Collaboration requires agents to coordinate their behavior on the fly, sometimes cooperating to solve a single task together and other times dividing it up into sub‐tasks to work on in parallel. Underlying the human ability to collaborate is theory‐of‐mind (ToM), the ability to infer the hidden mental states that drive others to act. Here, we develop Bayesian Delegation, a decentralized multi‐agent learning mechanism with these abilities. Bayesian Delegation enables agents to rapidly infer the hidden intentions of others by inverse planning. (...) We test Bayesian Delegation in a suite of multi‐agent Markov decision processes inspired by cooking problems. On these tasks, agents with Bayesian Delegation coordinate both their high‐level plans (e.g., what sub‐task they should work on) and their low‐level actions (e.g., avoiding getting in each other's way). When matched with partners that act using the same algorithm, Bayesian Delegation outperforms alternatives. Bayesian Delegation is also a capable ad hoc collaborator and successfully coordinates with other agent types even in the absence of prior experience. Finally, in a behavioral experiment, we show that Bayesian Delegation makes inferences similar to human observers about the intent of others. Together, these results argue for the centrality of ToM for successful decentralized multi‐agent collaboration. (shrink)

This book explains why moral beliefs can and likely do play an important role in the development and operation of market economies. It provides new arguments for why it is important that people genuinely trust others-even those whom they know don't particularly care about them-because in key circumstances institutions are incapable of combating opportunism. It then identifies specific characteristics that moral beliefs must have for the people who possess them to be regarded as trustworthy. When such moral beliefs are held (...) with sufficient conviction by a sufficiently high proportion of the population, a high trust society emerges that supports maximum cooperation and creativity while permitting honest competition at the same time. Such moral beliefs are not tied to any particular religion and have nothing to do with moral earnestness or the set of moral values-what matters is how they affect the way people think about morality. Such moral beliefs are based on abstract ideas that must be learned so they are matters of culture, not genes, and are therefore able to explain differences in economic performance across societies. (shrink)

Morality has traditionally been described in terms of an impartial and objective “moral law”, and moral psychological research has largely followed in this vein, focusing on abstract moral judgments. But might our moral judgments be shaped not just by what the action is, but who is doing it? We looked at ratings of moral wrongness, manipulating whether the person doing the action was a friend, a refugee, or a stranger. We looked at these ratings across various moral foundations, and conducted (...) the study in Brazil, US, and UK samples. Our most robust and consistent findings are that purity violations were judged more harshly when committed by ingroup members and less harshly when committed by the refugees in comparison to the unspecified agents, the difference between refugee and unspecified agents decays from liberals to conservatives, i.e., conservatives judge them more harshly than liberals do, and Brazilians participants are harsher than the US and UK participants. Our results suggest that purity violations are judged differently according to who committed them and according to the political ideology of the judges. We discuss the findings in light of various theories of groups dynamics, such as moral hypocrisy, moral disengagement, and the black sheep effect. (shrink)

Philosophy of Communication Ethics is a unique and timely volume that creatively examines communication ethics, philosophy of communication, and "the other.".

Augustan poets refer curiously often to the possible composition of a Gigantomachy, as in Prop. 2.1 and 3.9, Ov. Am. 2.1.11 ff., Trist. 2.61 ff. and 331 ff., and the future study of natural philosophy, as in Verg. Georg. 2.475 ff. and Prop. 3.5.25 ff. These ambitions are rejected, abandoned, or firmly set in the future. I suggest that the function of both is closely similar since they provide traditionally sublime themes to contrast the poet's present ‘humbler’’ task.

Donald Russell, Emeritus Professor of Classical Literature at the University of Oxford, has been a leading figure in several fields of classical scholarship over the last few decades. The present volume collects essays written in his honour by scholars who have all worked closely with him. They fall into three sections, corresponding to Donald Russell's main work: Latin literature, Greek imperial literature, and ancient literary criticism. They are unified by two of Russell's own pervasive concerns: ethics, the concern of classical (...) literature with moral conduct, and rhetoric, the techniques of effective persuasion. (shrink)

Phidias’ absence from the survey of sculptors in Cic. Brut. 70 is curious, explanation in terms of differing histories of sculpture only partly convincing. I suggest that Cicero has valid literary motives and is wittily undermining the Atticist position by adaptation of what was a rhetorical topos, the parallel development of Greek prose and sculpture from archaic spareness to classical expertise and dignity: see Dem. Eloc. 14, D. H. Isoc. 3, p.59 U-R; more elaborate but partly deriving from Cicero and (...) less homogeneous is Qu. 12.10.7–9. Cicero assumes the reader's knowledge of the commonplace, pointedly ignores the quality of grandeur and dignity, and develops a theory of technical progress on the basis of veritas and grace to attack the Atticists from their own preferences. The resulting model serves to demote Lysias, imitated by the Atticists but merely the counterpart of Calamis, strigosior like archaic sculptures and superseded by later progress. The analogy thus obliquely repeats the brief but charged parenthesis in 66 that Demosthenes superseded Lysias. (shrink)

Phidias’ absence from the survey of sculptors in Cic. Brut. 70 is curious, explanation in terms of differing histories of sculpture only partly convincing. I suggest that Cicero has valid literary motives and is wittily undermining the Atticist position by adaptation of what was a rhetorical topos, the parallel development of Greek prose and sculpture from archaic spareness to classical expertise and dignity: see Dem. Eloc. 14, D. H. Isoc. 3, p.59 U-R; more elaborate but partly deriving from Cicero and (...) less homogeneous is Qu. 12.10.7–9. Cicero assumes the reader's knowledge of the commonplace, pointedly ignores the quality of grandeur and dignity, and develops a theory of technical progress on the basis of veritas and grace to attack the Atticists from their own preferences. The resulting model serves to demote Lysias, imitated by the Atticists but merely the counterpart of Calamis, strigosior like archaic sculptures and superseded by later progress. The analogy thus obliquely repeats the brief but charged parenthesis in 66 that Demosthenes superseded Lysias. (shrink)

In his article , 97–105) R. Reneham rightly classes Sail. Cat.20.9 as a conscious imitation of Cic.Cat.1.1, but adopts the unsatisfactory explanation of parody. Such parody is, as he notes, without parallel in Sallust and ineptly distracts attention from the vigorous development of Catiline's rhetoric. Elsewhere mimesis is regularly a compliment to the author imitated, often closely functional by reinforcing a point from the parallel of a similar context . Similarly I suggest that here Sallust recalls Cicero's words to illustrate (...) that perversion of vocabulary which is the keynote of Catiline's speech: just as he misuses, for example, the terms virtus fidesque at the beginning of his speech, in stark contrast to Sallust's own definition, so he perverts the famous words of the attack which revealed his true villainy in similar savage indignatio. (shrink)

After years of relative neglect, experimental science has once again become an object of scrutiny. Philosophers such as Hacking and Cartwright have examined contemporary science in an attempt to display the epistemic status of experimental results, while sociologists such as Shapin and Schaffer have focussed on historical cases in an attempt to display the conventional basis of experimentation. In this study I am concerned with the epistemological question: How can one justify the claim that it is rational to believe that (...) the methods of experimental science yield knowledge about the unobserved causal structures of our world? My answer to this question is produced by way of an historical analysis and philosophical retrieval of Robert Boyle's epistemological defense of experimental science. ;The first two chapters examine contemporary issues surrounding experimental science, particularly those challenges posed to its knowledge-producing ability by philosophical instrumentalists and sociological constructionists. I then turn to an examination of Boyle's version of experimental philosophy, which includes a detailed discussion of the background traditions from which he drew in its formulation, and his response to critics of experimentation, such as Hobbes and Spinoza. ;Boyle's work is not only historically important, but is philosophically significant in light of the fact that he developed epistemological strategies in defense of experimental techniques at a time when it was not clear that experimentation would become the standard of modern science. His philosophy is characterized as a sophisticated and complex method that employs the elements of inductive, retroductive, and hypothetico-deductive reasoning. This combination, he argues, yields a system of checks and balances on sense, reason, and ideology that, while fallible, offers us the best assurance that we have of coming closer to the truth about the processes operative in our world. ;In a concluding chapter it is argued that Boyle's philosophy of science, by virtue of its richness and complexity, is sufficient to respond to the general challenges to scientific objectivity posed by sociologists of knowledge, and the more specific challenges to the realist import of the theoretical claims of experimental science posed by philosophers such as Laudan and van Fraassen. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to describe the development of a model of moral distress in military nursing. The model evolved through an analysis of the moral distress and military nursing literature, and the analysis of interview data obtained from US Army Nurse Corps officers (n = 13). Stories of moral distress (n = 10) given by the interview participants identified the process of the moral distress experience among military nurses and the dimensions of the military nursing moral distress (...) phenomenon. Models of both the process of military nursing moral distress and the phenomenon itself are proposed. Recommendations are made for the use of the military nursing moral distress models in future research studies and in interventions to ameliorate the experience of moral distress in crisis military deployments. (shrink)

Dr. David K. Naugle is widely regarded as a leading thinker in the area of Christian worldview formation. As Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Dallas Baptist University, he has drawn accolades and admiration. -/- This collection in his honor demonstrates that intellectual pursuits are inherently spiritual, that no area of life is separate from the lordship of Christ, and that true Christian faith is in fact the deep fulfillment of the human experience. On topics ranging from linguistics to gardening and (...) everything in between, these essays represent the depth and breadth of the idea that all goodness is God's goodness, all truth is God's truth, and all beauty is God's beauty. (shrink)

Arthur Danto is the Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and the most influential philosopher of art in the last half century. As an art critic for The Nation for 25 years and frequent contributor to other widely read outlets such as the New York Review of Books, Danto also has become one of the most respected public intellectuals of his generation. He is the author of some two dozen important books, along with hundreds of articles and reviews (...) which have been the center of both controversy and discussion. In this volume Danto offers his intellectual autobiography and responds to essays by 27 of the keenest critics of his thought from the worlds of philosophy and the arts. The book includes 16 pages of color art reproductions. Danto is the author dozens of books on art, philosophy, the philosophy of art, and art criticism. He is a rare philosopher who is also a public intellectual. (shrink)

In September 2008, 10 years after the untimely death of Pere Alberch (1954–1998), the 20th Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology gathered a group of Pere’s students, col- laborators, and colleagues (Figure 1) to celebrate his contribu- tions to the origins of EvoDevo. Hosted by the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) outside Vienna, the group met for two days of discussion. The meeting was organized in tandem with a congress held in May 2008 at the Cavanilles Institute (...) for Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology (ICBiBE) in Valencia, Spain. The talks at the KLI were equal parts: nostalgic remembrance, excitement over new ways of thinking about old problems, and an unrepressed vitriol against the resurgence of reductionist thinking in EvoDevo. Here we highlight some of the key aspects of Pere’s life and work that informed and infused the talks. (shrink)

It is often assumed that engaging in a one‐on‐one dialogue with a tutor is more effective than listening to a lecture or reading a text. Although earlier experiments have not always supported this hypothesis, this may be due in part to allowing the tutors to cover different content than the noninteractive instruction. In 7 experiments, we tested the interaction hypothesis under the constraint that (a) all students covered the same content during instruction, (b) the task domain was qualitative physics, (c) (...) the instruction was in natural language as opposed to mathematical or other formal languages, and (d) the instruction conformed with a widely observed pattern in human tutoring: Graesser, Person, and Magliano's 5‐step frame. In the experiments, we compared 2 kinds of human tutoring (spoken and computer mediated) with 2 kinds of natural‐language‐based computer tutoring (Why2‐Atlas and Why2‐AutoTutor) and 3 control conditions that involved studying texts. The results depended on whether the students' preparation matched the content of the instruction. When novices (students who had not taken college physics) studied content that was written for intermediates (students who had taken college physics), then tutorial dialogue was reliably more beneficial than less interactive instruction, with large effect sizes. When novices studied material written for novices or intermediates studied material written for intermediates, then tutorial dialogue was not reliably more effective than the text‐based control conditions. (shrink)

As human beings age, they become weak, fragile, and feeble. It is a slowly progressing yet complex syndrome in which old age or some disabilities are not prerequisites; neither does loss of human parts lead to frailty among the physically fit older persons. This paper aims to describe the influences of transhumanist perspectives on human‐technology enhancements and replacements in the transcendence of human frailties, including those of older persons, in which technology is projected to deliver solutions toward transcending these frailties. (...) Through technologies including genetic screening and other technological manipulations, intelligent machines and augmented humans improve, maintain, and remedy human‐linked susceptibilities. Furthermore, other technologies replace parts fabricated through inorganic‐mechanical processes such as 3D‐printing. Advancing technologies are reaching the summit of technological sophistication contributing to the transhumanist views of being human in a technological world. Technologies enhance the transcendence of human frailties as essential expressions of the symbiosis between human beings and technology in a transcendental world. (shrink)

It is often assumed that engaging in a one‐on‐one dialogue with a tutor is more effective than listening to a lecture or reading a text. Although earlier experiments have not always supported this hypothesis, this may be due in part to allowing the tutors to cover different content than the noninteractive instruction. In 7 experiments, we tested the interaction hypothesis under the constraint that (a) all students covered the same content during instruction, (b) the task domain was qualitative physics, (c) (...) the instruction was in natural language as opposed to mathematical or other formal languages, and (d) the instruction conformed with a widely observed pattern in human tutoring: Graesser, Person, and Magliano's 5‐step frame. In the experiments, we compared 2 kinds of human tutoring (spoken and computer mediated) with 2 kinds of natural‐language‐based computer tutoring (Why2‐Atlas and Why2‐AutoTutor) and 3 control conditions that involved studying texts. The results depended on whether the students' preparation matched the content of the instruction. When novices (students who had not taken college physics) studied content that was written for intermediates (students who had taken college physics), then tutorial dialogue was reliably more beneficial than less interactive instruction, with large effect sizes. When novices studied material written for novices or intermediates studied material written for intermediates, then tutorial dialogue was not reliably more effective than the text‐based control conditions. (shrink)

Using mixed methods, we explored new music students’ concepts of wellbeing and success and their current state of wellbeing at a university music department in Switzerland. Music performance is a competitive and achievement-oriented career. Research suggests musicians face vocation-specific challenges to physical health and mental wellbeing but has yet to investigate music students’ beliefs about wellbeing and success. With a self-report questionnaire we investigated new music students’ quality of life and self-efficacy. Through qualitative workshops we explored students’ understanding of the (...) term “wellbeing,” and how this relates to “success.” Over half new music students believed the institution has 40–60% responsibility for their wellbeing. A simple linear regression showed that self-efficacy could predict better wellbeing, explaining 12% of the variance. Self-efficacy predicts wellbeing for new music students. The 17 flipcharts generated 121 inputs clustered into themes. Four themes solely described “wellbeing” and four separately depict “success”. Some themes intersected as elements of both constructs. Four further themes illustrated the relationship between the two. Music students believe responsibility for wellbeing is shared between themselves and their institution. As they scored low on both self-efficacy and wellbeing, these findings are an urgent call for action for school management and stakeholders of the music student population. (shrink)

Introduction THOMAS C. HELLER AND DAVID E. WELLBERY A he essays that follow originated in a conference entitled "Reconstructing Individualism," held at ...

Many worry that global warming may produce dire consequences not just for humankind, but for many other living organisms on the planetEarth. This has raised concerns about the desirability of the political and economic policies that brought us to this point in history, a period of markedly higher levels of consumptionConsumption that produce higher levels of CO2. That, in turn, has raised new concerns about the ideologies and theoretical paradigms upon which such political and economic policies are based. Many now (...) call for a rejection of free marketFree Market economies to make room for more centrally planned economic systems. Even the idea of Homo EconomicusHomo Economicus – the primary actor in the modern free marketFree Market economy – is under fire in favor of a new conceptualization of the primary actor: Homo CuratorHomo Curator. This essay explains why these changes are both unnecessary and dangerous. I argue they are unnecessary by showing: (1) Homo Economicus and excessive consumptionConsumption are not the root of the problem, and (2) how the theory of market failure already gives us proven means to address problems like global warming. I argue that abandoning Homo Economicus and the free marketFree Market economy is dangerous because it will inevitably lead to a world that is far less likely to support individual and collective human flourishing; one that poorer, less free, and less respectful of the sanctity of the individual. (shrink)

Vaccination is a highly effective public health strategy that provides protection to both individuals and communities from a range of infectious diseases. Governments monitor vaccination rates carefully, as widespread use of a vaccine within a population is required to extend protection to the general population through “herd immunity,” which is important for protecting infants who are not yet fully vaccinated and others who are unable to undergo vaccination for medical or other reasons. Australia is unique in employing financial incentives to (...) increase vaccination uptake, mainly in the form of various childcare payments and tax benefits linked to timely, age-appropriate vaccination. Despite relatively high compliance with the childhood vaccination schedule, however, the Australian government has determined that rates should be higher and has recently introduced policy that includes removing certain tax and childcare benefits for non-vaccinators and formally disallowing conscientious objection to vaccination. In addition, it has raised the possibility of banning unvaccinated children from childcare centres. This article examines the impact of coercive approaches to childhood vaccination and raises the question of the ethical justification of health policy initiatives based on coercion. We consider the current evidence regarding childhood vaccination in Australia, the small but real risks associated with vaccination, the ethical requirement for consent for medical procedures, and the potential social harms of targeting non-vaccinators. We conclude that the evidence does not support a move to an increasingly mandatory approach that could only be delivered through paternalistic, coercive clinical practices. (shrink)

This note addresses the issue as to which ceers can be realized by word problems of computably enumerable (or, simply, c.e.) structures (such as c.e. semigroups, groups, and rings), where being realized means to fall in the same reducibility degree (under the notion of reducibility for equivalence relations usually called “computable reducibility”), or in the same isomorphism type (with the isomorphism induced by a computable function), or in the same strong isomorphism type (with the isomorphism induced by a computable permutation (...) of the natural numbers). We observe, e.g., that every ceer is isomorphic to the word problem of some c.e. semigroup, but (answering a question of Gao and Gerdes) not every ceer is in the same reducibility degree of the word problem of some finitely presented semigroup, nor is it in the same reducibility degree of some non‐periodic semigroup. We also show that the ceer provided by provable equivalence of Peano Arithmetic is in the same strong isomorphism type as the word problem of some non‐commutative and non‐Boolean c.e. ring. (shrink)

Background: There is a growing interest in using cognitive behavioural therapy with people who have Asperger Syndrome and comorbid mental health problems. Aims: To examine whether modified group CBT for clinically significant anxiety in an AS population is feasible and likely to be efficacious. Method: Using a randomised assessor-blind trial, 52 individuals with AS were randomised into a treatment arm or a waiting-list control arm. After 24 weeks, those in the waiting-list control arm received treatment, while those initially randomised to (...) treatment were followed-up for 24 weeks. Results: The conversion rate for this trial was high, while attrition was 13%. After 24 weeks, there was no significant difference between those randomised to the treatment arm compared to those randomised to the waiting-list control arm on the primary outcome measure, the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety. Conclusions: Trials of psychological therapies with this population are feasible. Larger definitive trials are now needed. Declaration of Interest: None Trial Registration: ISRCTN 30265294, UKCRN 8370. (shrink)

The potential to instrumentalize drug use based upon the detection of very many different drug states undoubtedly exists, and such states may play a role in psychiatric and many other drug uses. Nevertheless, nonaddictive drug use is potentially more parsimoniously explained in terms of sensation seeking/impulsivity and drug expectations. Cultural factors also play a major role in nonaddictive drug use.

Empirical work on the use of causal language by ordinary people indicates that their causal attributions tend to be sensitive not only to purely descriptive considerations, but also to broadly moral considerations. For example, ordinary causal attributions appear to be highly sensitive to whether a behavior is permissible or impermissible. Recently, however, a consensus view has emerged that situates the role of permissibility information within a broader framework: According to the consensus, ordinary causal attributions are sensitive to whether or not (...) a behavior is generally out of the norm, where being out of the norm might indicate deviation from a prescriptive norm (a broadly moral consideration) or deviation from a statistical norm (a purely descriptive consideration). In contrast, we conjecture that ordinary causal attributions are more directly connected to broadly moral judgments about normative responsibility (the responsibility view). We present the results of a series of new experimental studies that are consistent with the responsibility view, while indicating that the consensus position is seriously mistaken. (shrink)

Using structural equations and directed graphs, Christopher Hitchcock (2007a) proposes a theory specifying the circumstances in which counterfactual dependence of one event e on another event c is necessary and sufficient for c to count as an actual cause of e. In this paper, we argue that Hitchcock is committed to a widely-endorsed folk attribution desideratum (FAD) for theories of actual causation. We then show experimentally that Hitchcock’s theory does not satisfy the FAD, and hence, it is in need of (...) revision. (shrink)

« Nous savons que nous voulons nous retrouver. Tout ce dont nous avons besoin, c’est des cérémonies qui nous rassembleront » écrit la poétesse afro-féministe Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Les noms que nous utilisons pour nous dire font parfois office de cérémonies : un nom nous appelle, et nous répondons à son invocation. Ce peut être un cri de ralliement « Not GAY as in Happy but QUEER as in Fuck You! », mais même les collectifs les plus émeutiers et les (...) plus retors à l’identification courent le risque, en se nommant, de se voir réassigner à résidence par l’interpellation policière (« hé toi, là-bas! »). Comment éviter les pièges de l’identité? Les études queer ont élaboré le concept de désidentification pour décrire la tentative fugitive d’échapper aux marquages policiers des identités. Ce texte tente de détailler les enjeux politiques de ce refus d’identification en le situant dans les allers-retours franco-états-uniens des études et des activismes queer. (shrink)

Significant advances have recently been made in our understanding of the mechanisms of activation of proteins that require processing. Often this involves endoproteolytic cleavage of precursor forms at basic residues, and is carried out by a group of serine endoproteinases, termed the proprotein convertases. In mammals, seven different convertases have been identified to date. These act in both the regulated secretory pathway for the processing of prohormones and proneuropeptides and in the constitutive secretory pathway, in which a variety of proproteins (...) are activated endoproteolytically. The recently completed sequence of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans genome affords a unique opportunity to examine the entire proprotein convertase family in a multicellular organism. Here we review the nature of the family, emphasising the structural features, characteristic of the four nematode genes, that supply all of the necessary functions unique to this group of serine endoproteinases. Studies of the C. elegans genes not only provide important information about the evaluation of this gene family but should help to illuminate the roles of these proteins in mammalian systems. BioEssays 22:545–553, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Chromosome ends have been implicated in the meiotic processes of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Cytological observations have shown that chromosome ends attach to the nuclear membrane and adopt kinetochore functions. In this organism, centromeric activity is highly regulated, switching from multiple spindle attachments all along the chromosome during mitotic division to a single attachment during meiosis. C. elegans chromosomes are functionally monocentric during meiosis. Earlier genetic studies demonstrated that the terminal regions of the chromosomes are not equivalent in their meiotic (...) potentials. There are asymmetries in the abilities of the ends to recombine when duplicated or deleted. In addition, mutations in single genes have been identified that mimic the meiotic effects of a terminal truncation of the X chromosome. The recent cloning and characterization of the C. elegans telomeres has provided a starting point for the study of chromosomal elements mediating the meiotic process. (shrink)

In a series of pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger), and (d) the difference (...) between people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility in response to first-person scenarios and third-person scenarios. We predicted that once we focused participants’ attention on the two different abilities to do otherwise available to agents in indeterministic and deterministic scenarios, their intuitions would support natural incompatibilism—the view that laypersons judge that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. This prediction was borne out by our findings. (shrink)