Organisations are increasingly involved in what they call ‘ethical dilemmas’, that is, the conditions under which wrongdoing and righteous deeds must be defined once again because the line between right and wrong has blurred more than ever. In general, human beings have special moral characteristics in the individual and personality dimension that shape their thoughts, speech and behaviour. It is possible that the same people in the same position and organisation could be affected differently, and their ideas, speech and behaviour (...) affect the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation. Ethics can have positive or negative consequences at each organisational level. One of the effective factors on the occurrence of employees’ ethical behaviours is the role of spirituality in the work environment and humility of leaders. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of humility of Muslim leaders on the moral behaviours of followers and spirituality at work in Islamic society. The statistical population of the study was 370 Muslim employees of International Islamic University Malaysia. After distributing the questionnaires among the statistical population, 352 questionnaires were returned. The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by the content validity method, and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha. In this research, the structural equation modeling approach and Amos software were used to analyse the data. All hypotheses were confirmed at a 95% significance level. The results showed that the humility of leaders has a positive and significant effect on spirituality in the workplace and work ethic of followers. Spirituality in the workplace has also a positive effect on employees’ work ethic.Contribution: It is recommended that the officials of organisations should pay attention to spirituality in the workplace and the humility of managers and supervisors towards employees in order to promote work ethics. Further, it can be concluded that organisations can increase the ethical behaviours of employees by promoting the components of organisational spirituality. (shrink)

The problem of moral compliance is the problem of explaining how moral norms are sustained over extented stretches of time despite the existence of selfish evolutionary incentives that favor their violation. There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of solutions that have been offered to the problem of moral compliance, the reciprocity-based account and the punishment-based account. In this paper, I argue that though the reciprocity-based account has been widely endorsed by evolutionary theorists, the account is in fact deeply implausible. I (...) provide three arguments that suggest that moral norms are sustained by punishment, not reciprocity. But in addition to solving the problem of moral compliance, the punishment-based account provides an additional important theoretical dividend. It points the way for how theorists might build an evolutionary account of a feature of human groups that has long fascinated and troubled social scientists and moral philosophers – the existence of moral diversity. (shrink)

We discuss several features of coherent choice functions—where the admissible options in a decision problem are exactly those that maximize expected utility for some probability/utility pair in fixed set S of probability/utility pairs. In this paper we consider, primarily, normal form decision problems under uncertainty—where only the probability component of S is indeterminate and utility for two privileged outcomes is determinate. Coherent choice distinguishes between each pair of sets of probabilities regardless the “shape” or “connectedness” of the sets of probabilities. (...) We axiomatize the theory of choice functions and show these axioms are necessary for coherence. The axioms are sufficient for coherence using a set of probability/almost-state-independent utility pairs. We give sufficient conditions when a choice function satisfying our axioms is represented by a set of probability/state-independent utility pairs with a common utility. (shrink)

This essay is, primarily, a discussion of four results about the principle of maximizing entropy (MAXENT) and its connections with Bayesian theory. Result 1 provides a restricted equivalence between the two: where the Bayesian model for MAXENT inference uses an "a priori" probability that is uniform, and where all MAXENT constraints are limited to 0-1 expectations for simple indicator-variables. The other three results report on an inability to extend the equivalence beyond these specialized constraints. Result 2 established a sensitivity of (...) MAXENT inference to the choice of the algebra of possibilities even though all empirical constraints imposed on the MAXENT solution are satisfied in each measure space considered. The resulting MAXENT distribution is not invariant over the choice of measure space. Thus, old and familiar problems with the Laplacian principle of Insufficient Reason also plague MAXENT theory. Result 3 builds upon the findings of Friedman and Shimony (1971; 1973) and demonstrates the absence of an exchangeable, Bayesian model for predictive MAXENT distributions when the MAXENT constraints are interpreted according to Jaynes's (1978) prescription for his (1963) Brandeis Dice problem. Lastly, Result 4 generalizes the Friedman and Shimony objection to cross-entropy (Kullback-information) shifts subject to a constraint of a new odds-ratio for two disjoint events. (shrink)

We review de Finetti’s two coherence criteria for determinate probabilities: coherence1defined in terms of previsions for a set of events that are undominated by the status quo – previsions immune to a sure-loss – and coherence2 defined in terms of forecasts for events undominated in Brier score by a rival forecast. We propose a criterion of IP-coherence2 based on a generalization of Brier score for IP-forecasts that uses 1-sided, lower and upper, probability forecasts. However, whereas Brier score is a strictly (...) proper scoring rule for eliciting determinate probabilities, we show that there is no real-valuedstrictly proper IP-score. Nonetheless, with respect to either of two decision rules – Γ-maximin or E-admissibility-+-Γ-maximin – we give a lexicographic strictly proper IP-scoring rule that is based on Brier score. (shrink)

According to Dewey, we are responsible for our conduct because it is “ourselves objectified in action”. This idea lies at the heart of an increasingly influential deep self approach to moral responsibility. Existing formulations of deep self views have two major problems: They are often underspecified, and they tend to understand the nature of the deep self in excessively rationalistic terms. Here I propose a new deep self theory of moral responsibility called the Self-Expression account that addresses these issues. The (...) account is composed of two parts. The first part answers the question, What is a deep self? Theorists have tended to favor cognitive views that understand the deep self in terms of rationally formed evaluative judgment. I propose instead a conative view that says one’s deep self consists of a distinctive kind of pro-attitude, cares, and I provide an account of cares in terms of their distinctive psychological functional role. The second part answers the question, When does an action express one’s deep self? I criticize the agentially demanding conditions set out in existing views and propose a more minimalist alternative. I show that the Self-Expression account handles issues that bedeviled traditional deep self views, including how to explain moral responsibility for spontaneous, out of character, and weak-willed actions. (shrink)

For Savage (1954) as for de Finetti (1974), the existence of subjective (personal) probability is a consequence of the normative theory of preference. (De Finetti achieves the reduction of belief to desire with his generalized Dutch-Book argument for Previsions.) Both Savage and de Finetti rebel against legislating countable additivity for subjective probability. They require merely that probability be finitely additive. Simultaneously, they insist that their theories of preference are weak, accommodating all but self-defeating desires. In this paper we dispute these (...) claims by showing that the following three cannot simultaneously hold: (i) Coherent belief is reducible to rational preference, i.e. the generalized Dutch-Book argument fixes standards of coherence. (ii) Finitely additive probability is coherent. (iii) Admissible preference structures may be free of consequences, i.e. they may lack prizes whose values are robust against all contingencies. (shrink)

Let κ be an uncountable cardinal. Using the theory of conditional probability associated with de Finetti and Dubins, subject to several structural assumptions for creating sufficiently many measurable sets, and assuming that κ is not a weakly inaccessible cardinal, we show that each probability that is not κ-­additive has conditional probabilities that fail to be conglomerable in a partition of cardinality no greater than κ. This generalizes our result, where we established that each finite but not countably additive probability has (...) conditional probabilities that fail to be conglomerable in some countable partition. (shrink)

Philosophers routinely invoke self‐control in their theorizing, but major questions remain about what exactly self‐control is. I propose a componential account in which an exercise of self‐control is built out of something more fundamental: basic intrapsychic actions called cognitive control actions. Cognitive control regulates simple, brief states called response pulses that operate across diverse psychological systems (think of one's attention being grabbed by a salient object or one's mind being pulled to think about a certain topic). Self‐control ostensibly seems quite (...) different because it regulates complex, temporally extended states such as emotions and cravings. But critically, these complex states also exhibit important componential structure: They rely on response pulses as a key means by which they bring about action. The overall picture is that self‐control consists of skilled sequences of cognitive control directed against extended streams of response pulses that arise from states such as emotions and cravings, thus preventing these states from being effective in action. The account clarifies the “atoms” of self‐control—the elemental units that get combined in complex ways to produce different kinds of self‐control actions. Surprisingly, the account, which is derived from research in cognitive science, aligns nicely with the commonsense conception of self‐control. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Radicalizing the Local: 60 Linear Miles of Transborder ConflictTeddy Cruz (bio)2008estudio teddy cruzmedium: collage and vinyl wallpaperThe international border between the US and Mexico at the San Diego-Tijuana checkpoint is one of the most trafficked in the world. A 60-linear-mile cross-section—tangential to the border wall—between these two border cities compresses the most dramatic issues currently challenging our normative notions of architecture and urbanism.This transborder “cut” begins 30 miles (...) north of the border, on the periphery of San Diego, and ends 30 miles south of the border. We can find along this section’s trajectory a series of collisions, critical junctures, or conflicts between natural and artificial ecologies, top-down development and bottom-up organization. It is in the midst of many of these metropolitan and territorial sites of conflict where contemporary architectural practice needs to reposition itself.1. Conflict between master-planned gated communities and the natural topography +30 miles / San DiegoTop-down private development has been installing a selfish, oil-hungry sprawl of detached McMansions everywhere, forming massive subdivisions that collide with the natural topography.2. Conflict between large infrastructure and the watershed +28 miles / San DiegoLarge freeway and mall infrastructure runs the length of coastal San Diego, colliding with a natural network of canyons, rivers, and creeks that descend toward the Pacific Ocean.3. Conflict between privatization and everyday life +25 miles / San DiegoThe archipelago of beige tract homes also exacerbates a land use of exclusion, leading to an apartheid of everyday life, as gated communities retreat from the complexities of mixed uses.4. Conflict between military bases and environmental zones +20 miles / San DiegoIronically, the only interruptions along an otherwise continuous sprawl, 30 miles inland from the border, occur as the military bases that dot San Diego’s suburbanization overlap with environmentally protected lands.5. Conflict between the formal and informal +15 miles / San DiegoThe informal densities and economies produced by immigrants yield three-dimensional land use that collides with the one-dimensional zoning that defines suburban tract subdivisions. [End Page 107]6. Conflict between two border cities 0 miles / San Diego-TijuanaThis territorial conflict is currently dramatized by the hardening of the border wall that divides these cities, incrementally transforming San Diego into the world’s largest gated community.7. Conflict between the natural and political +0.5 miles / TijuanaAs the large infrastructure of the Tijuana River clashes with the border wall, a faint yellow line is inscribed on the dry river’s concrete channel to indicate the trajectory of the border. The border checkpoint is exactly at this intersection.8. Conflict between the informal and natural ecologies-10 miles / TijuanaAdjacent to the checkpoint we can find many slums crashing against the border. The wall acts as a powerful dam, containing the density of Tijuana and preventing it from contaminating San Diego’s picturesque sprawl.9. Conflict between factories and emergency housing-15 miles / TijuanaThese American-style, mini-master-planned communities are intertwined with a series of informal communities or slums, and both provide maquiladora factory enclaves with cheap labor.10. Conflict between density and sprawl-20 miles / TijuanaThousands of miniaturized replicas of typical suburban Southern California McMansions are now scattered around the periphery of Tijuana. In recent years, dwellers have radically transformed them into socioeconomic microengines.11. Conflict between two horizons-30 miles / TijuanaAs we reach the sea on the Mexican side, we witness the most dramatic of all territorial collisions across this 60-mile-section of local conflict. Here, the border metal fence finally sinks into the Pacific Ocean. [End Page 108] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page c1] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 2] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 12] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 22] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 32] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 42] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 52] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 62] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page... (shrink)

According to Interest-Relative Invariantism, whether an agent knows that p, or possesses other sorts of epistemic properties or relations, is in part determined by the practical costs of being wrong about p. Recent studies in experimental philosophy have tested the claims of IRI. After critically discussing prior studies, we present the results of our own experiments that provide strong support for IRI. We discuss our results in light of complementary findings by other theorists, and address the challenge posed by a (...) leading intellectualist alternative to our view.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.EMPIRICAL TESTS OF INTEREST-RELATIVE INVARIANTISMVolume 9, Issue 1Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Jason StanleyDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.2Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. EMPIRICAL TESTS OF INTEREST-RELATIVE INVARIANTISMVolume 9, Issue 1Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Jason StanleyDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.2Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. EMPIRICAL TESTS OF INTEREST-RELATIVE INVARIANTISMVolume 9, Issue 1Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Jason StanleyDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.2Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

According to a standard picture of agency, a person’s actions always reflect what they most desire, and many theorists extend this model to mental illness. In this chapter, I pin down exactly where this “volitional” view goes wrong. The key is to recognize that human motivational architecture involves a regulatory control structure: we have both spontaneous states (e.g., automatically-elicited thoughts and action tendencies, etc.) as well as regulatory mechanisms that allow us to suppress or modulate these spontaneous states. Our regulatory (...) abilities, however, are bounded. Mental illnesses, I argue, arise precisely where these bounds are reached, thus allowing inappropriate spontaneous states to regularly manifest in thought and action. I conclude that the volitional view of mental illness is wrong: when a person with mental illness reaches the limits of control, what they do often does not reflect what they most prefer. (shrink)

The "traditional" view of normative decision theory, as reported (for example) in chapter 2 of Luce and RaiÃa's [1957] classic work, Games and Decisions, proposes a reduction of sequential decisions problems to non-sequential decisions: a reduction of extensive forms to normal forms. Nonetheless, this reduction is not without its critics, both from inside and outside expected utility theory, It islay purpose in this essay to join with those critics by advocating the following thesis.

Incompatibilists and compatibilists (mostly) agree that there is a strong intuition that a manipulated agent, i.e., an agent who is the victim of methods such as indoctrination or brainwashing, is unfree. They differ however on why exactly this intuition arises. Incompatibilists claim our intuitions in these cases are sensitive to the manipulated agent’s lack of ultimate control over her actions, while many compatibilists argue that our intuitions respond to damage inflicted by manipulation on the agent’s psychological and volitional capacities. Much (...) hangs on this issue because manipulation-based arguments are among the most important for defending incompatibilist views of free will. In this paper, I investigate this issue from a experimental perspective, using a set of statistical methods well suited for identifying the features of hypothetical cases people’s intuitions are responding to. Results strongly support the compatibilist view—subjects’ tendency to judge that a manipulated agent is unfree was found to depend on their judgments that the agent suffers impairments to certain psychological/volitional capacities that compatibilists say are the basis for free will. I discuss the significance of these results for the use of manipulation cases in the philosophical debate about free will. (shrink)

This article takes direction from the transnational feminist lesbian encounter that took place between the Dutch collective Sister Outsider and Audre Lorde in the 1980s to reflect on the role of archives within transnational feminist research. Drawing on archival materials from the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV) at Atria (Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History) in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States, I consider how (...) fragmented archives offer stories on kinship, intimacy and loss. Taking into account the ‘absences’ and ‘presences’ (Lewis, 2017) produced in this archival research project, I propose an archival research methodology that is rooted in a practice of ‘orientation’ (Ahmed, 2006a, 2006b), ‘listening’ (Campt, 2017) and ‘intervention’ (Appadurai, 2003). (shrink)

The side-effect effect, in which an agent who does not speci␣cally intend an outcome is seen as having brought it about intentionally, is thought to show that moral factors inappropriately bias judgments of intentionality, and to challenge standard mental state models of intentionality judgments. This study used matched vignettes to dissociate a number of moral factors and mental states. Results support the view that mental states, and not moral factors, explain the side-effect effect. However, the critical mental states appear not (...) to be desires as proposed in standard models, but rather ‘deeper’ evaluative states including values and core evaluative attitudes. (shrink)

This title introduces the concept of "if this, then that" in coding by using relatable real-world examples. Vivid photographs and easy-to-read text aid comprehension for early readers. Features include an infographic, fun facts, Making Connections questions, a glossary, and an index. QR Codes in the book give readers access to book-specific resources to further their learning.

Humans are unique in the animal world in the extent to which their day-to-day behavior is governed by a complex set of rules and principles commonly called norms. Norms delimit the bounds of proper behavior in a host of domains, providing an invisible web of normative structure embracing virtually all aspects of social life. People also find many norms to be deeply meaningful. Norms give rise to powerful subjective feelings that, in the view of many, are an important part of (...) what it is to be a human agent. Despite the vital role of norms in human lives and human behavior, and the central role they play in explanations in the social sciences, there has been very little systematic attention devoted to norms in cognitive science. Much existing research is partial and piecemeal, making it difficult to know how individual findings cohere into a comprehensive picture. Our goal in this essay is to offer an account of the psychological mechanisms and processes underlying norms that integrates what is known and can serve as a framework for future research. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers have advanced a surprising conclusion: people's judgments about whether an agent brought about an outcome intentionally are pervasively influenced by normative considerations. In this paper, we investigate the ‘Chairman case’, an influential case from this literature and disagree with this conclusion. Using a statistical method called structural path modeling, we show that people's attributions of intentional action to an agent are driven not by normative assessments, but rather by attributions of underlying values and characterological dispositions (...) to the agent. In a second study, we examined people's judgments about what they think drives asymmetric intuitions in the Chairman case and found that people are highly inaccurate in identifying which features of the case their intuitions track. In the final part of the paper, we discuss how the statistical methods used in this study can help philosophers with the critical features problem, the problem of figuring out which among the myriad features present in hypothetical cases are the critical ones that our intuitions are responsive to. We show how the methods used in this study have some advantages over both armchair methods used by traditional philosophers and survey methods used by experimental philosophers. (shrink)

Teddy Seidenfeld – CMU An old, wise, and widely held attitude in Statistics is that modest intervention in the design of an experiment followed by simple statistical analysis may yield much more of value than using very sophisticated statistical analysis on a poorly designed existing data set.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

It is a familiar argument that advocates accommodating the so-called paradoxes of decision theory by abandoning the “independence” postulate. After all, if we grant that choice reveals preference, the anomalous choice patterns of the Allais and Ellsberg problems violate postulate P2 of Savage's system. The strategy of making room for new preference patterns by relaxing independence is adopted in each of the following works: Samuelson, Kahneman and Tversky's “Prospect Theory”, Allais and Hagen, Fishburn, Chew and MacCrimmon, McClennen, and in closely (...) argued essays by Machina. (shrink)

Recent studies by experimental philosophers demonstrate puzzling asymmetries in people’s judgments about intentional action, leading many philosophers to propose that normative factors are inappropriately influencing intentionality judgments. In this paper, I present and defend the Deep Self Model of judgments about intentional action that provides a quite different explanation for these judgment asymmetries. The Deep Self Model is based on the idea that people make an intuitive distinction between two parts of an agent’s psychology, an Acting Self that contains the (...) desires, means-end beliefs, and intentions that are the immediate causal source of an agent’s actions, and a Deep Self, which contains an agent’s stable and central psychological attitudes, including the agent’s values, principles, life goals, and other more fundamental attitudes. The Deep Self Model proposes that when people are asked to make judgments about whether an agent brought about an outcome intentionally, in addition to standard criteria proposed in traditional models, people also assess an additional ‘Concordance Criterion’: Does the outcome concord with the psychological attitudes of the agent’s Deep Self? I show that the Deep Self Model can explain a very complex pattern of judgment asymmetries documented in the experimental philosophy literature, and does so in a way that has significant advantages over competing models. (shrink)

We contrast three decision rules that extend Expected Utility to contexts where a convex set of probabilities is used to depict uncertainty: Γ-Maximin, Maximality, and E-admissibility. The rules extend Expected Utility theory as they require that an option is inadmissible if there is another that carries greater expected utility for each probability in a (closed) convex set. If the convex set is a singleton, then each rule agrees with maximizing expected utility. We show that, even when the option set is (...) convex, this pairwise comparison between acts may fail to identify those acts which are Bayes for some probability in a convex set that is not closed. This limitation affects two of the decision rules but not E-admissibility, which is not a pairwise decision rule. E-admissibility can be used to distinguish between two convex sets of probabilities that intersect all the same supporting hyperplanes. (shrink)

In spite of the dramatic images broadcast from the US/Mexican frontier, the border still remains porous. Illegal migration continues northward while piles of waste moves in the other direction to be recycled, and to be re-used in the construction of a counter-urbanism that includes numerous tunnels that pass under this border and make up this illegal inhabitation. In reaction to urban segregation, an urbanism of transgression is developing via specialised enterprises and their alternative prototypes. It is in this context that (...) the non-governmental organization Casa Familiar works in the border neighbourhood of San Ysidro, California. A zone of alternative affordable housing has been designed including a serie of « open air rooms » that contain electricity, serving as site for a variety of neighborhood activities. On the border a new housing programme is developing : affordable and socially sustainable. (shrink)

I will look at and discuss the ideological-subject position of the ‘sympathetic’ slave-owner by employing Žižek ’s specific conception of ideology across two varying slave-narratives. I attempt to uncover how this ideology operates within the social-material reality in the texts Our Nig and Minnie's Sacrifice and the ways that the authors employed tropes in depicting this particular archetypal figure in slave-narratives. These charachter's exhibit an ideology remarkably aligned with Žižek ’s: that a certain non-knowledge of the proper logic of an (...) ideological reality is what sustains it. This suggests not only that such an archetypal figure exists across slave-narratives, but also that they deploy a communal ideology that attempts to conflate unwillingness with inability. They enable the perpetuation of the institution by their unwillingness to reject the economic benefits of slavery, which they conceive of as an inability. (shrink)

One of the most remarkable features of the language of early Greek writing is a pervasive rhetorical strategy which consists in personifying objects for the purpose of identifying humans closely associated with them. Such ‘speaking objects’ have no Semitic parallel; how, then, is their conventional status in the Archaic Age to be explained? This article first considers the formulaic language of speaking objects, which is no straightforward transcription of speech, and seeks to explain where it comes from. It then turns (...) to the question of why writers employed the curious strategy of personification by setting it in the broader context of early Greek writing and literature. Variously analogous to herms, slaves and skytalai, speaking objects are shown to have been conceived as messengers acting on behalf of their senders by not speaking in their name. (shrink)

It is commonly remarked, as a curiosity, that Imruʾ al-Qays’s traditional death resembles that of Heracles, but it has never been meaningfully discussed. This article undertakes to do so, arguing for the Greek provenance of his death tradition and discussing the implications of the Islamic construction of a Greek death for “the greatest Arab poet.” One implication involves his biography more generally, which is argued to have originally formed a different kind of narrative serving particular Islamic interests, later adapted to (...) a biographic mold. The second stems from the recognition that the legendary Greek death of Imruʾ al-Qays is neither incidental nor isolated, which suggests that the horizons of Greco-Arabic studies are unduly narrow: alongside the transmission of written scientific texts, there were also oral popular traditions of Greek origin that left a deep imprint on Islamic culture. (shrink)

Can there be good reasons for judging one set of probabilistic assertions more reliable than a second? There are many candidates for measuring "goodness" of probabilistic forecasts. Here, I focus on one such aspirant: calibration. Calibration requires an alignment of announced probabilities and observed relative frequency, e.g., 50 percent of forecasts made with the announced probability of.5 occur, 70 percent of forecasts made with probability.7 occur, etc. To summarize the conclusions: (i) Surveys designed to display calibration curves, from which a (...) recalibration is to be calculated, are useless without due consideration for the interconnections between questions (forecasts) in the survey. (ii) Subject to feedback, calibration in the long run is otiose. It gives no ground for validating one coherent opinion over another as each coherent forecaster is (almost) sure of his own long-run calibration. (iii) Calibration in the short run is an inducement to hedge forecasts. A calibration score, in the short run, is improper. It gives the forecaster reason to feign violation of total evidence by enticing him to use the more predictable frequencies in a larger finite reference class than that directly relevant. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about loss of control in addiction: Some theorists say at least some addicts’ drug-directed desires are irresistible, while others insist that pursuing drugs is a choice. The debate is long-standing and has essentially reached a stalemate. This essay suggests a way forward. I propose an alternative model of loss of control in addiction, one based not on irresistibility, but rather fallibility. According to the model, on every occasion of use, self-control processes exhibit a low, but (...) non-zero, rate of failure due to error. When these processes confront highly recurrent drug-directed desires, the cumulative probability of a self-control lapse steadily grows. The model shows why the following statement—which has an air of paradox—can in fact be true: Each drug-directed desire the addict faces is fully resistible, but the addict nonetheless has significantly diminished control over eventually giving in. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The book is a whirlwind of thought and life in general. Its main purpose is not hurt speech but subjects everything to rigorous questions and seeks answers to seemingly insurmountable problems. Some views expounded in this book will no doubt raise some dust. But if dust has to be raised to reach to truth, so be it, no apologies. The author writes to be damned, but will not accept any thing that is advanced without evidence. The book in the first (...) chapter guides the reader through the author's struggles and in a way is a motivational piece as it shows that all is possible through not giving up, in spite of insurmountable odds. As a practical demonstration, of the power of being a Sceptic, the reader is taken through the fundamentals of the poorly understood topic of hypnosis. The reader is guided through the practical ways of becoming not only a hypnotist, but a way to improve one's memory. The section on how to study for success will certainly help those that are engaged in pursuing knowledge in any field. It has been used by the author himself and many others in their successful studies over a long period. In this way the book is a small but powerful educational tool.. A small part is what the author calls common Science; which of course may not be so common after all. The book shows through brutal examination of traditional views that the Sceptic sooner than later reaches to the truth. There are few topics in the book that the author has inserted purely to provide rest periods from the hard philosophical and scientific arguments that follow. Satire that may seem to exhibit itself in some topics should be seen from this point of view. It is the considered view of the author that many views that appear in this book, if taken as way of life would improve the world as we know it, be it socially, economically or politically. Topics on homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment, witchcraft, afterlife, and death, miracles, language and quality leadership among others are always brushed away without due thoughtful process especially in the African context. The book touches on these sensitive topics with candor and vigour, honesty and brutally. The authors' long stay in Botswana, a country with no debt and practically negligible corruption, helps him show what a country that embraces democracy coupled with pragmatism from the word go and prudent economic management can achieve. In this way, the Sceptic is as good source of wisdom to research students and those whose decisions do affect the vast majority of their people. The unconventional interesting way the various topics have been handled make reading of seemingly difficult topics enjoyable and can be read in any order for they do not follow a linear structure.Common myths prevalent in society are tackled with clarity towards the end of the book. The shooting down of some common myths, including the myths surrounding weight reduction and alcohol are a source of knowledge and guidance for those not lucky enough to be privy to very deep scientific evaluations of things. The book does not claim absolute knowledge but is an honest guide to those who do not fear to think.This small book is a dynamite of knowledge especially in most African countries where ignorance is the odder of the day. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt’s Unwilling Addict and Willing Addict cases accomplish something fairly unique: they pull apart the predictions of control-based views of moral responsibility and competing self-expression views. The addicts both lack control over their actions but differ in terms of expression of their respective selves. Frankfurt’s own view is that—in line with the predictions of self-expression views—the unwilling addict is not morally responsible for his drug-directed actions while the willing addict is. But is Frankfurt right? In this essay, I put (...) together a systematic defence of Frankfurt’s position. (shrink)