Virtual reality enables individuals to be exposed to naturalistic environments in laboratory settings, offering new possibilities for research in human neuroscience and treatment of mental disorders. We used VR to study psychological, autonomic and postural reactions to heights in individuals with varying intensity of fear of heights. Study participants were immersed in a VR of an unprotected open-air elevator platform in an urban area, while standing on an unstable ground. Virtual elevation of the platform elicited robust and reliable psychophysiological activation (...) including increased distress, heart rate, and electrodermal activity, which was higher in individuals suffering from fear of heights. In these individuals, compared with individuals with low fear of heights, the VR height exposure resulted in higher velocity of postural movements as well as decreased low-frequency body sway oscillations. This indicates that individuals with strong fear of heights react to heights with maladaptive rigidity of posture due to increased weight of visual input for balance control, while the visual information is less reliable at heights. Our findings show that exposure to height in a naturalistic VR environment elicits a complex reaction involving correlated changes of the emotional state, autonomic activity, and postural balance, which are exaggerated in individuals with fear of heights. (shrink)

Overconfidence is typically damaging to one’s reputation as a trustworthy source of information. Previous research shows that the reputational cost associated with conveying a piece of false information is higher for confident than unconfident speakers. When judging speaker trustworthiness, individuals do not exclusively rely on past accuracy but consider the extent to which speakers expressed a degree of confidence that matched the accuracy of their claims (their “confidence-accuracy calibration”). The present study experimentally examines the interplay between confidence, accuracy and a (...) third factor, namely evidence, in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. Experiment 1 probes the hypothesis that overconfidence does not backfire when a confident but inaccurate claim is justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be wrong is restored if the confidence expressed is based on strong evidence (good confidence-evidence calibration). Experiment 2 investigates the hypothesis that confidence can backfire if a confident and accurate claim is not justified: the trustworthiness of a confident speaker who turns out to be right is damaged if the confidence expressed is based on weak evidence (bad confidence-evidence calibration). Our results support both hypotheses and thus suggest that “confidence-evidence calibration” plays a crucial role in the assessment of speaker trustworthiness. (shrink)

This volume collects twenty original essays on the philosophy of film. It uniquely brings together scholars working across a range of philosophical traditions and academic disciplines to broaden and advance debates on film and philosophy. The book includes contributions from a number of prominent philosophers of film including Noël Carroll, Chris Falzon, Deborah Knight, Paisley Livingston, Robert Sinnerbrink, Malcolm Turvey, and Thomas Wartenberg. While the topics explored by the contributors are diverse, there are a number of thematic threads that connect (...) them. Overall, the book seeks to bridge analytic and continental approaches to philosophy of film in fruitful ways. Moving to the individual essays, the first two sections offer novel takes on the philosophical value and the nature of film. The next section focuses on the film-as-philosophy debate. Section IV covers cinematic experience, while Section V includes interpretations of individual films that touch on questions of artificial intelligence, race and film, and cinema's biopolitical potential. Finally, the last section proposes new avenues for future research on the moving image beyond film. This book will appeal to a broad range of scholars working in film studies, theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract:This study tests the usefulness of a person-situation interactionist framework in examining the willingness of a salesperson to lie to get an order. Using a survey of 389 salespersons, our results demonstrate that organizational relationships influence willingness to lie. Specifically, salespersons are less willing to lie to their own company than to their customer, than to a channel partner, and finally, than to a competitor firm. Furthermore, respondents from firms with a clear and positive ethical climate are less willing to (...) lie. Finally, our study finds that interactions between personality factors, such as high Machiavellianism and high self-monitoring, and situational factors have an impact on willingness to lie. Our results suggest that firms can take steps to influence employee ethical behavior. (shrink)

Disagreement is a hot topic right now in epistemology, where there is spirited debate between epistemologists who argue that we should be moved by the fact that we disagree and those who argue that we need not. Both sides to this debate often use what is commonly called “the method of cases,” designing hypothetical cases involving peer disagreement and using what we think about those cases as evidence that specific normative theories are true or false, and as reasons for believing (...) as such. With so much weight being given in the epistemology of disagreement to what people think about cases of peer disagreement, our goal in this paper is to examine what kinds of things might shape how people think about these kinds of cases. We will show that two different kinds of framing effect shape how people think about cases of peer disagreement, and examine both what this means for how the method of cases is used in the epistemology of disagreement and what this might tell us about the role that motivated cognition is playing in debates about which normative positions about peer disagreement are right and wrong. (shrink)

In addition to being a founder of American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce was a scientist and an empiricist. A core aspect of his thoroughgoing empiricism was a mindset that treats all attitudes as revisable. His fallibilism seems to require us to constantly seek out new information, and to not be content holding any beliefs uncritically. At the same time, Peirce often states that common sense has an important role to play in both scientific and vital inquiry, and that there cannot (...) be any “direct profit in going behind common sense.” Our question is the following: alongside a scientific mindset and a commitment to the method of inquiry, where does common sense fit in? Peirce does at times directly address common sense; however, those explicit engagements are relatively infrequent. In this paper, we argue that getting a firm grip on the role of common sense in Peirce’s philosophy requires a three-pronged investigation, targeting his treatment of common sense alongside his more numerous remarks on intuition and instinct. By excavating and developing Peirce’s concepts of instinct and intuition, we show that his respect for common sense coheres with his insistence on the methodological superiority of inquiry. We conclude that Peirce shows us the way to a distinctive epistemic position balancing fallibilism and anti-scepticism, a pragmatist common sense position of considerable interest for contemporary epistemology given current interest in the relation of intuition and reason. (shrink)

Engaged scholarship is an intellectual movement sweeping across higher education, not only in the social and behavioral sciences but also in fields of natural science and engineering. It is predicated on the idea that major advances in knowledge will transpire when scholars, while pursuing their research interests, also consider addressing the core problems confronting society. For a workable engaged agenda in science and technology studies, one that informs scholarship as well as shapes practice and policy, the traditional terms of engagement (...) must be renegotiated to be more open and mutual than has historically characterized the nature of inquiry in this field. At the same time, it is essential to protect individual privacy and preserve government confidentiality. Yet there is a scientific possibility for and benefit to introducing more collaborative and deliberative research approaches between scholar and subject in ways that will not violate these first-order ethics. To make the case, this article discusses the possibilities and perils of engaged science and technology scholarship by drawing on our own recent experiences to conduct and apply STS research while embedded in the National Science Foundation. Brief accounts of these experiences reveal the opportunities as well as the challenges of engaged scholarship. They also provide lessons for those fellow travelers who might follow the authors to this or other like host organizations with ambitions of increasing fundamental knowledge about and applying research to the policies, programs, and decisions of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

The integration of ideas, methods, and data from diverse disciplines has been a transformative force in science and higher education, attracting policy interventions, program innovations, financial resources, and talented people. Much energy has been invested in producing a new generation of scientists trained to work fluidly across disciplines, sectors, and research problems, yet the success of such investments has been difficult to measure. Using the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program of the U.S. National Science Foundation as a (...) strategic research site, we conducted an experiment to determine whether and how the process and products of research of IGERT-trained scientists differ from those of scientists trained in disciplinary graduate programs. Among scientists in the early years of graduate study we found substantial and consistent differences suggesting that interdisciplinary training improved the quality and process of research, but this pattern was equally strongly reversed among students in the latter years of graduate study. Using systematic observation and other data we suggest why this might be so, then discuss the implications of these results for the design and conduct of graduate education and research. (shrink)

The term 'therapeutic misconception' (TM) was introduced in 1982 to conceptualize how some psychiatry trial participants perceived and interpreted their involvement in research. TM has since been identified in many settings and is a major component in research ethics discussions. A qualitative study included a subgroup of interviews with five parents (two couples, one mother) who declined to enrol their baby in a neonatal trial. Analysis suggested the possibility of a counterpart to TM which, given the original terminology, we term (...) the 'injurious misconception' (IM). While TM is closely linked to the elision of care and research, and involves an over-stated sense of benefit and protection, IM may be a product of a particularly keen and discomforting sense of distinctions between care and research and a correspondingly over-stated sense of risk and threat. (shrink)

Previous research has demonstrated that ratings of the perceived pleasantness and quality of odors can be modulated by auditory stimuli presented at around the same time. Here, we extend these results by assessing whether the hedonic congruence between odor and sound stimuli can modulate the perception of odor intensity, pleasantness, and quality in untrained participants. Unexpectedly, our results reveal that broadband white noise, which was rated as unpleasant in a follow-up experiment, actually had a more pronounced effect on participants’ odor (...) ratings than either the consonant or dissonant musical selections. In particular, participants rated the six smells used as being less pleasant and less sweet when they happened to be listening to white noise, as compared to any one of the other music conditions. What is more, these results also add evidence to support the existence of a close relationship between an odor’s hedonic character and the perception of odor quality. So, for example, independent of the sound condition, pleasant odors were rated as sweeter, less dry, and brighter than the unpleasant odors. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for the understanding of crossmodal correspondences between olfactory and auditory stimuli. (shrink)

The topic of the self has long been salient in feminist philosophy, for it is pivotal to questions about personhood, identity, the body, and agency that feminism must address. In some respects, Simone de Beauvoir's trenchant observation, "He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other," sums up why the self is such an important issue for feminism. To be the Other is to be the non-subject, the non-person, the non-agent — in short, the mere body. (...) In law, in customary practice, and in cultural stereotypes, women's selfhood has been systematically subordinated, diminished, and belittled, when it has not been outright denied. Since women have been cast as lesser forms of the masculine individual, the paradigm of the self that has gained ascendancy in U.S. popular culture and in Western philosophy is derived from the experience of the predominantly white and heterosexual, mostly economically advantaged men who have wielded social, economic, and political power and who have dominated the arts, literature, the media, and scholarship. Responding to this state of affairs, feminist philosophical work on the self has taken three main tacks: (1) critique of established views of the self, (2) reclamation of women's selfhood, and (3) reconceptualization of the self to incorporate women's experience. This entry will survey feminist perspectives on the self from all three of these angles. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 373-391.

This is an intellectual biography of Feng Youlan [Fung Yu-lan]. It explores Feng’s work and the trajectory of changes in Feng’s philosophical outlook against the social and political contexts of Feng’s life from the 1920s to 1990.

Purpose This research aims to develop a conceptual framework that explores the influence of open-source software (OSS) on the sustainability of library services within the context of academic libraries in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a comprehensive research methodology that includes literature review and analysis to construct a robust conceptual framework. This study investigates the various dimensions of OSS adoption and its impact on library service sustainability. Findings The research findings reveal the critical factors and mechanisms through which OSS can (...) positively affect the sustainability of library services. This study identifies key drivers and challenges associated with the adoption of open-source solutions in the context of Bangladesh academic libraries. Practical implications The framework developed in this research offers practical insights for academic libraries in Bangladesh seeking to adopt OSS solutions. This study guides how to leverage these technologies to enhance the sustainability of library services in a cost-effective and efficient manner. Originality/value This study contributes to the academic literature by presenting a novel conceptual framework tailored to the unique context of Bangladesh academic libraries. This study adds value by addressing the specific challenges and opportunities related to OSS adoption and its implications for library service sustainability in this region. (shrink)

Twenty distinguished philosophers and social theorists have contributed original papers to this stimulating investigation into the nature of the economically just society. Collectively, and in a remarkably coherent fashion, these papers set out the problems of contemporary social theory within the context of the distributive justice vs. property rights debate initiated by the works of John Rawls and Robert Nozick.

Friedrich Nietzsche se ha convertido en uno de los exponentes más influyentes y conocidos de la filosofía. Y si bien muchos de sus conceptos fundamentales son cada vez mejor comprendidos y comentados, el mundo hispanohablante conoce menos de su filosofía terapéutica. Así, este artículo tiene por objetivo contribuir a enriquecer la lista de trabajos que han permitido redescubrir a Nietzsche no solo como un filósofo del ars vivendi, sino muy particularmente como filosofo de la medicina. En especial me detendré a (...) interpretar algunos de los planteamientos más fructíferos en su pensar para debates contemporáneos en filosofía de la medicina. (shrink)

Resumen: Propongo una crítica a la noción de serialidad en la comprensión del concepto de tiempo en el contexto de los estudios cartesianos. En el debate entre los defensores del tiempo continuo y quienes defienden un tiempo discreto, sostengo que ninguna de estas posiciones tiene en cuenta que la serialidad se enmarca en una noción de tiempo que se concibe como divisible y numerable y que no pertenece intrínsecamente a la naturaleza de la experiencia temporal del cogito. Mi propuesta consiste (...) en comenzar a desarrollar la caracterización de dicho tiempo experiencial y cogitativo.: My aim is to criticize the notion of seriality embedded in the understanding of time within the framework of Cartesian studies. I hold that neither those who defend that time is continuous nor those who think that it is discrete take into account the fact that seriality is rooted in a conception of time conceived as divisible and numerable that does not belong intrinsically to the nature of the experience of time of the cogito. I propose to advance towards a characterization of such experiential and cogitative time. (shrink)

Resumen En el presente trabajo se investigan los alcances y las consecuencias que se desprenden de utilizar a Heidegger en el campo de la filosofía de la medicina. Con este fin, la investigación se divide en los siguientes puntos: 1) se explicitará en qué puede consistir una “antropologización” del pensamiento heideggeriano; 2) se ofrecerá una descripción general respecto de las teorías de la salud y enfermedad más significativas y actuales en el campo de la teoría de la medicina; 3) nos (...) detendremos en el análisis relacionado con el problema de la enfermedad desde una perspectiva heideggeriana, para finalmente, 4) ofrecer algunas reflexiones críticas en relación con el análisis ofrecido.In this contribution we investigate the scope and consequences that arise from applying Heidegger in the field of philosophy of medicine. For this purpose, the paper is divided in the following points: First, we will make explicit the meaning of an “anthropologization” of Heidegger's thought. Second, an overview of the most significant contemporary theories of health and disease in the field of theory of medicine will be offered. Third, we will interpret the meaning of disease from a Heideggerian perspective. Finally, 4) we will offer some critical reflections offered in relation to the analysis. (shrink)

Provides an introduction to a vast array of scholarly perspectives on emergent technologies and biotechnologies used to modify or augment the capabilities of human beings.

El presente artículo pretende dar cuenta de cómo el pensamiento de Slavoj Žižek posibilita el diagnóstico, la comprensión y la interpretación de nuevas o diversas formas de confrontación de algunas de las crisis más importantes de este tiempo, para lo cual esta investigación partió del estudio del concepto de crisis en el pensamiento del filósofo esloveno y de la descripción breve de algunos hechos que podrían considerarse como críticos o verdaderas crisis de este tiempo. Posteriormente se realizó un análisis de (...) la teoría del acontecimiento desarrollada por Žižek en varias de sus obras, para finalizar con algunas recomendaciones y reflexiones en torno a la forma en que el pensamiento de dicho autor posibilita tanto una nueva comprensión de las crisis, como la construcción de alternativas y focos de atención que constituyan, en sí mismos, nuevas formas de confrontación de ellos. El método empleado para realizar el abordaje así propuesto fue el hermenéutico, el instrumento fue el estudio bibliográfico y la técnica de análisis de información fue el análisis del discurso. (shrink)

Se realizó la revisión bibliográfica con el objetivo de que los jóvenes profesionales de la salud conozcan acerca de la historia, origen y significado del distintivo que representa a la Medicina en todos sus campos con un carácter humanista y elevados valores éticos y morales: el emblema de Esculapio, al que se le atribuyen dotes para calmar o apaciguar. Esta imagen del bastón con la serpiente es la que ha quedado como un atributo del dios curativo y ha llegado hasta (...) la actualidad como símbolo de la Medicina. The literature review was made in order to young health professionals know about the history , origin and meaning of the emblem that represents the Medicine in all fields with humanist and high ethical values and moral character : the Aesculapius emblem, the feats attributed to him to calm or appease . This image of the snake with the cane has remained as a healing attribute of God and has come to the present as a symbol of medicine. (shrink)

The paper takes a Critical Discourse Analysis angle and joins Social Media Studies and Religious Studies perspectives of Computer Mediated Communication material to examine such strategies of online interpersonal communication as may foster civic solidarity on social networks sites over local incidents with national and international media coverage. Computer mediated discourse is often underpinned by ideological antagonism especially when tackling social, political, cultural and even religious issues. Our topic choice was occasioned by an infelicitous episode – a fire in a (...) local venue hosting a rock concert that resulted in a high number of casualties and fatalities. The tragic episode triggered some polarized and highly opinionated positioning in the social media, both independent of and/or in retaliation to media sourced accounts and personal posts. We analyzed qualitatively authentic CMC material as well as edited media inputs in order to establish if and how the networked, yet generationally diverse, public achieve symbolic solidarity through reactive and correlated digi-participation where sociocultural identities become tangent to such ecclesiastic issues as became salient and were up-cycled in the local political conjecture. (shrink)

Simulation – imagining future events – plays a role in decision-making. In Conviction Narrative Theory, people's emotional responses to their simulations inform their choices. Yet imagining one possible future also increases its plausibility and accessibility relative to other futures. We propose that the act of simulation, in addition to affective evaluation, drives people to choose in accordance with their simulations.

The use of ethics in everyday nursing practice will become increasingly important to the individual nurse, and nursing as a profession, as technology has a greater impact on health status and the provision of health care. Resource allocation is only one example of an ethical issue in which nursing must have input. Nursing can expand its contribution to society by ensuring that it plays a major role in shaping public policy and legislation. If nursing is to continue to serve the (...) public, the involvement of nurses within the political process must be accepted as an ethical necessity. (shrink)

This analysis examines the ‘girls only’ policy for publicly funded human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programmes. Current funding policy in most Canadian provinces covers ‘girls only’ with the goal of reducing mortality and morbidity rates of HPV‐related cervical cancer. Recent studies indicate increasing rates of other HPV‐related cancers among cisgender men and women. The HPV vaccine is proving effective against some of these cancers. Statistics on HPV vaccine uptake among individuals with different gender expressions are scarce. Critics argue that a ‘girls (...) only’ HPV vaccine policy is inequitable. We add to this critique by reflecting on the gender binary embedded in such policies and produced through epidemiological studies that attend differentially to females, reinforcing exclusionary practices that leave out those who form their gender identities across the spectrum. We then draw on deontological (duties‐based) and utilitarian (utility‐based) frameworks to show that these gendered policies are also unethical. These challenges to the assumptions underlying ‘girls only’ immunization programmes have implications for nurses and the healthcare system. If we are to advance equitable and ethical health outcomes, we entreat nurses as a collective to mobilize the public to lobby federal, provincial and territorial governments to fund more inclusive HPV vaccination policies. (shrink)

The recent availability of multiple avian genomes has laid the foundation for a huge variety of comparative genomics analyses including scans for changes and signatures of selection that arose from adaptions to new ecological niches. Nocturnal adaptation in birds, unlike in mammals, is comparatively recent, a fact that makes birds good candidates for identifying early genetic changes that support adaptation to dim‐light environments. In this review, we give examples of comparative genomics analyses that could shed light on mechanisms of adaptation (...) to nocturnality. We present advantages and disadvantages of both “data‐driven” and “hypothesis‐driven” approaches that lead to the discovery of candidate genes and genetic changes promoting nocturnality. We anticipate that the accessibility of multiple genomes from the Genome 10K Project will allow a better understanding of evolutionary mechanisms and adaptation in general. -/- . (shrink)

In this study we empirically map the field of media and communication studies by focusing on relationships between cognitive dimensions on the one hand and material dimensions on the other. Our analysis, which focuses on the field of MCS in Switzerland, identifies two clusters of research institutions representing distinct strands of research in the field. Results show how these two strands differ in terms of their resource base, institutional positioning and recognition, teaching and transfer activities, as well as activities of (...) scientific production. Similarities and differences in these dimensions serve to explain the general evolution of the field. (shrink)

Zika infection in pregnant women is associated with an elevated probability of giving birth to a child with microcephaly and multiple other disabilities. Public health messaging on Zika prevention has predominantly targeted women who know they are pregnant or intend to become pregnant, but not teenage females for whom unintended pregnancy is more likely. Vulnerabilities among this population to reproductive risks associated with Zika are further amplified by restrictive abortion laws in several Zika-impacted states. Key to prevention is enhanced, targeted (...) public health messaging centered on teens nationally and particularly in certain high-risk regions. (shrink)