The total and the sharp character of orthodox quantum logic has been put in question in different contexts. This paper presents the basic ideas for a unified approach to partial and unsharp forms of quantum logic. We prove a completeness theorem for some partial logics based on orthoalgebras and orthomodular posets. We introduce the notion of unsharp orthoalgebra and of generalized MV algebra. The class of all effects of any Hilbert space gives rise to particular examples of these structures. (...) Finally, we investigate the relationship between unsharp orthoalgebras, generalized MV algebras, and orthomodular lattices. (shrink)

We argue that there is a large class of questions—specifically questions about how to epistemically evaluate environments that currently available epistemic theories are not well-suited for answering, precisely because these questions are not about the epistemic state of particular agents or groups. For example, if we critique Facebook for being conducive to the spread of misinformation, then we are not thereby critiquing Facebook for being irrational, or lacking knowledge, or failing to testify truthfully. Instead, we are saying something about the (...) social media environment. In this paper, we first propose that a new branch of epistemology–Environmental Epistemology–is needed to address these questions. We argue that environments can be proper objects of epistemic evaluation, and that there are genuine epistemic norms that govern environments. We then provide a positive account of these norms and conclude by considering how recognition of these norms may require us to rethink longstanding epistemic debates. (shrink)

Many social media platforms enable (nearly) anyone to post (nearly) anything. One clear downside of this permissiveness is that many people appear bad at determining who to trust online. Hacks, quacks, climate change deniers, vaccine skeptics, and election deniers have all gained massive followings in these free markets of ideas, and many of their followers seem to genuinely trust them. At the same time, there are many cases in which people seem to reliably determine who to trust online. Consider, for (...) example, Do It Yourself (DIY) content about how to play guitar, bake, fix one’s plumbing, or repair one’s car. For these topics, those who have the largest accounts and the most popular content typically possess significant expertise. That is, social media users seem to reliably pick out DIY experts. We thus have a puzzle: why are social media users seemingly competent at identifying DIY experts, but not climate science or vaccine experts? In what follows, we solve this puzzle. We begin by identifying a novel wisdom of the crowds phenomenon: specifically we argue that the crowd (in combination with social media search and recommendation algorithms) reliably picks out DIY experts and serves as a credentialing institution for DIY content. Next, we argue that (a) there are five epistemic factors that determine whether the crowd can succeed at recognizing experts on social media platforms, and (b) while many of those factors are satisfied to a sufficiently high degree by DIY content, they are mostly lacking for content about climate change or vaccines. (shrink)

Through the influence of the religious mystical thought, which interprets the human as a traveler and the world as a destination to settle in and migrate from, numerous connotations as to the road, the passenger as well as the journey have been created in Turkish Ṣūfī poetry. The caravan, which takes place in poetry as an element of simile (tashbīḥ) and generally within the framework of metaphor (majāz) is one of these associations. In Ṣūfī texts, the caravan symbolizes the spiritual (...) journey of the sālik, who wants to reach the rank (maqām) of the Perfect Human Being in the footsteps of the leading figures of the religion and Ṣūfīsm (Taṣawwuf). The caravan has passed, which is understood as a symbol peculiar to the lore language, looks like a formula of a series of advice that reminds and warns people of the responsibilities they are obliged to fulfill even though life is short and the world is temporary. Being delayed of the unwary traveler when the caravan has passed was used in the sense that the sālik could not make use of his life, time, and opportunities; and the situation of the person who was left behind and separated from the caravan was generally met with the analogy of a lame donkey. In this study, which is about the caravan as a mystical metaphor (majāz), the survey model, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The research aims to determine the use of the caravan metaphor (majāz) in the examples of Ṣūfī poetry and meanings it has gained in Ṣūfī terminology. For this purpose, the major works written between the 12th and 19th centuries in Turkish Ṣūfī poetry have been investigated, and the data obtained have been evaluated in the light of the works and views of the leading figures who have been influential on Turkish Ṣūfī culture and literature. The study, which is thought to contribute to the understanding of the metaphors (majāzs) that Turkish Ṣūfī poetry is based on is important since it reveals that the usages the caravan has passed is one of the common symbols of Ṣūfīsm (Taṣawwuf). As a result of the research, it was found out that the metaphor (majāz) of the caravan has existed in poetry uninterruptedly since the 12th century when Turkish Ṣūfī literature began to take shape. Although time, place, and persons change, the meanings attributed to the metaphor (majāz) of the caravan are almost the same. Especially in the poems containing advice, the metaphor (majāz) of the caravan was frequently used to guide people and human life was associated with the caravan. In this respect, it can be said that the metaphor (majāz) of the caravan has a traditional usage in Turkish Ṣūfī poetry. On the other hand, the usage of the caravan metaphor (majāz) in Turkish Ṣūfī poetry and the usage in Iranian literature show similarity. As a matter of fact, starting with Aḥmed Yesevī (d. 562/1166), many Ṣūfī poets depicted the same journey in a similar way, and Saʿdī-i Shīrāzī (d. 691/1292) dealt with the same theme in a way that coincided with the narrative and vocabulary of Turkish poets. The fact that the caravan is determined with similar uses in the poems of different societies as a Ṣūfī symbol shows that the metaphor (majāz) of the caravan has a common usage regarding Ṣūfīsm (Taṣawwuf) in the wide cultural geography of Islam. The metaphor (majāz) of the caravan has a special usage in Turkish Ṣūfī poetry in the form of the caravan has passed. Expressions in the style of the caravan has passed which succinctly fit a long adventure into two words, are symbols peculiar to the lore language, and serve as psychological advice in Turkish Ṣūfī poetry. On the one hand, this symbol deals with the caravan journey in the dimension of truth, on the other hand, it gives metaphorical meanings to the word, referring to the spiritual journey of sālik. In this sense, the caravan has passed is a powerful metaphor (majāz) that warns people to make the best use of the rest of their life, or rather the moment they are in, and it looks like a formula of a series of advice that warns them. The advice in question is closely related to the words die before you die and time is a sharp sword, often used by the leading figures of religion and mysticism. Therefore, the caravan has passed is a kind of contemplation and presents a vivid picture of the journey that takes its source from the social life so that the traveler does not forget that he is on the way by reminding him of death. The advice style is generally dominant in the poems in which the metaphor (majāz) of the caravan is used, especially in the poems describing the caravan’s passing and the heedless traveler staying on the road. However, it is obvious that the subject is presented in a lyrical and impressive style, especially in poets such as Aḥmed Yesevī, Yūnus Emre (d. 720/1320 [?]) and Niyāzī-i Mıṣrī (d. 1105/1694). (shrink)

When thinking about designing social media platforms, we often focus on factors such as usability, functionality, aesthetics, ethics, and so forth. Epistemic considerations have rarely been given the same level of attention in design discussions. This paper aims to rectify this neglect. We begin by arguing that there are epistemic norms that govern environments, including social media environments. Next, we provide a framework for applying these norms to the question of platform design. We then apply this framework to the real-world (...) case of long-form informational content platforms. We argue that many current long-form informational content platforms are epistemically unhealthy. The good news? We provide concrete advice on how to take steps toward improving their health! Specifically, we argue that they should change how they verify and authenticate content creators and how this information is displayed to content consumers. We conclude by connecting this guidance to broader issues about the epistemic health of platforms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Tale of Three Zoras:Barbara Johnson and Black Women WritersHortense J. Spillers (bio)Talking about Zora Neale Hurston is like approaching the Sphinx—so much riddle, so many faces, and all of it occurring on fairly high holy ground since Alice Walker's remarkable discovery a couple of decades ago.1 But Barbara Johnson's criticism cracks the code on Her Majesty and brings the sign vehicle—"Zora Neale Hurston"—to the table of juxtapositions and (...) comparisons. There is the iconic Hurston, whose positioning between the Harlem Renaissance2 and the post-World War II writers gives her a priority of status that marks the woman artist's entry into literary modernism. The latter, in its variety of contexts and alignments, opened the way to certain experimental forms for these writers and might not have been completed as a systematic gesture before the late sixties and early seventies, when this generation of practitioners was free to create antiheroic figures and to probe the limits of representability. In short, with Zora Neale Hurston a window is pried open, a breeze blows through, and by the time of Toni Morrison's Beloved, an opening has become a prospect, a landscape of vistas of possibility. We can think of Hurston, then, as an enabler, who was not particularly encouraged by the literary politics of her age, from first to last; whether by the "maledom" of Harlem Renaissance avenues to reward and achievement, or by the paradigm shift of race politics in the 1950s,3 Hurston seems to have been equipped with the uncanny ability to create a kind of chaos, to behave outside the parameters of fashion, and to create dimensions of the mythical about her as she modeled versions of self.In her role as classically trained anthropologist and folklorist, Hurston is considered today one of the major theoreticians of black culture.4 Her collections of lore, a [End Page 94] motherlode of a southern-centered orality,5 of the countryside, are fruitfully poised against the displaced metaphysical traditions of discourse that we especially associate with figures like Alain Locke and W. E. B. DuBois.6 As it now appears, the oppositional currents that run between the Hurstonian and the DuBoisian figurations have yet to be reconciled: the latter is text-based, and the former exceeds the abiding centrality of the word. Barbara Johnson argues in A World of Difference that Hurston "tried to explain the difference between a reified 'art' and a living culture in which distinctions between spectator and spectacle, rehearsal and performance, experience and representation are not fixed" [159]. For Hurston, folklore was "'the arts of the people before they find out that there is such a thing as art.'" For Hurston, unlike DuBois, for example, black culture was not a project in the modality of Bildung, or the Hegelian notion, but, rather, a repertoire of gestures that might be said to belong to a second skin—the kinetic thing that is done or said.From our current perspective, what Hurston called "folklore" and what offered the occasion for the ethnographic foray might be given other names, though renaming these acts and gestures of the everyday does not make it any easier to reconcile the conceptual split in black culture theory between textuality and orality, or between "urban" and "countryside." But all of these locutions have been essentially eviscerated by radical changes in the availability and transmission of consumer goods that have rendered US local and indigenous cultures virtually indistinguishable from Jackson, Mississippi to Boston, Massachusetts. Take any interstate network across the land, east to west, or north to south: between McDonald's and the food/gas mart, scattered along ten- to twenty-mile sequences of roadway, one is quite astonished at the sameness and homogeneity of motifs that have translated particularity into an item of commerce and exchange. At one time, the critics were calling this outcome the postmodern flow, but my own hunch is that this apparent repetition and replication of the same are riddled with a variety of timbres and accents, still, that the Hurston ear was so sharp to articulate and define six decades ago. And in that intricate choreography between the life... (shrink)

800x600 Normal 0 21 false false false RO X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The dominant approaches to Kabbalah in modern scholarship are basically historical and philological. This is the manner in which the founder of modern scholarship in the field, Gershom Scholem, described his school. Though he also embraced more phenomenological analyses, this approach is less represented in the first stages of Kabbalah scholarship, though it becomes more evident in the last decades. In the writings of Schlomo G. Shoham, an existential approach (...) to Kabbalah - as to humanities in general - has been offered, one in which the experiential dimensions of this lore have been put in sharp relief. In the following pages I shall attempt to underscore some existential interpretations of the concept of Paradise in Jewish mysticism, emphasizing the different spiritual structures that informed the various schools. In a manner reminiscent of Shoham's emphasis on different structures that explain human spiritual life and behaviour, the following remarks will juxtapose the divergences between the ecstatic and theosophical-theurgical schools of Kabbalah. (shrink)

Reidenbach and Robin (1988, 1990) proposed and refined a multidimensional ethics scale. This study replicates and extends their work by examining the generalizability of the scale beyond marketing to accounting, and to subjects from across the United States and other countries. Results indicate that, in general, the scale holds for this different sample and context. However, an additional utilitarian construct emerged in the current study as important for accounting academics in their ethical decision-making. We also found that when we refined (...) Reidenbach and Robin's measure of intention to make a particular choice, a social desirability bias or halo effect was identified. Methodological implications for business ethics research are also presented. (shrink)

Current theories propose that our sense of curiosity is determined by the learning progress or information gain that our cognitive system expects to make. However, few studies have explicitly tried to quantify subjective information gain and link it to measures of curiosity. Here, we asked people to report their curiosity about the intrinsically engaging perceptual ‘puzzles’ known as Mooney images, and to report on the strength of their aha experience upon revealing the solution image (curiosity relief). We also asked our (...) participants (279) to make a guess concerning the solution of the image, and used the distribution of these guesses to compute the crowdsourced semantic entropy (or ambiguity) of the images, as a measure of the potential for information gain. Our results confirm that curiosity and, even more so, aha experience is substantially associated with this semantic information gain measure. These findings support the expected information gain theory of curiosity and suggest that the aha experience or intrinsic reward is driven by the actual information gain. In an unannounced memory part, we also established that the often reported influence of curiosity on memory is fully mediated by the aha experience or curiosity relief. We discuss the implications of our results for the burgeoning fields of curiosity and psychoaesthetics. (shrink)

A letter to The Times of London, May 9, 1992 protesting the Cambridge University proposal to award an honorary degree to M. Jacques Derrida.

The relationship between ethics and economics has never been easy. Opponents in a tug of war, friends in a warm embrace, ships passing in the night—the relationship has been highly variable. In recent years, the friendship model has been gaining credence, particularly among U.S. corporate executives. Increasingly, companies are launching ethics programs, values initiatives, and community involvement activities premised on management’s belief that “Ethics pays.”.

While consensus exists among many practitioners of ethics consultation about the need for and identification of core competencies and standards, there has been virtually no attempt to determine how these competencies and standards are best taught and assessed. We believe that clinical ethics consultation has reached a state of sufficient maturity that expert practitioners can evaluate those who are new to the field. We will outline several steps that can facilitate the creation of a certification process for clinical ethics consultants, (...) assuring the competency and quality of consultation for the patients, families, and healthcare professionals who utilize ECSs. (shrink)

Unlike natural-born citizens, many immigrants have agreed to undertake political obligations. Many have sworn oaths of allegiance. Many, when they entered their adopted country, promised to obey the law. This paper is about these agreements. First, it’s about their validity. Do they actually confer political obligations? Second, it’s about their justifiability. Is it permissible to get immigrants to undertake such political obligations? Our answers are ‘usually yes’ and ‘probably not’ respectively. We first argue that these agreements give immigrants political obligations. (...) We then argue that getting immigrants to undertake such obligations is morally wrong. This is because it makes immigrants’ political obligations more burdensome than those of natural-born citizens. We conclude that the practice of getting immigrants to undertake such obligations should be abolished. (shrink)

The study of alternatives to conventional industrial agricultural production has intensified in recent years. While many types of alternative production systems, and the motivations of individuals to participate in them, have been studied, there are significant gaps in the literature. One such dearth is research on those participating in self-provisioning activities. This study begins to fill the gap by looking at the self-provisioning activity of home gardening using data from the 2008 Ohio Survey of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Issues. Discerning (...) who household gardeners are is important given the recent economic, cultural, and political climate of the United States. The results show that home gardening occurs throughout the state of Ohio at surprisingly high levels. Bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal several noteworthy associations between gardening and household characteristics, including spatial location, pro-environmental and economic hardship behaviors, and level of participation in localized food systems. (shrink)

Social enterprises are hybrid organizations that primarily pursue social missions while also seeking economic gains. Drawing on workplace diversity and conflict theories, this article addresses recent calls for further research to explore how employees within social enterprises experience internal conflicts arising from the organizational pursuit of dual, competing missions (i.e., social and economic), and how social enterprises manage, and potentially overcome, these challenges. In the context of Korean social enterprise, we conducted a quantitative study that built on an initial explorative (...) qualitative study. Our research examined whether perceived participatory human resource management practices and diversity climate increase employees’ affective commitment by reducing their relational conflict. We further explored a boundary condition, perceived social impact, which strengthened this mediation relationship. Our results offer significant insights into social enterprise, business ethics, and broader management literature. Implications for future research and practice are also discussed. (shrink)

Research suggests that the ability to understand one’s own and others’ minds, or mentalizing, is a key factor for mental health. Most studies have focused the attention on the association between global measures of mentalizing and specific disorders. In contrast, very few studies have analyzed the association between specific mentalizing polarities and global measures of mental health. This study aimed to evaluate whether self and other polarities of mentalizing are associated with a multidimensional notion of mental health, which considers symptoms, (...) functioning, and well-being. Additionally, the level or depth of mentalizing within each polarity was also analyzed. A sample of 214 adolescents was evaluated on measures of self- and other- mentalizing, multi-informed measures of psychopathology and functioning based on Achenbach’s system, and measures of psychological well-being. Results revealed no association between mentalizing polarities and higher-order symptom factors. Self-mentalizing was associated with self-esteem and motivation to life goals, and other-mentalizing was associated to general, social and role functioning. This association between aspects of self-other mentalizing and self-other function has important implications for treatment and prevention. Deeper mentalizing within each polarity revealed stronger associations with functioning and well-being. Because mentalizing polarities are associated with functioning and well-being but not with symptoms, a new hypothesis is developed: mentalizing does not contribute to resiliency by preventing symptoms, but by helping to deal with them, thus improving functioning and well-being independently of psychopathology. These findings support that promoting mentalizing across development may improve mental health, even in non-clinical population. (shrink)

A plurality of axiomatic systems can be interpreted as referring to one and the same mathematical object. In this paper we examine the relationship between axiomatic systems and their models, the relationships among the various axiomatic systems that refer to the same model, and the role of an intelligent user of an axiomatic system. We ask whether these relationships and this role can themselves be formalized.

In “The Book of the Crown (_Kitāb al-Iklīl_) of pseudo-Rhazes” Oliver Kahl and Henrietta Sharp Cockrell offer a facsimile edition, with annotated English translation and introductory study, of a unique and highly unusual medieval Arabic medical text.

This book undertakes an extensive study of the constellation of two eminent thinkers of post-idealism for the first time. The contributions in this volume analyze the relationship between Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard systematically and historically from a number of thematic perspectives: metaphysics and ethics, freedom and original sin, existential philosophy and the theory of suffering, art and aesthetics, religion and science. The book also goes into Kierkegaard s explicit disagreement with Schopenhauer and last but not least discusses the conflicting poles of (...) idealism and modernity. The volume is rounded off by a first complete and annotated German translation of the notes on Schopenhauer, which Kierkegaard wrote in his late journals.". (shrink)

Social scientists have observed a sharp rise in affective polar­ization in many societies, particularly the United States. Since it is widely agreed that this poses a threat to democracy, finding solutions to this predicament is essential. One prominent proposal to depolarize the electorate holds that citizens need to exercise their capacities for empathy with the political opposition. However, defenders of the empathy response to affective polarization have yet to fully specify the range of mechanisms through which empathy can counteract (...) polarization. Recent proposals focus on empathy’s role in finding common ground and humanizing others. Drawing on the wider empathy literature, we identify several additional ways empathy might counter affective polarization. We show that the resultant account has important implications for the sorts of empathetic engagement with cross-partisans that is likely to reduce polarization. Our aim is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the potential of different kinds of empathetic engagement to counter polarization as well as the limits of empathy as a response to polarization. (shrink)

Just as it is impossible to understand the American religious landscape without some familiarity with evangelicalism, one cannot grasp the shape of contemporary Christian ethics without knowing the contributions of evangelical Protestants. This newest addition to the Library of Theological Ethics series begins by examining the core dynamic with which all evangelical ethics grapples: belief in an authoritative, inspired, and unchanging biblical text on the one hand, and engagement with a rapidly evolving and increasingly post-Christian culture on the other. It (...) explores the different roles that scholars and popular figures have played in forming evangelicals' understandings of Christian ethics. And it draws together the contributions of both senior and emerging figures in painting a portrait of this diverse, vibrant, and challenging theological and ethical tradition. This book represents the breadth of evangelical ethical voices, demonstrating that evangelical ethics involves nuance and theological insight that far transcend any political agenda. Contributors include David P. Gushee, Carl F. H. Henry, Jennifer McBride, Stephen Charles Mott, William E. Pannell, John Perkins, Soong-Chan Rah, Gabriel Salguero, Francis Schaeffer, Ron Sider, Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Glen H. Stassen, Eldin Villafañe, Allen Verhey, Jim Wallis, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and John Howard Yoder. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important, and otherwise unavailable, texts—English-language texts and translations that have fallen out of print, new translations, and collections of significant statements about problems and themes of special importance—in an easily accessible form. This series enables sustained dialogue on new and classic works in the field. (shrink)

Philosophers like Duhem and Cartwright have argued that there is a tension between laws' abilities to explain and to represent. Abstract laws exemplify the first quality, phenomenological laws the second. This view has both metaphysical and methodological aspects: the world is too complex to be represented by simple theories; supplementing simple theories to make them represent reality blocks their confirmation. We argue that both aspects are incompatible with recent developments in nonlinear dynamics. Confirmation procedures and modelling strategies in nonlinear dynamics (...) show that there are simple, abstract theories that can be confirmed without encountering the problems pointed to by Cartwright. (shrink)

This study investigates the differences in individuals'' ethical decision making between Canadian university business students and accounting professionals. We examine the differences in three measures known to be important in the ethical decision-making process: ethical awareness, ethical orientation, and intention to perform questionable acts. We tested for differences in these three measures in eight different questionable actions among three groups: students starting business studies, those in their final year of university, and professional accountants.The measures of awareness capture the extent to (...) which respondents felt that a particular action was unethical according to each of several ethical criteria. We found few differences between the two student groups on these measures, suggesting that their education had minimal effect on raising their awareness of the ethical issues in the vignettes. Indeed, overall, the graduating student''s scores were marginally lower than those of the entry-level students. However, the professionals viewed some actions as significantly less ethical than did the graduating students. (shrink)

This paper argues that moral thinking is an essential management capability which strengthens organizations and contributes to theirperformance in the marketplace. The paper explains what moral thinking is, and addresses the most common reasons for considering it inappropriate or irrelevant to managerial practice. The argument provides a compelling rationale for the corporate ethics initiatives undertaken in recent years.

For decades, the Belmont Report—and the associated regulatory framework it inspired—has been a cornerstone in the ethical conduct of research involving human subjects. Despite its canonic status, t...