Information unethical behavior is concerned with ethical behavioural conflicts in the use of information, information technologies, and information systems. This study examines the combination of locus of control and job insecurity as a joint moderator on the decision making process for information ethical behavioral intentions. A conceptual model is proposed to see the joint moderating role of LOC and JI. In the model, ethical behavioral intentions are influenced directly by ethical attitude, personal values, and perceived behavioural control. Simultaneously, personal values (...) also indirectly influence ethical behavioral intentions through the mediation of ethical attitude. The causal relationships are moderated by the joint moderator. Notably, the moderating effects were simultaneously examined using data from undergraduates in the MIS department of a college. The influences of the ethical attitude and personal values on ethical behavioral intentions are found to be similar for those with external locus of control and insecurity perception and those with internal locus of control and security perception. Furthermore, the influences of personal values on ethical attitude, and of perceived behavioural control on ethical behavioral intentions, are both greater for Controlists than Confusionists. Implications of the empirical findings are discussed. (shrink)

About one third of patients with epilepsy have seizures refractory to the medical treatment. Electrical stimulation mapping is the gold standard for the identification of “eloquent” areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue. However, it is time-consuming and may cause undesired side effects. Broadband gamma activity recorded with extraoperative electrocorticography during cognitive tasks may be an alternative to ESM but until now has not proven of definitive clinical value. Considering their role in cognition, the alpha and beta bands could further (...) improve the identification of eloquent cortex. We compared gamma, alpha and beta activity, and their combinations for the identification of eloquent cortical areas defined by ESM. Ten patients with intractable focal epilepsy participated in a delayed-match-to-sample task, where syllable sounds were compared to visually presented letters. We used a generalized linear model approach to find the optimal weighting of each band for predicting ESM-defined categories and estimated the diagnostic ability by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Gamma activity increased more in eloquent than in non-eloquent areas, whereas alpha and beta power decreased more in eloquent areas. Diagnostic ability of each band was close to 0.7 for all bands but depended on multiple factors including the time period of the cognitive task, the location of the electrodes and the patient’s degree of attention to the stimulus. We show that diagnostic ability can be increased by 3–5% by combining gamma and alpha and by 7.5–11% when gamma and beta were combined. We then show how ECoG power modulation from cognitive testing can be used to map the probability of eloquence in individual patients and how this probability map can be used in clinical settings to optimize ESM planning. We conclude that the combination of gamma and beta power modulation during cognitive testing can contribute to the identification of eloquent areas prior to ESM in patients with refractory focal epilepsy. (shrink)

BackgroundDue to causing inability of self-regulation and executive functions such as directed attention and visual searching for relevant information, mental fatigue impairs skilled performance in various sports. On the other hand, natural scenes could improve directed attention, which may considerably benefit visual searching ability and self-regulation. However, nature exposure as a potential intervention to improve skilled performance among mentally fatigued athletes has not been discussed thoroughly.PurposeTo propose the potential intervention for the impairment of skilled performance among mentally fatigued athletes and (...) generate a framework for future studies.MethodsA narrative review was applied to search broadly across disciplines, retrieving literature from several databases.ResultsThirty-three works of literature including 39 experiments were obtained. Finally, a conceptual framework was built regarding the effect of nature exposure intervention on skilled performance in athletes for future studies.ConclusionThree theories could be potentially integrated to be a conceptual framework and explain the mechanism of preventing prior mental exertion. Future studies could examine more on the duration of the intervention. (shrink)

Our think tank tasked by the Dutch Health Council, consisting of Radboud University Nijmegen Honours Academy students with various backgrounds, investigated the implications of Deep Brain Stimulation for psychiatric patients. During this investigation, a number of methodological, ethical and societal difficulties were identified. We consider these difficulties to be a reflection of a still fragmented field of research that can be overcome with improved organization and communication. To this effect, we suggest that it would be useful to found a centralized (...) DBS organization. Such an organization makes it possible to 1) set up and maintain a repository, 2) facilitate DBS studies with a larger sample size, 3) improve communication amongst researchers, clinicians and ethical committees, and 4) improve communication between DBS experts and the public at large. (shrink)

This book shows how pressing issues in bioethics – e.g. the ownership of biological material and human cognitive enhancement – successfully can be discussed with in a virtue ethics framework. This is not intended as a complete or exegetic account of virtue ethics. Rather, the aim here is to discuss how some key ideas in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, when interpreted pragmatically, can be a productive way to approach some hot issues in bioethics. In spite of being a very promising theoretical (...) perspective virtue ethics has so far been underdeveloped both in bioethics and neuroethics and most discussions have been conducted in consequentialist and/or deontological terms. ​. (shrink)

It has been argued that affordances are not meaningful and are thus not useful to be applied in contexts where specifically meaningfulness of experience is at stake (e.g. clinical contexts or discussions of autonomous agency). This paper aims to reconceptualize affordances such as to make them relevant and applicable in such contexts. It starts by investigating the ‘ambiguity’ of (possibilities for) action. In both philosophy of action and affordance research, this ambiguity is typically resolved by adhering to the agents intentions (...) and concerns. I discuss some recent accounts of affordances that highlight these concerns but argue that they tend to adopt an ‘atomistic’ approach where there is no acknowledgement of how these concerns are embedded in the agents wider concerns, values, projects and commitments. An holistic approach that does acknowledge this can be found in psychological research on agents having a sense of what they’re doing. I will discuss this research in the second part of the paper and argue that agents can analogously have a sense of what is afforded. This is deemed the entry point for understanding the meaningfulness of affordances. In the final part of the paper I apply this analysis to recent attempts which seek to make sense of authentic and autonomous agency in terms of affordances. (shrink)

Many experiential properties are naturally understood as dispositions such that e.g. a cake tastes good to you iff you are disposed to get gustatory pleasure when you eat it. Such dispositional analyses, however, face a challenge. It has been widely observed that one cannot properly assert “The cake tastes good to me” unless one has tried it. This acquaintance requirement is puzzling on the dispositional account because it should be possible to be disposed to like the cake even if this (...) disposition has never been manifested. We argue that familiar response strategies on behalf of the dispositionalist fail. These include appeals to conversational implicatures, expressivism, semantic presuppositions and norms of assertion. Against this background, we propose a new analysis in terms of what we call tendencies, where a tendency is a disposition that has been manifested. The acquaintance requirement comes out as an entailment. We point out a hitherto unnoticed parallel to sentences ascribing character traits such as “Hannah is brave,” and extend our tendency-based analysis to this domain. (shrink)

Given a Polish groupG, let$E(G)$be the right coset equivalence relation$G^{\omega }/c(G)$, where$c(G)$is the group of all convergent sequences inG. The connected component of the identity of a Polish groupGis denoted by$G_0$.Let$G,H$be locally compact abelian Polish groups. If$E(G)\leq _B E(H)$, then there is a continuous homomorphism$S:G_0\rightarrow H_0$such that$\ker (S)$is non-archimedean. The converse is also true whenGis connected and compact.For$n\in {\mathbb {N}}^+$, the partially ordered set$P(\omega )/\mbox {Fin}$can be embedded into Borel equivalence relations between$E({\mathbb {R}}^n)$and$E({\mathbb {T}}^n)$.

A recalled memory is deemed authentic when it accurately represents how one experienced the original event. However, given the convincing research in cognitive science on the constructive nature of memory, this inevitably leads to the question of the ‘bounds of authenticity’. That is, how similar does a memory have to be to the original experience to still count as authentic? In this paper we propose a novel account of ‘Situated Authenticity’ which highlights that the norms of authenticity are context-dependent. In (...) particular, we show that each of the three core functions of episodic memory (self, social and directive) is correlated with patterned changes in levels of conceptualization (e.g., concrete construal versus abstract construal of the event). We support this theoretical account with existing empirical data. We conclude the paper by showing how our account of Situated Authenticity supplements ongoing discussions on memory contextualism, and providing an outline of how our account, which is currently elaborated targeting a phenomenological level, may also be elaborated on a processing level using the concept of representational format. (shrink)

In this article, we introduce a hierarchy on the class of non-archimedean Polish groups that admit a compatible complete left-invariant metric. We denote this hierarchy by $\alpha $ -CLI and L- $\alpha $ -CLI where $\alpha $ is a countable ordinal. We establish three results: (1) G is $0$ -CLI iff $G=\{1_G\}$ ; (2) G is $1$ -CLI iff G admits a compatible complete two-sided invariant metric; and (3) G is L- $\alpha $ -CLI iff G is locally $\alpha $ (...) -CLI, i.e., G contains an open subgroup that is $\alpha $ -CLI. Subsequently, we show this hierarchy is proper by constructing non-archimedean CLI Polish groups $G_\alpha $ and $H_\alpha $ for $\alpha <\omega _1$, such that: (1) $H_\alpha $ is $\alpha $ -CLI but not L- $\beta $ -CLI for $\beta <\alpha $ ; and (2) $G_\alpha $ is $(\alpha +1)$ -CLI but not L- $\alpha $ -CLI. (shrink)

In the middle of the 17th century, Sheikh Wang Daiyu was one of China’s most famous Muslim scholars after Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Elias in China in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. and at a time when the sheikh lived, Islam in China was evolving progressively after it had had a weak presence, so Sheikh Wang Daiyu started writing books and scholarly articles in which he employed some Confucian terms... to explain Islamic ideas from the Holy Qur’an and (...) the Sunnah of the Prophet. He thus took upon himself the role of missionary caller to Islam, as well as the mission of spreading its culture by aiming to reconcile Confucian ideas with Islamic ones. The Sheikh systematically presented his ideas about the progress of Islam at that time in China. The present study mainly focuses on the biographical account of the Sheikh, on his scholarly and non-scholarly works, and on how he sought to reconcile Chinese culture with Islamic culture. We hereby seek to demonstrate that, during his time and owing to his efforts, Islam gained momentum in China, and that this momentum was achieved through the accommodative and integrating approach of Sheikh Wang Daiyu between the Arabo-Islamic culture and Chinese culture. Also, this study aims to get the world to understand China better, and thus musters the national advocacy of "Chinese storytelling" approach, in introducing the Chinese Muslim scholars who, for over a millennium, advocated Islam and strove to spread it and its culture, and, thus, we hope to draw attention to the contributions they have made within the national legacy of China. And in order to be able to conduct this research as fully as possible, we used the historical method and the analytical method, and the study is committed to covering and encapsulating the following: An examination of the Sheikh’s biographical account and his scholarly writings; A study of the challenges that Islam faced during his time; And an assessment of the Sheikh’s approach in fusing together Chinese and the Arabo-Islamic Civilizations. (shrink)

Let G = V G, E G be a molecular graph, where V G and E G are the sets of vertices and edges. A topological index of a molecular graph is a numerical quantity which helps to predict the chemical/physical properties of the molecules. The Wiener, Wiener polarity, and the terminal Wiener indices are the distance-based topological indices. In this paper, we described a linear time algorithm that computes the Wiener index for acyclic graphs and extended this algorithm for (...) unicyclic graphs. The same algorithms are modified to compute the terminal Wiener index and the Wiener polarity index. All these algorithms compute the indices in time O n. (shrink)

This study addresses the dynamical nature of a “representation‐hungry” cognitive task involving an imagined action. In our experiment, participants were handed rods that systematically increased or decreased in length on subsequent trials. Participants were asked to judge whether or not they thought they could reach for a distant object with the hand‐held rod. The results are in agreement with a dynamical model, extended from Tuller, Case, Ding, and Kelso (1994). The dynamical effects observed in this study suggest that predictive (...) judgments regarding the possibility or impossibility of a certain action can be understood in terms of dynamically evolving basins of attraction instead of as depending on representational structures. (shrink)

A revised version of my dissertation will soon appear (in German) under the title "Der Streit um das Ding an sich: Systematische Analysen zur Rezeption des kantischen Idealismus 1781–1794" (de Gruyter, vol. 150 “Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie” series). -/- My dissertation is focused on Kant’s transcendental idealism and the early, pre-Fichtean criticism thereof. It takes up the problem of the thing in itself in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and analyzes the most influential criticisms by Kant’s very first (...) readers (J. G. Feder, C. Garve, F. H. Jacobi, H. A. Pistorius, J. A. Eberhard, G. E. Schulze, and S. Maimon), who challenged the coherence and plausibility of Kant’s overall idealist conception. In reconstructing and discussing these early reactions to Kant’s idealism, I analyze and assess their criticism against the background of new scholarship on transcendental idealism, pursuing two central goals: (i) I defend Kant’s idealism –– and in particular, the status of the Kantian thing in itself –– against these early critics; (ii) nonetheless, I argue that by engaging with their texts, there are valuable lessons to be learnt which can and should inform our contemporary understanding of Kant. Consequently, the claims and arguments of this thesis have implications for both contemporary Kant scholarship, as well as research on the reception of Kant and/or the origins of German Idealism. With respect to Kant scholarship, I do not regard the endorsement of one-world readings of Kant’s idealism as an indispensable move for a defense of Kant against his early critics; the interpretive and argumentative strategies I develop are mostly neutral with respect to the debate between one- and two-world readings. From the perspective of research on the reception of Kant and/or the origins of German Idealism, my dissertation goes against a widespread tendency within the historiography of German philosophy: the tendency to distinguish between “conservative”, “backward-looking” early critics of Kant on the one hand, and more “progressive”, “forward-looking” ones –– who pave the way for German Idealism –– on the other hand. I argue instead that Kant’s pre-Fichtean readers form a far more homogeneous group than is often thought: rather than considering their arguments in isolation, where they can easily be overlooked philosophically, placing them in context with one another helps us better appreciate the interesting philosophical points they contain. -/- . (shrink)

This article examines the role of the mediaeval theory of the propositio in re, as proposed by Walter Burley and others, which bears a striking resemblance to the theory of the “proposition” advocated by G. E. Moore and B. Russell. Burley’s proposition composed of real things has the function of an ultimate significate for every sentence of natural language. The main problems of such a theory are on the one hand absurdities like a bird flying between the subject and predicate (...) of a sentence, on the other hand Burley’s assumption that a relation of identity holds between subject and predicate, which might render propositiones in re tautological. Moreover, the particular nature of this relation is left unexplained. But these difficulties can be solved: The former by applying objective being, being as being cognized, to the terms of a propositio, as did Scotus and Franciscus de Prato, the latter by specifying multiple forms of real predication as being or being-in-something apart from a mere identity-relation. (shrink)

An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

Although healthcare workers play a crucial role in helping curb the hazardous health impact of coronavirus disease 2019, their lives and major functioning have been greatly affected by the pandemic. This study examined the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of life of Malaysian healthcare workers and its predictive factors. An online sample of 389 university-based healthcare workers completed questionnaires on demographics, clinical features, COVID-19-related stressors, psychological experiences, and perceived social support after the movement lockdown was lifted. All (...) domains of QoL were within the norms of the general population except for social relationship QoL, which was lower than the norm. Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that COVID-19-related stressors and psychological sequelae predicted lower QoL. Conversely, greater perceived social support from friends and significant others predicted higher QoL. Clinical and demographic characteristics predicted QoL to a lesser extent: A history of pre-existing medical illness was associated only with lower physical health QoL, whereas older age and being single, divorced, or widowed were only predictive of higher environmental QoL. Efforts to enhance QoL among healthcare workers in response to the pandemic should focus on mitigating COVID-19-related stressors and psychological sequelae and facilitating social support. (shrink)

Moderate pragmatic invariantism (MPI) is a proposal to explain why our intuitions about the truth-value of knowledge claims vary with stakes and salient error-possibilities. The basic idea is that this variation is due to a variation not in the propositions expressed (as epistemic contextualists would have it) but in the propositions conversationally implicated. I will argue that MPI is mistaken: I will distinguish two kinds of implicature, namely, additive and substitutional implicatures. I will then argue, first, that the proponent of (...) MPI cannot appeal to additive implicatures because they don’t affect truth-value intuitions in the required way. Second, I will argue that the proponent of MPI cannot appeal to substitutional implicatures either because, even though they may have the required effects on truth-value intuitions, they don’t feature in the relevant cases. It follows that MPI is mistaken because whether the proponent of MPI appeals to additive or substitutional implicatures, at least one of the claims that make up her view is false. Along the way, I will suggest principles about implicatures that should be relevant not only to MPI, but to pragmatic accounts of seemingly semantic intuitions in general. (shrink)

This article brings together two sets of data that are rarely discussed in concert; namely, disagreement and testimony data. I will argue that relativism yields a much more elegant account of these data than its major rival, contextualism. The basic idea will be that contextualists can account for disagreement data only by adopting principles that preclude a simple account of testimony data. I will conclude that, other things being equal, we should prefer relativism to contextualism. In making this comparative point, (...) I will also defend self-standing relativist accounts of disagreement and testimony data. (shrink)

While philosophers are often concerned with the conditions for moral knowledge or justification, in practice something arguably less demanding is just as, if not more, important – reliably making correct moral judgments. Judges and juries should hand down fair sentences, government officials should decide on just laws, members of ethics committees should make sound recommendations, and so on. We want such agents, more often than not and as often as possible, to make the right decisions. The purpose of this paper (...) is to propose a method of enhancing the moral reliability of such agents. In particular, we advocate for a procedural approach; certain internal processes generally contribute to people’s moral reliability. Building on the early work of Rawls, we identify several particular factors related to moral reasoning that are specific enough to be the target of practical intervention: logical competence, conceptual understanding, empirical competence, openness, empathy and bias. Improving on these processes can in turn make people more morally reliable in a variety of contexts and has implications for recent debates over moral enhancement. (shrink)

As opposed to a ‘one size fits all’ approach, precision medicine uses relevant biological, medical, behavioural and environmental information about a person to further personalize their healthcare. This could mean better prediction of someone’s disease risk and more effective diagnosis and treatment if they have a condition. Big data allows for far more precision and tailoring than was ever before possible by linking together diverse datasets to reveal hitherto-unknown correlations and causal pathways. But it also raises ethical issues relating to (...) the balancing of interests, viability of anonymization, familial and group implications, as well as genetic discrimination. This article analyses these issues in light of the values of public benefit, justice, harm minimization, transparency, engagement and reflexivity and applies the deliberative balancing approach found in theEthical Framework for Big Data in Health and Research to a case study on clinical genomic data sharing. Please refer to that article for an explanation of how this framework is to be used, including a full explanation of the key values involved and the balancing approach used in the case study at the end. Our discussion is meant to be of use to those involved in the practice as well as governance and oversight of precision medicine to address ethical concerns that arise in a coherent and systematic manner. (shrink)

EDITOR’S ABSTRACTThe popular Chinese portrayal of the victory of Confucianism, or in Chinese terms “dismiss the hundred schools of thought and revere only the Confucian arts,” has been challenged by some scholars in the past decades. Ding’s essay illustrates not only how it has been challenged but also how the catch phrase influences the scholarly discussion. As he indicates, recent Chinese studies that attempt to subvert the traditional theory share the same “flow.” They fail to note that the expression (...) “dismiss the hundred schools of thought and revere only the Confucian arts” has had very negative connotations since it was invoked by Yi Baisha 易白沙 to harshly denounce Confucianism for being responsible for the centuries-long Chinese autocracy. (shrink)

EDITOR’S ABSTRACTThis article argues that the early Laozi text underwent three stages: The first had section divisions on the basis of the meaning. The second stage was the formative period of the Laozi text influenced by cosmological numerology; the Silk Manuscript version A is its testimony. The third stage finalized the text through the canonization of the Classic by Emperor Jing; it is represented by the Peking University Han Bamboo Slips, Yan Zun, and Liu Xiang versions and became the received (...) edition. From the Han Bamboo Slips to the Liu Xiang version, the Laozi’s two parts and section numbering became increasingly balanced and symmetric. Ding urges scholars to pay attention to all these developments when studying the Laozi text. (shrink)

In the modular design of generative theory the syntax-semantics interface has accounted all along for meanings at the level of Logical Form. The syntax-pragmatics interface, on the other hand, is the result of what one may call the 'pragmatic turn' in the linguistic theory, where content is partitioned into given and new information. In other words, the structural division of the clause has been subjected to criteria of information, or discourse structure. Both interfaces require a structurally descriptive inventory whose specific (...) shapes can be motivated on theory-internal grounds only. The present collection of original articles develops the concept of these interfaces further. The papers in the first section focus on the syntax-semantics interface, those in the second section on the syntax-pragmatics interface. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed numerous weaknesses in pandemic preparedness and response, including underfunding, inadequate surveillance, and inequitable distribution of countermeasures. To overcome these weaknesses for future pandemics, WHO released a zero draft of a pandemic treaty in February, 2023, and subsequently a revised bureau's text in May, 2023. COVID-19 made clear that pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response reflect choices and value judgements. These decisions are therefore not a purely scientific or technical exercise, but are fundamentally grounded in ethics. The latest (...) treaty draft reflects these ethical considerations by including a section entitled Guiding Principles and Approaches. Most of these principles are ethical—they establish core values that undergird the treaty. Unfortunately, the treaty draft's set of principles are numerous, overlapping, and show inadequate coherence and consistency. We propose two improvements to this section of the draft pandemic treaty. First, key guiding ethical principles should be clearer and more precise than they currently are. Second, the link between ethical principles and policy implementation should be clearly established and define boundaries on acceptable interpretation, ensuring that signatories abide by these principles. (shrink)

This is the first complete, one-volume English translation of the ancient Chinese text Xunzi, one of the most extensive, sophisticated, and elegant works in the tradition of Confucian thought. Through essays, poetry, dialogues, and anecdotes, the Xunzi articulates a Confucian perspective on ethics, politics, warfare, language, psychology, human nature, ritual, and music, among other topics. Aimed at general readers and students of Chinese thought, Eric Hutton’s translation makes the full text of this important work more accessible in English than ever (...) before. Named for its purported author, the Xunzi has long been neglected compared to works such as the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. Yet interest in the Xunzi has grown in recent decades, and the text presents a much more systematic vision of the Confucian ideal than the fragmented sayings of Confucius and Mencius. In one famous, explicit contrast to them, the Xunzi argues that human nature is bad. However, it also allows that people can become good through rituals and institutions established by earlier sages. Indeed, the main purpose of the Xunzi is to urge people to become as good as possible, both for their own sakes and for the sake of peace and order in the world. In this edition, key terms are consistently translated to aid understanding and line numbers are provided for easy reference. Other features include a concise introduction, a timeline of early Chinese history, a list of important names and terms, cross-references, brief explanatory notes, a bibliography, and an index. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the classes of all continuous $\mathcal {L}$ -(pre-)structures for a continuous first-order signature $\mathcal {L}$. We characterize the moduli of continuity for which the classes of finite, countable, or all continuous $\mathcal {L}$ -(pre-)structures have the amalgamation property. We also characterize when Urysohn continuous $\mathcal {L}$ -(pre)-structures exist, establish that certain classes of finite continuous $\mathcal {L}$ -structures are countable Fraïssé classes, prove the coherent EPPA for these classes of finite continuous $\mathcal {L}$ -structures, and (...) show that actions by automorphisms on finite $\mathcal {L}$ -structures also form a Fraïssé class. As consequences, we have that the automorphism group of the Urysohn continuous $\mathcal {L}$ -structure is a universal Polish group and that Hall’s universal locally finite group is contained in the automorphism group of the Urysohn continuous $\mathcal {L}$ -structure as a dense subgroup. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

The foregoing considerations support the conjecture that prototypes are semi-compositional in the sense that there exist unboundedly many combinations of nouns with non-exceptional adjectives, which satisfy the rule default-to-prototype and hence are compositional. Presumably there also exist unboundedly many combinations of nouns with exceptional adjectives, which violate DP and hence are non-compositional. An analysis of the connection between productivity and compositionality has been suggested by Robbins. He argues that, for the explanation of productivity, one need not assume that conceptual meanings (...) always compose—it is enough that they compose in infinitely many cases. Since semi-compositionality entails the existence of unboundedly many non-compositional cases, non-compositionality cannot be dealt away with a finite list of idiomatic exceptions, but is a genuine feature of prototype semantics in natural language. (shrink)

This book explores how one can bring about changes in the brain through meditation, both through attention-focus training and through compassion training. Recent findings in the natural sciences have confirmed that it is possible for humans to achieve these structural and functional changes through various life-style practices. It is argued that meditation enables us to influence some aspects of our biological make-up and, for example, could boost our cognitive flexibility as well as our ability to act compassionate. Such changes are (...) likely to facilitate the instilling of a number of epistemic virtues which have great bearing on our quality of life. This book offers the reader an accessible introduction to a set of neuro-enhancement methods, with a special focus on meditation techniques, and explores how such practices could contribute to make us better decision-makers and improve our moral virtues. The book is suitable for anyone looking for a text discussing the effects of neuro-enhancement from a secular ethics perspective. (shrink)