Research into the potential associations between tinnitus and cognition has investigated specific cognitive domains in laboratory settings despite adults with tinnitus reporting broad cognitive difficulties in every-day life. To address this limitation, the present study compared performance and perceived exertion on a visual office-like task in 38 adults with tinnitus and 38 adults without tinnitus matched for age, sex and educational background. All participants were also assessed for hearing, anxiety and depression, and participants with tinnitus were also assessed for tinnitus (...) handicap. No associations were found between presence of tinnitus and cognitive performance and perceived exertion on the visual office-like task when corrected for standard and extended high frequency hearing thresholds, anxiety, and depression. The correction for extended high frequency average hearing threshold was significant for performance but not perceived exertion on the visual office-like task. Overall, the results showed extended high frequency hearing, but not tinnitus, was associated with every-day cognitive performance. This indicates clinical testing of hearing thresholds above 8 kHz could support clinicians’ identification and management of cognitive difficulties. One management method suggested by the current findings would include provision of auditory stimulation at frequencies exceeding the frequency response of many current hearing aids. (shrink)

How do we truly live well? Can philosophy actually tell us how to be happy? Constantly under attack in today's day and age, the Church's philosophy of what it means to be human and how to act serves as the logical consequence and culmination of all the truths of her theology and holy religion. But if we do not understand why we should act well according to the light of natural reason, it will be all the more difficult to explain (...) why we should act in a certain way according to the light of supernatural revelation. In short, the Church's philosophical system of ethics may well be the most important thing to learn today and so forms the culmination of our Foundations of Wisdom series. Ethics covers the teachings of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, showing how living a life according to the Church's perennial philosophy not only is not contrary to reason, but also leads to the culmination of what reason was made for: the perfection of the human person, serving as a vehicle for beatitude. In this fourth and final volume of The Foundations of Wisdom, you will understand the Church's teaching that the human person should act according to the light of natural reason by delving into the teachings of St. Thomas and seeing how natural reason harmonizes with the ethics of Holy Mother Church. Deepen your understanding of our very selves, learning how God made us to come to know Him and see His mark in every aspect of creation. Finally, understand the journey to happiness that God through His Church has provided for us to reach our ultimate end: eternal beatitude by union with God. (shrink)

Vitalism is understood as impacting the history of the life sciences, medicine and philosophy, representing an epistemological challenge to the dominance of mechanism over the last 200 years, and partly revived with organicism in early theoretical biology. The contributions in this volume portray the history of vitalism from the end of the Enlightenment to the modern day, suggesting some reassessment of what it means both historically and conceptually. As such it includes a wide range of material, employing both historical and (...) philosophical methodologies, and it is divided fairly evenly between 19th and 20th century historical treatments and more contemporary analysis. This volume presents a significant contribution to the current literature in the history and philosophy of science and the history of medicine. (shrink)

Although Bohr’s Correspondence Principle (CP) played a central role in the first days of quantum mechanics, its original version seems to have no present-day relevance. The purpose of this article is to show that the CP, with no need of being interpreted in terms of the quantum-to-classical limit, still plays a relevant role in the understanding of the relationships between the classical and the quantum domains. In particular, it will be argued that a generic version of the CP is very (...) helpful in elucidating the physical meaning of the phenomenon of quantum decoherence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CRUCIFIXION: ACCIDENT OR DESIGN? Sebastian Moore, O.S.B. Downside Abbey Lastyear I was visited by an old friend from my Liverpool days. Mike and I had worked together with the young of the parish, and one summer the two of us took a couple of boys camping in France, a trial of patience which made us known to each other at some depth. He was in fact a passionately (...) convinced Catholic, and very pastoral with it. We had many and long theological discussions. On his recent visit to Downside, I was showing him and some friends round our church, when, à propos ofquite what I don't remember, he made a remark about the Catholic cult of suffering, and said, "and it's all because ofthe crucifixion, isn't it? Why don't we recognize that the crucifixion was an accident?" I didn't react, because I was dumbfounded at what seemed to be the denial ofthe mystery ofthe cross by a friend who I had no reason to believe had stopped being a Catholic. And I'm sure he hasn't. He would certainly have told me ifhe had. It has taken me over a year to figure out what is going on here, and this would not have been possible without intensive study of the work of René Girard. The only alternative to saying that the crucifixion was an accident is to say that it was "ordained by God." It is only as ordained by God that this horrible event could be presented to people as a divine affirmation that suffering is to be sought and espoused. Also, it is only as ordained by God that the crucifixion can be thought of as "appeasing God" in some way. Both the moral and the dogmatic implication ofthe crucifixion—that suffering is a good thing, and that God required a victim—are grounded in the notion that God required the crucifixion ofhis Son. And it is because this idea is quite unacceptable, unworthy of God and ofthe human mind made in God's image, that my friend concludes that the crucifixion was not required by God, not written into the eternal scheme ofthings, but an accident. 156Sebastian Moore Once the problem is clarified in these terms, more and more instances come to mind, of rejection, by Christians and others, of the whole divine ordination ofthe cross. Gore Vidal refers to Christianity as "that lugubrious religion." Mary Hunt, a prominent American Catholic feminist, introduced a workshop with the statement, "we are not about naked guys nailed to crosses, blood all over the place!" Where divine ordering is accepted the special painfulness and darkness ofthe idea is noted. Anselm refers to the doctrine as the Narnia Chronicles, to commend the notion, by referring to a dark law written into the nature ofthings beyond our comprehension. The children's suggestion that Asian should simply not comply with the Snow Queen's requirement is rejected by Asian with a mysterious impatience—the children justhaven't grown up, like the romantics who, according to Matthew Arnold, "did not know enough." Again, during a day on "the roots of violence" that I led here yesterday there was much questioning about the role ofGod die Father in the crucifixion. The problem is crystallized in the famous cry from the cross, "Why have you forsaken me?" To my confessedly lame suggestion that Jesus was "only quoting a psalm," someone remarked, "to quote that psalm at thatjuncture and not mean it, is somewhatmisleading!" Again it's the same problem. How can God be understood as ordaining the crucifixion, compatibly with the notion of God as all-loving which Christianity of course affirms? Hans Urs Von Balthasar, who is 90% pro-Girard, in the other 10% wants to hold on to something he calls "the wrath of God." Thus the seeming necessity of having God require and ordain the crucifixion is the main crisis of Christian belief. The six-year-old Willie, in Thomas Klise's amazing novel, The Last Western, puts the problem with childlike directness. He keeps interrupting catechism class with, "Why did God kill Jesus?" and is shushed by Sister. I recall that Illtyd Trethowan said to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of CultureSebastian LuftEdward Skidelsky. Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture. Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. ix + 288. Cloth $34.00.This is a curious book, because the soul of its author is torn.On the one hand, the book is a monograph on the philosopher-intellectual Ernst Cassirer. It is scholarly, noticeably well-written (not surprisingly, as the author also writes articles for British and (...) American newspapers), philosophical to the extent that it does not distort its subject matter too much, and a splendid piece of intellectual history, which places its subject, Cassirer, in a rich cultural, historical, and intellectual context. In terms of presenting the gist of Cassirer’s thought in relatively few pages, the author does everything right, disregarding minor quibbles. So far, so good.But already reading the introduction, the author makes a confession that bathes the entire book in a different light. Here we learn that the precursor of the present tome was a “straight-faced” account of the philosopher of culture, Cassirer. But over the course of writing it, Skidelsky admits, doubts crept in. Little by little, he came to see Cassirer as a dinosaur of a past age, his philosophy as a “rearguard action on behalf of a vanishing civilization” (3), which died on the battlefields of the Second World War. The “Olympian” Cassirer had an “enchanting vision” and dreamt a “happy dream” of human culture, all of which went down the drain with the advent of Nazism and has now, in our own age of postmodernism, been completely washed away.Instead, the real hero of the book is Heidegger. It was Heidegger, the existentialist, who rebelled against Western metaphysics, who won the day against Cassirer in the 1929 Davos encounter, and it is to him that we, today, owe our sensibilities. The liberalism of Cassirer—a unified vision, not just some narrowly political manifesto—“lost out to the Existenzphilosophie of Heidegger,” he writes, and, “Such unity of vision [as in Cassirer] is impossible for us. Our political principles find no support in our cultural tastes, religious beliefs, or metaphysical insights. We pay tribute to Cassirer, but Heidegger remains the secret master of our thought” (219). [End Page 116]Hence, the book is written, or rather re-written after the author’s conversion, in an ironic, sometimes melancholy style, looking back at Cassirer as a relic of a different era, his thought being “a stranger to our age” (7). Why read and study him at all then? The argument—the only argument—is weak: “he was the twentieth century’s most accomplished defender of the Humboldtian ideal” (6). Is this all? Yes, and this is how Cassirer is presented: with some sympathy, but at bottom as a creature from a different age that one observes like an exotic animal. Once more, why is this so? Skidelsky explains: “We have inherited Cassirer’s liberal political attitudes, but not the cultural sensibility that underlay them. With our skepticism toward progress, our distaste for ‘bourgeois’ formalities, our fascination with charisma, and our endless talk of commitment, authenticity, and roots, we remain, consciously or not, Heidegger’s children” (8), leaving “us” “with a dilemma” between both sentiments (ibid.).But who is this “we”? This reviewer’s suspicion is that it is first and foremost the author himself. Not denying that this dilemma might ring true to many contemporaries, it seems that the one who is troubled by it is primarily the author, who would like the world to be according to Cassirer, but who has become disenchanted with the latter’s synthetic vision due to the fragmented world around him. He would like to bring himself to believe, but cannot. But why is this? Because he has tacitly bought into the idea of all us being “Heidegger’s children.” There can be no doubt—we simply have to accept this fate.But it is this self-assurance that irks this reviewer about the author’s sentiment. Who is this “we” that he invokes? What right does he have to lump “us” together in this category of Heideggerians and to speak about “us” ex cathedra? That one... (shrink)

This article examines an episode of Chilean history during the days of the dictatorship of General Pinochet: Ingrid Olderock’s life and her criminal actions against people such as Alejandra Holzapfel and others. I use a secular framework for ethical evaluations of human behaviour related to armed conflicts in Latin America. In that context, I engage the following steps. First, I describe Ingrid Olderock’s life, briefly summarising some facts about her educational and political environment based on Nancy Guzman’s Ingrid Olderock: The (...) Madame of the Torture Dogs. This description is complemented by chronicles recently published by Alejandra Matus. Second, I suggest that the ‘commander’ concept (a concept arising within the ethical distinction between active and reactive actions by Gilles Deleuze) helps to assess the case at hand. Finally, I follow the main idea that human activities can be determined without having a transcendent system of values – an idea traditionally linked with Spinoza’s and Nietzsche’s viewpoints, as declared by Deleuze. (shrink)

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his (...) dead father, inviting Junger to join him. "It's okay," his father said. "There's nothing to be scared of. I'll take care of you." That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived. This experience spurred Junger--a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical--to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when forced to reckon with such existential questions? (shrink)

Interaction is the cornerstone of the online world. Most Americans converse with known and unknown others online every day, on social media sites, blogs, and after stories on news sites. While many...

This article examines a series of events that are generally known in historiography as the “Tatarbunar Uprising” – an armed rebellion that took place over ten days in September 1924 in south-eastern Bessarabia. I am also interested in the aftermath of those events as well as in their legal and memorial afterlife. My attempt is to reason through and to clarify the legal and historio­graphical construction of narratives of sovereign power as they emerge from the archives of the trial as (...) well as that of the preceding and subsequent military and police operations. The reflection I will conduct here is indeed grounded in the historical context of 1923-1925, but the jurisprudential and comparative legal and political analysis I will deploy here has more general reach insofar as it aims to grasp some more general points about the status of legality under the conditions of emergency. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gendered Geographies across Time IBeatriz Hermida Ramos and Miguel Sebastián-MartínEarly Researchers' Seminar for Science and Speculative Fiction, University of Salamanca, Spain, 03 06 2023The first Early Researchers' Seminar for Science and Speculative Fiction: Gendered Geographies across Time showcased the many and diverse approaches to speculative fiction (SF) currently being pursued within the University of Salamanca's English Department, which in a matter of years has become an unexpected hotbed of (...) aspiring SF scholars. A graduate student–led initiative organized by Paula Barba Guerrero (University of Salamanca), the seminar comprised six sessions that took place in spring 2023. The series opened with a keynote by Miriam Borham Puyal (University of Salamanca), followed by five more panels throughout the semester. Open to the public and organized in a hybrid format, the event positioned itself as a welcoming, non-commodified space for the exchange of ideas. To that end, the shared philosophy of the speakers was usually to deliver accessible talks, written not exclusively for established researchers and early career researchers (ECRs), but also catering to graduate and undergraduate populations. Questions ranged, therefore, from the most specialized to the most general—though questions such as "What is SF?" or "What is Utopia?" that might sound "basic" are not taken as such, and these led to the most intensive conversations among the diverse audience. [End Page 299]In the keynote lecture, titled "From Shelley to Braidotti: Posthuman Maternity in Netflix's I Am Mother," Borham Puyal traced a feminist genealogy of the streaming platform's latest speculative thriller by connecting it to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Puyal's talk occurred on International Women's Day and, in keeping with the overall seminar subtitle, "Gendered Geographies across Time," the speaker explored such topics as gendered corporealities, vulnerable bodies, and reproductive justice in a technological world. Through the lens of Rosi Braidotti's notion of posthumanism, Puyal investigated I Am Mother's (2019) alternative modes of maternity, belonging, and relationality; the speaker also reflected on the potential of speculative fiction and media to question and to imagine alternatives futures in response to our less-than-perfect present. Puyal's talk sparked a vibrant debate regarding precarity, surrogacy, and the fight for legal control over women and trans* people's bodies. Established professors, ECRs and undergraduate students alike debated the meanings of feminist speculation and posthumanism, particularly the nature of posthuman bodies. The audience responded enthusiastically to the nonhierarchical format of the discussion, which established the seminar—with five events yet to come—as a venue welcoming to everyone, regardless of their academic status or their familiarity with science and speculative fiction.The themes of posthuman perspectives and corporealities reappeared in "Beyond the Human: Posthuman and Ecocritical Perspectives," a panel taking place the following week. Lidia María Cuadrado Payeras (University of Salamanca), and Ana Tejero Marín (University of Salamanca) discussed a set of North American speculative novels that bring together the environmental humanities and posthumanist philosophy, transitioning from the topics of the opening keynote into those of the first thematic cluster. Cuadrado Payeras opened with a methodological discussion on genre and form, drawing from the works of both Braidotti and Margaret Atwood to argue for a queer approach to science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction, positioning these categories as porous rather than rigid and separate. Then, Cuadrado Payeras turned to contemporary Canadian authors to explore the nature/technology dyad and its relation to posthumanism. Moving the conversation toward the environmental humanities and the role of capitalism in the current climate crisis, Tejero Marín's talk addressed themes of worldbuilding, ecofeminism, and the Anthropocene in US-American science fiction. Afterward, she analyzed gendered conceptions of the earth and the nonhuman in N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (2015–17), focusing on how the vengeful [End Page 300] Father Earth of Jemisin's work subverts traditional associations between femininity and nature. The first panel ended with a lively discussion, during which both speakers had the opportunity to discuss the necessity of understanding the environmental humanities and posthumanism in dialogue with one another, and the necessity of emphasizing the potential of contemporary stories to help us rethink our relationship... (shrink)

An introduction to the Buddha's thought in the language of contemporary philosophy. 'The Philosophy of the Buddha' is an intro to Buddhist thinking which doesn't assuming any prior knowledge. This book introduces key concepts of Buddhist philosophy such as suffering, karma, or nirvana, and explains the fundamentals of Buddhist thought using these concepts. It demonstrates that the central ideas of Buddha are understandable in the present day and can be discussed and understood as a philosophy, independent of religious affiliations. Real-life (...) examples and questions for further discussion and reflection provide opportunities for deeper engagement with the text. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that the Galilean Relativity Principle, according to which the laws of classical systems are the same in all inertial frames in relative motion, has played an important role in the development of modern physics. It is also commonly believed that this principle holds the key to answering why, for example, we do not notice the orbital velocity of the Earth as we go about our day. And yet, I argue in this paper that the precise content (...) of this principle is ambiguous: standard presentations, in both physics and philosophy, fail to distinguish between two principles that are ultimately inequivalent, the “External Galilean Relativity Principle” (EGRP) and the “Internal Galilean Relativity Principle” (IGRP). I demonstrate that EGRP and IGRP play distinct roles in physics practice (e.g., EGRP is connected to the concept of Galilean invariance, but IGRP is not) and that many classical systems that satisfy IGRP fail to satisfy EGRP. I further show that the Relativity Principle introduced by Einstein in 1905—which is not restricted to classical systems—also leads to two inequivalent principles, an external one analogous to EGRP, and an internal one analogous to IGRP. I conclude by noting that the phenomenon originally captured by Galileo’s famous ship passage is much more general than contemporary discussions in the philosophy of symmetries suggest. (shrink)

Ever since the early days of quantum mechanics it has been suggested that consciousness could be linked to the collapse of the wave function. However, no detailed account of such an interplay is usually provided. In this paper we present an objective collapse model where the collapse operator depends on integrated information, which has been argued to measure consciousness. By doing so, we construct an empirically adequate scheme in which superpositions of conscious states are dynamically suppressed. Unlike other proposals in (...) which “consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function,” our model is fully consistent with a materialistic view of the world and does not require the postulation of entities suspicious of laying outside of the quantum realm. (shrink)

Though Indian courts at present are riddled with issues concerning music on the copyright front, significance of another aspect of music based on its essence is largely lost and unexplored. Though courts refer to popular songs in judgments, they are few and far in between. The understanding is that law today is neither poetic nor musical. Music, however, expresses mankind’s faith, hope and aspiration. The use of popular music by Indian courts to write creatively, though not necessarily improve the judgment (...) is restricted and largely unexplored. This paper proposes to explore the dimensions of labour movement through music and the role of law in the making of India as a nation. The association of political dissent through music and the determination of the nation state to procure a stake in the management of the popular music that is sought to belong to itself will be the key theme for understanding the songs that make a nation. Beginning from the struggle for India’s independence to modern day labour movements using music for critique and promoting the vernacular culture are the essence of the paper. Historically, the role of music is central for workers in any labour movement worldwide and is now explored in the Indian context, beginning from the early years of struggle in the nineteenth century to the year of independence in 1947. Recent movements including the protests against profiteering and displacement of persons will also form part of the discussions in this paper. The roles of music and the law have periodically been addressed in the scholarly legal arena but the topic has seldom been explored in-depth from a labour perspective, as paper ventures to do. (shrink)

This study adds to a small but growing literature that situates sleep within gendered work— family responsibilities. We conducted interviews with 25 heterosexual dual-earner working-class couples with children, most of whom had one partner who worked at night. A few men suffered disrupted sleep because of their commitment to being a coparent to their children, but for most their provider status gave them rights to longer and more continuous sleep. By contrast, as they were the primary caregiver during sentient hours, (...) women’s sleep was curtailed and interrupted by responding to the needs of family members at night and at the beginning of each day, and this was true for women who worked nights as well as days. Furthermore, in struggling to meet their daily employment and familial obligations while tired and sleepy, women further stressed their bodies in ways that can cause cumulative sleep debt. This article demonstrates that sleep deficits are another manifestation of gender inequality, with important implications for long-term health and well-being. (shrink)

Digital media, such as cellphones and tablets, are a common part of our daily lives and their usage has changed the communication structure within families. Thus, there is a risk that the use of DM might result in fewer opportunities for interactions between children and their parents leading to fewer language learning moments for young children. The current study examined the associations between children’s language development and early DM exposure.Participants: Ninety-two parents of 25months olds recorded their home sound environment during (...) a typical day [Language ENvironment Analysis ] and participated in an online questionnaire consisting of questions pertaining to daily DM use and media mediation strategies, as well as a Swedish online version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, which includes a vocabulary scale as well as a grammar and pragmatics scale.Results: Through correlations and stepwise regressions three aspects of language were analyzed. The child’s vocabulary was positively associated with interactional turn-taking. The child’s vocabulary and grammar were negatively associated with the likelihood of parent’s device use during everyday child routines and the amount of TV watched by the child. The child’s pragmatic development was also positively associated with the parent’s device use in child routines but also with the parent’s joint media engagement, as well as the child’s gender.Conclusion: Our study confirms that specific aspects of the 2-year old’s DM environment are associated with the child’s language development. More TV content, whether it is viewed on a big screen or tablet, is negatively associated with language development. The likelihood of parents’ use of DM during everyday child routines is also negatively associated with the child’s language development. Positive linguistic parental strategies such as interactional turn-taking with the child, JME, and book reading, on the other hand, are positively associated with the child’s language development. (shrink)

Emotional processing and episodic memory are closely related throughout childhood development. With respect to emotional episodic memory, available evidence shows that the consolidation of information is accompanied by an arousal that generates longer duration and persistence of the memory representations. In the case of early stages of development (i.e., first 5 years), it is less clear how these associations emerge and are modulated by individual and environmental factors. In this study, 116 4- to 5-years old Argentinean children from different socio-environmental (...) contexts (i.e., favorable or unfavorable living conditions at home), performed a task of visual emotional memory in which they observed a set of 15 images with variable emotional valences (negative, neutral, and positive). The child’s task was to appraise each image using one of the following three possible valences: (a) drawings of faces with smiles (positive valence), (b) drawings of faces with tears and round mouth with edges down (negative valence), or (c) drawings of faces with horizontal mouth (neutral valence). Five years-old children exhibited greater accuracy appraisal. Individual differences in emotional accuracy appraisal allowed us to observe different performances in free recall of negative visual images. Accuracy appraisal did not vary between children with respect to gender, living conditions at home, or language ability. Seven to ten days after the emotional appraisal children were asked to tell the experimenter all the images they remembered (variables of interest: free recall of negative, positive, or neutral images). Results showed individual (age) differences. Specifically, 5-years-old children evoked more images than 4-years-old children. These findings contribute to the understanding of emotional memory in early developmental stages and raise the need to include emotional appraisal in the assessment of episodic memory. (shrink)

In most European countries, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the imposition of physical distancing rules, resulting in a drastic and sudden reduction of real-life social interactions. Even people not directly affected by the virus itself were impacted in their physical and/or mental health, as well as in their financial security, by governmental lockdown measures. We investigated whether the combination of these events had changed people's appraisal of social scenes by testing 241 participants recruited mainly in Italy, (...) Austria, and Germany in an online, preregistered study conducted about 50 days after the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe. Images depicting individuals alone, in small groups, and in large groups were rated in terms of valence, arousal, and perceived physical distance. Pre-pandemic normative ratings were obtained from a validated database. Several self-report measures were also taken, and condensed into four factors through factor analysis. All images were rated as more arousing compared to the pre-pandemic period, and the greater the decrease in real-life physical interactions reported by participants, the higher the ratings of arousal. As expected, only images depicting large gatherings of people were rated less positively during, compared to before, the pandemic. These ratings of valence were, however, moderated by a factor that included participants' number of days in isolation, relationship closeness, and perceived COVID-19 threat. Higher scores on this factor were associated with more positive ratings of images of individuals alone and in small groups, suggesting an increased appreciation of safer social situations, such as intimate and small-group contacts. The same factor was inversely related to the perceived physical distance between individuals in images of small and large groups, suggesting an impact of lockdown measures and contagion-related worries on the representation of interpersonal space. These findings point to rapid and compelling psychological and social consequences of the lockdown measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic on the perception of social groups. Further studies should assess the long-term impact of such events as typical everyday life is restored. (shrink)

Alternatives to convenience sampling (CS) are needed for HIV/STI surveillance of most-at-risk populations in Latin America. We compared CS, time space sampling (TSS), and respondent driven sampling (RDS) for recruitment of men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women (TW) in Lima, Peru. During concurrent 60-day periods from June-August, 2011, we recruited MSM/TW for epidemiologic surveillance using CS, TSS, and RDS. A total of 748 participants were recruited through CS, 233 through TSS, and 127 through RDS. The TSS (...) sample included the largest proportion of TW (30.7 %) and the lowest percentage of subjects who had previously participated in HIV/STI research (14.9 %). The prevalence of newly diagnosed HIV infection, according to participants' self-reported previous HIV diagnosis, was highest among TSS recruits (17.9 %) compared with RDS (12.6 %) and CS (10.2 %). TSS identified diverse populations of MSM/TW with higher prevalences of HIV/STIs not accessed by other methods. (shrink)

Fractal fluctuations are a core concept for inquiries into human behavior and cognition from a dynamic systems perspective. Here, we present a generalized variance method for multivariate detrended fluctuation analysis (mvDFA). The advantage of this extension is that it can be applied to multivariate time series and considers intercorrelation between these time series when estimating fractal properties. First, we briefly describe how fractal fluctuations have advanced a dynamic system understanding of cognition. Then, we describe mvDFA in detail and highlight some (...) of the advantages of the approach for simulated data. Furthermore, we show how mvDFA can be used to investigate empirical multivariate data using electroencephalographic recordings during a time-estimation task. We discuss this methodological development within the framework of interaction-dominant dynamics. Moreover, we outline how the availability of multivariate analyses can inform theoretical developments in the area of dynamic systems in human behavior. (shrink)

In this reply to our commentators, we respond to ethical concerns raised about the potential use (or misuse) of personalized LLMs for academic idea and prose generation, including questions about c...

We argue that Wittgenstein’s philosophical perspective on Gödel’s most famous theorem is even more radical than has commonly been assumed. Wittgenstein shows in detail that there is no way that the Gödelian construct of a string of signs could be assigned a useful function within (ordinary) mathematics. — The focus is on Appendix III to Part I of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. The present reading highlights the exceptional importance of this particular set of remarks and, more specifically, emphasises (...) its refined composition and rigorous internal structure. (shrink)

Die analytische Philosophie hat selbst da, wo sie explizit an Kant anschließt, erhebliche Schwierigkeiten mit dessen Idee eines synthetischen Wissens a priori. Damit verliert sie eine ganze Dimension der philosophischen Tradition. Das vorliegende Buch gewinnt diese Idee zurück, indem es gerade den Anschauungsbezug und damit den Zeitbezug des menschlichen Denkens zum Gegenstand einer logischen Untersuchung macht. Nur wenn man die Zeit als inneres und formbildendes Merkmal des menschlichen Aussagens erkennt, versteht man den Begriff empirischer Wahrheit und sinnlich vermittelter Erkenntnis. In (...) diesem Gedanken, so zeigt sich, liegt die Einheit einer philosophischen Tradition, die Aristoteles mit Kant und beide mit dem späten Wittgenstein verbindet. (shrink)

Marian Przełęcki’s semantics for the Received View is a good explication of Carnap’s position on the subject, anticipates many discussions and results from both proponents and opponents of the Received View, and can be the basis for a thriving research program.

Animal models of human diseases are often used in biomedical research in place of human subjects. However, results obtained by animal models may fail to hold true for humans. One way of addressing this problem is to make animal models more similar to humans by placing human tissue into animal models, rendering them chimeric. Since technical and ethical limitations make neurological disorders difficult to study in humans, chimeric models with human neural tissue could help advance our understanding of neuropathophysiology. In (...) this article, we examine whether the introduction of human neural tissue and any consequent cognitive change is relevant to the way we ought to treat chimeras. We argue that changes in cognitive abilities are morally relevant to the extent that they increase the capacities that affect the moral status of any entity, including awareness, autonomy, and sociability. We posit that no being, regardless of species, should be treated in a way that is incommensurate with its moral status. Finally, we propose a framework that can be used to guide ethical assessment of research involving chimeras with advanced cognitive capacities. We advance this framework as a useful tool for bringing relevant considerations to the forefront for those considering the ethical merit of proposed chimeric research. In doing so, we examine concepts relevant to the question of how any entity may be treated, including moral status, dignity, and capacities. (shrink)

The thesis of underdetermination presents a major obstacle to the epistemological claims of scientific realism. That thesis is regularly assumed in the philosophy of science, but is puzzlingly at odds with the actual history of science, in which empirically adequate theories are thin on the ground. We propose to advance a case for scientific realism which concentrates on the process of scientific reasoning rather than its theoretical products. Developing an account of causal–explanatory inference will make it easier to resist the (...) thesis of underdetermination. For, if we are not restricted to inference to the best explanation only at the level of major theories, we will be able to acknowledge that there is a structure in data sets which imposes serious constraints on possible theoretical alternatives. We describe how Differential Inference, a form of inference based on contrastive explanation, can be used in order to generate causal hypotheses. We then go on to consider how experimental manipulation of differences can be used to achieve Difference Closure, thereby confirming claims of causal efficacy and also eliminating possible confounds. The model of Differential Inference outlined here shows at least one way in which it is possible to ‘reason from the phenomena’. (shrink)

What does the truth of a judgment consist of, according to F. H. Bradley? What is its ultimate nature? In particular, how does such a property relate to reality? At least three interpretive theses have been offered: (i) that Bradley defended a theory of truth as coherence; (ii) that, rather, Bradley defended a robust variant of the identity theory of truth; and (iii) that, in any case, Bradley rejected the correspondence theory of truth. In this article I question these three (...) theses and argue that the position defended by Bradley is perfectly compatible with a weak variant of the correspondence theory of truth. This, by the way, makes his position vulnerable to certain objections. Bradley’s merit consists not so much in having answered them satisfactorily as in having anticipated them and assumed them as eventual consequences of his position. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive study of the sublime in Lucan. Drawing upon renewed literary-critical interest in the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, Henry Day argues that the category of the sublime offers a means of moving beyond readings of Lucan's Bellum Civile in terms of the poem's political commitment or, alternatively, nihilism. Demonstrating in dialogue with theorists from Burke and Kant to Freud, Lyotard and Ankersmit the continuing vitality of Longinus' foundational treatise On the Sublime, Day charts Lucan's complex and (...) instructive exploration of the relationship between sublimity and ethical discourses of freedom and oppression. Through the Bellum Civile's cataclysmic vision of civil war and metapoetic accounts of its own genesis, through its heated linguistic texture and proclaimed effects upon future readers and, most powerfully of all, through its representation of its twin protagonists Caesar and Pompey, Lucan's great epic emerges as a central text in the history of the sublime. (shrink)

Both these developments would have surprised Berkeley. He would have found it paradoxical that the vulgar should have rejected his vulgar immaterialism as paradoxical, since he of course believed himself to be on their side in the matter, and characterised his own philosophy as a.

In this paper, we demonstrate how the collaborative and sequential unfolding of a story ties into the constitution of a membership categorization device which we have glossed as ‘us and them’. The data come from a focus group activity where first and second generation immigrants to Denmark have been asked to discuss their situation in Denmark. Using Ethnomethodological Conversation and Membership Categorization Analysis, we present one story which involves a story-teller and his family and an elderly Danish couple living in (...) the same block of flats. In the telling of the story, co-participants align and affiliate, and disalign and disaffiliate, at sequentially relevant junctions. We will argue that not only do such phenomena indicate listenership and possible agreement to the moral of the story in its telling, but also to the morally implicative categorical work involved in the story’s telling. (shrink)

Two cases from the UK are discussed to explore why, in the author's terms, women wilfully disempower themselves in religion and spiritual contexts. A case study of a women's prayer group shows how they resist acknowledging their own power or the idea that they are engaging in informal ritual equally important to their male counterparts. Second, qualitative data from a large study of people's beliefs are used to show how women willingly submit to a higher male power through a process (...) of self-denigration. It is argued that the women are making rational, strategic choices in an increasingly secular and patriarchal world. (shrink)

There are several known Lindström-style characterization results for basic modal logic. This paper proves a generic Lindström theorem that covers any normal modal logic corresponding to a class of Kripke frames definable by a set of formulas called strict universal Horn formulas. The result is a generalization of a recent characterization of modal logic with the global modality. A negative result is also proved in an appendix showing that the result cannot be strengthened to cover every first-order elementary class of (...) frames. This is shown by constructing an explicit counterexample. (shrink)