D’Aden à Zafar: Villes d’Arabie du sud préislamique. By Jérémie Schiettecatte. Orient & Méditeranée, Archéologie, vol. 6. Paris: De Boccard, 2011. Pp. 372, illus. €64.

There is a growing body of literature on the research ethics review process, a process that can have important effects on the nature of research in contemporary times. Yet, many people know little about what the actual process entails once an application has been submitted for review. This lack of knowledge can affect researchers and committee members' responses to the review process. Based on ethnographic research on the ethics review process in 5 countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, (...) and the United Kingdom) this article takes the reader through common aspects of the research ethics review process, including some of the kinds of narratives that influence decision making. Greater understanding of the nature of the review process and the narratives that often form the core of the process can help contextualize responses that researchers get from committees so they can better address them. It may also help committee members reflect on how these narratives influence their decision making and the responses they make to researchers. (shrink)

The Early Bronze Age Tombs of Jebel Hafit. By Bo Madsen. Aarhus: Jutland Archaeological Society and Moesgaard Museum, 2017. Pp. 245, illus. DKK 350. [Distributed by Aarhus University Press].

The Archaeology of Prehistoric Arabia: Adaptation and Social Formation from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. By Peter Magee. Cambridge World Archaeology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xv + 309, illus. $99.

Südarabien im Altertum: Kommentierte Bibliographie der Jahre 1997 bis 2011. By Walter W. Müller. Epigraphische Forschungen auf der Arabischen Halbinsel, vol. 6. Tübingen: Wasmuth, 2014. Pp. vii + 187. €19.80.

This article investigates the challenge of developing a robot capable of determining if a social situation demands trust. Solving this challenge may allow a robot to react when a person over or under trusts the system. Prior work in this area has focused on understanding the factors that influence a person’s trust of a robot (Hancock, et al., 2011). In contrast, by using game-theoretic representations to frame the problem, we are able to develop a set of conditions for determining if (...) an interactive situation demands trust. In two separate experiments, human subjects were asked to evaluate either written narratives or mazes in terms of whether or not they require trust. The results indicate aΦ1= +0.592 andΦ2= +0.406 correlation respectively between the subjects’ evaluations and the condition’s predictions. This is a strong correlation for a study involving human subjects. (shrink)

The Bronze Age Towers at Bat, Sultanate of Oman: Research by the Bat Archaeological Project, 2007– 12. By Christopher P. Thornton; Charlotte M. Cable; and G. L. Possehl. Museum Monographs, vol. 143. Philadelphia: The University Museum, 2016. Pp. 352, illus. $69.95.

In the Land of the Emirates: The Archaeology and History of the UAE. By D. T. Potts. Abu Dhabi: Sultan Bin Zayed’s Culture and Media Centre, 2012. Pp. 219, illus.

Tell Akkaz in Kuwait. Edited by Jacqueline Gachet-Bizollon. Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, vol. 57. Paris: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 2011. Pp. 436, illus., plates, CD-ROM.

Some patients with damaged striate cortex have blindsight-the ability to discriminate unseen stimuli in their clinically blind visual field defects when forced-choice procedures are used. Blindsight implies a sharp dissociation between visual performance and visual awareness, but signal detection theory indicates that it might be indistinguishable from the behavior of normal subjects near the lower limit of conscious vision, where the dissociations could arise trivially from using different response criteria during clinical and forced-choice tests. We tested the latter possibility with (...) a hemianopic subject during yes-no and forced-choice detection of static and moving targets. His response criterion differed significantly between yes-no and forced-choice responding, and the difference was sufficient to produce a blindsight-like dissociation with bias-sensitive measures of performance. When measured independently of bias, his sensitivity to static targets was greater in the forced-choice than in the yes-no task (unlike normal control subjects), but his sensitivity to moving targets did not differ. Differences in response criterion could therefore account for dissociations between yes-no and forced-choice detection of motion, but not of static pattern. The results explain why patients with blindsight are apparently more often ''aware'' of moving stimuli than of static stimuli. However, they also imply that blindsight is unlike normal vision near threshold, and that pattern- and motion-detection in blindsight may depend on different sets of neural mechanisms during yes-no and forced-choice tests. (shrink)

We examine a distinctive kind of problem for decision theory, involving what we call discontinuity at infinity. Roughly, it arises when an infinite sequence of choices, each apparently sanctioned by plausible principles, converges to a ‘limit choice’ whose utility is much lower than the limit approached by the utilities of the choices in the sequence. We give examples of this phenomenon, focusing on Arntzenius et al.’s Satan’s apple, and give a general characterization of it. In these examples, repeated dominance reasoning (...) (a paradigm of rationality) apparently gives rise to a situation closely analogous to having intransitive preferences (a paradigm of irrationality). Indeed, the agents in these examples are vulnerable to a money pump set-up despite having preferences that exhibit no obvious defect of rationality. We explore several putative solutions to such problems, particularly those that appeal to binding and to deliberative dynamics. We consider the prospects for these solutions, concluding that if they fail, the examples show that money pump arguments are invalid. (shrink)

The book investigates distinctions between independent individuality and interactive relationality in physical phenomena. This is a common topic for investigation in modern physics and philosophy of science, and the topic is explored using contemporary research in those disciplines. Additionally, it is common for Buddhism to focus on relationships, and it proposes that independent individual things do not exist. In the context of physical reality, I take this Buddhist view as a hypothesis and examine it critically. We evaluate its arguments and (...) find them generally to be problematic when evaluated against modern standards for logic and physics. However, its fundamental principle—emptiness, or shunyata—is still worthy of being tested. -/- Contrary to many books on Buddhism and science, this one takes a very positive view of science. Yet, this depends on how we define ‘science’. Hence, the book begins with an examination of that topic, informed by philosophy of science and the author’s experience and training as physicist and philosopher. While we discuss, explain and justify many standard views of science, and present the standard elements of science, physics and physics theories, the book argues extensively for one perspective: pluralism in a synthesis of the author’s design. -/- I will show shunyata to be quite consistent with the knowledge framework of Physics Pluralism. When we test Buddhist emptiness against the results of physics—interpreting both within that knowledge framework—we discover the relevance, importance, and some truth in the relationality ideas of shunyata. -/- Robert Alan Paul has studied physics, had a career as a physicist, and both studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics, and separate master’s degrees in philosophy; philosophy of science & mathematics; and physics (abd). He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in four disciplines: philosophy of science, Western analytic metaphysics, Buddhist philosophy, and physics. His Ph.D. dissertation was the foundation of this book. (shrink)

Given that there is referential uncertainty (noise) when learning words, to what extent can forgetting filter some of that noise out, and be an aid to learning? Using a Cross Situational Learning model we find a U-shaped function of errors indicative of a “Goldilocks” zone of forgetting: an optimum store-loss ratio that is neither too aggressive or too weak, but just the right amount to produce better learning outcomes. Forgetting acts as a high-pass filter that actively deletes (part of) the (...) referential ambiguity noise, retains intended referents, and effectively amplifies the signal. The model achieves this performance without incorporating any specific cognitive biases of the type proposed in the constraints and principles account, and without any prescribed developmental changes in the underlying learning mechanism. Instead we interpret the model performance as more of a by-product of exposure to input, where the associative strengths in the lexicon grow as a function of linguistic experience in combination with memory limitations. The result adds a mechanistic explanation for the experimental evidence on spaced learning and, more generally, advocates integrating domain-general aspects of cognition, such as memory, in to the language acquisition process. (shrink)

This article investigates the challenge of developing a robot capable of determining if a social situation demands trust. Solving this challenge may allow a robot to react when a person over or under trusts the system. Prior work in this area has focused on understanding the factors that influence a person’s trust of a robot. In contrast, by using game-theoretic representations to frame the problem, we are able to develop a set of conditions for determining if an interactive situation demands (...) trust. In two separate experiments, human subjects were asked to evaluate either written narratives or mazes in terms of whether or not they require trust. The results indicate a _Φ_1= +0.592 and _Φ_2 = +0.406 correlation respectively between the subjects’ evaluations and the condition’s predictions. This is a strong correlation for a study involving human subjects. (shrink)

A comparison of the literatures on how infants represent generic object classes, gender and race information in faces, and emotional expressions reveals both common and distinctive developments in the three domains. In addition, the review indicates that some very basic questions remain to be answered regarding how infants represent facial displays of emotion, including (a) whether infants form category representations for discrete classes of emotion, (b) when and how such representations come to incorporate affective meaning, (c) the developmental trajectory for (...) representation of emotional expression at different levels of inclusiveness (i.e., from broad to narrow or narrow to broad?), and (d) whether there is superior discrimination ability operating within more frequently experienced emotion categories. (shrink)

Contribution to a symposium on Alan Chalmer's The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms (Springer, Dordrecht, 2009).

A comparison of the literatures on how infants represent generic object classes, gender and race information in faces, and emotional expressions reveals both common and distinctive developments in the three domains. In addition, the review indicates that some very basic questions remain to be answered regarding how infants represent facial displays of emotion, including (a) whether infants form category representations for discrete classes of emotion, (b) when and how such representations come to incorporate affective meaning, (c) the developmental trajectory for (...) representation of emotional expression at different levels of inclusiveness (i.e., from broad to narrow or narrow to broad?), and (d) whether there is superior discrimination ability operating within more frequently experienced emotion categories. (shrink)

This book analyses the concepts of God in Vaisnavism, which is commonly referred to as one of the great Hindu monotheistic traditions. Addressing the question of what attributes God possesses according to particular textual sources and traditions in Vaisnavism, the book analyses Vaisnava traditions and texts in order to locate them within a global philosophical framework. The book is divided into two sections. The first one, God in Vaisnava Texts, deals with concepts of God found in the canonical Vaisnava texts: (...) the Bhavagad Gita, the Bhagavata Purana, the Pancaratras, and the Mahabharata. The second section, God in Vaisnava Traditions, addresses concepts of God found in several Vaisnava traditions and their respective key theologians. As well as the Alvars, five traditional Vaisnava schools- the Sri Vaisnava tradition, the Madhva tradition, the Nimbarka tradition, the Pustimarga tradition, and the Caitanya Vaisnava tradition- and two contemporary ones Ramakrishna's and Swami Bhaktivedanta's are considered. The book combines normative, critical and descriptive elements. Some chapters are philosophical in nature, others are more descriptive, unpacking a specific Vaiṣṇava concept of God for future philosophical analysis and critique. Written by experts who break new ground in presenting and representing a diversity of Vaiṣṇava texts and tradition, the book presents approaches that reflect the amount of philosophical and historical deliberation on the specific issues and divine attributes considered. This book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of philosophy of religion and Indian philosophy, cross-cultural and comparative philosophy, analytic philosophy of religion, Hindu studies, theology and religious studies. (shrink)

This paper discusses the work of the Einstein's Brain Project and its representations of a dynamic world through the production of technologically sustained realities and recursive cognitive systems examining bio-electrical fields. These augmented realities combine the languages of art, science and technology, and the new structures of hypermorphism - the ever morphing, ever changing object, and the parallaxic remix - the ever moving contextual eye -to reveal the invisible elements of biological existence and the dynamics of living systems.

This article investigates the challenge of developing a robot capable of determining if a social situation demands trust. Solving this challenge may allow a robot to react when a person over or under trusts the system. Prior work in this area has focused on understanding the factors that influence a person’s trust of a robot (Hancock, et al., 2011). In contrast, by using game-theoretic representations to frame the problem, we are able to develop a set of conditions for determining if (...) an interactive situation demands trust. In two separate experiments, human subjects were asked to evaluate either written narratives or mazes in terms of whether or not they require trust. The results indicate aΦ1= +0.592 andΦ2= +0.406 correlation respectively between the subjects’ evaluations and the condition’s predictions. This is a strong correlation for a study involving human subjects. (shrink)

Because of their visibility, marketers are often perceived by society as engaging in unethical or questionable behaviors. The marketing literature does not specifically provide an explanation for this dilemma. This paper suggests that there are three major reasons for this problem: fluctuating limits of consensus, ethnocentrism, and utilitarian economic analyses.

Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Workshop in History and Philosophy of Biology, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, March 23-24 2001 Session 4: Evolutionary Indeterminism.

This article rescues the original theory of violence that Jean-Paul Sartre developed in the late forties in Notebooks for an Ethics (1983). Notebooks is a posthumous and unfinished work in which the philosopher outlined the ethics promised in the last pages of Being and Nothingness. In this unfinished moral philosophy, violence is phenomenologically described as a human enterprise, freely chosen in an existential situation, which possesses the following essential features: the intransigent attitude, the destructive function, the dissociation of ends (...) and means, the rupture of bonds of solidarity, the magical belief, the self-justification, the demand and the devaluation of the freedom of others. The main objective of this article is to reconstruct this theory so that it is possible to judge its value today in the philosophical problem of defining what violence is. (shrink)