Parentage analyses via microsatellite markers have revealed multiple paternity within the broods of polytocous species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fishes and invertebrates. The widespread phenomenon of multiple paternity may have attending relationships with such evolutionary processes as sexual selection and kin selection. However, just how much multiple paternity should a species exhibit? We developed Bayesian null models of how multiple paternity relates to brood sizes. For each of 114 species with published data on brood sizes and numbers of (...) sires, we compared our null model estimates to published frequencies of multiple paternity. The majority of species fell close to our null model, especially among fish and invertebrate species. Some species, however, had low probabilities of multiple paternity, far from the predictions of the null model, likely due to sexual selection and environmental constraints. We suggest a major division among species’ mating systems between those with close to random mating and high levels of multiple paternity, and those with constraints that produce low levels of multiple paternity. (shrink)

The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as (...) a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon. (shrink)

Kant’s critical philosophy responds in parallel ways to mysticism and speculative metaphysics. In doing so, he develops the distinction between brooding reason and healthy reason, the former causing excessive attention and abstraction that the latter must contain. Mystics and metaphysicians, according to Kant, exemplify such brooding reason. His regimen for maintaining healthy reason is not simply an operation of rational thought but itself an embodied activity as well, and these two activities intersect in the imagination. Although Kant’s work is often (...) understood as wholly dismissive of mystical experience, I argue that his treatment of the religious imagination is fraught with ambiguity and can be most usefully understood as a technique for managing the incongruity of two types of religious imagination: the locative and the utopian. (shrink)

Are there different sizes of infinity? That is, are there infinite sets of different sizes? This is one of the most natural questions that one can ask about the infinite. But it is of course generally taken to be settled by mathematical results, such as Cantor’s theorem, to the effect that there are infinite sets without bijections between them. These results settle the question, given an almost universally accepted principle relating size to the existence of functions. The principle is: (...) for any sets A and B, if A is the same size as B, then there is a bijection from A to B. The aim of the paper, however, is to argue that this question is in fact wide open: to argue that we are not in a position to know the answer, because we are not in one to know the principle. The aim, that is, is to argue that for all we know there is only one size of infinity. (shrink)

Data from various settings suggest that there is an upper limit of about four on the number of individuals who can interact in spontaneous conversation. This limit appears to be a consequence of the mechanisms of speech production and detection. There appear to be no differences between men and women in this respect, other than those introduced by women’s lighter voices.

Carl Schmitt, whatever his clear deficiencies as a human being and excesses in his overall thought, is, by any objective measure, one of the leading jurisprudential figures of the 20th century. And...

Recent work has defended “Euclidean” theories of set size, in which Cantor’s Principle (two sets have equally many elements if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between them) is abandoned in favor of the Part-Whole Principle (if A is a proper subset of B then A is smaller than B). It has also been suggested that Gödel’s argument for the unique correctness of Cantor’s Principle is inadequate. Here we see from simple examples, not that Euclidean theories of (...) set size are wrong, but that they must be either very weak and narrow or largely arbitrary and misleading. (shrink)

The maintenance of cell size homeostasis has been studied for years in different cellular systems. With the focus on ‘what regulates cell size’, the question ‘why cell size needs to be maintained’ has been largely overlooked. Recent evidence indicates that animal cells exhibit nonlinear cell size dependent growth rates and mitochondrial metabolism, which are maximal in intermediate sized cells within each cell population. Increases in intracellular distances and changes in the relative cell surface area impose biophysical (...) limitations on cells, which can explain why growth and metabolic rates are maximal in a specific cell size range. Consistently, aberrant increases in cell size, for example through polyploidy, are typically disadvantageous to cellular metabolism, fitness and functionality. Accordingly, cellular hypertrophy can potentially predispose to or worsen metabolic diseases. We propose that cell size control may have emerged as a guardian of cellular fitness and metabolic activity. Cell size is intimately connected to metabolism and growth rate, which are influenced by mitochondrial activity and biophysical constraints. We discuss that cellular fitness is often cell-size dependent. While the current evidence relies largely on proliferating cells, this connection from cell size to fitness may also help explain metabolic diseases. (shrink)

We define a program size complexity function $H^\infty$ as a variant of the prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity, based on Turing monotone machines performing possibly unending computations. We consider definitions of randomness and triviality for sequences in ${\{0,1\}}^\omega$ relative to the $H^\infty$ complexity. We prove that the classes of Martin-Löf random sequences and $H^\infty$-random sequences coincide and that the $H^\infty$-trivial sequences are exactly the recursive ones. We also study some properties of $H^\infty$ and compare it with other complexity functions. In particular, (...) $H^\infty$ is different from $H^A$, the prefix-free complexity of monotone machines with oracle A. (shrink)

Hyperlink cinema is an emergent film genre that seeks to push the boundaries of the medium in order to mirror contemporary life in the globalized community. Films in the genre thus create an interacting network across space and time in such a way as to suggest that people’s lives can intersect on scales that would not have been possible without modern technologies of travel and communication. This allows us to test the hypothesis that new kinds of media might permit us (...) to break through the natural cognitive constraints that limit the number and quality of social relationships we can manage in the conventional face-to-face world. We used network analysis to test this hypothesis with data from 12 hyperlink films, using 10 motion pictures from a more conventional film genre as a control. We found few differences between hyperlink cinema films and the control genre, and few differences between hyperlink cinema films and either the real world or classical drama (e.g., Shakespeare’s plays). Conversation group size seems to be especially resilient to alteration. It seems that, despite many efficiency advantages, modern media are unable to circumvent the constraints imposed by our evolved psychology. (shrink)

This study focuses on the prediction of the engagement of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in environmental management practices, based on a random sample of 689 SMEs. The study finds that several endogenous factors, including tangibility of sector, firm size, innovative orientation, family influence and perceived financial benefits from energy conservation, predict an SME’s level of engagement in selected environmental management practices. For family influence, this effect is found only in interaction with the number of owners. In addition to (...) empirical research on SMEs’ environmental behavior, this article draws on the ecological modernization literature as well as the theory of planned behavior. (shrink)

Research has by and large shown the negative effects of state orientation, that brooding over past events (i.e., state orientation) leads to more negative emotions and less well-being than quickly getting over past events (i.e., action orientation). However, this past research has primarily focused on how people cope with negative events and bad outcomes. The present research focuses on how people cope with positive events with good outcomes. Study 1 found that state-oriented people felt better after a windfall than action-oriented (...) people. Study 2 found that state-oriented people felt not only worse when things turned out bad but also better when things turned out well than action-oriented people. Study 3 replicated the positive effect of state orientation on positive emotions with an experimental induction of action vs. state orientation. These results show that in positive situations state orientation can have emotional benefits – in other words, they show the bright side of brooding. (shrink)

In this paper the exclusive focus on large firms in the field of business ethics is challenged. Some of the idiosyncrasies of small firms are explained, and links are made between these and potential ethical issues. A review of the existing literature on ethics in small firms demonstrates the lack of appropriate research, so that to date we can draw no firm conclusions in relation to ethics in the small firm. Recommendations are made as to the way forward for small (...) firm business ethics research. Questions for investigation are suggested using micro, meso and macro perspectives. Much exploratory work needs to be done to lay the groundwork for this important area of social and commercial research in the future. (shrink)

Review of Isabelle Stengers. 2023. Making Sense in Common: A Reading of Whitehead in Times of Collapse. Translated by Thomas Lamarre. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

An important American lecture tour undertaken by Bertrand Russell in April 1939 has been largely ignored because of the long-standing embargo on tour letters sent by Russell to his third wife, Patricia. Taking advantage of the embargo’s recent expiry, this paper provides annotated transcriptions of twenty-four letters sent by Russell to Patricia and others during the tour and analyzes topics such as his family relationships and interactions with a wide array of individuals. Most importantly, Russell’s tour letters demonstrate his evolving (...) viewpoint on pacifism and his evaluation of the tense international situation as World War II approached. (shrink)

For researchers in Aotearoa New Zealand who intend to conduct research with people, it is common practice to first ensure that their proposals are approved by a Human Research Ethics Committee. HRECs take the role of reviewing, approving or rejecting research proposals and deciding on whether the intended research will be completed in the ‘right’, rather than the ‘wrong’ way. Such decisions are based upon a system which is guided by universal ethical principles – principles that assume there is universal (...) agreement about the ethically right way to conduct research. Increasingly, Aotearoa New Zealand is becoming more culturally diverse. Actions that are assumed as ‘right’ in reference to ethical norms endorsed in one culture or society may not always be considered ‘right’ in reference to ethical norms in another culture or society. In this article we first set out what is already known in the literature about the origins and applications of universal ethics in a research context. Next, we analyse how... (shrink)

This paper puts forward the following claims: (i) The size of inequality in welfare should be distinguished from its badness. (ii) The size of a pairwise inequality between two individuals can be measured by the absolute or the relative welfare distance between their welfare levels, but it does not depend on the welfare levels of other individuals. (iii) The size of inequality in a social state may be understood either as the degree of pairwise inequality or as (...) its amount. (iv) The badness of a pairwise inequality may differ from its size in several ways; for example, the badness measure might go by the distance between priority-transformed welfare levels and/or it might assign heavier weight to larger distances. (v) The badness of a pairwise inequality may be either personal or impersonal, with the personal interpretation being internally consistent and, pace Temkin, independently tenable even if we reject the so-called Slogan (i.e., the Person-Affecting Claim). (vi) The aggregation procedure by which we arrive from the badness of pairwise inequalities to the badness of the inequality in a social state takes different forms depending on whether the badness of a pairwise inequality is interpreted in a personal or in an impersonal way. (vii) Since Temkin’s complaint-based measures of the badness of inequality follow the format appropriate for the personal interpretation, they seem out of place if one, like him, treats the badness of inequality as an impersonal value. (shrink)

Group size is a function of relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates. Extrapolation from this regression equation yields a predicted group size for modern humans very similar to that of certain hunter-gatherer and traditional horticulturalist societies. Groups of similar size are also found in other large-scale forms of contemporary and historical society. Among primates, the cohesion of groups is maintained by social grooming; the time devoted to social grooming is linearly related to group size among the (...) Old World monkeys and apes. To maintain the stability of the large groups characteristic of humans by grooming alone would place intolerable demands on time budgets. It is suggested that (1) the evolution of large groups in the human lineage depended on the development of a more efficient method for time-sharing the processes of social bonding and that (2) language uniquely fulfills this requirement. Data on the size of conversational and other small interacting groups of humans are in line with the predictions for the relative efficiency of conversation compared to grooming as a bonding process. Analysis of a sample of human conversations shows that about 60% of time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences. It is suggested that language evolved to allow individuals to learn about the behavioural characteristics of other group members more rapidly than is possible by direct observation alone. (shrink)

Animal size is a relevant and unappreciated consideration in moral evaluations of killing animals for food, especially for utilitarians, who must weigh the gustatory satisfaction of eating meat-the quantity of which varies greatly throughout the animal kingdom-against animal suffering in utilitarian calculations. I argue that animal size can drastically alter not only the extent but even the valence of such calculations. Then I show how the business ethics literature on vegetarianism is deficient for not taking animal size (...) into account. Last, I argue that market conditions are also relevant in moral assessments of vegetarianism. (shrink)

This book explores how we can measure consciousness. It clarifies what consciousness is, how it can be generated from a physical system, and how it can be measured. It also shows how conscious states can be expressed mathematically and how precise predictions can be made using data from neurophysiological studies.

In my target article, I argued (1) that the relationship between neocortical size and group size in primates implies that there is a cognitive limit on the size of human groups, and (2) that time constraints forced the evolution of language as a more efficient means of bonding the large groups that humans evolved. The doubts about these claims raised by these additional commentaries largely reflect misinterpretation of my original claims.

Recent downward trends in corporate giving have renewed interest in the factors that shape corporate philanthropy. This paper examines the relationships between charitable contributions, firm size and industry. Improvements over previous studies include an IRS data base that covers a much broader range of firm sizes and industries as compared to previous studies and estimation using an instrumental variable technique that explicitly addresses potential simultaneity between charitable contributions and profitability. Important findings provide evidence of a cubic relationship between charitable (...) giving and firm size and evidence of strong industry effects. The plus-minus-plus regression coefficient sign pattern for the cubic firm size model suggests that small and large firms give more relative to total receipts with lower giving ratios among medium size firms. One interpretation for this finding is that small firms are close to the communities they serve while high visibility creates a need for large firm philanthropy. Strong industry effects provide evidence of inter-industry differences in giving culture and/or different public relations requirements across industries. (shrink)

Sexual size dimorphism is generally associated with sexual selection via agonistic male competition in nonhuman primates. These primate models play an important role in understanding the origins and evolution of human behavior. Human size dimorphism is often hypothesized to be associated with high rates of male violence and polygyny. This raises the question of whether human dimorphism and patterns of male violence are inherited from a common ancestor with chimpanzees or are uniquely derived. Here I review patterns of, (...) and causal models for, dimorphism in humans and other primates. While dimorphism in primates is associated with agonistic male mate competition, a variety of factors can affect male and female size, and thereby dimorphism. The causes of human sexual size dimorphism are uncertain, and could involve several non-mutually-exclusive mechanisms, such as mate competition, resource competition, intergroup violence, and female choice. A phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolution of dimorphism, including fossil hominins, indicates that the modern human condition is derived. This suggests that at least some behavioral similarities with Pan associated with dimorphism may have arisen independently, and not directly from a common ancestor. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractOrganelles are reaction vessels containing metabolic pathways. As in a chemical factory, the size of the reaction vessels limits the rate of product formation. Organelle size is tuned to metabolic needs, hence reprogramming organelle size could be a novel therapeutic strategy as well as a new tool for metabolic engineering.

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 193-222, Spring 2022.

The paper introduces the notion of size of countable sets, which preserves the Part-Whole Principle. The sizes of the natural and the rational numbers, their subsets, unions, and Cartesian products are algorithmically enumerable as sequences of natural numbers. The method is similar to that of Numerosity Theory, but in comparison it is motivated by Bolzano’s concept of infinite series, it is constructive because it does not use ultrafilters, and set sizes are uniquely determined. The results mostly agree, but some (...) differ, such as the size of rational numbers. However, set sizes are only partially, not linearly, ordered. Quid pro quo. (shrink)

The shortest stories are zero words long. There is no maximum length.

Size control depends on both the regulation of growth rate and the control over when to stop growing. Studies of Drosophila melanogaster have shown that insulin and Target of Rapamycin (TOR) pathways play principal roles in controlling nutrition‐dependent growth rates. A TOR‐mediated nutrient sensor in the fat body detects nutrient availability, and regulates insulin signaling in peripheral tissues, which in turn controls larval growth rates. After larvae initiate metamorphosis, growth stops. For growth to stop at the correct time, larvae (...) need to surpass a critical weight. Recently, it was found that the insulin‐dependent growth of the prothoracic gland is involved in assessing when critical weight has been reached. Furthermore, mutations in DHR4, a repressor of ecdysone signaling, reduce critical weight and adult size. Thus, the mechanisms that control growth rates converge on those assessing size to ensure that the larvae attain the appropriate size at metamorphosis. BioEssays 29:344–355, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Cook and Reckhow defined a propositional formulation of the pigeonhole principle. This paper shows that there are Frege proofs of this propositional pigeonhole principle of polynomial size. This together with a result of Haken gives another proof of Urquhart's theorem that Frege systems have an exponential speedup over resolution. We also discuss connections to provability in theories of bounded arithmetic.

Many ethical frameworks require artificial intelligence (AI) systems to be explainable. Explainable AI (XAI) models are frequently tested for their adequacy in user studies. Since different people may have different explanatory needs, it is important that participant samples in user studies are large enough to represent the target population to enable generalizations. However, it is unclear to what extent XAI researchers reflect on and justify their sample sizes or avoid broad generalizations across people. We analyzed XAI user studies (N = (...) 220) published between 2012 and 2022. Most studies did not offer rationales for their sample sizes. Moreover, most papers generalized their conclusions beyond their target population, and there was no evidence that broader conclusions in quantitative studies were correlated with larger samples. These methodological problems can impede evaluations of whether XAI systems implement the explainability called for in ethical frameworks. We outline principles for more inclusive XAI user studies. (shrink)

Visual illusions provide important evidence for the co-existence of unconscious and conscious representations. Objects surrounded by other figures are consciously perceived as different in size, while the visuo-motor system supposedly uses an unconscious representation of the discs’ true size for grip size scaling. Recent evidence suggests other factors than represented size, e.g., surrounding rings conceived as obstacles, affect grip size. Use of the diagonal illusion avoids visual obstacles in the path of the reaching hand. Results (...) support the dual representation theory. Grip size scaling follows actual size independent of illusory effects, which clearly bias conscious perception in direct comparisons of lengths and in finger-thumb span indications of perceived length. (shrink)

Agrifood scholars have long investigated the relationship between farm size and a wide variety of social and ecological outcomes. Yet neither this scholarship nor the extensive research on farmworkers has addressed the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired workers. Moreover, although this question has not been systematically investigated, many advocates, popular food writers, and documentaries appear to have the answer—portraying precarious work as common on large farms and nonexistent on small farms. In this paper, we (...) take on this question by describing and explaining the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired farm workers. To do so, we draw on data from two independently conducted, mixed-methods case studies—organic fruit and vegetable production in California, and dairy farming in Wisconsin—each of which offers a different set of insights into the farm size-job quality relationship. In both cases, larger farms fared better than or no worse than their smaller-scale counterparts for most job quality metrics investigated, though many of the advantages of working on large farms accrue disproportionately to white, U.S.-born workers. We explain that these patterns stem from economies of scale, industrialization, firm size itself, the dominant class identities and aspirations of farmers and their peers, as well as farmers’ and immigrant workers’ fears of immigration enforcement. (shrink)

The phenomenon of size constancy is defined as the apparent perceptual invariance of the linear dimensions of a seen object as this approaches the eye or recedes from it. It has been interpreted as resulting from the application by the brain of a size correction, made possible by the subject's apprehension of distance cues present in the image. We present several observations which, by dissociating accommodation from distance of the seen object and by suppressing the optic effects of (...) accommodation on the visual image itself, show that this interpretation is incorrect, and that in fact the size correction of the visual image is a function of the central effort of accommodation, not of the distance of the seen object. (shrink)