Game experiments designed to test the effectiveness of reward and/or punishment incentives in promoting cooperative behavior among their participants are quite common. Results from two such recent experiments conducted in Beijing, based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game and Public Goods Game respectively, are summarized here. The unexpected empirical outcomes for the repeated PD game, that cooperation actually decreased when the participants had the option of using a costly punishment strategy and that participants who used costly punishment in some round (...) of the repeated game often did so in the first round, are discussed in terms of differences in attitudes toward reputation in Chinese culture compared to other locations (mostly in Western society) where similar experiments have been conducted. The second experiment models an institution providing incentives to increase contribution levels (i.e., cooperation) to the public good. The results show that combined institutional reward and punishment is the most effective means to increase cooperation, followed by a scheme using only punishment. It is shown how these empirical results are related to the theoretical predictions that assume players play rationally by optimizing their personal payoff given their opponents’ actions in these multi-player games. (shrink)

The exercise of identifying lessons in the aftermath of a major public health emergency is of immense importance for the improvement of global public health emergency preparedness and response. Despite the persistence of the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa, it seems that the Ebola ‘lessons learned’ exercise is now in full swing. On our assessment, a significant shortcoming plagues recent articulations of lessons learned, particularly among those emerging from organizational reflections. In this article we argue that, despite not (...) being recognized as such, the vast majority of lessons proffered in this literature should be understood as ethical lessons stemming from moral failures, and that any improvements in future global public health emergency preparedness and response are in large part dependent on acknowledging this fact and adjusting priorities, policies and practices accordingly such that they align with values that better ensure these moral failures are not repeated and that new moral failures do not arise. We cannot continue to fiddle at the margins without critically reflecting on our repeated moral failings and committing ourselves to a set of values that engenders an approach to global public health emergencies that embodies a sense of solidarity and global justice. (shrink)

The issue of benefits in international clinical research is highly controversial. Against the background of wide recognition of the need to share benefits of research, the nature of benefits remains strongly contested. Little is known about the perspectives of research populations on this issue and the extent to which research ethics discourses and guidelines are salient to the expectations and aspirations existing on the ground. This exploratory study contributes to filling this void by examining perspectives of people in low-income South (...) African communities on benefits in international clinical research. Twenty-four individuals with and without experience of being involved in clinical research participated in in-depth interviews. Respondents felt that ancillary care should be provided to clinical research participants, while a clinical study conducted in particular community should bring better health to its members through post-trial benefits. Respondents' perspectives were grounded in the perception that the ultimate goal of international clinical research is to improve local health. We argue that perspectives and understandings of the respondents are shaped by local moral traditions rather than clinical research specificities and require attention as valid moral claims. It is necessary to acknowledge such claims and cultural worlds from which they emerge, thus building the foundation for equal and embracing dialogue to bridge different perspectives and handle contradicting expectations. (shrink)

This article examines Millett's condemnation of Ruskin in Sexual Politics to demonstrate that Ruskin's views on women are the product of a specific mode of experience—one that precludes his views being representative of traditional Victorian patriarchy. The article uses Oakeshott's philosophical framework of different modes of experience to illustrate that Millett narrowly interprets Ruskin's statements on women from her own modal perspective without considering his broader belief in the imaginative over the rational faculty.

We find Stoffregen & Bardy's argument that the senses are united and that specificity exists within the global array compelling. However, this view is not entirely new and research on the development and the origins of perception in infancy, inspired by Gibson's ecological perspective, also supports their claims. The inclusion of this developmental research will strengthen and challenge some of Stoffregen & Bardy's views.

Surrogate endpoints are a common application of biomarkers to estimate clinical benefit in clinical trials, despite questions about reliability. This article discusses ongoing opportunities for their validation, in the context of a regulatory environment in which they are increasingly championed.

As false information may spread rapidly on social media, a profound understanding of how it can be debunked is required. This study offers empirical insights into the development of rumors after they are debunked, the various user groups who are involved in the process, and their network structures. As crisis situations are highly sensitive to the spread of rumors, Twitter posts from during the 2017 G20 summit are examined. Tweets regarding five rumors that were debunked during this event were manually (...) coded into the following categories: rumor, debunking message, uncertainty about rumor, uncertainty about debunking message, and others. Our findings show that rumors which are debunked early and vehemently by official sources are the most likely to be stopped. When individuals participate in the process, they typically do so by sharing uncommented media content, as opposed to contributing user-generated content. Depending on the conditions in which a rumor arises, different network structures can be found. Since some rumors are easier for individuals to verify than others, our results have implications for the priorities of journalists and official sources. (shrink)

The paper seeks to show that underlying Bentham's concept of utility is a commitment to a criterion or principle of moral status distinguishing morally relevant beings from the morally irrelevant. Further, that the notion of moral status is ultimately inconsistent with Bentham's utility; that it implies something like a Kantian ethic barring the use of morally relevant beings as mere means to some other's satisfaction, an ethic which suitably interpreted may be more useful in defence of some concerns for which (...) Bentham has traditionally been cited, animal rights for example. The paper concludes by noting the history and politics of moral status and argues that the concept involves a fusion of fact and value, the empirical and the evaluative, undermining assumptions of a rigid separation of the two and the consequent essential subjectivity of the latter. (shrink)

This examination of gardens--particulary English gardens of the eighteenth century--offers possible links between garden design and the arts.

People differ in the extent to which they discount the values of future rewards. Behavioural economists measure these differences in terms of functions that describe rates of reduced valuation in the future – temporal discounting – as these vary with time. They measure differences in preference for risk – differing rates of probability discounting – in terms of similar functions that describe reduced valuation of rewards as the probability of their delivery falls. So-called ‘impulsive’ people, including people disposed to addiction, (...) tend to choose rewards in patterns that are described by unusually steeply sloped discount functions. The empirical literature is ambivalent as to whether this applies to pathological gamblers (PGs) who manifest most other behavioural patterns associated with addiction, with different, equally careful studies suggesting opposite conclusions (Petry & Casarella 1999; Holt, Green & Myerson 2003). This puzzle may arise from the fact that most previous experiments on discounting behaviour were not designed so as to allow effects of high temporal discounting to be distinguished from effects of low probability discounting. (Addiction has sometimes been associated with the latter because it seems to involve, at least in the starting addict, under appreciation of risk.) Our research project investigates both forms of discounting behaviour and their relationship to severity of risk of PG in a community sample of South African gamblers. (shrink)

Ours is an age of general automation. The factory that produced proletarians now extends to the biosphere; consequently, disautomatization is needed, which is the real meaning of autonomy. Autonomy and automatism must be reconceived as a composition rather than an opposition. Knowledge depends on hypomnesic automatisms that open up the possibility of what Socrates called “thinking for oneself”; digitalization thus requires a new epistemology that entails questions of political and libidinal economy. Today, automatization serves the autonomization of technics more than (...) noetic autonomy, but reconceiving the latter necessarily involves reconsidering the meaning and character of desire. Greta Thunberg’s diagnosis of the irresponsibility of the generation before hers exposes the fact that the knowledge necessary to combat the consequences of contemporary technological development has been destroyed. The only possible counter to this irresponsibility lies in the reconstitution of knowledge, understood as the means by which humans struggle against entropy and anthropy. (shrink)

This commentary on Isabelle Stengers's article “Comparison as a Matter of Concern,” takes its entry point in a battle between comparisons: imposed comparisons, where extraneous, irrelevant criteria are laid down, and active, interested comparisons, where rapport is established between the scientist and the phenomenon she studies. According to Stengers, the comparison, which establishes rapport, is a crucial ingredient in good science. In the context of a symposium titled “Comparative Relativism,” perhaps the crucial point to make about what characterizes Stengers's matter (...) of concern is that, in being utterly uninterested in defining absolute scales for comparison and in focusing only on the generative potential of comparing, she relativizes the very act of comparing. What matters to her is how experimental devices simultaneously sensitize their users to the phenomena at hand and to the workings of particular comparisons. Since (a relativized) comparison is a matter of concern to the scientists involved, finding out what other ways of comparing there are (besides objectivist comparison) should be a matter of concern to those of us who are engaged in studying knowledge production. This commentary suggests that “knowledge economy” researchers begin unpacking the science/industry collaboration through participation and careful analysis as a way of staying with the present moment. (shrink)

IntroductionApproaches to improve heart rate variability and reduce stress such as breathing retraining are more frequently being integrated into psychotherapy but little research on their effectiveness has been done to date. Specifically, no studies to date have directly compared using a breathing pacer at 6 breaths per minute with compassion focused soothing rhythm breathing.Current StudyIn this randomized controlled experiment, 6 breaths per minute breathing using a pacer was compared with compassion focused soothing rhythm breathing, with a nature video being used (...) as a control group condition.MethodsHeart rate variability measures were assessed via electrocardiogram and respiration belt, and an automated blood pressure machine was used to measure systolic diastolic blood pressure, and heart rate. A total of 96 participants were randomized into the three conditions. Following a 5-min baseline, participants engaged in either 6 breath per minute breathing, soothing rhythm breathing, or watched a nature video for 10 min. To induce a stressful state, participants then wrote for 5 min about a time they felt intensely self-critical. Participants then wrote for 5 min about a time they felt self-compassionate, and the experiment ended with a 10-min recovery period.ResultsConditions did not significantly differ at baseline. Overall, HRV, as measured by standard deviation of NN intervals, low frequency HRV, and LF/HF ratio, increased during the intervention period, decreased during self-critical writing, and then returned to baseline levels during the recovery period. High frequency HRV was not impacted by any of the interventions. The participants in the 6 breath per minute pacer condition were unable to consistently breathe at that rate and averaged about 12 breaths per minute. Time by Condition analyses revealed that both the 6 breaths per minute pacer and soothing breathing rhythm conditions lead to significantly higher SDNN than the nature video condition during breathing practice but there were no significant differences between conditions in response to the self-critical and self-compassionate writing or recovery periods. The 6 breath per minute pacer condition demonstrated a higher LF HRV and LF/HF ratio than the soothing rhythm breathing condition, and both intervention conditions had a higher LF HRV and LF/HF ratio than the nature video.ConclusionsAlthough the 6 breath per minute pacer condition participants were not able to breath consistently at the low pace, both the participants attempting to breathe at 6 breaths per minute as well as those in the soothing rhythm breathing condition effectively increased HR variability as measured by SDNN, and attempting to breathe at 6 breaths per minute led to the highest LF HRV and LF/HF ratio. Both breathing approaches impacted HRV more than watching a relaxing nature video and can potentially be used as key adjuncts in psychotherapy to aid in regulating physiological functioning, although it appears that consistent breathing practice would be needed. (shrink)

Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man is a modern myth. Like many ancient myths it seems to have the structure of a rite of passage analysed by van Gennep into three stages: separation, marginal existence and reintegration. Separation is precipitated by a traumatic event and the marginal state is characterized by extraordinary experiences and feats. However, Jarmusch's tale does not quite fit the ancient initiation pattern since the last stage, reintegration, is at least prima facie missing. This already undermines the social function (...) of initiation and warps the significance of the myth. The modern town of ?Machine?, where the marginal existence of Blake is sealed, looms in the background of the story of his final journey to the world of spirits whence he had come. But Blake cannot quite embrace the story in which he plays the protagonist. The story is cobbled together by the Native American called ?Nobody.? Blake sceptically resigns himself to his fate. Why does Blake do this? Jarmusch manipulates the generic structure of the initiation tale in order to say something culturally significant about the possibility of living a meaningful life in a world dominated by the machine. In other words, he tells a modern myth. What does his tale say? (shrink)

Examples of propaganda abound in contemporary society. Even though propaganda is increasingly prevalent in modern society, this phenomenon has received scant philosophical attention. This is particularly true of philosophy of art even as art, from posters and murals to films and novels, has been instrumental in the dissemination of propaganda. My dissertation develops a new model of propaganda to account for the phenomenon of art propaganda. I call this model the epistemic merit model, because I argue that propaganda essentially lacks (...) epistemic merit. ;My project proceeds in four parts: offer a diagnosis of why propaganda has virtually escaped philosophical scrutiny, survey the field of propaganda studies in the disciplines of sociology, social psychology, and communication theory, perform a conceptual analysis of propaganda, and show how my new model is particularly well-suited to cases of art propaganda. (shrink)

In everyday arguments we often meet with such phrases as ‘That's rational, it is mere common sense’ used in conjunction to approve of or back up some particular statement. The juxtaposition of these everyday locutions embodies a profound truth, the truth, namely, that the basis of rational communication between human beings is plain common sense. I call this point profound because it has been missed in all the discussions about rationality and its basis that I know; certainly its elusiveness thus (...) seems to indicate that participants in these discussions have not delved deeply enough. But I concede that this truth is simple and obvious, and conclude, therefore, that it has been overlooked only because its very obviousness has been taken, wrongly, to indicate superficiality and inadequacy. In suggesting that it is neither superficial nor inadequate I shall be relying on Wittgenstein's interpretation of Moore's ‘Defence of Common Sense’, to which I shall be adding a particular twist of my own. (shrink)

This article describes the emergence of a prized labor market in sectors that policymakers have designated as the creative industries. Statistics generated about these sectors have been legion. By contrast, there has been precious little attention to the quality of work life with which such livelihoods are associated. The article considers several features of creative work that have a qualitative dimension and recommends a policy-minded approach to each. The second half of the article examines the case for a cross-class coalition (...) of the sort proposed by the anti-precarity movement. Though they occupy opposite ends of the labor market hierarchy, workers in retail and low-end services and the `creative class' temping in high-end knowledge sectors share certain elements of precarious, or nonstandard employment. While these different segments have existential conditions in common, is there any reason to imagine that they interpret or experience them in similar ways? And, even if they do, is there enough commonality to forge a political coalition of interest against the class polarization associated with economic liberalization? (shrink)