A consistent finding reported in the literature is that epistemically suspect beliefs are less frequently endorsed by individuals with a greater tendency to think analytically. However, these results have been observed predominantly in Western participants. In the present work, we explore various individual differences known to predict epistemically suspect beliefs across both Western and Eastern cultures. Across four studies with Japanese and Western individuals, we find that the association between thinking style and beliefs varied as a function of culture. Specifically, (...) while Westerners who scored higher on measures of Type-2 analytic thinking tended to endorse epistemically suspect beliefs less, this association was not observed in Japanese samples, suggesting that the often-observed negative association between analytic thinking and epistemically suspect beliefs may be exclusive to Western individuals. Additionally, we demonstrate that a tendency to think holistically is positively associated with the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs within both samples. Overall, we discuss how various individual differences predict the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs across cultures. (shrink)

The Sustainable Development Goals are an opportunity to address major social and environmental challenges. As a widely agreed framework they offer a potential way to mobilise stakeholders on a global scale. The manner in which the goals, with time-based targets and specific metrics, are set out within a voluntary reporting process adopted by both governments and business, provides a fascinating and important case for organisational studies. It is both about advancing performance measurement and evidence-based policy-making for sustainable development, and also (...) participation and consultation at a wider, more global scale, than has ever been possible before. This paper contributes to the notion of SDGs as a wicked problem, answering calls for deeper theorisation, via synthesis with core ideas in the management field of decision theory. A case study on the wicked problem of deforestation and its links to supply chains, multi-stakeholder initiatives and SDG reporting, provides an illustration of the relevance of the application of decision theory to wicked problems, presented using a novel conceptual framework. This helps to illustrate new avenues for research and practical application regarding the balance of technocratic and participative approaches for sustainable development. (shrink)

Perceptions of criminality and remorse are critical for legal decision-making. While faces perceived as criminal are more likely to be selected in police lineups and to receive guilty verdicts, faces perceived as remorseful are more likely to receive less severe punishment recommendations. To identify the information that makes a face appear criminal and/or remorseful, we successfully used two different data-driven computational approaches that led to convergent findings: one relying on the use of computer-generated faces, and the other on photographs of (...) people. In addition to visualising and validating the perceived looks of criminality and remorse, we report correlations with earlier face models of dominance, threat, trustworthiness, masculinity/femininity, and sadness. The new face models of criminal and remorseful appearance contribute to our understanding of perceived criminality and remorse. They can be used to study the effects of perceived criminality and remorse on decision-making; research that can ultimately inform legal policies. (shrink)

The ‘musca depicta’ trope is well known to art historians, with a history going back to Pliny. It flourished in the Renaissance, but in eighteenth-century England the meaning of the trope was altered greatly when employed in popular culture, both in live theatrical presentations (by George Alexander Stevens) and in published poetry (by James Robertson, comedian of York). Originally, the trope signalled the virtuosity of the painter, who was able to fool the eye by depicting flies so real that (...) the viewer attempted to shoo them off the picture. However, in the hands of Stevens and Robertson, that bit of theatre was turned on its head, as the supposed connoisseur engaged in a harsh criticism of a painting is startled when a fly that he thinks poorly depicted suddenly flies off the canvas, thereby rendering the connoisseur a satiric target. (shrink)

We are largely in agreement with the Findlay & Walker model. However, they appear to dismiss the role of covert spatial attention in tasks in which people are free to move their eyes. We argue that an account of the facts about the perceptual span in reading requires a window of attention not centered around the fovea. Moreover, a computational model of reading that we (Reichle et al. 1998) developed gives a good account of eye movement control in reading (...) and would be unable to do so without relying heavily on covert attention. (shrink)

This article provides a survey of Walker Percy's criticism of what Pope Benedict XVI calls “scientificity,” which entails a constriction of the dynamic interaction of faith and reason. The process can result in the diminishment of ethical considerations raised by science's impact on public policy. Beginning in the 1950s, Percy begins speculating about the negative influence of scientificity. The threat of a political regime using weapons of mass destruction is only one of several menacing developments. The desacrilization of human (...) life from cradle to grave leads Percy to assert that modern science's impact is often radically incoherent. In The Moviegoer, Percy finds his existential and theistic voice that would enable him to advance his critique of science. (shrink)

The construction of content standards has become one of the most politicized processes in K-12 public education as those who determine the value of knowledge(s) also shape who retains or gains political power (Placier, Walker, & Foster, 2002; Sleeter, 2002; Heilig, Brown, & Brown, 2012). In this study, authors examine the process of crafting secondary social studies standards in the state of Missouri. Findings indicate that common sense was deployed in three areas: committee selection, standards writing, and committee decorum. (...) As a result, the standards generated through this process served to reify the neoconservative/neoliberal status quo and failed to include reference to content beyond the scope of traditional knowledge, values, and intentions of conservative social studies. Authors also call for the adoption of a critical common sense which insists that the status quo of old-fashioned common sense is challenged. (shrink)

This article examines one of the relevant concepts in the current debate on home birth—autonomy in place of birth—and its uses in general language, ethics, and childbirth health care literature. International discussion on childbirth services. A concept analysis guided by the model of Walker and Avant. The authors suggest that autonomy in the context of choosing place of birth is defined by three main attributes: information, capacity and freedom; given the antecedent of not harming others, and the consequences of (...) accountability for the outcome. Model, borderline and contrary cases of autonomy in place of birth are presented. A woman choosing place of birth is autonomous if she receives all relevant information on available choices, risks and benefits, is capable of understanding and processing the information and choosing place of birth in the absence of coercion, provided she intends no harm to others and is accountable for the outcome. The attributes of the definition can serve as a useful tool for pregnant women, midwives, and other health professionals in contemplating their moral status and discussing place of birth. (shrink)

In their Target Article, “Promoting Ethical Payment in Human Infection Challenge Studies,” Lynch et al. propose a framework for ethical payment to research participants and apply it to the c...

Previous research has established that goal tracking emerges early in the first year of life and rapidly becomes increasingly sophisticated. However, it has not yet been shown whether young children continue to update their representations of others’ goals over time. The current study investigates this by probing young children’s ability to differentiate between goal directed actions that have been halted because the goal was interrupted, and because the goal was abandoned. To test whether children are sensitive to this distinction, we (...) manipulated the experimenter’s reason for not completing a goal-directed action - his initial goal is either interrupted by an obstacle, or it is abandoned in favour of an alternative. We measure whether children’s helping behaviour is sensitive to the experimenter’s reason for not completing his goal-directed action by recording whether they complete the experimenter’s initial goal or the alternative goal. The results showed that children helped complete the experimenter’s initial goal significantly more often after this goal had been interrupted than after it had been abandoned. These results support the hypothesis that children continue to update their representations of others’ goals over time by the age of two, and specifically that they differentiate between abandoned and interrupted goals. (shrink)

In recent years, counterfeiting has grown exponentially and has now become a grave economic problem. The acquisition of counterfeits poses an ethical dilemma as it benefits the buyer and illegal seller at the cost of the legitimate producer and with fewer taxes being paid throughout the supply chain. Previous research reveals inconsistent and sometimes inconclusive findings regarding whether materialism is associated, positively or negatively, with intentions to purchase counterfeits. The current research seeks to resolve these inconsistencies by investigating previously ignored (...) interactions between three variables: risk of embarrassment, counterfeit detectability and product conspicuousness. First, risk of embarrassment mediates the relationship between materialism and counterfeit purchase intentions. Specifically, materialism negatively predicts counterfeit purchase intentions as mediated by risk of embarrassment. Second, this relationship only holds when the counterfeit can be easily detected. When it is not easily detected, materialism instead leads to positive purchase intentions. Third, these positive effects can be offset when the product is not highly visible. This research has important implications for marketers, manufacturers and academics and contributes to better understanding the antecedents of counterfeit purchases. (shrink)

This article focuses on the question of whether the doctrine of the real presence of Christ's body and blood, and likewise the doctrine of the real absence of bread and wine, can be defended philosophically. It argues for an affirmative answer, and does so by considering a variety of metaphysical models, including that of Aquinas. It will appear, thus, that transubstantiation is a philosophical possibility. If it is possible for two substances to be in the same place at the same (...) time, consubstantiation will be a philosophical possibility as well. Of course, the question of actuality is a theological one. (shrink)

I am grateful to the editors of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for inviting me to write a comment on Kathleen Gill’s ‘On the Metaphysical Distinction Between Processes and Events’. I readily concede that she is right in the central criticism she makes of my 1978 paper: that a properly metaphysical or ontological distinction between processes and events, if it is to be made at all, cannot be sustained on the basis of the informal linguistic criteria I offered in ‘Events, (...) Processes, and States.’ My main concern in that paper was to show that discussions of the Kenny-Vendler typology of activities, performances, and states had focused too narrowly on verb types, on adverbial phrases, on the domain of human action, and on English-language intuitions. Mine was one of several voices urging in the late 1970s that issues of tense logic and of the logic of verb types had to be placed in the broader context of verb aspect — a salient and pervasive structure in natural languages generally, and one that had been studied by philologists and linguists since the nineteenth century. Captivated, as I and others had become at the time, by evidence that the distinction between count nouns and mass nouns appears to be mirrored in verb predications, I went on to make some rather venturesome ‘ontological’ claims. It is satisfying, of course, that Gill accepts not only that there is ‘substantial evidence in favor of recognizing a grammatical distinction between the language of processes and [the language of] events’ but also that ‘similarities with count and mass expressions will allow us to apply techniques for han dling nominal expressions to verbal expressions’. It is more than satisfying that the phenomenon of verb aspect is now noticed and investigated by philosophers as well as by linguists. (shrink)

To understand the future of informed consent, we should pay attention to two ethical-legal sources in addition to the revised Common Rule. Physicians acting as investigators and patients serving as research subjects bring to that relationship a long history regarding consent to treatment, and everyone dealing with research ethics needs to be aware of the Nuremberg Code and other human-rights documents. These three streams make separate and distinctly different contributions to informed consent doctrine.

Canadians take pride in being good citizens of the world, yet our failure to meet global commitments raises questions. Do Canadians need to transcend national loyalties to become full global citizens? Is the idea of rooted cosmopolitanism simply a myth that encourages complacency about Canada's place in the world? This volume assesses rooted cosmopolitanism both in theory and practice. By exploring how Canadians are accommodating "the world" in areas such as multiculturalism, climate change, and humanitarian intervention, the contributors test the (...) possibility of reconciling national allegiances with commitments to human rights, global justice, and international law. (shrink)

Intellectual property law operates with the ontological assumption that immaterial goods such as works, inventions, and designs exist, and that these abstract types can be owned like a piece of land. Alexander Peukert provides a comprehensive critique of this paradigm, showing that the abstract IP object is a speech-based construct, which first crystalised in the eighteenth century. He highlights the theoretical flaws of metaphysical object ontology and introduces John Searle's social ontology as a more plausible approach to the subject (...) matter of IP. On this basis, he proposes an IP theory under which IP rights provide their holders with an exclusive privilege to use reproducible 'Master Artefacts.' Such a legal-realist IP theory, Peukert argues, is both descriptively and prescriptively superior to the prevailing paradigm of the abstract IP object. This work was originally published in German and was translated by Gill Mertens. (shrink)

Natural selection of specific protobiomonomers during abiogenic development of the prototype genetic code is hindered by the diversity of structural, spatial, and rotational isomers that have identical elemental composition and molecular mass (M), but can vary significantly in their physicochemical characteristics, such as the melting temperature Tm, the Tm:M ratio, and the solubility in water, due to different positions of atoms in the molecule. These parameters differ between cis- and trans-isomers of dicarboxylic acids, spatial monosaccharide isomers, and structural isomers of (...) α-, β-, and γ-amino acids. The stable planar heterocyclic molecules of the major nucleobases comprise four (C, H, N, O) or three (C, H, N) elements and contain a single –C=C bond and two nitrogen atoms in each heterocycle involved in C–N and C=N bonds. They exist as isomeric resonance hybrids of single and double bonds and as a mixture of tautomer forms due to the presence of –C=O and/or –NH2 side groups. They are thermostable, insoluble in water, and exhibit solid-state stability, which is of central importance for DNA molecules as carriers of genetic information. In M–Tm diagrams, proteinogenic amino acids and the corresponding codons are distributed fairly regularly relative to the distinct clusters of purine and pyrimidine bases, reflecting the correspondence between codons and amino acids that was established in different periods of genetic code development. The body of data on the evolution of the genetic code system indicates that the elemental composition and molecular structure of protobiomonomers, and their M, Tm, photostability, and aqueous solubility determined their selection in the emergence of the standard genetic code. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin's work on equality has shaped debates in the field of distributive justice for nearly three decades. In this book Alexander Brown attempts to provide a critique but also a defence of that work, and to extend equality of resources globally.

This essay aims to articulate why the Orthodox have historically, and to the present, opposed cremation. Its primary line of argument is that inhumation is a site of “theophanic encounter”: a manifestation of the Glory of God. This theophanic quality is borne out in the scriptures and the Church’s liturgical experience. In particular, the connections between the funeral service and the entombed Christ on Holy Friday and Saturday properly situate the meaning of the post-mortem body. This intimate connection between the (...) deceased and their body is clear in Orthodoxy’s “hylomorphism,” the soul-body unity, which champions the eschatology of resurrection. Finally, all of the above is concretely experienced in the cult of the saints and their relics, which become vehicles for the divine energies: a theophany of Christ’s ongoing conquest of sin and death. Thus, cremation can only be viewed as a tragic misunderstanding of the dual meaning of “doxa” in Orthodoxy: right-belief and right-glory. (shrink)

Today, knowledge on ideal text legibility and high-quality typefaces support fast reading and are accessible to almost everybody who uses a computer. Instead of accelerating the reading process, the kind of typography discussed in this article invites the observer to play in order to catch attention and go beyond the sheer process of reading. Text, which tricks our perception, is observed more intensely than usual ones. Roman Terpitz’ exhibition poster (Figure 1) and the typeface Wirefox (Figure 2) demonstrate how this (...) works in static images. Currently, there is quick growth of still and moving images. Flickering screens catch attention while their content is exchangeable anytime. Hand-held devices like smart phones, touch pads or large, facade-covering LED billboards allow text to be convertible over time. The experiment Dancing type (Figure 3) shows how animated characters can change between text and texture. Words reveal out of a graphical structure and immediately dissolve afterwards. This claims the observer’s attention. This article will introduce and analyse a typography that leads to questions like where it could be used beyond advertising, which applications make sense, if it could improve communication qualities of certain texts and how it can add benefits to current screen technologies. (shrink)

Following recent debates on the New Neoclassical Synthesis, the theory of monetary policy has been renewed. The prevailing method, illustrated by Woodford's version of Interest and Prices, is a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model in which the old LM curve is voluntarily substituted by an optimal monetary rule. Such a turning point requires a peculiar set of assumptions, especially regarding monetary prices. The recent debate pays attention to de-emphasis on the nominal monetary aggregate, which does not play any explicit role (...) in monetary policy deliberations. Following Calvo's model, Woodford's neo-Wicksellian framework only considered monetary prices in equilibrium. This article demonstrates that even though the New Neoclassical Synthesis considers it essential to have a monetary theory for policymaking, the former offers the same answers as the traditional static macroeconomics. More precisely, it shows that the use of dynamic optimisation – such as the one developed by Woodford's approach – does not contribute in a decisive way to improving our understanding of the role that money prices play in monetary theory. Woodford's canvas is silent about the mechanisms whereby monetary policy induces agents to adjust individual money prices to the values that generate an equilibrium price level. Thus, if we want to close this gap, it may be useful to consider a 'forward guidance' strategy. By means of such a tool, central bankers are able to shape the public's expectations on economic outcomes by pre-announcing the time path of future policy actions. (shrink)

I discuss the prospects of perspectival realism for resolving the problem of incompatible models or theories in scientific practice. My diagnosis is that the perspectivist can secure the ‘realism’ in her position only by employing suitable relations between the models. It is such relations that do the work, not the general philosophical claim about the perspectival nature of knowledge claims. But appeal to such relations has also been the preferred strategy of scientific realist approaches to the problem. With respect to (...) the problem of incompatible models, then, it is not clear that perspectivism has a clear advantage—even though the issue was among the motivating problems for proposing this view. I suggest, however, that the required inter-model relations embody a narrower notion of perspective, a notion that is explicitly part of the models themselves and that is essential in maintaining a realist view. (shrink)

A common and driving assumption in agricultural research is that the introduction of research trials, new practices and innovative technologies will result in technology adoption, and will subsequently generate benefits for farmers and other stakeholders. In Lao PDR, the potential benefits of introduced technologies have not been fully realised by beneficiaries. We report on an analysis of a survey of 735 smallholder farmers in Southern Lao PDR who were questioned about factors that influenced their decisions to adopt new technologies. In (...) this study, we have constructed measures or states of adoption which identify key elements of an adoption decision-making nexus. Analysis was conducted to statistically group explanatory factors of adoption. The key explanatory factors represented attributes of the farmer, the factors considered when undertaking production decisions and elements of the agricultural value chain that present as opportunities or constraints. We describe the combination of farmer’s personal attributes, perceptions of the value chain, and the introduction of new technologies by external actors as an “agricultural research value chain”, where agricultural research activities intervene to derive greater benefits for local farmers. A generalised linear model, via Poisson regression analysis on the identified explanatory factors, was applied to explore how they influence adoption measures and we found several significant relationships. (shrink)

Even good lawyers get a bad rap. One explanation for this is that the professional rules governing lawyers permit and even require behavior that strikes many as immoral. The standard accounts of legal ethics that seek to defend these professional rules do little to dispel this air of immorality. The revisionary accounts of legal ethics that criticize the professional rules inject a hearty dose of morality, but at the cost of leaving lawyers unrecognizable as lawyers. This article suggests that the (...) problem with both the professional rules and the extant accounts of legal ethics is that they treat the role of lawyer as largely uniform, whereas lawyers actually serve several importantly different roles in different contexts. The central insight of the article is that legal ethics must be fundamentally context-sensitive: what lawyers are morally permitted or required to do depends on the background context in which they are working. Additionally, by taking context into account, this article is the first to present a theory of legal ethics as appropriately shaped and constrained by normative political philosophy and norms of political legitimacy. -/- Specifically, the article argues that people act as lawyers in three different contexts: State v. Individual (situations in which the State seeks to apply some general law to a particular individual), Individual v. Individual (situations in which private individuals are engaged in a dispute), and Individual v. State (situations in which individuals object to State conduct on constitutional or other grounds unrelated to the question of whether a general law applies to their particular case); that the value of lawyers, qua lawyers, stems from a different source in each of these contexts; and that a theory of legal ethics must take into account both of these first two claims. This article develops one such theory - the Multi-Context View. To demonstrate how the theory applies in practice, the article applies the Multi-Context View to two significant issues in legal ethics: the ethical issues involved in deciding whether to represent a client and the moral permissibility of the use of tactical delay. (shrink)

The Central American migrant caravans of 2018 are best understood as having been precipitated by entangled multi-scalar geopolitical histories among the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Unsurprisingly, the migrants traveling north to the United States garnered widespread attention on social media. So much so that the reaction to the caravan accelerated plans to deploy troops to the US southern border and deny Central Americans the opportunity to seek asylum. This example showcases how the digital world can have (...) exponential material effects. While coverage on border security and migration has been extensive, within political geography, such concerns have rarely been paired with social media. In this article, we take as our object of analysis the digitality or “digital life” of the migrant caravan. Mapping the patterns of migrant caravan-related tweeting paired with the exploration of Twitter’s networked dimensions reveals the platform to be a fundamentally spatial technology. Rather than reflect, refract or distort, Twitter produces and is in turn produced through spatial mechanisms. We present multiple cartographic visualizations in support of this claim and highlight the ways in which a contextual knowledge of the subject under study—the migrant caravan—can further inform analyses of Big Data. (shrink)