Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by emotional deficits and a failure to inhibit impulsive behavior and is often subdivided into “primary” and “secondary” psychopathic subtypes. The maladaptive behavior related to primary psychopathy is thought to reflect constitutional “fearlessness,” while the problematic behavior related to secondary psychopathy is motivated by other factors. The fearlessness observed in psychopathy has often been interpreted as reflecting a fundamental deficit in amygdala function, and previous studies have provided support for a low-fear model of psychopathy. (...) However, many of these studies fail to use appropriate screening procedures, use liberal inclusion criteria, or have used unconventional approaches to assay amygdala function. We measured brain activity with BOLD imaging in primary and secondary psychopaths and non-psychopathic control subjects during Pavlovian fear conditioning. In contrast to the low-fear model, we observed normal fear expression in primary psychopaths. Psychopaths also displayed greater differential BOLD activity in the amygdala relative to matched controls. Inverse patterns of activity were observed in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for primary versus secondary psychopaths. Primary psychopaths exhibited a pattern of activity in the dorsal and ventral ACC consistent with enhanced fear expression, while secondary psychopaths exhibited a pattern of activity in these regions consistent with fear inhibition. These results contradict the low-fear model of psychopathy and suggest that the low fear observed for psychopaths in previous studies may be specific to secondary psychopaths. (shrink)

The use of biomarkers holds great promise for the development of new therapeutics and the acceleration of clinical research. However, biomarkers must be validated — a complex and costly endeavor. Importantly, biomarker validation is meaningfully shaped by economic and policy-driven incentives.

Arising out of the author's lifetime fascination with the links between the formal language of mathematical models and natural language, this short book comprises five essays investigating both the economics of language and the language of economics. Ariel Rubinstein touches the structure imposed on binary relations in daily language, the evolutionary development of the meaning of words, game-theoretical considerations of pragmatics, the language of economic agents and the rhetoric of game theory. These short essays are full of challenging ideas for (...) social scientists that should help to encourage a fundamental rethinking of many of the underlying assumptions in economic theory and game theory. As a postscript two economists, Tilman Borgers and Bart Lipman, and a logician, Johan van Benthem offer comments. (shrink)

'Et si les livres de sciences humaines avaient leur esthétique propre? Et si les idées des savants étaient tout simplement belles?' Établissant un pont entre art et savoir, performance artistique et performance intellectuelle, Ariel Colonomos trace les contours d'une esthétique de la connaissance qui renouvelle les critères distinctifs du beau. Il balaie ainsi deux idées fausses : l'esthétique relèverait de préoccupations futiles et la beauté compromettrait la qualité du savoir. Chaque auteur et chaque discipline ont une voix, une plume, et (...) la beauté de la forme repose notamment sur la force d'une intrigue, la capacité d'un texte ou d'un discours à surprendre son public. Si la beauté est clarté, elle a aussi une part de mystère. Sur cette ligne de crête, les théories des sciences humaines font autant réfléchir que rêver. Dans la mesure où elle permet aux idées de se diffuser et d'être reconnues, l'esthétique du savoir prend une valeur communicationnelle et une portée universelle. Pour le démontrer, Ariel Colonomos entreprend un voyage ludique, mais toujours savant, à travers différents univers et disciplines - sciences, histoire, phénoménologie, anthropologie, sociologie, philosophie, éthique... -, de l'Antiquité à nos jours"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The paper is a discussion of the interpretation of game theory. Game theory is viewed as an abstract inquiry into the concepts used in social reasoning when dealing with situations of conflict and not as an attempt to predict behavior. The first half of the paper..

Both traditional accounts of hope and some of their recent critics analyze hope exclusively in terms of attitudes that a hoper bears towards a hoped-for prospect, such as desire and probability assignment. I argue that all of these accounts misidentify cases of despair as cases of hope, and so misconstrue the nature of hope. I show that a more satisfactory view is arrived at by noticing that in addition to the aforementioned attitudes, hope involves a characteristic attitude towards an external (...) factor, on whose operation the hoper takes the prospect's realization to depend causally. (shrink)

Our knowledge about the world is often expressed by generic sentences, yet their meanings are far from clear. This book provides answers to central problems concerning generics: what do they mean? Which factors affect their interpretation? How can one reason with generics? Cohen proposes that the meanings of generics are probability judgments, and shows how this view accounts for many of their puzzling properties, including lawlikeness. Generics are evaluated with respect to alternatives. Cohen argues that alternatives are induced by the (...) kind as well as by the predicated property, and thus provides a uniform account of the varied interpretations of generics. He studies the formal properties of alternatives and provides a compositional account of their derivation by focus and presupposition. Cohen uses his semantics of generics to provide a formal characterization of adequate default reasoning, and proves some desirable results of this formalism. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system. The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system which I call ‘architectural’. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual learning that provides empirical evidence that (...) cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

RESUMO Busco traçar uma articulação teórica em torno de duas obras póstumas de Mikhail Bakhtin e Yuri Lotman, expoentes chave para pensar a cultura sob uma perspectiva semiótica. Nessas produções tardias, os dois pensadores expõem um interesse compartilhado em refletir como o medo se materializa, podendo-se ler em textos concretos que buscam explicar os fenômenos que estão ocorrendo no horizonte cultural. Nesse sentido, Lotman e Bakhtin estão focados em investigar a aparência regular de um conjunto de princípios e motivos que (...) seriam sistematicamente atualizados na relação entre laços sociais e medo. Meu objetivo vai além do descritivo para delinear aparatos críticos sobre o medo na perspectiva semiótica, à luz da interpretação desses artigos que mantêm o poder heurístico e fornecem um instrumento para iniciar uma reflexão sobre esse modo cultural de sentimento.ABSTRACT I seek to draw a theoretical articulation around two posthumous works by Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman, key exponents to think about culture from a semiotic perspective. In these late productions, both thinkers expose a shared interest in reflecting how fear materializes, being able to be read in concrete texts that seek to account for the phenomena that are occurring on the cultural horizon. In this sense, Lotman and Bakhtin focus on investigating the regular appearance of a set of principles and motives that would be systematically updated in the relationship between social ties and fear. My purpose is not only to describe, but also to outline a critical apparatus about fear from a semiotic perspective, in light of the interpretation of these articles that keep heuristic power and provide an instrument to initiate a reflection on this cultural mode of feeling.RESUMEN Busco trazar una articulación teórica en torno a dos trabajos póstumos de Mikhail Bakhtin y Yuri Lotman, exponentes clave para pensar la cultura desde una perspectiva semiótica. En estas producciones tardías, ambos pensadores exponen un interés compartido por reflexionar de qué manera el miedo se materializa, pudiendo leerse en textos concretos que buscan dar cuenta de los fenómenos que van produciéndose en el horizonte cultural. En tal sentido, Lotman y Bakhtin se abocan a indagar sobre la aparición regular de un conjunto de principios y motivos que se actualizarían, sistemáticamente, en la relación entre lazo social y miedo. Mi propósito irá más allá de lo descriptivo para esbozar aparato crítico sobre el miedo en perspectiva semiótica, a la luz de la interpretación de estos artículos que guardan potencia heurística y proveen de un instrumental para iniciar una reflexión sobre este modo cultural del sentir. (shrink)

about Smith, who usually emerges as a loveable if eccentric bachelor, trying—not always It would be no exaggeration to state that succeeding—to do the proper thing.

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t! -/- There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain (...) property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics. -/- An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects. -/- What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics. -/- Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others. -/- Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze? (shrink)

This article focuses on human dignity as a moral idea and, in particular, on a single but fundamental question: what conception of human dignity, if any, can generate an egalitarian duty to respect all persons? After surveying two mainstream and two alternative conceptions, the article suggests that explaining how human dignity generates an egalitarian duty of respect may be more difficult than has been appreciated.

El artículo revisa -tomando como referencia el episodio de un bloqueo de vías en Argentina durante siete días con sus noches, por parte de los habitantes de las localidades de Cutralco y Plaza Huincul, Argentina, con motivo de la privatización de YPF- el debate sobre la desobediencia civil, que es usualmente entendida como una desobediencia por la fuerza al orden constitucional. El autor desarrolla los componentes que la desobediencia civil tiene de específico, a saber: es disruptiva, pacífica, autónoma y recursiva; (...) esto último porque debe vincularse internamente con el mismo tipo de reglas que le reclama al sistema. Ello, dice, la convierte en una práctica excepcional, pero ello no implica que se incurra en una idealización. Plantea luego que, en lugar de encapsular a la desobediencia civil dentro de los moldes del liberalismo, buscando el menor costo posible para el Estado de derecho, y convertirla en inofensiva para que sea legítima, habría que redefinirla a partir de los ideales procedimentales que presuponemos en cualquier práctica social. (shrink)

In strategic situations, being wealthy andpowerful is consid eredto be advantageous. However, imagine a world where being powerful means being able to seize control of the assets heldandaccumulatedby others. Then, being wealthy might attract the attention of those who are powerful andbe detrimental to one’s wealth. So is being powerful, as those who seize control of the wealth of others will in turn become a desirable target for those who are in a position to seize their acquired wealth. In this (...) short paper, we identify a class of situations where one agent is stronger than another andyet ends up being poorer. (shrink)

This book presents Ariel Rubinstein's lecture notes for the first part of his well-known graduate course in microeconomics.

In this paper, we present a way to translate the metainferences of a mixed metainferential system into formulae of an extended-language system, called its associated σ-system. To do this, the σ-system will contain new operators (one for each standard), called the σ operators, which represent the notions of "belonging to a (given) standard". We first prove, in a model-theoretic way, that these translations preserve (in)validity. That is, that a metainference is valid in the base system if and only if its (...) translation is a tautology of its corresponding σ-system. We then use these results to obtain other key advantages. Most interestingly, we provide a recipe for building unlabeled sequent calculi for σ-systems. We then exemplify this with a σ-system useful for logics of the ST family, and prove soundness and completeness for it, which indirectly gives us a calculus for the metainferences of all those mixed systems. Finally, we respond to some possible objections and show how our σ-framework can shed light on the “obeying” discussion within mixed metainferential contexts. (shrink)

The aim of this article is twofold: first, to identify and address three central divisions in the field of authentic education that introduce ambiguity and at times inconsistencies within the field of authentic education. These divisions concern a) the relationship between autonomy and authenticity; b) the division between the two basic attitudes towards ‘care’ in the authenticity literature, and; c) the well-worn division between objective and subjective realms of knowledge and identity construction. Addressing these divisions through Charles Taylor's distinction between (...) active and passive aspects of authenticity, I believe, will lead to a better understanding of the main issues involved in conceptualising and applying authenticity-based education. Second, to present what I call The Postconventional Authentic Relation-to-Self as a basis for overcoming and reconciling the above divisions. I shall conclude by providing some examples of the way the perspective envisioned by PARTS can be applied to educational practices. (shrink)

Introduction Introducing Accessibility theory 0.1 On the role of context Utterances cannot be processed and interpreted on their own. ...

Teniendo como punto de partida la contraposición entre dos principales definiciones de lo económico, una formal y otra material o sustantiva, y en un contexto de nuevos cercamientos sobre la naturaleza y la cultura, se retoman las conceptualizaciones tradicionales de la propiedad privada para confrontarlas con la tendencia contemporánea hacia una creación artificial de escasez en la producción inmaterial. Desde aquí, se propone discutir las nociones tradicionales sobre la propiedad privada y su relación con la definición de lo económico, con (...) el objetivo de proveer elementos conceptuales que puedan contribuir a un análisis crítico de la propiedad en tanto que institución social. (shrink)

We model differences among agents in their ability to recognize temporal patterns of prices. Using the concept of DeBruijn sequences in two dynamic models of markets, we demonstrate the existence of equilibria in which prices fluctuate in a pattern that is independent of the fundamentals and that can be recognized only by the more competent agents. (JEL: C7, D4.

Let me start with what you should not do. Do not attend too many seminars in your own field. Otherwise you may simply end up adding a comment to the existing literature, which is mostly made up of comments on previous comments which were themselves only marginal comments. If you want a good idea, look at the world around you or take courses in other disciplines. Some of the papers in my own dissertation (like my 1979 paper on a principal-agent (...) problem with moral hazard and an infinite horizon) were thought of while daydreaming in some law courses I took. (shrink)

What ends should designers pursue? To what extent should they care about the societal and environmental impact of their work? And why should they care at all? Given the key influence design has on the way people live their lives, designing is fraught with ethical issues. Yet, unlike education or nursing, it lacks widespread professional principles for addressing these issues. -/- Rooted in a communitarian view of design practice, this lively and accessible book examines design through the lens of professions, (...) offering a critical vision that enables practitioners, academics and students of design in all disciplines to reflect on the practice’s overarching purposes. Considering how these are connected to others' flourishing and moulded by community interactions, "The Goods of Design" argues for a practice-based approach to cultivate professional ethics; it provides a normative direction that can meaningfully guide professional design activity, both individually and collectively. The volume also looks into the implications work has for the designer's self-growth as a person, offering ways to discover and navigate the complex tensions between personal and professional life. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the issue of the alleged circularity in the determination of homologies within cladistic analysis. More specifically, I focus on the claims made by the proponents of the dynamic homology approach, regarding the distinction (sometimes made in the literature) between primary and secondary homology. This distinction is sometimes invoked to dissolve the circularity issue, by upholding that characters in a cladistic data matrix have to be only primarily homologous, and thus can be determined independently of phylogenetic (...) hypotheses, by using the classical Owenian criteria (for morphological characters) or via multiple sequence alignment (for sequence data). However, since in the dynamic approach, sequence data can be analyzed without being pre-aligned, proponents have claimed that the distinction between primary and secondary homology has no place within cladistics. I will argue that this is not the case, since cladistic practice within the dynamic framework does presuppose primary homology statements at a higher level. (shrink)

Character education is an increasingly discussed topic drawing upon virtue ethics as a moral theory. Scholars have predominantly understood educating character as a process that entails the formation of certain distinct character traits or functions through practice and habituation. However, these approaches present some problems. This paper explores the educational implications of various accounts focusing on the relationship between _phronesis_ and other virtues. In particular, our focus will be on those that Miller ( 2023 ) has classified as Standard Model (...) and Eliminativist Model of practical wisdom. Starting from these accounts, we will outline three specific problems that the latter models appear to generate at a theoretical level in character education. Finally, we will address the task of demonstrating why the monist account of moral virtue recently proposed by the Aretai group—which conceives being virtuous in possessing _phronesis_ understood as ethical expertise—might offer a refined response to these challenges. In addition, we will illustrate three educational pathways that can emerge from the same model. (shrink)

The adequacy of Elliott Sober’s analogy between classical mechanics and evolutionary theory—according to which both theories explain via a zero-force law and a set of forces that alter the zero-force state—has been criticized from various points of view. I focus here on McShea and Brandon’s claim that drift shouldn’t be considered a force because it is not directional. I argue that there are a number of different theses that could be meant by this, and show that one of those theses—the (...) idea that drift cannot bias populations to be taken somewhere in the evolutionary space from one generation to the next—is actually false. Not only has this thesis been implicitly assumed in the discussion of the force analogy thus far, but it is also commonly found in a wider range of philosophical and biological texts. I argue that correcting this view, and the usual images associated with it, will thereby bring heuristic benefits that impact the force analogy discussion, but that also go beyond it. (shrink)

Generics and frequency statements are puzzling phenomena: they are lawlike, yet contingent. They may be true even in the absence of any supporting instances, and extending the size of their domain does not change their truth conditions. Generics and frequency statements are parametric on time, but not on possible worlds; they cannot be applied to temporary generalizations, and yet are contingent. These constructions require a regular distribution of events along the time axis. Truth judgments of generics vary considerably across speakers, (...) whereas truth judgments of frequency statements are much more uniform. A generic may be false even if the vast majority of individuals in its domain satisfy the predicated property, whereas a frequency statement using, e.g., usually would be true. This paper argues that all these seemingly unrelated puzzles have a single underlying cause: generics and frequency statements express probability judgments, and these, in turn, are interpreted as statements of hypothetical relative frequency. (shrink)

p. cm. — (Zeuthen lecture book series) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-262-18187-8 (hardcover : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-262-68100-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Decision-making. 2. Economic man. 3. Game theory. 4. Rational expectations (Economic theory) I. Title. II. Series.

The propensity account of fitness intends to solve the classical tautologicity issue by identifying fitness with a disposition, the ability to survive and reproduce. As proponents recognized early on, this account requires operational independence from actual reproductive success to avoid circularity and vacuousness charges. They suggested that operational independence is achieved by measuring fitness values through optimality models. Our goal in this article is to develop this suggestion. We show that one plausible procedure by which these independent operationalizations could be (...) thought to take place, and which is in accordance with what is said in the optimality literature, is unsound. We provide two independent lines of reasoning to show this. We then provide a sketch of a more adequate account of the role of optimality models in evolutionary contexts and draw some consequences. (shrink)

The notion of causation that Mary Shepherd develops in her 1824 An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (ERCE) has a number of surprising features that have only recently begun to be studied by scholars. This relation is synchronic, rather than diachronic (ERCE pp. 49–50); it always involves a ‘mixture’ of pre-existing objects (ERCE pp. 46–7); and the effect must be ‘a new nature, capable of exhibiting qualities varying from those of either of the objects unconjoined’ (ERCE p. (...) 63). In this essay, I argue for an emergentist interpretation of Shepherd’s causal theory. On the reading I defend, all effects have qualities that metaphysically emerge from the complex interactions of their constituents. This reading explains the structure of Shepherd’s causal relation and clarifies the central aims of her philosophical project. In response to the problems raised by the science of her time, Shepherd developed a theory of emergence and published it during the period when the concept was first being shaped and adopted by prominent philosophers. Her work thus merits a place in the history of emergentist ideas. (shrink)

In standard economic models, two basic assumptions are made: the first, that actors are rational, and the second, that actors’ preferences are a given and exogenously determined. Behavioral economics — followed by behavioral law and economics — has questioned the first assumption. This Article challenges the second one, arguing that in many instances, social welfare should be enhanced not by maximizing satisfaction of existing preferences but by changing the preferences themselves. The Article identifies seven categories of cases where the traditional (...) objections to intentional preference change by the state and the law lose force and argues that in these cases, such a change warrants serious consideration. It then proposes four different modes of intervention in people’s preferences, varying in intensity, on the one hand, and in the identity of their addressees, on the other, and explains the relative advantages and disadvantages of each form of intervention. (shrink)

In this paper, the term ‘debate’ refers to a situation in which two parties disagree over some issue and each of them tries to persuade a third party, the listener, to adopt his position by raising arguments in his favor. We are interested in the logic behind the relative strength of the arguments and counterarguments; we therefore limit our discussion to debates in which one side is asked to argue first, with the other party having the right to respond before (...) the listener makes up his mind. (shrink)

The paper presents a simple game-theoretic model in which players decide on search procedures for a prize located in one of a set of labeled boxes. The prize is awarded to the player who finds it first. A player can decide on the number of (costly) search units he employs and on the order in which he conducts the search. It is shown that in equilibrium, the players employ an equal number of search units and conduct a completely random search. (...) The paper demonstrates that the search procedure is intrinsically inefficient. Journal of Economic Literature Classification.. (shrink)

How should we think about apparent conflicts of moral rights? I defend a non-balancing and holistic specification model: non-balancing because moral rights have absolute deontic stringency regardless of any balance of independent values; holistic because the content of moral rights is limited only by that of other moral rights. Holistic Specification, as I call the model, offers a principled, non-consequentialist explanation of exceptions to moral rights. Moreover, Holistic Specification explains why moral rights matter to practical thought while rendering remedial duties (...) less mysterious. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article argues that received accounts of the concept of human dignity face more difficulties than has been appreciated, when explaining the connection between human dignity and the duty of respect that dignity is supposed to generate. It also argues that a novel, relational, account has the adequate structure to explain such connection.

Neuroeconomics is examined critically using data on the response times of subjects who were asked to express their preferences in the context of the Allais Paradox. Different patterns of choice are found among the fast and slow responders. This suggests that we try to identify types of economic agents by the time they take to make their choices. Nevertheless, it is argued that it is far from clear if and how neuroeconomics will change economics.

While opinions on the semantic analysis of generics vary widely, most scholars agree that generics have a quasi-universal flavor. However, there are cases where generics receive what appears to be an existentialinterpretation. For example, B's response is true, even though only theplatypus and the echidna lay eggs: (1) A: Birds lay eggs. B: Mammals lay eggs too. In this paper I propose a uniform account of the semantics of generics,which accounts for their quasi-existential readings as well as for their more (...) familiar quasi-universal ones. Generics are focus-sensitiveoperators: their domain is restricted by a set of alternatives, which may be provided by focus. I claim that, unlike otherfocus-sensitive operators, generics may, but do not have to, associate with focus. When alternatives are introduced, either by focus or by other means, generics get their usual quasi-universal readings. But when no alternatives are introduced, quasi-existential readings result.I argue that generics, unlike adverbs of quantification, do not introduce tripartite structures directly, but are initially interpreted as cases ofdirect kind predication. Only when this interpretation fails to make sense, the phonologically null generic quantifier is derived, and tripartite structures result. This two-level interpretation has the effect that while adverbs of quantification require focus to determine which elements go to the restrictor and which to the nuclear scope, and hence must associate with focus, generics do not, and hence may fail to associate with focus, resulting in quasi-existential readings. (shrink)

Forget the technology, and ask instead about the sampler’s gesture. For a long time, like Mozart’s « Don Giovanni », all citation supposed an instrument, an orchestra. Then, with the first recording technology, came the possibility of using tape recorders or analog turntables. But ultimately, the gesture is the same: overtly drawing upon a work .for its creation. In itself, the act of pillaging is not condemnable. Better, the détournement of advertising and of those artists like Michael Jackson who flood (...) our ears are indispensable acts of resistance and humour. Ariel Kyrou - the author of Techno Rebelle, Un Siècle de musiques électroniques , front which this « elegy to pillage » conies - prefers a scathing recycling to the recitals of the market, prefers the « loan » that one goes way beyond by rage and talent to the application of painless recipes for success. (shrink)