Discrete choice experiments—selecting the best and/or worst from a set of options—are increasingly used to provide more efficient and valid measurement of attitudes or preferences than conventional methods such as Likert scales. Discrete choice data have traditionally been analyzed with random utility models that have good measurement properties but provide limited insight into cognitive processes. We extend a well-established cognitive model, which has successfully explained both choices and response times for simple decision tasks, to complex, multi-attribute discrete choice data. The (...) fits, and parameters, of the extended model for two sets of choice data (involving patient preferences for dermatology appointments, and consumer attitudes toward mobile phones) agree with those of standard choice models. The extended model also accounts for choice and response time data in a perceptual judgment task designed in a manner analogous to best–worst discrete choice experiments. We conclude that several research fields might benefit from discrete choice experiments, and that the particular accumulator-based models of decision making used in response time research can also provide process-level instantiations for random utility models. (shrink)

Childhood obesity continues to rise in the United States, with now over 17% of children and adolescents considered overweight. Childhood obesity predisposes an entire generation to increased risk of chronic diseases and disabilities and is a severe threat to the economic well-being of the nation. At first thought, the solution to the obesity epidemic may seem simple: encourage people to eat less and exercise more. However, the reality is that behavioral change is difficult to achieve without also considering the interplay (...) of genetics, biological processes, and social and environmental mechanisms. As such, investment in obesity research has been considered an important tool to combat obesity and obesity-related diseases. Childhood obesity research, in particular, has drawn considerable attention, given the lower cost of prevention relative to treatment and the high potential for long-term benefits at a population level. (shrink)

This essay introduces a cluster of articles titled “Devalued Currency: An Elegiac Symposium on Paradigm Shifts.” Eagleton's piece addresses, from a perspective indebted to Walter Benjamin, the notion of Thomas Kuhn that “shifts” in the controlling paradigms of disciplines and practices are entirely transformative not only of their futures but also of their pasts. Benjamin argued that a work of art is a set of potentials that may or may not be realized in the vicissitudes of its afterlife. The true (...) significance of works might be said, therefore, to emerge only after some as-yet-unexpected event or upheaval makes their significance apparent. In this sense, we might argue that historical events make full sense only in the light of “judgment day”; until then, history remains an incoherent chronicle. But the totality that will one day be revealed cannot be anticipated. The past is open-ended because the present is, and meanwhile, the meaning of history is in our hands to change. Since we have that power, Eagleton suggests that we recycle figures of the past as characters in a comedy rather than tragedy. Still, it is never possible to say which figures of the past and which works are ultimately important and which are not, because we cannot say which mutations will result in major developments to come. No work or person is important or peripheral in itself or himself; it is the critic and historian who render them so. (shrink)

Religion is intrinsically social, and hence irretrievably organizational, although organization is often seen as the darker side of the religious experience--power, routinization, and bureaucracy. Religion and secular organizations have long received separate scholarly scrutiny, but until now their confluence has been little considered. This interdisciplinary collection of mostly unpublished papers is the first volume to remedy the deficit. The project grew out of a three-year inquiry into religious institutions undertaken by Yale University's Program on Non-Profit Organizations and sponsored by the (...) Lilly Endowment. The scholars who took part in this effort weree challenged to apply new perspectives to the study of religious organizations, especially that strand of contemporary secular organizational theory known as "New Institutionalism." The result was this groundbreaking volume, which includes papers on various aspects of such topics as the historical sources and patterns of U.S. religious organizations, contemporary patterns of denominational authority, the congregation as an organization, and the interface between religious and secular institutions and movements. The contributors include an interdisciplinary mix of scholars from economics, history, law, social administration, and sociology. (shrink)

Human genomics is a translational field spanning research, clinical care, public health, and direct-to-consumer testing. However, law differs across these domains on issues including liability, consent, promoting quality of analysis and interpretation, and safeguarding privacy. Genomic activities crossing domains can thus encounter confusion and conflicts among these approaches. This paper suggests how to resolve these conflicts while protecting the rights and interests of individuals sequenced. Translational genomics requires this more translational approach to law.

The present paper focuses on the antecedents of solidarity behavior towards Ukrainian refugees, specifically examining the role of subjective uncertainty generated in public opinion by the aggression of Ukraine on feelings of compassion and perceptions of refugees as a threat. Based on pooled data from six representative samples collected in different waves during the first six months of the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine among a representative sample of adult Italian citizens (N = 6,063), the study provided support for the (...) intensification hypothesis, suggesting that uncertainty can act as an affective amplifier. Indeed, the results showed that uncertainty increased perceptions of refugees as a threat (acting on its emotional component, i.e., anxiety), but also feelings of compassion, which is a main driver of solidarity. Moreover, compassion seemed to reduce the (perceived) threat posed by refugees on an economic, cultural, security, or political level. The pattern of relationships tested in the model proved to be stable across different areas of the country and for the first 6 months of the Russian invasion, suggesting that the empathic concern generated by the suffering of the Ukrainian population under attack did not significantly diminish its effects over the period considered. (shrink)

Bayesians take “definite” or “single-case” probabilities to be basic. Definite probabilities attach to closed formulas or propositions. We write them here using small caps: PROB(P) and PROB(P/Q). Most objective probability theories begin instead with “indefinite” or “general” probabilities (sometimes called “statistical probabilities”). Indefinite probabilities attach to open formulas or propositions. We write indefinite probabilities using lower case “prob” and free variables: prob(Bx/Ax). The indefinite probability of an A being a B is not about any particular A, but rather about the (...) property of being an A. In this respect, its logical form is the same as that of relative frequencies. For instance, we might talk about the probability of a human baby being female. That probability is about human babies in general — not about individuals. If we examine a baby and determine conclusively that she is female, then the definite probability of her being female is 1, but that does not alter the indefinite probability of human babies in general being female. Most objective approaches to probability tie probabilities to relative frequencies in some way, and the resulting probabilities have the same logical form as the relative frequencies. That is, they are indefinite probabilities. The simplest theories identify indefinite probabilities with relative frequencies.3 It is often objected that such “finite frequency theories” are inadequate because our probability judgments often diverge from relative frequencies. For example, we can talk about a coin being fair (and so the indefinite probability of a flip landing heads is 0.5) even when it is flipped only once and then destroyed (in which case the relative frequency is either 1 or 0). For understanding such indefinite probabilities, it has been suggested that we need a notion of probability that talks about possible instances of properties as well as actual instances.. (shrink)

NOTE: Series number is not an integer: n/a.

This study used naming fluency, visual and verbal mnemonics, and their interactions for transfer of strategy to a new task for recall and categorization of facts about world religions. Fluent and disfluent high school namers were identified in 10 intact classes and randomly assigned to verbal (N = 25) and visual (N = 17) mnemonic treatments delivered during 21 to 26 39-minute lessons via mastery learning methodology. Student selection of strategy use, that is, transfer of the strategy to a new (...) task, was analyzed by chi square. Recall and categorization after a 2-day and 7-day delay were analyzed by ANOVA with repeated measures. Although no significant differences were found, 57% of the students selected to transfer the strategy; after a 2-day delay, 81% of the material was recalled and 87% was categorized; after a 7-day delay, 63% of the material was recognized. (shrink)

Fix an integer $r \ge 3$. We consider metric spaces on n points such that the distance between any two points lies in $\left\{ {1, \ldots,r} \right\}$. Our main result describes their approximate structure for large n. As a consequence, we show that the number of these metric spaces is $\left\lceil {{{r + 1} \over 2}} \right\rceil ^{\left + o\left}.$Related results in the continuous setting have recently been proved by Kozma, Meyerovitch, Peled, and Samotij [34]. When r is even, our (...) structural characterization is more precise and implies that almost all such metric spaces have all distances at least $r/2$. As an easy consequence, when r is even, we improve the error term above from $o\left$ to $o\left$, and also show a labeled first-order 0-1 law in the language ${\cal L}_r $, consisting of r binary relations, one for each element of $[r]$. In particular, we show the almost sure theory T is the theory of the Fraïssé limit of the class of all finite simple complete edge-colored graphs with edge colors in $\left\{ {r/2, \ldots,r} \right\}$.Our work can be viewed as an extension of a long line of research in extremal combinatorics to the colored setting, as well as an addition to the collection of known structures that admit logical 0-1 laws. (shrink)

Background: Lack of compassion is claimed to result in poor and sometimes harmful nursing care. Developing strategies to encourage compassionate caring behaviours are important because there is evidence to suggest a connection between having a moral orientation such as compassion and resulting caring behaviour in practice. Objective: This study aimed to articulate a clearer understanding of compassionate caring via nurse educators’ selection and use of published texts and film. Methodology: This study employed discourse analysis. Participants and research context: A total (...) of 41 nurse educators working in universities in the United Kingdom (n = 3), Ireland (n = 1) and Canada (n = 1) completed questionnaires on the narratives that shaped their understanding of care and compassion. Findings: The desire to understand others and how to care compassionately characterised educators’ choices. Most narratives were examples of kindness and compassion. A total of 17 emphasised the importance of connecting with others as a central component of compassionate caring, 10 identified the burden of caring, 24 identified themes of abandonment and of failure to see the suffering person and 15 narratives showed a discourse of only showing compassion to those ‘deserving’ often understood as the suffering person doing enough to help themselves. Discussion: These findings are mostly consistent with work in moral philosophy emphasising the particular or context and perception or vision as well as the necessity of emotions. The narratives themselves are used by nurse educators to help explicate examples of caring and compassion (or its lack). Conclusion: To feel cared about people need to feel ‘visible’ as though they matter. Nurses need to be alert to problems that may arise if their ‘moral vision’ is influenced by ideas of desert and how much the patient is doing to help himself or herself. (shrink)

The peripheral nervous system has classically been separated into a somatic division composed of both afferent and efferent pathways and an autonomic division containing only efferents. J. N. Langley, who codified this asymmetrical plan at the beginning of the twentieth century, considered different afferents, including visceral ones, as candidates for inclusion in his concept of the “autonomic nervous system”, but he finally excluded all candidates for lack of any distinguishing histological markers. Langley's classification has been enormously influential in shaping modern (...) ideas about both the structure and the function of the PNS. We survey recent information about the PNS and argue that many of the sensory neurons designated as “visceral” and “somatic” are in fact part of a histologically distinct group of afferents concerned primarily autonomic function. These afferents have traditionally been known as “small dark” neurons or B-neurons. In this target article we outline an association between autonomic and B-neurons based on ontogeny, cell phenotype, and functional relations, grouping them together as part of a common reflex system involved in homeostasis. This more parsimonious classification of the PNS, made possible by the identification of a group of afferents associated primarily with the ANS, avoids a number of confusions produced by the classical orientation. It may also have practical implications for an understanding of nociception, homeostatic reflexes, and the evolution of the nervous system. (shrink)

Neurotechnological cognitive enhancement has become an area of intense scientific, policy, and ethical interest. However, while work has increasingly focused on ethical views of the general public, less studied are those with personal connections to cognitive impairment. Using a mixed-methods design, we surveyed attitudes regarding implantable neurotechnological cognitive enhancement in individuals who self-identified as having increased likelihood of developing dementia (n = 25; ‘Our Study’), compared to a nationally representative sample of Americans (n = 4726; ‘Pew Study’). Participants in Our (...) Study were additionally shown four videos showcasing hypothetical neurotechnological devices designed to enhance different cognitive abilities and were interviewed for more in-depth responses. Both groups expressed comparable degrees of worry and acknowledgement of potential ethical ramifications (all _ps_ > _0.05_). Compared to the Pew Study, participants in Our Study expressed slightly higher desire (_p_. (shrink)

One of the most important problems for contemporary Catholicism is its dialogue with the contemporary world. In recent years, the leaders of the Catholic Church have been speaking of this with increasing frequency. The Catholic journal La Civiltà cattolica has even written of the need to found a "theology of dialogue" . The recent papal encyclicals - "Mater et Magistra" , "Pacem in Terris" , and "Ecclesiam suam" - express the effort of the leaders of Catholicism to establish more intimate (...) contacts with the world in which the religious people of today find themselves. It is therefore no accident that this problem of dialogue was taken up in discussions at the Second Ecumenical Council and particularly at its third session held in the autumn of 1964. (shrink)

This paper responds to Terry Horgan’s recent critique of Bayesian formal epistemology. I argue that each of Horgan’s criticisms misses its mark when Bayesianism is viewed as putting forward an inductive logic of confidences. Along the way, I explore the nature, scope, and limits of a defensible brand of Bayesianism.

Hegel is a philosopher whom we ignore at our own intellectual peril. His influence appears unending, and his philosophical positions are often appropriated as the assumptions of our contemporary social and historical condition. His Phenomenology of Spirit is usually taken to be the work that is most relevant to that condition, and Terry Pinkard's book is an interpretation of the Phenomenology from the perspective of the development of reason in the context of our social existence and practices. In other (...) words, through his analysis of Hegel's understanding of the social character of human rationality, Pinkard hopes to clarify the guiding theme of the Phenomenology, the sociality of reason. The implication of Pinkard's work is that the sociohistorical character of rationality has emerged as a dominant theme of post-modern criticism. (shrink)

Introduction Sartre at One Hundred — a Man of the Nineteenth Century Addressing the Twenty-First? THOMAS R. FLYNN We are celebrating the centennial year of ...

Essays in Arabic Literary Biography, 925–1350. Edited by Terri DeYoung and Mary St. Germain. Mîzân: Studien zur Literatur in der islamischen Welt, vol. 17,1. Wiesbaden: haRRaSSoWitz, 2011. Pp. vii + 371. €68.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Socratic Virtue: Making the Best of the Neither-Good-Nor-BadJ. Clerk ShawNaomi Reshotko. Socratic Virtue: Making the Best of the Neither-Good-Nor-Bad. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 204. Cloth, $68.00.In this engaging and provocative book, Naomi Reshotko advances a naturalistic interpretation of Socratic philosophy, i.e., of those views expressed by Plato’s Socrates that best comport with Aristotle’s descriptions of Socrates. She contrasts her reading with those that (...) project foreign commitments onto the text, including: (i) moralism, or the separation of ethics from empirical science; (ii) two-dimensional semantics, or theories of meaning that distinguish the semantic contribution to a psychological state made by its subject’s conception of its objects from that made by its actual objects; and (iii) privileged access, or psychological theories that grant human beings incorrigibility concerning some aspect of their own psyches.Part I reviews and synthesizes views that the author shares with Terry Penner: that all desire is for one’s own real (not apparent) good, so that an agent’s belief about what is overall best for her invariably guides her actions; that all human virtue is identical to wisdom; and that virtue, so understood, guarantees the greatest possible satisfaction of the desire for one’s own real good, and so makes one live as well as possible.Part II places the distinction among the good, the bad, and the neither-good-nor-bad (NGNB) at the center of Socratic ethics. On Reshotko’s reading, the only goods are virtue and happiness, and the only bads vice and misery. She does not adequately explain why all actions are NGNB (16, 173), even though actions are individuated by their actual consequences (34–36), so that every action is either good or bad (98). Virtue’s goodness is due to its stable nomological (not conceptual or logical) connection to happiness. This makes virtue the only unconditional, other-generated good, while happiness is the only unconditional, self-generated good—its goodness does not depend on any nomological relation it enters into.Part III provides more detail about virtue and happiness. First, Reshotko explains that virtue is wisdom because it is the science of human happiness, and that this science is identical to every other science. Strictly speaking, nobody knows anything without knowing everything, although some people do grasp “some parts of knowledge” (160). Reshotko advocates this view as a solution to the closing puzzles of the Charmides. Socrates and Critias cannot figure out how temperance benefits, first because they assume that it is knowledge [End Page 132] of all things except good and bad, and then because they assume that it is knowledge of good and bad in isolation from other sciences (173a–175a). But if Socratic wisdom is the structured grasp of everything, then their puzzle is resolved. Second, Reshotko claims that happiness is a life maximally composed of pleasures. While she is sympathetic with the view that happiness is composed of modal pleasures (see G. Rudebusch, Socrates, Pleasure, and Value, Oxford 1999), she concludes that sensate pleasures can also be parts of happiness (185n7).The book’s major flaw is its limited engagement with textual evidence that seems to tell against the author’s readings and its limited coverage of alternative interpretations from the secondary literature. I mention three striking examples here.First, Reshotko argues that harming others is inconsistent with self-benefit because of the likelihood of reciprocal harm (65–71). She then notes passages where Socrates speaks as though harming others harms one’s soul simply by making it more unjust, which makes vice sound like a self-generated bad. Gorgias 472c–481b is particularly problematic in this respect, since Socrates claims there that doing injustice is less painful (but worse) than suffering it. Reshotko tries to make such passages conform with her initial explanation: harming others tends to entrench false beliefs that harming others is consistent with self-benefit, which leads to more harm of others and so more reciprocal harm (71–72, 174). This may be workable, but absent more extensive argument, it seems like an ad hoc maneuver.Second, Reshotko wants to avoid giving... (shrink)

The phrase "the meaning of life" for many seems a quaint notion fit for satirical mauling by Monty Python or Douglas Adams. But in this spirited, stimulating, and quirky enquiry, famed critic Terry Eagleton takes a serious if often amusing look at the question and offers his own surprising answer. Eagleton first examines how centuries of thinkers and writers--from Marx and Schopenhauer to Shakespeare, Sartre, and Beckett--have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests, however, that it is (...) only in modern times that the question has become problematic. But instead of tackling it head-on, many of us cope with the feelings of meaninglessness in our lives by filling them with everything from football to sex, Kabbala, Scientology, "New Age softheadedness," or fundamentalism. On the other hand, Eagleton notes, many educated people believe that life is an evolutionary accident that has no intrinsic meaning. If our lives have meaning, it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready made. Eagleton probes this view of meaning as a kind of private enterprise, and concludes that it fails to holds up. He argues instead that the meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical but ethical. It is not something separate from life, but what makes it worth living--that is, a certain quality, depth, abundance and intensity of life. Here then is a brilliant discussion of the problem of meaning by a leading thinker, who writes with a light and often irreverent touch, but with a very serious end in mind. "If you were to ask what provides some meaning in life nowadays for a great many people, especially men, you could do worse than reply 'football.' Not many of them perhaps would be willing to admit as much; but sport stands in for all those noble causes--religious faith, national sovereignty, personal honor, ethnic identity--for which, over the centuries, people have been prepared to go to their deaths. It is sport, not religion, which is now the opium of the people.". (shrink)

divisibility in Physics VI. I had been assuming at that time that Aristotle's elimination of reference to the infinitely large in his account of the potential inf inite--like the elimination of the infinitely small from nineteenth century accounts of limits and continuity--gave us everything that was important in a theory of the infinite. Hilbert's paper showed me that this was not obviously so. Suddenly other certainties about Aristotle's (apparently) judicious toning down of (supposed) Platonic extremisms began to crumble. The upshot (...) of work I had been doing earlier on Plato's 'Third Man Argument' began to look different from the way it had before. I was confronted with a possibility I had not till then so much as entertained. What if the more extreme posi tions of Plato on these issues were the more likely to be correct? The present work is the first instalment of the result ing reassessment of Plato's metaphysics, and especially of his theory of Forms. It has occupied much of my teaching and scholarly time over the past fifteen years and more. The central question wi th which I concern myself is, "How does Plato argue for the existence of his Forms (if he does )7" The idea of making this the central question is that if we know how he argues for the existence of Forms, we may get a better sense of what they are. (shrink)

From the beginning the French philosopher Claude Lefort has set himself the task of interpreting the political life of modern society-and over time he has succeeded in elaborating a distinctive conception of modern democracy that is linked to both historical analysis and a novel form of philosophical reflection. This book, the first full-scale study of Lefort to appear in English, offers a clear and compelling account of Lefort's accomplishment-its unique merits, its relation to political philosophy within the Continental tradition, and (...) its great relevance today. Much of what passes for political philosophy in our day is merely politicized philosophical concepts, a distinction author Bernard Flynn underscores as he describes the development of Lefort's truly political philosophy-its ideas formed in response to his own political experience and to the work of certain major figures within the tradition of political thought. Beginning with Lefort's most important single work, his book on Machiavelli, Flynn presents the philosopher's conceptions of politics, modernity, and interpretation in the context within which they took shape. He then draws on a wide variety of Lefort's works to explicate his notions of premodern and modern democracy in which totalitarianism, in Lefort's singular and highly influential theory, is identified as a permanent problem of modernity. A valuable exposition of one of the most important Continental philosophers of the post-World War II period, Flynn's book is itself a noteworthy work of interpretive philosophy, pursuing the ideas and issues addressed by Lefort to a point of unparalleled clarity and depth. (shrink)

The phrase "the meaning of life" for many seems a quaint notion fit for satirical mauling by Monty Python or Douglas Adams. But in this spirited Very Short Introduction, famed critic Terry Eagleton takes a serious if often amusing look at the question and offers his own surprising answer. Eagleton first examines how centuries of thinkers and writers--from Marx and Schopenhauer to Shakespeare, Sartre, and Beckett--have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests, however, that it is only (...) in modern times that the question has become problematic. But instead of tackling it head-on, many of us cope with the feelings of meaninglessness in our lives by filling them with everything from football to sex, Kabbala, Scientology, "New Age softheadedness," or fundamentalism. On the other hand, Eagleton notes, many educated people believe that life is an evolutionary accident that has no intrinsic meaning. If our lives have meaning, it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready made. Eagleton probes this view of meaning as a kind of private enterprise, and concludes that it fails to holds up. He argues instead that the meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical but ethical. It is not something separate from life, but what makes it worth living--that is, a certain quality, depth, abundance and intensity of life. Here then is a brilliant discussion of the problem of meaning by a leading thinker, who writes with a light and often irreverent touch, but with a very serious end in mind. (shrink)

[I.] Igazság, evidencia és tapasztalat Edmund Husserl munkásságában -- II. Az igazság problémája az időtudat és a keletkezés husserli filozófiájában.

This chapter contains sections titled: The “What is X?” Question, the Sciences, Virtue, and the Forms Plato's “Argument from the Sciences” for the Existence of Forms, as Apparently Represented by Aristotle, and Aristotle's Criticism of that Argument Plato the Parmenidean Sciences and Pseudo‐Sciences The Good and the Sciences A Proposal: The Forms are Attributes; and There are No Attributes that are not Forms What about Plato's Other Reasons for Believing in Forms (Logical, or Mystical‐Metaphysical‐Theological)? And Won't These Reasons Make of (...) Forms Something Rather More than Simply Attributes? Objections to the Theory of Forms The Theory of Forms in Later Dialogues Note. (shrink)

Este libro es parte de la colección e-Libro en BiblioBoard.