Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. This result undermines (...) some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)

The biological sciences provide ample opportunity and motivation for feminist interventions. These sciences are seen by many as an authority on human nature and are highly relevant to many issues of social justice and public policy. Feminist philosophy of biology focuses on the ethical and epistemic adequacy and responsibility of biological claims. This work is critical in the sense of identifying epistemically and ethically irresponsible knowledge claims, research practices, and dissemination of biological research regarding sex/gender, including ways that sex/gender interacts (...) with other social categories. In this chapter we describe classic themes in feminist philosophy of biology, with particular regard to research practices and metaphysical assumptions. We then go on to argue that these classic themes remain salient in contemporary neuroscientific investigations of human emotion and in feminist research on the evolution of human behavior. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that philosophers of science have an obligation to recognize and engage with the social nature of the sciences they assess if those sciences are morally relevant. Morally-relevant science is science that has the potential to risk harm to humans, non-humans, or the environment. My argument and the approach I develop are informed by an analysis of the philosophy of biology literature on the criticism of evolutionary psychology, the study of the evolution of human psychology and (...) behaviour. From this literature, I tease out two different methods of scientific critique. The first I call the “truth-detectional” approach. Those who take this approach are first and foremost concerned about the truth of EP claims as that truth can be determined by evidence. The second I call the “social-dimensional” approach. Those who take this approach talk about the production and truth of EP claims but within a social framework. On this account, the legitimacy and perceived legitimacy of EP claims are not separate from the institutional and social processes and values that lend to their production. I show that the truth-detectional approach risks harms to society and to the philosophy of science, but that the social-dimensional approach avoids these harms. Philosophers of science, therefore, should take a social-dimensional approach to the assessment of morally-relevant science. (shrink)

Philosophers who have written on modesty have largely agreed that it is a virtue, and that it therefore has an important psychological component. Mere modest behavior, it is often argued, is actually false modesty if it is generated by the wrong kind of mental state. The philosophical debate about modesty has largely focused on the question of which kind of mental state—cognitive, motivational, or evaluative—best captures the virtue of modesty. We therefore conducted a series of experiments to see which philosophical (...) account matches the folk concept of modesty. Surprisingly, we found that the folk concept is primarily behavioral. This leads us to argue that modesty may not be a virtue, but that if it is none of the extant philosophical accounts have properly explained why. (shrink)

This book offers both theoretical overviews and practical approaches for educators, academics, education students and parents who are interested in transforming schools. It encourages reinvigorating approaches to learning and teaching that can easily be integrated into both public and private K-12 school classrooms, with many ideas also applicable to higher education. It supports an educational system based on the beliefs that heart and spirit are intertwined with mind and intellect, and that inner peace, wisdom, compassion, and conscience can be developed (...) together with academic content and skills. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In this article, we explore how deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices designed to “close the loop”—to automatically adjust stimulation levels based on computational algorithms—may risk taking the individual agent “out of the loop” of control in areas where (at least apparent) conscious control is a hallmark of our agency. This is of particular concern in the area of psychiatric disorders, where closed-loop DBS is attracting increasing attention as a therapy. Using a relational model of identity and agency, we consider whether (...) DBS designed for psychiatric regulation may require special attention to agency. To do this, we draw on philosophical work on relational identity and agency, connecting it with reports from people using first-generation DBS devices for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. We suggest a way to extend a notion of relational agency to encompass neural devices. (shrink)

Awe has traditionally been considered a religious or spiritual emotion, yet scientists often report that awe motivates them to answer questions about the natural world, and to do so in naturalistic terms. Indeed, awe may be closely related to scientific discovery and theoretical advance. Awe is typically triggered by something vast (either literally or metaphorically) and initiates processes of accommodation, in which existing mental schemas are revised to make sense of the awe‐inspiring stimuli. This process of accommodation is essential for (...) the kind of belief revision that characterizes scientific reasoning and theory change. Across six studies, we find that the tendency to experience awe is positively associated with scientific thinking, and that this association is not shared by other positive emotions. Specifically, we show that the disposition to experience awe predicts a more accurate understanding of how science works, rejection of creationism, and rejection of unwarranted teleological explanations more broadly. (shrink)

Semantics for Reasons is a book about what we mean when we talk about reasons. It not only brings together the theory of reasons and natural language semantics in original ways but also sketches out a litany of implications for metaethics and the philosophy of normativity. In their account of how the language of reasons works, Bryan R. Weaver and Kevin Scharp propose and defend a view called Question Under Discussion Reasons Contextualism. They use this view to argue for (...) a series of novel positions on the ontology of reasons, indexical facts, the reasons-to-be-rational debate, moral reasons, and the reasons-first approach. (shrink)

In what has become a classic work, Richard M. Weaver unsparingly diagnoses the ills of our age and offers a realistic remedy. He asserts that the world is intelligible, and that man is free. The catastrophes of our age are the product not of necessity but of unintelligent choice. A cure, he submits, is possible. It lies in the right use of man's reason, in the renewed acceptance of an absolute reality, and in the recognition that ideas—like actions—have consequences.

By presenting a case study based on the argumentative analysis of news in the press, this article introduces and discusses strategic manoeuvring with contextual frames. Drawing on the linguistic notion of frame, I introduce the concept of contextual frame to refer to the news context, that is, the background against which a certain event is presented as a piece of news. I argue that newspapers and journalists make use of contextual frames in the apparently neutral genre of news reporting to (...) propose specific interpretations of the facts at issue, which become the basis for explicit comments and editorials. To show how this works, I investigate in detail a case of newspaper coverage of a complex episode using the pragma-dialectical notion of strategic manoeuvring and the Argumentum Model of Topics to analyse argument schemes. I show that, in the use of contextual frames, there is a prominent relation between presentational devices and topical potential; contextual frames provide the implicit material premises which are at the basis of argumentations through which newspapers interpret and comment on the news. (shrink)

Does responsible conduct of research (RCR) training improve levels of trust between researchers? Using data gathered as part of a survey on the attitudes of master's and doctoral-level students toward RCR, we found that RCR training correlated with a weakened beliefs of students toward their supervisors' ethicality but a stronger belief in the ethicality of their peers. We believe that these findings point to new avenues of research on trust in the academic setting and to needs for curriculum changes in (...) RCR training. (shrink)

Every day nurses are required to make ethical decisions in the course of caring for their patients. Ethics in Nursing Practice provides the background necessary to understand ethical decision making and its implications for patient care. The authors focus on the individual nurse’s responsibilities, as well as considering the wider issues affecting patients, colleagues and society as a whole. This third edition is fully updated, and takes into account recent changes in ICN position statements, WHO documents, as well as addressing (...) current issues in healthcare, such as providing for the health and care needs of refugees and asylum seekers, bioethics and the enforcement of nursing codes. (shrink)

A relation between two secrets, known in the literature as nondeducibility , was originally introduced by Sutherland. We extend it to a relation between sets of secrets that we call independence . This paper proposes a formal logical system for the independence relation, proves the completeness of the system with respect to a semantics of secrets, and shows that all axioms of the system are logically independent.

Abstract:AbstractWomen's Liberation was a radical, multiracial feminist movement that grew directly out of the New Left, civil rights, antiwar, and related freedom movements of the 1960s. Its insight that “the personal is political,” its intentionally decentralized structure, and its consciousness raising method allowed it to grow so fast and with such intensity that it swept up liberal feminist organizations in a wildfire of change. Though women's liberation was fundamental to the emergence of a mass feminist movement, the persistent stereotypes of (...) this feminist upsurge as white, middle-class, anti-motherhood, and anti-sex have obscured the creative radicalism of this early period and erased the presence of women of color and working class women. In a period of extreme racial polarization, feminist efforts to articulate the intersections of gender with race, class, and sexuality were often deeply flawed, but they began a conversation on which later generations could build. As scholars unearth the complex history of this dynamic and revolutionary moment they complicate narratives of the so-called “second wave.”. (shrink)

Association between sister chromatids is essential for their attachment and segregation to opposite poles of the spindle in mitosis and meiosis II. Sister‐chromatid cohesion is also likely to be involved in linking homologous chromosomes together in meiosis I. Cytological observations provide evidence that attachment between sister chromatids is different in meiosis and mitosis and suggest that cohesion between the chromatid arms may differ mechanistically from that at the centromere. The physical nature of cohesion is addressed, and proteins that are candidates (...) for holding sister chromatids together are discussed. Dissolution of sister‐chromatid cohesion must be regulated precisely, and potential mechanisms to release cohesion are presented. (shrink)

This paper develops a modal, Sentential logic having "not", "if...Then" and necessity as logical constants. The semantics (system of meanings) of the logic is the most obvious generalization of the usual truth-Functional semantics for sentential logic and its deductive system (system of demonstrations) is an obvious generalization of a suitable (jaskowski-Type) natural deductive system for sentential logic. Let a be a set of sentences and p a sentence. "p is a logical consequence of a" is defined relative to the semantics (...) and "p is demonstrable from a" is defined relative to the deductive system. Main meta-Theorem: p is demonstrable from a if and only if p is a logical consequence of a. Henkin-Type methods are used. The theorems of the logic are exactly those of s5. The deductive system is rigorously developed as a system of linear strings. (shrink)

Ideal for advanced students across Philosophy, Women’s Studies, Anthropology, Sociology and more, this book focuses on emerging trends in feminist phenomenology. It covers foundational feminist issues in phenomenology, feminist phenomenological methods, and applied phenomenological work on the body, politics, ethics, and performance theory.

This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November. I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson’s book is the autumn forest that surrounds the abandoned Moomin house. The decomposing forest is not just an emblem of the inner lives of the guests that gather in the house but is an active character itself: an ambiguous life form that creeps in the house and must be expelled from its living core. I further demonstrate that the (...) emotion of disgust has a crucial role in Jansson’s narrative, and that an adequate analysis of the intentional content of disgust allows us to see what is at issue in the relations between the characters. In my reading, the main insight of Tove Jansson’s last Moomin book is not about loss or sorrow but is about the human capacity to begin anew by composing novel wholes from scraps. (shrink)

Many journals in the physical sciences require authors to submit assurances of compliance with human subjects and other research ethics standards. These requirements do not cover all disciplines equally, however. In this paper we report on the findings of a survey of perceptions of ethical and managerial problems from journal editors in political science and related disciplines. Our results show that few journals in political science require assurance statements common to journals for other scientific disciplines. We offer some reasons for (...) this as well as some recommendations for implementing ethical assurance safeguards for political science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fitness, Fatness, and Aesthetic Judgments of the Female Body:What the AMA Decision to Medicalize Obesity means for other Non–Normal Female BodiesSara R. Jordan“I’ll be happy to refer you to our dietician to get you on a program to help you get your weight under control before it becomes a problem”.As my new physician spun around out of the examination room door, my head spun faster. I had heard the (...) phrase “get your weight under control” twice that morning, but the contexts in which the phrase was uttered could not have been more different.At 7:30 a.m., my fitness trainer was imploring me to get my weights under control as I struggled under a bar, laden with slightly less than my body weight, to do a final set of front squats. At 11:15 a.m., my new general practitioner was imploring me to get my weight under control, by which he meant to learn how to reduce my body mass index (BMI) to match the chart prominently displayed on his office wall. The exhortation to get my weight under control meant such radically different things in these two contexts that it was difficult to comprehend the meaning of the phrase.I am 5’4” and 158 pounds. This gives me a BMI of 27.3, which means that I am considered overweight; right in the middle of the category of overweight. Or, according to the definition of the BMI found on the calculator pinned to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institutes (NHLBI) webpage, I am over fat. If the BMI is, “a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to adult men and women” then I carry a health–threatening percentage of body fat. If my fitness trainer, with his 12 point skin–fold caliper test is correct, my body fat percentage of 17% is within the limits expected of female (non–endurance) athletes. In terms of health, then, I am a paradox: according to one standard, I am healthy and fit, according to another, I am unhealthy and fat.As this new physician picked apart my weight, suggesting I should lose between 15 and 20 pounds to bring myself to “full health”, I found myself quite annoyed. He was a small, rail thin, man with greying hair, tired eyes, unpressed khakis, and a beaten pair of black–ish grey “Crocs” on his feet. He looked disheveled and as if he had not seen the inside of a weights room in his life. As I listened to him address my history, current vitals, and how being overweight in my 30s could lead to being [End Page 101] “fat and 40”, I looked him over and made a snap judgment of “I could bench (press) you [right out this window]”. While I was angry with his delivery, I tried to remind myself that he was an overworked physician in a multi–lingual office, trying to operate under a new paradigm in healthcare policy, practice, and diagnostic categories. Specifically, prompted by the medicalization of the condition of obesity by the American Medical Association, my physician was reflecting the professional wisdom that I suffer from a condition needing preventive treatment. He was trying to be a good practitioner to recommend preventive treatment, but to me, he was being a terrible physician.The AMA Declares Obesity a DiseaseThe declaration by the American Medical Association in 2013 that the condition of being obese is one that requires medical treatment is one that I, on the face of it, support. By inviting the medicalization of the condition, the AMA opens the door for individuals who wage a deeply personal battle with their weight to find support in their physicians’ offices and from their insurance companies. Yet, the blunt tools that are used to assess these conditions raise my ire, emotionally and intellectually.Intellectually, the use of the BMI calculator for snap diagnosis of all individuals makes easy sense. It is an easily comprehended tool and, for a normally distributed population, such a simple tool is an excellent choice. But, it stands to treat outliers like me poorly. Outliers, such as particularly fit... (shrink)

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)

Despite the potential political impact of industry attempts to influence public policy about genetic modification, little research has focused on critical understanding of industry perspectives. This article explores the rhetorical and discursive construction of public messages about this controversial issue by two major New Zealand export industries. The kiwifruit industry advocates a very cautious public policy position, while the dairy industry has been a strong advocate for the commercial development of genetic modification. We demonstrate that these industries draw on multiple (...) identities and rationalities to negotiate, express, and elaborate their positions on genetic modification, informed variously by discourses of risk, science, the political economy of the marketplace, and images of the ‘natural’ environment. We suggest that exploring how organizations seek to influence controversial socio-political issues through the management of multiple identities may facilitate greater understanding of viewpoints often represented in the media as two distinct polarities; that is as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ the issues. (shrink)

In Atlas Shrugged, the observations of the character Francisco d'Anconia are used to illustrate the connection between Objectivism, morality, and economics. In response, the author demonstrates how today's socioeconomic movements not only are inconsistent with d'Anconia's view but will likely lead to further large-scale economic and moral crises, unless an economic system is established that will protect the individual's right to worthwhile production, income, and ownership.

BackgroundPeople say it is hard to stay truly positive in Lebanon. Studies showed that 63% of Lebanese young adults are highly dissatisfied with their country. In fact, young adults are the most vulnerable population to stressors in Lebanon since their future is at stake and it is their time to shape their lives in a country that cripples them. This study aimed to assess factors associated with positivity among a sample of Lebanese university students despite the various stressors they are (...) facing on top of the economic collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted between November and December 2021. A total of 333 participants was recruited through convenience sampling and snowball technique through several areas in Lebanon’s governorates. A linear regression taking the positivity score as the dependent variable was adopted and all variables that showed a correlation > │0.24│ in absolute value were entered in the final model as independent.ResultsA linear regression taking the positivity score as the dependent variable showed that more positive experiences in life, more flourishing, living in rural area compared to urban, and female gender were significantly associated with more positivity.ConclusionThis study demonstrated that the youth’s positivity is strongly affected by age, gender, residency, and the country they live in that will both directly and indirectly shape their life experiences and their ability to flourish and prosper. Along with all the efforts done to help during this collapse and alleviate the stress that young adults are enduring, follow-up studies are still needed to determine accurate coping techniques that pushes these young adults to think positively in a country where negativity reigns and all else fails. (shrink)

In order to reduce the dimensionality of parameter space and enhance out-of-sample forecasting performance, this research compares regularization techniques with Autometrics in time-series modeling. We mainly focus on comparing weighted lag adaptive LASSO with Autometrics, but as a benchmark, we estimate other popular regularization methods LASSO, AdaLASSO, SCAD, and MCP. For analytical comparison, we implement Monte Carlo simulation and assess the performance of these techniques in terms of out-of-sample Root Mean Square Error, Gauge, and Potency. The comparison is assessed with (...) varying autocorrelation coefficients and sample sizes. The simulation experiment indicates that, compared to Autometrics and other regularization approaches, the WLAdaLASSO outperforms the others in covariate selection and forecasting, especially when there is a greater linear dependency between predictors. In contrast, the computational efficiency of Autometrics decreases with a strong linear dependency between predictors. However, under the large sample and weak linear dependency between predictors, the Autometrics potency ⟶ 1 and gauge ⟶ α. In contrast, LASSO, AdaLASSO, SCAD, and MCP select more covariates and possess higher RMSE than Autometrics and WLAdaLASSO. To compare the considered techniques, we made the Generalized Unidentified Model for covariate selection and out-of-sample forecasting for the trade balance of Pakistan. We train the model on 1985–2015 observations and 2016–2020 observations as test data for the out-of-sample forecast. (shrink)

Within recent years, we have witnessed an alarming increase in so-called school-shootings, where one or more students enter their school and purposely start shooting other students or staff. Earlier, the phenomenon was primarily American, but lately school-shootings have also been seen in Canada, Europe, and Australia. School-shootings have become an increasing problem and the phenomenon calls for more thorough investigation. In this article, we analyse the actions of teachers, more specifically the ones where teachers give their lives to save students. (...) This unselfish act is analysed in the light of Jacques Derrida’s ethical discussions around ‘the gift of death’, and is displayed as an absolute responsibility. Moreover, the sacrificial actions displayed by teachers are viewed as acts of primitive leadership, which take us back to the romanticism and heroism of leadership. Unlike the everyday management of organisations, crises call for extraordinary leadership; for sacrifice and responsibility. (shrink)