This paper deals with new pharmacological and technological developments in the manipulation and curtailment of our sleep needs. While humans have used various methods throughout history to lengthen diurnal wakefulness, recent advances have been achieved in manipulating the architecture of the brain states involved in sleep. The progress suggests that we will gradually become able to drastically manipulate our natural sleep-wake cycle. Our goal here is to promote discussion on the desirability and acceptability of enhancing our control over biological sleep, (...) by illustrating various potential attendant ethical problems. We draw attention to the risks involved, possible conflicts of interests underlying the development of wake enhancement, and the potential impact on accountability for fatigue related errors. (shrink)

The traditional absolutist-relationist debate is still clearly formulable in the context of General Relativity Theory (GTR), despite the important differences between Einstein's theory and the earlier context of Newtonian physics. This paper answers recent arguments by Robert Rynasiewicz against the significance of the debate in the GTR context. In his (1996) (‘Absolute vs. Relational Spacetime: An Outmoded Debate?’), Rynasiewicz argues that already in the late nineteenth century, and even more so in the context of General Relativity theory, the terms of (...) the original Descartes–Newton–Leibniz dispute about space are not to be found. Nineteenth-century ether theories of electromagnetism, and the metric field of GTR, he claims, do not lend themselves to being interpreted clearly as either absolute space à la Newton, or relational structures à la either Descartes or Leibniz. I argue that, while in some imaginable theories Rynasiewicz's claim that the classical debate dissolves would be correct, in fact in the most important historical theories he discusses, this is not the case. In particular, I argue that in both Lorentz's ether theory and General relativity theory, there is a clear and compelling way to establish connections to the classical absolutist-relationist disputes, and that in both these theories it is the absolutist position that is prima facie victorious. To support my arguments and give a clear overview of the whole debate, I end by offering definitional sketches of relationism and absolutism (substantivalism) about spacetime in the context of contemporary physics. The sketches show the clear connections between these views today and their ancestors in Newton and Leibniz. But at the same time, they indicate how both views are not just claims about existing physical theories, but rather also bets about how future physics will clarify the ontological picture. (shrink)

As an incapacitated patient is unable to make decisions regarding their care, physicians turn to next-of-kin when appointing a surrogate decision-maker in the absence of an advanced directive. With the increasing complexity of modern families, physicians are facing new ethical dilemmas when choosing the individual to make end-of-life decisions for their patients. Legal definitions and hierarchies are no longer adhering to the purpose of a surrogate-decision maker, which is to maintain a patient’s autonomy. Moral criteria for surrogates, which emphasize the (...) importance of making decisions that align with the patient’s desires and wishes and negate biological relationships over emotional connections, are becoming much more important. This paper explores a case study in which physicians must appoint a surrogate decision-maker for an incapacitated patient, forced to choose between a biological relationship and a strong emotional connection. (shrink)

This paper corrects a pervasive mistake in readings of Buber’s iconic trope, “I-Thou” (Ich-Du; hereafter, I-You). The mistake lies in considering it synonymous to the principal concept of his dialogical thought, “relation” (Beziehung). A detailed reading of relevant passages in Buber’s I and Thou (hereafter, IAT) reveals their difference: While both “relation” and “I-You” refer to the same reality—to the dialogic moment—they do so with a different focus and scope: “Relation” refers to the dialogic moment in its (...) bilateral entirety. However, “primary word I-You” (hereafter, PWIY)—the phrase in which the I-You trope in fact appears in IAT—focuses on the active share of only one of the two interlocutors in the dialogic moment. While PWIY does refer to the dialogical moment (which is indeed bilateral), it denotes only a partial aspect of the dialogical moment. It focuses exclusively on my active turning toward you and defocuses your concurrent turning toward me (which, no doubt, is present as well). This mistake, I show, is due to interpreters’ enthusiastic endorsement of Buber’s later phrase, the “I-You relation,” which is indeed synonymous with “relation.” It is then easy to read back the “I-You relation” into the earlier, more focused concept of PWIY. Furthermore, this enthusiasm has blinded readers from realizing that, following IAT, Buber in fact abandoned the I-You trope and used it only reluctantly, mainly when addressing his interpreters who used it themselves, or when discussing IAT where it indeed appeared. (shrink)

This paper argues that decision problems and money-pump arguments should not be a deciding factor against accepting non-transitive better than relations. If the reasons to accept normative standpoints that entail a non-transitive better than relation are compelling enough, we ought to revise our decision method rather than the normative standpoints. The paper introduces the most common argument in favor of non-transitive better than relations. It then illustrates that there are different ways to reconceptualize rational choice so that rational choice (...) is possible also when the relevant better than relation is non-transitive. (shrink)

Ontologies that privilege being over becoming fragment what is real by privileging completeness, finality, and stability over motion, change, flow, and flux. This, in turn, results in a conception of truth that tends toward dogmatism and absolutism. This essay sketches an alternative ontology rooted in the rheomodic character of all that is real. Such an ontology underwrites an alternative to the ego-centered form of reasoning. This essay compares and contrasts ego-centred reasoning and doing with a de-centred form of reasoning and (...) doing. This alternative “de-centered” or rheomodic form of reasoning and doing allows us to retain the virtues and values of humanity, sociality, and universality without reducing all questions of humanity, sociality, or universality to dogmatic discourses and thereby promises to be a better alternative to the quest for human relations that promote equality, peace, and justice than the prevailing ego-centered reasoningand doing. (shrink)

The association between posttraumatic stress disorder and counterfactual comparisons is poorly understood and CFC-measures are missing. We developed and applied the Posttrauma...

Why do people shift their strategies for solving problems? Past work has focused on the roles of contextual and individual factors in explaining whether people adopt new strategies when they are exposed to them. In this study, we examined a factor not considered in prior work: people's evaluations of the strategies themselves. We presented undergraduate participants from a moderately selective university (N = 252; 64.8% women, 65.6% White, 67.6% who had taken calculus) with two strategies for solving algebraic word problems (...) and asked them to rate these strategies and their own strategy on a variety of dimensions. Participants’ ratings loaded onto two factors, which we label quality and difficulty. Participants’ initial evaluations of the quality of the strategies were associated with whether they used the strategies at posttest, and this effect held even when controlling for individual and contextual factors. However, people's evaluations of the difficulty of the strategies were not consistently associated with their later adoption of those strategies. We also examined individual and contextual predictors of strategy ratings and strategy adoption. Participants’ need for cognition and their spatial visualization ability were associated with their strategy evaluations, and the framing of the story problems was associated with their strategy adoption. The findings highlight that strategy adoption depends on multiple interacting factors, and that to understand strategy change, it is critical to examine how people evaluate strategies. (shrink)

This chapter gives qualified support to a fourth approach to incorporating the neutrality intuition. It considers the possibility that the betterness relation is indeterminate, but in the end supports the related but different view that betterness is vague. It adopts the supervaluation account of vagueness, which opens the way to continuing the development of the theory of weighing lives.

It is commonly held that rational preferences must be acyclic. There have, however, been cases that have been put forward as counterexamples to this view. This paper focuses on the following question: If the counterexamples are compelling and rational preferences can be cyclic, what should we conclude about the presumed acyclicity of the “better than” relation? Building on some revisionary suggestions concerning acyclicity and betterness, I make a case for hanging on to the presumption that “better than” is (...) acyclic even if “is rationally preferred to” is not. As I explain, the divergence my view makes room for does not threaten to make “better than” judgments less relevant to choice than judgments about rational preference. To the contrary, it makes them more relevant. Toward the end of the paper, I extend my results to the relation “is morally better than” in light of the possibility that there might be moral preferability cycles. (shrink)

This thesis investigates two main issues concerning the behavior of rational agents, preference dynamics and agent diversity. -/- We take up two questions left aside by von Wright, and later also the multitude of his successors, in his seminal book Logic of Preference in 1963: reasons for preference, and changes in preference. Various notions of preference are discussed, compared and further correlated in the thesis. In particular, we concentrate on extrinsic preference. Contrary to intrinsic preference, extrinsic preference is reason-based, i.e. (...) one's preference for one option over another has a reason. A logical model is proposed and its properties are determined. Dynamics come in naturally, since reasons for the preferences can change. Logical systems and formal results regarding dynamical preference change are then presented. -/- Preference arises from comparisons between alternatives. A first option is to compare situations. Abstractly speaking, preferences are in this case between propositions, viewed as sets of possible worlds. The reasons can then be based on a `betterness' relation over possible worlds. Propositional preference arises as a lift from this primitive relation. A standard modal logical approach is taken and we use a modality for the betterness relation in the language. We then model preference change by techniques from dynamic epistemic logic (DEL), where a typical action, e.g. a suggestion or a command can change the betterness ordering of the worlds, and thereby the propositional preference. Dynamic reduction axioms are obtained to encode exactly how such a change takes place. We obtain a complete dynamic preference logic. -/- A second option is to compare objects as such. Concretely, properties of the objects often determine the preference over the objects. Properties are now the reasons. Inspired by Optimality Theory (OT), we propose a priority sequence, an ordering of properties. Various ways of getting a preference from the priority sequence are investigated, though we mostly follow the OT approach. We use a fragment of first-order logic to describe the situation. Here, on the dynamic side, it is priority change that leads to preference change. Using the DEL methodology again we propose a complete set of reduction axioms concerning the possible dynamic operations on priority sequences. -/- Not surprisingly, the above two views are closely related. After all, possible worlds can be thought of as objects! On the basis of a systematic comparison of the two views, we develop a two level perspective, in which the models themselves are structured in layers. In particular, correspondence results between the changes at the level of the possible worlds and the changes at the level of the priority sequences are proved. We end up by sketching a two-level preferential predicate logic to describe more complex circumstances in which situations and objects are compared simultaneously. -/- But we do not see this as the whole story. Preference does not live by itself, it is often intermingled with epistemic notions of knowledge and belief. One can have different intuitions about how this entanglement operates. A few options are discussed, and proposals for logical models are presented. When moving to dynamics, we now see a picture of knowledge update, belief revision and preference change taking place symbiotically, often unconsciously as in real life. -/- The resulting picture in the thesis is one of agents that process information and adjust beliefs and preferences in many different ways. There is no logically prescribed unique norm for doing this. The second part of the thesis takes this general phenomenon of diversity of agents as its focus, since it raises many issues for logical systems and the idealized agents which they normally presuppose. In reality, agents can differ across a wide spectrum of cognitive abilities and habits: in their memory capacity, observation power, inferential power, introspective ability, and revision policies when facing new information. -/- Two kinds of agents, perfect recall agents, and memory-free agents are studied thoroughly, in the setting of playing games. We show how current dynamic logics can be `parametrized' to allow for this memory diversity, with new characterizations of agent types resulting in complete dynamic-epistemic logics. The other dimension of the reality of diverse agents is that, however different they are, they often do manage to coordinate with each other successfully. While this theme has been prominent in game theory and multi-agent systems, it has received hardly any attention in logic. We analyze this interaction between different agents by looking at concrete scenarios which model their types explicitly. -/- Finally, we analyze the issue of agent diversity in its generality, discussing what dynamic logics would have to look like to become a full-fledged account of agents of different capacities and tendencies that pursue and sometimes achieve their goals in irreducibly social settings. -/- . (shrink)

This article describes contrasting ideas for a set of topics in epidemiological thinking. The premise underlying this contribution to the special edition is that researchers develop their epidemiological thinking over time through interactions with other researchers who have a variety of in-practice commitments, such as to kinds of cases and methods of analysis, and not simply to a philosophical framework for explanation. I encourage discussants from philosophy and epidemiology to draw purposefully from across a range of topics and contrasting positions, (...) and thereby pursue critical thinking in the sense of understanding ideas and practices better when we examine them in relation to alternatives. After an initial topic concerning practices for developing epidemiological literacy, a number of conceptual steps follow—the characterization of the very phenomena we might be concerned with, the scope and challenges of the field of epidemiology, the formulation of categories—before linking associations, predictions, causes and interventions and examining the confounding of purported links. Building on that conceptual basis, the remaining topics consist of issues or angles of analysis related to the complexities of inequalities within and between populations, context, and changes over the life course. The organization of topics derives from a graduate course that I teach that aims for epidemiological literacy, not technical ability in statistical formulas and data analysis, and shares the underlying premise and critical thinking goals of this article. During the topic-by-topic description, some assertions about explanation and intervention emerge, notably, that epidemiological–philosophical discussion about causality often leaves unclear or unexamined whether a modifiable factor shown to have been associated with a difference in the data from past observations should be thought of as factor that, when modified, would generate that difference going forward. The article concludes with a “Limitations of this Study” section that teases out different kinds of description–prescription relationship that are implied in undertaking philosophy of epidemiology and identifies some other considerations that are implied but not emphasized by this article. (shrink)

Knowing Better presents a novel solution to the problem of reconciling the seemingly conflicting perspectives of ordinary virtue and normative ethics. Normative ethics is a sophisticated, open-ended philosophical enterprise that attempts to articulate and defend highly general ethical principles. Such principles aspire to specify our reasons, and tell us what it is right to do. However, it is not plausible to suppose that virtuous people in general follow such philosophical principles. These principles are difficult to articulate and assess, and we (...) do not think that advanced philosophical expertise is a necessary requirement for virtue. At the same time, the virtuous do not only accidentally get things right; rather, they act well in a reliable fashion, and they do so by responding appropriately to genuine reasons. Daniel Star argues that the solution to this problem requires a new approach to understanding the relation between ethical theory and ordinary deliberation, a new way of thinking about the nature of practical authority and normative reasons, a new account of the nature of virtue, and a rethinking of how best to understand the role that knowledge plays in deliberation and action. (shrink)

In this chapter, Fourie identifies and systematizes the impairments associated with having privilege and evaluates their implications for theories of relational equality and distributive justice. Having certain social privileges, for example, being a man in a patriarchal society, can also be damaging; in other words, there are “impairments of privilege.” Fourie delineates six kinds of impairments—epistemic, evaluative, emotional, health-related, affiliative, and moral. She then goes on to assess the implications of the impairments of privilege for two theories in political philosophy. (...) Relational egalitarianism, she argues, has the theoretical resources to identify and address the problems associated with these impairments, whereas distributive egalitarianism does not. Furthermore, she argues that assessing the impairments of privilege through relational egalitarianism helps to characterize a society of equals: we must address the causes of functional impairments, express respect for the worse off by not normalizing the experiences of the privileged, and minimize competitive positionality. (shrink)

There is a mistake in the definition of the covering criterion on page 6.

Open theists argue that God's relationship to time, as conceived in classical theism, is erroneous. They explain that it is contradictory for an atemporal being to act in a temporal universe, including experiencing its temporal successions. Contrary to the atemporalists, redemptive history has shown that God interacts with humans in time. This relational nature of God nullifies the classical notion of God as timelessly eternal. Therefore, it lacks a philosophical and theological basis. Because God is in time, He does not (...) know all future contingencies and, therefore, changes. This study examines open theism's appropriation of the A and B theories of time to the divine-human relationship. The study argues that divine temporality does not solve the tension of divine-human relationships, especially in relation to the future. Further, historical divine temporality does not negate the fact of divine atemporality. It mainly stems from God's choice to create temporal creatures and His relationship with them. Furthermore, if it is not logically and metaphysically contradictory for an omnipresent being to act in space, then it follows that an atemporal being can act in time. Whether time is understood from the metric or psychological point of view, it does not transcend God, and therefore, the limitation it places on human creatures with respect to the future does not apply to God. Lastly, although a few philosophers reject the notion of eternity as timelessly eternal, the doctrine has a philosophical and theological basis in the Scripture. (shrink)

The better best system account, short BBSA, is a variation on Lewis’s theory of laws. The difference to the latter is that the BBSA suggests that best system analyses can be executed for any fixed set of properties. This affords the possibility to launch system analyses separately for the set of biological properties yielding the set of biological laws, chemical properties yielding chemical laws, and so on for the other special sciences. As such, the BBSA remains silent about possible interrelations (...) between these freestanding sets of laws. In this paper, I explicate an emergence relation between them which preserves the autonomy or novelty of each special science’s laws but also shows their dependence: the autonomy of each level’s generalisations is given because nomicity is conferred to them system intrinsic, their dependence is established via their supervenience on lower level laws. As will be shown, the autonomy of special science laws is further strengthened by their ceteris paribus character. (shrink)

Better Never to Have Been argues for a number of related, highly provocative, views: (1) Coming into existence is always a serious harm. (2) It is always wrong to have children. (3) It is wrong not to abort fetuses at the earlier stages of gestation. (4) It would be better if, as a result of there being no new people, humanity became extinct. These views may sound unbelievable--but anyone who reads Benatar will be obliged to take them seriously.

The spectrum argument purports to show that the better-than relation is not transitive, and consequently that orthodox value theory is built on dubious foundations. The argument works by constructing a sequence of increasingly less painful but more drawn-out experiences, such that each experience in the spectrum is worse than the previous one, yet the final experience is better than the experience with which the spectrum began. Hence the betterness relation admits cycles, threatening either transitivity or asymmetry of (...) the relation. This paper examines recent attempts to block the spectrum argument, using the idea that it is a mistake to affirm that every experience in the spectrum is worse than its predecessor: an alternative hypothesis is that adjacent experiences may be incommensurable in value, or that due to vagueness in the underlying concepts, it is indeterminate which is better. While these attempts formally succeed as responses to the spectrum argument, they have additional, as yet unacknowledged costs that are significant. In order to effectively block the argument in its most typical form, in which the first element is radically inferior to the last, it is necessary to suppose that the incommensurability is particularly acute: what might be called radical incommensurability. We explain these costs, and draw some general lessons about the plausibility of the available options for those who wish to save orthodox axiology from the spectrum argument. (shrink)

It is often suggested that, since the state of affairs in which God creates a good universe is better than the state of affairs in which He creates nothing, a perfectly good God would have to create that good universe. Making use of recent work by Christine Korgaard on the relational nature of the good, I argue that the state of affairs in which God creates is actually not better, due to the fact that it is not better for anyone (...) or anything in particular. Hence, even a perfectly good God would not be compelled to create a good universe. (shrink)

Caregivers should usually accede to parents’ requests for life-sustaining treatment. For such decision-making, the best interests standard is too limited. John Arras’s “relational potential standard,” con-joined to a contemporary care ethics framework, provides a better guide.

Recent research has revealed the widespread effects of emotion on cognitive functions and memory. However, the influence of emotional valence on verbal short-term memory remains largely unexplored, especially in children. This study measured the effect of emotional valence on word immediate serial recall in 4–6-year-old French children (N = 124). Results show a robust effect of emotional valence on recall performances and recall errors. More precisely, we observed a facilitating effect of the positive valence of words: it allows better performance (...) and causes few recall errors. On the contrary, the data indicated a disruptive impact of negative word valence: the latter causes very low recall performance and is associated with a high proportion of recall errors. These findings add new evidence of the influence of emotion on children’s verbal short-term memory. Our results are discussed in relation to current semantic and attentional explanations of the emotional enhancement of memory. (shrink)

In Rabinowicz (2008), I considered how value relations can best be analysed in terms of fitting pro-attitudes. In the formal model of that paper, fitting pro-attitudes are represented by the class of permissible preference orderings on a domain of items that are being compared. As it turns out, this approach opens up for a multiplicity of different types of value relationships, along with the standard relations of ‘better’, ‘worse’, ‘equally as good as’ and ‘incomparable in value’. Unfortunately, the approach is (...) vulnerable to a number of objections. I believe these objections can be avoided if one re-interprets the underlying notion of preference: instead of treating preference as a ‘dyadic’ attitude directed towards a pair of items, we can think of it as a difference of degree between ‘monadic’ attitudes of favouring. Each such monadic attitude has just one item as its object. Given this re-interpretation, permissible preferences can be modelled by the class of permissible assignments of degrees of favouring to items in the domain. From this construction, we can then recover the old modelling in terms of the class of permissible preference orderings, but the previous objections to that model no longer apply. (shrink)

A complete compendium on theories and approaches to international relations covering debates surrounding the major paradigms and latest developments. Organized around the three paradigms of the discipline of international relations (IR)--realism, pluralism and globalism--this textbook offers a comprehensive and exhaustive coverage of the theories and approaches to IR, including their critiques and evaluations. By treating these theories and approaches under the canopy of the paradigms rather than in isolation, the book facilitates better understanding of their fundamental commonalities and divergences. It (...) addresses the ongoing lively debates both inside and among the paradigms as well as the excessive American-centricity and Eurocentrism of the discipline of IR. Written as an integrated, self-sufficient unit, this textbook will be a valuable companion for inquisitive undergraduate and postgraduate students, research scholars and teachers, who need not search for additional books and references. Key Features: - Careful organization of 15 theories into 3 positivist paradigmatic divisions, and treatment of 4 post-positivist theories to offer a comprehensive and logical approach to the entire subject - Focus on non-Western traditions of IR thinking such as Kautilya from India, Han Fei from China and reference to India in the study of old regionalism - Systematic browsing of relevant theoretical literature and current citations for every theoretical point made - Additional features such as Word Help boxes and review questions to enhance teaching-learning experience - Six chapters available on the companion website to address the needs of advanced readers. (shrink)

I argue that there can be value relations without individual values to support them. The fact that an item is better than another item does not have to be explained by reference to the values of the individual items. Instead, value relations can be grounded directly and exhaustively in descriptive facts about their relata. I show that my suggestion fits well with plausible perspectives on the nature of values and reasons, respectively. One of them is the fitting‐attitudes view, according to (...) which facts about value and value relations are facts about reasons for attitudes. The other is the descriptive view, according to which facts about reasons for attitudes can be grounded directly and exhaustively in descriptive considerations. (shrink)

The Concussion in Sport Group guidelines have successfully brought the attention of brain injuries to the global medical and sport research communities, and has significantly impacted brain injury-related practices and rules of international sport. Despite being the global repository of state-of-the-art science, diagnostic tools and guides to clinical practice, the ensuing consensus statements remain the object of ethical and sociocultural criticism. The purpose of this paper is to bring to bear a broad range of multidisciplinary challenges to the processes and (...) products of sport-related concussion movement. We identify lacunae in scientific research and clinical guidance in relation to age, disability, gender and race. We also identify, through multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary analysis, a range of ethical problems resulting from conflicts of interest, processes of attributing expertise in sport-related concussion, unjustifiably narrow methodological control and insufficient athlete engagement in research and policy development. We argue that the sport and exercise medicine community need to augment the existing research and practice foci to understand these problems more holistically and, in turn, provide guidance and recommendations that help sport clinicians better care for brain-injured athletes. (shrink)

Larry Temkin and Stuart Rachels have argued that the “_ is better than _” relation need not be transitive. In support of this claim, they have presented several spectrum cases towards which our actual preferences appear not to be transitive. In this paper I examine one of them, and explain that there are several solutions we may give to the problem of what is the best global option within the spectrum. I point out that these solutions do not depend (...) on whether we reject or accept the transitivity of the “_ is better than _” relation. This reduces the strength of the challenge that spectrum cases pose to transitivity in axiology. (shrink)

The standard therapy/enhancement distinction is usually related to health purposes and some sense of normality. In this paper, I will challenge the basis of the distinction arguing that only the first part of it is related to health and, consequently, the distinction should be better understood as differentiating between qualitative and quantitative consequences of interventions. As health and normality are broad concepts inside of which it is possible to make some ulterior distinctions, I will propose three different senses of normality (...) in order to more easily grasp the therapy/enhancement distinction. As with the distinction between therapy and enhancement, the difference between sports- and non-sports-persons is usually stated in terms of health and normality. I will challenge this assumption, too. In my opinion, the main difference between people, sportspeople and athletes should be related to the practice itself. Once the practice of a sport is taken seriously, along with its tough and demanding life... (shrink)

In Emanuel Adler's distinctive constructivist approach to international relations theory, international practices evolve in tandem with collective knowledge of the material and social worlds. This book - comprising a selection of his journal publications, a new introduction and three previously unpublished articles - points IR constructivism in a novel direction, characterized as 'communitarian'. Adler's synthesis does not herald the end of the nation-state; nor does it suggest that agency is unimportant in international life. Rather, it argues that what mediates between (...) individual and state agency and social structures are communities of practice, which are the wellspring and repositories of collective meanings and social practices. The concept of communities of practice casts new light on epistemic communities and security communities, helping to explain why certain ideas congeal into human practices and others do not, and which social mechanisms can facilitate the emergence of normatively better communities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Better to Have No Deep Cut Anywhere in the Biopsychosocial SystemDerek Bolton, PhD (bio)It is very good to see theoretical work on the biopsychosocial model, acknowledging the causal role of these three kinds of factors in health and disease. I think Ongaro is right to argue that the biopsychosocial model requires an account of these three also being one—integrated—and that systems theoretic concepts such as dynamic, nonlinear causation are (...) helpful for capturing this. In a recent paper (Bolton, 2023) I have described Engel’s original (1997) paper as visionary but programmatic: visionary in seeing radical theory change afoot, citing von Bertalanffy’s new general system theory, but programmatic because the changes had not happened. The systems theoretic approach applies across the life, behavioral and social sciences, and typically envisages multiple interacting systems and causal pathways, including feedback and feedforward mechanisms, within and between systems. However, linear mechanisms are less complicated to research, and early social epidemiology used standard linear regression models (e.g., see the Whitehall II study [Marmot et al., 1991]). Such models do not capture non-linear connections in which the dependent variable also functions over time as an independent variable. However, the background theory typically would not exclude nonlinear dynamic causation, but on the contrary envisages it. Lower social status raises risk of ill health in a linear model, but it is also a plausible hypothesis that ill health in turn raises risk of lowering social status, which is testable in another or in a composite linear model. As well as social epidemiology, another large-scale theory change was underway at the time Engel wrote, the so-called cognitive revolution in psychology. Axiomatic in this shift was the idea that behavior is a response to the environment as perceived, thus merging the psychological/behavioral with the environmental, including the social. This latter point bears on Ongaro’s main proposal that the biopsychosocial model should envisage social causes as externalist, distinguished from the bio-psychological orientation of current psychiatry—and will be picked up below.Paper 2 makes some bold claims about the positive therapeutic value of construing causes [End Page 321] of mental health problems in external terms that have shared social meaning. These claims are made for functional neurological problems, but with extension to other kinds, in relation to a culture in which the shared social meanings refer to spirit possession, which, as a general type, is found in many non-modern Western cultures, as well as now, in our globalized world, in subcultures worldwide. One of the author’s claims is that within the spirit possession framework the shared framework of external causes enables society to adapt to the problem of living, to make it manageable, by shifting the social environment around the patient. As appropriate for ethnomethodology, there is no reference to controlled studies of outcome or mechanisms and I follow this immersed observational methodology here, with an experiential story that illustrates absence of personal and social acceptance and manageability of problematic conditions. While wandering recently with a friend in the mountains in the northern part of Africa, the local guide, in conversation in the local language and in English, having found out that two of us worked in “psychiatry/psychology,” asked us what we knew about; our brief reply included “obsessive-compulsive disorder” (OCD) and “anxiety”; the guide responded by asking whether OCD was washing hands a lot, and then wanted to discuss with us two people he knew well. One was a relation engaged, since many years, for many hours a day washing and cleaning, avoiding many daily tasks, sometimes childcare; friends and wider kinship structures had tried everything, except modern Western psychiatry (which was unavailable anyway), and, to put it briefly and colloquially, they were not at all happy about the person’s state and wished the person would get better. This person lived at a distance and we could not see them, so we do not know their view, but to judge by people with definite or probable OCD that we are familiar with, they may or may not have been happy in their reclusive state. Also to mention that the local healer had investigated... (shrink)

A thriving literature has developed over logical and mathematical pluralism – i.e. the views that several rival logical and mathematical theories can be equally correct. These have unfortunately grown separate; instead, they both could gain a great deal by a closer interaction. Our aim is thus to present some novel forms of abstractionist mathematical pluralism which can be modeled on parallel ways of substantiating logical pluralism (also in connection with logical anti-exceptionalism). To do this, we start by discussing the Good (...) Company Problem for neo-logicists recently raised by Paolo Mancosu (2016), concerning the existence of rival abstractive definitions of cardinal number which are nonetheless equally able to reconstruct Peano Arithmetic. We survey Mancosu’s envisaged possible replies to this predicament, and suggest as a further path the adoption of some form of mathematical pluralism concerning abstraction principles. We then explore three possible ways of substantiating such pluralism—Conceptual Pluralism,Domain Pluralism,Pluralism about Criteria—showing how each of them can be related to analogous proposals in the philosophy of logic. We conclude by considering advantages, concerns, and theoretical ramifications for these varieties of mathematical pluralism. (shrink)

In “patchwork” families, full siblings, maternal and paternal half-siblings, and non-related children are raised together, and sometimes, genetically related children are separated. As their number is steadily growing, the investigation of the factors that influence within-family relations is becoming more important. Our aim was to explore whether people differentiate between half- and full-siblings in their social relations as implied by the theory of inclusive fitness, and to test whether co-residence or genetic relatedness improves sibling relations to a larger extent. We (...) administered the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire to 196 individuals who were in contact with full-, half-, or step-siblings in their childhood. We built Generalized Linear Mixed Models models to test for the effects of relatedness and co-residence on sibling relations. In general, a higher degree of relatedness was associated with better sibling relations, but only among those who did not live together during childhood. Co-resident siblings’ overall pattern of relation quality was not influenced by the actual level of genetic relatedness. In contrast to this, full siblings reported having experienced more conflicts during childhood than half-siblings, possibly resulting from enhanced competition for the same parental resources. The results suggest that inclusive fitness drives siblings’ relations even in recent industrial societies. However, among individuals who live together, the effect of relatedness might be obscured by fitness interdependence and the subjective feeling of kinship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Knowing Better: Sex, Cultural Criticism, and the Pedagogical Imperative in the 1990sRichard Burt (bio) and Jeffrey Wallen (bio)Teacher Petting“A distinguished professor and her graduate student French-kissed in front of a semicircle of gaping students. Were they furthering ‘an exploration of the erotics of the relation between teacher and student’ as the professor says—or was it part of a pattern of sexual harassment as the student later charged?” So (...) ran the copy on an envelope advertising in 1994 an “extraordinary one-time offer $9.95 trial subscription” to Lingua Franca in 1994. 1 The enclosed letter relates an anecdote about two complaints against Jane Gallop filed by two female graduate students alleging she had sexually harassed them. Gallop defended having French-kissed a graduate student in a bar in front of other students in the same class by saying it was a pedagogical performance. The letter quotes from a Lingua Franca cover story that came to Gallop’s defense [Talbot].As sex between students and professors has become a topic of new interest in the wake of sexual harassment legislation, as colleges have adopted campus sexual conduct codes or debate doing so, and as debates and incidents involving sex and teaching have attracted widespread media attention, the anecdote has become central. Some critics might want to dismiss the Lingua Franca story as nothing more than titillating tabloid gossip or take it seriously only by regarding it as an effort to combat a right-wing agenda to smear innocent professors who, as feminist or queer, are politically and intellectually well to the left of the mainstream. But the anecdotal interests us precisely because it involves more than just a tabloid scandal in any simple sense. Sex is not merely a way one can slur kinds of criticism one doesn’t like by tarnishing its proponents (for teaching sexual, transgressive material to shock, pervert, or in the extreme case—as in this instance—literally seduce students) though it can sometimes function in this way. For sex comes up in anecdotes told by cultural critics to one another, and when it comes up, it comes up in the same way it does in “tabloid” coverage. The anecdote about sex is never really just about sex, about who did or didn’t (French) kiss, suck, and/or fuck whom: it is rather a story about something in the pedagogical relation that has gone wrong, about a connection that has gone off track. Anecdotes about sex and teaching are really stories about criticism, about pedagogy itself as a form of criticism, and about failed pedagogy as the occasion for self-criticism.Yet if the anecdote is not really about sex, sex is hardly irrelevant to the production of what the anecdote is really about, namely, criticism. Indeed, we want to focus on the question of sex between students and professors because it is precisely sexuality that puts pressure on different, key aspects of the project of cultural criticism and on the present contestation over it within and outside of academia. Campus codes are being introduced [End Page 72] as new pedagogical practices, and new courses are being introduced into the classroom: disruption though impersonation, performative strategies, bringing the personal and the erotic into the classroom, and classes making use of pornography, even hardcore visual pornography, often taught by feminist women. 2 According to leading cultural critics, destabilizing gender roles shows us how gender is constructed, and tells us about power in ways that are politically and performatively effective. 3But there is often a moment when the game breaks down in the classroom. Someone gets offended, and given the way that for some sexual harassment extends from unwanted sexual advances or trading grades for sexual favors to classroom materials (both written and visual), offense can easily move into complaint, legal action, media attention, and of course administrative and professorial panic. The usual rationale for transgressive pedagogy is that this disruption will be successful, not just anarchic: it will be successful in that it gets in the way of the replication and reproduction of power (this is the new mission for teaching: to disrupt the transmission and reproduction of patriarchal power structures... (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an account of failed athletic contests which consists of two ideals, the Athletic Superiority Ideal and the Just Results Ideal. Related to this, I argue that a sports contest can fail in terms of the Athletic Superiority Ideal without failing in terms of the Just Results Ideal and vice versa. In the process of doing the former, I argue that besides adjudicating errors, cheating, gamesmanship and luck, there are two other types of reasons because of (...) which a sports contest can fail in terms of the Athletic Superiority Ideal. Finally, I argue that my account of failed athletic contests is more plausible than Mika Hämäläinen’s three-standard model of athletic superiority. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that corporate credibility is associated with firm financial performance in developed countries. This article examines whether corporate credibility is related to firm performance using Economic Observer's rating of corporate credibility in China, the largest emerging market in the world. Based on a four-stage valuation model, we find that more reputable and credible firms outperform those with low ratings by almost 20% in 3-year stock returns and have better 3-year net profit margins, return on equity, and sales growth. (...) This study is the first to directly examine the relationship between corporate credibility and firm performance in emerging markets such as China, and our results confirm that firms with high credibility exhibit better financial and market performance at least in the following 3 years. (shrink)

This is a case study about Better World, the NGO of Seoul-based Onnuri Church. The article is more descriptive than prescriptive and proceeds more inductively regarding explanations for BW’s practices than deductively evaluating BW according to predetermined models. This case study seeks to understand, present, and analyze BW in relation to larger development themes associated with Christian development activities. More than providing answers, the article hopes to sharpen questions. After considering the historical development of various programs, the study examines (...) BW’s philosophy of mission, ministry, and development. The article then closely examines programs and some challenges that BW faces. (shrink)

Policymakers, employers, insurance companies, researchers, and health care providers have developed an increasing interest in using principles from behavioral economics and psychology to persuade people to change their health-related behaviors, lifestyles, and habits. In this article, we examine how principles from behavioral economics and psychology are being used to nudge people (the public, patients, or health care providers) toward particular decisions or behaviors related to health or health care, and we identify the ethically relevant dimensions that should be considered for (...) the utilization of each principle. (shrink)

Ralph Waldo Emerson reputedly said, "If you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door." In this article, Emerson's actual quote is seen to infer a simple rule: quality supply attracts quantity demand. Such a rule could imply that enitre businesses related to persuasion, such as public relations, advertising, and marketing seem at best unnecessary and at worst unethical. However, Emerson's logic may not apply in modern market places driven by multiple competing images. This (...) article proposes eithical thresholds for persuasion and examines the relationship of these thresholds to public relations theory. Two case studies are analyzed in which better-mousetrap logic is applied to test the viability of these thresholds. (shrink)

. Donald MacKay has suggested that the logical concept of complementarity is needed to relate scientific and theological thinking. According to Ian Barbour, this concept should only be used within, not between, disciplines. This article therefore attempts to clarify that contrast from the standpoint of cognitive process. Thinking in terms of complementarity is explicated within a structuralist‐genetic, interactive‐constructivist, developmental theory of the neo‐ and post‐Piagetian kind, and its role in religious development is indicated. Adolescents'complementary views on Creation and on the (...) corresponding scientific accounts serve as an illustration. After further analysis of parallel and circular complementarity, it is shown under which conditions complementarity of science and theology can be better justified and may be potentially more fruitful than is apparent from Barbour's or even MacKay's considerations. (shrink)

The attempt to relate distinctions in perceptual theory to different physiological systems leads to numerous exceptions and inconsistencies. A more promising approach to the reconciliation of constructivist theory and direct perception is to recognize that perception does involve inference, as the constructivists insist, but that inference is a process in logic that does not require unconscious reasoning and need be no more thought-like than resonance.

Better Call Saul and Philosophy is an anthology, a collection of essays exploring the philosophical themes present in the hit television show Better Call Saul. Premiering in the Spring of 2015, Better Call Saul serves as a prequel to the much beloved and critically acclaimed television show Breaking Bad in a which mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher, Walter White - through a series of poor, albeit strained decisions - slowly but steadily becomes a monstrous drug kingpin. In Better Call Saul, (...) a struggling but cocksure attorney, Jimmy McGill goes through a similar transformation to become a cunning, devious criminal lawyer for the underworld. Beyond this, Better Call Saul is populated with a number of additional characters going through their own evolution - from a brother burdened with a psychosomatic(?) ailment, to a former police officer delving deeper into the wrong side of the law to provide for his family. -/- Much like the beloved show, Better Call Saul and Philosophy is an anthology-- a collection of snippets and essays that slowly reveal a much more complex story. Premiering in the Spring of 2015, Better Call Saul serves as a prequel to the much beloved and critically acclaimed television show Breaking Bad. Critics of the series have noted that its storytelling is emblematic, or "The New Golden Age of Television": programming that not only rewards multiple watches, but also calls for a careful, reasoned analysis of characters, plots, and themes. Better Call Saul is the type of program that is so rich with these elements that it not only calls for a book like Better Call Saul and Philosophy, but might even feel incomplete without it! -/- Now, readers can join alongside struggling-but-cocksure attorney Jimmy McGill as he goes through a series of transformative experiences and scenarios. Featuring the work of contemporary philosophers, Better Call Saul and Philosophy offers its readers a chance to delve deeply into a wide range of philosophical issues the show presents, including the nature of good and evil, personal identity, free will and determinism, the law as it relates to morality, the ethical implications of the war on drugs, death and dying, and many, many more. Fans of the show will love a chance to appreciate the show on much deeper level--and, for those hoping to learn a bit about philosophy as well as the show, the book perfectly marries the two together in a unique and engaging way. -/- This book is the latest edition (#8) in the series Pop Culture and Philosophy. (shrink)

Recognition that the Principle of Respect for Autonomy fails to work in family-centric societies such as Singapore has recently led to the promotion of relational autonomy as a suitable framework within which to place healthcare decision making. However, empirical data, relating to patient and family opinions and the practices of healthcare professionals in Confucian-inspired Singapore, demonstrate clear limitations on the ability of a relational autonomy framework to provide the anticipated compromise between prevailing family decision-making norms and adopted Western led atomistic (...) concepts of autonomy. Evidence suggests that despite a growing infusion of Western influence, there is still little to indicate any major shift to individual decision making, particularly in light of the way society and healthcare are structured. Similarly, the lack of employing a shared decision-making model and data that discredit the notion that the complex psychosocial and cultural factors that affect the decision making may be considered “content neutral” not only prevents the application of relational autonomy but questions the viability of the values behind the Principle of Respect for Autonomy. Taking into account local data and drawing upon a wider concept of personhood that extends beyond prevailing family-centric ideals along with the complex interests that are focused upon the preservation of the unique nature of personhood that arises from the Ring Theory of Personhood, we propose and “operationalize” the employing of an authoritative welfare-based approach, within the confines of best interest decision making, to better meet the current care needs within Singapore. (shrink)

Motor proficiency reflects the ability to perform precise and coordinated movements in different contexts. Previous research suggests that different profiles of motor proficiency may be associated with different cognitive functioning characteristics thus suggesting an interaction between cognitive and motor processes. The current study investigated this interaction in the general population of healthy adults with different profiles of motor proficiency by focusing on error-related cognitive control and behavioral adaptation mechanisms. In addition, the impact of these processes was assessed in terms of (...) trait anxiety and worries. Forty healthy adults were divided into high and low motor proficiency groups based on an assessment of their motor skills. Using electroencephalography during a flanker task, error-related negativity was measured as the neural indicator of cognitive control. Post-error slowing was measured to represent behavioral adaptation. Participants also completed an anxiety assessment questionnaire. Participants in the high motor proficiency group achieved better task accuracy and showed relatively enhanced cognitive control through increased ERN. Contrastingly, individuals in the lower motor proficiency group achieved poorer accuracy whilst showing some evidence of compensation through increased PES. Trait anxiety reflecting general worries was found to be correlated with motor functioning, but the study could not provide evidence that this was related to cognitive or behavioral control mechanisms. The interaction between cognitive and motor processes observed in this study is unique for healthy and sub-clinical populations and provides a baseline for the interpretation of similar investigations in individuals with motor disorders. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 497 Both theologians and philosophers need to see a completely integrated treatment of both rational and faith aspects of Aquinas's theology of creation. To this end, more work on theology as science also would be helpful. Emery's treatment of the end and subject of a science is not quite neoplatonic enough. His presentation of the subject of theology forces God, its subject in the Summa theologiae, on (...) earlier texts of Albert (49) and Aquinas (302). In I Sent. Aquinas says the subject is ens divinum, "being as related to the divine," which is much wider than God, who is the end but not subject oftheology. His model is Avicenna's ens commune as the subject of a metaphysics with God as its end. More work also must be done on the articles of faith, part of the subject of theology for Albert; but theology's proper principles for Aquinas. How primordial the articles are, and the interplay of reason and faith in knowing them, are still unresolved issues. In sum, one hopes this fine book by Fr. Emery will be the first of many helping give Thomism the new look it deserves. Centerfor Tlwmistic Studies Houston, TX R. E. HOUSER Relation als Vergleich: Die Relationstheorie des Johannes Buridan im Kontext seines Denkens und der Scholastik. By ROLF SCHONBERGER. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, Band 43. Leiden/New York/Koln: E. J. Brill, 1994. Pp. 489. $108.75 (cloth). This book is a revised version of the author's 1990 Habilitationsschrift at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat in Munich. It aims to articulate the theory of relations developed by the noted Parisian philosopher, John Buridan (ca. 1295-1358), "in connection with the extensive scholastic discussion of this problem," and, in particular, to show how the same arguments were advanced or refuted by different philosophers from "fundamentally different starting points" (ix, 59). This stems from the author's working hypothesis that the medieval debate on the nature of relations proceeded dialectically, and that Buridan's contribution to it can be better understood by taking its argumentative context into consideration. The scope of the book is wide-ranging, to say the least. Readers expecting a book about Buridan's theory of relations will find the title somewhat misleading, however, since background material and a survey of the "scholastic context" of Buridan's theory fill up the first 372 pages, with the author's presentation and discussion of the theory itself limited to the final 498 BOOK REVIEWS 75. Furthermore, the author seems to regard the relevance of the former discussion to the latter as self-evident. This is fine where the connections are fairly uncontroversial, as in the case of William of Ockham, but where they are less so, as in the cases 0f Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Meister Eckhart, Durand of St. Pour~ain, and Peter John Olivi, one is left in the dark about why separate chapters are devoted to each. Giles and Olivi are not even mentioned in the chapters on Buridan. Henry and Durand make one appearance each, both in the course of the trivial observation that unlike in their theories, "consideration of the doctrine of the Trinity plays no role in Buridan's theory of relations" (399). Eckhart is mentioned a few times, but in terms so speculative as to be useless for the general reader. For example, the author finds Jan Pinborg's characterization of Buridan as a someone who "took the arbitrariness of language seriously" to be "of course... too microscopic " (393). The reason is that Pinborg allegedly failed to see the radicalization of conventionality in the fourteenth century in terms of an "epochal shift" from "the symbolic and quasi-naturalistic conception of language in the early Middle Ages," a conception that, the author parenthetically notes, "is perhaps still to be found (or further strengthened) in Bonaventure or Meister Eckhart" (ibid.). But even bracketing the question of how this description fits the latter authors, the Buridan story is more complex than this. Buridan does emphasize that spoken and written expressions signify conventionally, but he never abandons the Aristotelian/Boethian tripartite conception of language, according to which concepts are said to... (shrink)

Decision-making competence in later adulthood is affected by declines in cognitive skills, and age-related changes in affect and experience can sometimes compensate. However, recent findings suggest that age-related changes in motivation also affect the extent to which adults draw from experience, affect, and deliberative skills when making decisions. To date, relatively little attention has been given to strategies for addressing age-related changes in motivation to promote better decisions in older adults. To address this limitation, we draw from diverse literatures to (...) suggest promising intervention strategies for motivating older recipients’ motivation to make better decisions. We start by reviewing the life-span developmental literature, which suggests that older adults’ motivation to put effort into decisions depends on the perceived personal relevance of decisions as well as their self-efficacy (i.e., confidence in applying their ability and knowledge). Next, we discuss two approaches from the health intervention design literature, the mental models approach and the patient activation approach, which aim to improve motivation for decision making by improving personal relevance or by building self-efficacy or confidence to use new information and skills. Using examples from these literatures, we discuss how to construct interventions to motivate good decisions in later adulthood. (shrink)