Task-unrelated thought (TUT) occurs frequently in our daily lives and across a range of tasks, but we know little about how this phenomenon arises during and influences the way we communicate. Conversations also provide a novel opportunity to assess the alignment (or divergence) in TUT during dyadic interactions. We conducted a study to determine: (a) the frequency of TUT during conversation as well as how partners align/diverge in their rates of TUT, (b) the subjective and behavioral correlates of TUT and (...) TUT divergence during conversation, and (c) if perceived social group identity impacts TUT and TUT divergence during conversation. We used a minimal groups induction procedure to assign participants (N = 126) to either an ingroup, outgroup, or control condition. We then asked them to converse with one another via a computer-mediated text chat application for 10 min while self-reporting TUTs. On average, participants reported TUT about once every 2 min; however, this rate was lower for participants in the ingroup condition, compared to the control condition. Conversational pairs in the ingroup condition were also aligned more in their rates of TUT compared to the outgroup condition. Finally, we discuss subjective and behavioral correlates of TUT and TUT divergence in conversations, such as valence, turn-taking ratios, and topic shifts. (shrink)

This volume discusses the origin and structure of the universe in mystical Islam (Sufism) and Islam's civilizational predecessors with special reference to parallel realms of existence and their interaction. Contributors address Sufi ideas about the fate of human beings in this and future life under three rubrics: (1) cosmogony and eschatology ("where do we come from?" and "where do we go?"); (2) conceptualizations of the world of the here-and-now ("where are we now?"); and (3) visualizations of realms of existence, their (...) hierarchy and mutual relationships ("where are we in relation to other times and places?"). Contributors are Christian Lange, Alexander Knysh, Noah Gardiner, Stephen Hirtenstein, Saeko Yazaki, Jean-Jacques Thibon, Leah Kinberg, Sara Sviri, Munjed M. Murad, Simon O'Meara, Pierre Lory, Mathieu Terrier, Michael Ebstein, Binyamin Abrahamov and Frederick Colby. (shrink)

Can there be grounding without necessitation? Can a fact obtain wholly in virtue of metaphysically more fundamental facts, even though there are possible worlds at which the latter facts obtain but not the former? It is an orthodoxy in recent literature about the nature of grounding, and in first-order philosophical disputes about what grounds what, that the answer is no. I will argue that the correct answer is yes. I present two novel arguments against grounding necessitarianism, and show that grounding (...) contingentism is fully compatible with the various explanatory roles that grounding is widely thought to play. (shrink)

The legacy of an antinomian messianism within a Jewish historical context -- Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben on the processes of messianicity and canonicity -- Conclusions formulated on the basis of part I: recognizing the challenges of a "political theology of immanence" -- The radical hermeneutics of theology -- The "violence" of the canon: a contemporary context for the canonical form -- The necessity of hermeneutics.

From island biogeography theory, the ethic of organic diversity was posited as a precept to guide applied biogeography. It states that humanity must act in such a way as to reduce the rate of worldwide species extinction for an indefinite period of time. Almost 50 years later, the ethic of organic diversity remains relevant in the context of the debate over species translocation practices. Ultimately, matters of biodiversity conservation are too complex to expect an exceptionless moral framework to determine whether (...) species translocation is acceptable in every situation. Instead, individual cases should be judged based on the adequacy of their decision-making processes. (shrink)

This long-awaited two-volume set constitutes the definitive presentation of the system of classifying moral judgment built up by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates over a period of twenty years. Researchers in child development and education around the world, many of whom have worked with interim versions of the system, indeed, all those seriously interested in understanding the problem of moral judgment, will find it an indispensable resource. Volume I reviews Kohlberg's stage theory, and the by-now large body of research on (...) the significance and utility of his moral stages. Issues of reliability and validity are addressed. The volume ends with detailed instructions for using the forms in Volume 2. Volume 2, in a specially-designed, user-friendly format, includes three alternative functionally-equivalent forms of the scoring system. (shrink)

We review articles about corporate political activity published in Business & Society since its beginnings 60 years ago and in a set of other leading management journals over the past decade. We present evidence that most studies of CPA use the political markets’ perspective. Under the premise that the contemporary political environment has changed significantly since the inception of the political markets’ perspective, our review asks two interconnected questions. First, to what degree have changes in the political environment challenged the (...) ability of the political markets’ perspective to understand the pillars of politics: issues, institutions, interests, and information? Second, to what degree have CPA scholars augmented or diversified their theoretical arguments to accommodate these changes in the political environment? We document the CPA literature across these dimensions and questions and note that many scholars are already adopting other theories side by side with the political markets’ perspective. (shrink)

The expression ‘a university without research is a dignified high school’ is becoming a both local and global concern in the academia. The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which collaborative research methodologies can enhance integration of faculties of arts and humanities in the universities in Malawi for knowledge development and transfer. It has been argued over and over that universities are spotlighted by their outstanding work in research, developing and sharing ideas, new inventions and creativity (...) within the spectrum of partnership development. While striving for partnership through collaborative research approaches, research activities still remain an area of concern in institutions that offer diverse tertiary education in Malawi. The question of how can these institutions or faculties engage each other in collaborative research methodologies in the quest of knowledge development and transfer remains crucial and relevant The study analyzed strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities of the existing research methods in Arts and Humanities and how the two disciplines can create a space for amalgamation so that research findings can benefit both disciplines. The study reveals that collaboration in various disciplines is a challenge owing to variations of conceptual analyses and the deficiency of technical no-how of both teaching staff and students as well as tools for data collection and analysis as may be emphasized in each of the areas of study; Arts and Humanities. Furthermore, while other institutions of higher learning have research ethics committees for checks and balances as a collaborative tool, some institutions do not know that this committee plays a crucial role in the field of research. Within this backdrop, there is need to develop research collaborations within an institution or with other institutions of higher learning that have a well-defined research profile for mutual benefits as far as collaborative research methodologies are concerned. (shrink)

This article focuses upon answering the following question: Does corporate political activity (CPA) stand as an academic field? Following Hambrick and Chen, we consider three elements of the emergence of an academic field—differentiation, mobilization, and legitimacy. Utilizing a variety of data sources, we find CPA to be well differentiated from other academic fields; to have undertaken a number of activities to mobilize CPA as a field, but short of large-scale unification; and to have earned low to moderate legitimacy within management, (...) but little legitimacy outside of management. All in all, at this time, CPA does not squarely meet the elements necessary to emerge as a field. (shrink)

The Power of Ideals examines the lives and work of six 20th century moral leaders who pursued moral causes ranging from world peace to social justice and human rights, and uses these six cases to show how people can make choices guided by their moral ideals rather than by base emotion or social pressures.

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or emergence of molecular structure (...) cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

Diffusion in social networks is a result of agents’ natural desires to conform to the behavioral patterns of their peers. In this article we show that the recently proposed “propositional opinion diffusion model” could be used to model an agent’s conformity to different social groups that the same agent might belong to, rather than conformity to the society as whole. The main technical contribution of this article is a sound and complete logical system describing the properties of the influence relation (...) in this model. The logical system is an extension of Armstrong’s axioms from database theory by one new axiom that captures the topological structure of the network. (shrink)

While it might seem prima facie plausible that divine foreknowledge is all that is needed for prophecy, this seems incorrect. To issue a prophecy, God hasto know not just how someone will act, but how someone would act were the prophecy issued. This makes some think that Middle Knowledge is required.I argue that Thomas Flint’s two Middle Knowledge based accounts of prophecy are unsatisfactory, but one of them can be repaired. However the resources needed for repair also yield a sketch (...) of a foreknowledge-only account of prophecy. (shrink)

Discussion of the relevance of grounding to substantiveness, theory-choice, and “location problems” in metaphysics.

Achieving space domain awareness requires the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Storing and leveraging associated space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and collision prediction and avoidance present further challenges. Space objects are characterized according to a variety of parameters including their identifiers, design specifications, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, processes, operational statuses, and associated persons, organizations, or nations. The Space Object Ontology provides a consensus-based realist framework (...) for formulating such characterizations in a computable fashion. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in the Space Object Ontology and stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space domain awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators. This paper presents the core of the Space Object Ontology, discusses its advantages over other approaches to space object classification, and demonstrates its ability to combine diverse sets of data from multiple sources within an expandable framework. Finally, we show how the ontology provides benefits for enhancing and maintaining longterm space domain awareness. (shrink)

This paper explores some issues which a humanlike story system ought to encompass, but which are usually not in the main focus of narrative models since Propp. We argue that knowledge about actions and interactions can account not only for how stories are constructed, but also for why some stories are more interesting and enduring than others. We analyze a traditional English folktale in these terms, and show how classes of surface expressions make recoverable the underlying structures and dependencies that (...) schema‐based understanders comprise. (shrink)

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

Professional philosophers and advanced students working in metaphysics and the philosophy of science will find this book both provocative and stimulating.

The present study investigated whether individual differences between psychologists in thinking styles are associated with accuracy in diagnostic classification. We asked novice and experienced clinicians to classify two clinical cases of clients with two co-occurring psychological disorders. No significant difference in diagnostic accuracy was found between the two groups, but when combining the data from novices and experienced psychologists accuracy was found to be negatively associated with certain decision making strategies and with a higher self-assessed ability and preference for a (...) rational thinking style. Our results underscore the idea that it might be fruitful to look for explanations of differences in the accuracy of diagnostic judgments in individual differences between psychologists (such as in thinking styles or decision making strategies used), rather than in experience level. (shrink)

A counterpossible is a counterfactual with an impossible antecedent. Counterpossibles present a puzzle for standard theories of counterfactuals, which predict that all counterpossibles are semantically vacuous. Moreover, counterpossibles play an important role in many debates within metaphysics and epistemology, including debates over grounding, causation, modality, mathematics, science, and even God. In this article, we will explore various positions on counterpossibles as well as their potential philosophical consequences.

Sadly, discussions of the pricklier issues of law, terrorism, and security rarely follow a cool, pragmatic approach. Richard Posner provides just such a perspective on the relationship of the Constitution to the terrorist threat. Undaunted by controversy, he forthrightly addresses detention, harsh interrogation methods, limits of free speech, ethnic profiling, and the boundaries of privacy rights, among other hot-button topics.

For a novice this book is a mathematically-oriented introduction to modal logic, the discipline within mathematical logic studying mathematical models of reasoning which involve various kinds of modal operators. It starts with very fundamental concepts and gradually proceeds to the front line of current research, introducing in full details the modern semantic and algebraic apparatus and covering practically all classical results in the field. It contains both numerous exercises and open problems, and presupposes only minimal knowledge in mathematics. A specialist (...) can use the book as a source of references. Results and methods of many directions in propositional modal logic, from completeness and duality to algorithmic problems, are collected and systematically presented in one volume. (shrink)

Otto Neurath’s empiricist methodology of economics and his contributions to politi- cal economy have gained increasing attention in recent years. We connect this research with contemporary debates regarding the epistemological status of thought experiments by reconstructing Neurath’s utopias as linchpins of thought experiments. In our three reconstructed examples of different uses of utopias/dystopias in thought experiments we employ a reformulation of Häggqvist’s model for thought experiments and we argue that: (1) Our reformulation of Häggqvist’s model more adequately complies with many (...) uses of thought experiments, especially with the open-ended discussions of utopias and dys- topias in thought experiments. (2) As a strict logical empiricist, Neurath is committed to a strictly empiricist account of thought experiments. John Norton’s empiricist argument view can indeed account for the justifications of empirical beliefs and genuine discoveries targeted by scientific utopianism in three distinct (yet connected) ways, all of which Neur- ath already contemplated: (2.I) Dealing with utopias and thought experiments on a regular basis increases creativity and inventiveness. (2.II) Particular ways of presenting knowl- edge facilitate scientific discovery and social progress. (2.III) The use of utopias in thought experiments can prompt conceptual change and allow access to new phenomena. We con- clude by highlighting that, even though thought experiments support a positive attitude for exploring new social possibilities, Neurath points out that active decisions are unavoidable. The exploration of alternatives and the awareness of a need for decisions in policy discus- sion avert a technocratic outlook in social science. (shrink)

This is an expanded and thoroughly revised edition of the widely adopted introduction to the philosophical foundations of the human sciences. Ranging from cultural anthropology to mathematical economics, Alexander Rosenberg leads the reader through behaviorism, naturalism, interpretativism about human action, and macrosocial scientific perspectives, illuminating the motivation and strategy of each.Rewritten throughout to increase accessibility, this new edition retains the remarkable achievement of revealing the social sciences’ enduring relation to the fundamental problems of philosophy. It includes new discussions of (...) positivism, European philosophy of history, causation, statistical laws, quantitative models, and postempiricist social science, along with a completely updated literature guide that keys chapters to widely anthologized papers. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a fundamental but under-appreciated distinction between two ways of understanding the desire-satisfaction theory of well-being. According to proactive desire satisfactionism, a person is benefited by the acquisition of new satisfied desires. According to reactive desire satisfactionism, a person can be benefited only by the satisfaction of their existing desires. I first offer an overview of this distinction. I then canvass several ways of developing a general formulation of desire satisfactionism that would capture the reactive view, (...) and argue that all come with significant costs. (shrink)

We have begun work on two separate but related ontologies for the study of neurological diseases. The first, the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND), is intended to provide a set of controlled, logically connected classes to describe the range of neurological diseases and their associated signs and symptoms, assessments, diagnoses, and interventions that are encountered in the course of clinical practice. ND is built as an extension of the Ontology for General Medical Sciences — a high-level candidate OBO Foundry ontology that (...) provides a set of general classes that can be used to describe general aspects of medical science. ND is being built with classes utilizing both textual and axiomatized definitions that describe and formalize the relations between instances of other classes within the ontology itself as well as to external ontologies such as the Gene Ontology, Cell Ontology, Protein Ontology, and Chemical Entities of Biological Interest. In addition, references to similar or associated terms in external ontologies, vocabularies and terminologies are included when possible. Initial work on ND is focused on the areas of Alzheimer’s and other diseases associated with dementia, multiple sclerosis, and stroke and cerebrovascular disease. Extensions to additional groups of neurological diseases are planned. The second ontology, the Neuro-Psychological Testing Ontology (NPT), is intended to provide a set of classes for the annotation of neuropsychological testing data. The intention of this ontology is to allow for the integration of results from a variety of neuropsychological tests that assay similar measures of cognitive functioning. Neuro-psychological testing is an important component in developing the clinical picture used in the diagnosis of patients with a range of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and following stroke or traumatic brain injury. NPT is being developed as an extension to the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations. (shrink)

The aim of this project was to explore the possibility of constructing a psychologic inference engine that might enhance introspective self-awareness by delivering inferences about a user based on what he said in interactive dialogues about his closest opposite-sex relation. To implement this aim, we developed a computer program (guru) with the capacity to simulate human conversation in colloquial natural language. The psychologic inferences offered represent the authors' simulations of their commonsense psychology responses to expected user-input expressions. The heuristics of (...) the natural language processor and its relation to output responses are described in enough detail for the operations of the implementation to be understood. Evaluation of this new cognitive agent presents, we hope, puzzles for artificial intelligence and cognitive science. (shrink)

One consequence of the later Wittgenstein's influential critique of epistemological foundationalism has been to convince many contemporary philosophers that the ideal of universal and necessary cognitive grounds for moral or political norms is illusory. Recent neo-Wittgensteinian accounts of practical reason attempt to formulate a conception of a post-foundational politics in which a political ethos can be legitimate, rational or just even if its informing practices and cognitive standards lack foundational justification. Against these appropriations of Wittgenstein, I argue that his account (...) challenges foundationalism only by generating epistemological relativism at both the first-order level of belief systems and at the second-order level of the comparative evaluation of first-order belief systems and their non-comparable forms of justification. The result is a polytheism of forms of reason which imperils the methodological ideal of a non-relativistic practice of moral-political criticism. (shrink)

Studies of human development have taken an ethnographic turn in the 1990s. In this volume, leading anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists discuss how qualitative methodologies have strengthened our understanding of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development, and of the difficulties of growing up in contemporary society. Part 1, informed by a post-positivist philosophy of science, argues for the validity of ethnographic knowledge. Part 2 examines a range of qualitative methods, from participant observation to the hermeneutic elaboration of texts. In Part 3, ethnographic (...) methods are applied to issues of human development across the life span and to social problems including poverty, racial and ethnic marginality, and crime. Restoring ethnographic methods to a central place in social inquiry, these twenty-two lively essays will interest everyone concerned with the epistemological problems of context, meaning, and subjectivity in the behavioral sciences. (shrink)

Could it be true that even though we as a group ought to do something, you as an individual ought not to do your part? And under what conditions, in particular, could this happen? In this article, I discuss how a certain kind of case, introduced by David Copp, illustrates the possibility that you ought not to do your part even when you would be playing a crucial causal role in the group action. This is because you may have special (...) agent-relative reasons against participating that are not shared by the group as a whole. I defend the claim that these are indeed cases in which you ought not to do your part in what the group ought to do. I then argue that we can expect these cases to produce a troubling kind of rational conflict. (shrink)

Elselijn Kingma argues that, in cases of mammalian placental pregnancy, the foster (roughly, the post-implantation embryo/foetus) is part of the gravida (the pregnant organism). But she does not consider the possibility of proper overlap. I show that this generates a number of serious problems for her argument and trace the oversight to a quite general issue within the literature on biological individuality. Doing so provides an opportunity to pull apart and clarify the relations between some importantly distinct questions concerning organismality (...) and organismic parthood, and to identify the implications that this has for those who want to draw on this literature when making metaphysical or mereological arguments. (shrink)

Narratives of discrimination due to gender differentiations, educational background, cultural systems and/or political alignments are not new phenomena in human history. The concepts themselves are as old as the applications within the systems. In order to grasp the cruciality of the tendency, this article discusses the realities of discrimination among the people of northern Malawi using the Dalit experiences in India. Its emphasis is on how the Northerners of Malawi are politically and socio-economically sidelined in the entire system of governance. (...) The article draws the conclusion that theology can in some ways help to minimize the situation when tolerance and accommodation in God’s design can be put into practice in order to promote harmony and togetherness. If this can be enhanced, the ignored North can feel part of Malawi and by doing so, they can reconstruct their lost humanity and dignity. (shrink)

Pattern-based reasons are reasons for action deriving not from the features of our own actions, but from the features of the larger patterns of action in which we might be participating. These reasons might relate to the patterns of action that will actually be carried out, or they might relate to merely hypothetical patterns. In past work, I have argued that accepting merely hypothetical pattern-based reasons, together with a plausible account of how to weigh these reasons, can lead to disastrous (...) consequences. However, in this article, I argue that this problem is not limited to hypothetical pattern-based reasons: it turns out that there are analogous issues for reasons deriving from actual patterns. I then suggest that we can avoid this problem by adopting a different account of the weight of pattern-based reasons. (shrink)

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996) is one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, perhaps the most influential. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. Kuhn’s contribution to the philosophy of science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines, but also inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it closer to the history of science. His account of the development (...) of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions. To this thesis, Kuhn added the controversial ‘incommensurability thesis’, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1868 Edition.

Philosophical discussions often involve appeals to verdicts about particular cases, sometimes actual, more often hypothetical, and usually with little or no substantive argument in their defense. Philosophers — on both sides of debates over the standing of this practice — have often called the basis for such appeals ‘intuitions’. But, what might such ‘intuitions’ be, such that they could legitimately serve these purposes? Answers vary, ranging from ‘thin’ conceptions that identify intuitions as merely instances of some fairly generic and epistemologically (...) uncontroversial category of mental states or episodes to ‘thick’ conceptions that add to this thin base certain semantic, phenomenological, etiological, or methodological conditions. As this chapter discusses, thick conceptions turn out to have their own methodological problems; some may even leave philosophers in the methodologically untenable position of being unable to determine when anyone is doing philosophy correctly. (shrink)