Studies of categorical induction typically examine how belief in a premise (e.g., Falcons have an ulnar artery) projects on to a conclusion (e.g., Robins have an ulnar artery). We study induction in cases in which the premise is uncertain (e.g., There is an 80% chance that falcons have an ulnar artery). Jeffrey's rule is a normative model for updating beliefs in the face of uncertain evidence. In three studies we tested the descriptive validity of Jeffrey's rule and a related probability (...) theorem, the rule of total probability. Although these rules provided good approximations to mean judgments in some cases, the results from regression and correlation analyses suggest that participants focus on the parts of these rules that are associated with the highest overall probability. We relate our findings to rational models of judgment. (shrink)

Initial evaluation structures (IESs) currently proposed as the earliest detectors of affective stimuli (e.g., amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, or insula) are high-order structures (a) whose response latency cannot account for the first visual cortex emotion-related response (~80 ms), and (b) lack the necessary infrastructure to locally analyze the visual features that define emotional stimuli. Several thalamic structures accomplish both criteria. The lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), a first-order thalamic nucleus that actively processes visual information, with the complement of the thalamic reticular nucleus (...) (TRN) are proposed as core IESs. This LGN–TRN tandem could be supported by the pulvinar, a second-order thalamic structure, and by other extrathalamic nuclei. The visual thalamus, scarcely explored in affective neurosciences, seems crucial in early emotional evaluation. (shrink)

Under Preston & de Waal's proposed model, empathy might be regarded as everything that determines the quality of a social relationship. Although the authors provide a useful heuristic for understanding relationships, clinical research efforts with a somewhat narrower focus have provided some additional insights into this topic, which might lead to testable hypotheses regarding the neurobiology of empathy.

In this note an allusion recreated from Seneca’s De providentia is rescued as it was hidden in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, which recovers and adapted some topics from the Senecan text in a few brief lines which have been hitherto practically unnoticed; if the allusion is verified, a more recent reading of Seneca’s writing would make full argumentative sense.

In 2008 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act amendments made deliberately choosing to bring disability into the world, using assisted reproduction, a criminal offence. This paper considers whether the legal prohibition above, should influence other policy areas concerning the welfare of future children such as new possibilities presented by foetal surgery and in utero gene therapy. If we have legal duties to avoid disability in one context should this influence our avoidance of disability in this other context? This paper investigates (...) whether the State might have a stake in wider promotion of practices to reduce the degree of disability in foetuses that will come to exist. Not selecting for disability does not affect the welfare of any future individual, whereas treating in utero abnormalities can optimize the eventual child’s welfare; antenatal interventions stand to improve clinical outcomes and welfare should that specific child be born. I explore why the State may want to intervene in the antenatal setting and to what extent, if at all; the State should implement these technologies. I argue that if the State is justified in intervening to outlaw the choosing to create disabled lives using assisted reproductive techniques, it is also justified in putting pressure on prospective parents to accept therapies in utero to help their child be born less disabled. However, I qualify this with the argument that the State is not justified in using force or the criminal law in this situation during pregnancy. (shrink)

The problem of human language is studied in the context of the definition “civilization” on the basis of Darwin’s theory. The author defines civilization as “survival of the unfit”. The author supposes that language was invented by the men to describe their heroic deeds for the women in order to be selected by them for reproduction. In other words, language became a selection criterion together with beauty and presents.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 3, Page 417, June 2012.

A feature is central to a concept to the extent that other features depend on it. Four studies tested the hypothesis that people will project a feature from a base concept to a target concept to the extent that they believe the feature is central to the two concepts. This centrality hypothesis implies that feature projection is guided by a principle that aims to maximize the structural commonality between base and target concepts. Participants were told that a category has two (...) or three novel features. One feature was the most central in that more properties depended on it. The extent to which the target shared the feature's dependencies was manipulated by varying the similarity of category pairs. Participants' ratings of the likelihood that each feature would hold in the target category support the centrality hypothesis with both natural kind and artifact categories and with both well-specified and vague dependency structures. (shrink)

Consumer skepticism of corporate environmental activities is on the rise. Yet research on this timely, intriguing, and important topic is scarce for both academics and practitioners. Building on attribution theory, we develop and test a theoretically anchored model that explains the sources and consequences of green skepticism. The study findings reveal that consumers’ perceptions of industry norms, corporate social responsibility, and corporate history are important factors that explain why consumers assign different motives to corporate environmental actions. In addition, the results (...) show that while intrinsic motives exert a strong negative effect on green skepticism, extrinsic motives have no discernible effect. Furthermore, the findings indicate that green skepticism prompts consumers to seek more information about the products, sparks negative word of mouth to friends and acquaintances, and forestalls purchase intentions. The study offers several implications for corporate and public policy makers and presents fruitful research directions. (shrink)

Resumo No que se segue, discuto o que eu quero dizer com Misticismo Ortodoxo em Filosofia e Teologia, com referências específicas a Pseudo-Dionísio, o Areopagita; São Simeão, o Novo Teólogo e São Nicolau Cabasilas. Depois abordarei o que considero ser a meta da Mística Ortodoxa em Filosofia e Teologia, ou seja, o rapto ecstático e a união com o Deus Uno e Trino por meio da glorificação ou deificação. A minha investigação vai terminar com uma análise acerca da diferença entre (...) a abordagem de Deus Uno e Trino na Mística Ortodoxa da abordagem Católica Romana de Deus percebido como ‘Esse de ipsum subsistens’ juntamente com as duas formas diferentes de misticismo que estas percepções de Deus implicam. Palavras-chave : intelectualismo esotérico, Misticismo Ortodoxo, nuvem do não saber, ontologia, proporcionalidade doxástica, sinergiaIn what follows, I discuss what I mean by Orthodox Mysticism in Philosophy and Theology with specific reference to Ps. Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Nicholaos Cabasilas. I then discuss what I take to be the goal of the Orthodox mystic in Philosophy and Theology, i.e., ecstatic rapture and union with the Triune God through glorification or deification. My investigation will finish with an examination of how the Orthodox mystical approach to the Triune God differs from the Roman-Catholic approach to God perceived as ‘Esse ipsum subsistens’ and the two different forms of mysticism that these two perceptions of God imply. Keywords : cloud of non-knowledge, doxastic proportionality, esoteric intellectualism, ontology, Orthodox Mysticism, synergos. (shrink)

This paper examined the persistence of individuals’ power in teams and the individual- and team-level factors influencing power maintenance and loss in the long-term. Specifically, and in line with the functional theory of power, we showed that individuals’ state of power in the past exerted a significant behavioral impact on their later state of power, hence, confirming the “power persistence” hypothesis. Furthermore, and in accordance with the conflict theory of power, we found that individuals’ competence positively influenced power above and (...) beyond its persistence. We also showed that individuals’ uncooperative behavior and team performance had a negative and significant effect on individuals’ power above and beyond its persistence. Finally, we discussed the importance of individuals’ power dynamics for effectively managing power struggles in teams. (shrink)

Volume 26, Issue 2, June 2019, Page 171-175.

This paper gives an account of the debate between F.A. Hayek and J.M. Keynes in the 1930s written for the general public. The purpose of this is twofold. First, to provide the general reader with a narrative of what happened, … More ›.

Unlike many dominant images of thought that are centered on searching for foundations whose coherence is found in binary logics or biunivocal relations, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophy constitutes a way of thinking through machines that produce pure multiplicities by virtue of intensive differences. What is important with regards to machines is to refrain from any attempt at defining or understanding them—they cannot be delimited and are a-signifying—and to try to make them work, such that various flows of thought (...) may circulate through them, intermingling with and interrupting each other. Even though any machine groups together many heterogeneous elements, literary machines are interesting insofar as they can reach a level of the fragmentary whereby the determinant potency of intensive differences can be expressed. This article experiments with Maurice Blanchot’s literary machine—especially with his idea of the neuter—to discover operations that could help to dismantle the foundations of dominant images of thought. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Sammlung von Aufsätzen einiger der weltbesten Spezialisten der antiken griechischen Philosophie konzentriert sich auf die philosophischen Texte, die während der hellenistischen und kaiserlichen Zeit Pythagoras und den Pythagoreern zugeschrieben wurden. Ihre unbekannten Verfasser behaupten, die Positionen der ursprünglichen pythagoreischen Schule zur Metaphysik, Theologie, Zahlenphilosophie, Physik, Logik, politischen Philosophie, Ethik und zur richtigen Lebensweise zu vermitteln. Die kühnsten unter ihnen präsentieren sich als die Quellen, aus denen Platon und Aristoteles die Inspiration für den Timaios und die Kategorien geschöpft haben. (...) Da sie von den meisten antiken Denkern als maßgebend angesehen wurden, führte dies zu einer Renaissance der platonischen und pythagoreischen Tradition. (shrink)

This chapter examines aspects of the Pythagorean tradition from the perspective of “spiritual guidance”. The only traces that remain of the initial period of Pythagoreanism are the acousmata and a handful of authentic fragments of Philolaus of Croton. The chapter focuses on the Golden Verses, a short poem dating back to the Hellenistic period that constitutes the most complete and impressive illustration of spiritual guidance in a Pythagorean milieu. The chapter analyzes that despite the chronological distance that separates the Golden (...) Verses from the acousmata, what is at issue in both cases is the practice of the Pythagorean way of life, that gives guidance all its meaning. What emerges from the testimonies dealing with the Pythagoreans is that their way of life was practiced in a community, or the Pythagorean society or sect. (shrink)

In what follows, I examine the views of Metropolitan Amfilohije’s views on St Gregory Palamas and Orthodoxy, primarily focusing on his PhD thesis, which was defended at the University of Athens, Faculty of Theology in 1973, and published in Thessaloniki in the same year. I claim that his views there not only show him defending Palamas, but also highlight the need for a strengthening of Palamism in Greece and abroad. Some of the problems, which he identified in 1973, exist in (...) Orthodoxy today and his suggestion that all contemporary Orthodox intellectuals should persist in the Philosophy and Theology of Palamism seems to be the only way to solve these problems, even today. (shrink)

The scholarly contributions gathered together in this volume discuss themes related to the cultural, social and ethical dimension of St Gregory Palamas’ works. They relate his mystical philosophy and theology to contemporary debates in metaphysics, philosophy of language, ethics, philosophy of culture, political philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of religion and theology, among others. The book considers a variety of topics of special interest to Christian theologians, philosophers and art historians including church and state relations, similarities and differences between Palamas, contemporary (...) phenomenologists and philosophers of language, and hesychast influences on late Byzantine iconography. (shrink)

The 13th and 14th centuries represented the most productive and influential period in the history of philosophy and theology in the West. A parallel and less influential (for the West) proliferation of arguments and theories took place in the East, at the same time, as a result of the defence of the Hesychastic movement offered by St Gregory Palamas and his followers. The papers brought together in this volume discuss the importance of Palamite ideas for the understanding of God in (...) terms of divine energies, and for contemporary approaches to solving perennial problems in science, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Some of the contributors take a more reserved evaluation of the Palamite corpus, preferring to highlight similarities and differences between Palamas and the chief representatives of Medieval Scholasticism, such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Other essays offer a radical re-evaluation of the Western history of philosophy and theology, preferring to bring out the reasons for Western philosophical and theological shortcomings and providing a wider critique on Western culture. Contributors to this volume include some of the top scholars on Palamite studies from the fields of philosophy, theology, aesthetics, cultural criticism, and art theory. As such, it represents a particularly useful resource for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers in Christian theology and philosophy, Byzantine cultural studies and aesthetics. (shrink)