Software plays an important role in contemporary research. Aside from its use for administering traditional instruments like surveys and in data analysis, the widespread use of mobile and web apps for social, medical and lifestyle engagement has led to software becoming a research intervention in its own right. For example, it is not unusual to find apps being studied for their utility as interventions in health and social life. Since the software may persist in use beyond the life of an (...) investigation, this raises questions as to the extent of ethical duties for researchers involved in its production and/or study towards the participants involved. Key factors identified include the extent of affect created by the software, the effect it has on a participant’s life, the length of investigation, cost of maintenance and participant agency. In this article we discuss the issues raised in such situations, considering them in the context of post-research duties of care and suggesting strategies to balance the burden on researchers with the need for ongoing participant support. (shrink)

A lively and scholarly analysis of the history of jazz in its long voyage from a New Orleans barrel-house type of enterprise to global acceptance.

Admittedly imperfect in its historical realization, the noble ideal of the "open society" is still a triumph of the cumulative wisdom of the human race.

This article offers a behavioral analysis of national conflict, in which the socio-psychological mechanisms of the adversary groups escalate ideological passions to the point of violence.

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics reexamines the notions of uniformity and variability within morphological systems from a cognitive linguistic standpoint. It challenges traditional perspectives that regard morphological variability as mere deviations from the norm, suggesting instead that such variability is systematic and shaped by external influences including language acquisition and processing constraints. The contributions in this issue promote a shift from isolated analysis to a holistic view of paradigms, classes, and systems, advocating for a framework where morphological structures are (...) seen as integral to communicative and functional aspects of language. By accounting for the broad adaptive dynamics of language systems, the complex interplay between uniformity and variability is revealed as an inherent aspect of language usage. (shrink)

Drawn sequences of images, like those in comics and picture stories, are a pervasive and fundamental way that humans have communicated for millennia. Yet, the study of visual narratives has only recently gained traction in Cognitive Science. Here we explore what has held back the study of the cognition of visual narratives, and why researchers should join in scholarship of this ubiquitous aspect of expression.

An empirical study using two ethics-related and three sales force outcome variables was conducted in Taiwan and compared to an existing U.S. sample. Across the two national cultures, individual perceptions of corporate ethics appears to be a more direct determinant of organizational commitment than individual moral values. Differences between the two national cultures were found in ethics perception as it relates to moral values, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. Explanations for the differences are discussed.

Howard Robinson has argued that even if the major claims of Berkeleian idealism are mistaken, including its account of the “physical world,” “the overall endeavour of defending idealism is more plausible than it is generally believed to be”. He argues that aspects of Berkeley’s arguments for idealism, including a Berkeleian argument against naive realism, can be shown to refute the representative realist’s view of perception, and its concomitant ontology. This ontology is at least partially materialist. According to Robinson, once naive (...) realism is disposed of and the objections to RR are exposed, Berkeleian Idealism can raise its shadowy head with at least the respectability afforded the currently more fashionable Representationalism. We shall argue that Robinson’s claim cannot plausibly be sustained. His defense of Berkeleian idealism, based in part on his understanding of naive realism and his critique of Representationalism, falters. “The overall endeavour of defending idealism” is not as plausible as Robinson takes it to be. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to defend traditional ethical theory (utilitarianism and deontology) for its application in business against a more recent model consisting of utility, rights, and justice. This is done in three parts: First, we provide a conceptual argument for the superiority of the traditional model; second, we demonstrate these points through an examination of three short cases; and third, we argue for the capability of the traditional model to account for universals and particulars in ethics.

We can infer moral conclusions from nonmoral evidence using a three-step procedure. First, we distinguish the processes generating belief so that their reliability in generating true belief is statistically predictable. Second, we assess the processes’ reliability, perhaps by observing how frequently they generate true nonmoral belief or logically inconsistent beliefs. Third, we adjust our credence in moral propositions in light of the truth ratios of the processes generating beliefs in them. This inferential route involves empirically discovering truths of the form (...) “Process P, which generates belief in moral proposition M, has truth ratio T", and using them to discover probabilities for moral propositions. The inferential route is noncircular, and progress along it is driven fundamentally by induction. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

Unrealistic optimism is a bias that leads people to believe, with respect to a specific event or hazard, that they are more likely to experience positive outcomes and/or less likely to experience negative outcomes than similar others. The phenomenon has been seen in a range of health-related contexts—including when prospective participants are presented with the risks and benefits of participating in a clinical trial. In order to test for the prevalence of unrealistic optimism among participants of early-phase oncology trials, we (...) conducted a survey with patients over 18 years of age who were enrolled in a phase I, phase I/II, or phase II clinical cancer trial in the New York City area between August 2008 and October 2009. Participants in our study were asked to compare their own chances of experiencing a range of risks and benefits related to the trial they were enrolled in with the chances of the other trial participants. We found a significant optimistic bias in their responses. Respondents tended to overestimate the benefits of the trial they were enrolled in and underestimate its risks. In addition, we found no significant relationship between respondents’ understanding of the trial’s purpose and how susceptible they were to unrealistic optimism. Our findings suggest that improving the consent process for oncology studies requires more than addressing deficits in understanding. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

It is an interesting fact of our time that some of the best studies of communism and Marxism have been written by Catholic scholars. This book, based on a series of television programs in St. Louis aims at presenting an historical and theoretical understanding of the emergence of Marxism and the development of Communism. Written for the intelligent lay reader as an introduction to a complex subject, the treatment is lucid and balanced.—R. J. B.

This essay argues that there are theoretical benefits to keeping distinct—more pervasively than the literature has done so far—the psychological states of imagining that p versus believing that in-the-story p, when it comes to cognition of fiction and other forms of narrative. Positing both in the minds of a story’s audience helps explain the full range of reactions characteristic of story consumption. This distinction also has interesting conceptual and explanatory dimensions that haven’t been carefully observed, and the two mental state (...) types make distinct contributions to generating emotional responses to stories. Finally, the differences between the mental states illuminate how a given story can be both shared with others and at the same time experienced as personal. (shrink)

Purpose Recent research has found unrealistic optimism among patient-subjects in early-phase oncology trials. Our aim was to investigate the cognitive and motivational factors that evoke this bias in this context. We expected perceptions of control to be a strong correlate of unrealistic optimism. Methods A study of patient-subjects enrolled in early-phase oncology trials was conducted at two sites in the USA. Respondents completed questionnaires designed to assess unrealistic optimism and several risk attribute variables that have been found to evoke the (...) bias in other contexts. Results One hundred and seventy-one patient-subjects agreed to be interviewed for our study. Significant levels of perceived controllability were found with respect to all nine research-related questions. Perceptions of control were found to predict unrealistic optimism. Two other risk attribute variables, awareness of indicators and mental image, were correlated with unrealistic optimism. However, in multivariate regression analysis, awareness and mental image dropped out of the model and perceived controllability was the only factor independently associated with unrealistic optimism. Conclusion Patient-subjects reported that they can, at least partially, control the benefits they receive from participating in an early-phase oncology trial. This sense of control may underlie unrealistic optimism about benefiting personally from trial participation. Effective interventions to counteract unrealistic optimism may need to address the psychological factors that give rise to distorted risk/benefit processing. (shrink)

To understand how Richard Rorty's “redescription” of transcendental arguments works against the realist interpretation – and in particular against the notion that philosophy can provide an answer to the quaestio juris – it is helpful to turn to a little history. In Anglophone philosophy, the development of the anti‐skeptical and antireductionist potential of transcendental arguments is usually ascribed to the work of P. F. Strawson and other philosophers influenced by the later L. Wittgenstein. According to Rorty, the following condition is (...) sufficient for designating an argument “realist”: a distinction is made between scheme and content. A transcendental argument against realism is an argument to the effect that attempts to make sense of a notion of justification that would do the work of legitimation required is parasitic on what can be gleaned from the methods of confirmation/inferential relations that we use in practice. (shrink)

De Cruz and Levy, in their commentaries on Religion as Make-Believe, present distinct questions that can be addressed by clarifying one core idea. De Cruz asks whether one can rationally assess the mental state of religious credence that I theorize. Levy asks why we should not explain the data on religious “belief” merely by positing factual beliefs with religious contents, which happen to be rationally acquired through testimony. To both, I say that having religious credences is p-irrational: a purposeful departure (...) from rational thought and behavior, where the purpose in question is maintaining a group identity. (shrink)

Some philosophers (including Urmson, Humberstone, Shah, and Velleman) hold that believing that p distinctively involves applying a norm according to which the truth of p is a criterion for the success or correctness of the attitude. On this view, imagining and assuming differ from believing in that no such norm is applied. I argue against this view with counterexamples showing that applying the norm of truth is neither necessary nor sufficient for distinguishing believing from imagining and assuming. Then I argue (...) that the different functional properties of these mental states are enough to distinguish them, and that norm-application doesn't help us draw the functional distinctions. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

In this paper I grant the Humean premise that some reasons for action are grounded in the desires of the agents whose reasons they are. I then consider the question of the relation between the reasons and the desires that ground them. According to promotionalism , a desire that p grounds a reason to φ insofar as A’s φing helps promote p . According to motivationalism a desire that p grounds a reason to φ insofar as it explains why, in (...) certain circumstances, A would be motivated to φ. I then give an argument favouring motivationalism, namely that promotionalism entails that agents have reasons to perform physically impossible actions, whereas motivationalism entails that there are no such reasons. Although this is a version of the ‘Too Many Reasons’ objection to promotionalism, I show that existing responses to that problem do not transfer to the case of reasons to perform physically impossible actions. In the penultimate section I consider and reject some objections to motivationalism made by promotionalists. The conclusion is that Humeans about reasons for action should prefer motivationalism. (shrink)

The naive anti-realist holds the following principle: (◊K) All truths are knowable. This unrestricted generalization (◊K), as is now well known, falls prey to Fitch’s Paradox (Fitch 1963: 38, Theorem 1). It can be used as the only suspect principle, alongside others that cannot be impugned, to prove quite generally, and constructively, that the set {p, ¬Kp} is inconsistent (Tennant 1997: 261). From this it would follow, intuitionistically, that any proposition that is never actually known to be true (by anyone, (...) at any time) is false; and it would follow, classically, that every truth is known (by someone, at some time). (shrink)

The word "blame" and the concept of blame are commonly used by both laymen and philosophers. The latter refer to it frequently in the controversies surrounding desert and in controversies surrounding determinism. Some of the brouhaha in each of the above controversies is generated because the disputants use the word "blame" in different ways. One who attacks blame may, in reality, be attacking the practice of settled disapproval; on the other hand, a disputant who defends blame may merely be defending (...) blame-as-holding-morally responsible. Hence, the two disputants "never meet." Worse, they seem unable to see why they never meet. Since they both write and speak the same word , they assume that they are speaking the same thing. ;We show that such an assumption is unwarranted. We show that the concept of blame variously refers to: causal identification, juding , holding morally responsible, and disapproval . Sudden disapproval means disapproval felt; settled disapproval means disapproval expressed. ;To show that blaming is not the same as condemning, censuring, rebuking, etc., we analyze blame vis-a-vis cognate concepts. Then, to show the wide range of understandings concerning blame, we outline and describe eight representative and historical views. Some of these views become especially prominent in our analysis of desert blame v. utilitarian blame and in our analysis of determinism vis-a-vis blame. ;One's "attitude of blaming" does not convey a singular, easy-to-identify attitude or series of responses. To show this, we spell out the differences in blaming-attitudes. We suggest that popular blame seems to be a blaming-attitude which allows or encourages expressions of condemnation. For this type of blame, there is no justification, we argue. In, "P blames A for untoward act X," P may feel disapproval toward act X, thus feel disapproval toward A because of X. This is non-controversial. Yet, how one expresses that blaming-attitude is significant. ; P may control and channel his feelings of disapproval and express them in such a way as to seek proper redress and ultimately help A. This, we argue, is an appropriate blaming-attitude. Or, P may use the occasion of untoward act X to unleash vengeance and hate on A. Such an action, we argue, is no part of blaming; it has nothing to do with holding a person morally responsible or with voluntariness and free-will. Such an action, we argue, would be better labelled as "condemning." ;We show how these blame distinctions relate to the issue of desert and to the issue of determinism. We show that attempts to relate determinism to any kind of blaming activity are difficult because the thesis of determinism is ambiguous. We also show that, all problems considered, desert blame is to be preferred over utilitarian blame. (shrink)

It became customary in the eighteenth century to praise Longinus in ways that mimicked one of his own favorite turns of thought—to identify enthusiastically two elements that would more commonly be thought of as quite distinct. To say, with Boileau and Pope, that Longinus “is himself the great Sublime he draws,” or to profess to doubt, as Gibbon did, “which is the most sublime, Homer’s Battle of the Gods or Longinus’ apostrophe…upon it,” is knowingly to override certain conventional lines of (...) demarcation—between writers and their subject matter, between text and interpretation—very much in the manner of Longinus overriding the distinction between Homer and his heroes, between sublime language and its author , or between sublime poet and his audience .1 Longinus’ admirers, struck by the force of the treatise, are usually willing to release him from the strictures of theoretical discourse and allow him the license of a poet; they are likely to appreciate his transgressions of conventional limits without ever calling them into question. It has been left to more skeptical readers, wary of Longinus’ “transports,” to draw attention to his odd movements of thought: W. K. Wimsatt, for example, is unsympathetic but acute when he accuses Longinus of “sliding” from one theoretical distinction to another, a slide “which seems to harbor a certain duplicity and invalidity.”2 Wimsatt is right: something one might want to call a “slide” is observable again and again in the treatise, and not merely from one theoretical distinction to another. One finds in the treatise a rhetorician’s argument conducted with great intelligence and energy, but one also discovers that it is remarkably easy to lose one’s way, to forget which rhetorical topic is under consideration at a particular point, to find oneself attending to a quotation, a fragment of analysis, a metaphor—some interestingly resonant bit of language that draws one into quite another system of relationships. I want to attempt to follow that movement here, to hold it in mind and to question its implications. I will look closely at a number of passages in which Longinus interweaves language of his own with that of the authors he admires—for it is here, out of the play of text with quotation and of quotations with one another, that the most interesting meanings as well as the peculiar power of the treatise are generated.1. ‘Longinus’ On Sublimity, trans. D. A. Russell , 9. 2, 7. 2; all further references to this work will appear in text, though I have changed a word or two of Russell’s translation in the interests of a more literal rendering of the Greek. I am indebted to another recent translation, G. M. A. Grube’s Longinus On Great Writing , and more particularly to the ample and intelligent introduction and notes accompanying Russell’s edition of the Greek text, ‘Longinus’ On the Sublime .2. W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History , p.101. (shrink)

Commentators on P.F. Strawson’s reactive attitudes emphasize the opposition between the participant and objective attitudes. This tendency overlooks Strawson’s attempt to mitigate what he saw as “a crude opposition” between these two perspectives. Strawson called attention to phenomena involving the “half-suspension” of reactive attitudes, or the “straddling” of the objective and participant stances in order to diminish this crudity. This has been largely ignored in the literature, and as a result, the phenomena that Strawson mentions are poorly understood. Drawing on (...) the work in the philosophy of emotion by Amélie Rorty and a multidimensional account of the reactive attitudes, we provide a framework to explain how such a half-suspension is possible and highlight some of its more prominent features. (shrink)

Because of the privileged place of beliefs in explaining behaviour, mismatch cases—in which agents sincerely claim to believe that p, but act in a way that is inconsistent with that belief—have attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, I argue that some of these cases, at least, are at least partially explained by agents believing that they believe that p, while failing to believe that p. Agents in these cases do not believe that ~p; rather, they have an (...) indistinct first‐order, beliefy, representation that p. The indistinctness of this first‐order representation provides the leeway for the inconsistency seen in their behaviour. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 368-370 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Poetry Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Poetry, by David Bromwich; xvii & 256 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001; $49.00 cloth, $16.00 paper. In his preface to this gathering of his essays and reviews on twentieth-century American and British poetry, David Bromwich regrets that it is "too late to suppress the (...) evidence of a critic educating himself in public" (p. xi). But even the earliest work reprinted in Skeptical Music--"The Making of the Auden Canon," published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1976, when the author was still a graduate student at Yale--hardly qualifies as juvenilia. Indeed, in Bromwich's case, evidence of a critic educating himself in public seems to have been suppressed from the start. No single explanation will account for an author's precocity, but the consistency of Bromwich's critical voice over the last quarter century is certainly related to his early preoccupation with William Hazlitt, the subject of his first book. In choosing Hazlitt as his model, Bromwich rejected what he took to be the legacy of systematic and professional literary theory extending from Coleridge to each new school of academic criticism. Bromwich's own development as a critic has therefore been subtler and more introspective than the critical retooling of so many of his colleagues. Although never far from the evaluative art of the reviewer, Bromwich has come to favor the more speculative dimension of his work. The more recent the piece, the more overt the attempt to imagine "what was in the poet's mind, or what was in the poem's mind, on the theory that certain thoughts and feelings are worth the trouble to characterize because of their strangeness and originality" (p. xi).Some of the most compelling chapters in Skeptical Music imagine what was in the poet's mind, or the poem's mind, by telling stories about complex relationships between poems by different poets--between the work of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, or T. S. Eliot and Hart Crane. These are stories about literary influence, or deep temperamental affinity. As in Harold Bloom's work, the stories are grounded in close readings, usually of the passages the critic prizes for their aesthetic superiority.A related procedure is at work in "Stevens and the Idea of the Hero"--a long speculative piece on Wallace Stevens's transfer of allegiance, at a crucial moment in his career, from the pragmatism of Nietzsche to the pragmatism of William James. What Stevens found "most persistently attractive" in Nietzsche's pragmatism, Bromwich coolly explains, was "the suggestion that the good of existence is change" and that "our most vivid acknowledgment of that good comes from the ability to imagine a life wiped clear of ourselves" (p. 71). But the Nietzschean sublime proved insufficient for Stevens. During the Second World War, the poet was confronted by "the reality of American soldiers going off to fight... for a cause which, as Stevens saw it, they could only make true by their fighting" (p. 68). Stevens turned to James for "the less brutal idea of a [End Page 368] man or woman who is made great by an enterprise in which others have a part" (p. 78).Bromwich's argument that Stevens became a more valuable poet when he located heroism in human solidarity, not just Nietzschean contingency and self-creation, bears a family resemblance to the work of one of James's heirs, Richard Rorty. Like Rorty, Bromwich often feels the pressure to adjudicate between the claims of the individual artist and the claims of the community; and like Rorty, he makes his judgements on a case by case basis, without recourse to a set standard, rule, or theory. In the closing chapter of Skeptical Music--"Is Taste Moral?"--Bromwich directly addresses the tension between aestheticism and the social good, a subject that also surfaces at the close of his preface and at numerous moments throughout the book. But the claims of the community seem relatively muted... (shrink)