I present an original model in judgment aggregation theory that demonstrates the general impossibility of consistently describing decision-making purely at the group level. Only a type of unanimity rule can guarantee a group decision is consistent with supporting reasons, and even this possibility is limited to a small class of reasoning methods. The key innovation is that this result holds when individuals can reason in different ways, an allowance not previously considered in the literature. This generalizes judgment aggregation to subjective (...) decision situations, implying that the discursive dilemma persists without individual agreement on the logical constraints. Notably, the model mirrors the typical method of choosing political representatives, and thus suggests that no voting procedure other than unanimity rule can guarantee representation that reflects electorate opinion. Finally, I apply the results to a normative argument for unanimity rule in contract theory and juries, as well as to problems posed for deliberative democratic theory and the concept of representation. (shrink)

This paper analyzes individual probabilistic predictions of state outcomes in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Employing an original survey of more than 19,000 respondents, ours is the first study of electoral forecasting to involve multiple subnational predictions and to incorporate the influence of respondents’ home states. We relate a range of demographic, political, and cognitive variables to individual accuracy and predictions, as well as to how accuracy improved over time. We find strong support for wishful thinking bias in expectations, as (...) Republicans gave higher probabilities to McCain victories and were worse at overall prediction. In addition, we find that respondents living in states with higher vote shares for Obama performed better at prediction and displayed less wishful thinking bias. We conclude by showing that suitable aggregations of our respondents’ predictions outperformed Intrade (a prediction market) and fivethirtyeight.com (a poll-based forecast) at most points in time. (shrink)

Science and technology are so intertwined that technoscience has been argued to more accurately reflect the progress of science and its impact on society, and most socioscientific issues require technoscientific reasoning. Education policy documents have long noted that the general public lacks sufficient understanding of science and technology necessary for informed decision-making regarding socioscientific/technological issues. The science–technology–society movement and scholarship addressing socioscientific issues in science education reflect efforts in the science education community to promote more informed decision-making regarding such issues. (...) Now Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics education has emerged as a major reform movement impacting science education. STEM education efforts emphasize literacy across the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but with rare exceptions, treat issues of technology superficially and uncritically. Informed decision-making regarding many personal and societal issues requires technological literacy beyond merely becoming an enthusiastic designer or skilled user of technology, but the science education community has given little attention to what such literacy entails. Here, we present results of an extensive review of the literature regarding the nature of technology in order to identify key issues among scholars who study technology. We then provide predominant perspectives among those scholars and suggest which identified NOT issues are most essential to address as part of STEM education efforts that seek to promote informed personal and societal decision-making. (shrink)

BackgroundPrenatal and early postnatal choline supplementation reduces cognitive and behavioral deficits in animal models of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. In a previously published 9-month clinical trial of choline supplementation in children with FASD, we reported that postnatal choline was associated with improved performance on a hippocampal-dependent recognition memory task. The current paper describes the neurophysiological correlates of that memory performance for trial completers.MethodsChildren with FASD who were enrolled in a clinical trial of choline supplementation were followed for 9 months. Delayed (...) recall on a 9-step elicited imitation task served as the behavioral measure of recognition memory. Neurophysiological correlates of memory were assessed via event-related potentials.ResultsDelayed recall on EI was correlated with two ERP components commonly associated with recognition memory in young children: middle latency negative component and positive slow wave. No significant ERP differences were observed between the choline and placebo groups at the conclusion of the trial.ConclusionAlthough the small sample size limits the ability to draw clear conclusions about the treatment effect of choline on ERP, the results suggest a relationship between memory performance and underlying neurophysiological status in FASD. This trial was registered.1. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Above and Beneath Classification”: Bartleby, Life and Times of Michael K, and Syntagmatic ParticipationGert Buelens (bio) and Dominiek Hoens (bio)The history of the relation between the law, norm, or rule on the one hand and what forms an exception to that rule on the other is complex and multifaceted.1 In the most general terms, one could posit that the exception is that which escapes from the rule. Thus, (...) confronted with the strangeness of Michael K, his noncommunicativeness, his odd combination of meekness and intransigence, the medical officer in J. M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K assigns K a place “above and beneath classification” [Coetzee 151]. Michael K is at once too large and too small to fit into the administrative and humanitarian categories that pertain at the prisoner camp. He appears to the medical officer—whose good intentions and patient, selfless interest in K cannot be doubted—as a recalcitrant, nonidentifiable object that flirts with dehumanization. To put it in Bataille’s terms, Michael K is formless (informe), and his existence can, by mere virtue of that fact, be called scandalous.2Let us take a closer look at the expression “above and beneath classification.” We can note that (1) it names something that situates itself on the outside of any classification; (2) this something must have a paradoxical status, since it is at once above and beneath classification; (3) the nonclassifiable is regarded as such from a classifying perspective. Although the latter point may sound tautological, it nonetheless touches upon one of the most difficult dimensions of the exception: if the exception is always an exception to the rule, how can it exist otherwise than by virtue of that rule? how can it be more than just the rule’s negative? But if the exception radically breaks away from the rule, then how is it possible for that rule to identify the exception and recognize it as such? This crucial problem has formed the basis for reflection on the relation between rule and exception. Freud, for instance, saw the exception (crime) as constitutive of social ties and the social order. Lacan needed a special topology to show the extimate character of what is at once inside and outside the symbolic order [Lacan, Miller]. Religious ways of thinking could be said to have located the exception as transcendent to any human order. For Badiou, the secularization of the infinite cannot be thought apart from an immanent, rather than transcendent, event that is disruptive of all order. In Derrida’s subtle analyses, the originary supplement appears as both constitutive and deconstructive. Agamben regards the exception as having become the political rule. These interpretative frameworks, in spite of some deep distinctions, all show not only that the rule cannot do without the exception, but that the exception is just as dependent on the rule. Even when the exception is regarded as a kind of pure, ruleless being-as-such, the rule is at the very least conceptually [End Page 157] indispensable for this pure, mere being to be thinkable in the first place. In brief, however much one may want, for political or other reasons, to assign the exception a central place at the expense of the rule, that rule remains inescapable.Nonetheless, the inevitability of the rule should not lead us to conclude that it is also immutable, nor that we should adopt a conservatism that accepts the rule as a repressive normativity or as an inclusive and exclusive apparatus of judgment. That this is as impossible as it is undesirable is suggested by what we indicated under the second item: the exception is both above and beneath. The exception is the paradoxical given of that which at once escapes from existing categories and lacks all identity in that escape. The problem that Michael K and Bartleby, the second figure of exception we consider in this essay, present for the rule resides not just in the recalcitrance that allows them to show up the limits of the rule, but also in the doubling with which this goes hand in hand. Michael K and Bartleby are as pliant as they are obdurate, show great loyalty even... (shrink)

Bad jokes are not simply non-humorous texts. They are texts that are humorous for someone––their author at least––but not for their audience. Bad jokes thus involve a contextual––pragmatic––dimension that is neglected in the semantic theories of humor. In this paper, we propose an approach to humor based on the Aristotelian notion of surprising enthymemes. Jokes are analyzed as kinds of arguments, whose tacit dimension can be retrieved and justified by considering the “logic” on which it is based. However, jokes are (...) based on specific pragmatic conditions: they are regarded as arguments grounded on a generalization that is at the same time uncommon, retrievable, and acceptable or plausible for the audience. This perspective integrates the “local logic” of jokes within a broader rhetorical theory that ultimately rests on the communicative notion of common ground. (shrink)

The following proposes an interpretation of Husserl's sustained exegetical commentary on Leibniz's metaphysics from 1922 (Hua XIV 298300), with reference to textual and historical resources. The leading historical index for the following interpretation is a minor contribution to Leibniz scholarship from 1917 by Dietrich Mahnke, a work with which Husserl was intimately familiar. Textual references are to works by Husserl which would have been available to Mahnke- i.e., the Logische Untersuchungen and Ideen—I as well as relevant notes and lectures from (...) the period ni question. Husserl's brief manuscript from 1922, I claim, can be read as a critique of the Mahnke interpretation that attempts to provide a more expansive and thorough-going phenomenological explication of Leibniz' doctrine of universal harmony. Thereby, Husserl offers some important clues as to how he himself understands his own uses of the terms "monad" and "monadology." The phenomenological reformation of Leibnizian Monadology must be understood as a methodological reconception with internal reference to Husserl's own theory of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

The aging of attentional and emotional functions has been extensively studied but relatively independently. Therefore, the relationships between aging and the interactions of attentional and emotional processes remain elusive. This study aimed to determine how age affected the interactions between attentional and emotional processes during adulthood. One-hundred forty adults aged 18–79 performed the emotional variant of the Attention Network Test, which probed alerting, orienting, and executive control in the presence and absence of threatening faces. During this task, contexts with varying (...) levels of task preparatory processes were created to modulate the effect of threatening faces on attention, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to examine the neural underpinnings of the behavioural effects. The behavioural results showed that aging was associated with a significant decline in alerting efficiency, and there was a statistical trend for age-related deficits in executive control. Despite these age differences, age did not significantly moderate the interactions among attentional networks or between attention and emotion. Additionally, the fNIRS results showed that decreased frontal cortex functioning might underlie the age-related decline in executive control. Therefore, while aging has varying effects on different attentional networks, the interactions of attentional and emotional processes remain relatively unaffected by age. (shrink)

The Hebrew Psalter is a repertoire of paired phenomena. From parallelisms to twin Psalms, biblical scholars have paid attention to these structural and poetical features as keys to unlocking and interpreting the meaning and theology of these psalms. Unfortunately, the otherwise admirable results of these exegetical works remain abstract and largely removed from the interests of the African reader. An alternative way of engaging these texts is to realise that paired phenomena are not exclusive to the Hebrew Psalter. African indigenous (...) sacred texts such as the Adinkra of the Akan people equally contain similar phenomena though relatively little attention has been paid to them. This article, using a dialogical approach of African Biblical Hermeneutics, studies the twin Psalms 111 and 112 as an example of a paired phenomenon in the Psalter. It brings this text into dialogue with the Adinkra denkyemfunefu to illustrate how focussing on similar structural phenomena in either text uncovers the same theme of the common good in either text and facilitates the reception of the biblical discourse in contemporary African contexts.Contribution: It is argued that common literary features in biblical and African indigenous sacred texts could be harnessed as vehicles for facilitating the reception of biblical discourse in contemporary Africa. (shrink)

During the past two years, colleagues and I at The Hastings Center have worked on a project, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, that seeks to improve the quality of public deliberation, particularly about science. Specifically, we seek to improve the public's capacity for civic learning, which is our term for the ability of people living in a democracy to learn at least the basics of complex policy issues, discuss them, and make civically responsible decisions about (...) them. There are no quick fixes. The forces that have undermined trust in society and that inhibit a mutually respectful deliberation about these issues have built up over centuries. (shrink)

We argue that, insofar as one accepts either supersubstantivalism or strong composition as identity for the usual reasons, one has (defeasible) reasons to accept the other as well. Thus, all else being equal, one ought to find the package that combines both views—the Identity Package—more attractive than any rival package that includes one, but not the other, of either supersubstantivalism or composition as identity.

This book shares innovative approaches to effectively engage students and faculty working in research labs, lab-based classrooms and courses to build inclusive ethical cultures. The frameworks and approaches presented move beyond traditional research ethics training to strengthen the ethical culture in research labs. The chapters in the book showcase best practices and approaches to embedding educational interventions in courses, research labs and departments. The book is based on the two-day workshop “Building Inclusive Ethical Cultures in STEM” (April 23-24, 2021). Moving (...) beyond the two-day conference that inspired this collected volume, the various chapters address questions like: What are approaches and tools to integrate ethics education in STEM effectively? How can STEM ethics education be improved? What can researchers do to build more inclusive research environments? How can meaningful discussions about ethics be effectively integrated into STEM courses, research labs, and workplace environments? While each chapter takes a different perspective and is located in its respective context, the contributions are united by the goal of effectively including ethical reflection in STEM education. Instructors from both four-year and two-year colleges who teach STEM and lab-based STEM courses; young principal investigators/junior faculty who are in the process of building their research groups; departmental chairs interested in programmatic approaches for improving mentoring, research ethics education, and the research culture of their department, will find this work to be a very valuable resource in their daily practice. (shrink)

Hierarchies abound to help us organize our world. A hierarchy places items into a general order, where more ‘general’ is also more ‘abstract’. The etymology of hierarchy is grounded in notions of religious and social rank. This article, after a historical review, focuses on knowledge systems, an interloper of the term hierarchy since at least the 1800s. Hierarchies in knowledge systems include taxonomies, classification systems, or thesauri in information science, and systems for representing information and knowledge to computers, notably ontologies (...) and knowledge representation languages. Hierarchies are the logical underpinning of inference and reasoning in these systems, as well as the scaffolding for classification and inheritance. Hierarchies in knowledge systems express subsumption relations that have flexible variants, which we can represent algorithmically, and thus computationally. This article dissects that variability, leading to a proposed typology of hierarchies useful to knowledge systems. The article argues through a perspective informed by Charles Peirce that natural hierarchies are real, can be logically determined, and are the appropriate basis for knowledge systems. Description logics and semantic language standards reflect this perspective, importantly through their open-world logic and vocabularies for generalized subsumption hierarchies. Recent research suggests possible mechanisms for the emergence of natural hierarchies. (shrink)

Introduction : saving liberal democracy from itself -- Individualism versus individuality -- Interference, independence, and what's worth doing -- Autonomy -- Freedom, rights, and conflicts between values -- Ethics and rules -- Exploring consequences -- The ethical point of view -- Objective ethics : the good -- Objective ethics : the right -- Negotiating ethically -- Why think ethically? -- Ethical heroism -- Afterword.

There is limited guidance on how to assess the ethical acceptability of research risks that extend beyond research participants to third parties (or “research bystanders”). Community or stakeholder engagement has been proposed as one way to address potential harms to community members, including bystanders. Despite widespread agreement on the importance of community engagement in biomedical research, this umbrella term includes many different goals and approaches, agreement on which is ethically required or recommended for a particular context. We analyse the case (...) of a potential Zika virus human challenge trial to assess whether and how community engagement can help promote the ethical acceptability of research posing risks to bystanders. We conclude that, in addition to having intrinsic value, community engagement can improve the identification of bystander risks, effective approaches to minimizing them, and transparency about bystander risks for host communities. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that by “Monade” the later Husserl means roughly what he meant by “das reine Bewußtsein” in the period of Ideas I. Of both consciousness and Monade, Husserl claims that objects of perception are immanent to them. I describe this claim as “quasi-representationalist” just because it bears enough similarity to some versions of contemporary representationalism. Since Husserl also claims that perceptual objects are publicly accessible, the inevitable conclusion seems to be that parts of perceptual consciousness must (...) also be publicly accessible. So strong internalist, Cartesian or idealist, interpretations of Husserl must be wrong. By the same token, if perceptual objects are necessarily physical, it then seems Husserl must agree that the physical can be, in some sense, immanent to consciousness. (shrink)

This work presents an annotated text of the most comprehensive and detailed arguments in Erasmus's conflict with the Catholic, conservative, scholastic theologians, the _Declarationes_. It also shows the contrast between the scholastic/logical and the humanist/rhetorical approach to Scripture and to theological questions.

Presents an overview of ancient Roman literature and philosophy, describing the works and major themes of the most important poets, dramatists, biographers, historians, and philosophers of the Roman empire.

The three faces of Francesco Petrarca -- Erasmus: the man in the middle -- Machiavelli and political realism -- Thomas More: the king's good servant but God's first -- Castiglione: a gentleman in Urbino -- Rabelais and the wisdom of laughter -- Montaigne and the wisdom of experience -- Cervantes: life as literature -- Shakespeare.

The release of genetically engineered organisms into the shared environment raises scientific, ethical, and societal issues. Using some form of democratic deliberation to provide the public with a voice on the policies that govern these technologies is important, but there has not been enough attention to how we should connect public deliberation to the existing regulatory process. Drawing on lessons from previous public deliberative efforts by U.S. federal agencies, we identify several practical issues that will need to be addressed if (...) relevant federal agencies are to undertake public deliberative activities to inform decision‐making about gene editing in the wild. We argue that, while agencies may have institutional capacity to undertake public deliberative activities, there may not be sufficient political support for them to do so. Advocates of public deliberation need to make a stronger case to Congress about why federal agencies should be encouraged and supported to conduct public deliberations. (shrink)

This paper develops twenty hypotheses concerning the relationships among selected individual differences variables (locus of control, delay of gratification, gender, and race) and five different ethical beliefs. The results of a study of collegians provide support for seventeen out of twenty research hypotheses. As predicted, locus of control, delay of gratification, and race are related to ethical beliefs. Also as predicted, gender is not related to ethical beliefs.

Based in a global array of case studies - Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Islamic education in the United States - this volume shows how the discourse concerning educational technology in the Islamic world has emphasized neoliberal and neofundamentalist themes, and argues that the design and implementation of educational technologies in schools would be better accomplished by taking a culturally grounded approach. This approach would be rooted in the context and local needs of learners, with implications and possible application (...) in the Muslim world and beyond. (shrink)

In this elegant, smoothly written book, David Carr provides nothing less than a defense of both Kantian and Husserlian versions of transcendental philosophy against Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics. Carr’s Paradox of Subjectivity is organized into four parts. In the first part, Carr provides a synopsis of Heidegger’s interpretation of traditional metaphysics. Part two is devoted to a reconstruction of Kant’s transcendental theory of subjectivity. The third part deals with Husserl’s conception of transcendental subjectivity. Finally, in part four, Carr proposes to (...) show that, for both Kant and Husserl, transcendental subjectivity is a purely methodological implement, which cannot in turn be reified into serving the role traditionally reserved for metaphysical substance. Instead, transcendental subjectivity is to be understood as itself a critical regard of traditional metaphysics. Moreover, such a strictly methodological conception of transcendental subjectivity cannot be assimilated into Heidegger’s conception of metaphysics. Consequently, Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics cannot be extended as a critique of either Kant or Husserl. (shrink)

While many models of ethical decision-making in marketing have been presented in the literature, no recent attempts have been made to explicitly account for ethical decision-making from a marketing research perspective. We present an ethical framework for marketing research, the various philosophies of ethics, and a few enduring marketing ethical decision-making models, thus laying the foundation for a descriptive model for ethics in marketing research. The authors then develop an integrated model of ethical decision-making that incorporates the perspectives of all (...) parties involved in the process of making ethical marketing research decisions, the various philosophies, and external variables. The proposed model is compared with some of the models considered in the literature and illustrated with a marketing research application. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 5, Page 42-43, September–October 2022.

Since Horn (1972) the notion of conversational implicature proposed by Grice has been put to use to explain certain interpretive differences between expressions in natural language and their counterparts in formal logic. For example, the sentences in (1) seem to convey more than they would be expected to if the natural language disjunction or had the same meaning as the logical disjunction ∨, or if the quantificational determiner some was interpreted as the existential quantifier ∃.

According to contemporary representationalism, phenomenal qualia—of specifically sensory experiences—supervene on representational content. Most arguments for representationalism share a common, phenomenological premise: the so-called “transparency thesis.” According to the transparency thesis, it is difficult—if not impossible—to distinguish the quality or character of experiencing an object from the perceived properties of that object. In this paper, I show that Husserl would react negatively to the transparency thesis; and, consequently, that Husserl would be opposed to at least two versions of contemporary representationalism. First, (...) I show that Husserl would be opposed to strong representationalism, since he believes the cognitive content of a perceptual episode can vary despite constancy of sensory qualia. Second, I then show that Husserl would be opposed to weak representationalism, since he believes that sensory qualia—specifically, the sort that he calls “kinesthetic sensations”—can vary despite constancy in representational content. (shrink)

Since 1980, the number of twin births in the United States has increased 76 percent, and the number of triplets or higher-order multiples has increased over 400 percent. These increases are due in part to increased maternal age, which is associated with spontaneous twinning. But the primary reason for these increases is that more and more people are undergoing fertility treatment. Despite an emerging (but not absolute) consensus in the medical literature that multiples, including twins, should be a far less (...) frequent outcome of fertility treatment, American clinicians currently practice fertility medicine in ways likely to result in twins and, occasionally, triplets-often, they tell us, at the request of their patients. At first blush, one might conclude that these practice patterns show that patients and their doctors have weighed the risks associated with twins against the benefits of swiftly completing their families and decided that the risks are worth taking. That is, their requests for twins must represent their free and informed choices. But there are reasons to be skeptical of this interpretation, including that the preferences of many patients seem to be very strongly shaped, if not sometimes completely constrained, by concerns about costs-costs that mainly result from the routine exclusion of in vitro fertilization from health insurance coverage. It is quite possible, we believe, that these cost concerns actually undermine the autonomy of fertility patients, pushing many of them to take risks with their health and the health of their hoped-for future children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

As an incredibly diverse religious system, Buddhism is constantly changing. The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism offers a comprehensive collection of work by leading scholars in the field that tracks these changes up to the present day. Taken together, the book provides a blueprint to understanding Buddhism's past and uses it to explore the ways in which Buddhism has transformed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume contains 41 essays, divided into two sections. The essays in the first section (...) examine the historical development of Buddhist traditions throughout the world. These chapters cover familiar settings like India, Japan, and Tibet as well as the less well-known countries of Vietnam, Bhutan, and the regions of Latin America, Africa, and Oceania. Focusing on changes within countries and transnationally, this section also contains chapters that focus explicitly on globalization, such as Buddhist international organizations and diasporic communities. The second section tracks the relationship between Buddhist traditions and particular themes. These chapters review Buddhist interactions with contemporary topics such as violence and peacebuilding, and ecology, as well as Buddhist influences in areas such as medicine and science. Offering coverage that is both expansive and detailed, The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism delves into some of the most debated and contested areas within Buddhist Studies today. (shrink)

This introduction to nonviolent movements analyzes fourteen classic and contemporary cases to show how nonviolent strategies can work where violent warfare has failed. Drawing on practitioner knowledge and diverse philosophical and religious texts, Michael K. Duffey offers a multifaceted argument for embracing nonviolent resolutions to conflict.