Theories of the genetics underlying punctuated equilibrium (PE) have been vague to date. Here the developmental gene hypothesis is proposed, which states that: 1) developmental regulatory (DevReg) genes are responsible for the orchestration of metazoan morphogenesis and their extreme conservation and mutation intolerance generates the equilibrium or stasis present throughout much of the fossil record and 2) the accumulation of regulatory elements and recombination within these same genes—often derived from transposable elements—drives punctuated bursts of morphological divergence and speciation across metazoa. (...) This two‐part hypothesis helps to explain the features that characterize PE, providing a theoretical genetic basis for the once‐controversial theory. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/C-fu-ks5yDs. (shrink)

BackgroundFreezing of gait is a disabling burden for Parkinson’s disease patients with poor response to conventional therapies. Combined deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus and substantia nigra moved into focus as a potential therapeutic option to treat the parkinsonian gait disorder and refractory FoG. The mechanisms of action of DBS within the cortical-subcortical-basal ganglia network on gait, particularly at the cortical level, remain unclear.MethodsTwelve patients with idiopathic PD and chronically-implanted DBS electrodes were assessed on their regular dopaminergic medication in (...) a standardized stepping in place paradigm. Patients executed the task with DBS switched off, conventional STN DBS and combined STN+SN DBS and were compared to healthy matched controls. Simultaneous high-density EEG and kinematic measurements were recorded during resting-state, effective stepping, and freezing episodes.ResultsClinically, STN+SN DBS was superior to conventional STN DBS in improving temporal stepping variability of the more affected leg. During resting-state and effective stepping, the cortical activity of PD patients in STIM OFF was characterized by excessive over-synchronization in the theta, alpha, and high-beta band compared to healthy controls. Both active DBS settings similarly decreased resting-state alpha power and reduced pathologically enhanced high-beta activity during resting-state and effective stepping compared to STIM OFF. Freezing episodes during STN DBS and STN+SN DBS showed spectrally and spatially distinct cortical activity patterns when compared to effective stepping. During STN DBS, FoG was associated with an increase in cortical alpha and low-beta activity over central cortical areas, while with STN+SN DBS, an increase in high-beta was prominent over more frontal areas.ConclusionsSTN+SN DBS improved temporal aspects of parkinsonian gait impairment compared to conventional STN DBS and differentially affected cortical oscillatory patterns during regular locomotion and freezing suggesting a potential modulatory effect on dysfunctional cortical-subcortical communication in PD. (shrink)

This study examines the socioeconomic and familial background of Irish Catholic priests born between 1867 and 1911. Previous research has hypothesized that lack of marriage opportunities may influence adoption of celibacy as part of a religious institution. The present study traced data from Irish seminary registries for 46 Catholic priests born in County Limerick, Ireland, using 1901 Irish Census returns and Land Valuation records. Priests were more likely to originate from landholding backgrounds, and with landholdings greater in size and wealth (...) than the local average. Priests were found to originate from families with more sons than the national average, but with similar numbers of daughters. These findings are discussed in relation to competition for resources and lineage survival strategies. (shrink)

The number of children with chronic critical illness (CCI) is a growing population in the United States. A defining characteristic of this population is a prolonged hospital stay. Our study assessed the proportion of pediatric patients with chronic critical illness in U.S. hospitals at a specific point in time, and identified a subset of children whose hospital stay lasted for months to years. The potential harms of a prolonged hospitalization for children with CCI, which include over treatment, infection, disruption of (...) family life, and the intensive utilization of resources—combined with the moral distress experienced by the clinicians who care for the children, suggest the need for ethical analysis of this growing issue to identify actions that could be taken at the clinical and health systems levels to reduce the harms associated with prolonged hospital stay.In this article we present three real cases from our study that involved a very long hospital stay. We applied a framework developed by Mackenzie, Rogers, and Dodds to analyze inherent, situational, and pathogenic vulnerabilities to examine the ways that interventions intended to remedy one source of harm for the children in our cohort inadvertently created other harms. We examined the complex ways that children with protracted hospitalization are vulnerable to the choices made by their family and clinicians, as well as by healthcare systems and communities. Finally, we used this analysis to summarize actions and ethical responses to this growing patient population. Such an understanding is essential to making clinical and ethical decisions that arise for children who are at risk for a very long stay in the hospital. (shrink)

BackgroundThe preferable position of Deep Brain Stimulation electrodes is proposed to be located in the dorsolateral subthalamic nucleus to improve general motor performance. The optimal DBS electrode localization for the post-operative improvement of balance and gait is unknown.MethodsIn this single-center, retrospective analyses, 66 Parkinson’s disease patients were assessed pre- and post-operatively by using MDS-UPDRS, freezing of gait score, Giladi’s gait and falls questionnaire and Berg balance scale. The clinical outcome was related to the DBS electrode coordinates in x, y, z (...) plane as revealed by image-based reconstruction. Binomial generalized linear mixed models with fixed-effect variables electrode asymmetry, parkinsonian subtype, medication, age class and clinical DBS induced changes were analyzed.ResultsSubthalamic nucleus-deep brain stimulation improved all motor, balance and FoG scores in MED OFF condition, however there were heterogeneous results in MED ON condition. DBS electrode reconstructed coordinates impacted the responsiveness of axial symptoms. FoG and balance responders showed slightly more medially located STN electrode coordinates and less medio-lateral asymmetry of the electrode reconstructed coordinates across hemispheres compared to non-responders.ConclusionDeep brain stimulation electrode reconstructed coordinates, particularly electrode asymmetry on the medio-lateral axis affected the post-operative responsiveness of balance and FoG symptoms in PD patients. (shrink)

This volume offers a collection of nine case studies from clinical social workers in K-12 schools, each from a phenomenological perspective, with the objective of educating Master of Social Work students and early career social work clinicians. Each chapter is framed with pre-reading prompts, reading comprehension questions, and writing assignments. This casebook provides a resource for understanding the range of practice in school social work as well as some of the challenges that school social workers face in today's complex world. (...) Using a phenomenological perspective the contributors stay close to the lived experience of students, teachers, parents, and social workers, revealing a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the genesis and treatment of students' problems in school. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the notion of $${\textbf{K}} $$ -rank, where $${\textbf{K}} $$ is a strong amalgamation Fraïssé class. Roughly speaking, the $${\textbf{K}} $$ -rank of a partial type is the number “copies” of $${\textbf{K}} $$ that can be “independently coded” inside of the type. We study $${\textbf{K}} $$ -rank for specific examples of $${\textbf{K}} $$, including linear orders, equivalence relations, and graphs. We discuss the relationship of $${\textbf{K}} $$ -rank to other ranks in model theory, including dp-rank and (...) op-dimension (a notion coined by the first author and C. D. Hill in previous work). (shrink)

This paper focuses on the integration of generic software such as enterprise resource planning into organisational life. These applications have gained prominence as the IT systems of choice in many organisations. The perspective that dominates the literature studying these applications reflects a rationality based on alignment of the software and organisational processes and fails to consider the ethical issues that arise when a new work system is being constructed, such as the possibilities for end‐user participation. Drawing on the strand of (...) research that studies implementations of new technologies as social relations, this paper considers the experiences of end user groups as they engage in adaptation of the software and embed technology in contexts of local use. Design and use activities are complex and multifaceted and the embedding of software for local use represents an overlap between them. This paper explores whether the shift towards large scale generic software allows for a blurring of a boundary between what are construed as design activities and use activities in applications for office work. It is significant to the construction of this boundary that office work is gendered female in the U.K. where clerical and secretarial work is usually done by and considered to be suited to women. The paper draws on a case study of the introduction and integration of a generic software application for supporting the administration of student records at a UK university to explore the social relations of end‐user participation in the implementation of these software packages. The paper presents an analysis of the implementation activity, IToffice worker relations, and the different constructions of skills and knowledge understood to be required as the workers attempted to deal with this software application. (shrink)

We present the first systematic literature review on stress and burnout in K−12 teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a systematic literature search, we identified 17 studies that included 9,874 K−12 teachers from around the world. These studies showed some indication that burnout did increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were, however, almost no differences in the levels of stress and burnout experienced by K−12 teachers compared to individuals employed in other occupational fields. School principals' leadership styles emerged as (...) an organizational characteristic that is highly relevant for K−12 teachers' levels of stress and burnout. Individual teacher characteristics associated with burnout were K−12 teachers' personality, self-efficacy in online teaching, and perceived vulnerability to COVID-19. In order to reduce stress, there was an indication that stress-management training in combination with training in technology use for teaching may be superior to stress-management training alone. Future research needs to adopt more longitudinal designs and examine the interplay between individual and organizational characteristics in the development of teacher stress and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. (shrink)

Cognitive science is experiencing a pragmatic turn away from the traditional representation-centered framework toward a view that focuses on understanding cognition as "enactive." This enactive view holds that cognition does not produce models of the world but rather subserves action as it is grounded in sensorimotor skills. In this volume, experts from cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, robotics, and philosophy of mind assess the foundations and implications of a novel action-oriented view of cognition. Their contributions and supporting experimental evidence show that (...) an enactive approach to cognitive science enables strong conceptual advances, and the chapters explore key concepts for this new model of cognition. The contributors discuss the implications of an enactive approach for cognitive development; action-oriented models of cognitive processing; action-oriented understandings of consciousness and experience; and the accompanying paradigm shifts in the fields of philosophy, brain science, robotics, and psychology. ContributorsMoshe Bar, Lawrence W. Barsalov, Olaf Blanke, Jeannette Bohg, Martin V. Butz, Peter F. Dominey, Andreas K. Engel, Judith M. Ford, Karl J. Friston, Chris D. Frith, Shaun Gallagher, Antonia Hamilton, Tobias Heed, Cecilia Heyes, Elisabeth Hill, Matej Hoffmann, Jakob Hohwy, Bernhard Hommel, Atsushi Iriki, Pierre Jacob, Henrik Jörntell, Jürgen Jost, James Kilner, Günther Knoblich, Peter König, Danica Kragic, Miriam Kyselo, Alexander Maye, Marek McGann, Richard Menary, Thomas Metzinger, Ezequiel Morsella, Saskia Nagel, Kevin J. O'Regan, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Giovanni Pezzulo, Tony J. Prescott, Wolfgang Prinz, Friedemann Pulvermüller, Robert Rupert, Marti Sanchez-Fibla, Andrew Schwartz, Anil K. Seth, Vicky Southgate, Antonella Tramacere, John K. Tsotsos, Paul F. M. J. Verschure, Gabriella Vigliocco, Gottfried Vosgerau. (shrink)

I examine a number of recent challenges to traditional individualist epistemologies. In chapter I, I examine Margaret Gilbert's claim that certain types of communities, "plural subjects," are capable of having what she calls "collective beliefs." In chapter II, I examine Lynn Hankinson Nelson's claim that communities, and not individuals, are the primary epistemological agents. In chapter III, I examine Miriam Solomon's claim that scientific rationality is a property of communities, not individuals. In chapter IV, I examine Richard Rorty's claim (...) that solidarity is the end of inquiry. Finally, in chapter V, I examine Helen Longino's claim that scientific knowledge and inquiry are mediated by processes that are irreducibly social. ;I argue that many philosophers who argue for a more social epistemology are mistaken about what role the community plays in inquiry, and that only individuals are epistemic agents--only they believe, know, and act rationally. In this respect, traditional individualist epistemologies are correct. I also argue that what is distinctively and irreducibly social about inquiry are the norms and processes that mediate our interaction with each other. These norms and processes require numerous individuals to sustain them. Further, I argue that given this understanding of the role of the community in inquiry we are required to change our understanding of both the nature and role of the individual knower, and the project of epistemology. Individual knowers are dynamic, changing their conception of themselves as they interact in the world with others. An integral but hitherto neglected part of epistemology is the evaluation of the social processes that mediate our interaction with others. (shrink)

I critically examine Miriam Solomon’s critique of individualist normative accounts of scientific rationality and her own “social” account of scientific rationality that takes communities to be the locus of rationality. I argue that scientists are not influenced in their decision making by nonepistemic factors to the extent that Solomon suggests and an individualist account can show how judgmental heuristics are conducive to scientific success. I also argue that Solomon’s account of rationality cannot guide us when we do not yet (...) know what is most conducive to scientific success. Consequently, I offer a defense of internalist individualist accounts of rationality and suggest that what is social about rationality are the standards of epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin by defending permissivism: the claim that, sometimes, there is more than one way to rationally respond to a given body of evidence. Then I argue that, if we accept permissivism, certain worries that arise as a result of learning that our beliefs were caused by the communities we grew up in, the schools we went to, or other irrelevant influences dissipate. The basic strategy is as follows: First, I try to pinpoint what makes irrelevant influences (...) worrying and I come up with two candidate principles. I then argue that one principle should be rejected because it is inconsistent with permissivism. The principle we should accept implies that it is sometimes rational to maintain our beliefs, even upon learning that they were caused by irrelevant influences. (shrink)

Insofern entwickelt die Begriffslogik eine Epistemologie freien Denkens. Damit entscheidet sich Hegel in den nachkantischen Debatten für Kant und gegen den von Schelling in die Diskussion zurückgebrachten Spinozismus.

The aim of this paper is to apply the accuracy based approach to epistemology to the case of higher order evidence: evidence that bears on the rationality of one's beliefs. I proceed in two stages. First, I show that the accuracy based framework that is standardly used to motivate rational requirements supports steadfastness—a position according to which higher order evidence should have no impact on one's doxastic attitudes towards first order propositions. The argument for this will require a generalization of (...) an important result by Greaves and Wallace for the claim that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy. The generalization I provide will, among other things, allow us to apply the result to cases of self-locating evidence. In the second stage, I develop an alternative framework. Very roughly, what distinguishes the traditional approach from the alternative one is that, on the traditional picture, we're interested in evaluating the expected accuracy of conforming to an update procedure. On the alternative picture that I develop, instead of considering how good an update procedure is as a plan to conform to, we consider how good it is as a plan to make. I show how, given the use of strictly proper scoring rules, the alternative picture vindicates calibrationism: a view according to which higher order evidence should have a significant impact on our beliefs. I conclude with some thoughts about why higher order evidence poses a serious challenge for standard ways of thinking about rationality. (shrink)

The question of whether it is ever permissible to believe on insufficient evidence has once again become a live question. Greater attention is now being paid to practical dimensions of belief, namely issues related to epistemic virtue, doxastic responsibility, and voluntarism. In this book, McCormick argues that the standards used to evaluate beliefs are not isolated from other evaluative domains. The ultimate criteria for assessing beliefs are the same as those for assessing action because beliefs and actions are both products (...) of agency. Two important implications of this thesis, both of which deviate from the dominant view in contemporary philosophy, are 1) it can be permissible to believe for non-evidential reasons, and 2) we have a robust control over many of our beliefs, a control sufficient to ground attributions of responsibility for belief. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to argue that, if a robust form of moral realism is true, then moral vagueness is ontic vagueness. The argument is by elimination: I show that neither semantic nor epistemic approaches to moral vagueness are satisfactory.

A defense of imprecise credences (and other imprecise doxastic attitudes).

Abstract: This paper defends a constraint that any satisfactory decision theory must satisfy. I show how this constraint is violated by all of the decision theories that have been endorsed in the literature that are designed to deal with cases in which opinions or values are represented by a set of functions rather than a single one. Such a decision theory is necessary to account for the existence of what Ruth Chang has called “parity” (as well as for cases in (...) which agents have incomplete preferences or imprecise credences). The problem with the all of the decision theories that have been defended to account for parity is that they are committed to a claim I call unanimity: when all of the functions in the set agree that an agent ought to do A, then an agent ought to do A. A decision theory committed to unanimity violates the constraint I defend in this paper. Thus, if parity exists, a new approach to decision theory is necessary. (shrink)

Had we grown up elsewhere or been educated differently, our view of the world would likely be radically different. What to make of this? This paper takes an accuracy-centered first-personal approach to the question of how to respond to the arbitrary nature in which many of our beliefs are formed. I show how considerations of accuracy motivate different responses to this sort of information depending on the type of attitude we take towards the belief in question upon subjecting the belief (...) to doubt. (shrink)

How is medical knowledge made? There have been radical changes in recent decades, through new methods such as consensus conferences, evidence-based medicine, translational medicine, and narrative medicine. Miriam Solomon explores their origins, aims, and epistemic strengths and weaknesses; and she offers a pluralistic approach for the future.

For the last forty years, two claims have been at the core of disputes about scientific change: that scientists reason rationally and that science is progressive. For most of this time discussions were polarized between philosophers, who defended traditional Enlightenment ideas about rationality and progress, and sociologists, who espoused relativism and constructivism. Recently, creative new ideas going beyond the polarized positions have come from the history of science, feminist criticism of science, psychology of science, and anthropology of science. Addressing the (...) traditional arguments as well as building on these new ideas, Miriam Solomon constructs a new epistemology of science. After discussions of the nature of empirical success and its relation to truth, Solomon offers a new, social account of scientific rationality. She shows that the pursuit of empirical success and truth can be consistent with both dissent and consensus, and that the distinction between dissent and consensus is of little epistemic significance. In building this social epistemology of science, she shows that scientific communities are not merely the locus of distributed expert knowledge and a resource for criticism but also the site of distributed decision making. Throughout, she illustrates her ideas with case studies from late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century physical and life sciences. Replacing the traditional focus on methods and heuristics to be applied by individual scientists, Solomon emphasizes science funding, administration, and policy. One of her goals is to have a positive influence on scientific decision making through practical social recommendations. (shrink)

Observers of German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt often disagree on her politics, yet many view her as a staunch early critic of Zionism. Whereas her criticism of Israel rendered her unpopular in the American-Jewish and Israeli communities for many decades after 1948, commentators more recently have come to see her perspective as a prescient assessment of the ills of Jewish nationalism. This interpretation, however, fails to grasp the complexity of Arendt‘s political views of Zionism in particular and of Jewish nationhood (...) in general, which evolved over time and remained ambivalent from her early to her late works. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt claims the concept of brotherhood presents false notions of political community that elide historic hatreds of others and threaten modern political life. This paper explores Arendt’s critical assessment of the concept of brotherhood in order to reflect on one specific example: the politics of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the wake of the Arab Spring of 2011. While some observers reject Arendt’s assessment of brotherhood as too narrow, her criticisms raise useful questions about democracy and plurality, which (...) confront any community that exhorts its members to act as ‘brethren’ rather than as ‘citizens.’ The Muslim concept of brotherhood suggests many different possibilities for belonging: a classic universalism of the Abrahamic natural law tradition; a progressive counter-public sphere; and as well the authoritarian private community of believers as represented in the early writings of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership. Therefore, the politically controversial Muslim Brotherhood has no monopoly over the understanding of the Muslim concept of brotherhood. However, it is the most powerful, most well-organized brotherhood movement. The paper opens and ends with reflections on the Arab Spring of 2011, its one-year anniversary in January 2012, and considers other possibilities for the concept of brotherhood against the backdrop of Arendt’s analysis. (shrink)

The article deals with larger stretches of talk-in-interaction and argues in favor of a descriptive approach, which integrates the structural requirements of global organization, the special type of sequential orderliness within larger units as well as the genre-orientation of these units. Drawing on previous work in conversation analysis, discourse analysis and the sociological genre analysis, the article introduces GLOBE as an analytical tool which functionally links discourse units to conventionalized communicative purposes. GLOBE reconstructs the interactive achievement of genre-oriented discourse units (...) in a three-branch analysis of jobs, devices and forms. The analytical potential of GLOBE is demonstrated in the exemplary genre-contrastive analysis of a narrative, an explanative and an argumentative excerpt. On the basis of the analyses of the three genres, the overarching constitution of genre-oriented global units is then explicated. (shrink)

Internalists face the following challenge: what is it about an agent's internal states that explains why only these states can play whatever role the internalist thinks these states are playing? Internalists have frequently appealed to a special kind of epistemic access that we have to these states. But such claims have been challenged on both empirical and philosophical grounds. I will argue that internalists needn't appeal to any kind of privileged access claims. Rather, internalist conditions are important because of the (...) way in which we expect them to act as causal mediators between states of the world, on the one hand, and our beliefs and actions on the other. (shrink)

Embodied approaches in cognitive science hold that the body is crucial for cognition. What this claim amounts to, however, still remains unclear. This paper contributes to its clarification by confronting three ways of understanding embodiment—the sensorimotor approach, extended cognition and enactivism—with Locked-in syndrome. LIS is a case of severe global paralysis in which patients are unable to move and yet largely remain cognitively intact. We propose that LIS poses a challenge to embodied approaches to cognition requiring them to make explicit (...) the notion of embodiment they defend and its role for cognition. We argue that the sensorimotor and the extended functionalist approaches either fall short of accounting for cognition in LIS from an embodied perspective or do it too broadly by relegating the body only to a historical role. Enactivism conceives of the body as autonomous system and of cognition as sense-making. From this perspective embodiment is not equated with bodily movement but with forms of agency that do not disappear with body paralysis. Enactivism offers a clarifying perspective on embodiment and thus currently appears to be the framework in embodied cognition best suited to address the challenge posed by LIS. (shrink)

A new, social epistemology of science that addresses practical as well as theoretical concerns.

My main aim in this paper is to specify conditions that distinguish rational, or justified, hope from irrational, or unjustified hope. I begin by giving a brief characterization of hope and then turn to offering some criteria of rational hope. On my view both theoretical and practical norms are significant when assessing hope’s rationality. While others have recognized that there are theoretical and practical components to the state itself, when it comes to assessing its rationality, depending on the account, only (...) one of these dimensions matters. Either hope’s rationality is taken to be entirely derivative on the rationality of some belief that the hope entails, or the focus is entirely on the practical dimensions. If we take seriously the idea that both kinds of norms are at play, an account which treats these both as salient and as intertwining in important ways is preferable. I argue that as the practical importance of hope increases, the demand for the level of evidential support lessens and as the stakes get lower, the evidence for the likeliness of the hoped-for outcome coming to be must go up for the hope to be rational. This is so because a hope is rational insofar as it contributes to agential flourishing, but the different dimensions of hope each pick out different aspects of agency; to hope well requires agential competence in both the epistemic and practical realms. (shrink)

My main aim is to argue that most conceptions of doxastic agency do not respond to the skeptic’s challenge. I begin by considering some reasons for thinking that we are not doxastic agents. I then turn to a discussion of those who try to make sense of doxastic agency by appeal to belief’s reasons-responsive nature. What they end up calling agency is not robust enough to satisfy the challenge posed by the skeptics. To satisfy the skeptic, one needs to make (...) sense of the possibility of believing for nonevidential reasons. While this has been seen as an untenable view for both skeptics and anti-skeptics, I conclude by suggesting it is a position that has been too hastily dismissed. (shrink)

REVIEW ESSAY The minimal self needs a social update Self and other: Exploring subjectivity, empathy, and shame, by Dan Zahavi, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015, 304 pp.