Despite the compelling subjective experience of executive self-control, we argue that ‘consciousness’ contains no top-down control processes. We propose that ‘consciousness’ involves no executive, causal or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it. In our view all psychological processing and psychological products are non-conscious. In particular, we argue that all ‘contents of consciousness’ are generated by and within non-conscious brain systems in the form of a continuous self-referential personal narrative that is not directed or (...) influenced in any way by the ‘experience of consciousness’. This continuously updated personal narrative arises from selective ‘internal broadcasting’ of outputs from non-conscious executive systems that have access to all forms of cognitive processing, sensory information and motor control. The personal narrative provides information for storage in autobiographical memory and is underpinned by constructs of self and agency, also created in non-conscious systems. The experience of consciousness, is seen as a passive accompaniment to the non-conscious processes of internal broadcasting and the creation of the personal narrative. In this sense personal awareness is analogous to the rainbow which accompanies physical processes in the atmosphere but exerts no influence over them. Though at an individual level it is an end-product created by non-conscious executive systems, the personal narrative serves the powerful evolutionary function of enabling individuals to communicate (externally broadcast) the contents of internal broadcasting. This in turn allows the recipients to generate potentially adaptive strategies, such as predicting the behavior of others and underlies the development of social and cultural structures, that promote species survival. Consequently, it is the capacity to communicate to others the contents of the personal narrative that confers an evolutionary advantage – not the experience of consciousness (personal awareness) itself. (shrink)

The demonstration that hypnotic suggestion can inhibit word/colour Stroop highlights one of the benefits of using hypnosis to explore cognitive psychology and in particular attentional processes. The compelling results using a rigorous design have particular relevance for the presumed automaticity of some forms of information processing. Moreover the results support the potential that hypnotic suggestion offers for creating clinically informed analogues of relevant psychological and neuropsychological conditions. As with all novel research, the results of Raz and Campbell raise further operational (...) and theoretical questions, relating in this case to the use of hypnotic, post-hypnotic and non-hypnotic suggestion and the utility of existing measures of hypnotizability. (shrink)

The valencies of the lanthanides vary more than was once thought. In addition to valencies associated with a half-full shell, there are valencies associated with a quarter- and three-quarter-full shell. This can be explained on the basis of Slater’s theory of many-electron atoms. The same theory explains the variation in complexing constants in the trivalent state. Valency in metallic and organometallic compounds is also discussed.

Understanding the mechanisms of early embryonic patterning and the timely allocation of specific cells to embryonic regions and fates as well as their development into tissues and organs, is a fundamental problem in Developmental Biology. The classical explanation for this process had been built around the notion of positional information. Accordingly the programmed appearance of sources of Morphogens at localized positions within a field of cells directs their differentiation. Recently, the development of organs and tissues from unpatterned and initially identical (...) stem cells (adult and embryonic) has challenged the need for positional information and even the integrity of the embryo, for pattern formation. Here we review the emerging area of organoid biology from the perspective of Developmental Biology. We argue that the events underlying the development of these systems are not purely linked to “self‐organization,” as often suggested, but rather to a process of genetically encoded self‐assembly where genetic programs encode and control the emergence of biological structures. (shrink)

The authors regret that there are errors in equation and subsequent discussion. The correct version is as follows.

The authors regret that there are errors in equation and subsequent discussion.

We examined Confucian moral philosophy, primarily the Analects, to determine how Confucian ethics could help managers regulate their own behavior (self-regulation) to maintain an ethical standard of practice. We found that some Confucian virtues relevant to self-regulation are common to Western concepts of management ethics such as benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, and trustworthiness. Some are relatively unique, such as ritual propriety and filial piety. We identify seven Confucian principles and discuss how they apply to achieving ethical self-regulation in management. In addition, (...) we examined some of the unique Confucian practices to achieve self-regulation including ritual and music. We balanced the framework by exploring the potential problems in applying Confucian principles to develop ethical self-regulation including whistle blowing. Confucian moral philosophy offers an indigenous Chinese theoretical framework for developing ethical self-regulation in managers. This is relevant for managers and those who relate to managers in Confucian-oriented societies, such as China, Korea, Japan, and Singapore. We recommend further research to examine if the application of the Confucian practices outlined here actually work in regulating the ethical behavior of managers in modern organizations. (shrink)

We endorse Davey's view that expectancy processes are intimately involved in fear reactions, but question his model on three grounds. First, the mechanism for generating expectancy bias to both ontogenetic and phylogenetic stimuli is not spelled out. Second, the selective association component is unnecessary. Third, the model fails to provide a clear explanation for the irrationality of phobic reactions.

Consciousness as used here, refers to the private, subjective experience of being aware of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, actions, memories including the intimate experience of a unified self with the capacity to generate and control actions and psychological contents. This compelling, intuitive consciousness-centric account has, and continues to shape folk and scientific accounts of psychology and human behavior. Over the last 30 years, research from the cognitive neurosciences has challenged this intuitive social construct account when providing a neurocognitive architecture for (...) a human psychology. Growing evidence suggests that the executive functions typically attributed to the experience of consciousness are carried out competently, backstage and outside subjective awareness by a myriad of fast, efficient non-conscious brain systems. While it remains unclear how and where the experience of consciousness is generated in the brain, we suggested that the traditional intuitive explanation that consciousness is causally efficacious is wrong-headed when providing a cognitive neuroscientific account of human psychology. Notwithstanding the compelling 1st-person experience that convinces us that subjective awareness is the mental curator of our actions and thoughts, we argue that the best framework for building a scientific account is to be consistent with the biophysical causal dependency of prior neural processes. From a 3rd person perspective,, we propose that subjective awareness lacking causal influence, is than our experience of being aware, our awareness of our psychological content, knowing that we are aware, and the belief that that such experiences are evidence of an agentive capacity shared by others. While the human mind can be described as comprising both conscious and nonconscious aspects, both ultimately depend on neural process in the brain. In arguing for the counter-intuitive epiphenomenal perspective, we suggest that a scientific approach considers all mental aspects of mind including consciousness in terms of their underlying, preceding biological changes, in the realization that most brain processes are not accompanied by any discernible change in subjective awareness. (shrink)

PurposeWeb accessibility is the practice of making web sites accessible to people, such as the disabled, who are using more than just traditional web browsers to access the internet. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to overview web accessibility and to highlight the ethics of web accessibility from a managerial perspective.Design/methodology/approachTo that end, this paper reviews related literature, highlights relevant public policy, discusses web accessibility from a systems development perspective, and concludes with a discussion of web accessibility with respect (...) to different ethical theories.FindingsThe findings take the form of a tutorial that highlights how to address web accessibility projects. The findings also examine web accessibility projects as they relate to well‐known ethical theories. Additionally, the findings also incorporate ethical opinions from web designers who have completed web accessibility projects in the past.Originality/valueThe paper makes several contributions to the existing literatures on web accessibility and ethics. An important contribution is that the paper is the first tutorial on web accessibility that also examines the topic through the lens of ethical theories. In addition to the tutorial, the paper reports on the opinions of web designers who have worked on web accessibility projects in the past. (shrink)

The conscious feeling of exercising ‘free-will’ is fundamental to our sense of self. However, in some psychopathological conditions actions may be experienced as involuntary or unwilled. We have used suggestion in hypnosis to create the experience of involuntariness in normal participants. We compared a voluntary finger movement, a passive movement and a voluntary movement suggested by hypnosis to be ‘involuntary.’ Hypnosis itself had no effect on the subjective experience of voluntariness associated with willed movements and passive movements or on time (...) estimations of their occurrence. However, subjective time estimates of a hypnotically-suggested, ‘involuntary’ finger movement were more similar to those for passive movements than for voluntary movements. The experience of anomalous control is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the normal conscious experience of a similar act produced intentionally. The experience of anomalous control may be produced either by pathology, or, in our case, by suggestion. (shrink)

Background: Some members of the general public feel that patients who cause their own organ failure through smoking, alcohol use, or drug use should not receive equal priority for scarce transplantable organs. This may reflect a belief that these patients (1) cause their own illness, (2) have poor transplant prognoses or, (3) are simply unworthy. We explore the role that social acceptability, personal responsibility, and prognosis play in people's judgments about transplant allocation. Methods: By random allocation, we presented 283 prospective (...) jurors in Philadelphia county with one of five questionnaire versions. In all questionnaires, subjects were asked to distribute transplantable hearts between patients with and without a history of three controversial behaviors (eating high fat diets against doctors’ advice, cigarette smoking, or intravenous drug use). Across the five questionnaire versions, we varied the relative prognosis of the transplant candidates and whether their behavior caused their primary organ Results: Subjects were significantly less willing to distribute organs to intravenous drug users than to cigarette smokers or people eating high fat diets (p le; 0.0005), even when intravenous drug users had better transplant outcomes than other patients. Subjects’ allocation decisions were influenced by transplant prognosis, but not by whether the behavior in question was causally responsible for the patients’ organ failure. Conclusion: People's unwillingness to give scarce transplantable organs to patients with controversial behaviors cannot be explained totally on the basis of those behaviors either causing their primary organ failure or making them have worse transplant prognoses. Instead, many people believe that such patients are simply less worthy of scarce transplantable organs. (shrink)

This paper is a beginning—an initial attempt to think of the function and character of epistemic norms as a kind of social norm. We draw on social scientific thinking about social norms and the social games to which they respond. Assume that people individually follow epistemic norms for the sake of acquiring a stock of true beliefs. When they live in groups and share information with each other, they will in turn produce a shared store of true beliefs, an epistemic (...) public good. True beliefs, produced individually or in groups, constitute an epistemic good—one commonly stockpiled and distributed within a community. Epistemic norms can then be understood as a kind of socially developed and transmitted normative sensibility having to do with the production of this individual and public good. Epistemic norms should serve to regulate this practice—coordinating the practice of individuals so as to afford the benefits of life in an interdependent epistemic community—and to manage the risks of being epistemically dependent on others within such a community. Here, we provide some attempts to characterize the central aspects of "the epistemic game"—the epistemic choice situation confronted by communities of epistemic agents. (shrink)

This chapter examines how epistemic norms could be social norms, with a reliance on work on the philosophy and social science of social norms from Bicchieri (on the one hand) and Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin and Southwood (on the other hand). We explain how the social ontology of social norms can help explain the rationality of epistemic cooperation, and how one might begin to model epistemic games.

In "Epistemic Norms and the 'Epistemic Game' They Regulate", we advance a general case for the idea that epistemic norms regulating the production of beliefs might usefully be understood as social norms. There, we drew on the influential account of social norms developed by Cristina Bicchieri, and we managed to give a crude recognizable picture of important elements of what are recognizable as central epistemic norms. Here, we consider much needed elaboration, suggesting models that help one think about epistemic communities (...) and, ultimately, the temptations confronted in one's epistemic life. We suggest that once "the epistemic game" is embedded into a wider set of gains and losses, one can understand the epistemic choice situation as a form of mixed-motive game. This allows one to understand epistemic games more straightforwardly using Bicchieri's framework for thinking about social norms. That is, once the choice situation denominated only in terms of classical epistemic gains and losses is embedded in a wider accounting of goods that may compete with the production of true beliefs, one can see how an agent's individual and community epistemic project can be furthered by social norms regulating epistemic practices. We recommend thinking of epistemic norms as analogous to social norms for hygiene. (shrink)

The principle of the common cause demands that every pair of causally independent but statistically correlated events should be the effect of a common cause. This demand is often supplemented with the requirement that said cause should screen-off the two events from each other. This paper introduces a new probabilistic model for common causes, which generalises this requirement to include sets of distinct but non-disjoint causes. It is demonstrated that the model hereby proposed satisfies the explanatory function generally attributed to (...) common causes and an existential proof is offered. Finally, the model is compared to other known structures intended to perform a similar function, such as Reichenbachian Common Cause Systems and Bayesian Networks. (shrink)

There is currently a stalemate over the correct approach to legal liability. To take a prominent example, it remains a point of contention whether land owners should be held liable for injuries to trespassers. Many of those who insist that land owners should be held liable for injuries to trespassers maintain this for purely economic or pragmatic reasons. In contrast, those on the other side frequently defend their view on the grounds that, in such trespass cases, owners are not morally (...) responsible for the injuries. We maintain that the best way forward for all parties in this debate is to recognize the existence of “morally responsible liability ”—of cases where owners qua owners are morally responsible for damages caused by their property. Once this is recognized, the debate can be framed in terms of whether there are economic or pragmatic reasons for legal liability to diverge from morally responsible liability. Unfortunately, there is no good account of morally responsible liability in the literature. Taking lessons from the failings of the few extant accounts, we draw on the work of A. M. Honoré and Jeremy Waldron to develop an account of our own. We argue that owners are morally responsible for damages caused by their property when and because their taking ownership of something leads to increased risk to others. We explain how and why such increases in risk come about, and how our account captures our intuitions concerning various cases, including those concerning injuries to trespassers. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

The papers in this issue all concern the normative standards by which we do or should regulate our joint epistemic lives in communities. Plausibly, reflection on how we should regulate ourselves—what one should insist on in one's own practice and that of one's epistemic partners—takes some cues from reflection on what we do insist on. The reverse is plausibly also the case. These papers also, more or less explicitly, suggest that our epistemic sensibilities themselves reflect the demands of epistemic practice (...) within a community of interdependent agents. (shrink)

Background The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to provide relief in the challenging and often stressful clinical setting for physicians. So far, however, the actual changes in work for physicians remain a prediction for the future, including new demands on the social level of medical practice. Thus, the question of how the requirements for physicians will change due to the implementation of AI is addressed. Methods The question is approached through conceptual considerations based on the potentials that (...) AI already offer and the focus on central normative concepts of trust, explainability, and responsibility which play an important role when implementing AI in everyday clinical practice. Conclusion Interpersonal communication will not disappear upon implementation of AI. Instead, it is much more likely that the exchange between various actors in medical practice will become increasingly important. This adds another level of complexity to practical concepts such as Shared-Decision-Making, which must be addressed in empirical research, including the involvement of AI systems as actors in communication. (shrink)

We propose a definition of capability as a class intermediate between function and disposition as the latter are defined in Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). A disposition inheres in a material entity and is realized in a certain kind of process. An example is the disposition of a glass to break when struck, which is realized when it shatters. A function is a disposition which is (simply put) the rationale for the existence of its bearer. To say for example that a (...) water pump has the function to pump water is to say that the pump exists because something was needed that would pump water. Capabilities are a special sort of disposition in that that, like functions, they can be evaluated on the basis of how well they are realized. They differ from functions in that their realizations are not the rationale – not the primary reason – for the existence of their bearers. Thus, a water pump may have many capabilities, including to be weatherproof, to run without lubricant, and so forth, but only one function. All functions are capabilities on the view we defend, but not all capabilities are functions. We develop a series of axioms to distinguish capabilities formally from both dispositions and functions and provide examples of the use of ‘capability’ in a variety of domains. (shrink)

RAID-II is a high-bandwidth, network-attached storage server designed and implemented at the University of California at Berkeley. In this paper, we measure the performance of RAID-II and evaluate various architectural decisions made during the design process. We first measure the end-to-end performance of the system to be approximately 20 MB/s for both disk array reads and writes. We then perform a bottleneck analysis by examining the performance of each individual subsystem and conclude that the disk subsystem limits performance. By adding (...) a custom interconnect board with a high-speed memory and bus system and parity engine, we are able to achieve a performance speedup of 8 to 15 over a comparative system using only off-the-shelf hardware. (shrink)

The core question behind this Frontiers research topic is whether explaining linguistic phenomena requires appeal to properties of human cognition that are specialized to language. We argue here that investigating this issue requires taking linguistic research results seriously, and evaluating these for domain-specificity. We present a particular empirical phenomenon, bound variable interpretations of pronouns dependent on a quantifier phrase, and argue for a particular theory of this empirical domain that is couched at a level of theoretical depth which allows its (...) principles to be evaluated for domain-specialization. We argue that the relevant principles are specialized when they apply in the domain of language, even if analogs of them are plausibly at work elsewhere in cognition or the natural world more generally. So certain principles may be specialized to language, though not, ultimately, unique to it. Such specialization is underpinned by ultimately biological factors, hence part of UG. (shrink)

Thesis Eleven is honoured to be able to publish this text by our late friend and mentor Agnes Heller. It was secured in the period before her recent death, and is published now posthumously in her memory. Echoing her earlier text written as an Imaginary Preface to Arendt’s Totalitarianism, it responds to themes in the later text, The Life of the Mind. These were among the most eminent of the minds referred to later as Women in Dark Times. Their connection (...) was not only institutional, via the New School, but represented a deep and ongoing affinity and critical engagement in political and philosophical terms. The imaginary letter arcs around issues and questions indicated by Cicero, Kant, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, including matters of republicanism, rhetoric and the question of thinking. Best of all, it shows Agnes Heller at work, at her best: it shows her thinking. Like Arendt, she offers inspiration, provocation, through thinking. (shrink)

Using the Friedman-Koepke Hyperfine Structure Theory of [2], we provide a short construction of a gap 1 morass in the constructible universe.

This is the inaugural volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Since its revival in the 1970s political philosophy has been a vibrant field in philosophy, one that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory. OSPP aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in political philosophy and these closely related subfields.

Exposure Therapy (ET) has demonstrated its efficacy in the treatment of phobias, anxiety and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), however, it suffers a high drop-out rate because of too low or too high patient engagement in treatment. Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) is comparably effective regarding symptom reduction and offers an alternative tool to facilitate engagement for avoidant participants. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that both ET and VRET normalize brain activity within a fear circuit. However, previous studies have employed brain imaging (...) technology which restricts people’s movement and hides their body, surroundings and therapist from view. This is at odds with the way engagement is typically controlled. We used a novel combination of neural imaging and VR technology—Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and Immersive Projection Technology (IPT), to avoid these limitations. Although there are a few studies that have investigated the effect of VRET on a brain function after the treatment, the present study utilized technologies which promote ecological validity to measure brain changes after VRET treatment. Furthermore, there are no studies that have measured brain activity within VRET session. In this study brain activity within the prefrontal cortex (PFC) was measured during three consecutive exposure sessions. N = 13 acrophobic volunteers were asked to walk on a virtual plank with a 6 m drop below. Changes in oxygenated (HbO) hemogl... (shrink)

This book reassesses the contribution to international thought of some of the most important thinkers of the inter-war period. It takes as its starting point E.H. Carr's famous critique which, more than any other work, established the reputation of the period as the "utopian" or "idealist" phase of international relations theorizing. This characterization of inter-war thought is scrutinized through ten detailed studies of such writers as Norman Angell, J.A. Hobson, J.M. Keynes, David Mitrany, and Alfred Zimmern. The studies demonstrate (...) the diversity of perspectives within so-called "idealism" and call into question the descriptive and analytical value of the entire notion. It is concluded that "idealism" is an overly general term, useful for scoring debating points rather than providing a helpful category for analysis. (shrink)

This is the second volume of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Since its revival in the 1970s political philosophy has been a vibrant field in philosophy, one that intersects with jurisprudence, normative economics, political theory in political science departments, and just war theory. OSPP aims to publish some of the best contemporary work in political philosophy and these closely related subfields. The papers in this volume address a range of central topics and represent cutting edge work in the field. They (...) are grouped into three main themes: ideal theory, the moral assessment of states, and issues in social reliations. (shrink)

It seems likely that there is no threshold for the induction of cancer by ionising radiation. Hence even small radiation doses may result in a finite number of premature deaths if a large number of people are exposed. Various arguments are used to demonstrate that such deaths, if they occur, are acceptable; these arguments are shown to be flawed. Many of the arguments, and the ICRP's principle of justification, appear rooted in a utilitarian system of moral philosophy. Such a system (...) is superficially attractive as it appears objective and rational; however, the objectivity may be an illusion masking the underlying aims of the interested parties. (shrink)

Peter McHugh’s influence on those of us who studied and worked with him as part of York University’s graduate sociology programme in Toronto from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s, while lasting and undeniable, is not necessarily immediately apparent nor easily articulated. What follows is a brief reflection on how this difficulty can be understood as integral to Peter McHugh’s unique contribution both to those of us fortunate enough to have studied with him, and more broadly, to the discipline of (...) sociology itself. (shrink)