Background Retraction is a mechanism for alerting readers to unreliable material and other problems in the published scientific and scholarly record. Retracted publications generally remain visible and searchable, but the intention of retraction is to mark them as “removed” from the citable record of scholarship. However, in practice, some retracted articles continue to be treated by researchers and the public as valid content as they are often unaware of the retraction. Research over the past decade has identified a number of (...) factors contributing to the unintentional spread of retracted research. The goal of the Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science: Shaping a Research and Implementation Agenda (RISRS) project was to develop an actionable agenda for reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science. This included identifying how retraction status could be more thoroughly disseminated, and determining what actions are feasible and relevant for particular stakeholders who play a role in the distribution of knowledge. -/- Methods These recommendations were developed as part of a year-long process that included a scoping review of empirical literature and successive rounds of stakeholder consultation, culminating in a three-part online workshop that brought together a diverse body of 65 stakeholders in October–November 2020 to engage in collaborative problem solving and dialogue. Stakeholders held roles such as publishers, editors, researchers, librarians, standards developers, funding program officers, and technologists and worked for institutions such as universities, governmental agencies, funding organizations, publishing houses, libraries, standards organizations, and technology providers. Workshop discussions were seeded by materials derived from stakeholder interviews (N = 47) and short original discussion pieces contributed by stakeholders. The online workshop resulted in a set of recommendations to address the complexities of retracted research throughout the scholarly communications ecosystem. -/- Results The RISRS recommendations are: (1) Develop a systematic cross-industry approach to ensure the public availability of consistent, standardized, interoperable, and timely information about retractions; (2) Recommend a taxonomy of retraction categories/classifications and corresponding retraction metadata that can be adopted by all stakeholders; (3) Develop best practices for coordinating the retraction process to enable timely, fair, unbiased outcomes; and (4) Educate stakeholders about pre- and post-publication stewardship, including retraction and correction of the scholarly record. -/- Conclusions Our stakeholder engagement study led to 4 recommendations to address inadvertent citation of retracted research, and formation of a working group to develop the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CORREC) Recommended Practice. Further work will be needed to determine how well retractions are currently documented, how retraction of code and datasets impacts related publications, and to identify if retraction metadata (fails to) propagate. Outcomes of all this work should lead to ensuring retracted papers are never cited without awareness of the retraction, and that, in public fora outside of science, retracted papers are not treated as valid scientific outputs. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the continued circulation and use of retracted science as a complex problem: Multiple stakeholders throughout the publishing ecosystem hold competing perceptions of this problem and its possible solutions. We describe how we used a participatory design process model to co-develop recommendations for addressing this problem with stakeholders in the Alfred P. Sloan-funded project, Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science (RISRS). After introducing the four core RISRS recommendations, we discuss how the issue of retraction-related stigma (...) gives rise to recommendation #4, Educate stakeholders about retraction and pre- and post-publication stewardship of the scholarly record. This recommendation is important for training publishing professionals and realizing this recommendation will require further collaborative design work across scholarly communications. We highlight ongoing stakeholder work which is now re-starting the design cycle. We conclude with a discussion of ongoing activities facilitating uptake and refinement of RISRS research and the implementation agenda. (shrink)

BACKGROUND Patients with chronic pain face significant barriers in finding clinicians to manage long-term opioid therapy (LTOT). For patients on LTOT, it is increasingly common to have them sign opioid treatment agreements (OTAs). OTAs enumerate the risks of opioids, as informed consent documents would, but also the requirements that patients must meet to receive LTOT. While there has been an ongoing scholarly discussion about the practical and ethical implications of OTA use in the abstract, little is known about how clinicians (...) use them and if OTAs themselves modify clinician prescribing practices. OBJECTIVE To determine how clinicians use OTAs and the potential impacts of OTAs on opioid prescribing. DESIGN We conducted qualitative analysis of four focus groups of clinicians from a large Midwestern academic medical center. Groups were organized according to self-identified prescribing patterns: two groups for clinicians who identified as prescribers of LTOT, and two who did not. PARTICIPANTS 17 clinicians from General Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, and Palliative Care were recruited using purposive, convenience sampling. APPROACH Discussions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for themes using reflexive thematic analysis by a multidisciplinary team. KEY RESULTS Our analysis identified three main themes: (1) OTAs did not influence clinicians’ decisions whether to use LTOT generally but did shape clinical decision-making for individual patients; (2) clinicians feel OTAs intensify the power they have over patients, though this was not uniformly judged as harmful; (3) there is a potential misalignment between the intended purposes of OTAs and their implementation. CONCLUSION This study reveals a complicated relationship between OTAs and access to pain management. While OTAs seem not to impact the clinicians’ decisions about whether to use LTOT generally, they do sometimes influence prescribing decisions for individual patients. Clinicians shared complex views about OTAs’ purposes, which shows the need for more clarity about how OTAs could be used to promote shared decision-making, joint accountability, informed consent, and patient education. (shrink)

This book is a methodological guide for the emerging, interdisciplinary science of virtue traits and their value. The authors situate this emerging empirical field in the history of psychology, critically survey existing work, defend the scientific validity of virtue science, and develop a general model that can guide, unify, and catalyze future research. In addition, chapters discuss how philosophy and philosophers can contribute to empirical inquiry and how a mature science of virtue could inform moral philosophy. The book is co-authored (...) by two psychologists and a philosopher who pursued joint empirical work on fairness and then began to discuss larger methodological issues raised by that collaboration. -/- o Expected publication date: January 31, 2024 o Paperback ISBN: 1108747981. (shrink)

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted (...) a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

Objective: Compassion has been associated with eudaimonia and prosocial behavior, and has been regarded as a virtue, both historically and cross-culturally. However, the psychological study of compassion has been limited to laboratory settings and/or standard survey assessments. Here, we use an experience sampling method (ESM) to compare naturalistic assessments of compassion with standard assessments, and to examine compassion, its variability, and associations with eudaimonia and prosocial behavior. -/- Methods: Participants took a survey which included standard assessments of compassion and eudaimonia. (...) Then, over four days, they were repeatedly asked about their level of compassion, eudaimonia, and situational factors within the moments of daily life. Finally, prosocial behavior was tested using the Dual Gamble Task and an opportunity to donate task winnings. -/- Results: Analyses revealed within-person associations between ESM compassion and eudaimonia. ESM compassion also predicted eudaimonia at the next ESM time point. While not impervious to situational factors, considerable consistency was observed in ESM compassion in comparison with eudaimonia. Further, ESM compassion along with eudaimonia predicted donating behavior. Standard assessments did not. -/- Conclusion: Consistent with virtue theory, some individual’s reports displayed a probabilistic tendency toward compassion, and ESM compassion predicted ESM eudaimonia and prosocial behavior toward those in need. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a novel challenge to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s reasons-responsiveness theory of moral responsibility. According to their view, agents possess the control necessary for moral responsibility if their actions proceed from a mechanism that is moderately reasons-responsive. I argue that their account of moderate reasons-responsiveness fails to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for moral responsibility since it cannot give an adequate account of the responsibility of individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Empirical evidence suggests (...) that autistic individuals demonstrate impairments in counterfactual thinking, and these impairments, I argue, are such that they cast doubt on Fischer and Ravizza’s construal of moderate reasons-responsiveness. I then argue that modifying the view in order to accommodate individuals with ASD forces them to defend a strong reasons-responsive account despite the fact that they explicitly deny that such an account can adequately characterize what it is to be morally responsible for one’s actions. (shrink)

In their 2010 book, Biology’s First Law, D. McShea and R. Brandon present a principle that they call ‘‘ZFEL,’’ the zero force evolutionary law. ZFEL says (roughly) that when there are no evolutionary forces acting on a population, the population’s complexity (i.e., how diverse its member organisms are) will increase. Here we develop criticisms of ZFEL and describe a different law of evolution; it says that diversity and complexity do not change when there are no evolutionary causes.

This article uses phenomenology to examine the way whiteness appears. It begins by discussing the phenomenologies of race done by Linda Martin Alcoff and Sara Ahmed, focusing on their accounts of how race develops and the role that proximity and visibility play in the production of racial categories. It then offers critiques of Ahmed and Alcoff for naturalizing part of the process by which race develops, arguing that a better account of race can be given if we avoid seeing (...) race as a function of proximity or visibility. A stronger account of whiteness can be given if we draw from the work of Merleau-Ponty, in particular his claims that there is always a directionality to perception and that we complete the world in our perceptions of it. A phenomenology that is motivated by these considerations will be able to explain how whiteness is able to appear in so many ways as it is constantly being completed differently in different contexts. The article ends by describing some of these contexts, such as how whiteness is often occluded but can also manifest the qualities of malignancy and autoimmunity. (shrink)

Text představuje aktivní role-playing jako výzkumnou experimentální metodu v sociálních vědách. Zasazuje role-playing do rámce simulačních výzkumných metod, rozkrývá jeho epistemo- logii a dosavadní metodologická uchopení zejména v sociální psychologii. Hlavní linií textu je obhajoba epistemologických kvalit metody a experimentu v sociálních vědách obecně. Inspiračním zdrojem je zde na jedné straně Latourova kvalitativní sociologie asociací, tázající se po původu sociality a problematizující samotný před- mět sociálních věd, tj. sociálno. A na druhé straně přístupy naturalizující sociálně- vědné výzkumy propojením s kognitivní (...) vědou. V tomto ohledu je naším klíčovým předpokladem pro smysluplné uchopení sociální reality v její simulované podobě shodnost kognitivních mechanismů skutečného i simulovaného jednání. V pojetí textu jsou oba zdroje spojeny jejich akcentem na tematizaci sociálna jako inter-psychologického fenoménu mezi tradiční mikro a makro úrovní. Analogií s Petriho miskou text promýšlí posunutí původní metody situační sociální psycho- logie směrem k využití konstruovaných diegetických liminálních situací jako svého druhu laboratoří sociálna. (shrink)

Collected and edited by Noah Levin -/- Table of Contents: -/- UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION 1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin) 2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba) 3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr) 4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin) 5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge) 6 The Ethics of (...) our Digital Selves (Noah Levin) -/- UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD” 7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas) 8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge) 9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis) 10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin) 11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) 12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) -/- UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS 13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar) 14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies) 15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman) 16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin) 17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar) 18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes) -/- UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS 19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh) 20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill) 21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge) 22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin) 23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) 24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill) -/- UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY 25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato) 26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant) 28 The Virtues (Aristotle) 29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko). (shrink)

"Philosophy of Happiness: A Critical Introduction" summarizes (a) what philosophy of happiness is, (b) why it should matter to us, (c) what assistance we can draw from philosophy, empiric science, religion, and self-help sources, and (d) why taking an independent approach is both necessary and feasible. -/- The article is in PDF format, 60 pages. The table of contents links directly to the listed captions. Also available in an html version under the phone variant of the referenced philosophy of happiness (...) website. -/- Table of Contents -/- 1. The Definition of Happiness. -/- 2. The Definition of Philosophy of Happiness. -/- 3. Taking Refuge from the Complexity of Happiness. -/- 4. Self-Help Contributions to Philosophy of Happiness. -/- 5. Religious Contributions to Philosophy of Happiness. -/- 6. Philosophical Authorities on Philosophy of Happiness. -/- 7. Happiness Studies by Sciences Beyond Philosophy. -/- 8. Independent Approaches Toward a Philosophy of Happiness. -/- 9. Further Reading. (shrink)

The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards modelbased approaches. The idea that there are simple and true laws of nature has met with objections from philosophers such as Nancy Cartwright (1983) and Paul Teller (2001), and this has made a strictly Hempelian D-N style explanation largely irrelevant to the explanatory practices of science (Hempel & Oppenheim, 1948). Much of science does not involve subsuming particular events under laws of nature. It is increasingly recognized (...) that science across the disciplines is to some degree a patchwork of scientific models, with different methods, strategies, and with varying degrees of successful prediction and explanation. And so accounts of scientific explanation have reflected this change of perspective and model-based approaches have flourished in the explanation literature (Batterman, 2002b; Bokulich, 2008; Craver, 2006; Woodward, 2003). (shrink)

This Introduction has three sections, on "logical fatalism," "theological fatalism," and the problem of future contingents, respectively. In the first two sections, we focus on the crucial idea of "dependence" and the role it plays it fatalistic arguments. Arguably, the primary response to the problems of logical and theological fatalism invokes the claim that the relevant past truths or divine beliefs depend on what we do, and therefore needn't be held fixed when evaluating what we can do. We call the (...) sort of dependence needed for this response to be successful "dependence with a capital 'd'": Dependence. We consider different accounts of Dependence, especially the account implicit in the so-called "Ockhamist" response to the fatalistic arguments. Finally, we present the problem of future contingents: what could "ground" truths about the undetermined future? On the other hand, how could all such propositions fail to be true? (shrink)

Ordinarily, we take moral responsibility to come in degrees. Despite this commonplace, theories of moral responsibility have focused on the minimum threshold conditions under which agents are morally responsible. But this cannot account for our practices of holding agents to be more or less responsible. In this paper we remedy this omission. More specifically, we extend an account of reasons-responsiveness due to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza according to which an agent is morally responsible only if she is (...) appropriately receptive to and reactive to reasons for action. Building on this, we claim that the degree to which an agent is responsible will depend on the degree to which she is able to recognize and react to reasons. To analyze this, we appeal to relations of comparative similarity between possible worlds, arguing that the degree to which an agent is reasons-reactive depends on the nearest possible world in which given sufficient reason to do otherwise, she does so. Similarly, we argue that the degree to which an agent is reasons-receptive will depend on the intelligibility of her patterned recognition of reasons. By extending an account of reasons-responsiveness in these ways, we are able to rationalize our practice of judging people to be more or less responsible. (shrink)

This study sought to replicate and extend Hall and colleagues’ (2014) work on developing and validating scales from the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) to index the triarchic psychopathy constructs of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. This study also extended Hall et al.’s initial findings by including the PPI Revised (PPI–R). A community sample (n D 240) weighted toward subclinical psychopathy traits and a male prison sample (n D 160) were used for this study. Results indicated that PPI–Boldness, PPI–Meanness, and PPI–Disinhibition converged (...) with other psychopathy, personality, and behavioral criteria in ways conceptually expected from the perspective of the triarchic psychopathy model, including showing very strong convergent and discriminant validity with their Triarchic Psychopathy Measure counterparts. These findings further enhance the utility of the PPI and PPI–R in measuring these constructs. (shrink)

Bien qu'il existe des différences significatives entre la philosophie de Mario Bunge et celle de Graham Harman, il existe également des similitudes fonda-mentales entre elles. Ces penseurs affirment tous deux qu'il est possible de dé-velopper une théorie générale des objets. Le premier estime que la théorie en question est logico-mathématique, tandis que le second suggère qu'elle est on-tologique. Quoi qu’il en soit, ils conviennent que tous les objets doivent être con-sidérés, qu’ils soient réels ou non. En outre, ils suggèrent que (...) même si aucun ob-jet ne doit être exclu de la théorie, il est nécessaire d’en distinguer différents types. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux est l’un des principaux philosophes français d’aujourd’hui. Son premier livre, Après la finitude. Essai sur la nécessité de la contingence (2006, traduit en anglais en 2008), est déjà un classique. Il comporte une préface de son ancien mentor, Alain Badiou. L’un des princi- paux objectifs de Meillassoux est de réhabiliter la distinction entre qualités premières et qualités secondes, typique des philosophies prékantiennes. Plus précisément, il affirme que les mathématiques sont capables de révéler les qualités premières de tout objet (...) : « Tout ce qui de l’objet peut être formulé en termes mathématiques, il y a sens à le penser comme propriété de l’objet en soi. » Nous allons utiliser la philosophie mathématique de Bunge pour remettre en question l’hypothèse précédente. (shrink)

Imaginez une table de billard, sur laquelle se trouvent plusieurs boules de billard rouges. Supposons que l’une d’entre elles en percute une autre. On pourrait prétendre que la première boule de billard, la cause, est en contact direct avec la seconde, l’effet. Si nous devions généraliser cela pour toutes choses, pas seulement pour les boules de billard, nous dirions que « la chose A cause la chose B ». Comme nous le verrons, Bunge et Harman rejettent tous deux la conception (...) précédente de la causalité. Ils s’entendent pour dire que l’affirmation « la chose A cause la chose B » est fausse, parce que les choses n’entrent pas en contact causal direct ; il doit y avoir un troisième élément qui les relie. Dans le cas de Bunge, deux choses sont liées par des événements. Dans le cas d’Harman, deux objets réels sont liés par un objet sensuel. (shrink)

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) is a syndrome of impaired health and performance that occurs as a result of low energy availability (LEA). Whilst many health effects associated with RED-S have been widely studied from a physiological perspective, further research exploring the psychological antecedents and consequences of the syndrome is required. Therefore, the aim of this study was to qualitatively explore athlete experiences of RED-S. Twelve endurance athletes (female n= 10, male n= 2; M age = 28.33 years) reporting (...) past or current experiences of RED-S, associated with periods of LEA, took part in semi-structured interviews designed to explore: contexts and mechanisms underpinning the onset of RED-S; the subjective experience of RED-S; and contexts and mechanisms influencing “recovery” from RED-S. Regardless of how RED-S was initiated, all athletes experienced a multitude of physiological impairments, accompanied by significant psychological distress. This paper contributes novel understanding of the complex interplay between physiological and psychological components of RED-S from the perspective of information-rich cases. The findings suggest that system-wide educational prevention and awareness interventions are vital for athletes and support personnel, such as coaches, parents, dieticians, psychologists, and sports medicine staff. (shrink)

L'empathie est un mode émotionnel qui associe le point de vue d'autrui à des sensations physiologiques. Ce phénomène a tendance à être plus important envers certaines personnes qu'envers d'autres. Or, il existe parfois de bonnes raisons morales de promouvoir une empathie plus égalitaire. Notre hypothèse de psychologie morale est qu'il est possible d'utiliser l'imagination, et en particulier sa dimension volontaire et sa transparence aux émotions, pour corriger certains biais empathiques.

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a relatively new, experimental treatment for patients suffering from treatment-refractory Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The effects of treatment are typically assessed with psychopathological scales that measure the amount of symptoms. However, clinical experience indicates that the effects of DBS are not limited to symptoms only: patients for instance report changes in perception, feeling stronger and more confident, and doing things unreflectively. Our aim is to get a better overview of the whole variety of changes that (...) OCD patients experience during DBS treatment. For that purpose we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 OCD patients. In this paper, we present the results from this qualitative study.We list the changes grouped in four domains: with regard to (a) person, (b) (social) world, (c)characteristics of person-world interactions, and (d) existential stance. We subsequently provide an interpretation of these results. In particular, we suggest that many of these changes can be seen as different expressions of the same process; namely that the experience of anxiety and tension gives way to an increased basic trust and increased reliance on one’s abilities. We then discuss the clinical implications of our findings, especially with regard to properly informing patients of what they can expect from treatment, the usefulness of including CBT in treatment, and the limitations of current measures of treatment success. We end by making several concrete suggestions for further research. (shrink)

La vérité est le degré d’exactitude d’une représentation de la réalité. Nous postulons trois étapes cognitives : le psychon, produit par la perception ; le construit, produit par intellection; et l’acte de parole, produit par la communication. La vérité se trouve à la seconde étape; seuls les construits sont aléthiques. La vérité est une qualité qui vient en degrés. La certitude est le point d’aboutissement parfait et inaccessible de cette gradation ; il s’agit donc d’un concept idéal. Une thèse est (...) réputée vraie si son degré aléthique est acceptablement efficace, sinon la thèse est considérée comme fausse. En d’autres termes, nous jugeons vraie toute thèse n’ayant pas assez d’échecs pour qu’elle soit considérée fausse. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the central role of praxis in Arendt’s conception of the human world and the structure of political life as a site of subjective interaction and narrative discourse. First, Arendt’s use of Aristotle will be presented in terms of the meaning of action as a unique philosophical category. Second, Arendt’s encounter with the work of Martin Heidegger will be shown to involve a critical response to his reading of Aristotle. Finally, the revised (...) conception of praxis that derives from her philosophical reflections will be related to the experience of narrative as a necessary complement to human plurality. (shrink)

After noting how academic philosophers have shunned psychobiography, the author brings to focus the psychobiographical sources of Martin Heidegger's "turn" from a hermeneutic phenomenology to a form of metaphysical mysticism.

This article examines the relationship between totalitarianism and the metaphysical illusions on which it rests. Phenomenological investigation is claimed to loosen the grip of totalitarian ideology by exposing its origins in the “resurrective” illusions that seek to overcome the impact of collective trauma. Phenomenology is thus shown to have emancipatory power.

The Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA), two techniques for global optimization, were applied to a reduced (simplified) form of the phase problem (RPP) in computational crystallography. Results were compared with those of "enhanced pair flipping" (EPF), a more elaborate problem-specific algorithm incorporating local and global searches. Not surprisingly, EPF did better than the GA or SA approaches, but the existence of GA and SA techniques more advanced than those used in this study suggest that these techniques still hold (...) promise for phase problem applications. The RPP is, furthermore, an excellent test problem for such global optimization methods. (shrink)

This paper investigates how environmental structure, given the innate properties of a population, affects the degree to which this population can adapt to the environment. The model we explore involves simple agents in a 2-d world which can sense a local food distribution and, as specified by their genomes, move to a new location and ingest the food there. Adaptation in this model consists of improving the genomic sensorimotor mapping so as to maximally exploit the environmental resources. We vary environmental (...) structure to see its specific effect on adaptive success. In our investigation, two properties of environmental structure, conditioned by the sensorimotor capacities of the agents, have emerged as significant factors in determining adaptive success: (1) the information content of the environment which quantifies the diversity of conditions sensed, and (2) the expected utility for optimal action. These correspond to the syntactic and pragmatic aspects of environmental information, respectively. We find that the ratio of expected utility to information content predicts adaptive success measured by population gain and information content alone predicts the fraction of ideal utility achieved. These quantitative methods and specific conclusions should aid in understanding the effects of environmental structure on evolutionary adaptation in a wide range of evolving systems, both artificial and natural. (shrink)

This paper outlines new work in cross-cultural psychology largely drawn from Nisbett, Choi, and Smith (Cognition, 65, 15–32, 1997); Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, Psychological Review, 108(2), 291–310, 2001; Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why. New York: Free Press 2003), Ji, Zhang and Nisbett (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 57–65, 2004), Norenzayan (2000) and Peng (Naive Dialecticism and its Effects on Reasoning and Judgement about Contradiction. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1997) (...) Peng and Nisbett (Cross-Cultural Similarities and Differences in the Understanding of Physical Causality. Paper presented at the Science and Culture: Proceedings of the Seventh Interdisciplinary Conference on Science and Culture, Frankfort, K. Y. 1996), and Peng, Ames, & Knowles (Culture and Human Inference: Perspectives from three traditions. In: D. Matsumoto (Ed.), Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (pp. 1–2). Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000). The paper argues that the findings on cultural influences on inference-making have implications for teaching and education generally, and specifically for the debate on conceptions and misconceptions of Asian students studying in western tertiary institutions around the world. The position defended is that, while there seems to be compelling empirical evidence for intercultural differences in thought patterns, these patterns are, for the most part, insignificant in everyday exchanges, though language and culture might subtlety modulate our inference-making at the margins. Linguistic determinism however is not defended. Nonetheless, the evidence provides food for thought, and it needs to inform the recent debates about international students studying overseas. (shrink)

Kostas Axelos' 'Introduction to a Future Way of Thought' attempts to bring together two strong thinkers often thought to represent diametrically opposed political traditions: Martin Heidegger and Karl Marx. This review considers this attempt as a result of Axelos' political background, as a Greek communist revolutionary who emigrated to France and came into contact with Postwar French Heideggerian thought. Axeols then helped to establish the Heideggerian Marxism characteristic of the influential journal, Arguments.

Resumo A transferência de embriões em bovinos tem o objetivo principal de aprimorar o melhoramento genético e otimizar a reprodução bovina A importância dessa prática é destacada pela sua contribuição para a maximização de características desejadas nos rebanhos, como qualidade de carne, eficiência reprodutiva e resistência a condições ambientais adversas. Este trabalho descreve e analisa as técnicas avançadas utilizadas nesse processo, incluindo seleção genômica, sexagem de embriões, produção in vitro, protocolos não cirúrgicos, sincronização reprodutiva, criopreservação de embriões e uso de (...) marcadores de fertilidade. A compreensão aprofundada dessas técnicas é fundamental para o sucesso da transferência de embriões, bem como para a capacidade de personalizar e aprimorar as características específicas dos rebanhos. Enfatizando a importância da expertise de profissionais especializados em reprodução bovina, este trabalho busca oferecer uma visão abrangente das práticas atuais e avanços tecnológicos nesse campo. Ao unir ciência e prática, torna-se importante a comparação de técnicas, bem como relacionar resultados eficientes para promover qualidade genética, trazer a sustentabilidade e envolver a técnica em um cenário atualizado da indústria. Palavras-chave: Embriões; Hormônio; Reprodutor. -/- Abstract Embryo transfer into cattle has the main objective of improving genetic improvement and optimizing bovine reproduction. The importance of this practice is highlighted by its contribution to maximizing desired characteristics in herds, such as meat quality, reproductive efficiency and resistance to environmental conditions adverse. This work describes and analyzes the advanced techniques used in this process, including genomic selection, embryo sexing, in vitro production, non-surgical protocols, reproductive synchronization, embryo cryopreservation and the use of fertility markers. An in-depth understanding of these techniques is critical to the success of embryo transfer, as well as the ability to customize and enhance specific herd characteristics. Emphasizing the importance of the expertise of professionals specialized in bovine reproduction, this work seeks to offer a comprehensive view of current practices and technological advances in this field. When combining science and practice, it becomes important to compare techniques, as well as relate efficient results to promote genetic quality, bring sustainability and involve the technique in an updated industry scenario. Keywords: Embryos; Hormone; Reproducer. -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS ABIEC. Associação Brasileira das Indústrias Exportadoras de Carnes. 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Produção de embriões bovinos in vivo e in vitro. Revista CFMV, Ano XX. v.8, p.8, 2014. PHILLIPS, P. E.; JAHNKE, M. M. Embryo Transfer (Techniques, Dono rs, and Recipients). Vet Clin Food Anim, v.9, p.8, 2016. RODRIGUES, J.; BERTOLINI, M. Biotecnologias da reprodução animal: de Aristóteles à edição gênica. Rev. Bras. Reprod. Anim. v.8, p.7, 2019. SANTOS, K. J. G. Biotecnologias reprodutivas e fisiologia reprodutiva da fêmea bovina – conhecimento para o sucesso. Rev. Bras. Reprod. Anim. v.8, p.98. 2012. SANTOS, P. H. Impactos da superestimulação ovariana sobre a diferenciação das células da granulosa bovina. Dissertação de Mestrado em Farmacologia e Biotecnologia – UNESP, v.8, p.8. 2017. SILVA, P. R. B. Regulação farmacológica do ciclo estral de bovinos. UNESP. v.9, p.8. 2011. (shrink)

Cette étude entend analyser la thèse heideggérienne d’un « privilège ontologique » de l’humain sur les autres étants. Par le recours à une « lecture anthropologique » de Martin Heidegger, nous voulons montrer l’actualité, la pertinence et la légitimité d’une telle thèse en nous appuyant notamment sur Être et Temps (GA2) et les Concepts fondamentaux de la métaphysique (GA29/30), œuvres dans lesquelles Heidegger déploie des concepts et des arguments permettant de distinguer ontologiquement l’humain du reste du vivant en s’intéressant (...) aux types de relations qu’ils entretiennent respectivement avec ce qui est ; de cette manière, et en évaluant la portée de cette distinction par le recours à l’activité anthropique mieux connue sous le terme de « domestication », nous pourrons analyser en quel sens il y a « privilège » et de quelle façon ce que nous définissons comme « culture » devrait être réinterprété. (shrink)

The “somewhat vague, intuitive” notion from computability theory of an effective procedure (method) or algorithm can be fairly precisely defined even if it is not sufficiently formal and precise to belong to mathematics proper (in a narrow sense)—and even if (as many have asserted) for that reason the Church–Turing thesis is unprovable. It is proved logically that the class of effective procedures is not decidable, i.e., that no effective procedure is possible for ascertaining whether a given procedure is effective. This (...) undecidability result is proved directly from the notion itself of an effective procedure, without reliance on any (partly) mathematical lemma, conjecture, or thesis invoking recursiveness or Turing-computability. In fact, there is no reliance on anything very mathematical. The proof does not even appeal to a precise definition of ‘effective procedure’. Instead, it relies solely and entirely on a basic grasp of the intuitive notion of an effective procedure. Though the result that effectiveness is undecidable is not surprising, it is also not without significance. It has the consequence, for example, that the solution to a decision problem, if it is to be complete, must be accompanied by a separate argument that the proposed ascertainment procedure invariably terminates with the correct verdict. (shrink)

Epistemic trespassers judge matters outside their field of expertise. Trespassing is ubiquitous in this age of interdisciplinary research and recognizing this will require us to be more intellectually modest.

Some rules seem more important than others. The moral rule to keep promises seems more important than the aesthetic rule not to wear brown with black or the pool rule not to scratch on the eight ball. A worrying number of metaethicists are increasingly tempted to explain this difference by appealing to something they call “authoritative normativity” – it’s because moral rules are “authoritatively normatively” that they are especially important. The authors of this chapter argue for three claims concerning “authoritative (...) normativity”: (1) that motivation for it originates in a parochial conception of “normative flavours”; (2) that arguments against alternative ways of explaining e.g., morality’s importance are overblown; and (3) that there are strong reasons against theorizing in terms of “authoritative normativity”. The overarching aim is not to show that “authoritative normativity” is incoherent or entirely unmotivated. Rather, it is to discuss some of “authoritative normativity’s” deeper commitments to correct the impression that is it largely benign or that it is entailed by familiar and popular “metanormative” positions. Authoritative normativity, it seems to us, is a solution in search of a problem. (shrink)

A new philosophical analysis is provided of the notorious Sleeping Beauty Problem. It is argued that the correct solution is one-third, but not in the way previous philosophers have typically meant this. A modified version of the Problem demonstrates that neither self-locating information nor amnesia is relevant to the core Problem, which is simply to evaluate the conditional chance of heads given an undated Monday-or-Tuesday awakening. Previous commentators have failed to appreciate the significance of the information that Beauty gains upon (...) waking, and which is relevant to the conditional chance of heads: de re acquaintance with the awakening itself and the non-locating knowledge that it is an experimental awakening. David Lewis and company are committed to several unjustifiable and unacceptable probability assessments. Previous commentators have in effect confused the information that Beauty undergoes this particular experimental awakening for the information that she undergoes some experimental awakening or other. Lewis in particular thereby illegitimately tips the scales both in favor of heads and in favor of Monday. The Sleeping Beauty Problem is equivalent to a ball-in-urn word problem in elementary probability theory. (shrink)

This is a non-technical version of "The Decision Problem for Effective Procedures." The “somewhat vague, intuitive” notion from computability theory of an effective procedure (method) or algorithm can be fairly precisely defined, even if it does not have a purely mathematical definition—and even if (as many have asserted) for that reason, the Church–Turing thesis (that the effectively calculable functions on natural numbers are exactly the general recursive functions), cannot be proved. However, it is logically provable from the notion of an (...) effective procedure--without reliance on any (partially) mathematical thesis or conjecture concerning effective procedures, such as the Church–Turing thesis--that the class of effective procedures is undecidable, i.e., that no effective procedure is possible for ascertaining whether a given procedure is effective. The proof does not appeal to a precise definition of ‘effective procedure’. Instead, it relies solely and entirely on a basic grasp of the intuitive notion of such a procedure. Though this undecidability result itself is not surprising, it is also not without significance. It has the consequence, for example, that the solution to a decision problem, if it is to be complete, must be accompanied by a separate argument that the proposed ascertainment procedure is, in fact, a decision procedure, i.e., effective—for example, that it invariably terminates with the correct verdict. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that it is always intrinsically good when people get what they deserve and that there is always at least some reason to give people what they deserve. I highlight problems with this view and defend an alternative. I have two aims. First, I want to expose a gap in certain desert-based justifications of punishment. Second, I want to show that those of us who have intuitions at odds with these justifications have an alternative account of desert at (...) our disposal – one that may lend our intuitions more credibility. (shrink)

I demonstrate that a "speech act" theory of meaning for imperatives is—contra a dominant position in philosophy and linguistics—theoretically desirable. A speech act-theoretic account of the meaning of an imperative !φ is characterized, broadly, by the following claims. -/- LINGUISTIC MEANING AS USE !φ’s meaning is a matter of the speech act an utterance of it conventionally functions to express—what a speaker conventionally uses it to do (its conventional discourse function, CDF). -/- IMPERATIVE USE AS PRACTICAL !φ's CDF is to (...) express a practical (non-representational) state of mind—one concerning an agent's preferences and plans, rather than her beliefs. -/- Opposed to speech act accounts is a preponderance of views which deny that a sentence's linguistic meaning is a matter of what speech act it is used to perform, or its CDF. On such accounts, meaning is, instead, a matter of "static" properties of the sentence—e.g., how it depicts the world as being (or, more neutrally, the properties of a model-theoretic object with which the semantic value of the sentence co-varies). On one version of a static account, an imperative 'shut the window!' might, for instance, depict the world as being such that the window must be shut. -/- Static accounts are traditionally motivated against speech act-theoretic accounts by appeal to supposedly irremediable explanatory deficiencies in the latter. Whatever a static account loses in saying (prima facie counterintuitively) that an imperative conventionally represents, or expresses a picture of the world, is said to be offset by its ability to explain a variety of phenomena for which speech act-theoretic accounts are said to lack good explanations (even, in many cases, the bare ability to offer something that might meet basic criteria on what a good explanation should be like). -/- I aim to turn the tables on static accounts. I do this by showing that speech act accounts are capable of giving explanations of phenomena which fans of static accounts have alleged them unable to give. Indeed, for a variety of absolutely fundamental phenomena having to do with the conventional meaning of imperatives (and other types of practical language), speech act accounts provide natural and theoretically satisfying explanations, where a representational account provides none. (shrink)

This article evaluates an emerging element in popular debate and inquiry: DYOR. (Haven’t heard of the acronym? Then Do Your Own Research.) The slogan is flexible and versatile. It is used frequently on social media platforms about topics from medical science to financial investing to conspiracy theories. Using conceptual and empirical resources drawn from philosophy and psychology, we examine key questions about the slogan’s operation in human cognition and epistemic culture.

Intellectual humility is commonly thought to be a mindset, disposition, or personality trait that guides our reactions to evidence as we seek to pursue the truth and avoid error. Over the last decade, psychologists, philosophers, and other researchers have begun to explore intellectual humility, using analytical and empirical tools to understand its nature, implications, and value. This review describes central questions explored by researchers and highlights opportunities for multidisciplinary investigation.

Abstract Both parties in the active philosophical debate concerning the conceptual character of perception trace their roots back to Kant's account of sensible intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason. This striking fact can be attributed to Kant's tendency both to assert and to deny the involvement of our conceptual capacities in sensible intuition. He appears to waver between these two positions in different passages, and can thus seem thoroughly confused on this issue. But this is not, in fact, the (...) case, for, as I will argue, the appearance of contradiction in his account stems from the failure of some commentators to pay sufficient attention to Kant's developmental approach to philosophy. Although he begins by asserting the independence of intuition, Kant proceeds from this nonconceptualist starting point to reveal a deeper connection between intuitions and concepts. On this reading, Kant's seemingly conflicting claims are actually the result of a careful and deliberate strategy for gradually convincing his readers of the conceptual nature of perception. (shrink)

Discussions of political obligation and political authority have long focused on the idea that the commands of genuine authorities constitute content-independent reasons. Despite its centrality in these debates, the notion of content-independence is unclear and controversial, with some claiming that it is incoherent, useless, or increasingly irrelevant. I clarify content-independence by focusing on how reasons can depend on features of their source or container. I then solve the long-standing puzzle of whether the fact that laws can constitute content-independent reasons is (...) consistent with the fact that some laws must fail to bind due to their egregiously unjust content. Finally I defend my understanding of content-independence against challenges and show why it retains a place of special importance for questions about the law and political obligation. Content-independence highlights that it is some feature of the law or law-making process in general that is supposed to generate moral obligations for citizens, not the merits of particular laws. (shrink)

This paper defends an interpretation of Gottlob Frege’s views on the structure of thought. I argue that Frege did not think that a thought has a unique decomposition into its component senses, but rather the same thought can be decomposed into senses in multiple, distinct ways. These multiple decompositions will often have distinct logical forms. I also argue against Michael Dummett and others that Frege was committed to the sense of a predicate being a function from the sense of a (...) name (or names) to a complete thought. I defend my Frege interpretation against a puzzle often discussed in the Frege literature; namely, that the Multiple Decompositions Thesis is incompatible with Frege’s stated view that a thought is built up out of its component senses as parts. I provide textual evidence and argument that Frege thought of the part/whole relation in such a way that a whole can be analyzed into (or built up out of) parts in multiple, distinct ways, thus dissolving the puzzle. I conclude with discussion of every sort of example of multiple decompositions that can be found in Frege's work. (shrink)

In the transcendental deduction, the central argument of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seeks to secure the objective validity of our basic categories of thought. He distinguishes objective and subjective sides of this argument. The latter side, the subjective deduction, is normally understood as an investigation of our cognitive faculties. It is identified with Kant’s account of a threefold synthesis involved in our cognition of objects of experience, and it is said to precede and ground Kant’s proof of the (...) validity of the categories in the objective deduction. I challenge this standard reading of the subjective deduction, arguing, first, that there is little textual evidence for it, and, second, that it encourages a problematic conception of how the deduction works. In its place, I present a new reading of the subjective deduction. Rather than being a broad investigation of our cognitive faculties, it should be seen as addressing a specific worry that arises in the course of the objective deduction. The latter establishes the need for a necessary connection between our capacities for thinking and being given objects, but Kant acknowledges that his readers might struggle to comprehend how these seemingly independent capacities are coordinated. Even worse, they might well believe that in asserting this necessary connection, Kant’s position amounts to an implausible subjective idealism. The subjective deduction ismeant to allay these concerns by showing that they rest on a misunderstanding of the relation between these faculties. This new reading of the subjective deduction offers a better fit with Kant’s text. It also has broader implications, for it reveals the more philosophically plausible account of our relation to the world as thinkers that Kant is defending – an account that is largely obscured by the standard reading of the subjective deduction. (shrink)

While it is tempting to suppose that an act has moral worth just when and because it is motivated by sufficient moral reasons, philosophers have, largely, come to doubt this analysis. Doubt is rooted in two claims. The first is that some facts can motivate a given act in multiple ways, not all of which are consistent with moral worth. The second is the orthodox view that normative reasons are facts. I defend the tempting analysis by proposing and defending a (...) heterodox account of both normative and motivating reasons that is inspired by Donald Davidson’s primary reasons. We should adopt the heterodox view, I argue, because it addresses an overlooked but fatal defect in the orthodox conception of reasons, of which challenges to the tempting analysis are a special case. (shrink)