We report on the small-scale (0.5 13 h - 1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

I. Scientific method as a mental operation [by] T. Case.--II. On some aspects of the scientific method [by] F. Gotch.--III. Physiology; its scope and method [by] C. S. Sherrington.--IV. Inheritance in animals and plants [by] W. F. R. Weldon.--V. Psycho-physical method [by] W. McDougall.--VI. The evolution of double stars [by] A. H. Fison.--VII. Anthropology: the evolution of currency and coinage [by] Sir R. C. Temple.--VIII. Archaeological evidence [by] W. M. F. Petrie.--IX. Scientific method as applied to history [by] T. B. (...) Strong. (shrink)

In der Auseinandersetzung mit der Semantik Alteuropas hat Niklas Luhmann darauf verwiesen, dass der Begriff der menschlichen Lebensform in der antiken Semantik jenen Platz besetzt hält, an dem eigentlich ein Gesellschaftsbegriff zu entwickeln wäre (I). Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob der zeitgenössische Begriff der menschlichen Lebensform, der eine tragende Bedeutung in der post-wittgensteinianischen Philosophie besitzt, dadurch erhellt werden kann, dass man ihn als funktionales Äquivalent des Gesellschaftsbegriffs versteht. Anhand von Wittgensteins Philosophischen Untersuchungen wird nachgezeichnet, dass der Begriff sich (...) in der Tat als ein begriffliches Angebot für die Frage nach der »Realität des Sozialen schlechthin« auffassen lässt (II, III). Die heutigen Verwendungen des Begriffs weisen dabei allerdings noch immer jene Gefahren auf, die Luhmanns Vorbehalte gegenüber der antiken Semantik begründeten: die Gefahr, die unerreichbare Einheit des Sozialen zu reifizieren und die in einem solchen Begriff zu entfaltenden Probleme vorschnell zu verdecken (IV). Diesen Gefahren steht zugleich ein spezifisches Problematisierungspotential gegenüber, das den Begriff der Lebensform gegenüber dem Gesellschaftsbegriff auszeichnet. Dieser Begriff erlaubt die besondere Akzentuierung eines zentralen Problems des Sozialen: des Problems der Einheit der Differenz von Individuum und Gesellschaft, das immer schon gelöst ist, wenn soziale Operationen geschehen, und das zugleich darin als unlösbares insistiert (V). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Impact of Clinicians on the Diagnostic ManualThomas A. Widiger (bio)Keywordsdiagnosis, classification, DSM, taxonomy, clinical judgmentSurveys of clinicians’ opinions can be very informative. There is a long tradition within medicine that new disorders are discovered within clinical practice. The original edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) diagnostic manual (DSM) was based in large part on clinical experience. The recent editions have been governed more heavily by more systematic (...) research (Widiger and Clark 2000), but many of the new additions are still said to come from clinical practice. As described for the development of DSM-III (APA 1980), “if there is general agreement among clinicians, who would be expected to encounter the condition, that there are a significant number of patients who have it and that its identification is important in their clinical work, it is included in the classification” (Spitzer, Sheehy, and Endicott 1977, 3).Clinicians can also be surveyed with regard to their opinions concerning a proposed revision. The ultimate consumers of a diagnostic manual are practicing clinicians and any effort to develop an official nomenclature should consider the opinions of the persons who must use the classification within their clinical practice (First et al. 2004; Sadler 2005). Clinicians can also be surveyed (or studied) with respect to how the diagnostic manual is being implemented. Much of this research has demonstrated that clinicians might be failing to apply the diagnostic manual in a reliable or valid manner (Garb 2005; Kutchins and Kirk 1997).It is perhaps obvious, however, that a diagnostic manual should not be governed primarily by clinical opinion or current clinical practice. The authors of DSM-III (APA 1980) and DSM-III-R (APA 1987) indicated that they would include a new diagnosis within the official nomenclature if a group of clinicians indicated that it was important to their clinical practice (Spitzer et al. 1977). This liberal threshold led to the decision of the DSM-III-R Task Force to include such diagnoses as paraphiliac rapism, self-defeating personality disorder, and sadistic personality disorder despite the lack of systematic research supporting their validity and the likelihood that these new diagnoses would have harmful social and forensic applications (Widiger 1995). These diagnoses no longer even appear within the appendix of DSM-IV-TR (APA 2000) for proposed diagnoses needing further study.The authors of DSM-III avoided opinion surveys because “no one wanted to repeat the scene of the general membership voting on a presumably ‘scientific’ issue, as was done in 1973 on the [End Page 277] issue of the elimination of homosexuality from the DSM-II classification” (Spitzer, Williams, and Skodol 1980, 152). Matters of construct validity should probably be addressed through systematic research rather than through opinion polls. Decisions should be informed by a fair hearing of the diversity of perspectives, and these viewpoints and perspectives should be systematically and enthusiastically solicited. Nevertheless, the most scientifically valid decision may at times be “politically incorrect.” The authors of the diagnostic manual should have the authority to make innovative decisions that are scientifically justified even when they are contrary to general clinical consensus (Widiger and Clark 2000).Some persons, though, do suggest that the diagnostic manual should be modeled on how disorders are being diagnosed within clinical practice. This is perhaps most readily evident in the proposals of Westen and Shedler (2000) to diagnose mental disorders via prototypal matching. They eschew the provision of specific and explicit criterion sets in favor of simply matching the patient to a global (e.g., paragraph description) of a prototypic case. A purported strength of this approach is that it is said to “conform to the way clinicians think about psychiatric diagnoses” (First and Westen 2007, 473).There are, however, concerns with respect to prototypal matching. First, it is not really clear that clinicians actually provide diagnoses in this manner. There are data to suggest that clinicians instead reach a diagnostic decision on the basis of just one or two individual diagnostic criteria rather than matching to a global prototype (Herkov and Blashfield 1995).More important, it is unclear whether the diagnostic manual should in fact emulate what is occurring within clinical practice. There is a... (shrink)

This paper is a reconstruction and analysis of Thomas Reid’s epistemology, based upon an examination of his extant manuscripts and publications. I argue that, in Reid’s view, a certain degree of “evidence” (or, as I shall say, ‘epistemic justification’) is that which distinguishes mere true belief from knowledge; and that this degree of justification may be ascribed to a person’s belief if and only if (i) the evidence upon which her belief is grounded is such that she holds it (...) with “certainty”; (ii) she has a “sound understanding”; (iii) she has a distinct conception of the object of her belief; and, finally, (iv) she has formed her belief “without prejudice”. (shrink)

This textbook brings the humanities to students in order to evoke the humanity of students. It helps to form individuals who take charge of their own minds, who are free from narrow and unreflective forms of thought, and who act compassionately in their public and professional worlds. Using concepts and methods of the humanities, the book addresses undergraduate and premed students, medical students, and students in other health professions, as well as physicians and other healthcare practitioners. It encourages them to (...) consider the ethical and existential issues related to the experience of disease, care of the dying, health policy, religion and health, and medical technology. Case studies, images, questions for discussion, and role-playing exercises help readers to engage in the practical, interpretive, and analytical aspects of the material, developing skills for critical thinking as well as compassionate care. (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 this important book, Thomas R. Flynn reinterprets and evaluates Sartre's social and political philosophy, arguing that the existential ethics of Sartre's ...

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: -/- The main aim of this review will be to assess the effects of changing practitioner empathy or patient expectations for all conditions. The main objective is to conduct a systematic review of randomised trials where the intervention involves manipulating either (a) practitioner empathy or (b) patient expectations, or (c) both.

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Regarded as the father of existentialist philosophy, he was also a political critic, moralist, playwright, novelist, and author of biographies and short stories. Thomas R. Flynn provides the first book-length account of Sartre as a philosopher of the imaginary, mapping the intellectual development of his ideas throughout his life, and building a narrative that is not only philosophical but also attentive to the political and literary dimensions (...) of his work. Exploring Sartre's existentialism, politics, ethics, and ontology, this book illuminates the defining ideas of Sartre's oeuvre: the literary and the philosophical, the imaginary and the conceptual, his descriptive phenomenology and his phenomenological concept of intentionality, and his conjunction of ethics and politics with an 'egoless' consciousness. It will appeal to all who are interested in Sartre's philosophy and its relation to his life. (shrink)

A nineteenth-century aristocrat, Nishi Amane (1829-1897) was one of the first Japanese to assert the supremacy of Western culture. He was sent by his government to Leiden to study the European social sciences; on his return to Japan shortly before the climactic Meiji Restoration of 1868 he introduced and adapted European utilitarianism and positivism to his country's intellectual world. To modernize, Nishi held, Japan must cast off the bonds of the Confucian world-view in order to adopt new principles of empirical (...) scholarly investigation and new standards of self-improvement. Though a Confucian by upbringing, Nishi became thoroughly committed to Western intellectual values in his programs for the new Japanese society. In his roles of teacher, writer, and government administrator, he was influential at one of the most critical times in Japan's history. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Philosophy as a way of life -- Becoming an individual -- Humanism : for and against -- Authenticity -- A chastened individualism? Existentialism and social thought -- Existentialism in the twenty-first century.

The concept of an ecological niche (econiche) has been used in a variety of ways, some of which are incompatible with a relational or functional interpretation of the term. This essay seeks to standardize usage by limiting the concept to functional relations between organisms and their surroundings, and to revise the concept to include epistemic relations. For most organisms, epistemics are a vital aspect of their functional relationships to their surroundings and, hence, a major determinant of their econiche. Rejecting the (...) traditional dualism of organism and environment, an econiche is defined as the reciprocal (dual) of a functionally specified class of organisms (FSTU). From this perspective, an econiche necessarily implies a certain type of organism, and a class of functionally similar organisms implies a special econiche.The econiche concept is also discussed in relation to other ecological terms that reflect the distributional patterns of organisms, such as habitat, and the concept of an empty niche is criticized. (shrink)

Social influence and social learning are important to the survival of many organisms, and certain forms of social learning also may have important implications for their underlying cognitive processes. The various forms of social influence and learning are discussed with special emphasis on the mechanisms that may be responsible for opaque imitation (the copying of a response that the observer cannot easily see when it produces the response). Three procedures are examined, the results of which may qualify as opaque imitation: (...) the bidirectional control procedure, the two- action procedure, and the do-as-I-do procedure. Variables that appear to affect the emergence of opaque imitation are identified and other complex forms of response copying are discussed. Keywords: bidirectional control procedure; contagion; emulation; imitation; local enhancement; object movement reenactment; observational conditioning; opaque imitation; social enhancement; social facilitation; social influence; social learning; stimulus enhancement; two action procedure. (shrink)

Social influence and social learning are important to the survival of many organisms, and certain forms of social learning also may have important implications for their underlying cognitive processes. The various forms of social influence and learning are discussed with special emphasis on the mechanisms that may be responsible for opaque imitation. Three procedures are examined, the results of which may qualify as opaque imitation: the bidirectional control procedure, the two- action procedure, and the do-as-I-do procedure. Variables that appear to (...) affect the emergence of opaque imitation are identified and other complex forms of response copying are discussed. Keywords: bidirectional control procedure; contagion; emulation; imitation; local enhancement; object movement reenactment; observational conditioning; opaque imitation; social enhancement; social facilitation; social influence; social learning; stimulus enhancement; two action procedure. (shrink)

Heyes discounts findings of imitation and self recognition in nonhuman primates based on flimsy speculation and then indicates that even positive findings would not provide evidence of theory of mind. Her proposed experiment is unlikely to work, however, because, even if the animals have a theory of mind, a number of assumptions, not directly related to theory of mind, must be made about their reasoning ability.

Adam Smith is respected as the father of contemporary economics for his work on systemizing classical economics as an independent field of study in The Wealth of Nations. But he was also a significant moral philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, with its characteristic concern for integrating sentiments and rationality. This article considers Adam Smith as a key moral philosopher of commercial society whose critical reflection upon the particular ethical challenges posed by the new pressures and possibilities of commercial society remains (...) relevant today. The discussion has three parts. First I address the artificial separation between self-interest and morality often attributed to Smith, in which his work on economics is stripped of its ethical context. Second I outline Smith’s ethical approach to economics, focusing on his vigorous but qualified defence of commercial society for its contributions to prosperity, justice, and freedom. Third I outline Smith’s moral philosophy proper as combining a naturalistic account of moral psychology with a virtue ethics based on propriety in commercial society. (shrink)

University of Utrecht, Department of Philosophy, Heidelberglaan 6, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 30 253 28 74, Email: Thomas.Nys{at}phil.uu.nl ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//-->Measures in public health care seem vulnerable to charges of paternalism: their aim is to protect, restore, or promote people's health, but the public character of these measures seems to leave insufficient room for respect for individual autonomy. This paper wants to explore three challenges to these charges: Measures in (...) PHC are aimed to protect, restore or promote ‘deep autonomy’, Measures in PHC are directed at the public and, as such, they do show respect for autonomy, and Some measures in PHC can be justified on grounds of justice and need not be defended as cases of ‘justified paternalism’. Although charges of unjustified paternalism in PHC might still be relevant, we should at least face these different challenges. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article examines some of the main tenets of competition theory in light of the theory of evolution and the concept of an ecological niche. The principle of competitive exclusion and the related assumption that communities exist at competitive equilibrium - fundamental parts of many competition theories and models - may be violated if non-equilibrium conditions exist in natural communities or are incorporated into competition models. Furthermore, these two basic tenets of competition theory are not compatible with the theory of (...) evolution. Variation in ecologically significant environmental factors and non-equilibrium in population numbers should occur in most natural communities, and such changes have important effects on community relations, niche overlap, and the evolution of ecosystems. Ecologists should view competition as a process occurring within a complexdynamic system, and should be wary of theoretical positions built upon simple laboratory experiments or simplistic mathematical models.In considering the relationship between niche overlap and competition, niche overlap should not be taken as a sufficient condition for competition; many factors may prevent or diminish competition between populations with similar resource utilization patterns. The typically opposing forces of intraspecific and interspecific competition need to be simultaneously considered, for it is the balance between them that in large part determines niche boundaries. (shrink)

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. A history, thought Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comparative charting of structural transformations and displacements. But for Sartre, authentic historical understanding demanded a much more personal and committed narrative, a kind of interpretive diary of moral (...) choices and risks compelled by critical necessity and an exacting reality. Sartre's history, a rational history of individual lives and their intrinsic social worlds, was in essence immersed in biography. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume work, Thomas R. Flynn conducts a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory, and provocatively anticipates the Foucauldian counterpoint to come in Volume Two. (shrink)

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. A history, thought Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comparative charting of structural transformations and displacements. But for Sartre, authentic historical understanding demanded a much more personal and committed narrative, a kind of interpretive diary of moral (...) choices and risks compelled by critical necessity and an exacting reality. Sartre's history, a rational history of individual lives and their intrinsic social worlds, was in essence immersed in biography. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume work, Thomas R. Flynn conducts a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory, and provocatively anticipates the Foucauldian counterpoint to come in Volume Two. (shrink)

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume study, Thomas R. Flynn conducted a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory. This long-awaited second volume offers a comprehensive and critical reading of the Foucauldian counterpoint. A history, theorized (...) Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comprehensive charting of structural transformations and displacements over time. Contrary to other Foucault scholars, Flynn proposes an "axial" rather than a developmental reading of Foucault's work. This allows aspects of Foucault's famous triad of knowledge, power, and the subject to emerge in each of his major works. Flynn maps existentialist categories across Foucault's "quadrilateral," the model that Foucault proposes as defining modernist conceptions of knowledge. At stake is the degree to which Sartre's thought is fully captured by this mapping, whether he was, as Foucault claimed, "a man of the nineteenth century trying to think in the twentieth.". (shrink)

Provides an advanced overview of the issues that are informing research on the subject of British philosophy in the seventeenth century, while at the same time offering new directions for research to take. It covers the whole of the seventeenth century, ranging from Francis Bacon to John Locke and Isaac Newton. The book contains five parts: the introductory Part I examines the state of the discipline and the nature of its practitioners as the century unfolded; Part II discusses the leading (...) natural philosophers and the philosophy of nature, including Bacon, Boyle, and Newton; Part III covers knowledge and the human faculty of the understanding; Part IV explores the leading topics in British moral philosophy from the period; and Part V concerns political philosophy. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, it discusses many less-well-known figures and debates from the period whose importance is only now being appreciated. (shrink)

After reviewing how Jean Wahl interprets the early Marcel, specifically his Metaphysical Journal, in a seminal work whose title captured the philosophical spiritof the 1930s, Vers le concret (“Toward the Concrete”), I discuss the existentialist style of philosophizing, offer five criteria for judging a philosopher to be an existentialist and submit Marcel’s work to each. I turn to the appropriateness of calling him a neo-Socratic philosopher, an appellation he seemed to prefer, and conclude with some observations of how this mixture (...) of the Socratic and the existentialist places Marcel in the lineage of those like Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot who speak of philosophy less as a doctrine and more as a way of life. (shrink)