Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA) has released its complete 2017 Final Report, an 81-page document that collects data on PhD-granting philosophy programs (including ratings by former students, placement rates, and diversity) and the discipline as a whole (including hiring networks, placement maps, cluster analyses of programs, job descriptions, non-academic hiring). The report was created by Carolyn Dicey Jennings, Patrice Cobb, Pablo Contreras Kallens, and Angelo Kyrilov, all of University of California, Merced. (from Daily Nous).

This essay provides a critical philosophical assessment of “offensiphobia,” which is the belief that higher educational academic freedom ought to be to some important extent censured because of the mere offensiveness of certain kinds of expressions, whether those expressions are perceived as being racist, sexist, etc., effectively holding that the offensiveness of such expressions is a sufficient condition to justify its prohibition. This paper concisely sets forth the general legal parameters of the United States constitutional First Amendment right to freedom (...) of expression. Subsequently, it follows Joel Feinberg in distinguishing between harms and offenses and explains why the law should only protect against harms and not mere offenses. Following this, logical and moral considerations are brought to bear in order to further assess the implicitly supporting view of offensiphobia that faculty and students in higher educational contexts have a claim right to not be offended correlated with a duty of others to not offend them. For example, the use-mention distinction is discussed in order to explain why linguistic intent is crucial for the determination of what genuinely counts as being racist, sexist or otherwise offensive discourse. In the end, there are a variety of reasons for thinking that there is no moral right to not be offended correlated with a moral duty of others to not offend in higher educational contexts and that the law and public policy ought to track this fact. Without a right to not be offended, those who seek to curtail higher educational academic freedom rights by way of censorship stand on unreasonable ethical grounds to do so, though the law seems to permit private institutions to delimit offensive expressions. Offensiphobia ought to be rejected as it is unsupported by the balance of reason. (shrink)

Recently, there have been discussions about whether or not inter-collegiate football should be eliminated in the US. This article philosophically assesses the arguments for its elimination as well as the arguments proffered against its elimination. While a variety of arguments are discussed, a new one is brought into the foray of philosophical investigation, one that combines the unfairness and economic arguments: the health care and medical costs to others argument. It is believed that this argument is sufficient to justify the (...) elimination of inter-collegiate football. (shrink)

In quantity discrimination tasks, adults, infants and animals have been sometimes observed to process number only after all continuous variables, such as area or density, have been controlled for. This has been taken as evidence that processing number may be more cognitively demanding than processing continuous variables. We tested this hypothesis by training mosquitofish to discriminate two items from three in three different conditions. In one condition, continuous variables were controlled while numerical information was available; in another, the number was (...) kept constant and information relating to continuous variables was available; in the third condition, stimuli differed for both number and continuous quantities. Fish learned to discriminate more quickly when both number and continuous information were available compared to when they could use continuous information only or number only; there was no difference in the learning rate between the two latter conditions. Our results do not support the hypothesis that processing numbers imposes a higher cognitive load than processing continuous variables. Rather, they suggest that availability of multiple information sources may facilitate discrimination learning. (shrink)

Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) has been a growing point of interest in medical education yet has not been assessed in the field of bioethics. This study evaluated the accuracy of ChatGPT-3.5 (April 2023 version) in answering text-based, multiple choice bioethics questions at the level of US third-year and fourth-year medical students. A total of 114 bioethical questions were identified from the widely utilised question banks UWorld and AMBOSS. Accuracy, bioethical categories, difficulty levels, specialty data, error analysis and character count (...) were analysed. We found that ChatGPT had an accuracy of 59.6%, with greater accuracy in topics surrounding death and patient–physician relationships and performed poorly on questions pertaining to informed consent. Of all the specialties, it performed best in paediatrics. Yet, certain specialties and bioethical categories were under-represented. Among the errors made, it tended towards content errors and application errors. There were no significant associations between character count and accuracy. Nevertheless, this investigation contributes to the ongoing dialogue on artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in healthcare and medical education, advocating for further research to fully understand AI systems’ capabilities and constraints in the nuanced field of medical bioethics. (shrink)

A philosophical assessment of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, exposing some errors of reasoning that undermine part of the foundation of his atheism. Distinctions between theism, atheism and agnosticism are also provided and explored for their significance to Dawkins’ argument.

In this paper I shall discuss various philosophical theories of collective punishment: marxian annihilism, metaphysical collectivism and methodological individualism. After refuting metaphysical collectivism and its modified version, I defend a modification of methodological individualism.

The presence of fetal cells has been associated with both positive and negative effects on maternal health. These paradoxical effects may be due to the fact that maternal and offspring fitness interests are aligned in certain domains and conflicting in others, which may have led to the evolution of fetal microchimeric phenotypes that can manipulate maternal tissues. We use cooperation and conflict theory to generate testable predictions about domains in which fetal microchimerism may enhance maternal health and those in which (...) it may be detrimental. This framework suggests that fetal cells may function both to contribute to maternal somatic maintenance (e.g. wound healing) and to manipulate maternal physiology to enhance resource transmission to offspring (e.g. enhancing milk production). In this review, we use an evolutionary framework to make testable predictions about the role of fetal microchimerism in lactation, thyroid function, autoimmune disease, cancer and maternal emotional, and psychological health.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

This volume provides discussions of both the concept of responsibility and of punishment, and of both individual and collective responsibility. It provides in-depth Socratic and Kantian bases for a new version of retributivism, and defends that version against the main criticisms that have been raised against retributivism in general. It includes chapters on criminal recidivism and capital punishment, as well as one on forgiveness, apology and punishment that is congruent with the basic precepts of the new retributivism defended therein. Finally, (...) chapters on corporate responsibility and punishment are included, with a closing chapter on holding the U.S. accountable for its most recent invasion and occupation of Iraq. The book is well-focused but also presents the widest ranging set of topics of any book of its kind as it demonstrates how the concepts of responsibility and punishment apply to some of the most important problems of our time. “This is one of the best books on punishment, and the Fourth Edition continues its tradition of excellence. The book connects punishment importantly to moral responsibility and desert, and it is comprehensive in its scope, both addressing abstract, theoretical issues and applied issues as well. The topics treated include collective responsibility, apology, forgiveness, capital punishment, and war crimes. Highly recommended.”—John Martin Fischer, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside. (shrink)

This article is a critical philosophical assessment of John Searle’s theory of human rights as it is articulated both in his earlier book, The Construction of Social Reality and especially in his more recent book, Making the Social World.

Introduction : approaching Plato's dialogues -- The mouthpiece interpretation -- The anti-mouthpiece interpretation -- A Socratic interpretation of the concept of art as mimesis -- Conclusion : appreciating Plato's dialogues.

The history of scholarship, philosophical or otherwise, about Plato and his writings reveals a quandary pertaining to the interpretation of the contents of Plato's dialogues. To understand Plato one must come to terms with this problem: how ought Plato's writings to be interpreted?

(2014). Connecting Personal History and Organizational Context: Suggestions for Developing Educational Programs for Youth Soccer Coaches. World Futures: Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 140-156.

We compute the effect of collapse models on neutrino oscillations. The effect of the collapse is to modify the evolution of the spatial part of the wave function and we will show that this indirectly amounts to a change on the flavor components. For the analysis we use the mass proportional CSL model, and perform the calculation to second order perturbation theory. As we will show, the CSL effect is very small—mainly due to the very small mass of neutrinos—and practically (...) undetectable. (shrink)

Soccer players inescapably live under stress during the sportive career, and many real-life aspects of soccer situations operate in the ongoing performance. This study’s main objective was to elaborate the List of Stressors in Professional Indoor and Field Soccer, a self-report instrument designed to measure the impact of 77 soccer situations upon the sport performance. Participants were 138 indoor and field soccer players from the Brazilian Premier League. Each situation was evaluated on a 7-point scale, ranging from the most negative (...) to the most positive. Data were analyzed according to the players’ perception of the items: distress or eustress and its intensity, and after that, situations perceived as plus −1 and +1 were compared by time in which they were experienced and distributed among five categories established by the literature: Expectations about the Performance, Personal Factors, Competition Aspects, Training Demands, and Relationship with Significant People. Narratives of athletes’ experiences were also used to discuss the results. An Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling using Bi-factorial was employed to assess the factor structure. For the total participants, 49 situations were perceived as distress and 28 as eustress. Using the criteria established a priori, the distribution was among the five categories in the remaining 32 situations. Differences in perception between less and more experienced players were found in 11 situations. The results revealed that Brazilian professional soccer players experience various stressful situations. These events are important representations of environmental demands and could predict the performance as they are perceived as eustress or distress. Some of these stressful situations are inherent in sport and others adjacent to the sports system or environment. Coach pressure to win and conflicts with teammates are examples of stressors in-sport, family problems and disputes with press or fans are examples of stressors external to the team, also called peripheral opponents, and showed the relative social influence of significant others in soccer performance. We can conclude that the knowledge of the direction of a given stress situation has important practical implications in preparing athletes and helping them face the performance stressors that are part of soccer daily life. (shrink)

This paper contains a philosophical explication of some of the essentials of a Marxist approach to business ethics. A Marxist approach is construed as a moral critique of capitalism. This paper hopes to lay the groundwork for a more detailed analysis of Karl Marx's critique of capitalist economies.

In his famous essay, "A Puzzle About Belief," Saul Kripke poses a puzzle regarding belief. In this paper I shall first describe Kripke's puzzle. Second, I shall introduce and examine five positions one might take in attempting to solve Kripke's Puzzle. In so doing, I shall show why each of these attempts fails to solve Kripke's Puzzle. The significance of this analysis is that if Kripke's Puzzle remains unresolved, then (as Kripke himself claims) the normal apparatus for belief ascription needs (...) rethinking. (shrink)

This paper seeks to provide some of the roles of philosophy in the field of academic ethics.

This essay argues that Alvin I. Goldman's truth-linked theory of group knowledge (veritism) omits individual components of social cognition, that all group based theories of knowledge lead to scepticism, and that if any sense is to be made of social knowledge, it must be done on individualist lines. I argue that Goldman's veritism can be reconstructed by adopting a reliabilist theory,social reliabilism. And I argue that Goldman's objections to a particular sort of consensualism are not telling. So there are now (...) two plausible and competing theories of social knowledge-social reliabilism and consensualism. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta seis ponencias en torno a los problemas que atraviesan distintos sectores de la población en situación de vulnerabilidad social en el goce de sus derechos humanos en el contexto de la pandemia global de COVID-19. Las exposiciones reflexionan sobre los prejuicios y vulnerabilidades que atraviesan las personas adultas mayores; las violencias de género en contextos de aislamiento; las personas en contextos de movilidad excluidas de las medidas de protección; el tratamiento y priorización de las personas con discapacidad (...) en los centros de derivación de COVID-19; la protección de las garantías penales en la administración de justicia durante los juicios de lesa humanidad llevados en forma remota; y el avance de las causas por crímenes de lesa humanidad durante la pandemia. (shrink)

Some recently articulated American Christian liberation theolo­gies maintain that they seek justice for the oppressed. But such “justice” fails to encompass the respecting of certain rights of the oppressed to compensation from their oppressors. The right of the oppressed to holistic (including compensatory) reparations from their oppressors is explored in terms of why liberation theologies ought to, among other things, respect and embrace such a right. For economic issues, both distributive and compensatory, are inseparable from oppression-based poverty and hence inseparable (...) from the will of God insofar as it is the will of God to liberate the oppressed. By pressing the importance of reparations for oppressed groups, we seek to liberate liberation theologies from the shackles of a view that fails to recognize in a robust sense the law as a vehicle of rectification of oppression. (shrink)

Adotei uma abordagem experimental para essa questão. Atos de vontade livre são precedidos por uma mudança elétrica específica no cérebro 3, que inicia 550 milissegundos antes do ato. As pessoas tomaram consciência da intenção de agir 350-400 milissegundos depois do início do RP e 200 milissegundos antes do ato motor. O processo volitivo é, portanto, iniciado inconscientemente. Mas a função consciente ainda poderia controlar o resultado; pode vetar o ato. O livre-arbítrio não é, portanto, excluído. Essas descobertas impõem restrições às (...) visões de como o livre-arbítrio pode operar; não faria iniciar um ato voluntário, mas poderia controlar a realização. As descobertas também afetam perspectivas de culpa e responsabilidade. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to present the dissertation research which studies the Olympian Zeus’ temples built during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. The intention is to understand how Olympia was responsible for the origin and dissemination of Olympian Zeus´cult through the Greek world. From the poleis survey that consecrated these temples to the deity and by the mapping of the cult in association to textual informations we will discuss the Olympios epiteth and the name Olympieion, the spacial (...) configuration of the Olympian Zeus sanctuaries and the relationship of the cult and the tyranny. (shrink)

Investigating perceptual and cognitive abilities of zoo animals might help to improve their husbandry and enrich their daily life with new stimuli. Developing new environmental enrichment programs and devices is hence necessary to promote species-specific behaviours that need to be maintained in controlled environments. As far as we are aware, no study has ever tested the potential benefits of motion illusions as visual enrichment for zoo animals. Starting from a recent study showing that domestic cats are spontaneously attracted by a (...) well-known motion illusion, the Rotating Snake (RS) illusion, we studied whether this illusion could be used as a visual enrichment for big cats. We observed the spontaneous behaviour of three lionesses when three different visual stimuli were placed in their environment: the RS illusion and two control stimuli. The study involved two different periods: the baseline and the RS period, in which the visual stimuli were provided to the lionesses. To assess whether the lionesses were specifically attracted by the RS illusion, we collected data on the number of interactions with the stimuli, as well as on the total time spent interacting with them. To investigate the effect of the illusion on the animals’ welfare, individual and social behaviours were studied and compared between the two periods. The results showed that two lionesses out of three interacted more with the RS stimulus than with the two control stimuli. The fact that the lionesses seemed to be more inclined to interact with the RS stimulus indirectly suggests the intriguing possibility that they were attracted by the illusory motion. Moreover, behavioural changes between the two periods were reported for one of the lionesses, highlighting a reduction in self-directed behaviours and an increase in attentive behaviours, suggesting positive welfare implications. Thus, behavioural observations made before and during the presentation of the stimuli showed that our visual enrichment actually provided positive effects in lionesses. These results call for the development of future studies on the use of visual illusions in the enrichment programs of zoo animals. (shrink)

_Background:_ Literature has documented the role of family in the outcome of chronic schizophrenia. In the light of this, family interventions (FIs) are becoming an integral component of treatment for psychosis. The First Episode of Psychosis (FEP) is the period when most of the changes in family atmosphere are observed; unfortunately, few studies on the relatives are available. _Objective:_ To explore burden of care and emotional distress at baseline and at 9-month follow-up and the levels of service satisfaction at follow-up (...) in the two groups of relatives (experimental treatment EXP vs. treatment as usual TAU) recruited in the cluster-randomized controlled GET UP PIANO trial. _Methods:_ The experimental treatment was provided by routine public Community Mental Health Centers (Italian National Health Service) and consisted of Treatment as Usual plus evidence-based additional treatment (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis for patients, Family Intervention for psychosis, and Case Management). TAU consisted of personalized outpatient psychopharmacological treatment, combined with non-specific supportive clinical management and informal support/educational sessions for families. The outcomes on relatives were assessed by the Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ-EU), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), and the Verona Service Satisfaction Scale (VSSS-EU). Differences within and between groups were evaluated. _Results:_ At baseline, 75 TAU and 185 EXP caregivers were assessed. In the experimental group 92% of relatives participated in at least 1 family session. At follow-up both groups experienced improvement in all IEQ and GHQ items, but caregivers belonging to the EXP arm experienced a significantly greater change in 10 IEQ items (mainly pertaining to the “Tension” dimension) and in GHQ items. Due to the low sample size, a significant effectiveness was only observed for 2 IEQ items and 1 GHQ-12 item. With respect to VSSS data at follow-up, caregivers in the EXP arm experienced significantly greater satisfaction in 8 items, almost all pertaining to the dimensions “Relatives' Involvement” and “Professionals' Skills and Behavior.” _Conclusions:_ The Family intervention for psychosis delivered in the GET UP PIANO trial reduced family burden of illness and improved emotional distress and satisfaction with services. These results should encourage to promote FIs on caregivers of first-episode psychosis patients. (shrink)

Entre Mead e Heidegger: a interioridade desdobrada e a formaçâo humana Resumo: O artigo visa aproximar a abordagem da psicologia social de Mead e a perspectiva fenomenológico-existencial de Martin Heidegger da noção de interioridade desdobrada. Tal aproximação permite sustentar que há uma radical e inseparável reciprocidade entre homem/mulher e mundo. A radicalidade de tal reciprocidade suplanta a dicotomia interioridade e exterioridade, reaproximando o corpo do tempo, lugar mesmo da abertura existencial humana. Apresenta-se a noção de “self” como processo e a (...) mente como resposta comportamental interativa com vistas a relacioná-la ao modo de ser-no-mundo. Também, uma breve incursão à psicologia de viés fenomenológico-existencial, buscando articular o interacionismo de Mead e a analítica existencial de Heidegger e suas implicações para o campo da formação humana.Palavras-chave: Self. Dasein. Interioridade desdobrada. Formação humana Between Mead and Heidegger: the unfolded interiority and the human formation: The article aims to approximate Mead's approach to social psychology and Martin Heidegger's phenomenological-existential perspective to the notion of unfolded interiority. Such an approach allows us to maintain that there is a radical and inseparable reciprocity between man / woman and the world. The radicality of such reciprocity supersedes the dichotomy interiority and exteriority, bringing the body of time closer together, the very place of human existential openness. The notion of “self” as a process and the mind as an interactive behavioral response is presented in order to relate it to the way of being in the world. Also, a brief foray into existential-phenomenological psychology, seeking to articulate Mead's interactionism and Heidegger's existential analytics and their implications for the field of human formationKeywords: Self. Dasein. Unfolded interiority. Human Formation. Entre Mead y Heidegger: la interioridad desarrollada y la formación humana Resumen: El artículo tiene como objetivo aproximar el enfoque de Mead a la psicología social y la perspectiva fenomenológica-existencial de Martin Heidegger a la noción desplegada de interioridad. Tal enfoque nos permite mantener que existe una reciprocidad radical e inseparable entre el hombre / mujer y el mundo. La radicalidad de tal reciprocidad suplanta la dicotomía de interioridad y exterioridad, devolviendo al cuerpo al tiempo, el lugar de la apertura existencial humana. La noción de "yo" se presenta como un proceso y la mente como una respuesta interactiva de comportamiento para relacionarlo con la forma de ser-en-el-mundo. Además, una breve incursión en la psicología del sesgo fenomenológico-existencial, buscando articular el interaccionismo de Mead y el análisis existencial de Heidegger y sus implicaciones para el campo de la formación humana.Palabras clave: auto. Dasein Interioridad desplegada. Formación humana Data de registro: 27/07/2020Data de aceite: 08/12/2020. (shrink)

The exceptional pandemic due to the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has obliged all Italians to stay at home. In the literature, there are evidences that traumatic global events, such as natural catastrophes and pandemic, have negative effects on the physical and psychological health of the population. We carried out a survey to analyze the physical and psychological conditions of Italians during the pandemic. Due to the severe limitations in moving during the phase one lockdown, the survey was administered by internet. (...) Results show that Italians followed the provisions established by the Italian government to avoid contamination, but 43% of them declared to have suffered from physical symptoms, in particular migraine, sleep disorders, persistent exhaustion, and difficulty of concentration. They have great fear to be contaminated or that relatives or friends can be contaminated, and they actively take actions to avoid contamination. Participants declared that they had suffered a lot of inconveniences due to restrictions in their movements, and that their life habits were strongly changed. They spent their time at home in different activities, but their psychological well-being was strongly impaired by the lockdown. The level of anxiety tripled, in relation to the prepandemic period, and 30% of males and 41% of females declared to have severe levels of depression. Participants with high levels of optimism and hopefulness show a stronger resilience against anxiety and depression. In addition, there is a negative correlation between anxiety and depression and the five factors of personality. These results show that psychological diseases must not be neglected, and that people in lockdown do need support for their psychological health, also with the help of internet and communication technologies. (shrink)