A crucial question in relation to support designed to enable the legal capacity of people with mental disabilities concerns when support constitutes undue influence. This article addresses this question in order to facilitate the development of law and policy in England and Wales, by providing a normative analysis of the different approaches to undue influence across decisions about property, contracts, health, finances, and accommodation. These are all potential contexts for supporting legal capacity, and, in doing so, (...) the article compares approaches to undue influence that are rarely considered together. -/- Drawing on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, third sector and public body documents, and law in England and Wales, the analysis identifies six models that conceptualise undue influence in terms of: modes of influence; an overborne will; an inference from the situation; an overborne will understood as a mental incapacity; an overborne will in connection with vulnerability; and impaired discursive control. This final approach is a novel proposal for understanding undue influence. The analysis highlights key policy-relevant issues that distinguish the models, and generates a deliberative framework for navigating them, with the ‘overborne will’, ‘inference-based’, and ‘discursive control’ models identified as potentially fitting for the support context. (shrink)

John Tillson argues, on grounds of children’s well-being, that it is impermissible to teach them religious views. I defend a practice of pluralistically advocating religious views to children. As long as there are no monopolies of influence over children, and as long as advocates do not use coercion, deceit, or manipulation, children can greatly benefit without having their rational abilities subverted, or incurring undue risk to form false beliefs. This solution should counter, to some extent, both perfectionist and (...) antiperfectionist reasons against initiating children into religions. (shrink)

In this article, I present some worries about the possible impact of global efforts to aid the needy in some of the world’s most desperate regions. Among the worries I address are possible unintended negative consequences that may occur elsewhere in a society when aid agencies hire highly qualified local people to promote their agendas; the possibility that foreign interests and priorities may have undue influence on a country’s direction and priorities, negatively impacting local authority and autonomy; and (...) the related problem of outside interventions undermining the responsiveness of local and national governments to their citizens. -/- Another issue I discuss is the possibility that efforts to aid the needy may involve an Each-We Dilemma, in which case conflicts may arise between what is individually rational or moral, and what is collectively rational or moral. Unfortunately, it is possible that if each of us does what we have most reason to do, morally, in aiding the needy, we together will bring about an outcome which is worse, morally, in terms of its overall impact on the global needy. -/- The article ends by briefly noting a number of claims and arguments that I made in my 2017 Uehiro Lectures regarding how good people should respond in a world of need. As I have long argued, I have no doubt that those who are well off are open to serious moral criticism if they ignore the plight of the needy. Unfortunately, however, for a host of both empirical and philosophical reasons, what one should do in light of that truth is much more complex, and murky, than most people have realized. (shrink)

My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproductive rights are also at stake. (...) I explain how reproductive rights are implicated in sex trafficking. Moreover, I contend that sex traffickers’ abuse of women’s reproductive rights is persecutory and that that this persecutory abuse obliges destination states to offer asylum to transnational sex trafficking victims. I start by sketching reproductive human rights doctrine. I then examine studies of women who are in post-trafficking recovery programs in order to ascertain the impact of their past experience of forced sex work on their reproductive freedom and health. On the basis of these findings, I maintain that, among other outrages, sex trafficking systematically violates victims’ reproductive human rights. In view of this abuse, women trafficked into sex work might seem to be prime candidates for asylum in destination states. Yet, economically well-off destination states are not particularly receptive to this idea, and international law provides some justification for their chilliness. Preliminary to challenging them, I explicate four ways in which international anti-trafficking law and international refugee law interfere with viewing women trafficked into sex work as refugees and approving their applications for asylum. The second half of my paper aims to overcome those legal obstacles. In the interest of parsimony and because there are many continuities between U.S. refugee law and anti-trafficking law and the policies of similar destination states, I focus mainly on the U.S. in this part of the paper. To anchor my argument, I spotlight two precedents in refugee law for taking reproductive human rights seriously and several precedents for treating trafficked women as members of a distinct social group as required by refugee law. I then urge that a law enforcement gestalt has gained undue influence over U.S. legal practices where anti-trafficking law intersects with refugee protection law. A human rights gestalt is needed as a counterweight, for otherwise victims of sex trafficking and the reproductive abuse they’ve suffered are erased. Taking up a human rights perspective and mobilizing the precedents I’ve identified, I show that respecting the reproductive human rights of women who have been trafficked into sex work entails that affluent destination states must recognize their right to asylum. (shrink)

The main argument of this paper is that the legal regulation of lobbying is an important factor for disciplining/curbing the undue (illicit) influence of different interest groups on the political-making process, especially in countries with post-communist and nonconsolidated democracies such as Albania. In three decades of political and economic transition from a one-party communist system to a democratic one and towards a market economy, the democratization of Albania has faced various problems, which have often led to a loss (...) of public confidence in the political class and apathy of citizens towards the political system. In many cases, this has come as a result of the perception or even the disclosure by the media and the public of corruption scandals, political clientelism, or undue influences in the decision-making processes in Albania. Surely, it can be said that political scandals of trading or exercising illicit influences on public officials can affect, as numerous cases have shown, every democratic political system in the world. However, they are more likely to occur in new democracies (post-communist) countries that face weak state structures and a legal environment that is not yet well consolidated and where a culture of informality exists alongside written rules and laws. For this purpose, that of disciplining and controlling the influences that specific interests exert on the decision-making process of governments, legislatures, or other regulatory agencies, a good part of European countries have considered undertaking legal regulatory initiatives for lobbying activity in their environments. (shrink)

Beneficence is usually regarded as adequate when it results in an actual benefit for a beneficiary and satisfies her self-chosen end. However, beneficence that satisfies these conditions can harm beneficiaries' free agency, particularly when they are robustly dependent on benefactors. First, the means that benefactors choose can have undesirable side-effects on resources that beneficiaries need for future free action. Second, benefactors may undermine beneficiaries' ability to freely deliberate and choose. It is therefore insufficient to satisfy someone's self-chosen ends. Instead, good (...) beneficence depends on whether the benefactor avoids undue influence over a beneficiary's deliberation and whether the choice of means is compatible with the beneficiary's conception of her good. Consequently, benefactors must have substantial respect for a beneficiary's free agency and the practical competence to choose means that take into account the beneficiary's conception of her good and the wider set of circumstances that influence her life. (shrink)

Bioethics journals have lagged behind medical and science journals in exploring the threat of conflict of interest (COI) to the integrity of publications. Some recent discussions of COI that have occurred in the bioethics literature are reviewed. Discussions of what has been termed the ?Healy affair? unintentionally demonstrate that the direct and indirect influence of undisclosed COI may come from those who call for protection from the undue influence of industry. Paradoxically, the nature and tone of current (...) discussions may serve to dull sensitivities to what is indeed a serious set of issues facing bioethics. Some proposals are presented to address COI and other challenges to the integrity of bioethics and its journals. COI is too important a topic to be left to ideologues, and there is no substitute for readers' caution and skepticism as tools in dealing with the full range of biases that exist in published papers. (shrink)

Consistent and well-designed frameworks for ethical oversight enable socially valuable research while forestalling harmful or poorly designed studies. I suggest some alterations that might strengthen the valuable checklist Rattani & Hyder propose for the ethical review of health policy and systems research (HPSR), or prompt future work in the area.

Religion has a considerable influence over the public’s attitudes towards science and technologies. The objective of the paper is to understand the ethical and religious problems concerning the use of embryo for research in assisting conception for infertile couples from the perspective of Catholic Christians. This paper seeks to explain our preliminary reflections on how religious communities particularly the Catholic Christian communities respond to and assess the ethics of reproductive technologies and embryo research. Christianity as a whole lacks a (...) unified and definitive statement on when an embryo becomes a person, although fundamentalist Christians tend to be opposed to embryo experimentation. Roman Catholics tend to believe that the embryo should be treated as human life from the moment of conception or fertilisation. As opposed to this preconception I have tried to point out that a foetus is a clump of cells and lacks individuality as a conscientious human being and thus can be used for research for therapeutic reason. The paper concluded that the Church accepts techniques on embryo that respect their life. So they would allow procedures that are akin with healing and improvement of life without involving undue risks. The Church feels children should arise out of act of love between man and his wife in co-operation with God. In this regard, it may be pointed out though the creation of a child through a conjugal act in a wed lock is the preferred method since it is the most natural, least expensive one. But that does not mean, it should be the only acceptable means to conception. To state a child born using ARTs would be less perfect compared to a child born through conjugal act of husband and wife is absurd one to be mentioned. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate concerning the identification of politically relevant cases of corruption in a democracy by sketching the basic traits of an original liberal theory of institutional corruption. We define this form of corruption as a deviation with respect to the role entrusted to people occupying certain institutional positions, which are crucial for the implementation of public rules, for private gain. In order to illustrate the damages that corrupt behaviour makes to liberal democratic institutions, we discuss the (...) case of health care professionals’ abuse of their right to conscientious objection to abortion services. We show that the conscience clause can be instrumentally abused to sabotage democratically established public rules and thus exert undue private influence on their implementation. In this sense, from a liberal democratic perspective, institutional corruption is problematic because it is disruptive of such fundamental liberal ideals as the impartiality of public institutions and citizens’ political equality. (shrink)

For several years, scholars have (for good reason) been largely preoccupied with worries about the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) tools to make decisions about us. Only recently has significant attention turned to a potentially more alarming problem: the use of AI/ML to influence our decision-making. The contexts in which we make decisions—what behavioral economists call our choice architectures—are increasingly technologically-laden. Which is to say: algorithms increasingly determine, in a wide variety of contexts, both the sets (...) of options we choose from and the way those options are framed. Moreover, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) makes it possible for those options and their framings—the choice architectures—to be tailored to the individual chooser. They are constructed based on information collected about our individual preferences, interests, aspirations, and vulnerabilities, with the goal of influencing our decisions. At the same time, because we are habituated to these technologies we pay them little notice. They are, as philosophers of technology put it, transparent to us—effectively invisible. I argue that this invisible layer of technological mediation, which structures and influences our decision-making, renders us deeply susceptible to manipulation. Absent a guarantee that these technologies are not being used to manipulate and exploit, individuals will have little reason to trust them. (shrink)

We often hear such casual accusations: you just believe that because you are a liberal, a Christian, an American, a woman… When such charges are made they are meant to sting—not just emotionally, but epistemically. But should they? It can be disturbing to learn that one's beliefs reflect the influence of such irrelevant factors. The pervasiveness of such influence has led some to worry that we are not justified in many of our beliefs. That same pervasiveness has led (...) others to doubt whether there is any worry here at all. I argue that evidence of irrelevant belief influence is sometimes, but not always, undermining. My proposal picks out ordinary, non-skeptical cases in which we get evidence of error. It says that, in those cases, evidence of irrelevant influence is epistemically significant. It shows how respecting evidence of error is compatible with the epistemic lives we see ourselves living. We are fallible creatures, yes, but we are also capable and intelligent ones. We can recognize and correct for our own error so as to improve our imperfect, yet nevertheless robust, epistemic lives. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We have previously argued that there are forms of greenhouse gas offsetting for which, when one emits and offsets, one imposes no risk. Orri Stefansson objects that our argument fails to distinguish properly between the people who stand to be harmed by one’s emissions and the people who stand to be benefited by one’s offsetting. We reply by emphasizing the difference between acting with a probability of making a difference to the distribution of harm and acting in a way (...) that worsen’s someone’s prospect. (shrink)

Automated influence is one of the most pervasive applications of artificial intelligence in our day-to-day lives, yet a thoroughgoing account of its associated individual and societal harms is lacking. By far the most widespread, compelling, and intuitive account of the harms associated with automated influence follows what I call the control argument. This argument suggests that users are persuaded, manipulated, and influenced by automated influence in a way that they have little or no control over. Based on (...) evidence about the effectiveness of targeted advertising as well as empirical results about the nature of attentional control, I provide reasons to reject this argument. In turn, I use C. Thi Nguyen’s theory of value collapse to develop a new account of the harmfulness of automated influence. (shrink)

This study examines the dynamic relationship between face-saving mechanisms—proxied by age, income, and gender—and the peers’ safe-driving information on the driving behaviors of Chinese drivers. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) and Granular Interaction Thinking Theory (GITT) to analyze data from 1,039 Chinese drivers, we uncover a complex interplay of factors. Our findings suggest that peers serving as role models and actively supporting careful driving positively influence drivers’ safe driving behaviors. The effect of role-model peers is strengthened among drivers (...) with higher age and income levels. In contrast, the impact of actively engaged peers is lower among these groups and male drivers (though the gender’s negative moderation effect is weakly reliable). These results highlight the crucial role of peer influence in promoting safe driving and underscore the dynamic effects of cultural values, particularly face-saving concerns, on drivers’ cognitive and behavioral processes in China. (shrink)

The paper describes the work of the Czech physician Ctibor Bezděk and his relation to the Russian philosopher Nikolai Lossky. The study examines Bezděk’s ethical theories (i.e. ‘ethicotherapy’) which he tried to incorporate into Medicine and focuses particularly on the role of intuition in Bezděk’s approach to Medicine, comparing it with the concepts of intuition and of substantival agents elaborated by Lossky. Lossky’s theories about disease and healing influenced several physicians and psychiatrists, and his work also received support from T.G. (...) Masaryk. Although he has been included among the pioneers of psychotherapy, Bezděk still remains unknown in the Czech Republic. The present study aims to introduce Ctibor Bezděk and his contributions to a wider audience. (shrink)

Amid the many figures who number among the Thomists writing during the early 20th century period of revival in scholastic thought in the Roman Catholic Church in the wake of the encyclical letter Aeterni Patris (1879) of Leo XIII, there is numbered the French convert, Jacques Maritain (1882–1973). Over the course of his long lifetime, Maritain authored works covering a host of philosophical and theological topics: epistemology, the philosophy of the sciences and natural philosophy, aesthetics, moral philosophy, political philosophy, metaphysics, (...) the philosophy of history, etc. The details concerning Maritain’s youth and conversion have been ably told by others and can be consulted by the interested reader. Detailed bibliographies of his works are available for those interested in engaging the full breadth of his writing. In this article, I will focus on the particular shape of Maritain’s Thomism and his place in the overall hermeneutics of the Thomistic tradition, in particular the debt that he owes to John Poinsot (1589–1644), to whom he refers as “John of St. Thomas,” in accord with the standard appellations within the Thomistic tradition in which he wrote. Following a general account of Maritain’s “style” of Thomism, I will provide a specific catalogue of some central themes in his thought that bear the clear impress of his engagement with the thought of John of St. Thomas. Without claiming to be exhaustive, this article intends to provide the reader with a sufficient appraisal of the main lines of influence exercised upon Maritain’s thought by the Baroque Commentator, without whose philosophical and theological works Maritain’s own labors would be unthinkable. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the people behaviour in different age buildings and different buildings typology. In the city of Kruja (Albania) exists mostly three types of buildings: the historical ones (medieval), the socialist ones (which belongs to the former communist regime) and the modern buildings. Each of them has different social and physics characteristics, different energy exchange and different building materials. The influence of all these characteristics in the exchange of energy and how they reflect (...) in changing the lifestyle of Kruja’s people is going to be analysed. A questionnaire will be undertaken to understand the way of life of Kruja’s people and to draw conclusions. A comparative analysis between all these typology of buildings will be undertaken in order to understand better the behaviour of Kruja’s people lifestyle living in these buildings. Although the conditions are not good, people tend to get a high level of place attachment and loyalty to the building they are living. The biggest energy consumers are the historical buildings and socialist ones; although the bills of the electricity are smaller than the third category they consume alternative energies and have major problems with thermal bridges. The most unfriendly categories are the socialist buildings. They prefer not to socialize much in comparison with the other two categories. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on feeding habits of inhabitants of Katagum local government Area of Bauchi state, Nigeria. The two nominal independent variables used in the descriptive survey are income level, and culture/ethnicity. This study employed the descriptive survey design. The population of the study was drawn from three districts council of Katagum local Government Area in Bauchi State Nigeria. Three hundred and ninety nine (399) respondents was conveniently selected using (...) stratified random sampling and convenient sampling techniques, the instrument used for collecting data for this study was questionnaire named Socio-demographic characteristics data (SDCDQ) and food frequency list (FFL), data collected was statistically analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The result revealed that income level was not significantly influenced by the feeding habit of the Katagum inhabitants, which implies that there is no significant difference between feeding habit and income level. The findings further discovered that culture/ethnicity shows there is no significant difference between feeding habit and culture/ethnicity; the study concludes that the inhabitant feeding habit was not influenced by their various cultures. Based on these findings it was recommended among others that the government should ensure food self-sufficiency and provide necessary infrastructure to stimulate economic activities, enhance incomes and improve living conditions of the poor. (shrink)

Mainstream views of medical research tell us it should be a fact-based, value-free endeavor: what a scientist (or her funding source) wants or cares about should not influence her findings. At the same time, we also sometimes criticize medical research for failing to embody certain values, e.g. when we criticize pharmaceutical companies for largely ignoring the diseases that affect the global poor. This chapter seeks to reconcile these perspectives by distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate influences of values on medical research. (...) It divides this broad question into two narrower ones, the Role Question (at what points in the research process is value influence potentially acceptable?) and the Content Question (when value influence is potentially acceptable, what specific values should researchers use?), and then draws on the philosophical literature on values in science to explore answers to each of them. (shrink)

The research in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has nowadays extended its attention to the study of persuasive technologies. Following this line of research, in this paper we focus on websites and mobile applications in the e-commerce domain. In particular, we take them as an evident example of persuasive technologies. Starting from the hypothesis that there is a strong connection between logical fallacies, i.e., forms of reasoning which are logically invalid but psychologically persuasive, and some common persuasion strategies adopted within these (...) technological artifacts, we carried out a survey on a sample of 175 websites and 101 mobile applications. This survey was aimed at empirically evaluating the significance of this connection by detecting the use of persuasion techniques, based on logical fallacies, in existing websites and mobile apps. In addition, with the goal of assessing the effectiveness of different fallacy-based persuasion techniques, we performed an empirical evaluation where participants interacted with a persuasive (fallacy-based) and with a non-persuasive version of an e-commerce website. Our results show that fallacy-based persuasion strategies are extensively used in existing digital artifacts, and that they are actually effective in influencing users’ behavior, with strategies based on visual salience manipulation (accent fallacy) being both the most popular and the most effective ones. (shrink)

Backtracking influence is influence that zigzags in time. For example, backtracking influence exists when an event E_1 makes an event E_2 more likely by way of a nomic connection that goes from E_1 back in time to an event C and then forward in time to E_2. I contend that in our local region of spacetime, at least, backtracking influence is redundant in the sense that any existing backtracking influence exerted by E_1 on E_2 is (...) equivalent to E_1's temporally direct influence on E_2. I prove the redundancy of backtracking influence using several plausible physical principles without assuming any fundamental temporal or causal asymmetry. This explanation can play a prominent role in an account of why causation appears to be objectively asymmetric regardless of whether the fundamental laws are symmetric. (shrink)

We present experimental evidence that people's modes of social interaction influence their construal of truth. Participants who engaged in cooperative interactions were less inclined to agree that there was an objective truth about that topic than were those who engaged in a competitive interaction. Follow-up experiments ruled out alternative explanations and indicated that the changes in objectivity are explained by argumentative mindsets: When people are in cooperative arguments, they see the truth as more subjective. These findings can help inform (...) research on moral objectivism and, more broadly, on the distinctive cognitive consequences of different types of social interaction. (shrink)

I argue that, although Aristotle himself does not say it in so many words, the Phaedrus has a deep influence on the three books of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. I also show that this influence is not only negative, as some scholars believe, but that Aristotle draws and expands on some of the results and propositions of the Phaedrus. After demonstrating how influential the Phaedrus is for the Rhetoric, I return in my conclusion to the difference between the two works.

Automated influence, delivered by digital targeting technologies such as targeted advertising, digital nudges, and recommender systems, has attracted significant interest from both empirical researchers, on one hand, and critical scholars and policymakers on the other. In this paper, we argue for closer integration of these efforts. Critical scholars and policymakers, who focus primarily on the social, ethical, and political effects of these technologies, need empirical evidence to substantiate and motivate their concerns. However, existing empirical research investigating the effectiveness of (...) these technologies (or lack thereof), neglects other morally relevant effects—which can be felt regardless of whether or not the technologies "work" in the sense of fulfilling the promises of their designers. Drawing from the ethics and policy literature, we enumerate a range of questions begging for empirical analysis—the outline of a research agenda bridging these fields—and issue a call to action for more empirical research that takes these urgent ethics and policy questions as their starting point. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of television on the structure and organization of political parties in the post – communist Albania. The existing literature on political parties links the structure of mass parties with the written press, and the structure of electoral- professional and cartel parties with the increasing influence of television. The mass party is based on the principle of membership. Among many tasks that members had to carry out, the dissemination of party’s declarations, statements, opinions and ideology, (...) through the distribution of party press is one of the most important. The studies on political parties have observed the emergence of the catch-all, electoral-professional and cartel party, in which the party leaders have substituted the membership organizational network with television, and thus minimized the role of intermediate party organs. In difference from their counterparts in Western Europe, in the new established democracies of post-communist countries, political parties were born in a period characterized by a modern and developed media which was accessible to everyone. Therefore, the immediate access to modern means of communication has distanced the parties from the society since the early phases of their inceptions, without giving them the opportunity and necessity to organize territorially. This article analysed the techniques that have used the Albanian political parties to communicate with their electorate, concluding that in the moment of their creation, television could not serve to the opposition parties as a means of information. That is why they had to rely heavily on the written press and their membership. The opening of some broadcasting channels, after 2000, made possible the access on modern techniques of communication, leading to a minor role of the press and membership. As a result we could say that at the early phase of democratic process, the political parties in Albania shared features of the mass party with a strong territorial penetration, features that started to fade out when television gained a more prominent role in the organization of electoral campaigns by influencing thus a more contemporary western alike model of party organization. (shrink)

The standard way to test alternative descriptive theories of moral judgment is by asking subjects to evaluate (amongst others) sacrificial dilemmas, where acting classifies as a utilitarian moral judgment and not acting classifies as a deontological moral judgment. Previous research uncovered many situational factors that alter subject’s moral judgments without affecting which type of action utilitarianism or deontology would recommend. This literature review provides a systematic analysis of the experimental literature on the influence of situational factors on moral judgments (...) in sacrificial dilemmas. It analyses 53 articles in detail and reports mean effect sizes, as well as operationalizations, for 36 situational factors that significantly influence moral judgment. Moreover, the review discusses how the impact of situational factors relates to a dual process theory of moral judgment. It supports the view that utilitarian judgments are driven by controlled cognitive processes and shows that the drivers of deontological judgments depend on valence. (shrink)

Privacy and surveillance scholars increasingly worry that data collectors can use the information they gather about our behaviors, preferences, interests, incomes, and so on to manipulate us. Yet what it means, exactly, to manipulate someone, and how we might systematically distinguish cases of manipulation from other forms of influence—such as persuasion and coercion—has not been thoroughly enough explored in light of the unprecedented capacities that information technologies and digital media enable. In this paper, we develop a definition of manipulation (...) that addresses these enhanced capacities, investigate how information technologies facilitate manipulative practices, and describe the harms—to individuals and to social institutions—that flow from such practices. -/- We use the term “online manipulation” to highlight the particular class of manipulative practices enabled by a broad range of information technologies. We argue that at its core, manipulation is hidden influence—the covert subversion of another person’s decision-making power. We argue that information technology, for a number of reasons, makes engaging in manipulative practices significantly easier, and it makes the effects of such practices potentially more deeply debilitating. And we argue that by subverting another person’s decision-making power, manipulation undermines his or her autonomy. Given that respect for individual autonomy is a bedrock principle of liberal democracy, the threat of online manipulation is a cause for grave concern. (shrink)

The present study aims to examine the relationship between the cortical midline structures (CMS), which have been regarded to be associated with selfhood, and moral decision making processes at the neural level. Traditional moral psychological studies have suggested the role of moral self as the moderator of moral cognition, so activity of moral self would present at the neural level. The present study examined the interaction between the CMS and other moral-related regions by conducting psycho-physiological interaction analysis of functional images (...) acquired while 16 subjects were solving moral dilemmas. Furthermore, we performed Granger causality analysis to demonstrate the direction of influences between activities in the regions in moral decision-making. We first demonstrate there are significant positive interactions between two central CMS seed regions—i.e., the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)—and brain regions associated with moral functioning including the cerebellum, brainstem, midbrain, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex and anterior insula (AI); on the other hand, the posterior insula (PI) showed significant negative interaction with the seed regions. Second, several significant Granger causality was found from CMS to insula regions particularly under the moral-personal condition. Furthermore, significant dominant influence from the AI to PI was reported. Moral psychological implications of these findings are discussed. The present study demonstrated the significant interaction and influence between the CMS and morality-related regions while subject were solving moral dilemmas. Given that, activity in the CMS is significantly involved in human moral functioning. (shrink)

Automated influence is one of the most pervasive applications of artificial intelligence in our day-to-day lives, yet a thoroughgoing account of its associated individual and societal harms is lacking. By far the most widespread, compelling, and intuitive account of the harms associated with automated influence follows what I call the control argument. This argument suggests that users are persuaded, manipulated, and influenced by automated influence in a way that they have little or no control over. Based on (...) evidence about the effectiveness of targeted advertising as well as empirical results about the nature of attentional control, I provide reasons to reject this argument. In turn, I use C. Thi Nguyen's theory of value collapse to develop a new account of the harmfulness of automated influence. (shrink)

On the basis of historical and textual evidence, this paper claims that after his Tractatus, Wittgenstein was actually influenced by Einstein's theory of relativity and, the similarity of Einstein's relativity theory helps to illuminate some aspects of Wittgenstein's work. These claims find support in remarkable quotations where Wittgenstein speaks approvingly of Einstein's relativity theory and in the way these quotations are embedded in Wittgenstein's texts. The profound connection between Wittgenstein and relativity theory concerns not only Wittgenstein's “verificationist” phase , but (...) also Wittgenstein's later philosophy centred on the theme of rule‐following. (shrink)

Origins of the Copernican Revolution that led to modern science genesis can be explained only by the joint influence of external and internal factors. The author tries to take this influence into account with a help of his own growth of knowledge model according to which the growth of science consists in interaction, interpenetration and unification of various scientific research programmes spreading from different cultural milieux. Copernican Revolution consisted in revealation and elimination of the gap between Ptolemy’s mathematical (...) astronomy and Aristotelian qualitative physics. But the very realization of the gap between physics and astronomy appeared to be possible because at least at its first stages modern science was a result of Christian Weltanschaugung development with its aspiration for elimination of pagan components. Of all the external factors religion was the strongest one. Key words: scientific revolution, Christian weltanschaugung, modernity, Copernicus, Ptolemy. (shrink)

This research assesses the factors influencing students' decision-making when choosing a university. The study proposes eight factors, such as parental or guardian influence, high school teacher recommendations, graduate quality, colleague recommendations, location, school fees, learning environment, and university reputation, on students' university choices. A quantitative approach was employed, utilizing both secondary and primary data. A total of 330 students were sampled for this study. The data were analyzed using SPSS, employing descriptive statistics for data summarization and inferential statistics for (...) analysis. Descriptive tools such as frequency analysis were used to examine the distribution of responses, while regression analysis was conducted to test the predictive power of the factors. The findings of this study indicate that factors such as parental or guardian influence, high school teacher recommendations, graduate quality, colleague recommendations, location, school fees, learning environment, and university reputation are all significant considerations in students' decision-making process when choosing a university. These factors play an influential role in shaping students' preferences and choices. The results show that these factors significantly impact students' university choices. The study contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence on the importance of these factors in the decision-making process. Understanding the influence of these factors can assist universities in developing targeted strategies to attract and meet the needs of prospective students. By recognizing the significance of parental involvement, fostering positive relationships with high school teachers, showcasing successful graduates, promoting positive word-of-mouth recommendations, providing a conducive learning environment, and building a solid reputation, universities can enhance their appeal and effectively compete in the higher education market. Further research in this area can explore additional factors and delve deeper into the mechanisms influencing students' decision-making when choosing a university. (shrink)

We show that cast shadows can have a significant influence on the speed of visual search. In particular, we find that search based on the shape of a region is affected when the region is darker than the background and corresponds to a shadow formed by lighting from above. Results support the proposal that an early-level system rapidly identifies regions as shadows and then discounts them, making their shapes more difficult to access. Several constraints used by this system are (...) mapped out, including constraints on the luminance and texture of the shadow region, and on the nature of the item casting the shadow. Among other things, this system is found to distinguish between line elements (items containing only edges) and surface elements (items containing visible surfaces), with only the latter deemed capable of casting a shadow. (shrink)

The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion electrically active neurones that generate an endogenous electromagnetic field, whose role in neuronal computing has not been fully examined. The source, magnitude and likely influence of the brain's endogenous em field are here considered. An estimate of the strength and magnitude of the brain's em field is gained from theoretical considerations, brain scanning and microelectrode data. An estimate of the likely influence of the brain's em field is gained from theoretical (...) principles and considerations of the experimental effects of external em fields on neurone firing both in vitro and in vivo. Synchronous firing of distributed neurones phase-locks induced em field fluctuations to increase their magnitude and influence. Synchronous firing has previously been demonstrated to correlate with awareness and perception, indicating that perturbations to the brain's em field also correlate with awareness. The brain's em field represents an integrated electromagnetic field representation of distributed neuronal information and has dynamics that closely map to those expected for a correlate of consciousness. I propose that the brain's em information field is the physical substrate of conscious awareness - the cemi field - and make a number of predictions that follow from this proposal. Experimental evidence pertinent to these predictions is examined and shown to be entirely consistent with the cemi field theory. This theory provides solutions to many of the intractable problems of consciousness - such as the binding problem - and provides new insights into the role of consciousness, the meaning of free will and the nature of qualia. It thus places consciousness within a secure physical framework and provides a route towards constructing an artificial consciousness. (shrink)

Forcing occurs when a magician influences the audience's decisions without their awareness. To investigate the mechanisms behind this effect, we examined several stimulus and personality predictors. In Study 1, a magician flipped through a deck of playing cards while participants were asked to choose one. Although the magician could influence the choice almost every time (98%), relatively few (9%) noticed this influence. In Study 2, participants observed rapid series of cards on a computer, with one target card shown (...) longer than the rest. We expected people would tend to choose this card without noticing that it was shown longest. Both stimulus and personality factors predicted the choice of card, depending on whether the influence was noticed. These results show that combining real-world and laboratory research can be a powerful way to study magic and can provide new methods to study the feeling of free will. (shrink)

In the article the effect of disbalances in the movement of financial resources on the national financial systems is formalized. For ensuring the corresponding monitoring objectives the financial sustainability indicators developed by the IMF and the World Bank have been used, as well as the integral indicator of financial resource disbalances, which serve as statistical units for measuring the financial situation and sustainability of the financial sector of the country. For the overwhelming majority of the studied countries, the hypothesis about (...) the negative impact of disbalances in the flow of financial resources on the stability of their financial sectors, regardless of the general economic conditions of these countries' development, was confirmed. At the same time, such a hypothesis was denied for a group of developing countries. Conditions-destabilizers of financial sectors’ stability of the countries under the influence of financialization of their economies, which should be considered the object of regulatory measures in financial markets, are defined. These include the level of market integration into the global financial space, which determines the tendency to systemic risks transmission and the degree of markets’ development that affects their volatility. (shrink)

In the present study it was shown that decision heuristics and confidence judgements play important roles in the building of preferences. Based on a dual-process account of thinking, the study compared people who did well versus poorly on a series of decision heuristics and overconfidence judgement tasks. The two groups were found to differ with regard to their information search behaviour in introduced multiattribute choice tasks. High performers on the judgemental tasks were less influenced in their decision processes by numerical (...) information format (probabilities vs. frequencies) compared to low performers. They also looked at more attributes and spent more time on the multiattribute choice tasks. The results reveal that performance on decision heuristics and overconfidence tasks has a bearing both on heuristic and analytic processes in multiattribute decision making. (shrink)

Intertemporal choice is the study of how people make choices about what and how much to do at various points in time, when choices at one time influence the possibilities available at other points in time. These choices are influenced by the relative value people assign to two or more payoffs at different points in time. Most choices require decision-makers to trade off costs and benefits at different points in time. These decisions may be about savings, work effort, education, (...) nutrition, exercise, health care and so forth. Since early in the twentieth century, economists have analyzed intertemporal decisions using the discounted utility model, which assumes that people evaluate the pleasures and pains resulting from a decision in much the same way that financial markets evaluate losses and gains, exponentially 'discounting' the value of outcomes according to how delayed they are in time. Discounted utility has been used to describe how people actually make intertemporal choices and it has been used as a tool for public policy. Policy decisions about how much to spend on research and development, health and education all depend on the discount rate used to analyze the decision. (shrink)

Advances in science and technology have added to our insights into the vulnerabilities of human agency as well as to the methods of exploiting them. This has raised the stakes for efforts to clarify the concept and ethics of manipulation. Among these efforts, Robert Noggle’s influencer-centered account of manipulation has been most significant. He defines manipulative acts as those whereby an agent intentionally influences a recipient’s attitudes so that they do not conform as closely as they otherwise would to the (...) pertinent norms and ideals endorsed by the influencer. This provides a relatively simple and in many ways clear definition of manipulation. It sidesteps thorny debates about autonomy, freedom, or practical rationality. It also promises to reveal a conceptual parallel between manipulating and lying, and thus to explain why manipulation is pro tanto wrong. In one respect, however, the account remains ambiguous: It remains unclear whether, and to what extent, it requires that influencers’ beliefs about what is ideal for their recipients to be grounded in some effort on the part of the influencer to identify with or take on the role of her recipient. This paper explains this ambiguity. It argues that influencer-centrism cannot remain indifferent to the validity of an agent’s beliefs about the ideal state of the recipient and provide an identification requirement that would render the whole account plausible and sufficiently determinate. (shrink)

Social media has always been popular, and it continues to be so today. As a result, there has been a steady increase in the number of influencers across various platforms. In which these so-called influencers with a following have established that there are people who look up to them and admire their work. It is the focus of this study to demonstrate the effectiveness of influencer marketing when it comes to the development of a product and/or brand. The proponents have (...) conducted a focus group discussion with a group of ten students who have previous experience in content creation and distribution. The discussion will center on the effectiveness of influencer marketing and how it can be implemented. Researchers have discovered that influencers, or those with a following, have an impact on consumers, to Filipinos in particular. This, in turn, has an impact on whether the consumer is inclined to purchase or patronize the endorsed product. Consequently, when brands collaborate with appropriate influencers, they can create a positive impression in the minds of consumers and increase sales. (shrink)

This article examines the influence of the Persian mystic poet Hafi z on western poets. Interest in Hafiz started in England in the eighteenth century with the translations of Sir William Jones. In the nineteenth century, the German translation of Baron von HammerPurgstall inspired Goethe to create his masterpiece Westöstliche Divan (West-Eastern Divan). The poetry of Hafiz evoked such passion in Goethe that he referred to him as ‘Saint Hafiz’ and ‘Celestial Friend’. Inspired by Westöstliche Divan, a number of (...) German poets including Rückert and Platen composed volumes of poetry on the model of ghazal, the popular poetic form perfected by Hafi z in Persian literature. Prominent among the German thinkers influenced and fascinated by Hafiz was Friedrich Nietzsche who repeatedly mentioned him in his works. The influence of Hafiz stretched to America in 1838 when Ralph Waldo Emerson read Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan. In Hafiz, Emerson found a man who derived pleasure in the very elements which others found mean. Under the influence of Hafiz’s Saki-nameh or the Book of Wine, he created his finest poem Bacchus which, according to Harold Bloom, set the terms for the dialectic of American poetry. (shrink)

Do university ethics classes influence students’ real-world moral choices? We aimed to conduct the first controlled study of the effects of ordinary philosophical ethics classes on real-world moral choices, using non-self-report, non-laboratory behavior as the dependent measure. We assigned 1332 students in four large philosophy classes to either an experimental group on the ethics of eating meat or a control group on the ethics of charitable giving. Students in each group read a philosophy article on their assigned topic and (...) optionally viewed a related video, then met with teaching assistants for 50-minute group discussion sections. They expressed their opinions about meat ethics and charitable giving in a follow-up questionnaire (1032 respondents after exclusions). We obtained 13,642 food purchase receipts from campus restaurants for 495 of the students, before and after the intervention. Purchase of meat products declined in the experimental group (52% of purchases of at least $4.99 contained meat before the intervention, compared to 45% after) but remained the same in the control group (52% both before and after). Ethical opinion also differed, with 43% of students in the experimental group agreeing that eating the meat of factory farmed animals is unethical compared to 29% in the control group. We also attempted to measure food choice using vouchers, but voucher redemption rates were low and no effect was statistically detectable. It remains unclear what aspect of instruction influenced behavior. (shrink)

Chater & Loewenstein argue that i-frame research has been coopted by private interests opposed to system-level reform, leading to ineffective interventions. They recommend that behavioural scientists refocus on system-level interventions. We suggest that the influence of private interests on research is problematic for wider normative and epistemic reasons. A system-level intervention to shield research from private influence is needed.

This article articulates a framework for normatively assessing influence operations, undertaken by national security institutions. Section I categorizes the vast field of possible types of influence operations according to the communication’s content, its attribution, the rights of the target audience, the communication’s purpose, and its secondary effects. Section II populates these categories with historical examples and section III evaluates these cases with a moral framework. I argue that deceptive or manipulative communications directed at non-liable audiences are presumptively immoral (...) and illegitimate for liberal states, as are deceptive operations aimed at an unjust end, or even operations aimed at a just end where secondary effects are forecast to be disproportionate to the proximate end. (shrink)

The current paper expands on previous work done on the influence of learners’ language and preexisting knowledge on understanding physics terminology by exploring the concept of ACCELERATION in Arabic and English. The study attempts to answer two questions: (1) what are the similarities and differences between the polysemy of Arabic تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) (acceleration) and the polysemy of English acceleration, and (2) to what extent do prototypes and factors motivating the conceptualization of تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) and the conceptualization of acceleration converge (...) or diverge? To this end, Arabic and English dictionaries and corpora, the ArabiCorpus (Arabic Corpus Search Tool) and the British National Corpus (BNC), were employed. The dictionaries were surveyed to explore the various meanings of تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) and acceleration, while the ArabiCorpus and the BNC were employed to investigate the senses and to identify the most frequent collocates and so the prototypes of these terms. The meaning extension of the terms is examined on the basis of the cognitive mechanisms which appear in the corpora. Theoretically, the paper is informed by the prototype theory (Rosch, 1973; 1975), image schemas (Johnson, 1987), and conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980/2003). The results show that تَسَارُع (tasāruʿ) (acceleration) and acceleration generally overlap in terms of polysemy, prototype, and images schemas as well as conceptual metaphor that organize the conceptualization of these terms. It was also found that both Arab and English speakers mix ACCELERATION up with SPEED and so misunderstand them in a scientific setting. The present findings have several implications for science curriculum design, education, and research on universal and culture-specific properties of language. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to determine the variables influencing college students' engagement in swimming activities, as well as the significant themes that often appear in these occurrences. A descriptive research design was used to identify the factors influencing college students' perception of participating in swimming activities. Descriptive research is a type of nonexperimental study that aims to describe the features of phenomena as it occurs. It was found out that participating in swimming activities provides various benefits, some of (...) these include helping build endurance, muscle strength, and cardiovascular fitness, enhanced swimming skills, and maintaining a healthy weight. As a result, the implementation of active recreational activities in schools must be reinforced, not simply for the purpose of participation, but also because students are driven to do so. And these activities must be carried out not just on school grounds, but also at home and in the community. (shrink)

The study of remembering is both compelling and challenging, in part, because of the multiplicity and the complexity of influences on memory. Whatever their interests, memory researchers are always aware of the many different factors that can drive the processes they care about. A search for the phrase ‘influences on memory’ confirms this daunting and exhilarating array of influences, of many different kinds, operating at many different timescales, and presumably often interacting in ways that we can’t yet imagine, let alone (...) model. There are hormonal and neuromodulatory, genetic and pharmacological, developmental and age-related influences; there are influences of arousal, stress, gender, mood, emotion, sleep and personality; there are unconscious, schematic or semantic influences, and there are influences of context, situation, task and environment. There are many aspects of ‘media influence on memory’ (Loftus and Banaji, 1989; Strange and Garry, 2007), and, of course, there are both ‘social influences on memory’ (Echterhoff and Hirst, 2009) and ‘cultural influences on memory’ (Gutchess and Indeck, 2009). Notoriously, there are numerous ‘suggestive influences’ on memory (Loftus, 2003): influences of misinformation (Seifert, 2002; Wright and Loftus, 1998), or of ‘memory conformity’ (Gabbert et al., 2006) and ‘memory contagion’ (Roediger et al., 2002). People who know each other well, such as intimate couples, ‘may be well practised in yielding to each other’s influence and incorporating their partner’s information into their own memories of the past’ (French et al., 2008: 264). (shrink)

The high prevalence of aggression, anxiety and stress symptoms among team members in the organisation, while acquisition of task is alarming causation of adjustment disorder influences on team embeddedness, is the subject of this study. The ontogenesis of psychosocial adjustment disorder in any employees is not palingenetic, this is exact reproduction of psychosocial factors (PSF) which develops at workplace The most important strategy for productivity improvement is based on the fact that human productivity, both positive and negative, is determined by (...) the attitudes of all those who work in the enterprise and gap surfaced between teamwork and competence development particularly with regard to managing individualism within organisation and specifically individualistic approach, organisational justice, productivity management and psychosocial support. We strongly feel that there is a need to reexamine organisational team credentials and possible strong influences on individual’s psychosocial adjustment disorders. Findings suggest psychosocial adjustment factors are significantly correlated with psychosocial disorders (PSDs). (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to understand how social knowledge affects human economic decision making. The paper discusses the nature of social knowledge in today’s context with special reference to how social knowledge influences consumers’ sentiments and their economic decisions. Social networks are being continuously flooded with various kinds of information and disinformation. Some of the information becomes knowledge for social network users who browse various kinds of content that are either entertaining or related to products and marketing. Although reliability (...) remains a critical issue regarding online information from social networks, it, however, provides some knowledge about diverse things, goods, and products being in use in different societies around the world. Some products advertised on social networks like Facebook may affect consumer decisions or provide information about new products. This paper presents a formal discussion on what social knowledge is and how it is originated, and what use it might have for such consumers. The paper designs a simplistic mathematical model for a theoretical understanding of the assumption that has practical implications regarding its utility in society. It is found that social networks generate enough social information that can influence user choice and preferences. The study has implications for both the users and the developers of social networking sites. (shrink)