BackgroundObtaining informed consent for intravenous thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke can be challenging, and little is known about if and how the informed consent procedure is performed by neurologists in clinical practice. This study examines the procedure of informed consent for intravenous thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke in high-volume stroke centers in the Netherlands.MethodsIn four high volume stroke centers, neurology residents and attending neurologists received an online questionnaire concerning informed consent for thrombolysis with tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA). The respondents (...) were asked to report their usual informed consent practice for tPA treatment and their considerations on whether informed consent should be obtained.ResultsFrom the 203 invited clinicians, 50% (n = 101) completed the questionnaire. One-third of the neurology residents (n = 21) and 21% of the neurologists (n = 8) reported that they always obtain informed consent for tPA treatment. If a patient is not capable of providing informed consent, 30% of the residents (n = 19) reported that they start tPA treatment without informed consent. In these circumstances, 53% of the neurologists (n = 20) reported that the resident under their supervision would start tPA treatment without informed consent. Most neurologists (n = 21; 55%) and neurology residents (n = 45; 72%) obtained informed consent within one minute. None of the respondents used more than five minutes for informed consent. Important themes regarding obtaining informed consent for treatment were patients’ capacity, and medical, ethical and legal considerations.ConclusionThe current practice of informed consent for thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke varies among neurologists and neurology residents. If informed consent is obtained, most clinicians stated to obtain informed consent within one minute. In the future, a shortened information provision process may be applied, making a shift from informed consent to informed refusal, while still considering the patient’s capacity, stroke severity, and possible treatment delays. (shrink)

The use of recent research on variations in medical practice to promote competitive market oriented cost containment strategies is critically examined. Research demonstrating widespread variations in physician practices for similar patient populations undermines the medical profession's claims about the scientific objectivity of medical practice and indicates the existence of widespread waste and inappropriate utilization of health care resources. Cost containment programs which rely on market-based care avoidance incentives, such as Medicare prospective payment or cost sharing plans, attempt to (...) impact medical practice variations by creating economic barriers between doctor and patient. An alternative interpretation of research on practice variations is presented, emphasizing containing costs while improving quality of care and achieving greater equity through planning and regulation of medical supply factors. (shrink)

In this commentary, I consider variability as an ordinary and irremediable feature related to the indexicality not only of transcripts but first of all of transcribing. In this sense, it is not just a characteristic of transcripts as texts, which can be assessed in a kind of philological comparison comparing formal features of autonomous and fixed textual objects, but a characteristic of transcribing as a situated practice. Practices are irremediably indexical, reflexively tied to the context of their production and (...) to the practical purposes of their accomplishment. Thus, a transcript is an evolving flexible object; it changes as the transcriber engages in listening and looking again at the tape, endlessly checking, revising, reformatting it. Transcribing relies in a fundamental way not only on the possibility of fixing the relevant details in a complex multilayered representation but also on the possibility of manipulating them, playing them again and again, at different paces, positions, fragments, while transcribing their finely tuned coordination, their synchronization, the fine articulation between different projections and sequential implicativenesses. These manipulations are one of the ways in which transcribing is accomplished as a situated practice. (shrink)

This paper will initially explore the assumptions about dissensus and consensus embedded in the values of cultures such as the dimension of individualism/collectivism. This will lead into an examination of how the emerging ideas about cultural forms of argument relate to dissensus and consensus in cultural practices. Finally, the paper will explore the ways that argument as dissensus can bridge the gap between cultural values and practice.

This article explores local variations in scientific practice through the lens of scientists’ international mobility. Its aim is twofold: to explore how the notion of epistemic living spaces may be mobilised as a tool for systematically exploring differences in scientific practice across locations, and to contribute to literature on scientific mobility. Using material from an interview study with scientists with experience of international mobility, and epistemic living spaces as an analytical frame, the paper describes a set of aspects (...) of life in science that interviewees described as being different in different places. These axes of variation were: embodied routines of research; resource levels and salaries; daily or longer-term rhythms of scientific life ; ‘efficiency’ and how work time is used; degree of hierarchy; the nature of social interactions between colleagues; the purposes of research; the social and interpersonal organisation of knowledge production; and the scale or ambition of research. In presenting an exploratory overview of these variations, the article points the way for future comparative investigation of epistemic cultures through studies of international mobility. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl’s eidetic phenomenology seeks a priori knowledge of essences and eidetic laws pertaining to conscious experience and its objects. Husserl believes that such eidetic knowledge has a higher epistemic status than the inherently fallible empirical knowledge, but a closer reading of his work shows that even eidetic claims are subject to error and open to modification. In this article, I develop a self-correcting account of Husserl’s method of eidetic variation, arguing that eidetic variation plays a critical role (...) in both challenging and improving upon the eidetic results in phenomenology. More specifically, I argue that the self-correcting account of eidetic variation 1) is consistent with Husserl’s own formulations of his eidetic methodology and epistemic principles; 2) captures the dual epistemic function of eidetic variation as means for both testing and intuitively validating eidetic claims; and 3) offers methodological support for contemporary attempts to integrate eidetic variation with non-eidetic methods and resources. To substantiate these claims, I first contrast the self-correcting account with the falsificationist interpretations of eidetic variation. Then, I turn to three applications of eidetic variation in order to examine how eidetic phenomenology could draw from real-life deviations, artificial variations, and critical–historical reflection. The goal is to lay the methodological groundwork for a self-correcting and integrative account of eidetic variation and illustrate its usefulness in research practice. (shrink)

Philosophical theorizing is often, either tacitly or explicitly, guided by intuitions about cases. Theories that accord with our intuitions are generally considered to be prima facie better than those that do not. However, recent empirical work has suggested that philosophically significant intuitions are variable and unstable in a number of ways. This variability of intuitions has led naturalistically inclined philosophers to disparage the practice of relying on intuitions for doing philosophy in general (e.g. Stich & Weinberg 2001) and for (...) doing moral philosophy in particular (Appiah 2008; Doris & Stich 2005; Horowitz 1998; Nadelhoffer & Feltz 2008; Sinnott Armstrong 2008). In this paper, we will draw on naturalistic considerations to offer some solace to philosophers who rely on intuitions. We wouldn’t call this a defense of intuitions, exactly, since we are sympathetic with much of the naturalists’ critique. But we want to introduce into the debate some neglected naturalistic reasons to be optimistic about intuitions, focusing especially on ethical intuitions. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore disciplinary variation in valuation practices by comparing the way research groups accumulate credibility across four epistemic cultures. Our analysis is based on case studies of four high-performing research groups representing very different epistemic cultures in humanities, social sciences, geosciences and mathematics. In each case we interviewed about ten researchers, analyzed relevant documents and observed a couple of meetings. In all four cases we found a cyclical process of accumulating credibility. At the same time, we (...) found significant differences in the manifestation of the six main resources that are part of the cycle, the mechanisms of conversion between these resources, the overall structure and the average speed of the credibility cycle. The different ways in which the groups use data and produce arguments affect the whole cycle of accumulating credibility. In some cultures, journal publications are the main source of recognition, but in others one can earn significant amounts of recognition for conference contributions or service to the academic community. Moreover, the collaboration practices in the respective fields strongly influence the connection between arguments and publications. In cultures where teams of researchers collaboratively produce arguments, it is more strongly embedded in the process of writing publications. We conclude that the credibility cycle can only be used as an analytical tool to explain the behavior of researchers or research groups when taking differences across epistemic cultures into account. (shrink)

The dichotomy between the conceptual and the empirical is part of common sense, yet its organizing force also extends to intellectual life more generally, including the disciplinary life of science and technology studies. This article problematizes this dichotomy as it operates in contemporary STS discussions, arguing instead that the conceptual and the empirical form unstable hybrids. Beginning with a discussion of the “discontents” with which the dominant theory methods packages in STS are viewed, it is suggested that STS has entered (...) a phase resembling Kuhnian normal science. Based on a discussion of the making of cognitive dissonance theory, it is then argued conceptual–empirical mixtures are unavoidable in actual research practice. This situation can be taken as an encouragement for more sustained exploration of conceptual–empirical relations and their inventive potentials. Invoking Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “continuous variation,” the article concludes that STS as a discipline is well served by promoting an ethos of empirical and conceptual experimentation. (shrink)

Résumé : Le stage d’enseignement est fréquemment considéré comme une période particulièrement propice au développement de la pratique réflexive. Souhaitant contribuer à cette réflexion, l’objectif de cet article vise à mieux comprendre la variation de la pratique réflexive des enseignants-stagiaires suivant les contextes académique et pratique. Pour ce faire, nous présentons une recherche qualitative, dont l’analyse thématique d’entrevues nous a permis de relever des variations contextuelles de la pratique réflexive à trois niveaux distincts : la motivation et la finalité (...) ; les acteurs soutenant la pratique réflexive ; enfin, les modalités d’interaction entre les acteurs. Abstract : Teaching practicum is usually considered as pivotal in the development of reflective practice. This article seeks to contribute to this reflexion in aiming to better understand how reflective practice varies between academic and practical contexts. In order to reach this objective, we proceeded to individual and group interviews with three groups of preservice teachers during their practicum. The content analysis that emerged shows that reflective practice varies at three different levels between academic and practical contexts: motivation and purpose; actors supporting reflective practice during practicum; interaction between actors. (shrink)

The entextualization and recontextualization of speech via transcription is a fundamental methodology of discourse analysis. However, particularly for researchers concerned with sociopolitical issues in discourse, transcription is not a straightforward tool but a highly problematic yet necessary form of linguistic representation. Recent commentators have critiqued the inconsistency of researcher transcripts; by contrast, this article seeks to understand rather than remedy such variability, conceptualizing diversity in transcripts as a kind of linguistic variation. Examining four different types of variation in (...) transcription practice — global format choices based on an analytic focus on content versus form, variation in the details of transcription format in reproducing one's own or others' transcripts, orthographic variation in a single transcript, and variation in translation — the article argues that although reflection about the transcription process cannot overcome the difficulties inherent in this methodology, it can allow scholars to be more attentive to their own transcription choices and their limitations and to make these explicit in their writing. (shrink)

Given the enduring debate over what constitutes quality, and therefore appropriate training, in clinical ethics consultation, it is unsurprising that there is variation in the structure and content of clinical ethics fellowship programs. However, this variation raises questions about the value of fellowship training when the ethicists that emerge from these programs might be quite different. The specifics of fellowship programs are largely internal. As such, the extent of variation and whether such variation is problematic remains (...) unclear. In this article, we summarize lessons learned from discussions between fellows, their mentors and program directors at the 2020 Clinical Ethics UnConference, and outline some possible ways to advance the conversation about variation in fellowship programs and training. We argue for the more open sharing of training specifics in order to help break down the siloed nature of fellowship programs. Greater transparency could, firstly, allow for more robust reflection on and refinement of training practices and, secondly, allow us to better balance professionally appropriate consistency with unavoidable or desirable variation based on local norms, culture and leadership. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the consequences of new scientific and philosophical approaches for the practical-theoretical framework of modern developmental biology. I highlight normal development, and the instructive-permissive distinction, as key parts of this framework which shape how variation is conceptualised and managed. Furthermore, I establish the different dimensions of biological variation: the units, temporality and mode of variation. Using the analytical frame established by this, I interpret a selection of examples as challenges to the instructive-permissive distinction. (...) These examples include the phenomena of developmental plasticity and transdifferentiation, the role of the microbiome in development, and new methodological approaches to standardisation and the assessment of causes. Furthermore, I argue that investigations into organismal development should investigate the effects of a wider range of kinds of variation including variation in the units, modes and temporalities of development. I close by examining various possible opportunities for producing and using normal development free of the assumptions of the instructive-permissive distinction. These opportunities are afforded by recent developments, which include new ways of producing standards incorporating more natural variation and being based on function rather than structure, and the ability to produce, store, and process large quantities of data. (shrink)

Michael Rosen’s The Shadow of God illustrates a distinctive way of understanding the relationship between ideas and history, while posing several connected questions. Among these are how the human condition of alienation may be overcome in a way that is ethically and intellectually defensible; how the search for reconciliation may generate, paradoxically, further alienation, and inspire terrible inhumanity; and whether a meaningful and good human life can be lived without the assurance of future justice—or, indeed, future existence. Rosen evokes the (...) emotional pull of the quest for reconciliation, and reveals the argumentative richness it has generated; yet reflection on human evil and suffering should chasten our aspirations to attain historical reconciliation or rational understanding. We may have good reason to turn away from both the project of theodicy, and the tendency to identify human value in something detached from living individuals, in favor of a reaffirmation of the value of the personal. Rosen’s own work illustrates how a reaffirmation of the personal, and respect for the freedom of others, may be practiced in and through the history of ideas. (shrink)

Background Intestinal transplant in infants with severe short bowel syndrome (SBS) is an emerging therapy, yet without sufficient long-term data or established guidelines, resulting in possible variation in practice. Objectives To assess current attitudes and counselling practices among physicians regarding intestinal transplant in infants with SBS, and to determine whether counselling and management vary between subspecialists or centres. Methods A national sample of practicing paediatric surgeons and neonatologists was surveyed via the American Academy of Paediatrics listserves. Results were (...) analysed by physician subspecialty and again by presence or absence of intestinal transplant at respondent's centre. Results The survey was completed by 433 respondents, consisting of 363 neonatologists and 70 paediatric surgeons. Fifty-seven respondents (13.2%) practiced at a centre that performed intestinal transplants in children. The vast majority of respondents (91% for preterm, 95% for term neonates) felt that maintaining a neonate with SBS on total parenteral nutrition for intestinal transplant was ethically optional (neither impermissible nor obligatory), and that parents should be given an informed choice whether to pursue that option. However, only 33% indicated they often/always offer intestinal transplant as a treatment option to families in this situation. Conclusions There is a marked disparity between individual physicians’ beliefs regarding the acceptability of intestinal transplant for severe SBS and their reported practice. Wide variability exists among physicians with respect to their knowledge, beliefs and practice regarding severe SBS, raising concerns about transparency and justice. Survival data prior to transplant, currently unavailable, are essential to rational decision making and informed parental permission. (shrink)

An exploration of mathematical style through 99 different proofs of the same theorem This book offers a multifaceted perspective on mathematics by demonstrating 99 different proofs of the same theorem. Each chapter solves an otherwise unremarkable equation in distinct historical, formal, and imaginative styles that range from Medieval, Topological, and Doggerel to Chromatic, Electrostatic, and Psychedelic. With a rare blend of humor and scholarly aplomb, Philip Ording weaves these variations into an accessible and wide-ranging narrative on the nature and (...) class='Hi'>practice of mathematics. Inspired by the experiments of the Paris-based writing group known as the Oulipo—whose members included Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, and Marcel Duchamp—Ording explores new ways to examine the aesthetic possibilities of mathematical activity. 99 Variations on a Proof is a mathematical take on Queneau’s Exercises in Style, a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, and it draws unexpected connections to everything from mysticism and technology to architecture and sign language. Through diagrams, found material, and other imagery, Ording illustrates the flexibility and creative potential of mathematics despite its reputation for precision and rigor. Readers will gain not only a bird’s-eye view of the discipline and its major branches but also new insights into its historical, philosophical, and cultural nuances. Readers, no matter their level of expertise, will discover in these proofs and accompanying commentary surprising new aspects of the mathematical landscape. (shrink)

This edited book explores diverse contestations and transformations of sovereignty around the world. Sovereignty plays a central role in modern political thought and practice, but it also remains fundamentally contested. Depending on the context and perspective, it seems either omnipresent or elusive, liberating or oppressive, fading or resilient. Indeed, if in recent decades sovereignty has been expected to wane, today it is back on the agenda; not as the solid bedrock of modern - international - politics, which it never (...) was, but as variations on a concept and institution that are ever contested and, as a result, constantly transforming. Bringing together perspectives from various disciplines, including International Relations (IR), political theory, geography, law, and anthropology, this volume: - goes beyond debates over the resilience or decline of sovereignty to instead emphasize how precisely the inherent ambiguities, tensions, and contestations in scholarship and practice spark sovereignty's manifold transformations; - offers three theoretical chapters that examine the illusions, contradictions, transformation, and lasting appeal of sovereignty and the nation-state; - explores sovereignty from various disciplinary perspectives in 11 empirical chapters that highlight its role in different contexts around the world, from the European Union (EU) to the South China Sea, to Western Sahara and Palestine; - problematizes the interplay between theory and practice of statehood and sovereignty, as in the perception of Northern Cyprus as a 'fake state', scholars' promotion of Kurdish 'statehood' in Iraq, and studies affirming the 'Islamic State'. This book will be of much interest to students of statehood, sovereignty, conflict studies and International Relations. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing analyses that aim to confront the problem of marked variation. Negatively marked differences are those natural variations that are used to cleave human beings into different categories (e.g., of disablement, of medicalized pathology, of subnormalcy, or of deviance). The problem of marked variation is: Why are some rather than other variations marked as epistemically or culturally significant or as a diagnostic of pathology, and What is the epistemic (...) background that makes these—rather than other variations—marked as subnormal? For Wilson (2018a), critical examination of the problem of marked variation is central to understanding the epistemology of medicalized pathology that made the history of eugenics possible. My aim is to explore the role marked variation plays in eugenic and other problematic classifications and the inferences they appear to license. I pay particular attention to the normative valuations of marked variations, how these valuations affect the inferences that are made by others about those possessing the variation, and how those possessing the variation perceive themselves. In the final sections, I illustrate this by critically discussing three putative kinship conceptions of race. I rely on these to extend the scope of the puzzle of marked variation from the context of historic and current markings of an individual’s variation as disability in the eugenics movement to historic and current markings for assigning putative racial ascriptions to individuals and groups. Lastly, I suggest that the problem of marked variation is a problem that looms over any epistemic account that is dependent upon sorting or classifying. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rethinking Variations of Musical MeaningfulnessAnneli ArhoAs a curious mind, I am able to focus on new kinds of topics, to research unknown practices; I am able to explore different cultures, interesting customs of making music, or I may trace various ways of musical thinking. It is wonderful to be able to enrich and transform my understanding of the musical world. [End Page 55]As a lived body,1 I have grown (...) up in the Western music tradition.2 This is my culture. This is the tradition I know as a composer, as a player of an instrument, as a teacher, as a researcher. Living in this culture has given me an embodied understanding of music. This understanding provides me with a meaningful background whenever I sense (hear, see, feel with my body's movements, read, fancy, and speak, write, or read about) music. I know this music in myself.As a musician, I have often been puzzled—even annoyed—that the tradition of writing about music favors descriptions and contemplations which I, as a musician, often find misleading and distorted. It has taken me a long time to realize two things: (1) the professional writers within various discourses create their own kinds of musical meaningfulness that are often interesting in themselves, and (2) in order to really share that kind of meaningfulness, I would have had to grow up within the discourse through which that meaningfulness evolved or was constructed.As a researcher, therefore, I have chosen to ground my research in my lived body, in the musicianship constituted through my experiences in making music. I am interested in phenomena of the lived world—as they are lived through and understood when making music.3 I am interested in different practices and divergent ways of regulating and guiding the making of music. I am interested in habitual ways of speaking about music, common ways of manual and mental training and rehearsing, and in different ways of teaching, supervising, and coaching. For me, all these reveal the phenomenon of music in our culture.My Living with Music—A Field of Musical MeaningfulnessAs a composer, I sometimes work with children and young people, and with their instrumental teachers. I have just started a three-year project in a music school, working each year with a new group of players. In 2004, I conducted a pilot project with recorder players. This year it will be the violin players; next year I may work with the piano players. There are many possibilities for the third year: the head of the school will have a hard job choosing a group from among the several enthusiastic candidates.I have enjoyed the open-mindedness of the children and of the volunteer teachers, too. Learning to play with music—learning to handle, vary, and transform, to compose, decompose, and recompose musical fragments, pieces, or sequences—may be as natural as any playing. Intertwining play, variation, and imitation seems to be an essential part of living and learning.But, I have also had to confront entrenched mythical conceptions of what it means to compose music, and curricula based on those conceptions.4 In my mind, composing cannot be regarded as a phenomenon that could simply be included in a curriculum. In practice, composing may refer to a variety of ways [End Page 56] of making music that are not always easy to tell apart from other culturally named phenomena, like playing, singing, improvising, or writing music.5 For me, composing simply refers to certain ways I live with music: several different ways of dealing with music, different kinds of activities, makings and doings, special states of mind, and special ways of using my embodied knowledge of music. Thus, composing refers to an individual and invisible6 background, an embodied perspective, a way of being, which shows me a certain variety of musical phenomena and their qualities, and conceals some others. Composing, like all arts of making and doing, generates its own practical and existential questions, which often are not an issue for those who do not compose. An outsider never really grasps the situation of a practitioner.Culturally bound ways of making music are being redefined... (shrink)

A new method for evaluating aircraft engine monitoring data is proposed. Commonly, prognostics and health management systems use knowledge of the degradation processes of certain engine components together with professional expert opinion to predict the Remaining Useful Life (RUL). New data-driven approaches have emerged to provide accurate diagnostics without relying on such costly processes. However, most of them lack an explanatory component to understand model learning and/or the nature of the data. A solution based on a novel recurrent version of (...) a VAE is proposed in this paper to overcome this gap. The latent space learned by the model, trained with data from sensors placed in different parts of these engines, is exploited to build a self-explanatory map that can visually evaluate the rate of deterioration of the engines. Besides, a simple regressor model is built on top of the learned features of the encoder in order to numerically predict the RUL. As a result, remarkable prognostic accuracy is achieved, outperforming most of the novel and state-of-the-art approaches on the available modular aero-propulsion system simulation data (C-MAPSS dataset) from NASA. In addition, a practical real-world application is included for Turbofan engine data. This study shows that the proposed prognostic and explainable framework presents a promising new approach. (shrink)

O'Shea concludes that Sellars's attempts to preserve the core truths in Kant's theory of experience and to integrate them with an overall scientific naturalist outlook can and should survive the rejection of several central components of Sellars's proposed adaptation of Kant's transcendental idealism: ABSTRACT: "Sellars’ career-long engagement with Kant’s philosophy involved both readings of Kant and appropriations of Kant that are nuanced, original, and related in complex ways to Sellars’ own philosophical views. In some ways similar to Strawson’s classic reading, (...) Sellars defended Kant’s theory of experience and his analysis of human knowledge as essentially correct. This includes various views on the nature of conceptual cognition, the thinking self, practical reason, perceptual experience, and the lawfulness of nature. On the other hand, and again like Strawson, Sellars regarded Kant’s transcendental idealism as involving a strong ontological commitment to unknowable but thinkable (and non-spatiotemporal) ‘things in themselves’. However, whereas Strawson regarded such a position as deeply incoherent, Sellars argues that Kant’s theological conception of things in themselves can coherently be replaced with a scientific realist conception of things in themselves as theoretically postulated imperceptible processes, which play a structurally similar role for Sellars in grounding the Kantian-phenomenal ‘appearances’ in the ‘manifest image’ of the world. Sellars’ highly complex but sophisticated reading of Kant on sensibility and intuition, when combined with Sellars’ own idiosyncratic views on sensory qualia, render it even more difficult to come to terms with Sellars’ engagements with Kant’s idealism. This chapter attempts to provide a concise presentation and evaluation of certain central themes in Sellars’ complex philosophical dialogue with Kant.". (shrink)

Objectives: Machine learning (ML) has the potential to facilitate “continual learning” in medicine, in which an ML system continues to evolve in response to exposure to new data over time, even after being deployed in a clinical setting. In this article, we provide a tutorial on the range of ethical issues raised by the use of such “adaptive” ML systems in medicine that have, thus far, been neglected in the literature. -/- Target audience: The target audiences for this tutorial are (...) the developers of ML AI systems, healthcare regulators, the broader medical informatics community, and practicing clinicians. -/- Scope: Discussions of adaptive ML systems to date have overlooked the distinction between 2 sorts of variance that such systems may exhibit—diachronic evolution (change over time) and synchronic variation (difference between cotemporaneous instantiations of the algorithm at different sites)—and underestimated the significance of the latter. We highlight the challenges that diachronic evolution and synchronic variation present for the quality of patient care, informed consent, and equity, and discuss the complex ethical trade-offs involved in the design of such systems. (shrink)

Why do people comply with coronavirus disease 2019 public health guidance? This study considers cultural-psychological foundations of variation in beliefs about motivations for such compliance. Specifically, we focused on beliefs about two sources of prosocial motivation: desire to protect others and obligation to society. Across two studies, we observed that the relative emphasis on the desire to protect others as an explanation for compliance was greater in the United States settings associated with cultural ecologies of abstracted independence than in (...) Chinese settings associated with cultural ecologies of embedded interdependence. We observed these patterns for explanations of psychological experience of both others and self, and for compliance with mandates for both social distancing and face masks. Discussion of results considers both practical implications for motivating compliance with public health guidance and theoretical implications for denaturalizing prevailing accounts of prosocial motivation. (shrink)

The importance of music for epinician, as for all other types of choral performance in Archaic and Classical Greece, has long been recognized, but the exiguousness of the evidence for the compositional principles behind such music, and for what these poems actually sounded like in performance, has limited scholarly enquiries. Examination of Pindar's texts themselves for evidence of his musical practices was for a long time dominated by extensive and often inconclusive debate about the relations between metres and modes. More (...) recently scholars have begun to explore Pindar's relations to contemporary developments in musical performance, and in doing so have opened up new questions about how music affected audiences as aesthetically and culturally significant in its own right, and how it interacted with the language of the text. This article will investigate the performance scenarios of two of Pindar's epinicians, arguing that in each case the poems contain indications of specific musical accompaniments, and use these scenarios as a starting point for engaging with wider interpretative questions. The self-referential dimension of these compositions will be of particular importance; I shall argue that Pindar deployed a type of musical intertextuality, in which his compositions draw on pre-existing melodic structures, utilizing their cultural associations for the purposes of his own pieces, a process crucial to the dynamics of performance of the poems concerned. By doing so I shall attempt to reach a better understanding of the roles played by music in epinician performance and of Pindar's place in relation to the musical culture in which he worked. (shrink)

Fifty years ago this month[[June]], in the Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University, the world's first electronic stored-program computer performed its first calculation. The tiny program, stored on the face of a cathode ray tube, was just 17 instructions long. Electronic engineers Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn built the Manchester computer in accordance with fundamental ideas explained to them by Max Newman, professor of mathematics at Manchester. The computer fell sideways out of research that nobody could have guessed would have (...) any practical application. The initial idea germinated thirteen years earlier in the head of Alan Turing, who was working on a recherché problem in mathematical logic. While thinking about this problem Turing dreamed up an abstract machine, nowadays known simply as the 'universal Turing machine' and which, as he put it, would compute 'all numbers which could naturally be regarded as computable'. The machine consisted of a memory in.. (shrink)

In several passages, Frege suggests that successful communication requires that speaker and audience understand the uttered words and sentences to have the same sense. On the other hand, Frege concedes that, in many ordinary cases, variation in sense is tolerable. In a recent article in this journal, Michaelson and Textor (2023) offer a new interpretation of Frege on the tolerability of sense variation according to which variation in sense is tolerable when the conversation aims at joint action, (...) but not when the conversation aims at joint thought. We maintain, contra Michaelson and Textor, that whether sense variation is tolerable does not depend on the conversational purpose, whether it be theoretical or practical. Rather, whether sense variation is tolerable depends instead on the conversational background. This picture offers what we take to be a more plausible reconstruction of Frege’s own view. (shrink)

Kierkegaard dismissed the quest for the historical Jesus that dominated historical‐critical biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century. Instead of historical reconstructions of the life of Jesus, he embarked on polyphonic rewritings of the story of the life of Jesus from still new perspectives. This chapter investigates how Kierkegaard's different narrations of the “life of Jesus” inscribe the New Testament texts and imitate their narrative art, particularly the role of dramatic irony, in relation to Kierkegaard's metareflections on how to communicate this (...) story in a modern age. (shrink)

Can right reason, Properly understood, Provide a justification for our moral duties? modern deontological or kantian type ethical theories generally argue that moral duties are duties to perform certain actions "without" reference to any end to be achieved. But rational action, I.E., Action dictated by practical reason cannot be other than purposive action, I.E., Action directed toward some end to be achieved. As such, Deontology must fail in its attempt to answer the question, Why be moral at all. Turning to (...) teleological theories, The author distinguishes so-Called hedonistic theories, Those in which an end is good merely because it is desired from natural law theories, Those in which the end is desired because it is subjectively good. Because hedonistic teleological theories involve no more than purely prudential considerations of one's own interests, Judgments as to what ought to be done can only be rationally justified in terms of an objective end. (shrink)

The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as “shared expectations,” the “selective patterning of attention and behaviour,” “cultural evolution,” “cultural inheritance,” and “implicit learning” are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater (...) specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational (free-energy) approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process “thinking through other minds” (TTOM) – in effect, the process of inferring other agents’ expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal (variational) treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Human Goodness: Pragmatic Variations on Platonic ThemesCatherine E. MorrisonHuman Goodness: Pragmatic Variations on Platonic Themes by Paul Schollmeier Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. x + 302. $80.00, cloth.This is a book about spirits—human, godly, ghostly, and alcoholic. Paul Schollmeier's Human Goodness: Pragmatic Variations on Platonic Themes explores how humble humans act morally in an absurd world. Schollmeier contends that the Socratic spirit, or daimon, of self-knowledge and (...) hypothesis testing provides the foundation for a deeply human moral philosophy. It is, in Schollmeier's elegant phrasing, daimonic rather than eudaimonic, joining Aristotle and Plato with William James, as well as contributions from the ghosts of David Hume and Immanuel Kant and a few rounds of whiskey. Spirits abound! Mixing Socratic skepticism with Jamesian empiricism, Schollmeier argues that we act best when we apply general principles held as opinion (not as certain knowledge), and tested through experience, to our particular situation. When these opinions yield fruit, we find ourselves less at the whim of our capricious surroundings; when they do not, we are obliged to recognize the provisional nature of our opinions and change them. The ends of these day-to-day activities reflect a far grander cosmological order, one we ignore to our mortal (and moral) peril. It is by engaging in this intellectual activity that we are made happy, and it is in measured pursuit of this happiness that we are virtuous. Our actions are neither absolutely true nor perfect. They are instead the best that we can do. And for a reviewer attempting to encapsulate a finely nuanced book in a small space, this is comforting advice indeed. [End Page 190]The book begins with a puzzle: The curious twin claims in Plato's Apology that, true to the Delphic oracle's proclamation, Socrates is both wise and knows nothing. The key to this apparent paradox, Schollmeier contends, is the difference between divine knowledge, "ultimate, nonhypothetical knowledge of final causes" (6), and human knowledge, which is hypothetical only. Schollmeier marshals William James to argue that as humans, we encounter objects of knowledge perceptually; even our concepts are fashioned from this meager material. Without access to divine knowledge, humans must test hypotheses and assume that they are true only provisionally.James's (and Hume's) emphasis on the passions as the foundation for action, however, gives Schollmeier pause. In order to construct a moral philosophy that avoids absolutism but remains objective, Schollmeier argues for a harmony between the intellectual and the passional that is ultimately rational, our Socratic daimon. We are neither gods nor animals. Should we surrender rationality to desire, Schollmeier warns in concert with Socrates, our already fragile perceptual knowledge will be further distorted by fickle emotion. It is precisely because our grasp on the world is so tenuous that we must pay heed to cool intellect rather than hot passion.Such skepticism of our claim to know might make one hesitant to engage in the enigmatic world—but we have no choice! In order to find our hybrid daimon, both Socratic and pragmatic, Schollmeier suggests rhetoric as the methodology best suited to serving practical knowledge because it eschews certainty in favor of probability and acknowledges that the hypotheses on which we act are tentative and revisable. To this end, Schollmeier highlights the enthymeme and argument by example as the two techniques that best suit the nature of our hypothetical knowledge, and he urges a return to philodoxy, the love of opinion.Giving up our claim to certainty need not be a dismal proposition. Having established his methodology, Schollmeier begins building a moral philosophy that embraces an ontology of change and contends that our happiness provides us with stability in the form of a rational teleology. The objects of our human happiness are fleeting and changeable, so happiness cannot be static but is, rather, an activity that is its own end, "an activity that is an intellectual inquiry" (78). Our happiness is contingent on our ability to hypothetically determine, in our particular setting, our function and then fulfill this role to the best of our abilities. Depending on the setting, it may be dancing, parenting, or simply a lively... (shrink)

This target article is concerned with the implications of the surprisingly different experimental practices in economics and in areas of psychology relevant to both economists and psychologists, such as behavioral decision making. We consider four features of experimentation in economics, namely, script enactment, repeated trials, performance-based monetary payments, and the proscription against deception, and compare them to experimental practices in psychology, primarily in the area of behavioral decision making. Whereas economists bring a precisely defined “script” to experiments for participants to (...) enact, psychologists often do not provide such a script, leaving participants to infer what choices the situation affords. By often using repeated experimental trials, economists allow participants to learn about the task and the environment; psychologists typically do not. Economists generally pay participants on the basis of clearly defined performance criteria; psychologists usually pay a flat fee or grant a fixed amount of course credit. Economists virtually never deceive participants; psychologists, especially in some areas of inquiry, often do. We argue that experimental standards in economics are regulatory in that they allow for little variation between the experimental practices of individual researchers. The experimental standards in psychology, by contrast, are comparatively laissez-faire. We believe that the wider range of experimental practices in psychology reflects a lack of procedural regularity that may contribute to the variability of empirical findings in the research fields under consideration. We conclude with a call for more research on the consequences of methodological preferences, such as the use on monetary payments, and propose a “do-it-both-ways” rule regarding the enactment of scripts, repetition of trials, and performance-based monetary payments. We also argue, on pragmatic grounds, that the default practice should be not to deceive participants. Key Words: behavioral decision making; cognitive illusions; deception; experimental design; experimental economics; experimental practices; financial incentives; learning; role playing. (shrink)