Lorazepam has been repeatedly shown to induce memory impairments. The effects of this benzodiazepine on the processes involved in the strategic regulation of memory accuracy have not as yet been explored. An experimental procedure that delineates the role of monitoring and control processes was used. Fifteen lorazepam and 15 placebo subjects were examined using a semantic memory task that combined both a forced- and a free-report option and a no-incentive and an incentive condition. Memory accuracy was lower in the lorazepam (...) than in the placebo group. Lorazepam impaired control sensitivity (the extent to which volunteering of answers is affected by the confidence judgments). While the absolute aspect of monitoring was impaired (calibration scores), both the discriminative aspect (the ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect answers) and the response criterion setting (the confidence threshold set for volunteering a report) were spared. The pharmacological dissociation between monitoring effectiveness and control sensitivity indicates that these two components involve distinct processes. (shrink)

Behavioral immune system describes psychological mechanisms that detect cues to infectious pathogens in the immediate environment, trigger disease-relevant responses and facilitate behavioral avoidance/escape. BIS activation elicits a perceived vulnerability to disease which can result in conformity with social norms. However, a response to superficial cues can result in aversive responses to people that pose no actual threat, leading to an aversion to unfamiliar others, and likelihood of prejudice. Pathogen-neutralizing behaviors, therefore, have implications for social interaction as well as illness behaviors (...) and responses to health communications. In this study, we investigate how PVD influences conformity, attitudes to other people and to lockdown regulations through the lens of the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory. RST describes personality in terms of biologically-driven approach and avoidance motivations which support personal goals. Participants from the United Kingdom public completed an RST personality questionnaire and then read either coronavirus morbidity-mortality statistics and current United Kingdom government lifestyle regulations, just the regulations, or no information at all. They all completed the Perceived Vulnerability to Disease scale to assess BIS-relevant Germ Aversion and Perceived Infectability, followed by questions measuring social conformity, warmth toward others and attitudes toward lockdown measures. Significantly lower PVD scores were observed in the no-information condition, with the other conditions showing no difference. In terms of RST, approach behaviors related to goal-drive persistence work alongside fear in explaining conformity to social norms. Reward related approach behaviors partially explained warmth toward others, indicating that social rewards gained through interaction continue to be strong drivers of behavior. We found no role for RST traits in attitudes toward lockdown. Overall, coronavirus-related behavior is not driven purely by fear, but also by social and/or protection goals regulated by approach motivation. This study presents new insights into public perceptions of coronavirus and government regulated lifestyle restrictions, helping to explain social behaviors in terms of biologically driven mechanisms. Such understanding is vital if we are to successfully motivate public behavior to constrain spread of the virus. (shrink)

In the United States, food banks served an estimated 46 million people in 2015. A combination of government policy reforms and political economic trends contributed to the rising numbers of individuals relying on private food assistance in the US, the United Kingdom and other high-income countries. Although researchers frequently map urban food environments, this project is one of the first to map private food assistance and potential need at the census-tract scale. We utilize Geographic Information Systems, demographic data, and food (...) assistance locations to develop a rapid assessment tool that could support food banks, pantries, soup kitchens, and government agencies that seek to answer the question of whether people with the greatest need have food distribution sites in close proximity. We define access based on distance and then calculate potential food insecurity using either poverty rates or a food insecurity index. We apply these methods in a case study analysis of Santa Clara County, California. Our findings suggest that food assistance distribution locations match the areas of potential need in more than 80% of urban census tracts. However, there are several potentially underserved locations and populations that could benefit from new food assistance operations. The poverty and index-based approaches show significant spatial overlap in mapped areas of high food insecurity and low access. The poverty only approach produces a higher estimate of food insecurity rates, is easier to calculate, and draws attention to the need to address poverty as a root cause of hunger. (shrink)

Spousal correlation in risk attitude is estimated using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel over the period 2004–2009. We apply the bivariate panel ordered probit model to the analysis of the simultaneous determination of the male’s and the female’s risk attitude, using the survey question about general willingness to take risk, provided on a 0–10 Likert-scale. The correlations between both the individual-specific effects of the two partners and the two within-individual errors are separately estimated, and found to be +0.285 and (...) +0.310, respectively. We consider the former to be a key parameter, since its positive sign may be interpreted in terms of positive assortative mating on risk attitude: individuals tend to form partnerships with others having a similar risk attitude. We also find evidence that this correlation increases with years of marriage, suggesting either a form of spousal socialization or a selection process in which marriage breakdown is more likely in poorly matched couples. (shrink)

Panel data from the German SOEP is used to test for risk vulnerability in the wider population. Two different survey responses are analysed: the response to the question about willingness-to-take risk in general and the chosen investment in a hypothetical lottery. A convenient indicator of background risk is the VDAX index, an established measure of volatility in the German stock market. This is used as an explanatory variable in conjunction with HDAX, the stock market index, which proxies wealth. The impacts (...) of these measures on risk attitude are identifiable by exploiting the time dimension of the panel and matching survey months with corresponding observations from these time-varying factors. Both of the survey responses allow us to test for decreasing absolute risk aversion ; in one case, we find strong evidence of DARA, while in the other, we do not. Both survey responses also allow us to test for RV, and in both cases we find strong evidence. In the case of the hypothetical lottery response, we are also able to estimate a “coefficient of risk vulnerability”. This is defined as the absolute amount by which absolute risk aversion rises in response to a doubling of background risk. We estimate CRV to be between 1.03 and 1.27. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Scholarship in the area of social movements points to the importance of inter-group collaboration and alliance building. In the case of Indigenous-led movements and the issue of solidarity with non-Indigenous movement participants, scholarship at the intersection of Native studies and social movements suggests that such alliances can be built and sustained but that unlearning colonial attitudes and behaviors is central to this process. Through in-depth interviews with non-Native solidarity participants, this article considers how engagement with Indigenous thought and action (...) re-shapes particpants’ conceptions of environment and place. Findings suggest that such involvement calls attention to histories of violence as well as ongoing practices of dispossession causing activists to grapple not only with their personal and family histories but also with their evolving relationship with environmentalism. (shrink)

An increasing amount of twenty-first century metaphysics is couched in explicitly hyperintensional terms. A prerequisite of hyperintensional metaphysics is that reality itself be hyperintensional: at the metaphysical level, propositions, properties, operators, and other elements of the type hierarchy, must be more fine-grained than functions from possible worlds to extensions. In this paper I develop, in the setting of type theory, a general framework for reasoning about the granularity of propositions and properties. The theory takes as primitive the notion of a (...) substitution on a proposition (property, etc.) and, among other things, uses this idea to elucidate a number of theoretically important distinctions. A class of structures are identified which can be used to model a wide range of positions about the granularity of reality; certain of these structures are seen to receive a natural treatment in the category of M-sets. (shrink)

D. M. Armstrong is an eminent Australian philosopher whose work over many years has dealt with such subjects as: the nature of possibility, concepts of the particular and the general, causes and laws of nature, and the nature of human consciousness. This collection of essays explores the many facets of Armstrong's work, concentrating on his more recent interests. There are four sections to the book: possibility and identity, universals, laws and causality, and philosophy of mind. The contributors comprise an international (...) group of philosophers from the United States, England and Australia. An interesting feature of the volume is that Armstrong himself has written responses to each of the essays. There is also a complete bibliography of Armstrong's writings. (shrink)

D. M. Armstrong is an eminent Australian philosopher whose work over many years has dealt with such subjects as: the nature of possibility, concepts of the particular and the general, causes and laws of nature, and the nature of human consciousness. This collection of essays explores the many facets of Armstrong's work, concentrating on his more recent interests. There are four sections to the book: possibility and identity, universals, laws and causality, and philosophy of mind. The contributors comprise an international (...) group of philosophers from the United States, England and Australia. An interesting feature of the volume is that Armstrong himself has written responses to each of the essays. There is also a complete bibliography of Armstrong's writings. (shrink)

My aim has been to adapt Quine's criterion of the ontological commitment of theories couched in standard quantificational idiom to a much broader class of theories by focusing on the set-theoretic structure of the models of those theories. For standard first-order theories, the two criteria coincide on simple entities. Divergences appear as they are applied to higher-order theories and as composite entities are taken into account. In support of the extended criterion, I appeal to its fruits in treating the various (...) examples considered above and to the healthy intuitions of the non-noneists among us. Don't O(m) and E(m) comprise just the things we should have though existed according to a particular interpretation m of a language or a theory? Whatever the answer (and it will hardly be unanimous), I hope to have pointed the way towards a recognition of ontology as a worthwhile branch of modern theory. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of seventeenth-century British philosophers on the notion of logic and demonstrative knowledge, particularly Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, offering an overview of traditional Aristotelianism in relation to logic and describing Bacon's approach to demonstration and logic. It also analyzes the contribution of the Cambridge Platonists and evaluates the influence of Cartesianism. The chapter concludes that theorizing about logic and demonstrative knowledge followed an arc familiar from other branches of philosophy such as (...) metaphysics or the philosophy of science. (shrink)

A brief, systematic exposition of the positions of seven classical thinkers on the subject of the logical and/or methodological unity of human knowledge. McRae writes methodically and accurately on a difficult subject.--R. G. M.

Copernican questions, 2006 ; It started with Copernicus, 2014 -- Copernican questions. What was Copernicus's revolution? ; What happens when your world changes? ; Copernican questions : rationality and realism ; The plan of the book -- Is science really rational? : the problem of incommensurability. Incommensurability of standards ; Incommensurability of values ; Incommensurability of meaning ; Evaluating meaning incommensurability ; Conversion : a concluding case study -- A walk on the wild side : social constructivism, postmodernism, feminism, and (...) that old-time religion. The constructivist challenge ; Postmodernism attacks! ; Is "objectivity" what a man calls his subjectivity? ; Is science godless? -- Ascending the slippery slope : scientific progress and truth. The evils of Whig history ; Social-constructivist history ; Does science converge toward truth? ; Assessing Laudan's Critique of Convergent Realism ; Scientists' own realism ; Could we be wrong about everything? -- Truth of consequences? Electrons : real particles or convenient fictions? ; Van Fraassen's constrictive empiricism ; Do we observe through microscopes? ; But what about things that are really unobservable? ; So what really is the goal of science? -- Mysteries of methods. Induction and deduction ; Aristotle : the first methodologist ; Bacon : scientific method renovated? ; The hypothetico-deductive method ; Hume on induction ; Popper and the rejection of induction ; Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) to the rescue? -- If you have science, who needs philosophy? The limits of science? ; The breakdown of philosophy ; Naturalizing epistemology ; Naturalizing ethics ; Philosophy in an age of science -- Science, scientism, and being human. Mind : physical or spiritual? ; Science and the human image ; Ape, angel, or neither? (shrink)

Francis Bacon (15611626) wrote that good scientists are not like ants (mindlessly gathering data) or spiders (spinning empty theories). Instead, they are like bees, transforming nature into a nourishing product. This essay examines Bacon's "middle way" by elucidating the means he proposes to turn experience and insight into understanding. The human intellect relies on "machines" to extend perceptual limits, check impulsive imaginations, and reveal nature's latent causal structure, or "forms." This constructivist interpretation is not intended to supplant inductivist (...) or experimentalist interpretations, but is designed to explicate Bacon's account of science as a collaborative project with several interdependent methodological goals. (shrink)

First published in 1905, this reissued edition of The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon is an edited collection based upon the definitive seven volume edition of 1857, translated and prefaced by Robert Leslie Ellis and James Spedding. Of great historical, philosophical and scientific interest, this collection brings together translations of Bacon’s most important works, including the Novum Organum , the De Augmentis Scientarium , the Parasceve , and the De Principiis atque Originibus, as well as works originally written (...) in English, such as the Valerius Terminus and the Filum Labyrinthi . The reissue offers a comprehensive and provocative collection of the key writings of the man we now consider to be the father of Empiricism who popularised inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry. All works include prefaces by Robert Leslie Ellis and James Spedding, and the collection includes an introductory note from the editor John M. Robertson. (shrink)

The Spedding-Ellis-Heath edition of The Works of Francis Bacon appeared in seven volumes between 1857 and 1859. Both a monument to Victorian scholarship and a staple of the history of science, this classic and historically significant work has been the authoritative edition of Bacon’s oeuvre ever since. This essay tells part of the story of its creation, reception, and influence. It describes the origin of and plan for the edition and, focusing on the three philosophical volumes, examines in (...) detail the collaboration between James Spedding and Robert Leslie Ellis. On the basis of fresh archival research, it is shown that Spedding and Ellis disagreed fundamentally about the very thing their new edition was meant to settle: the correct interpretation of Bacon’s philosophical writings and of the role of his famous inductive method in the development of modern science from the time of Newton. With the Works, Spedding and Ellis did more than furnish what was long believed to be the Baconian canon; they also (at least in part unwittingly) produced a valuable primary source for the history of nineteenth-century Baconianism. (shrink)