ABSTRACTPrior research on attention bias in anxious youth, often utilising a visual dot probe task, has yielded inconsistent findings, which may be due to how bias is assessed and/or variability in the phenomenon. The present study utilises eye gaze tracking to assess attention bias in socially anxious adolescents, and explores several methodological and within-subject factors that may contribute to variability in attention bias. Attention bias to threat was measured in forty-two treatment-seeking adolescents diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. Bias scores toward (...) emotional stimuli and bias scores away from emotional stimuli were explored. Bias scores changed between vigilance and avoidance within individuals and over the course of stimulus presentation. These differences were not associated with participant characteristics nor with self-reported social anxiety symptoms. However, clinician rated severity of social anxiety, explained a signific... (shrink)

A unified axiomatic theory that embraces both mechanics and thermodynamics is presented in three parts. It is based on four postulates; three are taken from quantum mechanics, and the fourth is the new disclosure of the existence of quantum states that are stable (Part I). For nonequilibrium and equilibrium states, the theory provides general original results, such as the relation between irreducible density operators and the maximum work that can be extracted adiabatically (Part IIa). For stable equilibrium states, it shows (...) for the first time that the canonical and grand canonical distributions are the only stable distributions (Part IIb). The theory discloses the incompleteness of the equation of motion of quantum mechanics not only for irreversible processes but, more significantly, for reversible processes (Part IIb). It establishes the operational meaning of an irreducible density operator and irreducible dispersions associated with any state, and reveals the relationship between such dispersions and the second law (Part III). (shrink)

This part of the paper concludes the presentation of the unified theory. It is shown that the theory requires the existence of, and applies only to, irreducible quantal dispersions associated with pure or mixed states. Two experimental procedures are given for the operational verification of such dispersions. Because the existence of irreducible dispersions associated with mixed states is required by Postulate 4 of the theory, and because Postulate 4 expresses the basic implications of the second law of classical thermodynamics, it (...) is concluded that the second law is a manifestation of phenomena characteristic of irreducible quantal dispersions associated with the elementary constituents of matter. (shrink)

Part IIb presents some of the most important theorems for stable equilibrium states that can be deduced from the four postulates of the unified theory presented in Part I. It is shown for the first time that the canonical and grand canonical distributions are the only distributions that are stable. Moreover, it is shown that reversible adiabatic processes exist which cannot be described by the dynamical equation of quantum mechanics. A number of conditions are discussed that must be satisfied by (...) the general equation of motion which is yet to be discovered. (shrink)

Part II of this three-part paper presents some of the most important theorems that can be deduced from the four postulates of the unified theory discussed in Part I. In Part IIa, it is shown that the maximum energy that can be extracted adiabatically from any system in any state is solely a function of the density operator $\hat \rho$ associated with the state. Moreover, it is shown that for any state of a system, nonequilibrium, equilibrium or stable equilibrium, a (...) unique propertyS exists which is proportional to the total energy of the system minus the maximum energy that can be extracted adiabatically from the system in combination with a reservoir. For statistically independent systems, propertyS is extensive, it is invariant during all reversible processes, and it increases during all irreversible processes. (shrink)

Drawing on the emerging research on Islamic work ethic (IWE) and informed by the social cognitive theory (SCT), this study seeks to examine how IWE influences employees’ behaviors through employees’ moral identity internalization, with religiosity moderating the IWE-moral identity Internalization nexus. To examine this moderated mediation model, we collected time-lagged data (_N_ = 427) from employees working in two public organisations in a Muslim majority country in the Middle East, e.g., Jordan. We used a partial least squares structural equation modelling (...) to examine our hypotheses. Our findings suggest that IWE encourages employees’ moral identity internalization, which subsequently prompts refraining from unethical pro-organisational behaviors (UPOB) and unethical pro-family behaviors (UPFB). The findings also show that employee religiosity plays an important role in the relationship between IWE and employees’ moral identity suggesting that IWE is more prone to influence employee disengagement in UPOB and UPFB through moral identity internalization when employee religiosity is higher. At the end, implications for theory and practice are offered as well as suggestions for future research. (shrink)

This is an analytical examination of Ibn Khaldun's epistemology, centred on Chapter Six of the Muqaddima. In this chapter, entitled The Book of Knowledge (Kitab al'Ilm), Ibn Khaldun sketched his general ideas about knowledge and science and its relationship with human social organisation and the establishment of a civilisation.

© 2016 Elsevier LtdJumping spiders are famous for their visually driven behaviors [1]. Here, however, we present behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that these animals also perceive and respond to airborne acoustic stimuli, even when the distance between the animal and the sound source is relatively large and with stimulus amplitudes at the position of the spider of ∼65 dB sound pressure level. Behavioral experiments with the jumping spider Phidippus audax reveal that these animals respond to low-frequency sounds by freezing—a common (...) anti-predatory behavior characteristic of an acoustic startle response. Neurophysiological recordings from auditory-sensitive neural units in the brains of these jumping spiders showed responses to low-frequency tones —recordings that also represent the first record of acoustically responsive neural units in the jumping spider brain. Responses persisted even when the distances between spider and stimulus source exceeded 3 m and under anechoic conditions. Thus, these spiders appear able to detect airborne sound at distances in the acoustic far-field region, beyond the near-field range often thought to bound acoustic perception in arthropods that lack tympanic ears [2]. Furthermore, direct mechanical stimulation of hairs on the patella of the foreleg was sufficient to generate responses in neural units that also responded to airborne acoustic stimuli—evidence that these hairs likely play a role in the detection of acoustic cues. We suggest that these auditory responses enable the detection of predators and facilitate an acoustic startle response. Video. (shrink)

Recreational Drugs European Network (ReDNet) project aims to use the Psychonaut Web Mapping Project database (Psychonaut Web Mapping Group, 2009) containing novel psychoactive compounds usually not mentioned in the scientific literature and thus unknown to clinicians as a unique source of information. The database will be used to develop an integrated ICT prevention approach targeted at vulnerable individuals and focused on novel synthetic and herbal compounds and combinations. Particular care will be taken in keeping the health professionals working directly with (...) young people showing problematic behaviors regularly updated in terms of novel compounds and combinations as well. A user-friendly project website will be developed aimed primarily at delivering the information/prevention approaches, but will also be a way of communicating with project partners and relevant stakeholders (e.g. thematic forum facilities, instant messages, blogs, video chat, wikiblog, newsletters distributed via mailing list). The website will support various ICT prevention tools, including an SMS alert service. Different areas and sections will be aimed specifically at the different target groups. -/- . (shrink)

T echnocrati c fundamentalis m (neocons ) an d theocrati c fundamentalis m (teocons) ar e t w o manifestation s o f politica l though t v e r y restrict i v e o f democra c y . Th e f irst on e ha s a highe r incidenc e i n th e f iel d o f econo m y an d th e secon d on e i n tha t o f the (...) religion , bu t bot h imp l y a stron g challeng e fo r th e democrati c State . Thi s a r ticl e deals wit h th e mor e o r les s fo r ma l conjunctio n bet w ee n bot h kind s o f fundamentalism , that appear s an d acts , e v e n a t a globa l l e v el , a s a v e r y conse r v at i v e reactio n agains t the mai n demand s o f c i vi c laicis m an d o f pr o g ress i v e policies . Th e autho r maintain s that th e an s w e r t o thes e n e w fundamentalisms , li k e t o th e ol d d o gmatisms , i s no t a t all th e relat i vism , bu t th e critica l an d aut o critica l thought . Th e poin t i s t o ad v ance , with thi s critica l attitude , i n th e const r uctio n o f n e w democrati c fo r mulations , pr o vided wit h a mor e stron g fundamen t i n te r m s o f ethica l l e gitima c y an d socia l l e gitimation. (shrink)

Plato. The republic.--Aristotle. Politics.--Cicero, M. T. On the commonwealth.--John of Salisbury. The prince versus the tyrant.--Machiavelli, N. The prince and the people.--Hobbes, T. The state of nature and the Leviathan.--Locke, J. The right of revolution.--Marx, K. and Engels, F. Bourgeois and proletarians.--Bakunin, M. A. The Paris Commune and the idea of the state.--Mill, J. S. On liberty.--Lenin, V. I. Marxism and the withering away of the state.--Hitler, A. Race and the folkish state.--Mao Tse-tung. From the masses, to the masses.--Che Guevara, (...) E. Create two, three, many Vietnams. (shrink)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a deeply enigmatic psychiatric condition associated with immense suffering worldwide. Efficacious therapies for OCD, like exposure and response prevention (ERP) are sometimes poorly tolerated by patients. As many as 25 percent of patients refuse to initiate ERP mainly because they are too anxious to follow exposure procedures. Accordingly, we proposed a simple and tolerable (immersive yet indirect) low-cost technique for treating OCD that we call “multisensory stimulation therapy.” This method involves contaminating a rubber hand during the (...) so-called “rubber hand illusion” (RHI) in which tactile sensations may be perceived as arising from a fake hand. Notably, Jalal and Ramachandran (2015), showed that such fake hand contamination during the RHI provokes powerful disgust reactions in healthy volunteers. In the current study, we explored the therapeutic potential of this novel approach. OCD patients (n = 29) watched as their hidden real hand was being stroked together with a visible fake hand; either synchronously (inducing the RHI) (i.e., the experimental condition; n = 16) or asynchronously (i.e., the control condition; n = 13). After 5 minutes of tactile stimulation, the rubber hand was contaminated with fake feces, simulating conventional exposure therapy. Intriguingly, results suggested sensory assimilation of contamination sensations into the body image via the RHI: patients undergoing synchronous stimulation did not report greater contamination sensations when the fake hand was initially contaminated relative to asynchronous stroking. But contrary to expectations, they did so after the rubber hand had been contaminated for 5 minutes; as assessed via disgust facial expressions (a secondary outcome) and in vivo exposure (upon discontinuing the illusion). Further to our surprise, synchronous and asynchronous stroking induced an equally vivid and fast emerging illusion, which helps explain why both conditions initially (5 minutes after initiating tactile stimulation) provoked contamination reactions of equal magnitude. This study is the first to suggest heightened malleability of body image in OCD. Importantly, it may pave the way for a tolerable technique for the treatment of OCD—highly suitable for poorly resourced and emergency settings, including low-income and developing countries with minimal access to high-tech solutions like virtual reality. (shrink)

In this introduction we highlight Norbert Elias’s bold attempt to build a general model of the human sciences, integrating the social and natural sciences. We point to a range of different disciplines, emphasizing how he rarely developed a consistent critique of individual disciplines, though he often made some very fruitful suggestions about they should be reconceptualized in a relational and more integrative way. Based on our own research on survival units and the contributions to this special issue, we discuss the (...) innovative potential of his ambition for transdisciplinary research, while at the same time offering an overview of some of the limitations in his theoretical perspective. We reassess his attempt to integrate the natural and social sciences within one universal testable model, and, at the same time, we consider areas like religion and economics that were rarely systematically investigated in his own theoretical approach. (shrink)

This article presents the results of an empirical study of the “sportification” of amateur-level competitive computer gaming. How do amateur players, who are unlikely to become professional esports players, turn what is considered to be enjoyable entertainment into a collective activity that demonstrates traits traditionally associated with professional sports, such as self-discipline, a focus on achieving results and overcoming personal limitations? Ethnographic research, consisting of in-depth interviews and participant observations, was conducted in the last quarter of 2019 based on a (...) series of tournaments (Rocket League, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, and Rainbow Six Siege) managed by a student esports club of a Moscow-based university. Such clubs combine different levels of esports practice: players who consider themselves amateurs who attend tournaments “for fun”, players seeking professionalization and who have already received the first modest revenue from their activity, as well as players who achieved the status of a cyberathlete through membership in one of the university teams. Thus, student esports represents an ideal environment for exploring the dynamics of changes in the meanings that players put into their activity, as well as for finding elements holding to­gether what could be called “esports culture”. The analysis conducted in the present article is based not so much on the interpretations of the phe­nomenon of esports that exists in the field of game studies, as on two clas­sical sociological traditions: the writings of Erving Goffman and Howard Becker, on the one hand, and those of Max Weber and Norbert Elias on the other. As a result, the process of the “sportification” of the amateur practice of competitive computer games is presented in the article as a change in the actors’ level of reflexivity: towards the game, towards themselves during play, and towards the world around the game, occurring as they move through the stages of the “career of a competitive player”. ­. (shrink)

«Theologicis et Philosophicis doctrinis, ex ipsa Iuris et lustititiae, nec non Prudentiae, aliarumque Virtutum Moralium Natura desumptis, compendiario illustratus et sub auspiciis lUustrissimi Domini D. Georgii de Lubomir L U B O M I R S K I, Comitis in Visnicz et Jaroslaw: Poloniarum Archimarschalci, et Regni Exercituum Ducis, nec non Generalis Cracoviae: et Casimiriensis, Olstinensis, Chmielnicensis, Nizinensis etc. etc. Capitanei. Publicae Disputantium concertationi propositus ab Alexandro J a s k m a n i c k i, sacrae Theologiae auditore. (...) In Cardinalitio Hosiano Collegio Societatis Jesu. Anno ab Homine Deo nato. M.DC.LXIV [1664]. Brunsbergae, Typis Henrici Schultz». En habes, Benevolo Lector, plenum titulum libri, qui hie nostram movet attentionem. Primum Auctoris biographia traditur, deinde de eiusdem operis dedicatione sermo est, postea vero ipsa eins politica et socialis doctrina explicatur et commentatur. (shrink)

Comment est né l'Etat moderne que d'aucuns disent en crise? Quel rôle a-t-il joué dans la relative pacification des sociétés occidentales au cours des cinq derniers siècles? Une théorie de la civilisation peut-elle comprendre et expliquer Auschwitz? L'œuvre de Norbert Elias s'est confrontée sans faux-semblants aux principaux défis légués par le XXe siècle aux sciences humaines. Atypique et longtemps méconnue, cette sociologie historique assume la tentative de penser ensemble, et dans la longue durée, l'évolution des structures psychiques des individus et (...) celle des structures sociales des entités qu'ils forment. Aujourd'hui, les conséquences de la mondialisation et les questions soulevées par l'intégration européenne lui offrent une actualité nouvelle. Les transformations affectant l'organisation politique des hommes n'ont certes aucune raison de s'arrêter aux frontières des Etats-nations, peut-être appelés à disparaître sous l'effet d'interdépendances devenues planétaires. Mais quand l'appartenance à l'humanité peine à créer du sens, peut-on éviter que la communauté ne se fonde sur un sentiment, par définition toujours exclusif d'un " autre "? La tâche du sociologue se voit alors redéfinie : mettre les problèmes en histoire afin de les mettre à distance. De même que sa mission : rapprocher les individus en leur faisant connaître et reconnaître les liens qui les unissent. C'est à la lumière de cette double ambition que se laisse décrypter la réflexion d'Elias. Une réflexion sur le devenir de la civilisation et de l'Etat aussi originale que contestée, et dont les enjeux politiques et épistémologiques ne sauraient être dissociés. (shrink)

L'auteur montre comment N. Elias critique à la fois la sociologie classique, qui emprunte aux sciences naturelles la théorie évolutionniste, et la sociologie moderne, qui rejette la notion d'évolution. Il analyse comment N. Elias propose une sociologie évolutionnaire à travers le concept de processus configurationnel qui abolit l'opposition classique individu-société. Dans ce cadre, la notion d'évolution appartient elle aussi au processus évolutionnaire.The author shows how N. Elias criticizes, at one and the same time, the classical sociology using the evolutionistic theoiy (...) coming from the natural sciences, and the modern sociology rejecting the notion of evolution. He analyses how N. Elias propounds an . evolutionary sociology through the concept of configurationalprocess which eliminates the classical individual-society opposition. In this framework the notion of evolution itself has to be seen as belonging to the evolutionaiy process. (shrink)

The sociological work of Elias is studied, together with his characteristic outcast position, typical of judaism at the end of the century. From such judaic root stems the metapolitical approach observed in the process of civilization from the platform of a Human Genre already assume as formed and defined by the civilized conscience. The idea of a metapolitical (extraterritorial) platform is determined, and its possible historical and political efficiency. Finally, the work focuses on the limits of the civilization process, contrasting (...) N. Elias and G. Bueno conceptions on the issue. Hence a third alternative which observs such limit of history and its superation in the “antropological field” – through the a structural, technoscientific and objective development of society – springs as a source from where the “ultramoderne spirit” described at the end of the issue finds its origins. (shrink)

The translation, notes, and commentary of Imam al-Harith al-Muhasibi's "Risala al-Mustarshidin (Treatise for the Seekers of Guidance)" serves as a layman's ...

A look at the nature of the universe, God, and our place within it explores the transformational role of consciousness in all human enterprise, offering inspirational insights into questions about religion, human existence, and good and evil.

Sociologue hors normes, Norbert Elias, né en Allemagne en 1897, mort aux Pays-Bas en 1990, est considéré comme l'un des plus grands représentants de sa discipline. Son oeuvre n'a été introduite en France que dans les années 1970, mais bénéficie aujourd'hui d'une reconnaissance internationale et pluridisciplinaire. Pour introduire à cette oeuvre au croisement et de l'histoire, de l'anthropologie et de la psychologie et en restituer l'unité substantielle, Nathalie Heinich dégage d'abord les motifs sous-jacents aux grands travaux d'Elias sur le processus (...) de civilisation et ses choix : la contextualisation plutôt que la généralisation, les relations plutôt que les objets, la neutralité plutôt que le jugement de valeur. Comment penser avec Elias? C'est ce que propose cet ouvrage, à l'approche didactique. (shrink)

Biomedical Science Law & Practice is a practical strategic guide to the management of legal risks in biomedical science transactions, and commercialization of innovation and technology through strategic intellectual property licensing. This book provides a concise introduction to strategic legal risk management issues and strategic value creation in the entire biomedical science value chain, including legal liability issues from R&D, clinical trials, production of devices and market roll-out, protection of innovation through intellectual property (patents, copyrights, trade marks and trade secrets); (...) and commercialization of biomedical science innovation through strategic licensing and technology transfer, including unique licensing arrangements relating to genome. Checklists, sample agreements and biomedical patents and real life and hypothetical case studies used in the book facilitate learning at the operational or technical level of execution. (shrink)

The field of reproductive medicine witnessed a breakthrough in September 2014 with the first successful live birth post uterine transplantation. This success represents the culmination of decades' worth of research on infertility and reproductive medicine. This subject of infertility gathers special attention in the Middle East, as childbearing is given paramount importance in the family unit. And as with any new medical advancement, Middle Eastern people look to their religious authorities for guidance. This paper describes the various ethical quandaries related (...) to uterine transplantation, from a perspective of the religious and societal factors that are unique to the Middle East, and embeds them within the conversation of its alternative solutions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Muslim or Islamic Philosophy of History? Islamic Concept of History Development of Muslim Philosophy of History and Historiography Two Muslim Philosophers of History: Ibn Miskawayh and Ibn Khaldun Muslim Philosophy of History and Encounters with the West Conclusion References Further Reading.

On local philosophy and ethics in Indonesia and Malaysia; collection of articles.

Confidentiality is a central bioethical principle governing the provider–patient relationship. Dating back to Hippocrates, new laws have interpreted it for the age of precision medicine and electronic medical records. This is where the discussion of privacy and technology often ends in the scientific health literature when Internet-related technologies have made privacy a much more complex challenge with broad psychological and clinical implications. Beyond the recognised moral duty to protect patients’ health information, clinicians should now advocate a basic right to privacy (...) as a means to safeguard psychological health. The article reviews empirical research into the functions of privacy, the implications for psychological development and the resigned sentiment taking hold regarding the ability to control personal data. The article concludes with a call for legislative, educational and research steps to readjust the equilibrium between the individual and ‘Big Data’. (shrink)

Due to the current shifting regional paradigms in the Middle East brought on by the series of popular uprisings known as the Arab Spring, this article focuses on the issue of minority rights within modern Islamic theorizing. Evaluating the writings of Islamic intellectuals such as Tariq Ramadan, Abdullah Ahmed An-Na’im and Rashid Al-Ghannushi, the article finds that there are indeed constructs available within modern Islamic theorizing that can help resolve current minority problems within Arab societies, albeit with the addition of (...) human rights discourse on citizenship and multiculturalism. Noting that minority–majority relations are a global problem, as seen through case studies of the United States and Europe, human rights discourse, cultural relativism and religion are explored, concluding that Islamic theorizing is a blend of the three. Turning to usul al fiqh, it is concluded that traditional Islamic approaches to minority rights fail to incorporate anything but religious minorities and those religious minorities are second-class citizens under shariah interpretation. The rise of the Ottoman millet system eventually helped shape the collective identity for minority groups, but it still placed sole emphasis on religious minorities and treated all minorities as unequal subjects under the sultanate. Building on the constructs of modern Islamic theorizing and expanding to include the concepts of multiculturalism and territorial citizenship, this article asserts that for minority–majority struggle to be solved, modernist Islamic theorists must transcend the traditional Islamic minority paradigm and instead promulgate citizenship as a basis for equality in society, applying new ijtihad for a fresh, integrative interpretation of minorities within Islam and the civil state. (shrink)

The article explores the tradition of dialogue in Islam and Islamic history and its importance in facilitating an inter-faith and cross-cultural dialogue with the West across the binary that has been increasingly strengthened since 2001. The rise in religious extremism and hegemony is an indicator of not only a crisis in religious authority, but also an absence of dialogue, the very dialogue that had shaped and conceptualized Islam and its tradition and is an inherent part of it. I examine the (...) way The Amman Message and A Common Word between Us and You bring back the role of dialogue and consensus in reconstructing Islam and how this has contributed to the dialogue at the international level. I also examine the role enlightenment thinking has played in promoting religious dialogue at both the internal and external levels, with the text, with traditional scholars, and with non-Muslim scholars and the non-Muslim public. (shrink)

Desde la tradición de los estudios de gubernamentalidad y sus resonancias en las sociologías políticas y de la educación, en este artículo se recuperan los debates vigentes en torno a las nociones de gubernamentalidad, gobierno y biopolítica desarrolladas en la vasta obra de Michel Foucault y sus continuadoras/es para enlazarlas con las discusiones sobre el objeto de estudio y el campo teórico de la política educativa, enfatizando el potencial analítico que ofrece su grilla de inteligibilidad para los fenómenos educativos propios (...) de las sociedades posdisciplinares. En esa dirección, este trabajo esboza una serie de propuestas epistemológicas, teóricas y metodológicas producidas a partir de una investigación empírica recientemente finalizada (Aguirre, 2022), de corte descriptivo y de carácter cualitativo. En vistas a estos propósitos, se producen diálogos interdisciplinares a la vez que se tensionan y discuten algunos supuestos clásicos y tradicionales de la política educativa, para incitar una renovación analítica que posibilite el estudio de las relaciones sociales de autogobierno y gobierno de las/os otras/os en tanto articulaciones históricas entre el saber, el poder y la subjetividad. Finalmente, se exponen algunos indicios y propuestas para el abordaje sociológico de los fenómenos educativos contemporáneos, que convocan y promueven la necesidad de producir ciertos desplazamientos epistemológicos en el campo teórico de la política educativa, así como invitan a la reconfiguración de sus objetos de estudio en el marco de la adscripción a un enfoque posestructuralista. (shrink)

Organizations are increasingly finding it challenging to balance economic and environmental performance particularly those that face competitive, regulatory and community pressure. With the increasing pressures for environmental sustainability, this calls for the new formulation of strategies by the manufacturers in order to minimize their products and services negative impact on the environment. Hence, Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) continues to be an important research agenda among the researchers. In Palestine, green issues are new and still developing. Constant study is needed (...) to fully understand and update information regarding this area. Objective: The aim of this paper is to explore the views and level of acceptance of GHRM practices among manufacturing firms in Palestine. Results: Through the use of e-mail survey, 121 responses were obtained to generate the results of the study. The result showed GHRM practices have been practiced to somewhat to a greater extent a firms in Palestine. Findings can be extended to study on the issues in further. Academicians and practitioners can apply this result to their research and business strategies on how to improve sustainable performance and to effectively implement GHRM practices. (shrink)

This book identifies 25 argumentation schemes for presumptive reasoning and matches a set of critical questions to each.

In 1817, in the preface to his Rein analytischer Beweis, Bernard Bolzano revealed that he had decided to postpone the publication of any subsequent instalment of his Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik because of the few and ‘superficial’ reviews of its first instalment, published in 1810. Bolzano’s transcriptions of the only two known reviews of this book are conserved at the Literární archiv Památníku národního písemnictví / Muzea literatury, in Prague, together with another manuscript on his Beyträge, the (...) provenance of which was unknown to Bolzano’s scholars until recently. In this paper it is shown that this latter manuscript is a draft of an announcement that was published at the time and that was indeed written at least to some extent by Bolzano himself. This hitherto unknown announcement of Bolzano’s Beyträge not only solves the mystery surrounding that manuscript, but also helps to date the publication of this book more precisely and provides an unusual insight into what we must take Bolzano himself to have considered most noteworthy about his work, namely his study on logic. The paper includes a transcription of the manuscript and an English translation of the announcement. (shrink)

One of the criticisms directed at the accounting profession is that auditing and accounting standards are subjective in nature and do not represent the society's widespread interests and values. This paper examines whether a general consensus exists regarding the significance of incorporating society's values into auditing standards. The examination revealed the lack of such general agreement and further indicated that the perceptual differences are subjective in nature and not influenced by the participant's qualifications, income, experience, gender or marital status.

The concept of truth arguably plays a central role in many areas of philosophical theorizing. Yet, what seems to be one of the most fundamental principles governing that concept, i.e. the equivalence between P and , is inconsistent in full classical logic, as shown by the semantic paradoxes. I propose a new solution to those paradoxes, based on a principled revision of classical logic. Technically, the key idea consists in the rejection of the unrestricted validity of the structural principle of (...) contraction. I first motivate philosophically this idea with the metaphysical picture of the states-of-affairs expressed by paradoxical sentences as being distinctively . I then proceed to demonstrate that the theory of truth resulting from this metaphysical picture is, in many philosophically interesting respects, surprisingly stronger than most other theories of truth endorsing the equivalence between P and (for example, the theory vindicates the validity of the traditional laws of excluded middle and of non-contradiction, and also vindicates the traditional constraint of truth preservation on logical consequence). I conclude by proving a cutelimination theorem that shows the consistency of the theory. (shrink)

Cause and effect relationships play a central role in how we perceive and make sense of the world around us, how we act upon it, and ultimately, how we understand ourselves. Almost two decades ago, computer scientist Judea Pearl made a breakthrough in understanding causality by discovering and systematically studying the “Ladder of Causation” [Pearl and Mackenzie 2018], a framework that highlights the distinct roles of seeing, doing, and imagining. In honor of this landmark discovery, we name this the Pearl (...) Causal Hierarchy (PCH). In this chapter, we develop a novel and comprehensive treatment of the PCH through two complementary lenses, one logical-probabilistic and another inferential-graphical. Following Pearl’s own presentation of the hierarchy, we begin by showing how the PCH organically emerges from a well-specified collection of causal mechanisms (a structural causal model, or SCM). We then turn to the logical lens. Our first result, the Causal Hierarchy Theorem (CHT), demonstrates that the three layers of the hierarchy almost always separate in a measure theoretic sense. Roughly speaking, the CHT says that data at one layer virtually always underdetermines information at higher layers. Since in most practical settings the scientist does not have access to the precise form of the underlying causal mechanisms – only to data generated by them with respect to some of PCH’s layers – this motivates us to study inferences within the PCH through the graphical lens. Specifically, we explore a set of methods known as causal inference that enable inferences bridging PCH’s layers given a partial specification of the SCM. For instance, one may want to infer what would happen had an intervention been performed in the environment (second-layer statement) when only passive observations (first-layer data) are available. We introduce a family of graphical models that allows the scientist to represent such a partial specification of the SCM in a cognitively meaningful and parsimonious way. Finally, we investigate an inferential system known as docalculus, showing how it can be sufficient, and in many cases necessary, to allow inferences across PCH’s layers. We believe that connecting with the essential dimensions of human experience as delineated by the PCH is a critical step towards creating the next generation of AI systems that will be safe, robust, human-compatible, and aligned with the social good. (shrink)