Using an economic bargaining game, we tested for the existence of two phenomena related to social norms, namely norm manipulation – the selection of an interpretation of the norm that best suits an individual – and norm evasion – the deliberate, private violation of a social norm. We found that the manipulation of a norm of fairness was characterized by a self-serving bias in beliefs about what constituted normatively acceptable behaviour, so that an individual who made an uneven bargaining offer (...) not only genuinely believed it was fair, but also believed that recipients found it fair, even though recipients of the offer considered it to be unfair. In contrast, norm evasion operated as a highly explicit process. When they could do so without the recipient's knowledge, individuals made uneven offers despite knowing that their behaviour was unfair. (shrink)

In the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry, psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress. The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to widespread service delivery in places like Australia, North America, and Europe, which has prompted ethical questions by social scientists and bioethicists. Taking a broader view, we argue that the ethics of psychedelic therapy (...) concerns not simply how psychotherapies are different when paired with psychedelic drugs, but how psychedelic therapies shape and are shaped by different values, norms, and metaphysical commitments. Drawing from the published literature and interviews with seven psychedelic therapists working in clinical trials in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, this article opens the black box of the treatments to consider the values and informal debates currently animating the therapies. Considering questions of patient autonomy, mechanisms of therapeutic action, and which therapies are best suited to pair with psychedelic substances, we examine the ethics of psychedelic therapy as an emergent form of life. To bring this form of life out in fuller relief, we conclude by comparing and contrasting it with ayahuasca use in Amazonian shamanism. (shrink)

An axiomatic treatment of synthetic domain theory is presented, in the framework of the internal logic of an arbitrary topos. We present new proofs of known facts, new equivalences between our axioms and known principles, and proofs of new facts, such as the theorem that the regular complete objects are closed under lifting . In Sections 2–4 we investigate models, and obtain independence results. In Section 2 we look at a model in de Modified realizability Topos, where the Scott Principle (...) fails, and the complete objects are not closed under lifting. Section 3 treats the standard model in the Effective Topos. Theorem 3.2 gives a new characterization of the initial lift-algebra relative to the dominance. We prove that in the standard case it is not the internal colimit of the chain 0 → L → L 2 → ⋯ . The models in Sections 2 and 3 compare via an adjunction. Section 4 discusses a model in a Grothendieck topos. A feature here is that N is not well-complete , whereas 2 is. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractScience and technology consortia provide a viable solution for the recent unsustainable academic growth in biomedical research.

What is considered to be fair depends on context-dependent expectations. Using a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, we demonstrate that both fair behavior and perceptions of fairness depend upon beliefs about what one ought to do in a situation—that is, upon normative expectations. We manipulate such expectations by creating informational asymmetries about the offer choices available to the Proposer, and find that behavior varies accordingly. Proposers and Responders show a remarkable degree of agreement in their beliefs about which choices (...) are considered fair. We discuss how these results fit into a theory of social norms. (shrink)

This paper presents an implemented computational model of word acquisition which learns directly from raw multimodal sensory input. Set in an information theoretic framework, the model acquires a lexicon by finding and statistically modeling consistent cross‐modal structure. The model has been implemented in a system using novel speech processing, computer vision, and machine learning algorithms. In evaluations the model successfully performed speech segmentation, word discovery and visual categorization from spontaneous infant‐directed speech paired with video images of single objects. These results (...) demonstrate the possibility of using state‐of‐the‐art techniques from sensory pattern recognition and machine learning to implement cognitive models which can process raw sensor data without the need for human transcription or labeling. (shrink)

Subjects communicated prior to playing trust games; the richness of the communication media and the topics of conversation were manipulated. Communication richness failed to produce significant differences in first-mover investments. However, the topics of conversation made a significant difference: the amounts sent were considerably higher in the unrestricted communication conditions than in the restricted communication and no-communication conditions. Most importantly, we find that first-movers' expectations of second-movers' reciprocation are influenced by communication and strongly predict their levels of investment.

Virtue ethics is regarded as the key in search of moral excellence among corporations. Yet, there are limited works to empirically investigate what virtuous character morally good corporations is expected to exhibit in the course of business from the perspective of customers. To fill this gap, we argue that customers are to evaluate firm’s virtuous character using Confucian cardinal virtues (ren, yi, and li) and perceived virtuousness determines customer loyalty. We test this argument using a sample of 276 Hong Kong (...) Chinese. The result suggests that a corporation not only has to offer a good value and high quality to customers but also needs to develop and acquire virtuous character in retaining customer loyalty. Firm has to embrace ren, yi, and li as the primary business goal. In fact, they are not the means but the end in themselves. The continuous pursuit of these cardinal virtues at the firm level not only establishes proper corporate values but also enables a firm to act morally in the course of business. Such kind of firm is known as junzi corporation. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 55-57, June 2011.

The main focus of this article is to present the practical aspect of the code rules of variation and the search for a second set of genomic rules, including comparison of sequences to understand how to preserve compatible organisms in danger of extinction and how to generate biodiversity. Three new rules of variation are introduced: 1) homologous recombination, 2) a healthy fertile offspring, and 3) comparison of compatible genomes. The novel search in the natural world for fully compatible genomes capable (...) of homologous recombination is explored by using examples of human polymorphisms and by the production of fertile offspring by crossbreeding. By a rational control of: natural crossbreeding of organisms with compatible genomes (something already happening in nature), the current work focuses on the generation of new varieties after a careful plan. This study is presented within the context of biosemiotics, which studies the processing of information, signalling and signs by living systems. I define a group of organisms having compatible genomes as a single theme: the genomic species or population, able to speak the same molecular language through different accents, with each variety within a theme being a different version of the same book. These studies have a molecular, compatible genetics context. Population and ecosystem biosemiotics will be exemplified by a possible genetic damage capable of causing mutations by breaking the rules of variation through the coordinated patterns of atoms present in the 9/11 World Trade Center contaminated dust (U, Ba, La, Ce, Sr, Rb, K, Mn, Mg, etc.), combination that may be able to overload the molecular quality control mechanisms of the human body. I introduce here the balance of codons in the circular genetic code: 2[1(1)+1(3)+1(4)+4(2)]=2[2(2)+3(4)]. (shrink)

The slogan that rationality is about responding to reasons has a turbulent history: once taken for granted; then widely rejected; now enjoying a resurgence. The slogan is made harder to assess by an ever-increasing plethora of distinctions pertaining to reasons and rationality. Here we are occupied with two such distinctions: that between subjective and objective reasons, and that between structural rationality (a.k.a. coherence) and substantive rationality (a.k.a. reasonableness). Our paper has two main aims. The first is to defend dualism about (...) rationality – the view that affirms a deep distinction between structural and substantive rationality – against its monistic competitors. The second aim is to answer the question: with the two distinctions drawn, what becomes of the slogan that rationality is about responding to reasons? We’ll argue that structural rationality cannot be identified with responsiveness to any kind of reasons. As for substantive rationality, we join others in thinking that the most promising reasons-responsiveness account of substantive rationality will involve an “evidence-relative” understanding of reasons. But we also pose a challenge for making this idea precise – a challenge that ultimately calls into question the fundamentality of the notion of a reason even with respect to the analysis of substantive rationality. (shrink)

In this work, we propose a variant of so-called informational semantics, a technique elaborated by Voishvillo, for two infectious logics, Deutsch’s |${\mathbf{S}_{\mathbf{fde}}}$| and Szmuc’s |$\mathbf{dS}_{\mathbf{fde}}$|⁠. We show how the machinery of informational semantics can be effectively used to analyse truth and falsity conditions of disjunction and conjunction. Using this technique, it is possible to claim that disjunction and conjunction can be rightfully regarded as such, a claim which was disputed in the recent literature. Both |${\mathbf{S}_{\mathbf{fde}}}$| and |$\mathbf{dS}_{\mathbf{fde}}$| are formalized in (...) terms of natural deduction. This allows us to solve several problems: to develop a natural deduction calculus for |${\mathbf{S}_{\mathbf{fde}}}$| containing the standard form of disjunction elimination (in contrast to the calculus by Petrukhin), to introduce the first natural deduction calculus for |$\mathbf{dS}_{\mathbf{fde}}$| and to reflect the fundamental symmetry between |${\mathbf{S}_{\mathbf{fde}}}$| and |$\mathbf{dS}_{\mathbf{fde}}$| on proof-theoretical level forming a convenient basis for obtaining their well-known extensions |$\mathbf{K}^{\mathbf{w}}_{\mathbf{3}}$| and |$\mathbf{PWK}$|⁠. (shrink)

What does the world's engagement with the unfolding crisis in Darfur tell us about the impact of the Iraq war on the norm of humanitarian intervention? Is a global consensus about a “responsibility to protect” more or less likely? There are at least three potential answers to these questions. Some argue that the merging of strategic interests and humanitarian goods amplified by the intervention in Afghanistan makes it more likely that the world's most powerful states will act to prevent or (...) halt humanitarian crises. Others insist that the widespread perception that the United States and its allies “abused” humanitarian justifications to legitimate its invasion of Iraq has set back efforts to build a global consensus about humanitarian action. A third group argues that the “responsibility to protect” inhibits the potential for abuse and, as a result, consensus is likely to strengthen post-Iraq for precisely this reason. Through a detailed study of the international engagement with Darfur, I suggest that the latter two arguments have merit but need to be adjusted. I argue that the humanitarian intervention norm has changed in two subtle ways. First, while the strength of the norm itself has not changed, the credibility of the United States and U.K. as “norm carriers” has been significantly undermined. Second, while the “responsibility to protect” has been invoked to support international activism, it has also re-legitimated anti-interventionist arguments. (shrink)

We show, that given two fundamental theses of Kripke, no statement of the form ‘‘a=b’ is necessarily true’, is true, if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are distinct rigid designators.

This paper argues that nothing that has been discovered in the increasingly complex delails of gene regulation has provided any grounds to retract or qualify Crick's version of the central dogma. In particular it defends the role of the genes as the sole bearers of information, and argues that the mechanism of epigenetic modification of the DNA is but another vindication of Crick's version of the central dogma. The paper shows that arguments of C.K. Waters for the distinctive causual role (...) of the genes are equivalent in important respects to the present ones and concludes with a defense of the informational role of the genes against an argument from trans-actĭng genetic regulation due to Stotz. (shrink)

Comment on Declan Smithies's book The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (2019).

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Contents: H.G. CALLAWAY: Open Transcendentalism and the Normative Character of Methodology. Roger F. GIBSON: Two Conceptions of Philosophy. Jürg FREUDIGER: Quine und die Unterdeterminiertheit empirischer Theorien. David PEARS: The Ego and the Eye: Wittgenstein's Use of an Analogy. Guido KÜNG: Welterkennen und Textinterpretation bei Roman Ingarden und Nelson Goodman. Barry SMITH: Putting the World Back into Semantics. Herbert STACHOWIAK: Offen für Ophelia? Paul GOCHET & Michel KEFER: Henri Lauener's Open Transcendentalism. Rudolf HALLER: Zum Problem des Relativismus in der Philosophie. Andreas (...) GRAESER: Analytic Philosophy and Hermeneutic Philosophy. Toward Reunion in Philosophy? Avrum STROLL: That Puzzle We Call the Mind. Wolfgang RÖD: Humes Skeptizismus als Entwurf eines neuen philosophischen Paradigmas. Henry E. ALLISON: Apperception and Analyticity in the B-Deduction. Peter SIMONS: Who's Afraid of Higher-Order Logic? Wilhelm K. ESSLER: Gorgias hat Recht! Alex BURRI: Relativismus, Realismus, Mathematik. (shrink)

We give three counterexamples to the folklore claim that in an arbitrary theory, if a complete type p over a set B does not divide over $C\subseteq B$, then no extension of p to a complete type over $\operatorname {acl}(B)$ divides over C. Two of our examples are also the first known theories where all sets are extension bases for nonforking, but forking and dividing differ for complete types (answering a question of Adler). One example is an $\mathrm {NSOP}_1$ theory (...) with a complete type that forks, but does not divide, over a model (answering a question of d’Elbée). Moreover, dividing independence fails to imply M-independence in this example (which refutes another folklore claim). In addition to these counterexamples, we summarize various related properties of dividing that are still true. We also address consequences for previous literature, including an earlier unpublished result about forking and dividing in free amalgamation theories, and some claims about dividing in the theory of generic $K_{m,n}$ -free incidence structures. (shrink)

This review examines Alex Csiszar's book, The Scientific Journal: Authorship and the Politics of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century.

The attitude of intention is not usually the primary focus in philosophical work on self-knowledge. A recent exception is the so-called “Transparency” theory of self-knowledge, which attempts to explain how we know our own minds by appeal to reflection on non-mental facts. Transparency theories are attractive in light of their relative psychological economy compared to views that must posit a dedicated mechanism of ‘inner sense’. However, it is argued here, focusing on proposals by Richard Moran and Alex Byrne, that (...) the Transparency approach to explaining knowledge of our intentions fails. Considerations of economy therefore recommend an alternative approach: the Rylean Theory Theory. The particular view defended here is that one way of coming to know what we intend is to self-ascribe an intention on the basis of making a conscious decision about what to do. This view requires that there are such things as conscious decisions, and so the existence of conscious decisions is defended against skeptical worries raised by Peter Carruthers. The conclusion is that we know of our intentions by theorizing about ourselves, but that this knowledge can still be first-personally privileged, authoritative, and non-alienated. (shrink)

In this issue, Alex London and Kevin Zollman provide an analysis of an influential approach to the ethics of international research, known as the “fair benefits” approach. According to them, the fair benefits approach suffers from a fatal flaw: it is either too vague to be useful, or worse, is internally inconsistent. The fair benefits approach was developed based on a presentation I gave at a workshop organized in Malawi in March 2001 by the National Institutes of Health Clinical (...) Center’s Department of Bioethics. In this presentation, I made what I still think is a valid point, which was accepted by the diverse group of participants and formed the basis of the subsequent publications: One should not .. (shrink)

Review of Alex Byrne's book Transparency and Self-Knowledge.

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

We investigate the impact of informal arguments on judgments about thought experiment cases in light of Deutsch and Cappelen’s mischaracterization view, which claims that philosophers’ case judgments are primarily based on arguments and not intuitions. If arguments had no influence on case judgments, this would seriously challenge whether they are, or should be, based on arguments at all—and not on other cognitive sources instead, such as intuition. In Experiment 1, we replicated Wysocki’s (Rev Philos Psychol 8(2):477–499, 2017) pioneering study on (...) a Gettier-style case, and we confirmed that the informal arguments used by him had no significant effect. However, we also included an improved argument for ascribing knowledge, which did have a significant effect even in Wysocki’s original design. We therefore followed up with Experiment 2 on three Gettier-style cases, where we used a more natural dialogical format for presenting both case descriptions and informal arguments. Overall, we found a clear impact of prima facie good pro and con arguments on case judgments. The issue of argument impact is thus no obstacle to arguing about thought experiments. (shrink)

There are at least two different aspects of our rational evaluation of agents’ doxastic attitudes. First, we evaluate these attitudes according to whether they are supported by one’s evidence (substantive rationality). Second, we evaluate these attitudes according to how well they cohere with one another (structural rationality). In previous work, I’ve argued that substantive and structural rationality really are distinct, sui generis, kinds of rationality – call this view ‘dualism’, as opposed to ‘monism’, about rationality – by arguing that the (...) requirements of substantive and structural rationality can come into conflict. In this paper, I push the dialectic on this issue forward in two main ways. First, I argue that the most promising ways of resisting the diagnosis of my cases as conflicts still end up undermining monism in different ways. Second, supposing for the sake of argument that we should understand the cases as conflicts, I address the question of what we should do when such conflicts arise. I argue that, at least in a prominent kind of conflict case, the coherence requirements take precedence over the evidential requirements. (shrink)

Some combinations of attitudes--of beliefs, credences, intentions, preferences, hopes, fears, and so on--do not fit together right: they are incoherent. A natural idea is that there are requirements of "structural rationality" that forbid us from being in these incoherent states. Yet a number of surprisingly difficult challenges arise for this idea. These challenges have recently led many philosophers to attempt to minimize or eliminate structural rationality, arguing that it is just a "shadow" of "substantive rationality"--that is, correctly responding to one's (...) reasons. -/- In *Fitting Things Together*, Alex Worsnip pushes back against this trend--defending the view that structural rationality is a genuine kind of rationality, distinct from and irreducible to substantive rationality, and tackling the most important challenges for this view. In so doing, he gives an original positive theory of the nature of coherence and structural rationality that explains how the diverse range of instances of incoherence can be unified under a general account, and how facts about coherence are normatively significant. He also shows how a failure to focus on coherence requirements as a distinctive phenomenon and distinguish them adequately from requirements of substantive rationality has led to confusion and mistakes in several substantive debates in epistemology and ethics. -/- Taken as a whole, Fitting Things Together provides the first sustained defense of the view that structural rationality is a genuine, autonomous, unified, and normatively significant phenomenon. (shrink)

Does immorality necessarily involve irrationality? The question is often taken to be among the deepest in moral philosophy. But apparently deep questions sometimes admit of deflationary answers. In this case we can make way for a deflationary answer by appealing to dualism about rationality, according to which there are two fundamentally distinct notions of rationality: structural rationality and substantive rationality. I have defended dualism elsewhere. Here, I’ll argue that it allows us to embrace a sensible – I will not say (...) boring – moderate view about the relationship between immorality and irrationality: roughly, that immorality involves substantive irrationality, but not structural irrationality. I defend this moderate view, and argue that many of the arguments for less moderate views turn either on missing the distinction between substantive and structural rationality, or on misconstruing it. (shrink)

Lying is an everyday moral phenomenon about which philosophers have written a lot. Not only the moral status of lying has been intensively discussed but also what it means to lie in the first place. Perhaps the most important criterion for an adequate definition of lying is that it fits with people’s understanding and use of this concept. In this light, it comes as a surprise that researchers only recently started to empirically investigate the folk concept of lying. In this (...) paper, we describe three experimental studies which address the following questions: Does a statement need to be objectively false in order to constitute lying? Does lying necessarily include the intention to deceive? Can one lie by omitting relevant facts? (shrink)