This volume commemorates the 6th centennial of the birth of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), a Renaissance polymath whose interests included law, politics, metaphysics, epistemology, theology, mysticism and relations between Christians and non-Christian peoples. The contributors to this volume reflect Cusanus' multiple interests; and, by doing so they commemorate three deceased luminaries of the American Cusanus Society: F. Edward Cranz, Thomas P. McTighe and Charles Trinkaus. Contributors include: Christopher M. Bellitto, H. Lawrence Bond, Elizabeth Brient, Louis Dupré, Wilhelm Dupré, (...) Walter Andreas Euler, Lawrence Hundersmarck, Thomas M. Izbicki, Dennis D. Martin, Yelena Matusevich, Bernard McGinn, Clyde Lee Miller, Thomas E. Morrissey, Brian A. Pavlac, and Morimichi Watanabe. Publications by Charles Trinkaus: - Edited by C. Trinkaus and H.A. Oberman, The pursuit of holiness in late medieval and renaissance religion, ISBN: 978 90 04 03791 5 (Out of print). (shrink)

Citizens need accurate news to govern themselves effectively in a democratic society. Journalists argue editorial independence is necessary to ensure that the integrity of news is not compromised. However, the economic characteristics of news create conflicts between the ideal of independence and the need to pay production costs. This study analyzes those conflicts and the economic tools for resolving them. The analysis suggests ways to balance independence and economic necessity without violating mutual ethical obligations shared by journalists, audiences, and advertisers. (...) Independence, along with a good budget, tends to make for quality journalism. —Michael Wolff, The Man Who Owns the News (p. 225). (shrink)

One professor of literature renounces his fight to discriminate wrong from right readings. He succumbs to pressures from theorists and practitioners in the profession at large and enters a world of unimagined intellectual freedom. After all, to suggest that some readings might be wrong is not only to engage in intellectual discrimination, but to enter into complicity with a number of imperious gestures that carry dire political consequences. Coming to terms with his newfound freedom to embrace all interpretations of texts (...) as equally valid, he outlines for those who follow thirteen rules that guide hermeneutical practice in our postmodern age. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, academic-industrial collaborations and technology transfer have played an increasingly prominent role in the biomedical sciences. These relationships can speed the delivery of innovative drugs and medical technologies to clinical practice, creating important public health benefits as well as income for universities and their faculty. At the same time, they raise ethical concerns, particularly when research involves human subjects in clinical trials. Lapses in oversight of industry sponsored clinical trials at universities, and especially patient deaths in (...) a number of trials, have brought these issues into the public spotlight and have led the federal government to intensify its oversight of clinical research. The leadership of Harvard Medical School convened a group of leaders in academic medicine to formulate guidelines on individual financial conflicts of interest. They and other groups are working to formulate a national consensus on this issue. (shrink)

While even today lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people might have cause to distrust the healthcare establishment, how much more fragile was the relationship between sexual minorities and health professionals in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic. Dissent from consensus healthcare and health research then was a question of survival in the face of political and medical intransigence. This article focuses on one version of AIDS dissent: The narrative representations of AIDS in fiction by the gay African-American fantasy writer (...) Samuel R. Delany, which rejected the rigid binarism of “safe” and “unsafe” sex practices, Delany’s evidence-based dissent. He also engaged in a related form of cultural dissent: speaking the unspeakably obscene, at a time when Silence = Death. Delany called into question both the inferential leaps based on limited epidemiological research that were represented in safer sex guidelines and the widespread public reticence about sexual behavior. (shrink)

Clinical ethics support (CES) for health care professionals and patients is increasingly seen as part of good health care. However, there is a key drawback to the way CES services are currently offered. They are often performed as isolated and one-off services whose ownership and impact are unclear. This paper describes the development of an integrative approach to CES at the Center of Expertise and Care for Gender Dysphoria (CEGD) at Amsterdam University Medical Center. We specifically aimed to integrate CES (...) into daily work processes at the CEGD. In this paper, we describe the CES services offered there in detail and elaborate on the 16 lessons we learned from the process of developing an integrative approach to CES. These learning points can inform and inspire CES professionals, who wish to bring about greater integration of CES services into clinical practice. (shrink)

This paper reviews and synthesizes emerging multi-disciplinary evidence toward understanding the development of social and political organization in the Last Glacial. Evidence for the prevalence and scope of political egalitarianism is reviewed and the biological, social, and environmental influences on this mode of human organization are further explored. Viewing social and political organization in the Last Glacial in a much wider, multi-disciplinary context provides the footing for coherent theory building and hypothesis testing by which to further explore human political systems. (...) We aim to overcome the claim that our ancestors’ form of social organization is untestable, as well as counter a degree of exaggeration regarding possibilities for sedentism, population densities, and hierarchical structures prior to the Holocene with crucial advances from disparate disciplines. (shrink)

This article reports on the development of an instrument to measure the perceived stress that results from the use and ubiquity of digital technology in the workplace. Based upon a contemporary understanding of stress and a set of stressors that is a substantial update to existing scales, the Digital Stressors Scale advances the measurement of digital stress. Initially, 138 items were constructed for the instrument and grouped into a set of 15 digital stressors. Based on a sample of N = (...) 1,998 online questionnaires completed by individuals representative of the US employed population, the scale was refined using exploratory factor analyses and PLS-SEM. The resulting and final scale consists of ten stressor categories reflective of one higher-order construct and a total of 50 items. Through a nomological network that includes important outcome variables of digital stress it was then demonstrated that the DSS provides substantial explanatory power, particularly related to emotional exhaustion and user satisfaction. Thus, the DSS constitutes a state-of-the-art self-report instrument to measure the extent of distress appraisal related to digital technologies in the workplace and helps to explain further how and why information and communication technologies can lead to adverse outcomes in individuals, thereby providing the starting point for job related organizational interventions. (shrink)

For loss averse investors, a sequence of risky investments looks less attractive if it is evaluated myopically—an effect called myopic loss aversion (MLA). The consequences of this effect have been confirmed in several experiments and its robustness is largely undisputed. The effect’s causes, however, have not been thoroughly examined with regard to one important aspect. Due to the construction of the lotteries that were used in the experiments, none of the studies is able to distinguish between MLA and an explanation (...) based on (myopic) loss probability aversion (MLPA). This distinction is important, however, in discussion of the practical relevance and the generalizability of the phenomenon. We designed an experiment that is able to disentangle lottery attractiveness and loss probabilities. Our analysis reveals that mere loss probabilities are not as important in this dynamic context as previous findings in other domains suggest. The results favor the MLA over the MLPA explanation. (shrink)

What is the will? And what is its relation to human action? Throughout history, philosophers have been fascinated by the idea of "the will": the source of the drive that motivates human beings to act. However, there has never been a clear consensus as to what the will is and how it relates to human action. Some philosophers have taken the will to be based firmly in reason and rational choice, and some have seen it as purely self-determined. Others have (...) replaced the idea of the human will with a more general drive uniting humans and the rest of nature, living and non-living. This collection of nine specially commissioned papers traces the formulation and treatment of the problem of the will from ancient philosophy through the scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages, to modern philosophy and right up to contemporary theories. Philosophers discussed include Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Hobbes, Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. (shrink)

Blatantly observable in the U.S. currently, the political chasm grows, representing a prototype of political polarization in most if not all western democratic political systems. Differential political psychology strives to trace back increasingly polarized political convictions to differences on the individual level. Recent evolutionary informed approaches suggest that interindividual differences in political orientation reflect differences in group-mindedness and cooperativeness. Contrarily, the existence of meaningful associations between political orientation, personality traits, and interpersonal behavior has been questioned critically. Here, we shortly review (...) evidence showing that these relationships do exist, which supports the assumption that political orientation is deeply rooted in the human condition. Potential reasons for the premature rejection of these relationships and directions for future research are outlined and implications for refinements and extensions of evolutionary informed approaches are derived. (shrink)

As a consequence of the changing conditions of doing business, we can observe the emergence of an increasing number of industrial and company-specific codes of conduct, as well as social and environmental standards. This paper considers these initiatives as being self-regulating governance mechanisms, which are characterized by a process of voluntary adherence on the part of firms to certain mechanisms or principles that seek to promote a “good society.” Two specific internationally established standards are discussed: Social Accountability 8000 and AccountAbility (...) 1000. These institutionalized approaches are described and then contrasted in relation to a number of different factors, particularly the degree to which they foster “reflexivity,” in terms of how businesses think about these issues, and “dialog,” in terms of how businesses interact with stakeholders. Such questions are relevant to the ways in which these standards might be introduced and implemented, and which of these institutionalized approaches are the most promising for international businesses in developing countries. (shrink)

Research ethics committees ‘(RECs) members’ perceptions of their role in regard to the science of research proposals are discussed. Our study, which involved the interviewing of 20 participants from amongst the UK’s independent (Phase I) ethics committees, revealed that the members consider that it is the role of the REC to examine and approve the scientific adequacy of the research – and this notwithstanding the fact that a more competent body will already have done this and even when that other (...) body has the legal responsibility for this function. The problematic nature of this situation, tantamount to double jeopardy, is considered: it can delay research and so add to costs whilst offering no countervailing benefits, or the double jeopardy may be just the cost society imposes, through its RECs, on researchers as the price for research on human subjects. (shrink)

Since those times "nature" has become the basic word designating essential relations that Western historical humanity has to beings, both to itself and to beings other than itself. This fact is shown by a rough list of dichotomies that have become prevalent: nature and grace (i.e., super-nature).

Since Hilary Putnam offered multiple realization as an empirical hypothesis in the 1960s, philosophical consensus has turned against the idea that mental processes are identifiable with brain processes, and multiple realization has become the keystone of the 'antireductive consensus' across philosophy of science. Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro offer the first book-length investigation of multiple realization, which serves as a starting point to a series of philosophically sophisticated and empirically informed arguments that cast doubt on the (...) generality of multiple realization in the cognitive sciences. They argue that mind-brain identities have played an important role in the growth and achievements of the cognitive sciences, and suggest that there is little prospect for multiple realization in an empirically-based theory of mind. This leads Polger and Shapiro to offer an alternative framework for understanding explanations in the cognitive sciences, as well as in chemistry, biology, and other non-basic sciences. (shrink)

A long tradition of research in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) countries has investigated how people weigh individual welfare versus group welfare in their moral judgments. Relatively less research has investigated the generalizability of results across non-WEIRD populations. In the current study, we ask participants across nine diverse cultures (Bali, Costa Rica, France, Guatemala, Japan, Madagascar, Mongolia, Serbia, and the USA) to make a series of moral judgments regarding both third-party sacrifice for group welfare and first-person sacrifice for group (...) welfare. In addition to finding some amount of cross-cultural variation on most of our questions, we also find two cross-culturally consistent judgments: (1) when indi- viduals are in equivalent situations, overall welfare should be maximized, and (2) harm to individuals should be taken into account, and some types of individual harm can trump overall group welfare. We end by discussing the specific pattern of variable and consistent features in the context of evolutionary theories of the evolution of morality. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Why and how have supply chain codes of conduct diffused among lead firms around the globe? Prior research has drawn on both institutional and stakeholder theories to explain the adoption of codes, but no study has modeled adoption as a temporally dynamic process of diffusion. We propose that the drivers of adoption shift over time, from exclusively nonmarket to eventually market-based mechanisms as well. In an analysis of an original data set of more than 1,800 firms between the years 2006 (...) and 2015, we find that strong nonmarket labor institutions in a firm’s home country are critical to initiating and sustaining the diffusion process. Market mechanisms, such as investor scrutiny and brand risk, emerge as important later. Contrary to prior research, we did not find a significant effect from nongovernmental organization (NGO) pressure. We conclude that markets for corporate social responsibility can and do arise, but only after they are effectuated by nonmarket institutions. (shrink)

In Pietroski ( 2018 ) a simple representation language called SMPL is introduced, construed as a hypothesis about core conceptual structure. The present work is a study of this system from a logical perspective. In addition to establishing a completeness result and a complexity characterization for reasoning in the system, we also pinpoint its expressive limits, in particular showing that the fourth corner in the square of opposition (“ Some_not ”) eludes expression. We then study a seemingly small extension, called (...) SMPL +, which allows for a minimal predicate-binding operator. Perhaps surprisingly, the resulting system is shown to encode precisely the concepts expressible in first-order logic. However, unlike the latter class, the class of SMPL + expressions admits a simple procedural (context-free) characterization. Our contribution brings together research strands in logic—including natural logic, modal logic, description logic, and hybrid logic—with recent advances in semantics and philosophy of language. (shrink)

Mental and physical causes do not competedthe presence of one does not exclude the efficacy of the other. This point is obvious from the perspective of an interventionist theory of causation, but only when this theory gets its proper due. Doubts about the interventionist justification for concluding that there is both physical and mental causation, we have argued, rest on misunderstandings of interventionism. When looking to interventions to reveal causal structures, care must be taken to consider the right variable sets. (...) Jaegwon Kim’s diagram is the wrong starting point for interventionist causal reasoning because it includes variables that are related by non-causal relations in addition to causal relations. When it comes to understanding exclusion, less is more. (shrink)

Codes of ethics exist in many, if not the majority, of all large U.S. companies today. But how the impact of these written codes affect managerial attitudes and behavior is still not clearly documented or explained. This study takes a step in that direction by proposing that attention should shift from the codes themselves as the sources of ethical behavior to the persons whose behavior is the focus of these codes. In particular, this study investigates the role of code familiarity (...) as a factor impacting the influence of an ethics code on manager behavior. Data collected from 286 executives from companies in the direct selling industry are used to test hypotheses (1) that the perceived usefulness of ethics codes is positively related to the degree of familiarity with the code, and (2) that ethical climate as assessed by managers is positively related to the code''s perceived usefulness. Both hypotheses are supported, and their implications and further research directions are discussed. (shrink)

In response to points raised by our critics in this book symposium, we offer some clarifications about how to understand the role of science in assessing the multiple realization thesis. We also consider the connection between functionalism and multiple realization in the contexts of both psychological and biological sciences.

According to the multiple realization argument, mental states or processes can be realized in diverse and heterogeneous physical systems; and that fact implies that mental state or process kinds cannot be identified with particular kinds of physical states or processes. More specifically, mental processes cannot be identified with brain processes. Moreover, the argument provides a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. The multiple realization argument is widely influential, but over the last thirty years it has also faced (...) serious objections. Despite those objections, most philosophers regard the fact of multiple realization and the cogency of the multiple realization argument as plainly correct. Why is that? What is it about the multiple realization argument that makes it so resilient? One reason is that the multiple realization argument is deeply intertwined with a view that minds are, in some sense, computational. But we argue that the sense in which minds are computational does not support the conclusion that they are ipso facto multiply realized. We argue that the sense in which brains compute does not imply that brains implement multiply realizable computational processes, and it does not provide a general model for the autonomy of the special sciences. (shrink)

Issues of identity and reduction have monopolized much of the philosopher of mind’s time over the past several decades. Interestingly, while investigations of these topics have proceeded at a steady rate, the motivations for doing so have shifted. When the early identity theorists, e.g. U. T. Place ( 1956 ), Herbert Feigl ( 1958 ), and J. J. C. Smart ( 1959 , 1961 ), fi rst gave voice to the idea that mental events might be identical to brain processes, (...) they had as their intended foil the view that minds are immaterial substances. But very few philosophers of mind today take this proposal seriously. Why, then, the continued interest in identity and reduction? Th e concern, as philosophers like Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor have expressed it, is that a victory for identity or reduction is a defeat for psychology. For if minds are physical, or if mental events are physical events, then psychologists might as well disassemble their laboratories, making room for the neuroscientists and molecular biologists who are in a better position to explain those phenomena once misdescribed as “psychological.” Th e worry nowadays is not that locating thought in immaterial souls will make psychology intractable, but that locating thoughts in material brains will make it otiose. (shrink)

35 million people die annually of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), 80% of them in low- and middle-income countries — representing a marked epidemiological transition from infectious to chronic diseases and from richer to poorer countries. The total number of NCDs is projected to rise by 17% over the coming decade, absent significant interventions. The NCD epidemic poses unique governance challenges: the causes are multifactorial, the affected populations diffuse, and effective responses require sustained multi-sectorial cooperation. The authors propose a range of regulatory (...) options available at the domestic level, including stricter food labeling laws, regulation of food advertisements, tax incentives for healthy lifestyle choices, changes to the built environment, and direct regulation of food and drink producers. Given the realities of globalization, such interventions require global cooperation. In 2011, the UN General Assembly held a High-level meeting on NCDs, setting a global target of a 25% reduction in premature mortality from NCDs by 2025. Yet concrete plans and resource commitments for reaching this goal are not yet in the offing, and the window is rapidly closing for achieving these targets through prevention — as opposed to treatment, which is more costly. Innovative global governance for health is urgently needed to engage private industry and civil society in the global response to the NCD crisis. (shrink)

The history of the Euclidean Steiner tree problem, which is the problem of constructing a shortest possible network interconnecting a set of given points in the Euclidean plane, goes back to Gergonne in the early nineteenth century. We present a detailed account of the mathematical contributions of some of the earliest papers on the Euclidean Steiner tree problem. Furthermore, we link these initial contributions with results from the recent literature on the problem.

In recent years consciousness has become a significant area of study in the cognitive sciences. The Frontiers of Consciousness is a major interdisciplinary exploration of consciousness. The book stems from the Chichele lectures held at All Souls College in Oxford, and features contributions from a 'who's who' of authorities from both philosophy and psychology. The result is a truly interdisciplinary volume, which tackles some of the biggest and most impenetrable problems in consciousness. The book includes chapters considering the apparent explanatory (...) gap between science and consciousness, our conscious experience of emotions such as fear, and of willed actions by ourselves and others. It looks at subjective differences between two ways in which visual information guides behaviour, and scientific investigation of consciousness in non-human animals. It looks at the challenges that the mind-brain relation presents for clinical practice as well as for theories of consciousness. The book draws on leading research from philosophy, experimental psychology, functional imaging of the brain, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and clinical neurology. Distinctive in its accessibility, authority, and its depth of coverage, Frontiers of Consciousness will be a groundbreaking and influential addition to the consciousness literature. (shrink)

When the first edition of Pediatric Psychopharmacology published in 2002, it filled a void in child and adolescent psychiatry and quickly establishing itself as the definitive text-reference in pediatric psychopharmacology. While numerous short, clinically focused paperbacks have been published since then, no competitors with the scholarly breadth, depth, and luster of this volume have emerged. In the second edition, Christopher Kratochvil, MD, a highly respected expert in pediatric psychopharmacology, joins the outstanding editorial team led by Dr. Martin and Dr. (...) Scahill. In the new edition, the editors streamline the flow of information to reflect the growth in scientific data since the first edition appeared. The overall structure of the book remains the same, with major sections on underlying biology; somatic interventions; assessment and treatment; and special considerations. (shrink)