T violation has previously been shown to induce destructive interference between different paths that the universe can take through time which leads to a new quantum equation of motion called bievolution. Here we examine further details of the interference and clarify the conditions needed for the bievolution equation.

Violation pornography is pornography where the depicted behavior includes unjust sexual acts, e.g., rape. In this paper I argue that it is unclear whether the enjoyment of violation pornography is bad for the viewer. My essay has three parts. First, I set out an account of flourishing. I adopt a composite account, whereby flourishing is a function of the degree to which an individual has pleasure and various objective-list elements. Objective-list elements are things (e.g., knowledge and meaningful relationships) (...) that make my life go better independently of their effects on pleasure and desire-fulfillment. In the next two parts, I relate violation pornography to each component of flourishing. Thus, in the second part, I explore whether violation pornography promotes or hinders pleasure. In the third part I explore whether pornography is compatible with these objective-list elements, particularly virtue. (shrink)

A violation of procedure invariance in preference measurement is that the predominant or prominent attribute looms larger in choice than in a matching task. In Experiment 1, this so-called prominence effect was demonstrated for choices between pairs of options, choices to accept single options, and preference ratings of single options. That is, in all these response modes the prominent attribute loomed larger than in matching. The results were replicated in Experiment 2, in which subjects chose between or rated their (...) preference for pairs of options which were matched to be equally attractive either in the same session or 1 week earlier. On the basis of these and previous results, it is argued that the prominence effect is a reliable phenomenon. However, none of several cognitive explanations which have been offered appears to be completely viable. (shrink)

An increasing number of experiments at the Belle, BNL, CERN, DAΦNE and SLAC accelerators are confirming the violation of time reversal invariance (T). The violation signifies a fundamental asymmetry between the past and future and calls for a major shift in the way we think about time. Here we show that processes which violate T symmetry induce destructive interference between different paths that the universe can take through time. The interference eliminates all paths except for two that represent (...) continuously forwards and continuously backwards time evolution. Evidence from the accelerator experiments indicates which path the universe is effectively following. This work may provide fresh insight into the long-standing problem of modeling the dynamics of T violation processes. It suggests that T violation has previously unknown, large-scale physical effects and that these effects underlie the origin of the unidirectionality of time. It may have implications for the Wheeler-DeWitt equation of canonical quantum gravity. Finally it provides a view of the quantum nature of time itself. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that many types of attitudinal incoherence are irrational, but there is controversy about why they are. Some think incoherence is irrational because it violates certain wide-scope conditional requirements, others (‘narrow-scopers’) that it violates narrow-scope conditional requirements. In his paper ‘The Scope of Rational Requirements’, John Brunero has offered a putative counter-example to narrow-scope views. But a narrow-scoper should reject a crucial assumption which Brunero makes, namely, the claim that we always violate conditional narrow-scope requirements when we (...) do not comply with them. I show how Brunero's objection can be met by denying this claim, and I provide independent arguments in favour of denying it. (shrink)

Rule violations have usually been studied from a third-person perspective, identifying situational factors that render violations more or less likely. A first-person perspective of the agent that actively violates the rules, on the other hand, is only just beginning to emerge. Here we show that committing a rule violation sensitises towards subsequent negative stimuli as well as subsequent authority-related stimuli. In a Prime-Probe design, we used an instructed rule-violation task as the Prime and a word categorisation task as (...) the Probe. Also, we employed a control condition that used a rule inversion task as the Prime. Probe targets were categorised faster after a violation relative to after a rule-based response if they related to either, negative valence or authority. Inversions, however, primed only negative stimuli and did not accelerate the categorisation of authority-related stimuli. A heightened sensitivity towards authority-related targets thus seems to be specific to rule violations. A control experiment showed that these effects cannot be explained in terms of semantic priming. Therefore, we propose that rule violations necessarily activate authority-related representations that make rule violations qualitatively different from simple rule inversions. (shrink)

Could laws of nature be violated, in the sense that some proposition is both a law and false? I argue that opponents of regularity theories of laws should accept the metaphysical possibility of such genuine violations. I begin with a clarification of this claim. The main argument is then developed in three steps. I first argue that opponents of regularity theory should endorse the modal-essence view: certain modal principles are essential to the laws of nature. Second, I argue that the (...) modal-essence view entails sophisticated modal primitivism. Third, I argue from sophisticated primitivism to the metaphysical possibility of genuine violations of laws. (shrink)

The redundant-signals paradigm (RSP) is designed to investigate response behavior in perceptual tasks in which response-relevant targets are defined by either one or two features, or modalities. The common finding is that responses are speeded for redundantly compared to singly defined targets. This redundant-signals effect (RSE) can be accounted for by race models if the response times do not violate the race model inequality (RMI). When there are violations of the RMI, race models are effectively excluded as a viable account (...) of the RSE. The common alternative is provided by co-activation accounts, which assume that redundant target signals are integrated at some processing stage. However, ‘co-activation’ has mostly been only indirectly inferred and the accounts have only rarely been explicitly modeled; if they were modeled, the RSE has typically been assumed to have a decisional locus. Yet, there are also indications in the literature that the RSE might originate, at least in part, at a non-decisional or motor stage. In the present study, using a distribution analysis of sequential-sampling models (ex-Wald and Ratcliff Diffusion model), the locus of the RSE was investigated for two bimodal (audio-visual) detection tasks that strongly violated the RMI, indicative of substantial co-activation. Three model variants assuming different loci of the RSE were fitted to the quantile reaction time proportions: a decision, a non-decision, and a combined variant both to vincentized group as well as individual data. The results suggest that for the two bimodal detection tasks, co-activation has a shared decisional and non-decisional locus. These findings point to the possibility that the mechanisms underlying the RSE depend on the specifics (task, stimulus, conditions, etc.) of the experimental paradigm. (shrink)

Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure By AzamHina, xi + 270 pp. Price HB £60.00. EAN 978–1107094246.

This study examines the relationships between violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts, money consciousness, and the tendency to pay bribes among organizational employees in Bangkok, Thailand. A total of 385 organizational employees in Bangkok participated in the study. Structural equation models were used to test the relationships. The fitted model shows a mediation effect of money consciousness on the relationship between violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts and the tendency to pay bribes. Results indicate that the extent of (...) violation of the Buddhist Five Precepts is associated with money consciousness to predict the tendency to pay bribes. Observing the Buddhist Five Precepts and not allowing money consciousness to influence behaviors may reduce ethical problems. (shrink)

Since the early Gestaltists there has been a strong interest in the question of how problem solvers get stuck in a mental impasse. A key idea is that the repeated activation of a successful strategy from the past results in a mental set (‘Einstellung’) which determines and constrains the option space to solve a problem. We propose that this phenomenon, which mostly was tested by fairly restricted experiments in the lab, could also be applied to more complex problem constellations and (...) naturalistic decision making. We aim at scrutinizing and reconstructing how a mental set determines the misinterpretation of facts in the field of political decision making and leads in consequence to wrong expectations and an ill-defined problem representation. We will exemplify this psychological mechanism considering a historical example, namely the unexpected stabilization of the Franco regime at the end of World War II and its survival thereafter. A specific focus will be drawn to the significant observation that erroneous expectations were taken as the basis for decisions. This is congruent with the notion that in case of discrepancy between preconceived notions and new information, the former prevails over the new findings. Based on these findings, we suggest a theoretical model for expectation violation in political decision making and develop novel approaches for cognitive empirical research on the mechanisms of expectation violation and its maintenance in political decision making processes. (shrink)

We report results of an experiment testing for present-value maximization in intertemporal income choice. Two-thirds of subjects did not maximize present value. Through a series of experimental manipulations that impose costs on non-present value maximizers, we are able to reduce the level of violations substantially. We find, however, that a sizeable proportion of subjects continue to systematically violate present-value principles. Our interpretation is that these subjects either cannot or choose not to distinguish between t income and t expenditure in making (...) their choices. Self-management, bounded rationality, and sequence preference are suggested as possible explanations for such behavior. (shrink)

Under Article 63 of the Constitution, a gross violation of the Law on Elections to the Seimas is one of the grounds for discontinuation of the powers of the Member of the Seimas. The Constitution does not reveal expressis verbis as to what is a gross violation of the law on election. The establishment of this is within the discretion of the legislator. While defining what a gross violation of the Law on Elections to the Seimas is, (...) the legislator is bound by the norms and principles of the Constitution. Although the Constitution does not define expressis verbis as to what a gross violation of the law on election is, the fact that, under Item 6 of Article 63 of the Constitution, the powers of a Member of the Seimas shall cease on this ground, implies at least several things: first, not every violation of the law on election can be regarded as a gross one, thus, if the law on election has not been grossly violated, it is not permitted on this ground to recognise that the Member of the Seimas lost his mandate, or that the powers of the Member of the Seimas ceased; second, only such violations may be regarded as gross ones, upon commission of which there appear reasonable doubts whether during the election the genuine will of the voters was expressed, whether their will was not distorted to the extent that the results of the election do not reflect the genuine will of the voters and the mandates of Members of the Seimas have been distributed unfairly. (shrink)

It is shown that violation of the Born Rule leads to a breakdown of the correspondence between the quantum electromagnetic field and its classical counterpart. Specifically, the relationship of the quantum coherent state to the classical electromagnetic field turns out to imply that if the Born Rule were violated, this could result in apparent deviations from the energy conservation law applying to the field and its sources. The result, which is fully general and independent of interpretations of quantum theory, (...) suggests that the Born Rule is just as fundamental a law of Nature as are the field conservation laws. (shrink)

The importance of the hidden curriculum is recognised as a practical training ground for the absorption of medical ethics by healthcare professionals. Pakistan’s healthcare sector is hampered by the exclusion of ethics from medical and nursing education curricula and the absence of monitoring of ethical violations in the clinical setting. Nurses have significant knowledge of the hidden curriculum taught during clinical practice, due to long working hours in the clinic and front-line interaction with patients and other practitioners.

The study sought to determine whether impression management tactics by an employee could effectively lessen the recommended punishment for an ethical rule infraction by this individual. Subjects read a vignette in which an employee violated the confidentiality of personnel records. The employee was presented as either having had a history of previous infractions or no such historical information was provided. Additionally, the employee was described as using either no impression management tactics, an apology, or a justification for his behavior. Result (...) show that in the case of a history of multiple offenses, the employee''s use of justifications effectively mitigated others'' judgments of the wrongfulness of the employee''s action, while apologies did not. Similarly, the justification appeared to lessen respondent recommendations for punishment, prevention of promotion, and demotion/firing, but only when there is a history of multiple offenses. In most cases, apologies tended to exacerbate the problem when previous offenses had been committed. The data are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of employee use of impression management tactics. (shrink)

We show that Bell inequalities can be violated in the macroscopic world. The macroworld violation is illustrated using an example involving connected vessels of water. We show that whether the violation of inequalities occurs in the microworld or the macroworld, it is the identification of nonidentical events that plays a crucial role. Specifically, we prove that if nonidentical events are consistently differentiated, Bell-type Pitowsky inequalities are no longer violated, even for Bohm's example of two entangled spin 1/2 quantum (...) particles. We show how Bell inequalities can be violated in cognition, specifically in the relationship between abstract concepts and specific instances of these concepts. This supports the hypothesis that genuine quantum structure exists in the mind. We introduce a model where the amount of nonlocality and the degree of quantum uncertainty are parameterized, and demonstrate that increasing nonlocality increases the degree of violation, while increasing quantum uncertainty decreases the degree of violation. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the bulk of the laws of physics –including such venerable laws as Universal Gravitation– are violated in many (or even all) circumstances because they havecounter-instances that result when a system is not isolated fromother systems. Various accounts of how one should interpretthese (apparently) violated laws have been provided. In thispaper, I examine two accounts of (apparently) violated laws, thatthey are merely ceteris paribus laws and that they aremanifestations of capacities. Through an examination of theprimary example (...) that motivated these views, I show that given aproper understanding of the situation, neither view is optimalbecause the law is not even apparently violated. Along the way, Iam able to diagnose what has led to the mistaken belief: I showthat it originates from an element of the standard empiricistconception of laws. I then evaluate the suggestions of how tointerpret violated laws with respect to other examples and findthem wanting there too. (shrink)

In this paper I propose violation games as the basis of formal logics to represent and reason about norms, i.e. as the foundation of deontic logic. Deontic logic is an applied non-classical logic reflecting a way in which we conceptualize normative reasoning. By introducing violation games as a fundamental principle of deontic logic, I am introducing a new way of looking at familiar problems in normative reasoning, with the aim of introducing a new approach for handling norms in (...) intelligent systems. (shrink)

Violations of ethical conductThis article is about torture, power and the breach of ethical conduct among military doctors, nurses and medics in the “War on Terror”. Violations of ethical conduct have been widely recounted in academic and non-academic journals and reports.1 This paper is also a call to international boards of doctors and nurses to intervene directly to stop abuses undertaken by US military healthcare providers under the guise of the War on Terror. With evidence growing that US military and (...) security services are actively engaged in the ill treatment, torture and deaths of suspects, details about the participation of healthcare professionals in such unlawful and unethical activities remain for the most part timidly accounted for. But according to current literature on this topic, there is increasing evidence that US doctors, nurses and medics have been complicit in torture and other unethical activities in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay .2–4The US government has inadequately dealt with these facts. Senior officials in the Bush administration who have played a major part in conducting the War on Terror have been either promoted or asked to remain in their posts. More seriously, despite worldwide condemnation of the reality behind the photos, allegations of torture continue at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.5 The graphic and appalling nature of several photographs are by no means the only evidence of abuses conducted by the US on its own territory and abroad. But the complicity of healthcare professionals in many venues , such as in capital punishment procedures in the US, exacerbates the already disturbing extent of bio-political abuses by the US government.Doctors and nurses often top the polls as caring and trustworthy professionals.6 Indeed, so strong …. (shrink)

This paper discusses recent evidence that violations of core knowledge offer special learning opportunities for infants and young children. Children make predictions about the world from the youngest ages. When their fail to match observed data, they show an enhanced drive to seek and retain new information about entities that violated their expectations. Finally, the authors draw comparisons between children and adults, and with other species, to explore how surprise shapes thought more broadly.

Bell’s theorem is often said to imply that quantum mechanics violates local causality, and that local causality cannot be restored with a hidden-variables theory. This however is only correct if the hidden-variables theory fulfils an assumption called Statistical Independence. Violations of Statistical Independence are commonly interpreted as correlations between the measurement settings and the hidden variables. Such correlations have been discarded as “fine-tuning” or a “conspiracy”. We here point out that the common interpretation is at best physically ambiguous and at (...) worst incorrect. The problem with the common interpretation is that Statistical Independence might be violated because of a non-trivial measure in state space, a possibility we propose to call “supermeasured”. We use Invariant Set Theory as an example of a supermeasured theory that violates the Statistical Independence assumption in Bell’s theorem without requiring correlations between hidden variables and measurement settings. (shrink)

The paper proposes an alternative approach to the ontology of social institutions by systematizing various normative institutional influences and identifying processes that distinguish between conforming and violating behaviour. The prevailing – cost-based model – suggests that an agent's conformity to a specific institutional rule can be represented by a single measure – cost. The model is limited in its explanatory potential since it accounts for varieties of institutional behaviour in terms of single parametrical changes in the agents' utilities. The central (...) argument shows that normative attitudes represent a distinctive normative structure capable of explaining crucial aspects of institutional behaviour. These attitudinal aspects provide the structure necessary for understanding institutional normativity and its violations. (shrink)

Deontologists often assume that ethical constraints hold ‘come what may’ but that violations of the constraints can be excused or pardoned. Vinit Haksar has argued for pardon as deontologically appropriate mitigation for the violation of deontological constraints. However, the reasons he adduces against excuse are inconclusive. In this paper, I show how complex the question of excuse versus pardon for deontological transgressions is. Liability for the development of character traits and the assumption of agent-centered responsibility have to be taken (...) into account before the possibility of pardon can be identified as appropriate deontological softener for strict constraints. (shrink)

A number of papers have applied the CNI model of moral judgments to investigate deontological and consequentialist response tendencies (Gawronski et al., 2017). A controversy has emerged concerning the methodological assumptions of the CNI model (Baron & Goodwin, 2020, 2021; Gawronski et al. 2020). In this paper, we contribute to this debate by extending the CNI paradigm with a skip option. This allows us to test an invariance assumption that the CNI model shares with prominent process-dissociation models in cognitive and (...) social psychology (Klauer et al., 2015). Like for these models, the present experiments found violations of the invariance assumption for the CNI model. In Experiment 2, we replicate these results and selectively influence the new parameter for the skip option. In addition, structural equation modeling reveals that previous findings for the relationship between gender and the CNI parameters are completely mediated by the association of gender with primary psychopathy. (shrink)

This paper seeks to identify the distinctive moral wrong of stalking and argues that this wrong is serious enough to criminalize. We draw on psychological literature about stalking, distinguishing types of stalkers, their pathologies, and victims. The victimology is the basis for claims about what is wrong with stalking. Close attention to the experiences of victims often reveals an obsessive preoccupation with the stalker and what he will do next. The kind of harm this does is best understood in relation (...) to the value of privacy and conventionally protected zones of privacy. We compare anti-stalking laws in different jurisdictions, claiming that they all fail in some way to capture the distinctive privacy violation that stalking involves. Further reflection on the seriousness of the invasion of privacy it represents suggests that it is a deeply personal wrong. Indeed, it is usually more serious than obtrusive surveillance by states, precisely because it is more personal. Where state surveillance genuinely is as intrusive as stalking, it tends to adopt the tactics of the stalker, imposing its presence on the activist victim at every turn. Power dynamics —whether rooted in the power of the state or the violence of a stalker —may exacerbate violations of privacy, but the wrong is distinct from violence, threats of violence and other aggression. Nor is stalking a simple expression of a difference in power between stalker and victim, such as a difference due to gender. (shrink)

The majority consensus in the empirical literature is that probability weighting functions are typically inverse-S shaped, that is, people tend to overweight small and underweight large probabilities. A separate stream of literature has reported event-splitting effects and shown that they can explain violations of expected utility. This leads to the questions whether the observed shape of weighting functions is a mere consequence of the coalesced presentation and, more generally, whether preference elicitation should rely on presenting lotteries in a canonical split (...) form instead of the commonly used coalesced form. We analyze data from a binary choice experiment where all lottery pairs are presented in both split and coalesced forms. Our results show that the presentation in a split form leads to a better fit of expected utility theory and to probability weighting functions that are closer to linear. We thus provide some evidence that the extent of probability weighting is not an ingrained feature, but rather a result of processing difficulties. (shrink)

Background Even though we are now well into the 21st century and notwithstanding all the abuse to individuals involved in clinical studies that has been documented throughout History, fundamental ethical principles continue to be violated in one way or another. Discussion Here are some of the main factors that contribute to the abuse of subjects participating in clinical trials: paternalism, improper use of informed consent, lack of strict ethical supervision, pressure exerted by health institutions to increase the production of scientific (...) material, and the absence of legislation regarding ethics in terms of health care and research. Are researchers ready to respect fundamental ethical principles in light of the ample window of information provided by individual genomes, while defending the rights of the subjects participating in clinical studies as a major priority? Summary As one of the possible solutions to this problem, education regarding fundamental ethical principles is suggested for participants in research studies as an initial method of cognitive training in ethics, together with the promotion of ethical behavior in order to encourage the adoption of reasonable policies in the field of values, attitudes and behavior. (shrink)

This study focuses on issues of elder abuse in residential settings. Violation of ethical principles is shown in the results of this quantitative study aimed at defining the extent, nature and causes of such abuse by employees’ unethical conduct towards clients in senior homes (i.e. residential nursing homes) in the Moravian-Silesian region of the Czech Republic. The research sample comprised 454 employees and 488 clients from 12 residential homes for older people. The data were collected from interviews with clients, (...) who also received a questionnaire concerning their satisfaction with the institution. Two questionnaires were administered to the employees, one based on a pilot qualitative study and a second to investigate burnout. Outcomes were assessed according to the extent and form of elder abuse, the causes of elder abuse and the violation of basic ethical principles. The responses, in particular those of employees, revealed both psychological and physical abuse of older clients, and thus violation of two basic principles: respect for the person and non-maleficence. The group at risk of elder abuse comprised aggressive and dissatisfied clients, as well as those with mental problems and dementia. The employees most at risk of being abusers were those who had been employed in institutional care for more than five years, had inadequate knowledge about social services and suffered from burnout. The prevention of elder abuse is recommended to be through education focused on ethical principles, increasing employees’ satisfaction by promoting a friendly and safe organizational culture, and providing adequate working conditions. (shrink)

Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure. By Hina Azam. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 270. $95.

In the context of computational social choice, we study voting methods that assign a set of winners to each profile of voter preferences. A voting method satisfies the property of positive involvement (PI) if for any election in which a candidate x would be among the winners, adding another voter to the election who ranks x first does not cause x to lose. Surprisingly, a number of standard voting methods violate this natural property. In this paper, we investigate different ways (...) of measuring the extent to which a voting method violates PI, using computer simulations. We consider the probability (under different probability models for preferences) of PI violations in randomly drawn profiles vs. profile-coalition pairs (involving coalitions of different sizes). We argue that in order to choose between a voting method that satisfies PI and one that does not, we should consider the probability of PI violation conditional on the voting methods choosing different winners. We should also relativize the probability of PI violation to what we call voter potency, the probability that a voter causes a candidate to lose. Although absolute frequencies of PI violations may be low, after this conditioning and relativization, we see that under certain voting methods that violate PI, much of a voter's potency is turned against them - in particular, against their desire to see their favorite candidate elected. (shrink)

Transnational effects are identified as those economic effects which cross state boundaries. Where these effects are negative, as illustrated by the ‘transnational case’, it is asked what the appropriate ethical analysis of such a case might be. If we leave aside a social distributive justice analysis, for reasons given, then a typical move is to claim that transnational economic effects are analysable as human rights violations. The paper examines this claim and identifies the specific view of human rights which motivates (...) it: the ‘outcomes view of human rights’. It is then shown how the outcomes view of human rights ultimately collapses into social distributive justice-type standards and so suffers from the same problems raised against using those standards for transnational effects. An alternative approach to human rights is sketched, although a complete theory of human rights is not offered. Finally, a different type of justice analysis for transnational cases is offered in which a form of international justice proper is proposed. (shrink)

Gitik, M., On measurable cardinals violating the continuum hypothesis, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 63 227-240. It is shown that an extender used uncountably many times in an iteration is reconstructible. This together with the Weak Covering Lemma is used to show that the assumption o=κ+α is necessary for a measurable κ with 2κ=κ+α.

A travel management programme allows an organisation to manage corporate travel expenditure, and through a well-formulated travel policy, to control its travel expenses. However, traveller non-compliance of the travel policy is an increasing area of concern with surveys conducted amongst travellers showing various reasons for non-compliance, both deliberate and unknowing. The purpose of this article is to look beyond the reasons and identify the underlying factors that influence travel policy compliance. Two broad categories of factors that lead to non-compliance are (...) distinguished: those related to the corporate travel policy as formulated and communicated by the organisation, referred to as corporate-related factors and including issues of corporate culture and business ethics; and those related to the person of the corporate traveller, referred as personal-related factors and including issues of personal ethics. This article makes a first attempt at identifying factors that have not previously been recognised in those industry or academic studies done on non-compliance or violation of the corporate travel policy. (shrink)

Over 90% of the organs transplanted in China before 2010 were procured from prisoners. Although Chinese officials announced in December 2014 that the country would completely cease using organs harvested from prisoners, no regulatory adjustments or changes in China’s organ donation laws followed. As a result, the use of prisoner organs remains legal in China if consent is obtained. We have collected and analysed available evidence on human rights violations in the organ procurement practice in China. We demonstrate that the (...) practice not only violates international ethics standards, it is also associated with a large scale neglect of fundamental human rights. This includes organ procurement without consent from prisoners or their families as well as procurement of organs from incompletely executed, still-living prisoners. The human rights critique of these practices will also address the specific situatedness of prisoners, often conditioned and traumatized by a cascade of human rights abuses in judicial structures. To end the unethical practice and the abuse associated with it, we suggest to inextricably bind the use of human organs procured in the Chinese transplant system to enacting Chinese legislation prohibiting the use of organs from executed prisoners and making explicit rules for law enforcement. Other than that, the international community must cease to abet the continuation of the present system by demanding an authoritative ban on the use of organs from executed Chinese prisoners. (shrink)

I discuss a model inspired from the string/brane framework, in which our Universe is represented (after perhaps appropriate compactification) as a three brane, propagating in a bulk space time punctured by D0-brane (D-particle) defects. As the D3-brane world moves in the bulk, the D-particles cross it, and from an effective observer on D3 the situation looks like a “space-time foam” with the defects “flashing” on and off (“D-particle foam”). The open strings, with their ends attached on the brane, which represent (...) matter in this scenario, can interact with the D-particles on the D3-brane universe in a topologically non-trivial manner, involving splitting and capture of the strings by the D0-brane defects. Such processes are consistently described by logarithmic conformal field theories on the world-sheet of the strings. Physically, they result in effective decoherence of the string matter on the D3 brane, and as a result, of CPT Violation, but of a type that implies an ill-defined nature of the effective CPT operator. Due to electric charge conservation, only electrically neutral (string) matter can exhibit such interactions with the D-particle foam. This may have unique, experimentally detectable (in principle), consequences for electrically-neutral entangled quantum matter states on the brane world, in particular the modification of the pertinent Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Correlation in neutral mesons in an appropriate meson factory. For the simplest scenarios, the order of magnitude of such effects might lie within the sensitivity of upgraded φ-meson factories. (shrink)

. The ability to enforce the provisions of a code of conduct influences whether the code is effective in shaping behavior. Enforcement relies in part on the willingness of organization members to report violations of the code, but research from the business and educational environment suggests that fewer than half of those who observe code violations follow their organizations procedures for reporting them. Based on a review of the literature in the business and educational environments, and a survey of 3605 (...) students at a mid-sized comprehensive university, this paper attempts to make conceptual sense of the non-reporting phenomenon. We present a conceptual framework based on four distinct factors which we have labeled: (1) factual non-responsibility; (2) moral non-responsibility; (3) consequential exoneration; and, (4) functional exoneration. Each of these factors suggest a different remedial strategy as well as provide a theoretical foundation for future research. Testable propositions for future research are developed, and some implications for organization leaders are discussed. (shrink)

Recent scholarship in business ethics has revealed the importance of privacy expectations as they relate to implicit privacy norms and the business practices that may violate these expectations. Yet, it is unclear how and when businesses may violate these expectations, factors that form or influence privacy expectations, or whether or not expectations have in fact been violated by company actions. This article reports the findings of three studies exploring how and when the corporate dissemination of consumer data violates privacy expectations. (...) The results indicate that consumer sentiment is more negative following intentional releases of sensitive consumer data, but the effect of data dissemination is more complex than that of company intentionality and data sensitivity alone. Companies can effectively set, and re-affirm, privacy expectations via consent procedures preceding and succeeding data dissemination notifications. Although implied consent has become more widely used in practice, we show how explicit consent outperforms implied consent in these regards. Importantly, this research provides process evidence that identifies perceived violation of privacy expectations as the underlying mechanism to explain the deleterious effects, on consumer sentiment, when company actions are misaligned with consumers’ privacy expectations. Ethical implications for companies collecting and disseminating consumer information are offered. (shrink)

In this paper I will focus on the case of the discovery of parity nonconservation in weak interactions from the period spanning 1947–1957, and the lessons this episode provides for successful theory construction in HEP. I aim to (a) summarize the history into a coherent story for philosophers of science, and (b) use the history as a case study for the epistemological evolution of the understanding of weak interactions in HEP. I conclude with some philosophical lessons regarding theory construction in (...) physics. (shrink)

A torsional-antenna and a log-periodic antenna are used as a source and an analyzer, respectively, to investigate the possible anomalies of an electro-magnetic field. An unexpected isotropic signal has been detected using those torsion angles, which correspond to a breakdown of the Local Lorentz Invariance, which was found in the past. This coincidence is interpreted as the recovery of a lost symmetry by torqueing the antenna, thus putting in evidence that this Lorentz violation is of angular nature. Introducing a (...) new physical dimension—not only a mathematical dimension as a way to rearrange some equations—is here proposed as a general rule to recover the lost symmetry. (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason —the principle that everything has a reason—plays a central role in Leibniz’s philosophical system. It is rather difficult, however, to determine what Leibniz’s attitude towards the modal status of the PSR is. The prevailing view is that Leibniz takes the PSR to be true necessarily. This paper develops a novel interpretation and argues that Leibniz’s PSR is a contingent principle. It also discusses whether a merely contingent PSR can do the metaphysical heavy lifting that Leibniz (...) aims for. The paper shows that, despite appearance to the contrary, this is possible. In a nutshell, the argument is that the only possible PSR violation Leibniz allows for is God’s creation of a suboptimal world; there is no Leibnizian possible world, though, which intrinsically violates the PSR. Despite its contingency, then, Leibniz’s PSR is modally robust enough to serve as a foundational principle of his metaphysics. (shrink)

In decision theory, the betweenness axiom postulates that a decision maker who chooses an alternative A over another alternative B must also choose any probability mixture of A and B over B itself and can never choose a probability mixture of A and B over A itself. The betweenness axiom is a weaker version of the independence axiom of expected utility theory. Numerous empirical studies documented systematic violations of the betweenness axiom in revealed individual choice under uncertainty. This paper shows (...) that these systematic violations can be linked to another behavioral regularity—choice shifts in a group decision making. Choice shifts are observed if an individual faces the same decision problem but makes a different choice when deciding alone and in a group. (shrink)

Dignity is a human right and a base for human health. This right must be observed in work environments as a moral obligation. This qualitative study aimed to understand nurses’ experiences of violation of their dignity at work and to explore its dimensions. The participants were 15 nurses working in two hospitals in Tehran. The data were collected through 26 unstructured interviews and analyzed using content analysis. The dimensions of violation were ‘irreverence’, including experiences of abuse and violence, (...) humiliation, and being ignored; ‘coercion and violation of autonomy’, consisting of the control of relationships, lack of privacy, rigidness, and imposition; ‘ignoring professional and scientific ability’, indicating impossibilities in applying nurses’ knowledge; and ‘denying the value of nurse/care’, being the theme that verified the dominance of treatment/cure and lack of recognition of care value. Health systems should take the promotion of the nurses’ dignity into account through providing a dignified work environment. (shrink)

I argue there are some objects which do not respect the Law of the Excluded Middle, i.e., which are such that, for some property F, the disjunction Fo v ~Fo fails to be true. I call such objects “odd objects” and present three examples—fictional objects, nonsort objects, and quantum objects. I argue that each of these objects is best understood as violating LEM. I, then, discuss Jessica Wilson’s account of metaphysical indeterminacy. I show how the indeterminacy which arises with odd (...) objects can be accounted for on Wilson’s account. I, then, argue that my Wilson-inspired, but non-LEM-respecting, account of metaphysical indeterminacy is superior to Wilson’s in terms of costs and benefits. (shrink)

In the present study, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated a group of participants on a grammaticality classification task after they had been exposed to well-formed consonant strings generated from an artificial regular grammar. We used an implicit acquisition paradigm in which the participants were exposed to positive examples. The objective of this studywas to investigate whether brain regions related to language processing overlap with the brain regions activated by the grammaticality classification task used in the present study. (...) Recent meta-analyses of functional neuroimaging studies indicate that syntactic processing is related to the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's areas 44 and 45) or Broca's region. In the present study, we observed that artificial grammaticality violations activated Broca's region in all participants. This observation lends some support to the suggestions that artificial grammar learning represents a model for investigating aspects of language learning in infants [TICS 4 (2000) 178] and adults [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of United States of America 99 (2002) 529]. (shrink)

Violations of research ethics including a varieties of plagiarism by students in Iran is a concern which has lately called promising levels of attention as rules are updated and better enforced and more awareness is being raised. As to deal with any problem, a full understanding of its nature is necessary, the current study focused on how a sample of Iranian students construe this phenomenon. To collect the necessary data, an original questionnaire with 34 closed-ended items included the most common (...) instances of violations of research ethics was designed. The items included were mainly varieties of plagiarism identified in the literature. The items were narrowed down with reference to the qualitative data from focus group interviews with a purposive sample of Iranian graduate students. In the main phase of the study, using the questionnaire, quantitative data were obtained from the responses of 274 graduate students of translation studying in various Iranian universities. The findings revealed the participants did not have a fully accurate perception and appreciation of research ethics violation as they failed to distinguish ethically acceptable from unethical conducts. The contributing sample showed indifference to most ethical issues in scholarly publication. Translating a text and presenting it as one’s own in addition to text recycling were identified as the most severe instances perceived. The types, fraudulence, unacknowledged use, duplicate publication, misreferencing, excessive overuse were perceived the most severe to the least severe according to the sample. The typology and the findings on the severity of the types and instances were recommended to be used as an empirically supported guideline for curriculum design of academic writing courses in graduate programs in Iranian universities or similar contexts. (shrink)

Dignity is a human right and a base for human health. This right must be observed in work environments as a moral obligation. This qualitative study aimed to understand nurses’ experiences of violation of their dignity at work and to explore its dimensions. The participants were 15 nurses working in two hospitals in Tehran. The data were collected through 26 unstructured interviews and analyzed using content analysis. The dimensions of violation were ‘irreverence’, including experiences of abuse and violence, (...) humiliation, and being ignored; ‘coercion and violation of autonomy’, consisting of the control of relationships, lack of privacy, rigidness, and imposition; ‘ignoring professional and scientific ability’, indicating impossibilities in applying nurses’ knowledge; and ‘denying the value of nurse/care’, being the theme that verified the dominance of treatment/cure and lack of recognition of care value. Health systems should take the promotion of the nurses’ dignity into account through providing a dignified work environment. (shrink)

Although the sensorimotor account is a significant step forward, it cannot explain experiences of entoptic phenomena that violate normal sensorimotor contingencies but nonetheless are perceived as visual. Nervous system structure limits how they can be interpreted. Neurophysiology, combined with a sensorimotor theory, can account for space constancy by denying the existence of permanent representations of states that must be corrected or updated.