Phase 1 healthy volunteer clinical trials—which financially compensate subjects in tests of drug toxicity levels and side effects—appear to place pressure on each joint of the moral framework justifying research. In this article, we review concerns about phase 1 trials as they have been framed in the bioethics literature, including undue inducement and coercion, unjust exploitation, and worries about compromised data validity. We then revisit these concerns in light of the lived experiences of serial participants who are income-dependent on phase (...) 1 trials. We show how participant experiences shift attention from discrete exchanges, behaviors, and events in the research enterprise to the ongoing and dynamic patterns of serial participation in which individual decision-making is embedded in collective social and economic conditions and shaped by institutional policies. We argue in particular for the ethical significance of structurally diminished voluntariness, routine powerlessness in setting the terms of exchange, and incentive structures that may promote pharmaceutical interests but encourage phase 1 healthy volunteers to skirt important rules. (shrink)

Andrew McGonigal presents some interesting data concerning truth in serial fictions.1 Such data has been taken by McGonigal, Cameron and Caplan to motivate some form of contextualism or relativism. I argue, however, that many of these approaches are problematic, and that all are under-motivated as the data can be explained in a standard invariantist semantic framework given some independently plausible principles.

Applications of sexual selection theory to humans lead us to expect that because of mammalian sex differences in obligate parental investment there will be gender differences in fitness variances, and males will benefit more than females from multiple mates. Recent theoretical work in behavioral ecology suggests reality is more complex. In this paper, focused on humans, predictions are derived from conventional parental investment theory regarding expected outcomes associated with serial monogamy and are tested with new data from a postreproductive cohort (...) of men and women in a primarily horticultural population in western Tanzania (Pimbwe). Several predictions derived from the view that serial monogamy is a reproductive strategy from which males benefit are not supported. Furthermore, Pimbwe women are the primary beneficiaries of multiple marriages. The implications for applications of sexual selection theory to humans are discussed, in particular the fact that in some populations women lead sexual and reproductive lives that are very different from those derived from a simple Bateman-Trivers model. (shrink)

Serial homology, i.e., homology between repetitive structures in the same individual organism, is a debated concept in evolutionary developmental biology. The central question is the evolutionary interpretation of “sameness” in the context of the same body. This essay provides a synthetic analysis of the main issues involved in the debate, connecting conceptual problems with current experimental research. It is argued that a concept of serial homology that is not of the all-or-nothing kind can smooth several theoretical inconsistencies, while being more (...) in line with what we know about evolutionary change and the way we investigate it. (shrink)

Chapter One Introduction Serial Iteration in Modern Art This book is an analysis of the theoretical and historical relations between modern painting and seriality. While many modern artists have created and presented their works in the ...

In ‘Truth, Relativism, and Serial Fiction’, Andrew McGonigal presents new data that a theory of truth in fiction should account for, and argues that the data is best accounted for by his relativist view. I argue against McGonigal’s relativist view and in favour of a more metaphysical view. The key feature of this view is that it is one on which the content of a work of fiction can change over time. Along the way I also argue against Ross Cameron’s (...) contextualist view. (shrink)

The article considers the nature of series as a narrative, focusing especially on its chronotope, i.e. its spatiotemporal coordinates. The concept of chronotope can be applied at at least two different levels of the interpretation of a narrative: the real world of reception and the expressive form of narration. The impact of series entails both aspects. It is for this reason that series, once on television then on the internet, represented a revolutionary turn in the modern experience of storytelling. Series (...) are therefore bound to the progressive spread of a new form of sociality known as a digital “total mobilisation”. Since the era of TV series up to the emergence of web series, seriality has been able to regulate the increase of interaction in the use of visual devices. Series play the role of a dietetical regulator, which designs the spectators’ attention. An artistic, i.e. experimental, exploitation of this new form of storytelling is possible when one considers the emergence of a new narrative genre, which we propose to call the “short form”. (shrink)

Nick Hopwood, Simon Schaffer and Jim Secord , “Seriality and scientific objects in the nineteenth century”, History of Science, xlviii . Series represent much that was new and significant in the sciences between the French Revolution and the First World War. From periodical publication to the cinema, tabulation to industrialized screening, series feature in major innovations in scientific communication and the organization of laboratories, clinics, libraries, museums and field - XIXe siècle – Nouvel article.

This study aimed to investigate the serial-multiple mediation effect of professional identity, psychological capital, work-related stress, and work-related wellbeing among intensive care unit nurses in China. The cross-sectional survey was conducted from January 2017 to May 2017 in two Grade III A general hospitals in Jining, Shandong Province, China. Cluster sampling was used to recruit participants from the two hospitals. A total of 330 ICU nurses participated in the study. The nurses’ work stress scale, Chinese nurse’s professional identity scale, the (...) PsyCap questionnaire, and Chinese work-related wellbeing scale were used to collect the data. Descriptive analysis, independent-samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance, Pearson correlation analysis, linear regression analysis, and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data. The average score for the work-related wellbeing of ICU nurses was 85.91 ± 13.94. Work-related stress, professional identity, and PsyCap correlated significantly with work-related wellbeing. The major predictors of work-related wellbeing were PsyCap, work-related stress, professional identity, and monthly salary. The serial-multiple mediation effects of professional identity and PsyCap in the relationship between work-related stress and work-related wellbeing were statistically significant. Positive professional identity and PsyCap were sequentially associated with decreased work-related stress, which in turn was related to increased work-related wellbeing among ICU nurses. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impact of ICU nurses’ work-related stress on work-related wellbeing, as well as the mediating effect of professional identity and PsyCap. It is hoped that hospital care managers will pay attention to the mental health of ICU nurses, increase their professional identity, and reduce work-related stress to improve the quality of the ICU nursing service and stabilize nursing work. (shrink)

The Serial Endosymbiotic Theory explains the origin of nucleated eukaryotic cells by a merging of archaebacterial and eubacterial cells. The paradigmatic change is that the driving force behind evolution is not ramification but merging. Lynn Margulis describes the symbiogenetic processes in the language of mechanistic biology in such terms as “merging”, “fusion”, and “incorporation”. Biosemiotics argues that all cell-cell interactions are (rule-governed) sign-mediated interactions, i.e., communication processes. As the description of plant communication demonstrates, the biosemiotic approach is not limited to (...) the level of molecular biology, but is also helpful in examining all sign-mediated interactions between organisms on the phenotypic level. If biosemiotics also uses the notions of “language” and “communication” to describe non-human sign-mediated interactions, then the underlying scientific justification of such usage should be critically considered. Therefore, I summarize the history of this discussion held between 1920 and 1980 and present its result, the pragmatic turn. (shrink)

We conducted the largest multiple-iteration retelling study to date (12,840 participants and 19,086 retellings) with two different studies that test how emotional appraisals are transmitted across retellings. We use a novel Bayesian model that tracks changes across retellings. Study 1 examines the preservation of appraisals of happy and sad stories and finds that retellings preserve the story’s degree of happiness and sadness even when length shrinks and aspects of story coherence and rationalisation deteriorate. Study 2 compared the transmission of appraisals (...) of happiness and sadness with embarrassment, disgust, and risk. Appraisals of happiness, sadness, and also embarrassment showed high appraisal preservation, while disgust and risk were not well preserved. We conclude that participants in our studies encoded happy and sad stories by encapsulating the events and details into an overall emotional appraisal of the story and that this processing strategy might also apply to stories involving other emotions like embarrassment. The emotional appraisal played a key role in retelling by helping to guide the selection, invention, and ordering of the story elements. Hence, we posit that emotion appraisals can operate as anchors for remembering and retelling stories, thus playing an important role in narrative communication. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology prioritises aesthetics as first philosophy, and finds increasing interest from those working across art, architecture and the humanities in general. This article tests the application of Harman’s ideas by applying them to a thorny issue related to the domain of serial art, and serially developed drawing in particular. The issue concerns the productive role of the beholder in constituting the serial artwork as a unified thing, wherein it appears manifestly deeper than the sum of its (...) physical parts. Referring to an artwork produced by contemporary artist Stefana McClure, I build upon prior propositions on serial art put forward by Christy Mag Uidhir and Nicolas de Warren to make the case for seeing serially. This uses Harman’s understanding of aesthetics to claim that imagined iterations constitute an integral element to serial drawing, brought into play when the beholder reflects upon the loose relationship between the array of qualities the artwork palpably presents and its withdrawn reality as a unified object. (shrink)

Nick Hopwood, Simon Schaffer and Jim Secord, “Seriality and scientific objects in the nineteenth century”, History of Science, xlviii. Series represent much that was new and significant in the sciences between the French Revolution and the First World War. From periodical publication to the cinema, tabulation to industrialized screening, series feature in major innovations in scientific communication and the organization of laboratories, clinics, libraries, museums and field - XIXe siècle – Nouvel article.

Resumen: Propongo una crítica a la noción de serialidad en la comprensión del concepto de tiempo en el contexto de los estudios cartesianos. En el debate entre los defensores del tiempo continuo y quienes defienden un tiempo discreto, sostengo que ninguna de estas posiciones tiene en cuenta que la serialidad se enmarca en una noción de tiempo que se concibe como divisible y numerable y que no pertenece intrínsecamente a la naturaleza de la experiencia temporal del cogito. Mi propuesta consiste (...) en comenzar a desarrollar la caracterización de dicho tiempo experiencial y cogitativo.: My aim is to criticize the notion of seriality embedded in the understanding of time within the framework of Cartesian studies. I hold that neither those who defend that time is continuous nor those who think that it is discrete take into account the fact that seriality is rooted in a conception of time conceived as divisible and numerable that does not belong intrinsically to the nature of the experience of time of the cogito. I propose to advance towards a characterization of such experiential and cogitative time. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Serial Killers, Real and Imagined Dexter Gacy Are Serial Killers Morally Responsible? Moral Responsibility: Emotions and Cognitive Frames.

This chapter contains sections titled: In Cold Bold: The Moral Psychology of Fictional Serial Killers I Think I'll Eat Your Heart: The Lack‐of‐Empathy Explanation Dexter and the Extreme Lack of Understanding The Hot‐Blooded Reality: Sex, Rage, Fame My Evil Just Happened to Come Out: Empathy Inhibits? Serial Killing Because They Care? “Angels of Death” “I didn't want to hurt them, I only wanted to kill them”: Empathic Dissonance The Serial Killer Next Door?

This article develops a theory of serial reading rethought as a theory of serial unreading, a processual form of attention directed toward virtual principles of production, whether a procedure, formula, operation, algorithm, or even an obsessive compulsion. The material specificity of the series’ parts matter but only insofar as the concrete detail suggests its own unwinding, the virtual and nonlinear path to its current state. In other words, the value or facility of serial unreading includes rediscovering the rules governing the (...) production of the work. Thus, unreading is not necessarily an end in itself. In fact, by dispersing and expanding our attentional field, acts of unreading make us better readers of nonserial works. In drawing our attention to their governing rules, operations, or patterns of production, serial works generate a primary principle of criticism: the impulse to reverse engineer the object. To show how this works, I examine three twentieth-century items—one series of minimalist drawings and two poetic works. By choosing a small cluster of examples I aim to mimic the oscillations of serial unreading, the way audiences are required to move from one member of the series to the transtextual techne that produced it. By withholding or abjecting the single finished object (often projecting divergent endlessness), serial art projects its governing intention in terms of techne—which subsists virtually along with the actual work as its formal and efficient cause—rather than deep expression. Moving quickly among individual works, I try to show how the feeling of navigating their expanded, multidirectional fields leads us on a cognitive path (whether we take it or not) toward criticism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Historical Survey with Interviews Moral Skepticism and the Serial Killer A Brief History of Serial Killers Serial Killers of the Ancient World Serial Killers of the Renaissance Serial Killers of the Nineteenth Century Serial Killers of the Early Twentieth Century The Golden Age of Serial Killers Serial Killers Today: Conversations on Motivation.

_Serial Killers - Philosophy for Everyone_ investigates our profound intrigue with mass-murderers. Exploring existential, ethical and political questions through an examination of real and fictional serial killers, philosophy comes alive via an exploration of grisly death. Presents new philosophical theories about serial killing, and relates new research in cognitive science to the minds of serial killers Includes a philosophical look at real serial killers such as Ian Brady, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and the Zodiac killer, as well (...) as fictional serial killers such as Dexter and Hannibal Lecter Offers a new phenomenological examination of the writings of the Zodiac Killer Contains an account of the disappearance of one of Ted Bundy's victims submitted by the organization Families and Friends of Missing Persons and Violent Crime Victims Integrates the insights of philosophers, academics, crime writers and police officers. (shrink)

Serial music was one of the most important aesthetic movements to emerge in post-war Europe, but its uncompromising music and modernist aesthetic has often been misunderstood. This book focuses on the controversial journal die Reihe, whose major contributors included Stockhausen, Eimert, Pousseur, Dieter Schnebel and G. M. Koenig, and discusses it in connection with many lesser-known sources in German musicology. It traces serialism's debt to the theories of Klee and Mondrian, and its relationship to developments in concrete art, modern poetry (...) and the information aesthetics and semiotics of Max Bense and Umberto Eco. M. J. Grant sketches an aesthetic theory of serialism as experimental music, arguing that serial theory's embrace of both rigorous intellectualism and aleatoric processes is not, as many have suggested, a paradox, but the key to serial thought and to its relevance for contemporary theory. (shrink)

Previous experiments have shown a serial-position effect (SPE) in paired-associate (PA) learning where the pairs contained stimuli pre- viously learned in serial order. The present experiment extended the number of pairs from 10 to 14. Pairs containing stimuli from terminal serial positions were learned with significantly fewer errors than pairs whose stimuli derived from central positions. The latter produced a dip in the PA error distribution suggesting the presence of sequential associations in SL between items occupying central positions.

One of the central but yet unresolved problems in evolutionary biology concerns the origin of novel complex traits. One hypothesis is that complex traits derive from pre‐existing gene regulatory networks (GRNs) reused and modified to specify a novel trait somewhere else in the body. This simple explanation encounters problems when the novel trait that emerges in a body is in a region that is known to harbor a latent or repressed trait that has been silent for millions of years. Is (...) the novel trait merely a re‐emerged de‐repressed trait or a truly novel trait that emerged via a novel deployment of an old GRN? A couple of new studies sided on opposite sides of this question when investigating the origin of horns in dung beetles and helmets in treehoppers that develop in the first thoracic segment (T1) of their bodies, a segment known to harbor a pair of repressed/modified wings in close relatives. Here, I point to some key limitations of the experimental approaches used and highlight additional experiments that could be done in future to resolve the developmental origin of these and other traits. (shrink)

This essay presents and discusses the ways that prior experience constitutes a logical black box in Umberto Eco’s discussion of serial forms in ‘Interpreting Serials’ by using the complex adaptive system model for how complexity arises and is sustained over time, as proposed by John Holland. In exploring how Holland’s model can account for some aspects of Eco’s past experience, it becomes evident that a modification of both theories to accommodate multiple, contradictory potentials simultaneously suggests we consider meaning as a (...) range of potentials rather than as a singular choice. Even though the model proposed here is incomplete and tentative, it is suggestive of possible strategies for justifying interpretations without precluding their rejection or revision at a later time. Individual interpretations are justified not by comparison to an external truth but by the existence of other possible interpretations with shared characteristics that nevertheless contradict each other. (shrink)