A healthy work-life balance has become increasingly important to people trying to cope with the pressures of contemporary society. This trend highlights the fallacy of assessing well-being in terms of finance alone; how much time we have matters just as much as how much money. The authors of this book have developed a novel way to measure 'discretionary time': time which is free to spend as one pleases. Exploring data from the US, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden and Finland, they show (...) that temporal autonomy varies substantially across different countries and under different living conditions. By calibrating how much control people have over their time, and how much they could have under alternative welfare, gender or household arrangements, this book offers a new perspective for comparative cross-national enquiries into the temporal aspects of human welfare. (shrink)

The emergence of the “4th Industrial Revolution,” i.e. the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies, could accelerate socioeconomic insecurities and anxieties or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo. In the post-Covid-19 era, the entities that are best positioned to capitalize on these innovations are large firms, which use digital platforms and big data to orchestrate vast ecosystems of users and extract market share across industry sectors. Nonetheless, these technologies also have the potential (...) to democratize ownership, broaden political-economic participation, and reduce environmental harms. We articulate the potential sociotechnical pathways in this high-stakes crossroads by analyzing cellular agriculture, an exemplary 4th Industrial Revolution technology that synergizes computer science, biopharma, tissue engineering, and food science to grow cultured meat, dairy, and egg products from cultured cells and/or genetically modified yeast. Our exploration of this space involved multi-sited ethnographic research in both the cellular agriculture community and alternative economic organizations devoted to open source licensing, member-owned cooperatives, social financing, and platform business models. Upon discussing how these latter approaches could potentially facilitate alternative sociotechnical pathways in cellular agriculture, we reflect upon the broader implications of this work with respect to the 4th Industrial Revolution and the enduring need for public policy reform. (shrink)

The QR code recognition often faces the challenges of uneven background fluctuations, inadequate illuminations, and distortions due to the improper image acquisition method. This makes the identification of QR codes difficult, and therefore, to deal with this problem, artificial intelligence-based systems came into existence. To improve the recognition rate of QR image codes, this article adopts an improved adaptive median filter algorithm and a QR code distortion correction method based on backpropagation (BP) neural networks. This combination of artificial intelligence algorithms (...) is capable of fitting the distorted QR image into the geometric deformation pattern, and QR code recognition is accomplished. The two-dimensional code distortion is addressed in this study, which was a serious research issue in the existing software systems. The research outcomes obtained after emphasizing on the preprocessing stage of the image revealed that a significant improvement of 14% is observed for the reading rate of QR image code, after processing by the system algorithm in this article. The artificial intelligence algorithm adopted has a certain effect in improving the recognition rate of the two-dimensional code image. (shrink)

Through empirical studies or laboratory tests, previous studies have shown that sport-confidence, attention, and emotion regulation are key factors in archery performance. The present study aims to further identify the effects and pathways of sport-confidence, attention, and cognitive reappraisal on real-world archery performance by constructing a hypothesized model to provide a basis for scientific training of athletes to improve sport performance. A survey design was utilized on a sample of 61 athletes from the Chinese National Archery Team to test the (...) model. The measurement and hypothesized models were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results indicate that the model fit well and explained 33.6% of the variance in archery performance. Sport-confidence and attention were important predictive indicators of archery performance, while the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and archery performance showed considerable complexity. We conclude that the development of sport-confidence and attention of archery athletes should be strengthened, but athletes who use cognitive reappraisal in archery competition should be mindful of its potential appropriation of cognitive resources and should be directed to improve sport-confidence or develop a positive orientation to arouse excitement. (shrink)

Due to improvements in medicine, the figures of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) are increasing. Diagnostics of DoC and prognostication of rehabilitation outcome is challenging but necessary to evaluate recovery potential and to decide on treatment options. Such decisions should be made by doctors and patients’ surrogates based on medico-ethical principles. Meeting information needs and communicating effectively with caregivers as the patients´ most common surrogate-decision makers is crucial, and challenging when novel tech-nologies are introduced. This qualitative study aims to (...) explore information needs of informal DoC caregivers, how they manage the obtained information and their perceptions and experiences with caregiver-physician communication in facilities that implemented innovative neurodiagnostics studies. In 2021, we conducted semi-structured interviews with nine caregivers of clinically stable DoC patients in two rehabilitation centers in Italy and Germany. Participants were selected based on consecutive purposeful sampling. Caregivers were recruited at the facilities after written informed consent. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated. For analysis, we used reflexive thematic analysis according to Braun & Clarke (2006). Caregivers experienced the conversations emotionally, generally based on the value of the information provided. They reported to seek positive information, comfort and empathy with-in the communication of results of examinations. They needed detailed information to gain a deep understanding and a clear picture of their loved-one’s condition. The results suggest a mismatch between the perspectives of caregivers and the perspectives of medical profession-als, and stress the need for more elaborate approaches to the communication of results of neu-rodiagnostics studies. (shrink)

_Objective:_ The aim of the current study was to investigate associations, unique and interactive, between mothers’ and children’s histories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and children’s psychiatric outcomes using an intergenerational perspective. Further, we were particularly interested in examining whether maternal reflective functioning about their own trauma (T-RF) was associated with a lower likelihood of children’s abuse exposure (among children of CSA-exposed mothers). _Methods:_ One hundred and eleven children ( M age = 9.53 years; 43 sexual abuse victims) and their (...) mothers ( M age = 37.99; 63 sexual abuse victims) participated in this study. Mothers completed the Parent Development Interview (PDI), which yielded assessments of RF regarding their own experiences of abuse, and also reported on their children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms. _Results:_ Children of CSA-exposed mothers were more likely to have experienced CSA. A key result was that among CSA-exposed mothers, higher maternal T-RF regarding their own abuse was associated with lower likelihood of child CSA-exposure. Mothers’ and children’s CSA histories predicted children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms, such that CSA exposure for mother or child was associated with greater symptomatology in children. _Conclusion:_ The findings show that the presence of either maternal or child CSA is associated with more child psychological difficulties. Importantly in terms of identifying potential protective factors, maternal T-RF is associated with lower likelihood of CSA exposure in children of CSA-exposed mothers. We discuss these findings in the context of the need for treatments focusing on increasing T-RF in mothers and children in the context of abuse to facilitate adaptation and reduce the intergenerational risk. (shrink)

This volume is a comprehensive Handbook of Russian thought that provides an in-depth survey of major figures, currents, and developments in Russian intellectual history, spanning the period from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century. Written by a group of distinguished scholars as well as some younger ones from Russia, Europe, the United States, and Canada, this Handbook reconstructs a vibrant picture of the intellectual and cultural life in Russia and the Soviet Union during the most buoyant period (...) in the country's history. Contrary to the widespread view of Russian modernity as a product of intellectual borrowing and imitation, the essays collected in this volume reveal the creative spirit of Russian thought, which produced a range of original philosophical and social ideas, as well as great literature, art, and criticism. While rejecting reductive interpretations, the Handbook employs a unifying approach to its subject matter, presenting Russian thought in the context of the country's changing historical landscape. This Handbook will open up a new intellectual world to many readers and provide a secure base for its further exploration. (shrink)

Implicit theories refer to assumptions people hold about different domains, also known as mindsets. There are two implicit theories on the malleability of one’s ability: entity theory and incremental theory. They constrain and regulate people’s understanding and responses to an individual’s behavior, leading to different social cognitive patterns and behavioral responses. Resilience is a positive adaptation in highly stressful situations that represents mechanisms for coping with and transcending difficult experiences, i.e., a person’s ability to successfully adapt to change, resist the (...) adverse effects of stressors, avoid significant dysfunction, and be chronically affected by considered a protective factor for mental health. Although previous studies showed that individuals’ implicit theories are associated with resilience, this relationship has received little attention in the nursing population. It is unclear which variables may contribute to explaining the relationship between implicit theories and resilience. Therefore, the current study aims to deeply explore the relationship between implicit theories and the resilience of Chinese nurses. In addition, we also seek to demonstrate the chain mediating effects of grit and meaning in life on this relationship. We surveyed 709 Chinese nurses through online questionnaires using the self-made demographic questionnaire, the Implicit Theories Scale, the Short Grit Scale, the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, and the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. After controlling for demographic variables such as age, gender, educational background, marital status, professional title, and working years, the results reveal positive associations between Chinese nurses’ implicit theories and their resilience, and grit and meaning in life play a partial mediating role in this relationship, respectively. Furthermore, grit and meaning in life play a chain mediating role between implicit theories and resilience. These findings contribute to understanding the psychological impact mechanism of implicit theories on nurses’ resilience and provide a theoretical basis for nursing managers to formulate strategies to improve nurses’ psychological resilience. (shrink)

The general objective of this research was to understand the manifestations of managerial leadership in the employees of a public institution in Cajamarca. The research is qualitative in nature, based on the analysis of scientific research obtained from the review of various studies and academic documents. The main results revealed the coexistence of different leadership approaches within the institution, highlighting transformational leadership and systemic leadership, characterized by fostering skills development, promoting a shared vision, and stimulating innovation; however, the presence of (...) autocratic leadership was also identified, suggesting the persistence of more traditional and centralized approaches in some aspects of management. The research concluded that the perception of employees regarding these leadership styles is crucial to understand their impact on motivation, satisfaction, and performance; therefore, more participatory and adaptable leadership styles should be prioritized in order to avoid feelings of dissatisfaction among workers, phenomena that manifest in autocratic or less participatory styles. (shrink)

Many of the major challenges facing global society are unstructured collective harms (e.g., global warming): collective in the sense that they arise as the result of the actions of, or interactions among, multiple agents, and unstructured in the sense that there is no coordination or intention to cause harm among these agents. But how should we distribute moral responsibility for these harms? In this paper, an answer is proposed to this question. This answer builds on but develops existing proposals by (...) drawing together literatures that speak to different aspects of the question. First, it is argued that the notion of causal contribution needs to be broadened to include the idea of causation as production. Second, it is discussed how the voluntariness and foreseeability conditions are best interpreted in this context. Third, literature on moral taint is drawn to introduce additional objective (external) criteria. (shrink)

This article reflects on the concepts of health, well‐being, gender, and dignity when providing nursing care to older adults, focusing on their wisdom and the phenomena that can affect their health or improve their quality of life. These concepts are analyzed based on the current health conditions of older adults and their needs, on the perspectives of authors in this field of research, and on Patricia Benner's philosophy: the integration of science, clinical wisdom, and ethics in nursing practice. Furthermore, this (...) article aims at contributing to the health, well‐being, gender, and dignity of older adults, despite the discrimination that they may face, as well as to the reality of nursing practice. As such, this study stems from the observed reality, experiences as caregivers and reflection of nurses committed to the values of the profession. Therefore, the article begins with the conceptualization of health, well‐being, gender, and dignity, subsequently analyzing the health–disease status of older adults from a gender perspective, addressing nursing care for older adults based on Patricia Benner's philosophy and concluding with reflections on nursing practice for a better future for older adults. (shrink)

As evaluation of practitioners’ competence is largely based on self-report, accuracy in practitioners’ self-assessment is essential for ensuring high quality treatment-delivery. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between independent observers’ ratings and practitioners’ self-reported treatment integrity ratings of Motivational interviewing. Practitioners were randomized to two types of supervision [i.e., regular institutional group supervision, or individual telephone supervision based on the MI Treatment Integrity code]. The mean age was 43.2 years, and 62.7 percent were females. All sessions (...) were recorded and evaluated with the MITI, and the MI skills were self-assessed with a questionnaire over a period of 12 months. The associations between self-reported and objectively assessed MI skills were overall weak, but increased slightly from baseline to the 12-months assessment. However, the self-ratings from the group that received monthly objective feedback were not more accurate than those participating in regular group supervision. These results expand findings from previous studies and have important implications for assessment of practitioners’ treatment fidelity: Practitioners may learn to improve the accuracy of self-assessment of competence, but to ensure that patients receive intended care, adherence and competence should be assessed objectively. (shrink)

Objective: The present study examines the validity of 11 new Holtzman Inkblot Technique indices. These were chosen from Exner’s Comprehensive System indices using two criteria: first, they had to be valid according to meta-analysis, and second, they must be computed using the HIT standard scoring system.Methods: Both techniques were administrated with a retest interval from 1 to 7days to a sample of 139 subjects from the general population. The validity of the new indices was studied through Pearson correlation with the (...) corresponding RCS indices.Results: Nine of the 11 new indices showed significant correlations with Rorschach scales, confirming our hypotheses. The correlation ranged from a minimum of 0.144 to a maximum of 0.414.Conclusions: The results provide support for the validity of the new HIT indices and have important implications for both clinical and research fields. (shrink)

Studies have demonstrated that parents often exhibit a still face while silently reading their cell phones when responding to texts. Such disruptions to parent-child interactions have been observed during parental media use such as texting and these disruptions have been termed technoference. In the present study, we explored changes to mother-child interactions that occur before, during and after interruptions due to texting using an adapted naturalistic still face paradigm. Specifically, we examined the effect of an interruption due to either maternal (...) smartphone use or use of an analog medium on maternal interaction quality with their 20- to 22-month-old children. Mother-child interactions during free play were interrupted for 2 min by asking the mothers to fill out a questionnaire either by typing on the smartphone or on paper with a pen. Interactional quality was compared between free-play and interruption phases and to a no-interruption control group. Mixed ANOVA across phase and condition indicated that maternal responsiveness and pedagogical behavior decreased during the interruption phase for both the interruption groups but not for the no-interruption group. Children also increased their positive bids for attention during the paper-and-pencil and the smartphone conditions relative to the no-interruption control. These findings are consistent with a large body of research on the still-face paradigm and with a recent study demonstrating that smartphone interruptions decreased parenting quality. The present study, however, connects these lines of research showing the many everyday disruptions to parent-child interactions are likely to decrease parenting quality and that toddlers are likely to detect and attempt to repair such interruptions. (shrink)

Depression is a common mental health illness worldwide that affects our quality of life and ability to work. Although prior research has used EEG signals to increase the accuracy to identify depression, the rates of underdiagnosis remain high, and novel methods are required to identify depression. In this study, we built a model based on single-channel, dry-electrode EEG sensor technology to detect state depression, which measures the intensity of depressive feelings and cognitions at a particular time. To test the accuracy (...) of our model, we compared the results of our model with other commonly used methods for depression diagnosis, including the PHQ-9, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and House-Tree-Person drawing test, in three different studies. In study 1, we compared the results of our model with PHQ-9 in a sample of 158 senior high students. The results showed that the consistency rate of the two methods was 61.4%. In study 2, the results of our model were compared with HAM-D among 71 adults. We found that the consistency rate of state-depression identification by the two methods was 63.38% when a HAM-D score above 7 was considered depression, while the consistency rate increased to 83.10% when subjects showed at least one depressive symptom. In study 3, 68 adults participated in the study, and the results revealed that the consistency rate of our model and HTP drawing test was 91.2%. The results showed that our model is an effective means to identify state depression. Our study demonstrates that using our model, people with state depression could be identified in a timely manner and receive interventions or treatments, which may be helpful for the early detection of depression. (shrink)

Emotion recognition plays an important role in intelligent human–computer interaction, but the related research still faces the problems of low accuracy and subject dependence. In this paper, an open-source software toolbox called MindLink-Eumpy is developed to recognize emotions by integrating electroencephalogram and facial expression information. MindLink-Eumpy first applies a series of tools to automatically obtain physiological data from subjects and then analyzes the obtained facial expression data and EEG data, respectively, and finally fuses the two different signals at a decision (...) level. In the detection of facial expressions, the algorithm used by MindLink-Eumpy is a multitask convolutional neural network based on transfer learning technique. In the detection of EEG, MindLink-Eumpy provides two algorithms, including a subject-dependent model based on support vector machine and a subject-independent model based on long short-term memory network. In the decision-level fusion, weight enumerator and AdaBoost technique are applied to combine the predictions of SVM and CNN. We conducted two offline experiments on the Database for Emotion Analysis Using Physiological Signals dataset and the Multimodal Database for Affect Recognition and Implicit Tagging dataset, respectively, and conducted an online experiment on 15 healthy subjects. The results show that multimodal methods outperform single-modal methods in both offline and online experiments. In the subject-dependent condition, the multimodal method achieved an accuracy of 71.00% in the valence dimension and an accuracy of 72.14% in the arousal dimension. In the subject-independent condition, the LSTM-based method achieved an accuracy of 78.56% in the valence dimension and an accuracy of 77.22% in the arousal dimension. The feasibility and efficiency of MindLink-Eumpy for emotion recognition is thus demonstrated. (shrink)

According to conceptual metaphor theory, individuals are thought to understand or express abstract concepts by using referents in the physical world—right and left for moral and immoral, for example. In this research, we used a modified Stroop paradigm to explore how abstract moral concepts are metaphorically translated onto physical referents in Chinese culture using the Chinese language. We presented Chinese characters related to moral and immoral abstract concepts in either non-distorted or distorted positions or rotated to the right or to (...) the left. When we asked participants to identify the Chinese characters, they more quickly and accurately identified morally positive characters if they were oriented upright or turned to the right and more quickly and accurately identified immoral characters when the characters were distorted or rotated left. These results support the idea that physical cues are used in metaphorically encoding social abstractions and moral norms and provided cross-cultural validation for conceptual metaphor theory, which would predict our results. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was to analyze the impact of work performance on companies in Latin America and the Caribbean. The methodology used was a qualitative approach, a literature review was carried out through the documentary analysis of scientific articles, triangulation was also used as a technique for the analysis of information. Among the main results are: Job performance has a significant impact on productivity, effectiveness of public management and work performance in the region, human resource management is fundamental (...) in the performance and productivity of workers; and motivation, satisfaction and commitment influence organizational performance. It was concluded that work performance impacts sustainable development and organizational growth in the region, likewise, selection, training, well-being, motivation and communication in human resources management optimize work performance. (shrink)

Community leaders in Colombia have historically suffered processes of microaggressions and intimidation that threaten the free exercise of their voice in the processes of production of knowledge and in the participation of the planning of their territories. In this article, we explore the case study of the Network of Community Researchers (NCR), also known in Spanish as Red de Investigadores Comunitarios, promoted by the University of Antioquia, Colombia. The NCR is a commitment to the co-production of knowledge about human security (...) from below between community researchers and academics. This article analyses the contribution of the NCR to the human security of Medellin and a specific collection of capabilities for epistemic liberation of community researchers: the capability to be recognised as a producer of valid knowledge, to do through communicative openness, to learn from collective knowledge and to transform through collective action. The expansion of these four capabilities evidence processes of resistance and hermeneutic insurrection of some community leaders and activists who participate in the NCR. The analysis shows the contribution of the NCR to facilitate and generate a safe space in which community researchers communicate knowledge and practices and share experiences, risks, struggles, fears and collective dreams of transformation. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently suggested that some abstract, plausibly non-causal and/or mathematical, explanations explain in a way that is radically dif- ferent from the way causal explanation explain. Namely, while causal explanations explain by providing information about causal dependence, allegedly some abstract explanations explain in a way tied to the independence of the explanandum from the microdetails, or causal laws, for example. We oppose this recent trend to regard abstractions as explanatory in some sui generis way, and argue (...) that a prominent ac- count of causal explanation can be naturally extended to capture explanations that radically abstract away from microphysical and causal-nomological details. To this end, we distinguish di erent senses in which an explanation can be more or less abstract, and analyse the connection between explanations’ abstractness and their explanatory power. According to our analysis abstract explanations have much in common with counterfactual causal explanations. (shrink)

Probabilism is committed to two theses: 1) Opinion comes in degrees—call them degrees of belief, or credences. 2) The degrees of belief of a rational agent obey the probability calculus. Correspondingly, a natural way to argue for probabilism is: i) to give an account of what degrees of belief are, and then ii) to show that those things should be probabilities, on pain of irrationality. Most of the action in the literature concerns stage ii). Assuming that stage i) has been (...) adequately discharged, various authors move on to stage ii) with varied and ingenious arguments. But an unsatisfactory response at stage i) clearly undermines any gains that might be accrued at stage ii) as far as probabilism is concerned: if those things are not degrees of belief, then it is irrelevant to probabilism whether they should be probabilities or not. In this paper we scrutinize the state of play regarding stage i). We critically examine several of the leading accounts of degrees of belief: reducing them to corresponding betting behavior (de Finetti); measuring them by that behavior (Jeffrey); and analyzing them in terms of preferences and their role in decision-making more generally (Ramsey, Lewis, Maher). We argue that the accounts fail, and so they are unfit to subserve arguments for probabilism. We conclude more positively: ‘degree of belief’ should be taken as a primitive concept that forms the basis of our best theory of rational belief and decision: probabilism. (shrink)

Recently, there has been much research into conceptual engineering in connection with feminist inquiry and activism, most notably involving gender issues, but also sexism and misogyny. Our paper contributes to this research by explicating, in a principled manner, a series of other concepts important for feminist research and activism, to wit, feminist political identity terms. More specifically, we show how the popular Conceptual Spaces Framework (CSF) can be used to identify and regiment concepts that are central to feminist research, focusing (...) especially on feminism in France. According to the CSF, concepts can be represented geometrically, as regions in similarity spaces. A particular strength of the CSF framework is its empirically-focused methodology, which allows researchers to infer the boundaries of concepts from empirical data, thus eliminating the need to strongly rely on intuitions about meanings. This is shown to be especially valuable for the explication of concepts relating to feminist political identity, given that the intuitions of feminist scholars and activists about what would appear to be core concepts in the area tend to be poorly aligned or even conflicting. We report the results from an empirical categorization study conducted among French feminists and show how they support the view that the CSF can contribute to both the conceptual engineering project and our understanding of the structure of social reality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Our aim in this article is to offer a new justification for preferring theories that are more quantitatively parsimonious than their rivals. We discuss cases where it seems clear that those involved opted for more quantitatively parsimonious theories. We extend previous work on quantitative parsimony by offering an independent probabilistic justification for preferring the more quantitatively parsimonious theories in particular episodes of theory choice. Our strategy allows us to avoid worries that other considerations, such as pragmatic factors of computational (...) tractability and so on, could be the driving ones in the historical cases under consideration. _1_ Introduction _2_ Three Desiderata _2.1_ Limiting _2.2_ Robustness _2.3_ Breadth _2.3.1_ A limited success for Baker _2.3.2_ Rejecting Baker’s analysis _2.4_ The proposal _3_ Probabilistically Additive Hypotheses and a Bayesian Account: The Limpid Rationale Relativized and Reconsidered _3.1_ Neutrinos and beta decay _3.2_ Avogadro’s hypothesis _3.3_ Postulation of Neptune _4_ Conclusion. (shrink)

The notions of ground and ontological dependence have made a prominent resurgence in much of contemporary metaphysics. However, objections have been raised. On the one hand, objections have been raised to the need for distinctively metaphysical notions of ground and ontological dependence. On the other, objections have been raised to the usefulness of adding ground and ontological dependence to the existing store of other metaphysical notions. Even the logical properties of ground and ontological dependence are under debate. In this article, (...) I focus on how to account for the judgements of non-symmetry in several of the cases that motivate the introduction of notions like ground and ontological dependence. By focusing on the notion of explanation relative to a theory, I conclude that we do not need to postulate a distinctively asymmetric metaphysical notion in order to account for these judgements. (shrink)

The problem of explanatory non-symmetries provides the strongest reason to abandon the view that laws can figure in explanations without causal underpinnings. I argue that this problem can be overcome. The solution that I propose starts from noticing the importance of conditions of application when laws do explanatory work, and I go on to develop a notion of nomological dependence that can tackle the non-symmetry problem. The strategy is to show how a strong notion of counterfactual dependence as guaranteed by (...) the laws is a plausible account of what we aim towards when we give law-based explanations. The aim of this project is not to deny that causal relations can do explanatory work but to restore laws of nature as capable of being explanatory even in the absence of any knowledge of causal underpinnings. (shrink)

Objectification is a notion central to contemporary feminist theory. It has famously been associated with the work of anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and more recently with the work of Martha Nussbaum. However, objectification is a notion that has not yet been adequately defined. It has been used rather vaguely to refer to a broad range of cases involving, in some way or another, the treatment of a person as an object. My purpose in this paper is to (...) offer a plausible understanding of objectification. I do that by focusing on the work of four prominent thinkers: Immanuel Kant, and contemporary feminists Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Martha Nussbaum. Through drawing on these thinkers' conceptions of objectification, I am finally led to a more complete and coherent understanding of this notion. (shrink)

Kant has famously argued that monogamous marriage is the only relationship where sexual use can take place "without degrading humanity and breaking the moral laws." Kantian marriage, however, has been the target of fierce criticisms by contemporary things: it has been regarded as flawed and paradoncal, as being deeply at odds with feminism, and, at best, as plainly uninteresting. In this paper, I argue that Kantian marriage can indeed survive these criticisms. Finally, the paper advances the discussion beyond marriage. Drawing (...) on Kant 's conception of friendship, I suggest that he might have overlooked the possibility of sex being morally permissible in yet another context. (shrink)

Jung's interest in the East was deep-rooted and life-long, and the traditional teachings of China and India played an important role in his personal and intellectual development, as well as in the formations of the ideas and practices that are central to Jungian psychology. Jung on the East brings together key selections from his work on Buddhism, yoga and Taoism, and on such classic texts as the I Ching and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It also includes (...) accounts on his own journey to India. The clear and perceptive introduction sets the context for Jung's encounter with the East, and provides an excellent framework that will enable the reader to get the most out of Jung's writings in this area. The book will be of interest to everyone seeking to further their understanding both of Jung, and of Eastern thought and spirituality. (shrink)

This paper examines the relations between stubbornness and weakness of will, adopting Holton’s definition of weakness of will as an over-readiness to revise one’s resolutions. It posits that both stubbornness and weakness of will are responses to pessimism – the negative perception of a task or its outcome. Contrary to naive judgement, stubbornness is not merely the opposite of weakness; rather, it serves as a preventive behaviour stemming from a fear of weakness of will. Weakness of will and stubbornness can (...) be viewed as two facets of the same phenomenon, both influenced by pessimism. The paper explores the implications of this unified account, particularly at the therapeutic level, suggesting that enhancing self and other trust could reduce both weak and stubborn behaviours. (shrink)

A frequent justification in the literature for using stated preference methods (SP) is that they are the only methods that can capture the so-called total economic value (TEV) of environmental changes to society. Based on follow-up interviews with SP survey respondents, this paper addresses the implications of that argument by shedding light on the construction of TEV, through respondents’ perspective. It illuminates the deficiencies of willingness to pay (WTP) as a measure of value presented as three aggregated themes considering respondents’ (...) unintentionality, their retraction once they understood that their WTP could be decisive in cost-benefit analysis and the inherent incompleteness of WTP. We discuss why the TEV discourse persists, how it conceals rather than reveals broader notions of value and in what ways our results support the development of alternative approaches that truly endorse plurality in environmental valuation and decision-making. (shrink)

"As a doctor, I make every effort to strengthen the belief in immortality, especially with older patients when such questions come threateningly close. For, seen in correct psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal, and life's inclination towards death begins as soon as the meridian is past."--C.G. Jung, commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower? Here collected for the first time are Jung's views on death and immortality, his writings often coinciding with the death (...) of the most significant people in his life. The book shows many of the major themes running throughout the writings, including the relativity of space and time surrounding death, the link between transference and death, and the archetypes shared among the world's religions at the depths of the Self. The book includes selections from "On Resurrection," "The Soul and Death," "Concerning Rebirth," "Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead" from the Collected Works, "Letter to Pastor Pfafflin" from Letters, and "On Life after Death.". (shrink)

I show that the Lottery Paradox is just a version of the Sorites, and argue that this should modify our way of looking at the Paradox itself. In particular, I focus on what I call “the Cut-off Point Problem” and contend that this problem, well known by Sorites scholars, ought to play a key role in the debate on Kyburg’s puzzle. Very briefly, I show that, in the Lottery Paradox, the premises “ticket n°1 will lose”, “ticket n°2 will lose”… “ticket (...) n°1000 will lose” are equivalent to soritical premises of the form “~(the winning ticket is in {…, (tn)}) ⊃ ~(the winning ticket is in {…, tn, (tn + 1)})” (where “⊃” is the material conditional, “~” is the negation symbol, “tn” and “tn + 1” are “ticket n°n” and “ticket n°n + 1” respectively, and “{}” identify the elements of the lottery tickets’ set. The brackets in “(tn)” and “(tn + 1)” are meant to point out that in the antecedent of the conditional we do not always have a “tn” (and, as a result, a “tn + 1” in the consequent): consider the conditional “~(the winning ticket is in {}) ⊃ ~(the winning ticket is in {t1})”). As a result, failing to believe, for some ticket, that it will lose comes down to introducing a cut-off point in a chain of soritical premises. In this paper I explore the consequences of the different ways of blocking the Lottery Paradox with respect to the Cut-off Point Problem. A heap variant of the Lottery Paradox is especially relevant for evaluating the different solutions. One important result is that the most popular way out of the puzzle, i.e., denying the Lockean Thesis, becomes less attractive. Moreover, I show that, along with the debate on whether rational belief is closed under classical logic, the debate on the validity of modus ponens should play an important role in discussions on the Lottery Paradox. -/- . (shrink)

This book is parapsychological study of the meaningful coincidence of events, extrasensory perception, and similar phenomena.

The paper’s target is the historically influential betting interpretation of subjective probabilities due to Ramsey and de Finetti. While there are several classical and well-known objections to this interpretation, the paper focuses on just one fundamental problem: There is a sense in which degrees of belief cannot be interpreted as betting rates. The reasons differ in different cases, but there’s one crucial feature that all these cases have in common: The agent’s degree of belief in a proposition A does not (...) coincide with her degree of belief in a conditional that A would be the case if she were to bet on A, where the belief in this conditional itself is conditioned on the supposition that the agent will have an opportunity to make such a bet. Even though the two degrees of belief sometimes can coincide (they will coincide in those cases when the bet has no expected causal bearings on the proposition A and the opportunity to bet have no evidential bearings on that proposition), it is the latter belief rather than the former that guides the agent’s rational betting behaviour. The reason is that this latter belief takes into consideration potential interferences that bet opportunities and betting itself might create with regard to the proposition to be betted on. It is because of this interference problem that the agent’s degree of belief in A cannot be interpreted as her betting rate for A. (shrink)

Everettian quantum mechanics faces the challenge of how to make sense of probability and probabilistic reasoning in a setting where there is typically no unique outcome of measurements. Wallace has built on a proof by Deutsch to argue that a notion of probability can be recovered in the many worlds setting. In particular, Wallace argues that a rational agent has to assign probabilities in accordance with the Born rule. This argument relies on a rationality constraint that Wallace calls state supervenience. (...) I argue that state supervenience is not defensible as a rationality constraint for Everettian agents unless we already invoke probabilistic notions. (shrink)