This paper concerns the relations between the relative Manin–Mumford conjecture and Pink’s conjecture on unlikely intersections in mixed Shimura varieties. The variety under study is the 4-dimensional Poincaré biextension attached to a universal elliptic curve. A detailed list of its special subvarieties is drawn up, providing partial verifications of Pink’s conjecture in this case, and two open problems are stated in order to complete its proof.

This study describes the results of experiments motivated by an attempt to understand spectral processing in the cerebral cortex (DeValois and DeValois, 1988; Pribram, 1971, 1991). This level of inquiry concerns processing within a restricted cortical area rather than that by which spatially separate circuits become synchronized during certain behavioral and experiential processes. We recorded neural responses for 55 locations in the somatosensory (barrel) cortex of the rat to various combinations of spatial frequency (texture) and temporal frequency stimulation of their (...) vibrissae. The recordings obtained from single and multi-unit bursts of spikes were mapped as surface distributions of local dendritic potentials. The distributions showed a variety of patterns that are asymmetric with respect to the spatial and temporal parameters of stimulation, and were, therefore, not simply reflecting whisker flick rate. Next, a simulation of our results showed that these surface distributions of local dendritic potentials can be described by Gabor-like functions much as in the visual system. The results provide support for a model of distributed cortical processing that imposes a physiologically derived frame (the limited extent of a dendritic patch) and an anatomically derived (axonal) sampling of the distributed process. This combination provides a complex Gabor wavelet that encodes phase, which is necessary to processing such details as edges and texture in a scene. The synchronization across cortical areas that make the Gabor wavelet processes within restricted cortical areas available to one another (the binding problem) proceed at a ''higher order'' level of integration. Both levels of distributed processing accomplish computation in the conjoint spacetime and spectral domain. (shrink)

Mixed methods research - the combination of qualitative and quantitative data within the same design to strengthen causal inference - is gaining prominence in the social sciences but its benefits are contested. There remains confusion over which methods to mix and what is the point of mixing them. We argue that variety of evidence is what matters, not the data or methods, and that distinct epistemic principles underlie its added value for causal inference. The centrality of evidential variety also (...) implies that strong causal pluralism is untenable as a foundation for mixed methods research. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a general copula approach to accommodate non-normal continuous mixing distributions in multinomial probit models. In particular, we specify a multivariate mixing distribution that allows different marginal continuous parametric distributions for different coefficients. A new hybrid estimation technique is proposed to estimate the model, which combines the advantageous features of each of the maximum simulated likelihood inference technique and Bhat’s maximum approximate composite marginal likelihood inference approach. The effectiveness of our formulation and inference approach is demonstrated (...) through simulation exercises and an empirical application. (shrink)

Language mixing is a ubiquitous phenomenon characterizing bilingual speakers. A frequent context where two languages are mixed is the word-internal level, demonstrating how tightly integrated the two grammars are in the mind of a speaker and how they adapt to each other. This raises the question of what the minimal unit of language mixing is, and whether or not this unit differs depending on what the languages are. Some scholars have argued that an uncategorized root serves as a unit, (...) others argue that the unit needs to have been categorized prior to mixing. We will discuss the question of what the relevant unit for language mixing is by studying word-internal mixing in Cypriot Greek-English, English-Norwegian, Greek-English, Greek-German, and Spanish-German varieties that have been reported in the literature based on data from judgment experiments and spoken corpora. By understanding and modeling the units of language mixing across languages, we will gain insight into how languages adapt to each other word-internally, and what some possible outcomes of language contact are in the minds of speakers. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn’s supervenience argument—focusing on the mysterious “ban on mixed worlds”—is still subject to a variety of conflicting interpretations. In this paper, I hope to provide a defense of the argument that clarifies both the argument and the objections it must overcome. Many of the extant objections, I will argue, fail to engage the argument in its true form. And to counter the more compelling objections, it will be necessary to bring in additional argumentation that Blackburn himself does not (...) clearly provide. One important upshot of this discussion is that moral realism is not the only target of the argument: it raises trouble for a variety of metaethical views wed to realist-friendly construals of moral evaluation. Rightly understood, this argument not only survives the prominent responses, but turns out to be more powerful than his critics and Blackburn himself have recognized. (shrink)

In a previous paper (see ‘Tolerant, Classical, Strict’, henceforth TCS) we investigated a semantic framework to deal with the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, namely that small changes do not affect the applicability of a vague predicate even if large changes do. Our approach there rests on two main ideas. First, given a classical extension of a predicate, we can define a strict and a tolerant extension depending on an indifference relation associated to that predicate. Second, we can use (...) these notions of satisfaction to define mixed consequence relations that capture non-transitive tolerant reasoning. Although we gave some empirical motivation for the use of strict and tolerant extensions, making use of them commits us to the view that sentences of the form ‘ p∨¬p ’ and ‘ p∧¬p ’ are not automatically valid or unsatisfiable, respectively. Some philosophers might take this commitment as a negative outcome of our previous proposal. We think, however, that the general ideas underlying our previous approach to vagueness can be implemented in a variety of ways. This paper explores the possibility of defining mixed notions of consequence in the more classical super/sub-valuationist setting and examines to what extent any of these notions captures non-transitive tolerant reasoning. (shrink)

This study’s objective was to understand Colombian adolescents’ experiences and preferences regarding access to sexual and reproductive health services (SRHS), either alone or accompanied. A mixed-method approach was used, involving a survey of 812 participants aged eleven to twenty-four years old and forty-five semi-structured interviews with participants aged fourteen to twenty-three. Previous research shows that adolescents prefer privacy when accessing SRHS and often do not want their parents involved. Such findings align with the longstanding tendency to frame the ethical (...) principle of autonomy as based on independence in decision-making. However, the present study shows that such a conceptualization and application of autonomy does not adequately explain Colombian adolescent participants’ preferences regarding access to SRHS. Participants shared a variety of preferences to access SRHS, with the majority of participants attaching great importance to having their parents involved, to varying degrees. What emerges is a more complex and non-homogenous conceptualization of autonomy that is not inherently grounded in independence from parental involvement in access to care. We thus argue that when developing policies involving adolescents, policymakers and health professionals should adopt a nuanced “relational autonomy” approach to better respect the myriad of preferences that Colombian (and other) adolescents may have regarding their access to SRHS. (shrink)

A variety of philosophical positions have been proposed and developed to motivate, justify, and guide mixed methods research. This chapter provides a brief overview of the main positions in the debate over the philosophical foundations of mixed methods research. It shows that ‘philosophical foundations’ means differently while different positions provide ‘philosophical foundations’ in different senses. It also highlights the significance of the collaboration between researchers and philosophers in the examination of the philosophical foundations of mixed methods research.

Mix & Stir', this book's aim is an endeavour to understand art as being a panhuman phenomenon of all times and cultures; to steer away from the persistent Eurocentric/Western-centric viewpoint towards a transcultural and transnational interconnected model of exchange and processes of interculturalization. Mix & Stir wants to expand this landscape by bringing to the fore new, recalcitrant, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods and concerns that open up ways to approach art from a global perspective. Analogous (...) to a cookery book filled with recipes and instruction, Mix & Stir explores new outlooks on contemporary art from global perspectives. It intends to encourage studying art beyond national constraints, cultural dominances, and hierarchies: a voyage similar to that of culinary discovery. The book brings a variety of tastes and flavours to the table, and breaks new ground by allowing innovative, contrary, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods, and concerns to access art in its global dimensions. Researchers, curators and artists with a special interest in this topical issue were invited to present, develop, outline, and contemplate compelling frames of reference, both theoretical and artistic, in order to arrive at a true 'world art studies'. Their contributions are structured in seven thematic fields: Undecidability and Spectatorship, Collectives, Circulations, Exhibitions, Artists at Work, Postcolonial Perspectives, and Deep Art History. The reader is invited to explore the vast supply of dishes, to taste and test the aromas and to feast. (shrink)

William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience is one of the world's most popular attempts to meld science and religion. Academic reviews of the book were mixed in Europe and America, however, and prominent contemporaries, unsure whether it was science or theology, struggled to interpret it. James's reliance on an inherently ambiguous understanding of the subconscious as a means of bridging between religion and science accounts for some of the interpretive difficulties, but it does not explain why his (...) overarching question was so obscure, why psychopathology and unusual experiences figured so prominently, or why he gave us so many examples and so little argument. To understand these persistent puzzles we need to do more than acknowledge James's indebtedness to Frederic Myers's conception of the subconscious. We need to read VRE in the context of the transatlantic network of experimental psychologists and psychical researchers who provided the primary intellectual inspiration for the book. Doing so not only locates and clarifies the underlying question that animated the work but also illuminates the structural and rhetorical similarities between VRE and Myers's Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. In contrast to the individual case studies of hysterics, mediums, and mystics produced by others in this network, both Myers and James adopted a natural-history approach in which they arranged examples of automatisms to produce a rhetorical effect, thus invoking science in order to evoke a religious response. Where Myers organized his examples to make a case for human survival of death, James organized his to make a case for the involvement of higher powers in the transformation of the self. Read in this way, VRE marks a dramatic shift from a religious preoccupation with life after death to a religious preoccupation with this-worldly self-transformation. (shrink)

There are at least four varieties of quotation, including pure, direct, indirect and mixed. A theory of quotation, we argue, should give a unified account of these varieties of quotation. Mixed quotes such as 'Alice said that life is 'difficult to understand'', in which an utterance is directly and indirectly quoted concurrently, is an often overlooked variety of quotation. We show that the leading theories of pure, direct, and indirect quotation are unable to account for (...) class='Hi'>mixed quotation and therefore unable to provide a unified theory. In the second half of the paper we develop a unified theory of quotation based on Davidson's demonstrative theory. 'Language is the instrument it is because the same expression, with semantic features (meaning) unchanged, can serve countless purposes.' (Davidson 1968). (shrink)

Community psychologists address social inequalities and problems by employing ecological principles, multiple methodologies, and participatory approaches to empower individuals, organizations, and communities to organize action and systems change. This article aims to contribute to mixed methods literature by presenting three models of mixed methods participatory research across a variety of geographic and sociocultural contexts. The models outline participatory processes and points of qualitative and quantitative data integration. Challenges related to the interplay between participatory approaches and mixed methods (...) studies as well as implications on social science research are discussed. (shrink)

This paper develops the view presented in our 1997 paper "Varieties of Quotation". In the first part of the paper we show how phenomena such as scare-quotes, echoing and mimicry can be treated as what we call Speech Act Heuristics. We then defend a semantic account of mixed quotation. Along the way we discuss the role of indexicals in mixed quotation and the noncancelability of reference to words in mixed quotation. We also respond to some objections (...) raised by Recanati, Saka, Stainton and Reimer. (shrink)

Fleshing out Ramsey-sentence functionalism; against Lewis's "mad pain" mixed theory; relating functionalism to the causal theory of properties. Empirical functionalism is chauvinistic so probably false. A terrific, in-depth paper.

This timely, in-depth examination of the educational experiences and needs of mixed-race children focuses on the four contexts that primarily influence learning and development: the family, school, community, and society-at-large. The book provides foundational historical, social, political, and psychological information about mixed-race children and looks closely at their experiences in schools, their identity formation, and how schools can be made more supportive of their development and learning needs. Moving away from an essentialist discussion of mixed-race children, a (...) wide variety of research is included. Life and schooling experiences of mixed-raced individuals are profiled throughout the text. Rather than pigeonholing children into a neat box of descriptions or providing readymade prescriptions for educators, _Mixed-Race Youth and Schooling_ offers information and encourages teachers to critically reflect on how it is relevant to and helpful in their teaching/learning contexts. (shrink)

This volume addresses some of the central issues of journalism today -- the nature and needs of the individual versus the nature and needs of the broader society; theories of communitarianism versus Enlightenment liberalism; independence versus interdependence (vs. co-dependency); negative versus positive freedoms; Constitutional mandates versus marketplace mandates; universal ethical issues versus situational and/or professional values; traditional values versus information age values; ethics of management versus ethics of worker bees; commitment and compassion versus detachment and professional "distance;" conflicts of interest (...) versus conflicted disinterest; and "talking to" versus "talking with." All of these issues are discussed within the framework of the frenetic field of daily journalism--a field that operates at a pace and under a set of professional standards that all but preclude careful, systematic examinations of its own rituals and practices. The explorations presented here not only advance the enterprise, but also help student and professional observers to work through some of the most perplexing dilemmas to have faced the news media and public in recent times. This lively volume showcases the differing opinions of journalistic experts on this significant contemporary issue in public life. Unlike previous books and monographs which have tended toward unbridled enthusiasm about public journalism, and trade press articles which have tended toward pessimism, this book offers strong voices on several sides of this complex debate. To help inform the debate, a series of "voices"--journalistic interviews with practitioners and critics of public journalism -- is interspersed throughout the text. At the end of each essay, a series of quotes from a wide variety of sources -- "In other words..." -- augments each chapter with ideas and insights that support and contradict the points used by each chapter author. (shrink)

There is a growing body of literature using the tools of syntactic models of word formation (e.g. Distributed Morphology) to provide analyses of language mixing phenomena, in particular word internal mixing. In fact, the very phenomenon of word internal mixing directly supports a syntactic approach to word formation, according to which words are structurally complex. On the basis of this view, the basic units of word formation involve roots that combine with functional elements in the syntax. The combination of roots (...) with functional elements creates words. This paper is in line with this work and investigates further the question of how word formation operates in cases of language mixing and what exactly is being mixed in mixing, i.e. words vs. roots. After reviewing literature on word internal mixing, I will discuss compound formation in language contact situations, the question being of how compounding in mixing can inform both theories of mixing and theories of word-hood. Compounding is important to answer the question of what exactly is being mixed in mixing, as language differ with respect to the units they employ for compound formation, i.e. words vs. roots and to the availability of linking elements to form compounds. Moreover, compounding is important to understand the role the two languages play in mixing, as languages differ with respect to head-ness (left or right) of their compounds. The data to be discussed will be a mixture of materials that have already been published in the literature and newly collected data and involve several mixing varieties, namely Greek-English, Greek-German, Greek-Turkish, Turkish-Norwegian, Turkish-Dutch and French-Dutch. (shrink)

The Substituted Judgment Standard for surrogate decision-making dictates that a surrogate, when making medical decisions on behalf of an incapacitated patient, ought to make the decision that the patient would have made if the patient had decisional capacity. Despite its intuitive appeal, however, SJS has been the target of a variety of criticisms. Most objections to SJS appeal to epistemic difficulties involved in determining what a patient would have decided in a given case. In this article, I offer an alternative (...) standard for surrogate decision-making that avoids these difficulties. I then offer an account of its theoretical underpinnings which shows that it preserves the central moral justification for SJS, namely, respect for patient autonomy. (shrink)

In her response to my "Seeing as a Non-Experiental Mental State: The Case from Synesthesia and Visual Imagery" Ophelia Deroy presents an argument for an interesting new account of synesthesia. On this account, synesthesia can be thought of as "a perceptual state (e.g. of a letter)" that is "changed or enriched by the incorporation of a conscious mental image (e.g. a color)." I reply that while this is a plausible account of some types of synesthesia, some forms cannot be accounted (...) for this way. (shrink)

We investigate algebraically the fragment of the intuitionistic propositional calculus consisting of equivalence together with conjunction on the intuitionistic regularizations. We find that this fragment is strongly algebraizable with the equivalent algebraic semantics being the variety of equivalential algebras with an additional binary operation that can be interpreted as the meet on regular elements. We give a finite equational base for this variety, and investigate its properties, in particular the commutator. As applications, we prove that the fragment is hereditarily structurally (...) complete and we describe the top of the lattice of its axiomatic extensions. (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)

Drawing from the varieties of capitalism theoretical framework, the study explores the home country influences of multinational corporations on their corporate social responsibility practices when they operate outside their national/regional institutional contexts. The study focusses on a particular CSR practice of seven MNCs from three varieties of capitalism – coordinated, mixed and liberal market economies – operating in the oil and gas sector of the Nigerian economy. The study concludes that the corporate codes of conduct of these (...) MNCs operating in Nigeria, to a large extent, reflect the characteristics of their home countries' model of capitalism, respectively, albeit with certain degree of modifications. The home countries' model of capitalism is also found to have implications for the degree of adaptability of these MNCs' CSR practices to the Nigerian institutional context – with the mixed market economy model of capitalism adapting more flexibly than the liberal and coordinated market economies, respectively. The findings of this study will contribute to the emerging literature on the institutional embeddedness of CSR practices in transnational social spaces, understanding of varieties of capitalism, and CSR in developing economies. (shrink)

Ethical questions about end-of-life treatment present themselves at two levels. In clinical situations, patients, families, and healthcare workers sift through ambivalent feelings and conflicting values as they try to resolve questions in particular circumstances. In a very different way, at the societal level, policy makers, lawyers, and bioethicists attempt to determine the best policies and laws to regulate practices about which there are a variety of deeply held beliefs. In the United States we have tried a number of ways to (...) resolve the societal-level issues. We have ignored them, argued to try to convince others of our beliefs, voted to let the majority determine what is right or wrong, and turned to the courts to decide, as in the cases of Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and Jack Kervorkian. Yet none of these approaches has yet left us with comfortable, unambiguous cultural norms about issues such as euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, which are readily assumed by as they face individual and interpersonal dilemmas. (shrink)

Metacognition, otherwise known as ‘thinking about one’s thinking,’ leads to greater academic success and is foundational. Given this importance, metacognitive behaviors need to be developed within early years contexts to provide young children the opportunity to practice these behaviors and receive feedback. However, literature continues to focus on the development of metacognition in later grades. This mixed methods study explored metacognition in eight Kindergarten classrooms. Participants included eight Kindergarten teachers, six early childhood educators (ECEs), and 80 students. Data collection (...) was conducted at two time periods separated by 12 weeks. Data collection included the Children’s Independent Learning Development (CHILD) measure, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. The quantitative data from the CHILD were analyzed using a paired samplest-test in SPSS. All qualitative data were analyzed thematically. Qualitatively, three themes were identified: (1) Conceptualization of metacognition, (2) Barriers to developing metacognition, and (3) Operationalization of strategies to facilitate metacognitive development. Evidence demonstrated that participants had incomplete conceptualizations of metacognition. Some articulated simple understandings by reporting the literal translation and were unable to articulate more fulsome conceptions. However, some teachers had more developed conceptions of metacognition that included different facets such as planning and reflective thinking. All participants were forthcoming with identifying ways in which they struggled with implementing metacognitive practices or encouraging the development of metacognition. These barriers included large classroom sizes, developmental readiness, and wide student ability. Despite having an incomplete understanding of metacognition, early years educators were trying a variety of different strategies to help promote metacognitive thinking within their Kindergarten classrooms. Surprisingly, teacher ratings using the CHILD did not change significantly from Time 1 (M= 1.88, SD = 0.744) to Time 2 (M= 1.85, SD = 0.66),t(72) = 0.72,p> 0.05. A similar trend was observed for ECE ratings using the CHILD as they did not change significantly from Time 1 (M= 1.89, SD = 0.70) to Time 2 (M= 1.80, SD = 0.79),t(52) = 1.36,p> 0.05. This research highlights empirical practices that Kindergarten educators can use to help facilitate metacognitive thinking. Furthermore, it identifies a need to better support Kindergarten educators by integrating practices aimed at developing metacognitive thinking in their students through explicit examples of strategies. (shrink)

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the formation of cultural traits is an open challenge. This is intimately connected to cultural dynamics, which has been the focus of a variety of quantitative models. Recent studies have emphasized the importance of connecting those models to empirically accessible snapshots of cultural dynamics. In particular, it has been suggested that empirical cultural states, which differ systematically from randomized counterparts, exhibit properties that are universally present. Hence, a question about the mechanism responsible for the observed patterns (...) naturally arises. This study proposes a stochastic structural model for generating cultural states that retain those robust empirical properties. One ingredient of the model assumes that every individual’s set of traits is partly dictated by one of several universal “rationalities,” informally postulated by several social science theories. The second, new ingredient assumes that, apart from a dominant rationality, each individual also has a certain exposure to the other rationalities. It is shown that both ingredients are required for reproducing the empirical regularities. This suggests that the effects of cultural dynamics in the real world can be described as an interplay of multiple, mixing rationalities, providing indirect evidence for the class of social science theories postulating such a mixing. (shrink)

In conclusion, this paper explores the intricate dynamics of improper omission as an amplifying device within the Colombian legal context. A detailed analysis has demonstrated how improper omission allows the imputation and punishment of individuals who, without fulfilling the typical description of conduct, incur criminal liability when they abandon their role as guarantors in the absence of a nexus of avoidability. This occurs when they fail to prevent the typical results that, in the context of legal assets in their charge, (...) the perpetrator can update their conduct, but refuses to do so without sufficient justification. It is crucial to differentiate between the general clause of equivalence of improper omission and the special clause of equivalence. While the former pertains to all legal assets, the latter is limited to specific legal assets mentioned in Article 25 of the Criminal Code. This distinction is vital to guarantee coherence and proportionality in the application of criminal law, thus preventing potential arbitrariness and violations of fundamental rights while enabling effective protection of positive duties of protection of legal rights with criminal protection. In particular, the issue of extending the position of guarantor to the protection of legal interests beyond those contemplated in the first paragraph of Article 25 of the Criminal Code has been addressed. By means of practical examples and analyses of case law, it has been demonstrated how improper omission can be constituted in a variety of contexts, including situations in which typical behaviors may arise as a result of the negligence or eventual inaction of an individual, whereby the individual in question removes himself from the protection of the legal assets in his control, which he has assumed voluntarily, so that an omission is constituted without sufficient justification. In conclusion, the clarification of the concepts presented here will contribute to the ongoing academic and legal discourse on improper omission in Colombia. It will provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of its application and implications within the country's legal framework. Through rigorous and thoughtful analysis, we encourage continued exploration and debate on this complex issue, with the aim of enhancing and strengthening the administration of justice in Colombia. (shrink)

I argue that penal philosophy should focus more on our attitudes towards offenders, since these attitudes can shed new light on theories or principles of punishment (of which they are often expressions) and also play a significant role in changing the face of criminal justice. Building on Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment,” I define attitudes as certain ways of seeing human beings that logically include or exclude various emotional, behavioral, and linguistic responses, that can be more or less natural, and over (...) which we have some degree of voluntary control. I argue that, understood in this sense, there are broadly speaking six attitudes towards offenders: the retributive, the hostile, the moralistic, the paternalistic, the merciful, and the actuarial. After presenting each of these attitudes, I sum up my analysis by focusing on the Polanski sexual abuse case. I then introduce the concept of second-order attitudes, where egalitarianism is the attitude that consists of taking the same attitude towards all offenders, and particularism is the attitude that consists of adjusting your attitude to each offender. Finally, I briefly explain why a mix of the retributive and the merciful should be our default attitude. (shrink)

Background and aim Healthcare professionals are regularly exposed to moral challenges in patient care potentially compromising quality of care and safety of patients. Preventive clinical ethics support aims to identify and address moral problems in patient care at an early stage of their development. This study investigates the occurrence, risk factors, early indicators, decision parameters, consequences and preventive measures of moral problems. Method Semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with 20 interprofessional healthcare professionals from 2 university hospitals in Basel, Switzerland. A (...) Likert scale questionnaire was completed by the interviewees and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results Healthcare professionals are frequently exposed to a variety of moral problems, such as end-of-life decisions, resource allocation and assessing the patient's will or decisional capacity. Thirty-four different risk factors for moral problems are identified, e.g. patient vulnerability, divergent values or world views, inadequate resources or poor ethical climate. Twenty-one early indicators are recognised such as disagreement between healthcare professionals, patients and relatives, emotional disturbances, gut feeling or conflict of conscience. A variety of preventive measures are suggested and presented in a preventive clinical ethics support process model. The most helpful measures are early ethical conversations with colleagues, early team-internal ethical case discussions and an ethics-trained contact person on the ward. Ethics training, kerbside consultations, proactive ethics consultations, ethics screening and rounds are also considered helpful. Conclusions Clinical ethics support services should not only offer reactive and complex, but also proactive and low-threshold support for healthcare professionals, patients and relatives. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that any epistemological theory that allows for what is called basic knowledge, viz., knowledge that an agent acquires from a certain source, even if he fails to know that the source is reliable, falls victim to what is known as the problem of easy knowledge. The idea is that for such theories bootstrapping and closure allow us far too easily to acquire knowledge (justification) that seems unlikely under the envisaged circumstances. In this paper, I begin (...) by highlighting the distinction between the (epistemic) legitimacy and dialectical effectiveness of such inferences. After evaluating some of the well-known solutions to this problem, I offer a mixed view of the legitimacy of easy knowledge inferences while trying to provide novel explanations as to how contrary intuitions arise. (shrink)

This volume contains eighteen essays by established and younger historians that examine non-democratic alternative political systems and ideologies--oligarchies, monarchies, mixed constitutions--along with diverse forms of communal and regional associations such as ethnoi, amphiktyonies, and confederacies. The papers, which span the length and breadth of the Hellenic world highlight the immense political flexibility and diversity of ancient Greek civilization.

The search for meaningful work has been of interest to researchers from a variety of disciplines for decades and seems to have grown even more recently. Much of the literature assumes that employees share a sense of what is meaningful in work and there isn’t much attention given to how and why meanings might differ. Researchers have not only called for more research studying demographic differences in definitions of meaning :77–90, 2014), but also more research utilizing mixed methods to (...) study psychological concepts like meaningful work Handbook of multimethod measurement in psychology, American Psychological Association, Washington, 2006). This study specifically examines differences across generational cohorts on their prioritization of sources of meaningful work through qualitative, in-depth interviews followed by a more generalizable, quantitative survey. Findings from the qualitative study show that generational cohorts define the meaning in their jobs differently, and they hold negative perceptions about the lack of desire for meaning in each of the other cohorts. Study 2 maps generational cohorts on the comprehensive model of meaningful work designed by Lips-Wiersma and Morris :491–511, 2009) to reveal that although there are some differences in prioritization of sources of meaningful work, all generational cohorts share similar desire to “develop and become themselves” when asked about their definitions of meaningful work. Implications and future research are discussed. (shrink)

This article argues that constitutional mixture should be regarded as an inherent, inevitable feature of constitutions, and to some degree all constitutions are mixed. Thus, “mixed constitutions” should not be regarded as a distinct category of constitutions. Instead of asking whether a constitution is mixed, it might therefore be more useful to ask in which characteristics and to what extent a constitution is mixed. To demonstrate this, the article provides a preliminary typology of constitutional mixture considering (...) the form or system of government; the nature or character of government; the religious or secular identity; the flexibility or rigidity of the constitution; and its model of judicial enforcement—judicial or parliamentary supremacy. Examining these constitutional features, allows to shed light on the three different dimensions of “constitutional mixture”: First, the various features of the constitutional order do not function in a binary yes-or-no manner but appear and move along a spectrum. Second, the various features of the constitution change with time. Third, the various features of the constitutional text may be in tension with the features of the society. (shrink)

I first summarize the central issues in the debate about the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics, and then examine the role that social psychologists claim positive and negative mood have in influencing compassionate helping behavior. I argue that this psychological research is compatible with the claim that many people might instantiate certain character traits after all which allow them to help others in a wide variety of circumstances. Unfortunately for the virtue ethicist, however, it turns out that these helping traits (...) fall well short of exhibiting certain central features of compassion. (shrink)

The commentators collectively indicate a variety of further considerations that should factor into an account of musical emotion beyond those I consider. I agree that we should seek a more holistic account of musical experience and provide some of my own suggestions toward this end in light of their remarks.

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of various forms of alethic pluralism. Along the way we will draw a number of distinctions that, hopefully, will be useful in mapping the pluralist landscape. Finally, we will argue that a commitment to alethic disjunctivism, a certain brand of pluralism, might be difficult to avoid for adherents of the other pluralist views to be discussed. We will proceed as follows: Section 1 introduces alethic monism and alethic pluralism. Section 2 (...) presents a distinction between strong and moderate versions of monism and pluralism, understood as theses about the existence of truth properties. Section 3 introduces four pluralist positions: strong alethic pluralism, alethic disjunctivism, second-order functionalism and manifestation functionalism. These positions are classified using the basic framework from Section 2, and a further distinction between pure and mixed versions of pluralism is drawn. Interestingly, alethic disjunctivism and the two kinds of functionalism—i.e. three out of four positions— have a mixed character. They incorporate a monist thesis. The only pure form of pluralism is strong alethic pluralism. Section 4 adds another distinction to the stock: one-level and two-level views. Each of the mixed positions operates with two levels, locating certain “alethically potent”—or grounding—properties at a lower level and others at a higher level. We briefly discuss the nature of grounding. In Section 5, we answer a question about mixed, two-level views, viz. whether they are as much monist as pluralist in nature, or more. They are not. Section 6 is devoted to the task of arguing that the strong pluralist, the second-order functionalist, and the manifestation functionalist will find it hard to deny a commitment to alethic disjunctivism. (shrink)

In La nova scientia , Niccolò Tartaglia analyses trajectories of cannonballs by means of different forms of reasoning, including ‘physical and geometrical reasoning’, ‘demonstrative geometrical reasoning’, ‘Archimedean reasoning’, and ‘algebraic reasoning’. I consider what he understood by each of these methods and how he used them to render the quick succession of a projectile's positions into a single entity that he could explore and explain. I argue that our understanding of his methods and style is greatly enriched by considering the (...) abacus tradition in which he worked. As a maestro d'abaco in sixteenth-century Venice he had access to a great variety of mathematical and natural-philosophical works. This paper traces how Tartaglia drew elements from a vast spectrum of sources and combined them in an innovative manner. I examine his use of algebra and geometry, consider what he knew about Archimedes and suggest a reading of his enigmatic phrase ‘Archimedean reasoning’, which has eluded satisfactory interpretation. (shrink)

Buson, Nardy, Muller & Chevrot (2018) report two experiments ‐ a repetition task and a judgment task ‐ based on the phenomenon of sociolinguistic restoration. When people repeat utterances mixing standard and non‐standard variants, they make them homogeneous. The results suggest that coherent cognitive representation of the sociolinguistic varieties influences the reconstruction of the mixed heard utterance during the repetition. Using the repetition task could help understanding how sociolinguistic cues are organized in memory.

Recently, we initiated a new research line on fulfillment in life by developing a conceptual framework and a self-report measure. To enhance conceptual clarity and complement theoretical considerations and empirical findings, we investigated lay conceptions of a fulfilled life in German-speaking participants at different life stages. First, we selected a qualitative approach using an open-ended question asking participants to describe a fulfilled life. Second, for a more comprehensive understanding, quantitative data were collected about the relevance of sources in providing fulfillment (...) and ratings on a fulfilling life in the present and a fulfilled life in retrospect. Qualitative content analysis was used to assess the responses to the open-ended question. One-fifth of the data was double coded, and intercoder reliability was high. Responses comprised a variety of descriptions, and we grouped them into seven themes, three of which overlapped with the prior conceptualization, namely the core elements of general description, cognitive appraisals, and affective appraisals. Cognitive evaluations related to intrapersonal aspects, particularly having lived life fully, attained personally significant goals, and developed oneself, as well as interpersonal, generative aspects, such as having made a contribution and been able to leave something of value. These categories are mostly in line with what the Fulfilled Life Scale measures. Further themes referred to correlates—including sources—and antecedents, including resources, personal characteristics, and quality of life, all considered worthy to be the subject of empirical investigation but which were not included in the conceptual model. Qualitative and quantitative results suggest that individuals derive fulfillment from different sources. Fulfillment from a profession and having a life task was strongly associated with longer-term fulfillment. Only a few age and sex differences were found. The overarching framework developed from the qualitative results can stimulate further investigation. Our findings underscore that a fulfilled life as a distinct construct should be measured directly rather than via a proxy. Insights into the constituents, sources, and antecedents of a fulfilled life can inform practice to promote a life well lived. (shrink)

IntroductionNeurofeedback training is increasingly applied as a therapeutic tool in a variety of disorders, with growing scientific and clinical interest in the last two decades. Different Neurofeedback approaches have been developed over time, so it is now important to be able to distinguish between them and investigate the effectiveness and efficiency characteristics of each specific protocol. In this study we intend to examine the effects of Neurofeedback based on slow brain activity, the so-called Infra-Low Frequency training a recently developed methodology (...) that seems promising for the regulation of the central nervous system.AimsWith this review we intend to summarize the currently existing literature on ILF-Neurofeedback, examine its quality and formulate indications about the clinical effectiveness of ILF-Neurofeedback.MethodsLiterature search was first conducted according to PRISMA principles, described, and then assessed using the MMAT appraisal tool. 18 well-documented studies of ILF-Neurofeedback training in human subjects were picked up and analyzed. Reports include group interventions as well as single case studies.ResultsResearch data indicates good potential for ILF-Neurofeedback to influence brain activity and neurovegetative parameters. From the clinical profile, a salient common observation is a high level of individualization as a specific characteristic of ILF-Training: this feature seems to correlate with effectiveness of ILF-Neurofeedback, but also poses a challenge for researchers in terms of producing controlled and comparable findings; according to this point, some recommendation for future research on ILF-Neurofeedback are proposed. In conclusion, ILF-neurofeedback shows great potential for application for all those conditions in which the regulation of brain activity and neurophysiological processes are crucial. Further research will make it possible to complete the available data and to have a broader overview of its possible applications. (shrink)

This chapter argues that while quotation marks are polysemous, the thread that runs through all uses of quotation marks that involve reference to expressions is pure quotation, in which an expression formed by enclosing another expression in quotation marks refers to that enclosed expression. We defend a version of the so-called disquotational theory of pure quotation and show how this device is used in direct discourse and attitude attributions, in exposition in scholarly contexts, and in so-called mixed quotation in (...) indirect discourse and attitude attributions. We argue that uses of quotation marks that extend beyond pure quotation have two features in common. First, the expressions appearing in quotation marks are intended to be understood, and that they are intended to be understood is essential to the function that such quotations play in communication, though this does not always involve the expressions contributing their extensional properties to fixing truth conditions for the sentences in which they appear. Second, they appeal to a relation to the expression appearing in quotation marks that plays a role in determining the truth conditions of the sentences in which they appear. (shrink)

Listeners can attend to and track instruments or singing voices in complex musical mixtures, even though the acoustical energy of sounds from individual instruments may overlap in time and frequency. In popular music, lead vocals are often accompanied by sound mixtures from a variety of instruments, such as drums, bass, keyboards, and guitars. However, little is known about how the perceptual organization of such musical scenes is affected by selective attention, and which acoustic features play the most important role. To (...) investigate these questions, we explored the role of auditory attention in a realistic musical scenario. We conducted three online experiments in which participants detected single cued instruments or voices in multi-track musical mixtures. Stimuli consisted of 2-s multi-track excerpts of popular music. In one condition, the target cue preceded the mixture, allowing listeners to selectively attend to the target. In another condition, the target was presented after the mixture, requiring a more “global” mode of listening. Performance differences between these two conditions were interpreted as effects of selective attention. In Experiment 1, results showed that detection performance was generally dependent on the target’s instrument category, but listeners were more accurate when the target was presented prior to the mixture rather than the opposite. Lead vocals appeared to be nearly unaffected by this change in presentation order and achieved the highest accuracy compared with the other instruments, which suggested a particular salience of vocal signals in musical mixtures. In Experiment 2, filtering was used to avoid potential spectral masking of target sounds. Although detection accuracy increased for all instruments, a similar pattern of results was observed regarding the instrument-specific differences between presentation orders. In Experiment 3, adjusting the sound level differences between the targets reduced the effect of presentation order, but did not affect the differences between instruments. While both acoustic manipulations facilitated the detection of targets, vocal signals remained particularly salient, which suggest that the manipulated features did not contribute to vocal salience. These findings demonstrate that lead vocals serve as robust attractor points of auditory attention regardless of the manipulation of low-level acoustical cues. (shrink)

There has been much recent debate over the meaning of the claim that God is good and loving. Although the participants in this debate strongly disagree over the correct analysis of the claim, there is nonetheless agreement across all parties that there is a single correct analysis. This paper aims to overthrow this consensus, by showing that sentences such as ‘There is a good and loving God’ are often used to express a variety of beliefs with quite different logico-grammatical characteristics. (...) Belief in a good and loving God might range from being an evidentially grounded and empirically falsifiable ontological hypothesis, all the way to being a belief which is both ungrounded and unfalsifiable, and more akin to an attitude than to an hypothesis. The logical variety exhibited by the belief in a good and loving God often gives rise, in turn, to people holding that belief in a way that is indeterminate, mixed, or fluid between those different varieties. That is, someone’s belief in a good and loving God may hover indeterminately between more than one logical variety of the belief; or it may mix together some of the logical characteristics of different varieties of the belief; or it may change from having one logical character to another and perhaps back again. These properties are often masked by the fact that the belief is always expressed by the same sentence regardless of any indeterminacy, mixedness, or fluidity. Though these properties are rarely discussed by analytic philosophers of religion, logico-grammatical variety, indeterminacy, mixedness, and fluidity are pervasive in religious beliefs and utterances, and account for much of those beliefs and utterances' real-life complexity. This paper will make a start at an examination of these important properties by using the belief in a good and loving God as a representative case study. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue against unrestricted mereological hybridism, the view that there are absolutely no constraints on wholes having parts from many different logical or ontological categories, an exemplar of which I take to be ‘mixed fusions’. These are composite entities which have parts from at least two different categories – the membered (as in classes) and the non-membered (as in individuals). As a result, mixed fusions can also be understood to represent a variety of cross-category summation (...) such as the abstract with the concrete, the physical with the non-physical, and the possible with the impossible, just to name a few. -/- Proposed by David Lewis (1991) alongside his defence of classical mereology (the major theory of parthood which permits such transcategorial composites through its principle of unrestricted composition) it is my contention that mixed fusions are an under-examined consequence of indiscriminate mereological fusion which harbour a multitude of complications. In my attempt to discern their substantive character, throughout this thesis I make a case study of mixed fusions and uncover several problematic consequences which I think follow from their most plausible assessment. -/- These include: (1) that mixed fusions’ probable membership relations may lead to dubious foundational loops in the mereological Universe, or (2) otherwise that mixed fusions oblige an implausible ontological priority of the mereological Universe as a whole; (3) that mixed fusions contradict the reductive account of set theory they are proposed within, by plausibly being seen to have the same members as their class parts, and (4) that mixed fusions therefore confound a mereological thesis of Composition as Identity, which some (including Lewis) use to support classical mereology – a consequence which is potentially self-defeating; (5) that mixed fusions as sums of abstract and concrete entities both subvert Lewis’s (1986) system of modal realism, while (6) also undermining less expansive theories of possible worlds; and finally, (7) that even where some of the foregoing is resisted, it remains implausible that mixed fusions are ontologically innocent, because their supposed distinction from their parts in this case ensures that they need to be counted as additional entities in one’s ontology. -/- To be clear, I do not advance a theory of mereological hybrid nihilism in the sense of denying all cases of transcategorial composition. (I only cover a few select instances of mereological hybridism via mixed fusions after all.) Rather, I deny that mereological hybridism is plausible in full generality, by demonstrating that any cases of it are at least limited by the constraints that I identify. This in turn vindicates a call for a restriction on parthood theories and composition principles which allow certain types of categorially mixed entities – including restricting classical mereology with its principle of unrestricted composition. -/- Although theories of parthood like the standard classical mereology are not ordinarily developed for the sake of mereological hybrids like mixed fusions, these and other transcategorial composites are still among the logical consequences of such parthood systems operating with sufficient generality. The significance of my thesis, then, comes from showcasing how some of these kinds of entities do not conform to the systems in which they are included as required, and hence I argue for the rejection of unrestricted mereological hybridism as well as any mereological principles which support it. (shrink)

Emotions play a significant role in human relations, decision-making, and the motivation to act on those decisions. There are ongoing attempts to use artificial intelligence (AI) to read human emotions, and to predict human behavior or actions that may follow those emotions. However, a person’s emotions cannot be easily identified, measured, and evaluated by others, including automated machines and algorithms run by AI. The ethics of emotional AI is under research and this study has examined the emotional variables as well (...) as the perception of emotional AI in two large random groups of college students in an international university in Japan, with a heavy representation of Japanese, Indonesian, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and other Asian nationalities. Surveys with multiple close-ended questions and an open-ended essay question regarding emotional AI were administered for quantitative and qualitative analysis, respectively. The results demonstrate how ethically questionable results may be obtained through affective computing and by searching for correlations in a variety of factors in collected data to classify individuals into certain categories and thus aggravate bias and discrimination. Nevertheless, the qualitative study of students’ essays shows a rather optimistic view over the use of emotional AI, which helps underscore the need to increase awareness about the ethical pitfalls of AI technologies in the complex field of human emotions. (shrink)

Many traditional martial artists assert that MMA is not a martial art, denying that the ‘martial skill’ of MMA constitutes a ‘martial art’, and citing the sportive and entertainment aspects of MMA competitions as antithetical to the spirit of martial arts, lacking the integrity, discipline, and tradition found in martial arts. Today, these criticisms are even more relevant in light of the fact that the typical MMA fighter no longer practices a single discipline but is versed in a variety of (...) techniques and utilizes a variety of strength and conditioning modalities. In addition, with the development of social media and mainstream media’s acceptance of MMA as a legitimate sport, MMA is now more than ever about entertainment. We argue that MMA is a martial art, but it is not always practiced as one. By drawing upon Socrates’ distinction in Plato’s Gorgias between ‘knacks’ and ‘crafts’, we clarify the difference between ‘martial skills’ and ‘martial arts’. Using this distinction, we examine whether the sportive and entertainment aspects of MMA are, in fact, antithetical to the spirit of martial arts. We argue that the latter is, but the former is not. (shrink)

The Hadza foragers of Tanzania are currently experiencing a nutritional shift that includes the intensification of domesticated cultigens in the diet. Despite these changes, no study, to date, has examined the possible effects of this transition on the food collection behavior of young foragers. Here we present a cross-sectional study on foraging behavior taken from two time points, 2005 and 2017. We compare the number of days foraged and the type and amount of food collected for young foragers, aged 5–14 (...) years, in age- and season-matched samples. Compared with 2005, in 2017 fewer subadults left camp to forage, and overall, they targeted a smaller variety of wild foods, with the noticeable absence of wild honey, figs, and tubers. In addition, participants in 2017 were significantly more likely to have attended school. Despite the increased presence of domesticated plant foods in the diet and increased attendance at school, some young foragers continue to be highly productive in collecting wild, undomesticated foods. Despite the preliminary nature of our results, our findings suggest that the range of wild foods targeted by subadults is decreasing as the amount of domesticated cultigens in the diet increases. These data underscore the importance of studying diet composition and foraging decisions across temporal, nutritional, and ecological landscapes. (shrink)

Based on the novel data collected through original fieldwork on five syntactic phenomena (the position of the finite verb in embedded clauses, in sentences with a modal verb, negative concord, position of focused light/heavy objects in main clauses with a complex tense, scrambling) in the heritage language Mòcheno, we show that i) there exist two populations – one exhibiting intra-speaker variation between German and Italian word orders, and one lacking it; ii) these two populations are the result of diatopic variation (...) and, to a lesser extent, of diastratic variation. The results reached through quantitative statistical analysis are partially convergent with those arrived at by traditional theoretical syntax on Mòcheno, but our analysis has allowed us to shed new light on a series of so-far neglected or poorly understood phenomena. More specifically, we discovered that there exists micro-variation fed by diastratic (age) variation within the Roveda variety, which represents the only case in Mòcheno in which age is a relevant factor in determining variation. We also showed that the traditional claim that the Palù variety is “more German” than the other Mòcheno variety is surely to be confirmed, but we could refine it by showing that German word orders are also accepted by speakers of other varieties and that the acceptability of these word orders in competition with the Italian syntax is not fed by the age of speakers (no diastratic variation). Finally, we showed that the acceptance of German word orders across speakers varies according to the phenomenon investigated: negation is the phenomenon in which German word orders are more likely to be accepted, whereas embedded clauses are the phenomenon in which German word orders are more likely to be rejected. (shrink)

Significant technological advancements over the last two decades have led to enhanced accessibility to computing devices and the Internet. Our society is experiencing an ever-growing integration of the Internet into everyday lives, and this has transformed the way we obtain and exchange information, communicate and interact with one another as well as conduct business. However, the term ‘Internet addiction’ has emerged from problematic and excessive Internet usage which leads to the development of addictive cyber-behaviours, causing health and social problems. The (...) most commonly used intervention treatments such as motivational interviewing, cognitive-behavioural therapy, and retreat or inpatient care mix a variety of psychotherapy theories to treat such addictive behaviour and try to address underlying psychosocial issues that are often coexistent with IA, but the efficacy of these approaches is not yet proved. The aim of this paper is to address the question of whether it is possible to cure IA with the Internet. After detailing the current state-of-the-art including various IA definitions, risk factors, assessment methods and IA treatments, we outline the main research challenges that need to be solved. Moreover, we propose an Internet-based IA Recovery Framework which uses AI to closely observe, visualize and analyse patient’s Internet usage behaviour for possible staged intervention. The proposal to use smart Internet-based systems to control IA can be expected to be controversial. This paper is intended to stimulate further discussion and research in IA recovery through Internet-based frameworks. (shrink)