It has become common to distinguish between two kinds of ethical concepts: thick and thin ones. Bernard Williams, who coined the terms, explains that thick concepts such as “coward, lie, brutality, gratitude and so forth” are marked by having greater empirical content than thin ones. They are both action-guiding and world-guided: -/- If a concept of this kind applies, this often provides someone with a reason for action… At the same time, their application is guided by the world. A concept (...) of this sort may be rightly or wrongly applied, and people who have acquired it can agree that it applies or fails to apply to some new situation. -/- Thin concepts are concepts such as good and bad, right and wrong, obligation and duty. Judgments applying thick concepts have been seen as lending support to the possibility of explaining moral knowledge, and objectivity in ethics. It appears that due to their empirical content – their world-guidedness – judgments employing thick concepts can be true or false, depending on whether they get the worldly facts right. In addition they provide reasons for action – they are action-guiding – and thus may provide the starting point of a realist account of practical reasons: the view that reasons are facts and whether or not a person has a reason to act does not (normally) depend on her attitudes. The cruelty of an action is a reason not to perform it or to prevent it; that an action is kind is a reason in its favour. Of course these remarks aren’t conclusive – far from it. But even so, some non-cognitivists may regard them as completely wrongheaded, and so does Bernard Williams even though he is not a non-cognitivist. However, he believes that having a practical reason does depend on a person’s attitudes and motives. A certain worry about thick concepts will make clear what the problem is. It has most expressly been raised by Simon Blackburn, who sees it as undermining even the most superficial plausibility of moral cognitivism, as well as the claim that the properties picked out by thick concepts provide reasons. While we may readily accept that the kindness of an action or the fact that it is required by justice is a reason to perform it, there are many thick concepts whose action-guiding role we would reject. Some derogatory – e.g., racist or sexist - words express thick concepts too, Blackburn notes. And surely there are no racist or sexist truths. Furthermore there are concepts that some people use evaluatively (like chaste or obscene), but many of us do not regard the propositions in which those concepts feature as even prima facie reason giving. In raising these points, Blackburn claims that it is morally objectionable to regard the facts asserted in propositions which employ thick concepts as action-guiding because it leads to “a conservative and ultimately self-serving complacency.” As he sees it, the problem is that if we believe that the correct application of thick concepts yields evaluative truths and that evaluative truths state reasons for actions, we seem to be committed to accepting that some people are, say, fat, derog., and therefore to be ridiculed, and that there is at least a pro tanto reason to lead a chaste life, or feel affection towards cute women. Therefore, the view that all evaluative properties provide reasons for action or for attitudes such as admiration, affection or (dis)approval must be rejected. I will call this worry henceforth Blackburn’s challenge. The challenge is that understanding judgments employing thick concepts as expressing evaluative truths and providing reasons for actions or for attitudes leads to a morally unacceptable view. Blackburn suggests instead that we should separate the conditions for applying thick concepts and the reasons that we have in virtue of the concept applying. She may be cute, yes, but that is not a reason for “admiration and arousal.” -/- …it is morally vital that we proceed by splitting the input from the output in such a case. By refusing to split we fail to open an essential specifically normative dimension of criticism. -/- According to Blackburn, the meaning of thick concepts is made up of two distinct and in principle separable components: a descriptive one and the expression of an attitude. The truth-aptness and cognitive appearance of judgments employing thick concepts is explained by the descriptive component alone. Blackburn writes “[w]e get nothing but detachable and flexible attitudes, coupled with delineations of traits of character or action”. I will call this reply to Blackburn’s challenge the separability thesis. I agree with Blackburn that any account of thick concepts has to face and answer the challenge that he poses. In this paper, I will focus on one reply to the challenge which denies separability, namely Bernard Williams’s. Williams answers Blackburn’s challenge, while holding on to a cognitivist understanding of thick concepts. But his particular brand of cognitivism is peculiar: Williams rejects the separability thesis, and claims that correct applications of thick concepts yield evaluative (and not just descriptive) knowledge. But this is a special kind of knowledge. It is confined to a local community. The members of a community which uses certain thick concepts may have reasons to act accordingly, but the non-members do not. And even the reasons of members remain a little fragile: they may not want to continue using their concepts upon thorough reflection. The local knowledge view allows Williams to answer Blackburn’s challenge, because even though thick concepts are evaluative concepts and their application can yield evaluative knowledge, no one who isn’t a member of the relevant community has reason to be guided by the concept. Complementing a cognitivist view of thick concepts with reasons internalism allows Williams to answer the challenge. My aim in this paper is to show that Williams’s position is, despite its initial attraction, untenable. In particular, I am going to show why the internal reasons view is incompatible with Williams’s own understanding of thick concepts. My modest result is that the internalist view of reasons does not help to answer Blackburn’s challenge. My aim in this paper is not to answer the challenge but, rather, to explore the possibility of developing Williams’s attenuated version of cognitivism, and the possibility of combining it with reasons internalism. (shrink)

The appeal to expert opinion is an argument form that uses the verdict of an expert to support a position or hypothesis. A previous scheme-based treatment of the argument form is formalized within a Bayesian network that is able to capture the critical aspects of the argument form, including the central considerations of the expert's expertise and trustworthiness. We propose this as an appropriate normative framework for the argument form, enabling the development and testing of quantitative predictions as to how (...) people evaluate this argument, suggesting that such an approach might be beneficial to argumentation research generally. We subsequently present two experiments as an example of the potential for future research in this vein, demonstrating that participants' quantitative ratings of the convincingness of a proposition that has been supported with an appeal to expert opinion were broadly consistent with the predictions of the Bayesian model. (shrink)

In this paper, new evidence is presented for the assumption that the reason-relation reading of indicative conditionals ('if A, then C') reflects a conventional implicature. In four experiments, it is investigated whether relevance effects found for the probability assessment of indicative conditionals (Skovgaard-Olsen, Singmann, and Klauer, 2016a) can be classified as being produced by a) a conversational implicature, b) a (probabilistic) presupposition failure, or c) a conventional implicature. After considering several alternative hypotheses and the accumulating evidence from other studies as (...) well, we conclude that the evidence is most consistent with the Relevance Effect being the outcome of a conventional implicature. This finding indicates that the reason-relation reading is part of the semantic content of indicative conditionals, albeit not part of their primary truth-conditional content. (shrink)

The paper introduces, compares and contrasts formal models of source reliability proposed in the epistemology literature, in particular the prominent models of Bovens and Hartmann and Olsson :127–143, 2011). All are Bayesian models seeking to provide normative guidance, yet they differ subtly in assumptions and resulting behavior. Models are evaluated both on conceptual grounds and through simulations, and the relationship between models is clarified. The simulations both show surprising similarities and highlight relevant differences between these models. Most importantly, however, our (...) evaluations reveal that important normative concerns arguably remain unresolved. The philosophical implications of this for testimony are discussed. (shrink)

Background: In the ever-changing and complex healthcare environment, nurses encounter challenging situations that may involve a clash between their personal and professional values resulting in a profound impact on their practice. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of literature on how nurses develop their personal–professional values. Aim: The aim of this study was to understand how nurses develop their foundational values as the base for their value system. Research design: A constructivist grounded theory methodology was employed to collect multiple data sets, (...) including face-to-face focus group and individual interviews, along with anecdote and reflective stories. Participants and research context: Fifty-four nurses working across various nursing settings in Indonesia were recruited to participate. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval was obtained from the Monash University Human Ethics Committee, project approval number 1553. Findings: Foundational values acquisition was achieved through family upbringing, professional nurse education and organisational/institutional values reinforcement. These values are framed through three reference points: religious lens, humanity perspective and professionalism. This framing results in a unique combination of personal–professional values that comprise nurses’ values system. Values are transferred to other nurses either in a formal or informal way as part of one’s professional responsibility and customary social interaction via telling and sharing in person or through social media. Discussion: Values and ethics are inherently interweaved during nursing practice. Ethical and moral values are part of professional training, but other values are often buried in a hidden curriculum, and attained and activated through interactions during nurses’ training. Conclusion: Developing a value system is a complex undertaking that involves basic social processes of attaining, enacting and socialising values. These processes encompass several intertwined entities such as the sources of values, the pool of foundational values, value perspectives and framings, initial value structures, and methods of value transference. (shrink)

Conditionals and conditional reasoning have been a long-standing focus of research across a number of disciplines, ranging from psychology through linguistics to philosophy. But almost no work has concerned itself with the question of how hearing or reading a conditional changes our beliefs. Given that we acquire much—perhaps most—of what we believe through the testimony of others, the simple matter of acquiring conditionals via others’ assertion of a conditional seems integral to any full understanding of the conditional and conditional reasoning. (...) In this paper we detail a number of basic intuitions about how beliefs might change in response to a conditional being uttered, and show how these are backed by behavioral data. In the remainder of the paper, we then show how these deceptively simple phenomena pose a fundamental challenge to present theoretical accounts of the conditional and conditional reasoning – a challenge which no account presently fully meets. (shrink)

Reasoning with conditionals is central to everyday life, yet there is long-standing disagreement about the meaning of the conditional. One example is the puzzle of so-called missing-link conditionals such as "if raccoons have no wings, they cannot breathe under water." Their oddity may be taken to show that conditionals require a connection between antecedent ("raccoons have no wings") and consequent ("they cannot breathe under water"), yet most accounts of conditionals attribute the oddity to natural language pragmatics. We present an experimental (...) study disentangling the pragmatic requirement of discourse coherence from a stronger notion of connection: probabilistic relevance. Results indicate that mere discourse coherence is not enough to make conditionals assertable. (shrink)

Over the past decades, we have witnessed calls for greater transdisciplinary engagement between scientific and societal actors to develop more robust answers to complex societal challenges. Although there seems to be agreement that these approaches might nurture innovations of a new kind, we know little regarding the research practices, their potential, and the limitations. To fill this gap, this article investigates a funding scheme in the area of transdisciplinary sustainability research. It offers a detailed analysis of the imaginaries and expectations (...) on which the funding scheme rests and how researchers actually practice transdisciplinarity within the respective projects. Identifying three ideal typical models of science–society relations at work, attention is paid to how, where, and when societal and scientific arenas get entangled. This article discusses the tensions between classical academic values and efforts to open research to society, the prevailing power structures that make societal participation challenging, the importance of place and technopolitical cultures, and how temporal project structures impede more radical openings to new ways of knowledge production. We finally emphasize that transdisciplinary knowledge production can only become a serious option for addressing societal challenges if broader changes are made to the knowledge regimes in place. (shrink)

Based on its prevalence, there is an urgent need to better understand the mechanisms, opportunities and risks of sexual interaction in digital contexts that are related with sexual arousal. While there is a growing body of literature on SIDC, there is also a lack of conceptual clarity and classification. Therefore, based on a conceptual analysis, we propose to distinguish between sexual interaction through, via, and with digital technologies. Sexual interactions through digital technologies are face-to-face sexual interactions that have been started (...) digitally or are accompanied by digital technology. Sexual interactions via digital technology are technology-mediated interpersonal sexual interactions. Sexual interactions with digital technology occur when the technology itself has the role of an interaction partner. The three types of SIDC and their respective subtypes are explained and backed up with empirical studies that are grouped according to two major mediators: consent and commerce. Regarding the causes and consequences of the three types of SIDC we suggest a classification that entails biological, psychological, social, economic, and technological factors. Regarding implications of SIDC we suggest to focus on both opportunities and risks for sexual health. The proposed conceptual framework of SIDC is meant to inform future research. (shrink)

Music is a stimulus capable of triggering an array of basic and complex emotions. We investigated whether and how individuals employ music to induce specific emotional states in everyday situations for the purpose of emotion regulation. Furthermore, we wanted to examine whether specific emotion-regulation styles influence music selection in specific situations. Participants indicated how likely it would be that they would want to listen to various pieces of music (which are known to elicit specific emotions) in various emotional situations. Data (...) analyses by means of non-metric multidimensional scaling revealed a clear preference for pieces of music that were emotionally congruent with an emotional situation. In addition, we found that specific emotion-regulation styles might influence the selection of pieces of music characterised by specific emotions. Our findings demonstrate emotion-congruent music selection and highlight the important role of specific emotion-regulation styles in the selection of music in everyday situations. (shrink)

In social interactions, emotional biases can arise when the emotional state of oneself and another person are incongruent. A person’s ability to judge the other’s emotional state can then be biased by their own emotional state, leading to an emotional egocentric bias (EEB). Alternatively, a person’s perception of their own emotional state can be biased by the other’s emotional state leading to an emotional altercentric bias (EAB). Using a modified audiovisual paradigm, we examined in three studies (n = 171; two (...) online & one lab-based study) whether emotional biases can be considered traits by measuring two timepoints within participant and relating empathy trait scores to emotional biases, as well as the electrophysiological correlates of emotional biases. In all studies, we found a congruency effect, reflecting an EEB and EAB of small size. Both biases failed to correlate significantly within participants across timepoints and did not display significant relationships with empathy trait scores. On the electrophysiological level, we did not find any neural emotional bias effects in the time–frequency domain. Our results suggest that EEB and EAB effects are strongly task sensitive. Caution is warranted when studying interindividual differences in emotional biases using this paradigm, as they did not show significant test-retest reliabilities. (shrink)

Byun et al. describe how deaf signers deal with communication problems in first encounters with signers of different languages. They show that the basic Conversation Analytic repair mechanisms for dealing with verbal troubles are largely reproduced in gesture and sign, including details of turn‐taking structure, timing and form. This underlines the role of repair as a basic resource for linguistic and interactional creativity across modalities.

Byun et al. describe how deaf signers deal with communication problems in first encounters with signers of different languages. They show that the basic Conversation Analytic repair mechanisms for dealing with verbal troubles are largely reproduced in gesture and sign, including details of turn‐taking structure, timing and form. This underlines the role of repair as a basic resource for linguistic and interactional creativity across modalities.

Byun et al. describe how deaf signers deal with communication problems in first encounters with signers of different languages. They show that the basic Conversation Analytic repair mechanisms for dealing with verbal troubles are largely reproduced in gesture and sign, including details of turn‐taking structure, timing and form. This underlines the role of repair as a basic resource for linguistic and interactional creativity across modalities.

The directionality of space-number association (SNA) is shaped by cultural experiences. It usually follows the culturally dominant reading direction. Smaller numbers are generally associated with the starting side for reading (left side in Western cultures), while larger numbers are associated with the right endpoint side. However, SNAs consistent with cultural reading directions are present before children can actually read and write. Therefore, these SNAs cannot only be shaped by the direction of children’s own reading/writing behavior. We propose six distinct processes (...) – one biological and five cultural/educational – underlying directional SNAs before formal reading acquisition: (i) Brain lateralization, (ii) Monitoring adult reading behavior, (iii) Pretend reading and writing, and rudimentary reading and writing skills, (iv) Dominant attentional directional preferences in a society, not directly related to reading direction, (v) Direct spatial-numerical learning, (vi) Other spatial-directional processes independent of reading direction. In this mini-review, we will differentiate between these processes, elaborate when in development they might emerge, discuss how they may create the SNAs observed in preliterate children and propose how they can be studied in the future. (shrink)

In this comparative analysis of twelve focus groups conducted in Austria, France, and the Netherlands, we investigate how lay people come to terms with two biomedical technologies. Using the term ‘‘technopolitical culture,’’ we aim to show that the ways in which technosciences are interwoven with a specific society frame how citizens build their individual and collective positions toward them. We investigate how the focus group participants conceptualized organ transplantation and genetic testing, their perceptions of individual agency in relation to the (...) two technologies and to more collective forms of acting and governing, and also their understanding of the two technologies’ relationship to broader societal value systems. Against the background of the sustained political effort to build common European values, we suggest that more fine-grained attention toward the culturally embedded differences in coming to terms with biomedical technologies is needed. (shrink)

Domain experts regularly teach novice students how to perform a task. This often requires them to adjust their behavior to the less knowledgeable audience and, hence, to behave in a more didactic manner. Eye movement modeling examples (EMMEs) are a contemporary educational tool for displaying experts’ (natural or didactic) problem‐solving behavior as well as their eye movements to learners. While research on expert‐novice communication mainly focused on experts’ changes in explicit, verbal communication behavior, it is as yet unclear whether and (...) how exactly experts adjust their nonverbal behavior. This study first investigated whether and how experts change their eye movements and mouse clicks (that are displayed in EMMEs) when they perform a task naturally versus teach a task didactically. Programming experts and novices initially debugged short computer codes in a natural manner. We first characterized experts’ natural problem‐solving behavior by contrasting it with that of novices. Then, we explored the changes in experts’ behavior when being subsequently instructed to model their task solution didactically. Experts became more similar to novices on measures associated with experts’ automatized processes (i.e., shorter fixation durations, fewer transitions between code and output per click on the run button when behaving didactically). This adaptation might make it easier for novices to follow or imitate the expert behavior. In contrast, experts became less similar to novices for measures associated with more strategic behavior (i.e., code reading linearity, clicks on run button) when behaving didactically. (shrink)

In the original publication of this article, the equally contributed article note was missed.

Providing comprehensive sexuality education in schools is a work in progress in many countries throughout the world. In some countries, the journey is just beginning; in others, investments in this field have been made for many years. It is and has been difficult in Pakistan to implement and promote reproductive health, women’s empowerment, and CSE. In Pakistan, previous implementation efforts revealed the critical role of community influencers in propagating misleading information about the initiatives, inciting organized community resistance, and provoking backlash. (...) This paper looked at several aspects of community resistance, as well as approaches for overcoming the resistance for increasing community engagement in the implementation of CSE in Islamabad, Pakistan. To analyze community perceptions of CSE implementation in Islamabad, the community readiness assessment questionnaire was adapted. Questions and prompts for discussion included leadership, current initiatives, community knowledge, resource availability, community support, and implementation strategies. A total of 35 in-depth interviews were conducted. Data was analyzed and interpreted using qualitative content analysis to explore community perspectives that contribute to resistance around CSE, as well as implementation options. Using inter-code relationship data, network analysis was conducted to provide a graphical representation of the analyzed qualitative data. The study reveals community resistance to CSE being implemented in schools. Misconceptions, a lack of awareness, a lack of priority, and the lack of dedicated resources are just a few of the primary implementation challenges to consider when implementing CSE in practice. Network analysis identified, based on modularity class, five distinct clusters of highly connected nodes/codes: non-governmental organizations, misconceptions, resources and policy, strategies and community support, and personal social and health education and current efforts. In conservative environments and when confronted with resistance, innovative marketing and rebranding are critical for priority setting and community engagement, especially when developing curriculum and implementing CSE. Some of the suggested strategies for implementation include community sensitization through strategic awareness campaigns, involving already established infrastructure and NGOs, endorsement by all major stakeholders, particularly decision-makers, and the use of creative digital platforms for better dissemination. (shrink)

This is the co-authored--with Carolyn Korsmeyer--Introduction to the first published feminist scholarship in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Volume 48, Number 4, Fall 1990). Contributors included Hilde Hein, Paul Mattick, Jr., Timothy Gould, Joanne B. Waugh, Joseph Margolis, Mary Devereaux, Noel Carroll, Flo Leibowitz, Anita Silvers, Elizabeth Ann Dobie, Renee Cox, and Ellen Handler Spitz. All essays were subsequently published in an expanded book version entitled, Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics by Penn State Press (1995).

In this manuscript we study individual variation in the interpretation of conditionals by establishing individual profiles of the participants based on their behavioral responses and reflective attitudes. To investigate the participants’ reflective attitudes we introduce a new experimental paradigm called the Scorekeeping Task, and a Bayesian mixture model tailored to analyze the data. The goal is thereby to identify the participants who follow the Suppositional Theory of conditionals and Inferentialism and to investigate their performance on the uncertain and-to-if inference task.

This section is a discussion of Joseph Raz's Conception of Normativity introduced by Georgios Pavlakos.

Dicer is a key player in microRNA (miRNA) and RNA interference (RNAi) pathways, processing miRNA precursors and doublestranded RNA into ~21-nt-long products ultimately triggering sequence-dependent gene silencing. Although processing of substrates in vertebrate cells occurs in the cytoplasm, there is growing evidence suggesting Dicer is also present and functional in the nucleus. To address this possibility, we searched for a nuclear localization signal (NLS) in human Dicer and identified its C-terminal double-stranded RNA binding domain (dsRBD) as harboring NLS activity. We (...) show that the dsRBD-NLS can mediate nuclear import of a reporter protein via interaction with importins β, 7, and 8. In the context of full-length Dicer, the dsRBD-NLS is masked. However, duplication of the dsRBD localizes the full-length protein to the nucleus. Furthermore, deletion of the N-terminal helicase domain results in partial accumulation of Dicer in the nucleus upon leptomycin B treatment, indicating that CRM1 contributes to nuclear export of Dicer. Finally, we demonstrate that human Dicer has the ability to shuttle between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. We conclude that Dicer is a shuttling protein whose steady-state localization is cytoplasmic. (shrink)

Looking back on the many prophets who tried to predict the future as if it were predetermined, at first sight any forward-looking activity is reminiscent of making predictions with a crystal ball. In contrast to fortune tellers, today’s exercises do not predict, but try to show different paths that an open future could take. A key motivation to undertake forward-looking activities is broadening the information basis for decision-makers to help them actively shape the future in a desired way. Experts, laypeople, (...) or stakeholders may have different sets of values and priorities with regard to pending decisions on any issue related to the future. Therefore, considering and incorporating their views can, in the best case scenario, lead to more robust decisions and strategies. However, transferring this plurality into a form that decision-makers can consider is a challenge in terms of both design and facilitation of participatory processes. In this paper, we will introduce and critically assess a new qualitative method for forward-looking activities, namely CIVISTI (Citizen Visions on Science, Technology and Innovation; www.civisti.org ), which was developed during an EU project of the same name. Focussing strongly on participation, with clear roles for citizens and experts, the method combines expert, stakeholder and lay knowledge to elaborate recommendations for decision-making in issues related to today’s and tomorrow’s science, technology and innovation. Consisting of three steps, the process starts with citizens’ visions of a future 30–40 years from now. Experts then translate these visions into practical recommendations which the same citizens then validate and prioritise to produce a final product. The following paper will highlight the added value as well as limits of the CIVISTI method and will illustrate potential for the improvement of future processes. (shrink)

The role of chance in historiography is a major question for the analysis of cultural transformations. Its main subject are the transformations of contingentia itself, which has undergone substantial changes in its mythical forms (as Tyche or Fortuna) as well in its historical expressions in philosophy, theology, politics, sciences, literature and art.