The so-called geek-culture becomes increasingly more mainstream, and its social and economic impact is growing. In contrast, there is very little quantitative psychological research on this subculture and the people immersed in it. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there are differences in the Big Five personality factors between Dungeons & Dragons players and non-players. Within a sample of 801 individuals – 399 Dungeons & Dragon players and 402 non-players - the results indicated that Dungeons & Dragons (...) players show statistically significant higher scores in extraversion as well as in openness to new experiences. Furthermore, we found a statistically significant correlation between Dungeons & Dragons players’ scores in extraversion and their character’s charisma. The results are in line with more recent findings from Big Five research in the geek-culture and contradict older findings regarding a low extraversion and high neuroticism of Dungeons & Dragon players. (shrink)

Shepherd propounds a theory of mind with a fair claim to be better than Hume’s at explaining the sources of commonly held human beliefs about causal necessity due largely to her relational theory of sense perception. In comparison with Hume’s account, it incorporates a more sophisticated treatment of mental representation, especially the role of relational structure and logical form. Most important, perhaps, Shepherd’s theory enforces the division, obscured by Hume, between the evidence of necessity and the metaphysical foundation of necessity.

Locke, Leibniz, and the Logic of Mechanism MARTHA BRANDT BOLTON l~ EARLY MECHANIST PHILOSOPHERS demanded a new standard of perspicuity in the natural sciences. They accused others of "explaining" phenomena in terms of obscurely defined, unconfirmed, and uninformative causes. These complaints were leveled, not just at the real qualities and forms of Scholastics, but also against the sympathetic attractions of Hermetics and the sophic prin- ciples of the Spagyrites. These competitors to mecha- nism could at best demonstrate that a (...) certain effect occurs and claim to state why it does. Mechanists aspired to explain how phenomena are produced. 1 Beyond that, however, philosophers in the broadly "mechanist" movement shared no single account of what this sort of explanation involves. They were too diverse, not only in their views on the central notions of material sub- stance, cause, and force, but also with respect to their standards of intelligibil- ity. In this paper, however, I want to isolate one mechanist model of explana- tion with intellectual virtues that strongly recommended it in some quarters. I will argue specifically that it influenced Leibniz and Locke. This favored form of mechanism opens a deep problem, because it con- flicts with the existence of causal interaction between bodies and minds. 2 It is not just that the model does not apply beyond the realm of intercorporeal ' Much of the work of documenting this trait.. (shrink)

Rechtsphilosophie der Aufklärung: Symposium Wolfenbüttel 1981.

Leibniz repeatedly daims to refute "Hobbes' doctrine of arbitrary truth". I argue against several recent expositors of Hobbes that Hobbes' view comes to nothing more scandalous than "nominalism" about kind terms. Although some have recognized that it is this thesis which Leibniz claims to refute, his argument has not been correctly understood. I maintain that the argument rests upon Leibniz' theory of signs and his account of concepts. In brief, Leibniz argues that concepts have structures which correspond to structures of (...) (possible) things; thus, kinds are independent of language and truth is independent of arbitrary convention. (shrink)

There is in the New Essays a prominent line of argument that Leibniz took to have remarkable scope. If it works, it sweeps away most of the mainstays of Locke’s metaphysics: atoms, vacuum, real space and time, absolute rest, inactive faculties, and the tabula rasa. It alone does not suffice to undermine the possibility of thinking matter, but it contributes support to that most important of Leibniz’s claims against Locke. Because it is so central to the project of New Essays, (...) I am going to focus mainly on the argument as it is employed there; doing so illuminates both the work and the argument. But Leibniz used it a number of times in letters and notes from roughly the same time period and it is related to a thesis in the Discourse on Metaphysics and letters to Arnauld. The argument invokes a distinction between abstract or incomplete entities and concrete or complete ones. Its premises are that atoms, vacuum, inactive substances, and other items on Leibniz’s list are homogeneous or uniform; that all things that are uniform or otherwise exactly alike are abstract; and that nothing abstract can be found in nature. (shrink)

One area in which the moral philosopher might say something useful for the thinking of economists is that of welfare economics – not by improving formalizations or criticizing proofs as to conditions necessary or sufficient for an optimum situation, much less by suggesting what particular state of society would be optimal. Rather, he can do this by pointing out some distinctions, by suggesting how some terms used by economists can profitably be defined, and by questioning some assumptions which seem to (...) lie behind the thinking of some economists. The following discussion is aimed along these lines. The main goal of the argument will be to produce helpful definitions of “increase the welfare of an individual” and “increase social welfare.”. (shrink)

“We had a great conference!” was a comment generally shared by the participants at the last Conference of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion (IAPR) which took place in Gdansk, Poland from 31 August through 3 September 2019. This recent event and the publication, in this issue, of several keynote addresses from this conference, afford an excellent occasion to share some thoughts about IAPR conferences, the G’dansk conference in particular, the state of the IAPR in general, and some (...) considerations and challenges for the future of our organization. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of the “representative theory of perception” in general, and Locke's views about perception in particular. It is intended only as a limited defense, but one against those objections which recently have been taken thoroughly to discredit both the general theory and Locke's particular position. The chief of these objections is that the representative theory leads inevitably to skepticism about the existence of objective material things. George Pitcher finds this objection to the representative theory completely persuasive (...) and so well established that it scarcely requires discussion:It is just here [in the area of justifying perceptual knowledge of the world] that the most serious and notorious deficiencies of sense-datum theories are encountered. If the sense-datum theorist maintains the existence of physical objects, … as ordinarily conceived, then his claim that sense-data are metaphysically distinct from anything in the physical world commits him to a version of representative realism. The enormous epistemological difficulties [due to their skeptical consequences] faced by theories of this kind are well known, and I shall not say anything about them, except that I regard them as insuperable …. (shrink)

This interesting and challenging book addresses the apparent gap between the empiricist account of the origin of ideas and the theory of knowledge in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. Matthew Priselac makes an impressive argument that they are complementary parts of a coherent program. It consists of a naturalistic interpretation on which the Essay's main aim is to provide the kind of understanding of the mind, knowledge, and probability afforded by modern methods of natural scientific inquiry.On this view, the Essay (...) advances a hypothesis intended to explain the epistemic phenomena of everyday life, that is, what we take ourselves to know rather than hold as probable. It describes a process by which the... (shrink)

In order to explain the idea that sacrifice involves voluntary diminution of the agent’s well-being, “well-being” must be explained. The thesis that an agent’s well-being just consists in the occurrence of events wanted is rejected. Overvold replaces it by the view that the motivating desires involve the existence of the agent, alive, at the time of their satisfaction. This view seems counterintuitive. The whole desire-satisfaction theory is to be rejected partly because we dont’t think an event worthwile if it is (...) not liked when it occurs, and partly because the theory cannot give a sensible account of what is good for an individual when his desires change. A more satisfactory view is that the goodness of an event for a person is fixed by his total gratifications as a result of its occurrence, provided they would occur if the person were fully informed about facts knowledge of which would change them if it existed. But self-sacrifice seems to involve not only voluntary diminution of well-being in this sense, but belief that the action is taken for the benefit of someone else. Overvold’s view leaves open the possibility that acting morally is never contrary to self-interest, if one of the agent’s major interests is that he act morally. This is an ingenious suggestion, but seems a bit counterintuitive. (shrink)

In order to explain the idea that sacrifice involves voluntary diminution of the agent’s well-being, “well-being” must be explained. The thesis that an agent’s well-being just consists in the occurrence of events wanted is rejected. Overvold replaces it by the view that the motivating desires involve the existence of the agent, alive, at the time of their satisfaction. This view seems counterintuitive. The whole desire-satisfaction theory is to be rejected partly because we dont’t think an event worthwile if it is (...) not liked when it occurs, and partly because the theory cannot give a sensible account of what is good for an individual when his desires change. A more satisfactory view is that the goodness of an event for a person is fixed by his total gratifications as a result of its occurrence, provided they would occur if the person were fully informed about facts knowledge of which would change them if it existed. But self-sacrifice seems to involve not only voluntary diminution of well-being in this sense, but belief that the action is taken for the benefit of someone else. Overvold’s view leaves open the possibility that acting morally is never contrary to self-interest, if one of the agent’s major interests is that he act morally. This is an ingenious suggestion, but seems a bit counterintuitive. (shrink)

I wish to consider what can helpfully be meant by the phrase “rational to believe” as it might appear in the statement “It is rational for the person S in his circumstances at t to place more confidence in p than in q, provided his overriding interest at the time is to place confidence, among any propositions he is considering, in true propositions and not in false ones.” The reference here to the interest of the person is intended to avoid (...) discussing persons for whom it is rational to believe something for extraneous reasons, e.g., for a man to believe his wife is loyal to him irrespective of the evidence. I shall take this term as paradigmatic of “epistemic terms”, examples of which philosophers take to be such terms as “is epistemically justified in believing”, “is warranted in believing”, “is credible”, and so on. I do not claim that all these terms have or should bear the same meaning, but I propose to ignore possible distinctions. (shrink)

McGarvey (Econometrica, 21(4), 608–610, 1953) has shown that any irreflexive and anti-symmetric relation can be obtained as a relation induced by majority rule. We address the analogous issue for dominance relations of finite cooperative games with non-transferable utility (coalitional NTU games). We find any irreflexive relation over a finite set can be obtained as the dominance relation of some finite coalitional NTU game. We also show that any such dominance relation is induced by a non-cooperative game through β-effectivity. Dominance relations (...) obtainable through α-effectivity, however, have to comply with a more restrictive condition, which we refer to as the edge-mapping property. (shrink)

DNA glycosylases remove aberrant DNA nucleobases as the first enzymatic step of the base excision repair (BER) pathway. The alkyl‐DNA glycosylases AlkC and AlkD adopt a unique structure based on α‐helical HEAT repeats. Both enzymes identify and excise their substrates without a base‐flipping mechanism used by other glycosylases and nucleic acid processing proteins to access nucleobases that are otherwise stacked inside the double‐helix. Consequently, these glycosylases act on a variety of cationic nucleobase modifications, including bulky adducts, not previously associated with (...) BER. The related non‐enzymatic HEAT‐like repeat (HLR) proteins, AlkD2, and AlkF, have unique nucleic acid binding properties that expand the functions of this relatively new protein superfamily beyond DNA repair. Here, we review the phylogeny, biochemistry, and structures of the HLR proteins, which have helped broaden our understanding of the mechanisms by which DNA glycosylases locate and excise chemically modified DNA nucleobases. (shrink)

In 1932 the US Public Health Service (USPHS) initiated an experiment in Macon County, Alabama, to determine the natural course of untreated, latent syphilis in black males. The test comprised 400 syphilitic men, as well as 200 unin- fected men who served as controls. ..

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 1 Seiten: 390-391.