The nonlocality phenomena exhibited by entangled quantum systems are certainly one of the most extraordinary aspects of quantum theory. This book discusses this phe nomenon according to several points of view, i.e., according to different interpretations of the mathematics of the quantum formalism. The several interpretations of the Copenhagen interpretation, the many worlds, the de Broglie-Bohm, quantum logics, the decohering by the environment approach and the histories approach interpretations are scrutinized and criticized in detail. Recent results on cryptography, quantum bit (...) commitment, quantum erasers and teleportation are also presented and discussed. In preparing the book we benefited from discussions with many people, but we would like, in particular, to express our gratitude to Professor B. d'Espagnat for his useful comments and suggestions. We are grateful also to Ms. L. Gentry EI-Dash for the English revision, to Dr. 1. E. Maiorino for the production of the figures and a careful reading of the manuscript, and for the statI of Plenum for advice and for having produced a nice book. Finally, the authors thank FAPESP (contract no. I 99612657-0) for a grant making this book possible. A. A. ORIB AND W. A. RODRIGUES, JR. (shrink)

The study of the cultural activity of the Spiritual missions of the Russian Orthodox Church in various regions of Russia is one of the urgent tasks in the context of the problematic field of the theory of regionalism, cultural studies and socio-philosophical knowledge. Russian settlements on the territory of the Yenisei River basin and the entry of ethnic groups and territories of Yakutia and Buryatia into the Russian Empire has become one of the most important stages of the integration of (...) the ethnic groups of Siberia into a single statehood. The Irkutsk Spiritual Mission received a more perfect organization, institutionalized by increasing the number of missionary camps, which for successful Christian activities carried out among pagans allowed the formation of school educational institutions for the education and upbringing of a new Buryat generation of children in the doctrinal Orthodox canons, and Russian cultural traditions. In this regard, one of the key tasks of the missionaries was to establish a rational view of further life in new Christian-type formations, which was realized in socio-cultural activities: providing medical care to sick representatives of other ethnic groups, a friendly attitude to people of a different faith and a sincere desire to guide them on the path of righteousness, etc. It should be noted that the largest share of foreigners in this territory belonged to Buddhists, which was reflected in the influence of lamas on doctrinal issues, including economic ones. Since Buddhism in the Russian Empire belonged to the section of tolerant religions, direct (administrative) pressure on it was impossible. There remained funds of an exclusively spiritual nature, to which Orthodox missionary work was directed. Today in the Russian Federation, Buddhism, as well as Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism, as well as some other faiths belong to the category of traditional religions, which organizationally operate within the framework of the modern Russian Constitution. (shrink)

Lorsqu'on pense à la politique culturelle de l'URSS, un seul mot vient à l'esprit : jdanovisme. Tout le monde connaît Andreï Jdanov, le commissaire du peuple à la culture de Staline et ses diktats en matière de création. En revanche, on ignore tout de son " prédécesseur " et pour ainsi dire, son opposé : Anatole Vassiliévitch Lounatcharski. Nul hasard. L'idéologie a tout intérêt à réduire le communisme au goulag, Lénine à Staline, le matérialisme dialectique à Lyssenko et la critique (...) marxiste à quelques vulgates du réalisme socialiste. Mais pour tous ceux qui n'ont jamais accepté le communisme dans sa version momifiée, à commencer par Lénine lui-même, devenu pharaon malgré lui dans un mausolée sur la place rouge, il est enfin temps de découvrir son plus proche conseiller en matière de culture, Anatole Lounatcharski, philosophe, artiste et révolutionnaire. (shrink)

Recent theories have argued that emotions play a central role in moral decision-making and suggested that emotion regulation may be crucial in reducing emotion-linked biases. The present studies focused on the influence of emotional experience and individual differences in emotion regulation on moral choice in dilemmas that pit harming another person against social welfare. During these “harm to save” moral dilemmas, participants experienced mostly fear and sadness but also other emotions such as compassion, guilt, anger, disgust, regret and contempt (Study (...) 1). Fear and disgust were more frequently reported when participants made deontological choices, whereas regret was more frequently reported when participants made utilitarian choices. In addition, habitual reappraisal negatively predicted deontological choices, and this effect was significantly carried through emotional arousal (Study 2). Individual differences in the habitual use of other emotion regulation strategies (i.e., acceptance, rumination and catastrophising) did not influence moral choice. The results of the present studies indicate that negative emotions are commonly experienced during “harm to save” moral dilemmas, and they are associated with a deontological bias. By efficiently reducing emotional arousal, reappraisal can attenuate the emotion-linked deontological bias in moral choice. (shrink)

In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or an act/object ambi-guity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argument’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments?

Much evidence suggests that, from a young age, humans are able to generalize information learned about a subset of a category to the category itself. Here, we propose that—beyond simply being able to perform such generalizations—people are biased to generalize to categories, such that they routinely make spontaneous, implicit category generalizations from information that licenses such generalizations. To demonstrate the existence of this bias, we asked participants to perform a task in which category generalizations would distract from the main goal (...) of the task, leading to a characteristic pattern of errors. Specifically, participants were asked to memorize two types of novel facts: quantified facts about sets of kind members and generic facts about entire kinds. Moreover, half of the facts concerned properties that are typically generalizable to an animal kind, and half concerned properties that are typically more idiosyncratic. We predicted that—because of the hypothesized bias—participants would spontaneously generalize the quantified facts to the corresponding kinds, and would do so more frequently for the facts about generalizable properties. In turn, these generalizations would lead to a higher rate of quantified-to-generic memory errors for the generalizable properties. The results of four experiments supported this prediction. Moreover, the same generalizable-versus-idiosyncratic difference in memory errors occurred even under cognitive load, which suggests that the hypothesized bias operates unnoticed in the background, requiring few cognitive resources. In sum, this evidence suggests the presence of a powerful bias to draw generalizations about kinds. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Existing research on certifiable management standards (CMS) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) tends to focus on large companies and is characterised by disagreement about the role of these standards as drivers of CSR. We contribute to the literature by shifting the analytical focus to the behaviour of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that subscribe to multiple CSR related standards. We argue that, in respect of motive and commitment, SMEs are not as different from large companies as the literature suggests, as (...) they are guided by similar institutional and economic motives. Results, based on ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certified SMEs in Greece, demonstrate that later adopters are more susceptible to coercive and mimetic motives and are less likely to commit fully to the CMS requirements, while earlier adopters react to normative motives and considerations of internal efficiency gains and tend to carry out CMS requirements with greater diligence. (shrink)

On the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), internal proper parts of an agent such as desires and intentions are causally responsible for actions. CTA has increasingly come under attack for its alleged failure to account for agency. A recent version of this criticism due to François Schroeter proposes that CTA cannot provide an adequate account of either the executive control or the autonomous control involved in full-fledged agency. Schroeter offers as an alternative a revised understanding of the proper role of (...) consciousness in agency. In this paper we criticize Schroeter’s analysis of the type of consciousness involved in executive control and examine the way in which the conscious self allegedly intervenes in action. We argue that Schroeter’s proposal should not be preferred over recent versions of CTA. (shrink)

Richard Scheer has recently argued against what he calls the 'mental state' theory of intentions. He argues that versions of this theory fail to account for various characteristics of intention. In this essay we reply to Scheer's criticisms and argue that intentions are mental states.

The paper is devoted to Nikolay Lossky who was one of the leading Russian philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century. We demonstrate the interrelationship between three aspects of Lossky’s philosophy: realism in the theory of knowledge, hierarchical personalism, and supra-naturalistic concept of evolution. We pay attention to the contemporary relevance of Lossky, and we discuss and critique his ideas in light of those of other philosophers. Lossky acknowledges that the subject interacts with being itself and that knowledge (...) is not a shadow or copy of being. His ontology is based on intuitivism and epistemological optimism. Its main categories are God, as the super-systematic principle, and monads. In Lossky’s metaphysics, the idea of abstract ideal principles of being is quite harmoniously combined with personalism. Lossky’s ontology has strong ethical underpinnings. He considers that values are rooted in being and that the evolution of the world is directed by God towards the good. Lossky elaborates a supra-naturalistic concept of evolution. He extrapolates principles of teleological determination, which are fundamental to human existence, on the underlying levels of the world as a whole. Many trends of modern thought are in tune with Lossky’s philosophy, including a return to metaphysics, panpsychism, Platonism, and the desire to unite the religious worldview with new scientific discoveries. (shrink)

We construct a computable vector space with the trivial computable automorphism group, but with the dependence relations as complicated as possible, measured by their Turing degrees. As a corollary, we answer a question asked by A.S. Morozov in [Rigid constructive modules, Algebra and Logic, 28 570–583 ; 379–387 ].