Background Nonanonymized direct contact between organ recipients and donor families is a topic of international interest in the adult context. However, there is limited discussion about whether direct contact should be extended to pediatric settings due to clinician and researcher concerns of the potential harms to pediatric patients.Methods We interviewed pediatric organ recipients, their families, and donorfamilies in British Columbia, Canada, to determine their views on direct contact. Interviews were conducted in two stages, with those who were further removed from (...) the transplant process informing the approach to interviews with those who more recently went throughthe transplant process.Results Twenty-nine individuals participated in twenty in-depth interviews. The study included participants from three major organ systems: kidney, heart, and liver. Only five participants expressed that direct contact might cause harm or discomfort, while twenty-three indicated they saw significant potential for benefits. Nearly half focused on the harms to others rather than themselves, and nearly two-thirds focused on the benefits for others rather than themselves.Conclusion There appears to be a community desire for direct contact in pediatric organ transplant programs among those living in British Columbia, Canada. These results suggest a need to revisit the medical community’s assumptions around protection and paternalism in our practice as clinicians and researchers. (shrink)

The real history of the covey of attention-artists who call themselves "The Birds." A great deal of uncertainty--and even some genuine confusion--surrounds the origin, evolution, and activities of the so-called Avis Tertia or "Order of the Third Bird." Sensational accounts of this "attentional cult" emphasize histrionic rituals, tragic trance-addictions, and the covert dissemination of obscurantist ontologies of the art object. Hieratic, ecstatic, and endlessly evasive, the Order attracts sensual misfits and cabalistic aesthetes--both to its ranks, and to its scholarship. In (...) recent years, however, the revisionist work of the research collective ESTAR(SER) has done much to clear the air, bringing archival precision to the history of this covey of attention-artists who call themselves "The Birds." Gathering the best articles of the last twenty years of The Proceedings of ESTAR(SER), this volume represents a landmark in the history of aesthetic practices, and will be a point of departure for future work wading the muddy marshes at the limits of historicism."--Publisher description. (shrink)

What difference does music make to performance poetry, and how did the ancients understand this relationship? This volume explores the interaction of music and language in ancient Greek poetry, arguing that music crucially informs the ways in which these texts create meaning and exploring its place in contemporary critical writings.

The no-free-lunch theorems promote a skeptical conclusion that all possible machine learning algorithms equally lack justification. But how could this leave room for a learning theory, that shows that some algorithms are better than others? Drawing parallels to the philosophy of induction, we point out that the no-free-lunch results presuppose a conception of learning algorithms as purely data-driven. On this conception, every algorithm must have an inherent inductive bias, that wants justification. We argue that many standard learning algorithms should rather (...) be understood as model-dependent: in each application they also require for input a model, representing a bias. Generic algorithms themselves, they can be given a model-relative justification. (shrink)

Individuals with trypophobia have an aversion towards clusters of roughly circular shapes, such as those on a sponge or the bubbles on a cup of coffee. It is unclear why the condition exists, given the harmless nature of typical eliciting stimuli. We suggest that aversion to clusters is an evolutionarily prepared response towards a class of stimuli that resemble cues to the presence of parasites and infectious disease. Trypophobia may be an exaggerated and overgeneralised version of this normally adaptive response. (...) Consistent with this explanation, individuals with trypophobia, as well as comparison individuals, reported aversion towards disease-relevant cluster stimuli, but only the trypophobic group reported aversion towards objectively harmless cluster stimuli that had no relevance to disease. For both groups the level of aversion reported was predicted uniquely by a measure of disgust sensitivity. Scaled emotion ratings and open-ended responses revealed that the aversive response was predominantly based on the disease avoidance emotion, disgust. Many open-ended responses also described skin sensations. These findings support the proposal that individuals with trypophobia primarily perceive cluster stimuli as cues to ectoparasites and skin-transmitted pathogens. (shrink)

We investigate claims about the frequency of "know" made by philosophers. Our investigation has several overlapping aims. First, we aim to show what is required to confirm or disconfirm philosophers’ claims about the comparative frequency of different uses of philosophically interesting expressions. Second, we aim to show how using linguistic corpora as tools for investigating meaning is a productive methodology, in the sense that it yields discoveries about the use of language that philosophers would have overlooked if they remained in (...) their "armchairs of an afternoon", to use J.L. Austin’s phrase. Third, we discuss facts about the meaning of "know" that so far have been ignored in philosophy, with the aim of reorienting discussions of the relevance of ordinary language for philosophical theorizing. (shrink)

There is a standard story told about the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy: it was a widespread, if not dominant, approach to philosophy in Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II up until the early 1960s, but with the development of systematic approaches to the study of language—formal semantic theories on one hand and Gricean pragmatics on the other—ordinary language philosophy more or less disappeared. In this paper we present quantitative evidence to evaluate the standard story (...) of the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy, building on the topic model of over 30,000 philosophy articles in Weatherson (2022). Using a combination of qualitative judgment and a topic-model-based measurement of similarity between individual articles, we find evidence that supports the first part of the standard story, according to which ordinary language philosophy arises in the 1940s, peaks between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, and then rapidly declines. But we argue that there is also evidence of a "new wave" of ordinary language philosophy in the early 21st century that defies the second part of the standard story. (shrink)

Depression is a highly recurrent disorder with limited treatment alternatives for reducing risk of subsequent episodes. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and attention bias modification (ABM) separately have shown some promise in reducing depressive symptoms. This study investigates (a) if group-based ACT had a greater impact in reducing residual symptoms of depression over a 12-month follow-up than a control condition, and (b) if preceding ACT with ABM produced added benefits. This multisite study consisted of two phases. In phase 1, participants (...) with a history of depression, currently in remission (N= 244), were randomized to either receive 14 days of ABM or a control condition. In phase 2, a quasi- experimental design was adopted, and only phase-1 participants from the Sørlandet site (N= 124) next received an 8-week group-based ACT intervention. Self-reported and clinician-rated depression symptoms were assessed at baseline, immediately after phase 1 and at 1, 2, 6, and 12 months after the conclusion of phase 1. At 12-month follow-up, participants who received ACT exhibited fewer self-reported and clinician-rated depressive symptoms. There were no significant differences between ACT groups preceded by ABM or a control condition. There were no significant differences between ACT groups preceded by ABM or a control condition. Group-based ACT successfully decreased residual symptoms in depression over 12 months, suggesting some promise in preventing relapse. (shrink)

This volume collects essays by philosophers and scholars working at the interface of Western philosophy and Buddhist Studies. Many have distinguished scholarly records in Western philosophy, with expertise in analytic philosophy and logic, as well as deep interest in Buddhist philosophy. Others have distinguished scholarly records in Buddhist Studies with strong interests in analytic philosophy and logic. All are committed to the enterprise of cross-cultural philosophy and to bringing the insights and techniques of each tradition to bear in order to (...) illuminate problems and ideas of the other. These essays address a broad range of topics in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics, and demonstrate the fecundity of the interaction between the Buddhist and Western philosophical and logical traditions. (shrink)

Discussions of research involving vulnerable populations have left the homeless comparatively ignored. Participation by these subjects in drug studies has the potential to be upsetting, inconvenient, or unpleasant. Participation occasionally produces injury, health emergencies, and chronic health problems. Nonetheless, no ethical justification exists for the categorical exclusion of homeless persons from research. The appropriate framework for informed consent for these subjects of pharmaceutical research is not a single event of oral or written consent, but a multi-staged arrangement of disclosure, dialogue, (...) and permission-giving. Payments and other rewards in biomedical research raise issues of whether it is ethical to offer inducements to the homeless in exchange for participation in drug studies. Such inducements can influence desperate persons who are seriously lacking in resources. The key is to strike a balance between a rate of payment high enough that it does not exploit subjects by underpayment and low enough that it does not create an irresistible inducement. This proposal does not underestimate the risks of research, which are often overestimated and need to be appraised in light of the relevant empirical literature. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine how organizations’ impression management evolves in response to rising stakeholder pressures regarding organizations’ corporate responsibility initiatives. We conducted a comparative case study analysis over a period of 13 years for two organizations—Exxon and BP—that took extreme initial stances on climate change. We found that as stakeholder pressures rose, their IM tactics unfolded in four phases: advocating the initial stance, sensegiving to clarify the initial stance, image repairing, and adjusting the stance. Taken together, our analysis of (...) IM over these four phases provides three key insights about the evolution of IM in the face of rising pressures. First, when faced with stakeholder pressures, it seems that organizations do not immediately resort to conforming but tend to give in gradually when pressures increase and start to come from relatively powerful stakeholders. Second, evolution of IM seems to be characterized by path dependence, i.e., even as organizations’ positions evolve, they continue to show their conviction in their initial positions and try to convey that their subsequent positions flow logically from the previous ones. Finally, IM involves navigation between symbolism and substance, and companies tend to strive toward harmonizing their symbolic and substantive actions as stakeholder pressure increases. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

The most famous paradox in chinese philosophy, Kung-Sun lung's "white horse not horse" has been taken as evidence of platonism, Aristotelian essentialism, Class logic, Etc., In ancient chinese thought. I argue that a nominalistic interpretation utilizing the notion of "stuffs" (mass objects) is a more plausible explanation of the dialogue. It is more coherent internally, More consistent with kung-Sun lung's other dialogues, And the tradition of chinese thought which is usually regarded as nominalistic. The interpretation is also strongly suggested by (...) striking parallels between all chinese classificatory nouns and english mass nouns. (shrink)

The advent of prenatal screening technologies has neatly paralleled the evolution of disability rightsDisability rights. During the 1970s and 1980s, the disability movement in many countries campaigned for barrier removal, better provision and recognition.

Research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has tended to focus on external stakeholders and outcomes, revealing little about internal effects that might also help explain CSR-firm performance linkages and the impact that corporate marketing strategies can have on internal stakeholders such as employees. The two studies ( N = 1,116 and N = 2,422) presented in this article draw on theory from both corporate marketing and organizational behavior (OB) disciplines to test the general proposition that employee trust partially mediates the (...) relationship between CSR and employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Both studies provide evidence in support of these general relationships. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the context of CSR and corporate marketing research. (shrink)

Kant, Fichte, and the Legacy of Transcendental Idealism contains ten new essays by leading and rising scholars from the United States, Europe, and Asia who explore the historical development and conceptual contours of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are being investigated as an access pathway to communication for individuals with physical disabilities, as the technology obviates the need for voluntary motor control. However, to date, minimal research has investigated the use of BCIs for children. Traditional BCI communication paradigms may be suboptimal given that children with physical disabilities may face delays in cognitive development and acquisition of literacy skills. Instead, in this study we explored emotional state as an alternative access pathway to communication. We developed (...) a pediatric BCI to identify positive and negative emotional states from changes in hemodynamic activity of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). To train and test the BCI, 10 neurotypical children aged 8–14 underwent a series of emotion-induction trials over four experimental sessions (one offline, three online) while their brain activity was measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Visual neurofeedback was used to assist participants in regulating their emotional states and modulating their hemodynamic activity in response to the affective stimuli. Child-specific linear discriminant classifiers were trained on cumulatively available data from previous sessions and adaptively updated throughout each session. Average online valence classification exceeded chance across participants by the last two online sessions (with 7 and 8 of the 10 participants performing better than chance, respectively, in Sessions 3 and 4). There was a small significant positive correlation with online BCI performance and age, suggesting older participants were more successful at regulating their emotional state and/or brain activity. Variability was seen across participants in regards to BCI performance, hemodynamic response, and discriminatory features and channels. Retrospective offline analyses yielded accuracies comparable to those reported in adult affective BCI studies using fNIRS. Affective fNIRS-BCIs appear to be feasible for school-aged children, but to further gauge the practical potential of this type of BCI, replication with more training sessions, larger sample sizes, and end-users with disabilities is necessary. (shrink)

In this article, the insertion of a two-staged highly interesting question in an online, survey-based field experiment is shown to produce better survey completion rate (i.e., decreases completion refusal by 8%) and sample representativeness (increases the number of moderate answer patterns by 12%) than a typical (same) highly interesting question at the beginning of a survey only. Using nonparametric tests and subgroup probability analysis, measured effects include survey completion rates, response bias and reported demographic differences. In regards to sample representativeness, (...) the results also raise questions about the sensitivity of the conventional practice of comparing early to late respondent means scores as a method of investigating nonresponse bias in marketing research. Alternative approaches to measuring potential non-response bias are compared with the tradition of comparing early-wave verses late-wave mean respondent differences. The results indicate that the conventional mean test fails to identify differences in nonresponse bias; the scores of highly interested or opposed respondents in the first waves produce equivalent means to the scores of the less interested or opposed respondents in the latter wave between the surveys (e.g., 1's and 5's vs. 2's and 4's, both averaging to 3's) that are identifiable through kurtosis and probability analysis. (shrink)

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When required to experience emotional (...) response, by ‘getting into the feeling’ of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group. (shrink)

In order to enhance the “structural competency” of medicine—the capability of clinicians to address social and institutional determinants of their patients’ health—physicians need a theoretical lens to see how social conditions influence health and how they might address them. We consider one such theoretical lens, fundamental cause theory, and propose how it might contribute to a more structurally competent medical profession. We first describe fundamental cause theory and how it makes the social causes of disease and health visible. We then (...) outline the sorts of “fundamental interventions” that physicians might make in order to address the fundamental causes. (shrink)

Patient-reported outcomes are frequently used for medical decision making, at the levels of both individual patient care and healthcare policy. Evidence increasingly shows that PROs may be influenced by patients’ response shifts and dispositions. We identify how response shifts and dispositions may influence medical decisions on both the levels of individual patient care and health policy. We provide examples of these influences and analyse the consequences from the perspectives of ethical principles and theories of just distribution. If influences of response (...) shift and disposition on PROs and consequently medical decision making are not considered, patients may not receive optimal treatment and health insurance packages may include treatments that are not the most effective or cost-effective. We call on healthcare practitioners, researchers, policy makers, health insurers, and other stakeholders to critically reflect on why and how such patient reports are used. (shrink)