We argue that formal analogical reasoning is not a uniquely human trait but is found in chimpanzees, if not in monkeys. We also contest the claim that the relational matching-to-sample task is not exemplary of analogical behavior, and we provide evidence that symbolic-like treatment of relational information can be found in nonhuman species, a point in contention with the relational reinterpretation hypothesis.

Background Offering financial incentives to achieve medication adherence in patients with severe mental illness is controversial. Aims To explore the views of different stakeholders on the ethical acceptability of the practice. Method Focus group study consisting of 25 groups with different stakeholders. Results Eleven themes dominated the discussions and fell into four categories: (1) ‘wider concerns’, including the value of medication, source of funding, how patients would use the money, and a presumed government agenda behind the idea; (2) ‘problems requiring (...) clear policies’, comprising of practicalities and assurance that incentives are only one part of a tool kit; (3) ‘challenges for research and experience’, including effectiveness, the possibility of perverse incentives, and impact on the therapeutic relationship; (4) ‘inherent dilemmas’ around fairness and potential coercion. Conclusions The use of financial incentives is likely to raise similar concerns in most stakeholders, only some of which can be addressed by empirical research and clear policies. (shrink)

BackgroundChildhood adversity is linked to adverse health in adulthood. One posited mechanistic pathway is through physiological responses to acute stress. Childhood adversity has been previously related to both exaggerated and blunted physiological responses to acute stress, however, less is known about the psychological mechanisms which may contribute to patterns of physiological reactivity linked to childhood adversity.ObjectiveIn the current work, we investigated the role of challenge and threat stress appraisals in explaining relationships between childhood adversity and cortisol reactivity in response to (...) an acute stressor.MethodsUndergraduate students completed an online survey that included general demographic information and the Risky Families Questionnaire 24 h before a scheduled lab visit. In the lab, a research assistant collected a baseline salivary cortisol sample. Following the baseline period, participants were read instructions for the Trier Social Stress Test, a validated psychological lab stressor. Next, they completed a challenge vs. threat task appraisal questionnaire and completed the speech and math portion of the TSST. Twenty minutes following the start of the TSST, a second salivary sample was collected to measure changes in salivary cortisol following the TSST.ResultsLinear regression analyses adjusted for age, sex, childhood socioeconomic status, and baseline cortisol levels, showed childhood adversity associated with changes in cortisol levels [B = –0.29 t = –2.35, p = 0.02, R2=0.07]. Linear regression analyses controlling for age, sex, and childhood SES showed childhood adversity associated with both challenge [B = –0.52 t = –5.04, p < 0.001, R2=0.24] and threat [B = 0.55 t = 5.40, p < 0.001, R2=0.27] appraisals. Significant indirect effects of childhood trauma on cortisol reactivity were observed through challenge appraisals [B = –0.01 ], and threat appraisals [B = –0.01 ].ConclusionChildhood adversity may contribute to blunted cortisol reactivity, a pattern of response which is linked to obesity, addiction, and other behavior-related diseases. Our findings suggest that this relationship is in part a product of stress appraisals. (shrink)

This reply addresses observations of Drs. Larsen, Kruse, and Sweeny, and Scherer in their reviews of our published work on the link between positive psychological assets and outcomes of physical health. Inspired by Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative we argue that the interplay between the emotion spectrum and health is likely a complex and heterogeneous amalgam of known and yet unidentified elements melding at the individual level. When exploring the emotion–health link, researchers are challenged to grapple with complex system models (...) by considering multiple hierarchies of information that span individual-level factors, genetic blueprints, and cultural and environmental context. Research is needed to more fully elucidate the mechanism through which emotion influences health, with careful consideration of differences across race/ethnicity, culture, and context. (shrink)

Each of the five volumes in the Stone Art Theory Institutes series—and the seminars on which they are based—brings together a range of scholars who are not always directly familiar with one another’s work. The outcome of each of these convergences is an extensive and “unpredictable conversation” on knotty and provocative issues about art. This fourth volume in the series, _Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic_, focuses on questions revolving around the concepts of the aesthetic, the anti-aesthetic, and the political. (...) The book is about the fact that now, almost thirty years after Hal Foster defined the anti-aesthetic, there is still no viable alternative to the dichotomy between aesthetics and anti- or non-aesthetic art. The impasse is made more difficult by the proliferation of identity politics, and it is made less negotiable by the hegemony of anti-aesthetics in academic discourse on art. The central question of this book is whether artists and academicians are free of this choice in practice, in pedagogy, and in theory. The contributors are Stéphanie Benzaquen, J. M. Bern­stein, Karen Busk-Jepsen, Luis Camnitzer, Diarmuid Costello, Joana Cunha Leal, Angela Dimitrakaki, Alexander Dumbadze, T. Brandon Evans, Geng Youzhuang, Boris Groys, Beáta Hock, Gordon Hughes, Michael Kelly, Grant Kester, Meredith Kooi, Cary Levine, Sunil Manghani, William Mazzarella, Justin McKeown, Andrew McNamara, Eve Meltzer, Nadja Millner-Larsen, Maria Filomena Molder, Carrie Noland, Gary Peters, Aaron Richmond, Lauren Ross, Toni Ross, Eva Schürmann, Gregory Sholette, Noah Simblist, Jon Simons, Robert Storr, Martin Sundberg, Timotheus Vermeulen, and Rebecca Zorach. (shrink)

Recent advances in wireless technologies have led to the development of intelligent, in-vehicle safety applications designed to share information about the actions of nearby vehicles, potential road hazards, and ultimately predict dangerous scenarios or imminent collisions. These vehicle safety communication (VSC) technologies rely on the creation of autonomous, self-organizing, wireless communication networks connecting vehicles with roadside infrastructure and with each other. As the technical standards and communication protocols for VSC technologies are still being developed, certain ethical implications of these new (...) information technologies emerge: Coupled with the predicted safety benefits of VSC applications is a potential rise in the ability to surveil a driver engaging in her everyday activities on the public roads. This paper will explore how the introduction of VSC technologies might disrupt the “contextual integrity” of personal information flows in the context of highway travel and threaten one’s “privacy in public.” Since VSC technologies and their related protocols and standards are still in the developmental stage, the paper will conclude by revealing how close attention to the ethical implications of the remaining design decisions can inform and guide designers of VSC technologies to create innovate safety applications that increase public safety, but without compromising the value of one’s privacy in public. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Opining the articuli fidei:Thomas Aquinas on the Heretic’s Assent to the Articles of FaithM. V. DoughertyTHOMAS AQUINAS’S ACCOUNT of the infused virtue (habitus) of faith presupposes that some intrinsically intelligible truths are beyond the range of the natural cognitive abilities of human beings. The possession of the virtue of faith allows the believer to transcend certain natural epistemic limitations so that he can assent to truths that are necessary (...) for salvation. Consonant with the Catholic theological tradition, Aquinas refers to such truths as the articles of faith (articuli fidei), and stock examples include propositions concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation.1In light of the many and well-known texts from the Corpus Thomisticum that highlight the disproportion or incommensurability between the articles of faith and the natural cognitive abilities of human beings, it would not be unreasonable for one to assume that faith is required to assent to such articles of faith [End Page 1] in this life. Such an interpretive assumption could be expressed as:A1: A human being can assent to the articles of faith in this life if and only if the human being is fortified with the infused virtue of faith.One might be led to ascribe A1 to Aquinas when one considers that he criticizes the Pelagians precisely for maintaining that the assent to matters of faith is caused by nothing other than free will.2 Still further, one might think that strong evidence for A1 is Aquinas’s claim that “free will does not suffice for believing, since those things that are of faith are above reason.”3I argue, however, that A1’s identification of the virtue of faith as a necessary condition for the assent to the articles of faith does not adequately reflect Aquinas’s position, despite the many texts that may suggest such a view.4 That Aquinas does not endorse A1 can be made evident by examining his largely overlooked account of the epistemic state of the heretic (haereticus). To be sure, most commentators who explore the Thomistic treatment of heresy focus on the psychology of error underlying the heretic’s denial of one or more of the articles of faith.5 In the present paper I take an alternate path, however, focusing on those epistemic acts whereby the heretic gets its [End Page 2] right, so to speak, by correctly assenting to some of the articles of faith. Aquinas maintains that the heretic does not possess the infused virtue of faith yet still assents to all the articles of faith except for the one or more articles that he denies. Bereft of faith, the heretic “holds those things that are of faith by another mode than through faith.”6 This seemingly anomalous epistemic condition deserves consideration.7I. Intellects without FaithThe heretic appears to be cognitively privileged, since without faith he assents to the things that are of faith, seemingly overcoming without divine assistance the aforementioned disproportion between the limited range of reason and the articles of faith. Aquinas is aware of the apparent difficulty; in the Summa theologiae he defuses the rather unusual objection that heretics appear to have greater cognitive capacities than the faithful, since heretics routinely and unassistedly assent to those higher truths without possessing the virtue of faith.8 Aquinas concludes that the heretic holds the articles of faith by opinion (opinio), not faith.What makes one a heretic? Frequently Aquinas identifies obstinacy (pertinacia, instantia) as a necessary condition for heresy.9 The cause of heresy is at times identified with pride [End Page 3] (superbia).10 On Aquinas’s account, heresy is a species of unbelief (infidelitas) and every heretic is a schismatic.11 But the heretic does get many things right. If one were to deny all of the articles of faith, one would not qualify as a heretic, but would simply be a nonbeliever or an apostate. So, apart from the denial of an article (or a few articles) that specifies heretics as the distinct kind of heretic they happen to be, heretics for the most part succeed in assenting to most—but not all—of the articles of faith.Although the... (shrink)

Книга представляет собой систематический научный труд. Это принципиально новая наука! Здесь нет механики! Исследование мироздания - "качественное", и законы, есть законы.

Selected articles on Marxism, nationalism, and humanism by a radical humanist leader and Communist international; includes study on his life and work.

Após a obrigatoriedade da educação sexual (ES) nas escolas portuguesas em 2009, pretendemos conhecer que perspectiva têm os professores ( N = 307) sobre a ES. Através de um questionário on-line , analisado através de estatística descritiva e de análise factorial e inferencial, avaliámos as atitudes ..

In teaching introductory ethics courses it is a struggle to find ways to ground the theoretical approach in a context accessible to students. Two way to provide this context are to use feature films and service learning. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. Feature films provide students with a consistentnarrative, the filmmaker’s intentions, and identical experiences. Service learning provides students with an open encounter with uncertain meaning, concrete human problems, and at best similar experiences. The benefits and weaknesses of each (...) approach depend upon the objectives of the course. Films allow for greater clarity in interpretation of ethical theory, while service makes possible an appreciation of the ambiguities of ethical actions. (shrink)

In a series of articles, Snyder has developed the idea of simultaneous situations and that concept's implications for physics and psychology . In recent articles , he develops the application of the concept to the Einstein, Poldsky, and Rosen Gedankenexperiment that utilized spacelike separated events to solve the problem that arises in Bohr's complimentarity interpretation of quantum mechanics. In the course of his most recent article , Snyder made several criticisms of Garrison in order to strenghten Snyder's argument for a (...) cognitive-interpretive activity in the gedankenexperiment. These criticisms are addressed and Snyder's Einsteinian realism is contrasted with Garrison's verificationist stance. (shrink)

Learning a mapping involves finding regularities in a training set and generalization to novel patterns. Clark & Thornton's type distinction has been discussed in terms of generalization, but has limited value in this respect. However, in terms of detection of regularities in the training set, the distinction is more valid, as it provides a measure of complexity and correlates with the size of search space.

System of References To keep footnotes to a minimum, references to classical sources are incorporated into the body of the narrative, normally in the ...