Causal mechanisms' portability and their predictions in sometimes counterfactual settings point to the value of studies with details of interactions and/or convenience samples that depart from those in the proximate contexts of the phenomena of interest. The proper role of such contexts must be construed within an explanatory framework attentive to the nature and properties of relevant causal mechanisms.

This study illuminates how a cross-sector social partnership legitimizes itself toward multiple internal and external stakeholders. Within a single-case study design, we collected retrospective and real time data on the partnership between Deutsche Post DHL and The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Within this partnership, Deutsche Post DHL provides corporate volunteers that support disaster response after natural disasters on a pro bono basis. The main objects that needed legitimacy as well as the audiences from which legitimacy (...) was mainly sought changed over time. In addition, we identified legitimation work as occurring across objects, audiences, and time. Thus, we introduce legitimation work as the purposeful effort of the legitimacy seeker to avoid certain issues while ensuring other issues that are of importance to the conferrer of legitimacy. These findings contribute to micro-level considerations within institutional theory which view legitimacy as socially constructed between legitimacy seeker and conferrer. Hence, we add another perspective on legitimation to the previously existing conceptualizations of legitimacy as a deterministic consequence of institutionalization. (shrink)

Brams’ paradox of new members and Shenoy’s paradox of smaller coalitions are, in a sense, equivalent. They are both implied by the monotonicity of a power index: while the first is exhibited on every simple game that is not strong, the latter can be observed on every simple game in which players are not almost symmetric. For the Shapley–Shubik index, this symmetry condition is not only necessary but also sufficient to avoid the paradox of smaller coalitions.

The paper introduces a broad family of metrics applicable to finite and countably infinite strings, or, by extension, to formal structures serving as semantics for countable languages. The main focus is on applications to sets of pointed Kripke models, a semantics for modal logics. For the resulting metric spaces, the paper classifies topological properties including which metrics are topologically equivalent, providing sufficient conditions for compactness, characterizing clopen sets and isolated points, and characterizing the metrical topologies by a concept of logical (...) convergence. We then apply the approach to maps from dynamic epistemic logic, showing that product updates with action models yield continuous maps, hence allowing for an interpretation of the iterated updates as discrete time dynamical systems. (shrink)

Forming intimate relationships is a fundamental human motive. Emotions play a critical role in intimate relationships—they are central to the development and maintenance of these bonds, and these very bonds can influence both individual and interpersonal emotional dynamics across time. Investigating emotional dynamics in an interpersonal context provides unique insight into the functioning of intimate relationships and, at the same time, provides a window into the interdependence of partners’ daily experiences. Reviewing a selection of the literature involving emotional dynamics in (...) intimate relationships, we explore how intimate relationships shape partner’s emotional experiences and the implications this may have for their relationship across time. (shrink)

Consider where κ is an uncountable regular cardinal. By a result of Shelah's we have for almost all witnessing this. Here we consider the question if there could be a similar result for. We will discuss some basic facts implying that this cannot hold in general. We will use these facts to construct an interesting example of a pseudo Prikry forcing, answering a question of Sinapova.

In the past several years, observational entropy has been developed as both a quantum generalization of Boltzmann entropy, and as a rather general framework to encompass classical and quantum equilibrium and non-equilibrium coarse-grained entropy. In this paper we review the construction, interpretation, most important properties, and some applications of this framework. The treatment is self-contained and relatively pedagogical, aimed at a broad class of researchers.

One of the important lessons to take away from Rohit Parikh’s impressive body of work is that logicians and computer scientists have much to gain by focusing their attention on the intricacies of political campaigns. Drawing on recent work developing a theory of expressive voting, we study the dynamics of voters’ opinions during an election. In this paper, we develop a model in which the relative importance of the different issues that concern a voter may change either in response to (...) candidates’ statements during a campaign or due to unforeseen events. We study how changes in a voter?s attention to the issues influence voting behavior under voting systems such as plurality rule and approval voting. We argue that it can be worthwhile for candidates to reshape public focus, but that doing so can be a complex and risky activity. (shrink)

On their alethic reading, formulas,, and codify three of the most basic principles of possibility and its dual. This paper discusses these formulas on a broadly epistemic reading, and in particular as candidate principles about conceivability and its dual. As will be shown, the question whether and its classical dual equivalent, as well as and hold on this reading is not only a logical one but involves a distinctively metaphysical controversy between realist and antirealist views on the relation between truth (...) on the one hand and various cognitive conditions such as knowability, conceivability, and thinkability on the other. It will be argued that the stance we take with regard to the metaphysical dispute has consequences for our assessment of the plausibility not only of and its classical equivalent, but also of and—when that stance is combined with a structural account of propositions—potentially of as well; with all four taken in the above epistemic sense. A second upshot will be that the same sensitivity to metaphysical background commitment also applies to our view as to whether or not inconceivability of the opposite coincides with, or even entails, apriority. (shrink)

In eukaryotes, the messenger RNA (mRNA), the blueprint of a protein‐coding gene, is processed and packaged into a messenger ribonucleoprotein particle (mRNP) by mRNA‐binding proteins in the nucleus. The steps of mRNP formation – transcription, processing, packaging, and the orchestrated release of the export‐competent mRNP from the site of transcription for nuclear mRNA export – are tightly coupled to ensure a highly efficient and regulated process. The importance of highly accurate nuclear mRNP formation is illustrated by the fact that mutations (...) in components of this pathway lead to cellular inviability or to severe diseases in metazoans. We hypothesize that efficient mRNP formation is realized by a molecular mRNP packaging station, which is built by several recruitment platforms and coordinates the individual steps of mRNP formation. (shrink)

PurposeSince the 1980s we have witnessed a soaring “extra-therapeutic” use of psycho-pharmacology. But there is also an increasing interest in invasive methods of neuroenhancement that can be subsumed under the term “brain engineering”. The present article aims to identify key issues raised by those forms of neuro-technical enhancement (e.g., deep brain stimulation, brain-computer interfaces, memory chips, neurobionic interventions). First it distinguishes different forms of neuroenhancement, then describes features of those methods and finally discusses their ethical implications.MethodsThe article is based on (...) an in-depth literature study and an ethical assessment of the current and emerging forms of neuroenhancement.ResultsFrom a medical and normative perspective, psycho-pharmacological enhancement and nonpharmacological enhancement by brain engineering demonstrate considerable differences. Many arguments in favour of nonpharmacological enhancement fall short, for they fail to sufficiently consider the medical, anthropological and socio-cultural context. In many respects unsecured use is confronted with considerable risks.ConclusionsResearch on invasive forms of neuroenhancement partly takes place in the fields of (nano-)technology and military, to which health care experts and medical ethicists do not have easy access. This raises the danger of misjudging trends and developmental tendencies. Thus medicine and medical ethics must a priori thematize the goals and risks linked to these questions as well as participate discursively right from the beginning. (shrink)

IntroductionResearch on the impact of cancer on close relationships brings up conflicting results. This systematic review collects empirical evidence on the research questions whether a cancer diagnosis in general or the type of cancer affects the divorce rate.Materials and MethodsThis systematic review was conducted according to the guidelines of the Cochrane Collaboration and the PRISMA statement. The following electronic databases were searched: Web of Science, Ovid SP MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PsyINDEX, CINAHL, ERIC. Risk of bias assessment was performed with the preliminary (...) risk of bias for exposures tool template. The grading of methodological quality was assessed with the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.ResultsOf 13,929 identified records, 15 were included in the qualitative synthesis. In 263,616 cancer patients and 3.4 million healthy individuals, we found that cancer is associated with a slightly decreased divorce rate, except for cervical cancer, which seems to be associated with an increased divorce rate.DiscussionAccording to this systematic review, cancer is associated with a tendency to a slightly decreased divorce rate. However, most of the included studies have methodologic weaknesses and an increased risk of bias. Further studies are needed. (shrink)

We review mathematical models of HIV dynamics, disease progression, and therapy. We start by introducing a basic model of virus infection and demonstrate how it was used to study HIV dynamics and to measure crucial parameters that lead to a new understanding of the disease process. We discuss the diversity threshold model as an example of the general principle that virus evolution can drive disease progression and the destruction of the immune system. Finally, we show how mathematical models can be (...) used to understand correlates of long‐term immunological control of HIV, and to design therapy regimes that convert a progressing patient into a state of long‐term non‐progression. BioEssays 24:1178–1187, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Belnap-Dunn logic, sometimes also known as First Degree Entailment, is a four-valued propositional logic that complements the classical truth values of True and False with two non-classical truth values Neither and Both. The latter two are to account for the possibility of the available information being incomplete or providing contradictory evidence. In this paper, we present a probabilistic extension of BD that permits agents to have probabilistic beliefs about the truth and falsity of a proposition. We provide a sound and (...) complete axiomatization for the framework defined and also identify policies for conditionalization and aggregation. Concretely, we introduce four-valued equivalents of Bayes’ and Jeffrey updating and also suggest mechanisms for aggregating information from different sources. (shrink)

This paper addresses the ongoing debate over the relation between belief and credence. A proposal is made to reverse the currently predominant order of analysis, by taking belief as conceptually basic and credence as the phenomenon to be clarified. In brief, the proposal is to explicate an agent’s credence in a proposition P as the agent’s tendency toward believing P. Platitudinous as this reduction may seem, it runs counter to all of the major positions in the debate, including the Threshold (...) View, the Certainty View as conventionally understood, Dualism, Eliminativism, as well as Credence Primitivism. Section 1 gives an overview on the current state of the debate. Section 2 considers unsuccessful predecessors of the proposed belief-first approach to credence. Section 3 motivates and lays out the basics of a conceptual framework for thinking about doxastic states that characterizes such states in terms of two formally independent dimensions, one pertaining to the agent’s tendency toward believing P, the other to the level of resilience with which the agent manifests that tendency. Against this backdrop, it is argued in Sect. 4 that the present reduction satisfies a set of standard, theoretically neutral criteria of adequacy for theories of credence, at least once they are purged of a quite common conflation of tendency and resilience. Section 5 argues against all of the above competing accounts. (shrink)

Many have claimed that epistemic rationality sometimes requires us to have imprecise credal states (i.e. credal states representable only by sets of credence functions) rather than precise ones (i.e. credal states representable by single credence functions). Some writers have recently argued that this claim conflicts with accuracy-centered epistemology, i.e., the project of justifying epistemic norms by appealing solely to the overall accuracy of the doxastic states they recommend. But these arguments are far from decisive. In this essay, we prove some (...) new results, which show that there is little hope for reconciling the rationality of credal imprecision with accuracy-centered epistemology. (shrink)

Group judgements are often – implicitly or explicitly – influenced by their members’ individual expertise. However, given that expertise is seldom recognized fully and that some distortions may occur (bias, correlation, etc.), it is not clear that differential weighting is an epistemically advantageous strategy with respect to straight averaging. Our paper characterizes a wide set of conditions under which differential weighting outperforms straight averaging and embeds the results into the multidisciplinary group decision-making literature.

Insects reevaluated as archives foreground possible sites of multidisciplinary research, with multifaceted potential for the history of science. With different disciplinary approaches to the study of small animals and the production of collections, the history of science, archaeology, environmental history, and natural history are brought into conversation in this forum on “Collection Ecologies.” This exchange about collections as a web of relationships entailing regimes of value, epistemes of logistics, and bureaucratic and scientific practices explores how multidisciplinary knowledge of “natural” bodies (...) can be formed around insect collections. (shrink)

Many different approaches to describing the players’ knowledge and beliefs can be found in the literature on the epistemic foundations of game theory. We focus here on non-probabilistic approaches. The two most prominent are the so-called Kripkeor Aumann- structures and knowledge structures (non-probabilistic variants of Harsanyi type spaces). Much of the recent work on Kripke structures has focused on dynamic extensions and simple ways of incorporating these. We argue that many of these ideas can be applied to knowledge structures as (...) well. Our main result characterizes precisely when one type can be transformed into another type by a specific type of information update. Our work in this paper suggest that it would be interesting to pursue a theory of “information dynamics” for knowledge structures (and eventually Harsanyi type spaces). (shrink)

How should the information that a proposition p is a mystery impact your credence in p? To answer this question, we first provide a taxonomy of mysteries; then, we develop a test to distinguish two types of mysteries. When faced with mysteries of the first type, rational epistemic agents should lower their credence in p upon learning that p is a mystery. The same information should not impact agents’ credence in p, when they face mysteries of the second type. Our (...) account of mystery complements existing explications of abduction. We illustrate its significance by examining the mystery of consciousness. (shrink)

The debate on empirical tests of social mechanisms suffers from a fragmented view on the relative benefit of the empirical method a researcher considers to be superior, compared to the flaws of all other methods. In this outlook. I argue that disciplinary barriers might be surmounted by a common methodological perspective on the analysis of social mechanisms. First, experimental, quantitative, qualitative, and simulation methods (agent-based modeling) are all required, but also capable to deal with the issue of causal identification, respectively. (...) Second, having established causal identification (among which I subsume strategies to deal with causal heterogeneity). each method disposes of genuine techniques to deal with the most crucial property of mechanism-based explanations: input-mechanism-output (IMO) relations. (shrink)

While many studies from analytical sociology apply agent-based modeling to analyze the transformational mechanisms linking the micro to the macro level, we hold the view that both situational and action formation mechanisms can rather be unveiled by means of more advanced quantitative methods. By focusing on selective exposure to quality newspapers, our study has both an analytical and a substantive aim. First., our analytical aim is to amend the psychological mechanism of avoiding cognitive dissonance by social mechanisms allowing postulates on (...) how the selective exposure effect might vary by particular social groups. Second, our substantive aim is to set the ground for a longitudinal analysis of selective exposure to quality papers by placing these social mechanisms in the context of social and cultural change. By referring to hypothetical data, we illustrate which kind of (multilevel) moderator effects would have to hold if our hypotheses were true. (shrink)

Im Bild der «offenen Kreise» nimmt der Band Grundspannungen der Wissenschaften in den Blick. Sie ergeben sich aus ihren zentralen Fragestellungen und den Grenzen dessen, was überhaupt als wissenschaftlich gelten kann. Das Buch versteht sich daher als Beitrag zur Diskussion dessen, was die Wissenschaft als eine fortwährende Befragung der eigenen Standpunkte von allen anderen Formen der Erkenntnis unterscheidet. Die dazu versammelten Texte gingen mehrheitlich aus dem studium universale Leipzig hervor. Anlass war das 600-jährige Bestehen der Universität Leipzig. Zur Debatte steht (...) das grundlegende Selbstverständnis der Wissenschaften am Beispiel von Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Erkenntnistheorie, Sprachkritik und dem Fehlverhalten von Wissenschaftlern. Demgegenüber stehen Fragen zu den Grenzen der Wissenschaftlichkeit am Beispiel der Theologie, der Alchemie, des Farbempfindens, der Plastination oder der Tendenz zum Exzentrischen und Absonderlichen in der Wissenschaft. Das abstrakte Paradox der «geschlossenen Offenheit» der Wissenschaften kann letztlich von diesen selbst nicht eingelöst werden. Hierzu bedarf es der Kunst. Die beigegebenen Drucke Susanne Werdins laden zu einer solchen Reflexion ein. (shrink)

Although bees are a frequent motif in ancient literature, the people who work with bees are often left in the background. An exception is the motif of the older man on his – usually small – farm who lives from and with his bees. The article shows that this motif is a topos that appears in various texts of Greek and Latin literature of the imperial period. Depending on the intention behind these representations, different elements of the motif may be (...) emphasised or omitted. These variations, and how the motif develops, are here shown through the example of different passages. (shrink)