In this article I develop a big picture of the evolution of human cooperation, and contrast it to an alternative based on group selection. The crucial claim is that hominin history has seen two major transitions in cooperation, and hence poses two deep puzzles about the origins and stability of cooperation. The first is the transition from great ape social lives to the lives of Pleistocene cooperative foragers; the second is the stability of the social contract through the early Holocene (...) transition to complex hierarchical societies. The first of these transitions is driven, at least initially, by individual advantage: cooperation paid off for individual foragers, initially through mutualist interaction, then through reciprocation. This argument leads to a reanalysis of the role of violence and the nature of the freeriding threat to cooperation. But the conditions that select for cooperative individuals in the Pleistocene were eroded in the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. So we need an alternative account of the survival, and indeed the expansion, of cooperation in the Holocene. Group selection driven by intercommunal conflict really may well be central to this second transition. (shrink)

Responsible leadership is rare. It is not that most leaders are irresponsible, but responsibility in leadership is frequently defined so that an important connotation of responsible leadership is ignored. This article equates responsible leadership with virtuousness. Using this connotation implies that responsible leadership is based on three assumptions—eudaemonism, inherent value, and amplification. Secondarily, this connotation produces two important outcomes—a fixed point for coping with change, and benefits for constituencies who may never be affected otherwise. The meaning and advantages of responsible (...) leadership as virtuous leadership are discussed. (shrink)

The principle that each person is his own property occupies an almost axiomatic status in right-wing liberal thought as well as in some egalitarian theories. I reject any, full or partial, notion of property with respect to oneself by showing that any appeal and any justifiability which may be associated with self-ownership can at most serve to ground rights which are demonstrably non-property rights. As a contrast to self ownership, I introduce the non-proprietarian notion of Original Freedom. I compare the (...) two with respect to the control, income, and transfer aspects of ownership and suggest that Original Freedom is the more intuitively acceptable. (shrink)

Using a national survey of US consumers, this study demonstrates the positive effects of corporate social responsibility communication factors on consumers’ CSR knowledge, trust, and perceptions of corporate reputation. The study also examines the role of a stakeholder-specific factor of consumer–company identification in the process of CSR communication. The findings suggest that the positive effects of CSR informativeness are enduring and independent of consumers’ identification levels with a company, whereas the positive consequences of the personal relevance, transparency, and factual tone (...) of CSR communication intensify as the identification levels increase. Although CSR communication in which a self-promotional tone is adopted has a negative relationship with consumer trust and corporate reputation, such negative effects are not evident among consumers with very high identification levels with a company. Such CSR communication in fact improves consumers’ CSR knowledge and, in turn, has a positive effect on corporate reputation. (shrink)

Within paleoanthropology, the origin of behavioral modernity is a famous problem. Very large-brained hominins have lived for around half a million years, yet social lives resembling those known from the ethnographic record appeared perhaps 100,000 years ago. Why did it take 400,000 years for humans to start acting like humans? In this article, I argue that part of the solution is a transition in the economic foundations of cooperation from a relatively undemanding form, to one that imposed much more stress (...) on human motivational and cognitive mechanisms. The rich normative, ceremonial, and ideological lives of humans are a response to this economic revolution in forager lives; from one depending on immediate return mutualism to one depending on delayed and third-party reciprocation. (shrink)

Given the widening gap between the number of individuals on transplant waiting lists and the availability of donated organs, as well as the recent plateau in donations based on neurological criteria, there has been a growing interest in expanding donation after circulatory determination of death. While the prevalence of this form of organ donation continues to increase, many thorny ethical issues remain, often creating moral distress in both clinicians and families. In this article, we address one of these issues, namely, (...) the challenges surrounding patient and surrogate informed consent for donation after circulatory determination of death. First we discuss several general concerns regarding consent related to this form of organ donation, and then we address additional issues that are unique to three different patient categories: adult patients with medical decision-making capacity or potential capacity, adult patients who lack capacity, and pediatric patients. (shrink)

This study reports the results of a study of Swedish psychiatrists’ responses to moral statements related to decision making in the psychiatric context. Use was made of the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire, a modified instrument previously constructed from a theory of moral sensitivity. This Likert-type scale contains 30 items constructed from the following categories: interpersonal orientation, structuring moral meaning, benevolence, modifying autonomy, experiencing moral conflict, and trust in medical knowledge and principles of care. The purpose was to identify possible differences in (...) responses rather than to evaluate right or wrong responses. The analysis is based on 754 completed questionnaires. The results of the study showed some significant differences in the item and category levels; for example, male psychiatrists experienced more conflicts than female psychiatrists and agreed to a greater extent that medical knowledge was most important in deciding what was best for the patient. The results also showed that more female than male psychiatrists thought that the relationship with the patient was most important in psychiatric practice. (shrink)

In this paper I present a moral account of the legal notion of deceptive advertising. I argue that no harmful consequences to the consumer need follow from a deceptive advertisement as such, and I suggest instead that one should focus on the consequences of permitting the practise of deceptive advertising on society as a whole. After a brief account of deceptive advertising, I move to discuss the role of the reasonable person standard in its definition. One interpretation of this standard (...) is empirical, aiming to objectify the quality of misleadingness in the advertisement. I offer an alternative normative interpretation which aims to draw the line between the advertiser's responsibility and that of the consumer, between misleading and miscomprehension. I then examine and reject several possible moral grounds for condemning and prohibiting deceptive advertising. These include: harm, in the sense of welfare, to the misled consumer; harm to competitors; and a violation or a reduction of the consumer's autonomy. Finally, I explain how the effect of the practise of deceptive advertising on society as a whole should inform our normative line-drawing between misleading and miscomprehension, and how it provides the basis for the moral evaluation of deceptive advertising. (shrink)

Change is inevitable, and increasingly rapid and continuous in healthcare as organizations strive to adapt, improve and innovate. Organizational change challenges healthcare providers because it restructures how and when patient care delivery is provided, changing ways in which nurses must carry out their work. The aim of this doctoral study was to explore frontline nurses’ experiences of living with rapid and continuous organizational change. A critical hermeneutic approach was utilized. Participants described feeling voiceless, powerless and apolitical amidst rapid and continuous (...) organizational changes which fuelled apathy, cynicism and disengagement from the organization. However, critical analysis of the data showed that nurses actively engaged with power, voice and politics through resistant and transgressive behaviours in micro‐ethical moments of practice. There is a need to reconceptualize the concepts of voice, power and politics in nursing as there is dissonance between nurses’ beliefs about these concepts and what they are enacting in practice. Recognizing their enactment of power, voice and political agency at the micro‐level may empower nurses. Empowerment would mitigate the high levels of reports of powerlessness experienced in practice during organizational changes. (shrink)

This paper examines the iconic conception of aesthetic education in the work of Friedrich Schiller, with the aim of elucidating Schiller’s unique innovation of this notion in understanding i) the relationship between aesthetic and ethical value and ii) the transformative possibilities within a collective, social dimension of aesthetic experience. The paper provides an overview of the Kantian origins of Schiller’s aesthetic programme (Section 1). It then considers Schiller’s critique of the perceived failings of the Kantian and Enlightenment republican models of (...) ethical value and political emancipation (Section 2) before turning to his positive alternative aesthetic programme (Section 3). The paper concludes (Section 4) with some evaluation and reflection on Schiller’s original contributions. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of extending Locke’s theory with respect to tangible property so that it might offer a feasible theoretical basis for intellectual property too. The main conclusion is that such an attempt must fail. Locke’s theory comes in three parts: a general justification of property which serves to explain why assets ought to be under the exclusive control of individuals; a positive method of private appropriation whereby an individual acquires a prima facie exclusive claim to previously commonly (...) held natural resources; and third, a negative requirement that other individuals’ crucial interests are not harmed by such an appropriation. For each of these, the difficulties involved in applying that part of the theory to the sphere of ideas are discussed, and a central aspect of intellectual property that raises the problems of application is highlighted. (shrink)

The acquisition of English noun and verb morphology is modeled using a single-system connectionist network. The network is trained to produce the plurals and past tense forms of a large corpus of monosyllabic English nouns and verbs. The developmental trajectory of network performance is analyzed in detail and is shown to mimic a number of important features of the acquisition of English noun and verb morphology in young children. These include an initial error-free period of performance on both nouns and (...) verbs followed by a period of intermittent over-regularization of irregular nouns and verbs. Errors in the model show evidence of phonological conditioning and frequency effects. Furthermore, the network demonstrates a strong tendency to regularize denominal verbs and deverbal nouns and masters the principles of voicing assimilation. Despite their incorporation into a single-system network, nouns and verbs exhibit some important differences in their profiles of acquisition. Most importantly, noun inflections are acquired earlier than verb inflections. The simulations generate several empirical predictions that can be used to evaluate further the suitability of this type of cognitive architecture in the domain of inflectional morphology. (shrink)

Can Rawls’s theory provide a framework for assessing obligations to future generations? Extending the veil of ignorance so that participants in the original position do not know to which generation they belong appears to fail in this endeavour. Earlier generations cannot improve their situation by “cooperating” with later generations. Such circumstances, lacking mutuality, leave no room for an agreement or contract. Nevertheless, the original position can be reconstructed so as to model relations of mutuality between generations even if these are (...) absent from the real world. This chapter assesses earlier attempts to do this and provides a rationale for viewing the just savings principle as a clause in the full formulation of the difference principle. (shrink)

Working from a "capitalist" theory of exploitation, based on a neo-classical account of economic value, I argue that guest workers are exploited. It may be objected, however, that since they are not citizens, any inequality that stems from their status as non-citizens is morally unobjectionable. Although host countries are under no moral obligation to admit guest workers as citizens, there are independent reasons that call for the extension of economic rights – the freedom of occupation in particular – to guestworkers. (...) Since the cause of unequal exchange rests in the fact that guest workers are deprived of these rights, rather than in their exclusion from citizenship per se, I conclude that they are exploited even if their exclusion from citizenship may be justified. (shrink)

In men and women sexual arousal culminates in orgasm, with female orgasm solely from sexual intercourse often regarded as a unique feature of human sexuality. However, orgasm from sexual intercourse occurs more reliably in men than in women, likely reflecting the different types of physical stimulation men and women require for orgasm. In men, orgasms are under strong selective pressure as orgasms are coupled with ejaculation and thus contribute to male reproductive success. By contrast, women's orgasms in intercourse are highly (...) variable and are under little selective pressure as they are not a reproductive necessity. The proximal mechanisms producing variability in women's orgasms are little understood. In 1924 Marie Bonaparte proposed that a shorter distance between a woman's clitoris and her urethral meatus (CUMD) increased her likelihood of experiencing orgasm in intercourse. She based this on her published data that were never statistically analyzed. In 1940 Landis and colleagues published similar data suggesting the same relationship, but these data too were never fully analyzed. We analyzed raw data from these two studies and found that both demonstrate a strong inverse relationship between CUMD and orgasm during intercourse. Unresolved is whether this increased likelihood of orgasm with shorter CUMD reflects increased penile–clitoral contact during sexual intercourse or increased penile stimulation of internal aspects of the clitoris. CUMD likely reflects prenatal androgen exposure, with higher androgen levels producing larger distances. Thus these results suggest that women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse. . (shrink)

Depression experienced by older adults is proving an increasing global health burden, with rates generally 7% and as high as 27% in the USA. This is likely to significantly increase in coming years as the number and proportion of older adults in the population rises all around the world. Therefore, it is imperative that the effectiveness of approaches to the prevention and treatment of depression are understood. Creative arts interventions, including art, dance movement, drama and music modalities, are utilised internationally (...) to target depression and depressive symptoms in older adults. This includes interventions led by trained arts therapists as well as other health and arts professionals. However, to date there has not been a systematic review that reports effects and examines the processes (why) and mechanisms (how) of creative arts interventions are used to address depression in this older age group. This systematic review of studies on creative arts interventions for older adults experiencing depression examined: outcomes of four creative arts modalities (art, dance movement, drama, and music); with particular attention paid to processes documented as contributing to change in each modality; and mechanisms considered to result from these processes. Our analysis of 75 articles (17 art, 13 dance, 4 drama and 41 music) indicates mostly significant quantitative or positive qualitative findings, particularly for interventions led by creative arts therapists. Mechanisms of change gleaned from the studies that were common across modalities include physical (e.g. increased muscle strength; neurochemical effects, such as endorphin release), intra-personal (e.g. enhanced self-concept, strengthened agency and mastery; processing and communication of emotions), cultural (e.g. creative expression, aesthetic pleasure), cognitive (e.g. stimulation of memory) and social (e.g. increased social skills and connection), that were all considered to contribute to reduced depression and symptoms. Recommendations for future research include a stronger focus on testing of processes and mechanisms. (shrink)

The orthodoxy on the concept of ownership is given by Honoré's list of incidents. The idea this portrays is as ownership as a very flexible concept. The main purpose of this paper is to argue that the concept of property has much more integrity than the notion of a bundle of incidents may suggest. The Libertarian Challenge claims that redistributive theories of Justice, in so far as they impose involuntary taxes, are inconsistent with property rights, and are therefore unjustifiable. One (...) response to the libertarian challenge is to present alternative conceptions of ownership that are based on less than the complete list of incidents. These conceptions, we are told, avoid the inconsistency inherent in redistributive taxation by rejecting the incidents that are the source of the inconsistency, while retaining the moral appeal by leaving in place the core incidents and thus remaining faithful to what is primarily justifiable in property rights. Such an approach has been taken by several writers (notably, Waldron, Christman, and Fried). These different attempts to present a "truncated", "bifurcated", or "purist" concept of property invariably fail. Taxation must be an infringement of property. The upshot of this is that a justification of redistributive taxation requires a restriction of property or abandoning it altogether rather than redefining it. (shrink)

: While it is well known that Zhuangzi uses metaphor extensively, there is much less appreciation of the role that it plays in his thought—a topic that is investigated in this essay. At the same time, this investigation is closely concerned with questions about the nature of metaphor. Comparisons are made between a central metaphorical structure in the Zhuangzi on the one hand and contemporary views of the nature of metaphor by Donald Davidson and by Lakoff and Johnson on the (...) other. It is hoped that these comparisons will help to illuminate the central metaphorical structure and its role in the philosophy of the Zhuangzi. (shrink)

Is 'development' a concept that properly belongs to mind and morality and, if it does, what account can we give of moral development now that Piagetian and Kohlbergian models are increasingly being abandoned in developmental psychology? In addressing this central issue, it is hoped that the paper will contribute to the quest for a new integrated model of moral functioning, called for in the September 2008 Special Issue of the Journal of Moral Education (37[3]). Our paper argues that the notion (...) of moral development is fully justified, though it does not occur via invariant stages. Rather, each child is an emergent self-organising organism in which development is highly variable, dynamic and often non-linear. By viewing each child as a self-organising being and adopting the notion that moral development is dynamic and emergent from the predilection to value, the paper points towards a new account of moral development that opens up new avenues for educational research and moral education in schools. (shrink)

Libertarianism attempts to establish a set of property rights as a complete political morality, its argument proceeding from liberty tout court, as the unique foundational aspect of well being that grounds rights. In this book, Attas presents a sympathetic reconstruction of the libertarian argument and then brings to bear a critical evaluation leading to an ultimate rejection of libertarianism. Exposing the limitations of libertarianism and disclosing its errors, Attas argues that the rights which libertarians adopt with respect to persons, natural (...) resources and products are indefensible given what liberty must be. (shrink)

Medicine at the Crossroads is a collection of essays based a column originally published in the Waco-Tribune Herald by renowned cardiologist Dr. Michael Attas of Baylor University. It touches on three perspectives - the physician, the patient, and the healthcare system - and addresses some of the most pressing questions in medicine today.

When viewed as a question of distributive justice the evaluation of workfare typically reflects exclusively on the distribution of income: do the physically capable have a justified claim for state support, or is it fair to demand from those who do work to subsidise this support? Rarely is workfare appraised in terms of how it affects other parties such as employers or other workers, and on the structural effects the pattern of incentives it generates brings about, or as an issue (...) of distributive justice related to a more extensive range of objects of distribution such as access to pleasing jobs. -/- We propose to evaluate workfare by looking at its effects more broadly: (1) we discuss and dismiss on empirical grounds the two most common arguments in favour of workfare, namely that workfare develops self-reliance among participants and it is more economical in the use of altruism among taxpayers. (2) We suggest that workfare focuses on work as a burden and as a means to income, ignoring other beneficial aspects that are conducive to the worker’s self expression. These other benefits are distributed unevenly between two main groups: the privileged well off and the disadvantaged. (3) we argue that workfare functions as a mechanism to preserve these privileges to one class of workers at the expense of another. Or, to put it the other way, the payment of unconditional welfare to the long term unemployed might be justified as one method of mitigating unjustified privileges. (shrink)

According to the negative principle of appropriation a person can acquire an unowned resource if doing so respects a certain condition (the Lockean proviso). Contrary to some views, a proviso of this sort is not incompatible with libertarianism. Moreover, no unilateral powers of acquisition can fail to consider the impact on the interests of others. Hence, a doctrine of appropriation must incorporate such a proviso. However, the several interpretations such a proviso can take on various dimensions will be either implausible (...) as a way of taking into consideration the interests of others, or unable to generate the kind and extent of property rights libertarians typically endorse. (shrink)

Comments on G. Marcus' criticisms (see record 1996-24670-001) of K. Plunkett's and V. Marcham's (see record 1994-35650-001) connectionist account of the acquisition of the English past tense (verb morphology). The original model is reviewed. Graphing, overregularization, and other criticisms are addressed (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2000 APA, all rights reserved).

A common and driving assumption in agricultural research is that the introduction of research trials, new practices and innovative technologies will result in technology adoption, and will subsequently generate benefits for farmers and other stakeholders. In Lao PDR, the potential benefits of introduced technologies have not been fully realised by beneficiaries. We report on an analysis of a survey of 735 smallholder farmers in Southern Lao PDR who were questioned about factors that influenced their decisions to adopt new technologies. In (...) this study, we have constructed measures or states of adoption which identify key elements of an adoption decision-making nexus. Analysis was conducted to statistically group explanatory factors of adoption. The key explanatory factors represented attributes of the farmer, the factors considered when undertaking production decisions and elements of the agricultural value chain that present as opportunities or constraints. We describe the combination of farmer’s personal attributes, perceptions of the value chain, and the introduction of new technologies by external actors as an “agricultural research value chain”, where agricultural research activities intervene to derive greater benefits for local farmers. A generalised linear model, via Poisson regression analysis on the identified explanatory factors, was applied to explore how they influence adoption measures and we found several significant relationships. (shrink)

Disability, like questions of race, gender, and class, is one of the most provocative topics among theorists and philosophers today. This volume, situated at the intersection of feminist theory and disability studies, addresses questions about the nature of embodiment, the meaning of disability, the impact of public policy on those who have been labeled disabled, and how we define the norms of mental and physical ability. The essays here bridge the gap between theory and activism by illuminating structures of power (...) and showing how historical and cultural perceptions of the human body have been informed by and contributed to the oppression of women and disabled people. (shrink)

Somites are transient structures which represent the most overt segmental feature of the vertebrate embryo. The strict temporal regulation of somitogenesis is of critical developmental importance since many segmental structures adopt a periodicity based on that of the somites. Until recently, the mechanisms underlying the periodicity of somitogenesis were largely unknown. Based on the oscillations of c-hairy1 and lunatic fringe RNA, we now have evidence for an intrinsic segmentation clock in presomitic cells. Translation of this temporal periodicity into a spatial (...) periodicity, through somite formation, requires Notch signaling. While the Hox genes are certainly involved, it remains unknown how the metameric vertebrate axis becomes regionalized along the antero–posterior (AP) dimension into the occipital, cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and sacral domains. We discuss the implications of cell division as a clock mechanism underlying the regionalization of somites and their derivatives along the AP axis. Possible links between the segmentation clock and axial regionalization are also discussed. (shrink)

Many philosophers have challenged the ideal of value-free science on the grounds that social or moral values are relevant to inferential thresholds. But given this view, how precisely and to what extent should scientists adjust their inferential thresholds in light of nonepistemic values? We suggest that signal detection theory provides a useful framework for addressing this question. Moreover, this approach opens up further avenues for philosophical inquiry and has important implications for philosophical debates concerning inductive risk. For example, the signal (...) detection theory framework entails that considerations of inductive risk and inferential-threshold placement cannot be conducted in isolation from base-rate information. (shrink)

Perceptual expertise refers to learning that is specific to a domain, that transfers to new items within the trained domain, and that leads to automatic processing in the sense that expertise effects can be measured across a variety of tasks. It can be argued that most of us possess some degree of perceptual expertise in a least one, if not several domains, thereby giving the study of perceptual expertise broad application. Some object categories may in fact be objects of perceptual (...) expertise to the majority of people: Faces appear to be one such example. Thus, the use of face stimuli, or the comparison of face and object perception, can be a powerful way to ask whether a given process is influenced by perceptual expertise. Here, we emphasize one characteristic way that face processing appears to differ from nonface processing: that is, the degree to which they recruit a “holistic” rather than a “featural” perceptual strategy. This review brings evidence that expertise influences perceptual processing together with recent findings that the capacity of visual short-term memory is greater in perceptual experts and explores the relationship between the two. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 110 Heft: 1 Seiten: 136-159.

According to surveys of companies, branding is one of the main objectives of their corporate social responsibility. With advantageous data from Brand Finance, we address three contextual factors that may condition the relationship between CSR and brand value. First, we hypothesize that the relationship between CSR and brand value obtains across major world regions and industrial sectors. Second, we hypothesize that the relationship has weakened with time, as companies have had increasing difficulty using CSR to differentiate their brands in a (...) sea of CSR-espousing competitors. Third, we hypothesize that the relationship between CSR and brand value is weaker where a brand’s identity is different from that of its corporate owner, which may make it difficult for observers to readily link CSR with its potential brand beneficiaries. We support these hypotheses with random-effects, fixed-effects, and instrumental-variable regressions before ending with contributions, limitations, implications, and potential next steps. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of the emphasis on anti-futurity and failure prevalent in contemporary queer theory. I argue that responsibility for climate change requires commitments to futures that are queer, crip, and feminist. A queer crip feminist commitment to the future is, I contend, informed by radical hope.

In the Confucian tradition, the ideal government is called "benevolent government" (ren zheng), central to which is the ruler's parental love toward his people who he deems as his children. Hanfeizi criticized this seemingly innocent political idea by pointing out that (1) not only is the state not a family but even within the family parental love is short of making the children orderly and (2) ren as love inevitably results in the ruin of the state because it confuses what (...) is right/meritorious with what is not, thus disrupts the legal system. In this paper, I defend Confucian virtue politics against Hanfeizi's criticisms. I argue that by failing to grasp the complex nature of ren that encompasses both emotion (ren as love) and moral virtue (ren as filiality), Hanfeizi also failed to understand the actual process in which the ruler's parental love is extended to the people. (shrink)

This article discusses the resurgence of the term ‘patriarchy’ in digital culture and reflects on the everyday online meanings of the term in distinction to academic theorisations. In the 1960s–1980s, feminists theorised patriarchy as the systematic oppression of women, with differing approaches to how it worked. Criticisms that the concept was unable to account for intersectional experiences of oppression, alongside the ‘turn to culture’, resulted in a fall from academic grace. However, ‘patriarchy’ has found new life through Internet memes (humorous, (...) mutational images that circulate widely on social media). This article aims to investigate the resurgence of the term ‘patriarchy’ in digital culture. Based on an analysis of memes with the phrase ‘patriarchy’ and ‘smash the patriarchy’, we identify how patriarchy memes are used by two different online communities (feminists and anti-feminists) and consider what this means for the ongoing usefulness of the concept of patriarchy. We argue that, whilst performing important community-forming work, using the term is a risky strategy for feminists for two reasons: first, because memes are by their nature brief, there is little opportunity to address intersections of oppression; secondly, the underlying logic of feminism is omitted in favour of brevity, leaving it exposed to being undermined by the more mainstream logic of masculinism. (shrink)

Under Mencius' influence jen has been regarded as part of a theory of nature. As such, commentators have had difficulty resolving the apparent paradox in "Analects" 9.1 that Confucius rarely talked about jen. No paradox arises if jen is seen as a practice involving self-cultivation as a never-ending task and the immediacy of ethical commitment where a cluster of emotions, attitudes, and values are expressed. Jen is an ethical orientation from which one speaks and acts--not particular qualities that one might (...) enumerate and claim to possess. As such, the internal relation between jen and li does not amount to their being the same thing, as implied by some recent writers. (shrink)

Incomplete preferences displaying ‘mildly sweetened’ structure are common, yet theoretically problematic. This paper examines the properties of the rankings induced by the set of all coherent completions of the mildly sweetened partial preference structure. Building on these properties, I propose an ensemble-based refinement of Hare’s prospectism criterion for rational choice when preferences are incomplete. Importantly, this ensemble-based refinement is immune to Peterson’s weak money pump argument. Hence, ensemble prospectism ensures outcome rationality. Furthermore, by recognizing the structural isomorphism between mildly sweetened (...) preference structures and Cover’s splitting rule in Blackwell’s Pick the Largest Number problem, ensemble prospectism can be shown to yield better-than-even odds of selecting the ex-post higher utility option—despite the absence of all-things-considered preferences ex ante. (shrink)

The present study investigated estimate biases in cross-classified random effect modeling and hierarchical linear modeling when ignoring a crossed factor in CCREM considering the impact of the feeder and the magnitude of coefficients. There were six simulation factors: the magnitude of coefficient, the correlation between the level 2 residuals, the number of groups, the average number of individuals sampled from each group, the intra-unit correlation coefficient, and the number of feeders. The targeted interests of the coefficients were four fixed effects (...) and two random effects. The results showed that ignoring a crossed factor in cross-classified data causes a parameter bias for the random effects of level 2 predictors and a standard error bias for the fixed effects of intercepts, level 1 predictors, and level 2 predictors. Bayesian information criteria generally outperformed Akaike information criteria in detecting the correct model. (shrink)