_Despite advances in standard of living of the population, the condition of widows and divorced women remains deplorable in society. The situation is worse in developing nations with their unique social, cultural and economic milieu, which at times ignores the basic human rights of this vulnerable section of society. A gap exists in life expectancies of men and women in both developing and developed nations. This, coupled with greater remarriage rates in men, ensures that the number of widows continues to (...) exceed that of widowers. Moreover, with women becoming more educated, economically independent and aware of their rights, divorce rates are increasing along with associated psychological ramifications. The fact that widowed/divorced women suffer from varying psychological stressors is often ignored. It has been concluded in various studies that such stressors could be harbingers of psychiatric illnesses (e.g., depression, anxiety, substance dependence), and hence should be taken into account by treating physicians, social workers and others who come to the aid of such women. A change in mindset of the society is required before these women get their rightful place, for which a strong will is needed in the minds of the people, and in law-governing bodies._. (shrink)

The effect of recent experience on current behavior has been studied extensively in simple laboratory tasks. We explore the nature of sequential effects in the more naturalistic setting of automobile driving. Driving is a safety-critical task in which delayed response times may have severe consequences. Using a realistic driving simulator, we find significant sequential effects in pedal-press response times that depend on the history of recent stimuli and responses. Response times are slowed up to 100 ms in particular cases, a (...) delay that has dangerous practical consequences. Further, we observe a significant number of history-related pedal misapplications, which have recently been noted as a cause for concern in the automotive safety community. By anticipating these consequences of sequential context, driver assistance systems could mitigate the effects of performance degradations and thus critically improve driver safety. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

Friendly persuasion, in contrast to deterrent measures like tax audits and penalties on underreported taxes, is a positive and possibly a cost effective method of increasing taxpayer compliance. However, prior studies have failed to show that friendly persuasion has a significant impact on compliance (Blumenthal et al., 2001; McGraw and Scholz, 1991). In our study, in contrast to prior studies, we examine the impact of generating and reading reasons supporting compliance as friendly persuasion on individuals' income reporting behavior as well (...) as control for gender effects. Specifically, we predict an interaction effect between friendly persuasion and gender on compliance behavior. We carried out a 2 (friendly persuasion and control) × 2 (men and women) full factorial experiment, where participants earned $30 by completing two questionnaires. Participants in the friendly persuasion group were required first to generate and second to read a list of reasons why they should comply fully. Afterwards, participants in both groups were asked to report the income they earned and pay tax on the reported income. The results show a significant main effect for gender as well as a significant interaction effect between gender and friendly persuasion on income reported. Women in the friendly persuasion group reported significantly higher income compared to men in that group. Other comparisons were not significant. Policy implications for increasing taxpayers' ethics and compliance are highlighted. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

The authors argue that the chain of events which they describe is the end-product of a century's effort to convert Hindus into a 'proper' modern nation and a conventional ethnic majority. Simultaneously, the effort is equally to turn the followers of other Indian faiths into well-behaved ethnic minorities and nationalities. The American model of a 'melting pot' is being imposed with the expectation that it will dissolve India's primordial identities. A society which has for centuries been a salad bowl of (...) diverse communities, each identifiably different but constituting parts of a whole, is being forced to conform to the pattern of a 'proper' nation-state. (shrink)

Millions of memes are created and shared every day on social media platforms. Memes are a great tool to spread humour. However, some people use it to target an individual or a group generating offensive content in a polite and sarcastic way. Lack of moderation of such memes spreads hatred and can lead to depression like psychological conditions. Many successful studies related to analysis of language such as sentiment analysis and analysis of images such as image classification have been performed. (...) However, most of these studies rely only upon either one of these components. As classifying meme is one problem which cannot be solved by relying upon only any one of these aspects, the present work identifies, addresses, and ensembles both the aspects for analyzing such data. In this research, we propose a solution to the problems in which the classification depends on more than one model. This paper proposes two different approaches to solve the problem of identifying hate memes. The first approach uses sentiment analysis based on image captioning and text written on the meme. The second approach is to combine features from different modalities. These approaches utilize a combination of glove, encoder-decoder, and OCR with Adamax optimizer deep learning algorithms. Facebook Challenge Hateful Meme Dataset is utilized which contains approximately 8500 meme images. Both the approaches are implemented on the live challenge competition by Facebook and predicted quite acceptable results. Both approaches are tested on the validation dataset, and results are found to be promising for both models. (shrink)

With improvement in medical services in the last few years, there has been a constant rise in the geriatric population throughout the world, more so in the developing countries. The elderly are highly prone to develop psychiatric disorders, probably because of age related changes in the brain, concomitant physical disorders, as well as increased stress in later life. Psychiatric disorders in this population may have a different presentation than in other groups and some of psychopathologies might be mistaken for normal (...) age related changes by an unwary clinician. Therefore the need of the day is to train psychiatrists and physicians to better recognize and manage mental disorders in this age group. (shrink)

Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being better than another kind. Other theories of goodness—those that take there to be (...) absolute goodness—are comparatively rich: they offer grounds for judging some types of things better than others because they have more absolute goodness. Moorean accounts, for example, can tell us that humans and human experiences are superior to bees and blades of grass. But such theories tend to be descriptively poor: they struggle to tell us in virtue of what this is so. In this essay we motivate and flesh out a view that splits the difference between accounts of goodness as relative and accounts of goodness as absolute. Such a view holds promise only if the mechanics of this kind of metaphysics of goodness can be worked out. Here we present a view on which the paradigm for absolute goodness is God and the paradigm for each kind of relative goodness is a divine idea. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 108-112 [Access article in PDF] Themes in the Philosophy of Music, by Stephen Davies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 283 pp., hardcover. Over the last few decades, there has been a remarkable output of several books and articles on the philosophy of music. Stephen Davies is one of the leading contributors to this growing literature in the Philosophy of Music. This (...) important and thought-provoking volume collects fifteen of Davies's essays on various philosophical issues pertaining to music such as ontology, performance, expression, and appreciation. With the exception of two, all of the essays have been published before. There is not enough space here to do justice to all fifteen essays, and thus I focus on those that strike me as most important and where I disagree with Davies.First a word about the book's relevance to aesthetic education and itspotential for use in aesthetic education. Davies's book strikes me as having immense potential for aesthetic education. I can easily see the various essays as being of great value in educating performers, composers, musicologists, and music lovers about various aspects of performance and appreciation especially. Here is a brief list of questions pertinent to aesthetic education that Davies's work raises and addresses: Why is performance on authentic instruments important? What is involved in understanding musical works? Is technical training necessary to appreciate musical works fully? To what degree can the performer create her own interpretation of a work, and how much does the score constrain her?Now on to the essays themselves. The first part of Davies's volume concerns ontology, and the first essay "John Cage's 4'33": Is it Music?" addresses this very famous musical work. Davies argues that 4'33" is not music but rather a theatrical piece about music because it does not exclude anysounds as being ambient noise, as Davies thinks musical works should do. Davies does not deny, however, that this work is an artwork. He thinks instead that the work is not organized sound, as all music must be, for it does not exclude any sonic events during performance as ambient; even sounds made by the performer of this work, claims Davies, are mistakes and not ambient. Thus neither Cage nor the performer organize (select, appropriate) sounds. Davies also suggests that while Cage wants us to have an aesthetic interest in the sonic properties of 4'33," he failed in his intention for we hear the work instead in musico-historical terms.Contrary to Davies's view, one mustwonder if 4'33" just is a theatrical piece about music, not a musical work as such. Unlike theater and theatrical works which are meant to be both seen and heard, Cage's work is only meant to be heard. Davies's view would seem to neglect this important auditory aspect in claiming that the work is just theater not music. Besides, why must all musical works exclude some soundsas ambient, and why might Cage's [End Page 108] work not be an exception to this? Why couldn't 4'33" be a limiting case of music, at one extreme of a range of musical works? As for Davies's claim that any sounds made by the performer who is supposed to be silent are mistakes not ambient noise, one must wonder if Cage intended instead that sounds made by the performer (such as musical tones or coughs) be bracketed by listeners as not part of the work while sounds made by the audience are part of the work, thus undermining the audience-performer distinction. Moreover, against Davies's claim that Cage intended us to have an aesthetic interest in sonic properties, I submit that Cage was Zen-influenced and not committed to such dualisticaesthetic concepts (such as beautiful vs. ugly) or any concepts for that matter, whether musico-historical or not. Instead, Cage intended us to simplylisten, with an open mind and openears, without adhering rigidly to concepts or hearing 4'33" in musico-historical terms, difficult as that may be. Finally, there... (shrink)

I criticize Julian Dodd's Platonist conception of musical works as discovered eternal types, and defend and elaborate upon Jerrold Levinson's conception of musical works as creatable indicated types. I raise broadly three sorts of worries for Dodd. First, I argue that Dodd conflates types with Platonist universals in claiming that types are eternal and discovered. Secondly, I raise worries for Dodd's Platonist claim that musical works are discovered not created. Here I argue that Dodd's claim goes against our current musical (...) practice. I then argue that Dodd's view leads to a false divide across the arts, and defend this claim from Dodd's criticisms. I also defend the claim that Dodd's view robs artists of the special status we give to them as creators, not merely creative discoverers. I suggest also that musical works can not only be created but can also plausibly cease to exist, which Dodd's Platonism would seem to deny. Thirdly and finally, I defend the conception of musical works as indicated types from Dodd's criticisms. Here I argue that Dodd's view is ontologically profligate. I also submit that Dodd is mistaken in thinking that indicated types have times as their constituents and thus must be events. (shrink)

This study used a laboratory experiment with monetary incentives to test the impact of three personal factors (moral reasoning, value orientation and risk preference), and three situational factors (the presence/absence of audits, tax inequity, and peer reporting behavior), while controlling for the impact of other demographic characteristics, on tax compliance. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) reveals that all the main effects analyzed are statistically significant and robustly influence tax compliance behavior. These results highlight the importance of obtaining a proper understanding of (...) these factors for developing effective policies for increasing the level of compliance, and indicate that standard enforcement polices based on punishment alone should be supplemented by an information system that would acquaint tax payers with the compliance level of other tax payers; reinforce the concept of fairness of the tax system among tax payers; and develop programs that enhance and appeal to a taxpayer's moral conscience and reinforce social cohesion. (shrink)

Since 1900, debates about the justification of punishment have also been debates about the cause of crime. In the early twentieth century, the rehabilitative ideal of punishment viewed mental illness and dysfunction in individuals as the cause of crime. Starting in the 1970s, retributivism identified the immorality of human agents as the source of crime, which dovetailed well with the “tough-on-crime” political milieu of the 1980s and 1990s that produced mass incarceration. After surveying these historical trends, Wirts argues for a (...) social critical view that crime is best understood as a product of an unjust society, not faulty human beings. This view should take the lessons learned by the critiques of rehabilitation, however, and resist the tendency to reduce human beings to recipients of social services. (shrink)

Over the last several years, there has been a growing controversy about whether Yogacara Buddhism can be said to be idealist in some sense, as used to be commonly thought by earlier scholars. In this paper, I first clarify the different senses of idealism that might be pertinent to the debate. I then focus on some of the works of Vasubandhu, limiting myself to his Vimsatika, Trimsika, and Trisvabhavanirdesa. I argue that classical Yogacara Buddhism, at least as found in these (...) works of Vasubandhu, is closer to epistemic rather than metaphysical idealism or absolute idealism, as I understand these. However, there are undoubtedly some important differences between Vasubandhu's Yogacara and Western epistemic idealism that cast doubt on the idea that Yogacara is simply to be lumped together with Western epistemic idealism. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has made enormous contributions to the philosophy of action, epistemology, semantics and philosophy of mind and today is recognized as one of the most important analytical philosophers of the late twentieth century. _Donald Davidson: Truth, Meaning and Knowledge_ addresses * Davidson's writings on epistemology and theory of language with their implications of ontology and philosophy of mind * the central issue of whether truth is the ultimate goal of enquiry, challenged by contributions from Richard Rorty and Paul Horwich (...) * Davidson's approach to semantics and applied linguistics as addressed by Kirk Ludwig, Gabriel Segal, Peter Pagin, Stephen Neale, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore and Reinaldo Elugardo * Davidson's advances in the philosophy of mind in relation to the views of Williard V. Quine, John McDowell and Peter F. Strawson, in essays by Roger Gibson and Anita Avramides. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to describe a type of law governing involuntary treatment that is based on decision-making capability and not on risk of harm to self or others. It is consistent with the legal and ethical principles followed in general medicine, and non-discriminatory against people with a mental illness. The rationale behind the proposal is outlined, as well as its principles and main features. It is argued that this type of law could be adapted to the needs (...) of low and middle-income countries without sacrificing its underlying principles, and that it lends itself to such adaptation much better than traditional mental health legislation. (shrink)

The topic of professionalism has dominated the content of major academic medicine publications during the past decade and continues to do so. The message of this current wave of professionalism is that medical educators need to be more attentive to the moral sensibilities of trainees, to their interpersonal and affective dimensions, and to their social conscience, all to the end of skilled, humanistic physicians. Urgent calls to address professionalism from such groups as the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American (...) Board of Internal Medicine, and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, among others. In fact, at the 2004 annual meeting of the AAMC six separate presentations addressed professionalism with such titles as "Evaluating Humanism and Professionalism," Professionalism: Expectation, Education, Evaluation," or "Toward Assessing Professional Behaviors of Medical Students through Peer Observations". Professionalism, then, has become part of the current academic medicine parlance, used by administrators, clinical faculty, residency programs, and professional organizations with an expectation of shared meanings and goals. All of these stakeholders focus on what has become a consistent list of attributes deemed to be the essence of professionalism, which usually include variations on altruism, duty, excellence, honor and integrity, accountability, and respect. In fact, most of the scholarly work to date has been listing, describing, decrying, and measuring/evaluating it. In this collection of essays, we don’t argue with these attributes. Instead, we ask questions of the discourse from which they arise, how the specialized language of academic medicine disciplines has defined, organized, contained, and made seemingly immutable a group of attitudes, values, and behaviors subsumed under the label "professional" or "professionalism." This collection aims to be a critical text, one that questions the profession’s beliefs about the nature of its work and how such beliefs are enacted in medical education, particularly as they fuel the professionalism discourse. In addition, we will scrutinize how the discourse is enacted in both the formal and hidden curriculum, and in the larger medical environment. (shrink)

In this article, I assume that musical works are abstract types, and I raise and address a new question concerning musical ontology that may take the types view at least a step further: When do musical works cease to exist? I then propound my view about musical works as types, which is somewhat like the Aristotelian Realist position concerning universals. Next, I address some objections to that view. Finally, I provide some grounds for rejecting alternative views that see Western classical (...) musical works before 1950 (the sorts of musical works the discussion here is restricted to) either as classes or else as kinds. (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Articulates an imaginationist solution to the question of how purely instrumental music can be perceived by a listener as having emotional content. Both musicians and laypersons can perceive purely instrumental music without words or an associated story or program as expressing emotions such as happiness and sadness. But how? In this book, Saam Trivedi discusses and critiques the leading philosophical approaches to this question, including formalism, metaphorism, expression theories, arousalism, resemblance theories, and persona theories. Finding these to be inadequate, (...) he advocates an “imaginationist” solution, by which absolute music is not really or literally sad but is only imagined to be so in a variety of ways. In particular, he argues that we as listeners animate the music ourselves, imaginatively projecting life and mental states onto it. Bolstering his argument with empirical data from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science, Trivedi also addresses and explores larger philosophical questions such as the nature of emotions, metaphors, and imagination. Saam Trivedi is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. (shrink)