected with either oxytocin (OT) or saline with the prediction that rats administered (...) oxytocin would display a shorter average latency to approach on ambiguous trials. There was no significant difference between latencies to approach on ambiguous trials compared to reward trials, but the rats were significantly slower on the aversive compared to the ambiguous conditions. Oxytocin did not affect approach time; however, it was unclear, after follow-up testing, whether the OT doses tested were sufficient to produce the desired effects on cognitive bias. Future research should consider this possibility. (shrink)

Legal decision-support systems have the potential to improve access to justice, administrative efficiency, and judicial consistency, but broad adoption of such systems is contingent on development of technologies with low knowledge-engineering, validation, and maintenance costs. This paper describes two approaches to an important form of legal decision support—explainable outcome prediction—that obviate both annotation of an entire decision corpus and manual processing of new cases. The first approach, which uses an attention network for prediction and attention weights to highlight salient case (...) text, was shown to be capable of predicting decisions, but attention-weight-based text highlighting did not demonstrably improve human decision speed or accuracy in an evaluation with 61 human subjects. The second approach, termed semi-supervised case annotation for legal explanations, exploits structural and semantic regularities in case corpora to identify textual patterns that have both predictable relationships to case decisions and explanatory value. (shrink)

Personalisation is the new mantra in social care; this article focuses on how personalisation can be achieved in practice, by presenting an analysis of data from people with learning disabilities and their personal assistants, where traditional care relationships have often been shown to be disempowering. The focus here is on the ways in which both parties use references to shared knowledge, joint experiences or personal-life information. These strategies can be used for various social goals, and instances are given where shared (...) references are used during non task-related talk. Both parties are seen on occasion to attempt to refer to shared information, and dense layers of inference can result, which move the interaction onto an ordinary, more symmetrical and friendly footing. The article concludes that shared knowledge referencing creates a way to shift between the personal and the professional, to blur the boundaries, and to create a new and more personalised relationship. (shrink)

While risk of harm is an important focus for whether clinical research on humans can and should proceed, there is uncertainty about what constitutes harm to a trial participant. In Phase I trials on healthy volunteers, the purpose of the research is to document and measure safety concerns associated with investigational drugs, and participants are financially compensated for their enrollment in these studies. In this article, we investigate how characterizations of harm are narrated by healthy volunteers in the context of (...) the adverse events they experience during clinical trials. Drawing upon qualitative research, we find that participants largely minimize, deny, or re-attribute the cause of these AEs. We illustrate how participants' interpretations of AEs may be shaped both by the clinical trial environment and their economic motivation to participate. While these narratives are emblematic of the larger ambiguity surrounding harm in the context of clinical trial participation, we argue that these interpretations also problematically maintain the narrative of the safety of clinical trials, the ethics of testing investigational drugs on healthy people, and the rigor of data collected in the specter of such ambiguity. (shrink)

Lukas J. Meier et al. offer the promise of a pathway for resolving clinical bioethical problems using an artificial intelligence interface. The ultimate goal, we assume, is...

Rendell and Whitehead's thorough review dispels notions that culture is an exclusive faculty of humans and higher primates. We applaud the authors, but differ with them regarding the evolution of cetacean culture, which we argue resulted from the availability of abundant but spatially and temporally patchy prey such as schooling fish. We propose two examples of gene-culture coevolution: (1) acoustic abilities and acoustic traditions, and (2) transmission of environmental information and longevity.

Previous research has shown that personal contacts are powerful intermediaries in transmitting job lead information for both job seekers and employers and therefore could contribute to various forms of gender inequality by, for example, providing higher-quality job leads to men than to women. The authors use a unique data set that includes information on the quality and source of individual job leads to explore whether the overall quality of job lead information depends solely on various attributes of recipients' contacts or (...) whether job lead quality is also conditional on gender. These data are based on a diverse sample of professional, technical, and managerial workers from California. Findings indicate that the overall quality of the respondent's job leads is a product of their gender and that of the person providing the lead. In addition, net of a variety of factors, women and men with young children at home receive significantly lower-quality job leads. (shrink)

Online vaccine-critical sentiments are often expressed in appealing personal narratives, whereas vaccine-supporting information is often presented in a non-narrative, expository mode describing scientific facts. In two experiments, we empirically test whether and how these different formats impact the way in which readers process and retrieve information about childhood vaccination, and how this may impact their perceptions regarding vaccination. We assess two psychological mechanisms that are hypothesized to underlie the persuasive nature of vaccination narratives: the availability heuristic and cognitive resistance. The (...) results of experiment 1 showed no empirical evidence for the availability heuristic, but exploratory analyses did indicate that an anti-vaccination narrative might reduce cognitive resistance, decrease vaccination attitudes and reduce attitude certainty in a generally pro-vaccination sample, especially for those who were more vaccine hesitant. Preregistered experiment 2 formally tested this and showed that not narrative format, but prior vaccine hesitancy predicts cognitive resistance and post-reading attitudes. Hesitant participants showed less resistance toward an anti-vaccine text than vaccine-supporting participants, as well as less positive post-reading attitudes and attitude certainty. These findings demonstrate belief consistency effects rather than narrative persuasion, which has implications for scientific research as well as public health policy. (shrink)

Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians is an invaluable resource to educators seeking to bring history alive for students at all levels. Filled with insightful reflections on teaching oral history, it offers practical suggestions for educators seeking to create curricula, engage students, gather community support, and meet educational standards. By the close of the book, readers will be able to successfully incorporate oral history projects in their own classrooms.

Smith et al. demonstrate the viability of animal metacognition research. We commend their effort and suggest three avenues of research. The first concerns whether animals are explicitly aware of their metacognitive processes. The second asks whether animals have metaknowledge of their own uncertain responses. The third issue concerns the monitoring/control distinction. We suggest some ways in which these issues elucidate metacognitive processes in nonhuman animals.

Adolescent risk-taking behaviour has potentially serious injury consequences and school-based behaviour change programmes provide potential for reducing such harm. A well-designed programme is likely to be theory-based and ecologically valid; however, it is rare that the operationalisation process of theories is described. The aim of this paper is to outline how the theory of planned behaviour and cognitive behavioural therapy informed intervention design in a school setting. Teacher interviews provided insights into strategies that might be implemented within the curriculum and (...) provided detail used to operationalise theory constructs. Benefits and challenges in applying both theories are described with examples from an injury prevention programme, Skills for Preventing Injury in Youth. (shrink)