Emotion recognition skills and the ability to understand the mental states of others are crucial for normal social functioning. Conversely, delays and impairments in these processes can have a profound impact on capability to engage in, maintain, and effectively regulate social interactions. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the performance of 42 autistic children, 45 unaffected siblings, and 41 typically developing controls on the Affect Recognition and Theory of Mind subtests of the Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment Battery. There were no significant (...) differences between siblings and TD controls. Autistic children showed significantly poorer performance on AR when compared to TD controls and on TOM when compared to both TD controls and unaffected siblings. An additional comparison of ASD, unaffected sibling and TD control subsamples, matched on full-scale IQ, revealed no group differences for either AR or TOM. AR and TOM processes have received less research attention in siblings of autistic children and remain less well characterized. Therefore, despite limitations, findings reported here contribute to our growing understanding of AR and TOM abilities in siblings of autistic children and highlight important future research directions. (shrink)

Image-making is a nearly universal human behavior, yet the visual strategies and conventions to represent things in pictures vary greatly over time and space. In particular, pictorial styles can differ in their degree of figurativeness, varying from intersubjectively recognizable representations of things to very stylized and abstract forms. Are there any patterns to this variability, and what might its ecological causes be? Experimental studies have shown that demography and the structure of interaction of cultural groups can play a key role: (...) the greater the degree of contact with other groups, the more recognizable and less abstract are the representations. Here we test this hypothesis on a real-world dataset for the first time. We constructed a balanced database of Indigenous Australian rock art motifs from both isolated and contact Aboriginal groups (those often in contact with other groups). We then ran a survey asking participants to judge the recognizability of the motifs and to provide interpretations. Results show that motifs from contact Aboriginal groups were more likely to be judged as inter-subjectively recognizable and also elicited more convergent descriptions than motifs from isolated groups. This is consistent with the idea that intergroup contact is likely to be an important factor in the cultural evolution of pictorial representation. We discuss the implications of these findings for the archaeology and anthropology of art, and the parallels with language evolution. (shrink)

In the second edition of this groundbreaking text in non-Western philosophy, sixteen experts introduce some of the great philosophical traditions in the world. The essays unveil exciting, sophisticated philosophical traditions that are too often neglected in the western world. The contributors include the leading scholars in their fields, but they write for students coming to these concepts for the first time. Building on revisions and updates to the original, this new edition also considers three philosophical traditions for the first time—Jewish, (...) Buddhist, and South Pacific philosophy. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics ed. by Daniel W. GrahamPhillip Sidney HorkyDaniel W. Graham, ed. and trans. The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics. Parts 1 and 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xvii + 1020 pp. Cloth, $180; paper, $99.It has been nearly 30 years since Malcolm (...) Schofield revised and updated the first edition of the venerable translation of fragments of the Presocratic philosophers by J. E. Raven and G. S. Kirk, originally compiled in 1957 in the wake of the sixth and final edition of Diels-Kranz’s (DK) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin 1951–52). And in the time since Kirk-Raven-Schofield’s second edition of The Presocratic Philosophers (KRS), in 1983, several translations of selected portions of the collected fragments of early Greek philosophy into English have appeared: Jonathan Barnes’ Early Greek Philosophy (London 1987), drawn from his revised edition of The Presocratic Philosophers (London 1982), Robin Waterfield’s The First Philosophers (Oxford 2000), and Richard McKirahan’s Philosophy Before Socrates (Indianapolis, Ind. 2011). Students of Presocratic philosophy and the early intellectual history of Greece have profited immensely from the contributions made by KRS, Barnes, Waterfield, and McKirahan. Yet none of these volumes, despite their intellectual courage, philosophical acumen, and deep learning, could provide what Diels and Kranz had given German audiences in the middle of the twentieth century: a bilingual translation of the complete fragments of and selected testimonia concerning those important intellectual antecedents of Plato (including the Sophists).On the eve of Professor Schofield’s retirement, then, Daniel W. Graham has produced a two-volume translation and commentary on the complete fragments and selected testimonies of the “major Presocratics.” It should be mentioned that this is not an easy or even enviable project. Presocratic studies has undergone a renaissance of sorts since the last edition of KRS in 1983, and new critical editions and translations into English of individual figures (J. Lesher’s Xenophanes of Colophon [Toronto 1992]; C. A. Huffman’s editions of Philolaus of Croton [Cambridge 1993] and Archytas of Tarentum [Cambridge 2005]; the editions of Anaxagoras by P. Curd [Toronto 2007] and D. Sider [Sankt Augustin 2005]; C. C. W. Taylor’s The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus [Toronto 1999]; G. J. Pendrick’s Antiphon the Sophist [Cambridge 2002]); new editions of papyrus discoveries (A. Martin and O. Primavesi’s L’Empédocle de Strasbourg [Berlin 1999], incorporated into B. Inwood’s The Poem of Empedocles [Toronto 2001] and the long-awaited “official” text of The Derveni Papyrus by T. Kouremenos, G. Parássoglou, and K. Tsantsanoglou [Firenze 2006]); and major critical studies [End Page 149] of Presocratic philosophers and/or philosophy (too numerous to name here) have significantly modified the landscape of the study of early Greek philosophy. In the midst of this renaissance, one has seen the critical approaches used to evaluate Presocratic thought develop into a perfect storm, with a barrage of new approaches concerning historiography, interpretation, reception, and contextualization, now considered legitimate in the assessment and evaluation of those thorny and often obscure fragments of the early Greek speculators. Presocratic studies has become contested ground, and the idea of producing a two-volume set that might update, stabilize, and make DK accessible for an English-reading audience, despite the protestations of the few (xiii), must be considered nothing less than wholly welcome. Given his demonstrated comprehension of the field of Presocratic studies at large—he has produced two broad-ranging monographs, edited several general volumes, and offered many article-length contributions on early Greek philosophy—Graham would seem to be the perfect choice for the job.What remains to be seen, then, is whether the volumes as we have them rise to the challenge of the project. The results, I think, are mixed. I will first discuss those aspects of The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy that seem more successful and testify to the value that such a collection offers to educators and students alike. Then I will examine some areas where the volumes do not quite reach the heights promised by the... (shrink)

This study explores Kant's accounts of acting from inclination and pursuing happiness. It culminates in two findings. First, Kant fails in his attempt to prove a central tenet of his ethics, namely that there can be no practical law of happiness. Second, Kant's critics have unfairly condemned his account of the role pleasure plays in acting from inclination. Chapter I, devoted to Kant's theory of agency, offers readings of his notions of willing, acting, and acting on a maxim. The chapter (...) rejects the orthodox interpretation of the will as the capacity for choice, arguing that Willkur is actually the capacity to act-on-choice. Chapter II focuses on Kant's account of the role pleasure plays in actions performed from inclination. According to the traditional interpretation, defended by T. H. Green and others, Kant holds that whenever an agent acts from inclination, she has pleasure as her only ultimate end. The chapter offers an alternative to this radically hedonistic reading, arguing that, with equal plausibility but more charity, we may interpret Kant to hold the following: whenever an agent acts from inclination, she has pleasure or the avoidance of displeasure as an ultimate end, but not necessarily as her only one. Chapter III offers a reading of Kant's views on happiness. It argues that his two main conceptions, i.e., his hedonistic and his inclination-based one, are not equivalent. Chapter IV shows that not one of Kant's six arguments for the claim that there can be no practical law of happiness succeeds. Chapter V also begins on a critical note, questioning the plausibility of Kant's conceptions of happiness. It ends by arguing that Kant's account of the role pleasure plays in acting from inclination stands up well to criticisms, including those advanced by Bernard Williams and Phillips Griffiths. With the help of this account, Kant is able to rebut the serious charge that his practical philosophy does not allow for the possibility of genuine friendship. (shrink)

The idea for this collection of essays arose out of conversations I had with D. Z. Phillips in Claremont in 2000: a set of philosophical essays recognizing and arising out of something I took to be both interesting and good going on at University College, Swansea, roughly from the 1950s into the 1990s. I envisioned eight essays, each in some way taking up the work of one of eight individuals - Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, R. F. Holland, J. R. (...) Jones, H. O. Mounce, D. Z. Phillips, Ilham Dilman, and R. W. Beardsmore - each of whom taught at Swansea for a substantial period during those years, these being followed by a ninth essay providing something of an overview of the other eight essays and thereby of philosophy at Swansea during the same period. (shrink)

Some philosophers have thought that life could only be meaningful if there is no God. For Sartre and Nagel, for example, a God of the traditional classical theistic sort would constrain our powers of self-creative autonomy in ways that would severely detract from the meaning of our lives, possibly even evacuate our lives of all meaning. Some philosophers, by contrast, have thought that life could only be meaningful if there is a God. God and the Meanings of Life is interested (...) in exploring the truth in both these schools of thought, seeking to discover what God could and couldn't do to make life meaningful (as well as what he would and wouldn't do). Mawson espouses a version of the 'amalgam' or 'pluralism' thesis about the issue of life's meaning – in essence, that there are a number of different legitimate meanings of 'meaning' (and indeed 'life') in the question of life's meaning. According to Mawson, God, were he to exist, would help make life meaningful in some of these senses and hinder in some others. He argues that whilst there could be meaning in a Godless universe, there could be other sorts of meaning in a Godly one and that these would be deeper. (shrink)

T. J. Smiley; XII.—Entailment and Deducibility, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 June 1959, Pages 233–254, https://doi.org/10.1093.

Recent highly publicized privacy breaches in health care and genomics research have led many to question whether current standards of data protection are adequate. Improvements in de-identification techniques, combined with pervasive data sharing, have increased the likelihood that external parties can track individuals across multiple databases. This paper focuses on the communication of identifiability risks in the process of obtaining consent for donation and research. Most ethical discussions of identifiability risks have focused on the severity of the risk and how (...) it might be mitigated, and what precisely is at stake in pervasive data sharing. However, there has been little discussion of whether and how to communicate the risk to potential donors. We review the ethical arguments behind favoring different types of risk communication in the consent process, and outline how identifiability concerns can be incorporated into either a detailed or simplified method of communicating risks during the consent process. (shrink)

This anthology of the very latest research on truth features the work of recognized luminaries in the field, put together following a rigorous refereeing process. Along with an introduction outlining the central issues in the field, it provides a unique and unrivaled view of contemporary work on the nature of truth, with papers selected from key conferences in 2011 such as Truth Be Told (Amsterdam), Truth at Work (Paris), Paradoxes of Truth and Denotation (Barcelona) and Axiomatic Theories of Truth (Oxford).

Sometimes ordinary disagreements become deep as a result of epistemic injustice. The paper explores a hitherto unnoticed connection between two phenomena that have received ample attention in recent social epistemology: deep disagreement and epistemic injustice. When epistemic injustice comes into play in a regular disagreement, this can lead to higher-order disagreement about what counts as evidence concerning the original disagreement, which deepens the disagreement. After considering a common definition of deep disagreement, it is proposed that the depth of disagreements is (...) best understood as a matter of degree. Then, a case study of real-life disagreement is introduced: the disagreement about whether racism is a significant issue in the Netherlands, illustrated by the tradition of ‘Black Pete’. It is argued that there is disagreement about what counts as evidence in the case study because of two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Specifically, there is disagreement about epistemic principles concerning whether private first-personal experience of racism is a weighty source of evidence in this domain, whether victims of racism count as important testifiers in this domain, and how to assess testimony that is not intelligible to you because it employs concepts and terminology you are unfamiliar with. By dismissing the relevant testimony and epistemic resources, the disagreement boils down to disagreement on the level of epistemic principles concerning,, and. Introducinginjustice-based deep disagreementhighlights moral and political aspects of disagreements that might seem factual. (shrink)

Amongst other countries, the Netherlands currently allows euthanasia, provided the physician performing the procedure adheres to a strict set of requirements. In 2016, Second Chamber member Pia Dijkstra submitted a law proposal which would also allow euthanasia without the reason necessarily having any medical foundation; euthanasia on the basis of a completed life. The debate on this topic has been ongoing for over two decades, but this law proposal has made the discussion much more immediate and concrete. This paper considers (...) the moral permissibility of Pia Dijkstra’s law proposal, focusing on the ethics of the implementation Dijkstra describes in her proposal. I argue that, at present, Dijkstra’s law proposal is unsuitable for implementation, due to a number of as of yet unaddressed problems, including the possible development of an ageist stigma and undue pressure on the profession of end-of-life coordinator. Perhaps adequate responses can be conceived to address these issues. However, the existence of a radically different, yet currently equally unacceptable position regarding the implementation of euthanasia for a completed life as proposed by fellow party member Paul Schnabel suggests it may be difficult to formulate an ethically acceptable implementation for this, in principle, ethically acceptable concept. (shrink)

Finding happiness within the inevitable chaos of the world is one of the hardest things you can do. It's also one of the most important. There are lots of challenges in your life, occupying space in your mind and keeping you anxious, depressed, or angry. Mental health TikToker and licensed therapist TJ Hoegh outlines his three rules for chaotic happiness, helping you rise above the fray and claim the contentedness that is yours. With evidence-based advice and more than 30 practical (...) exercises, you'll explore your own psyche, improve the quality of your relationships, and understand the impact of the outside world so you can arrive at your happiest self. (shrink)

Background Biobank participants often do not understand much of the information they are provided as part of the informed consent process, despite numerous attempts at simplifying consent forms and improving their readability. We report the first assessment of biobank enrollees’ comprehension under an "integrated consent” process, where patients were asked to enroll in a research biobank as part of their normal healthcare experience. A number of healthcare systems have implemented similar integrated consent processes for biobanking, but it is unknown how (...) much patients understand after enrolling under these conditions. Methods: We recruited patients who enrolled in a biobank while in a healthcare setting when receiving ordinary care. We assessed knowledge of consent materials using 11 true/false questions drawn from a well-known biobank knowledge test. After reviewing the results from 114 participants, we revised the consent form and repeated the knowledge assessment with 144 different participants. Results: Participants scored poorly on the knowledge test in both rounds, with no significant differences in overall scores or individual items between the rounds. In Phase 1, participants answered 53% of the questions correctly, 25% incorrectly, and 22% “I don’t know.” In Phase 2, participants answered 53% of questions correctly, 24% incorrectly, and 23% “I don’t know.” Participants scored particularly poorly on questions about data sharing and accessing medical records. Conclusions: Enrollees under an integrated consent model had significant misunderstandings that persisted despite an attempt to improve information specifically about those topics in a consent form. These results raise challenges for current approaches that attribute misunderstanding to overly complex consent forms. They also suggest that the pressures of the clinic may compound other problems with patient understanding of biobank consent. As health systems increasingly blend research and care, they may need to rethink their approach to educating patients about participation in a biobank. (shrink)

Genetic information is widely thought to pose unique risks of reidentifying individuals. Genetic data reveals a great deal about who we are and, the standard view holds, should consequently be treated differently from other types of data. Contrary to this view, we argue that the dangers of reidentification for genetic and nongenetic data—including health, financial, and consumer information—are more similar than has been recognized. Before different requirements are imposed around sharing genetic information, proponents of the standard view must show that (...) they are in fact necessary. We further argue that the similarities between genetic and nongenetic information have important implications for communicating risks during consent for health care and research. While patients and research participants need to be more aware of pervasive data‐sharing practices, consent forms are the wrong place to provide this education. Instead, health systems should engage with patients throughout patient care to educate them about data‐sharing practices. (shrink)