The Society for Unification Psychology was formed by a group of psychologists concerned about the growing issues of diversity and fragmentation in psychology. The Society held its first organizational meeting at the 1985 APA convention. It is intended that SUNI will become a special interest group of APA's Division 24, Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. The Society's purpose is to stimulate discussion of issues of unity and disunity in psychology by: planning symposia and other presentations at APA and related conventions; conducting (...) Society interest group meetings at these conventions; and publishing a Newsletter. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, The crucible of experience: R. D. Laing and the crisis of psychotherapy by Daniel Burston . Unlike his earlier book, which was more biographical and focused on R. D. Laing’s personal experiences, this book is devoted to examining the man’s contributions to contemporary psychotherapeutic theory and practice. This, of course, is no easy task as Laing is a notoriously unsystematic thinker, whose work often violated entrenched disciplinary expectations and challenged conventional sensibilities and assumptions. Despite such obvious (...) obstacles, however, Burston does an excellent job laying out Laing’s intellectual indebtedness to existentialism and phenomenology, as well as his lasting contributions to existential psychiatry. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

It is widely claimed that climate change has increased the magnitude and the frequency of natural phenomena such as storms, droughts, and floods with the concomitant costs in terms of damages and victims. This paper using weekly data from global stock market indices in a Fama–French model, examines how and to what extent market agents and investors react to such events. As a yardstick for comparison purposes, the possible market impact of industrial accidents is also incorporated and examined in the (...) empirical investigation. The study uses in a comparative approach the STOXX Global ESG Environmental Leaders index and the STOXX Global index diversified across 1800 top companies. Results reported herein seem to indicate that natural and anthropogenic adversity have no immediate impact on the stock indices, while wildfires have an immediate reduction impact on market risk in the case of the ESG Environmental Leaders index. Moreover, wildfires and industrial accidents appear to cause a significant reduction of systematic risk over the next week following the incident. However, the magnitude of the effect is higher in the case of the ESG Environmental Leaders stock index. Finally, the effect on systematic risk by industrial accidents is temporarily without any lasting imprint. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has shocked his readers by arguing that assertion is not a conventional activity, thus attacking what was taken to be a truism by most philosophers of language. The paper claims that Davidson's argument is seriously flawed by his failure to distinguish a number of questions which should be kept separate. Assertion is a matter of seriousness, not of sincerity; departures from seriousness are marked by techniques which are undeniably conventional. There are no parallel indicators of seriousness, (...) i. e. there is no assertion-sign. But this necessary absence of a conventional marker of seriousness from our communicative repertoire does not imply that the activity of asserting is not conventional. Assertion differs in important ways from eating or walking; it is these differences which have led Searle, Lewis, EHimmett and countless others to conceive of language as essentially conventional'. The paper argues that Davidson'snaturalistic challenge illuminates the (non-existing) role of the assertion-sign, while failing to undermine the credentials of the 'truism'. (shrink)

The basis of property rights is a central problem in political philosophy. The core philosophical dispute concerns whether property rights are natural facts, independent of human conventions. In this article, we examine adult judgments on this issue. We find evidence that familiar property norms regarding external objects (e.g., fish and strawberries) are treated as conventional on standard measures of authority dependence and context relativism. Previous work on the moral/conventional distinction indicates that people treat property rights as moral rather (...) than conventional (e.g., Dahl & Waltzer, 2020; Nucci & Turiel, 1993; Tisak & Turiel, 1984). However, these studies explicitly assume that one person owns property that another steals. Study 1 explores judgments of authority dependence regarding ownership in cases that explicitly appeal to stealing and prior ownership as compared to cases that omit such explicit appeals. We find that participants tend to treat ownership as authority dependent when explicit appeals to stealing are absent, but not when the explicit appeals are present. Study 2 examines intuitions about authority dependence of ownership violations as compared to canonical conventional and harm-based moral violations. We find that ownership violations are treated as more authority dependent than harm-based moral violations. This all suggests that some central property norms are treated as conventional. However, we also find that the conventionality of property norms is restricted in several ways. In study 3, we find that people do not treat norms of self-ownership as conventional. Other people cannot take your hair or skin cells even if the teacher says it's okay. Study 4 uses a measure of context relativism to examine the conventionality of ownership norms, comparing different possible norms of ownership. We find that participants regard takings that are violations in their own culture as permissible in other cultures; however, only some foreign norms are deemed acceptable. In study 5 we find another limitation – participants think it's impermissible to take resources from someone based on a new property norm that is retrospectively imposed. Finally, in study 6 we explore whether some takings might be judged to be morally (non-conventionally) wrong as a function of scarcity. We find that when asked about another culture that allows taking, participants tend to say that taking a food item from the person who caught it is permissible when the food is plentiful, but not when the food is scarce. (shrink)

Sprat situated his analysis of the Royal Society within an emerging Anglican Royalist narrative of the longue durée of post-Reformation England. A closer examination of Sprat's own religious views reveals that his principal interest in the History of the Royal Society, as in the closely related reply to Samuel de Sorbière, the Observations, was to appropriate the advantages and benefits of the Royal Society as support for a re-established, anti-Calvinist Church of England. Sprat connected the two through a reformulation of (...) the powerful conventions of ‘Reformation’ and ‘Israel’, both of which still resonated strongly in the religious politics of the 1660s. Applying his voluntarist theology, Sprat changed especially the representation of the chosen nation from a tale of divine castigation and punishment to a rational and probabilistic covenant based on material success as the indicator of God's pleasure. Sprat proposed that the knowledge and application of nature, through the experimental labours of the Royal Society, could build an increasingly wealthy nation and so a permanent home for the reconfigured Israel. Attaching this to a renewed monarchical and Anglican state also meant security for the traditional forms of rule. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has shocked his readers by arguing that assertion is not a conventional activity, thus attacking what was taken to be a truism by most philosophers of language. The paper claims that Davidson's argument is seriously flawed by his failure to distinguish a number of questions which should be kept separate. Assertion is a matter of seriousness, not of sincerity; departures from seriousness are marked by techniques which are undeniably conventional. There are no parallel indicators of seriousness, (...) i. e. there is no assertion-sign. But this necessary absence of a conventional marker of seriousness from our communicative repertoire does not imply that the activity of asserting is not conventional. Assertion differs in important ways from eating or walking; it is these differences which have led Searle, Lewis, EHimmett and countless others to conceive of language as essentially conventional'. The paper argues that Davidson'snaturalistic challenge illuminates the (non-existing) role of the assertion-sign, while failing to undermine the credentials of the 'truism'. (shrink)

What is special about picturing according to the rules of perspectival drawing systems? My answer is at once both radical and conciliatory. I think that depiction essentially involves a distinctive experience, an experience of resemblance. More precisely, the picture must be seen as preserving what Thomas Reid (Enquiry 1764) called the "visible figure" of what is represented. It follows from this, and from some other plausible premises, that if a picture is to depict detailed spatial arrangements, rather than simply to (...) represent them in some other, non-pictorial, way, it must conform to perspectival rules. Hence the radicalism. Perspective does not provide uniquely accurate or realistic ways to depict things, but, for certain aspects of the world, the only way to depict them at all. What of the conciliatory aspect of my view? My account of depiction in no way implies that only perspectival pictures can depict anything at all. Indeed, it is quite consistent with a good deal of variation in the marks which might, in the right context, depict a given content. But better still, the factors determining what we see a picture as resembling, and hence partially determining what it depicts, are just those factors emphasized by those who take perspective to be a matter of convention. They include, for instance, the nature of the subject's perceptual environment, and the sorts of pictures to which he has previously been exposed. Thus, even given the radical claim, the variety in ways of depicting a given thing is neither incomprehensible nor indicative of some kind of failure. We can understand perspective's special status without denigrating the alternatives. (shrink)

Recent defenses of a priori knowledge can be applied to the idea of conventions in science in order to indicate one important sense in which conventionalism is correctsome elements of physical theory have a unique epistemological status as a functionally a priori part of our physical theory. I will argue that the former a priori should be treated as empirical in a very abstract sense, but still conventional. Though actually coming closer to the Quinean position than recent defenses of (...) a priori knowledge, the picture of science developed here is very different from that developed in Quinean holism in that categories of knowledge can be differentiated. (shrink)

The moral/conventional task has been widely used to study the emergence of moral understanding in children and to explore the deficits in moral understanding in clinical populations. Previous studies have indicated that moral transgressions, particularly those in which a victim is harmed, evoke a signature pattern of responses in the moral/conventional task: they are judged to be serious, generalizable and not authority dependent. Moreover, this signature pattern is held to be pan‐cultural and to emerge early in development. However, (...) almost all the evidence for these claims comes from studies using harmful transgressions of the sort that primary school children might commit in the schoolyard. In a study conducted on the Internet, we used a much wider range of harm transgressions, and found that they do not evoke the signature pattern of responses found in studies using only schoolyard transgressions. Paralleling other recent work, our study provides preliminary grounds for skepticism regarding many conclusions drawn from earlier research using the moral/conventional task. (shrink)

Conventional metaphors such as early bird are interpreted rather fast and efficiently. This is so because they might be stored as lexicalized, non-compositional expressions. In a previous study, employing a maze task, we showed that, after reading metaphors (John is an early bird so he can …), participants took longer and were less accurate in selecting the appropriate word (attend) when it was paired with a literally-related distractor (fly) rather than an unrelated one (cry). This suggests that the literal (...) meaning of conventional metaphors is awakened or made available immediately after their metaphorical interpretation. But does the literal meaning remain available further downstream during sentence comprehension? In two experiments also employing a maze task, we examined whether the awakening effect can be obtained when there is a medium (6 to 8 words) and a large (11 to 13 words) distance between the metaphor and lexical choice. Results indicated that the metaphor awakening effect persists but decreases as word distance increases. An analysis of our data based on a GPT model showed that our maze effects could not be attributed to target predictability. Overall, our results suggest that the literal meaning of a metaphor is accessed and remains available for about three seconds, fading as the sentence unfolds over time. The results support a model of metaphor comprehension that postulates the availability of both literal and metaphoric content in the course of sentence processing. (shrink)

Peter Kivy and Stephen Davies developed an influential and convincing account of what features of music cause listeners to hear it as expressive of emotion. Their view (the resemblance theory) holds that music is expressive of some emotion when it resembles human expressive behaviour. Some features of music, they believe, are expressive of emotion because of conventional associations. In recent years, Kivy has rejected the resemblance theory without adopting an alternative. This essay argues that Kivy has been unwise to (...) abandon the resemblance theory. New and compelling psychological evidence supports the theory. The essay also argues that new psychological evidence indicates that convention makes a smaller contribution to musical expressiveness than Kivy and Davies believe. (shrink)

Kant’s essay Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose differs in deep ways from standard Enlightenment views of human history. Although he agrees with many contemporaries that unsocial sociability can drive human progress, he argues that we know too little about the trends of history to offer either metaphysical defence or empirical vindication of the perfectibility of man or the inevitability of progress. However, as freely acting beings we can contribute to a better future, so have grounds for (...) committing ourselves to human progress even if we cannot guarantee or know that it will continue indefinitely. As Kant sees, it, human progress is better seen as a practical assumption—an Idea of Reason—than as a theoretical claim.Keywords: Cosmopolitanism; Historical trends; Ideas of Reason; Immanuel Kant; Philosophy of history; Optimism; Pessimism; Progress; Unsocial sociability. (shrink)

This article examines the risk and return profiles of stock indices composed of companies meeting environmental, social and governance screening criteria [such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices ] and conventional composite indices of eight Asian countries from 2002 to 2014. The results indicate that there are no significant differences in the returns or risk-adjusted returns between the ESG indices and the composite indices within countries. The results do reveal that the market volatility of the ESG indices is higher (...) than the market volatility of the conventional indices. Market betas of DJSI and ESG equity indices are significantly lower than betas of the composite equity indices. The overall results indicate that the performance of ESG equity indices of many Asian countries is similar to the performance of conventional indices, suggesting that investors can pursue socially responsible investing objectives without a material difference in portfolio performance from conventional investing. (shrink)

This paper falls into two parts. In the first part, I argue that consideration of general indicative conditionals, e.g., sentences like If a donkey brays it is beaten, provides a powerful argument that a pure material implication analysis of indicative if p, q is correct. In the second part I argue, opposing writers like Jackson, that a Gricean style theory of pragmatics can explain the manifest assertability conditions of if p, q in terms of its conventional content – assumed (...) to be merely (p⊃q) – and the conversational implicature contents which utterance of if p, q may gain in certain contexts. I also defend the pragmatic approach against a recent objection by Edgington that appeal to pragmatics cannot explain what we are inclined to say about the believability conditions, as opposed to the assertability conditions, of indicative if p, q. (shrink)

Islamic equity funds are subject to the screening criteria for stock selection imposed by the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. Equities must pass three basic screens: revenue source, business activity, and financial factors to be included in an Islamic fund. However, screening criteria are not universal especially for the financial factors. One can use financial ratios based on either the book-value of total assets or the market-value of equity for screening of stocks. This may not only result in a different portfolio (...) composition but also entail diverse rebalancing and monitoring costs. The performance of 29 Islamic equity indices versus conventional indices from four major international index providers using different Shari’ah screening criteria are analyzed in a single as well as in a multi-equation framework. The use of a multi-equation framework has the added advantage of utilizing the information content of different screening criteria adopted by different index providers. The empirical findings suggest that the difference in screening criteria does not significantly affect the performance of IEIs. Returns deviation, if any, stems from the relative riskiness of the IEI as compared with the relevant benchmark. Work needs to done to streamline the quantitative screening criteria to avoid confusion among the investing public. (shrink)

This essay offers a constructive criticism of Part I of Davis’ Meaning, Expression and Thought. After a brief exposition, in Sect. 2, of the main points of the theory that will concern us, I raise a challenge in Sect. 3 for the characterization of expression that is so central to his program. I argue first of all that a sincere expression of a thought, feeling, or mood shows it. Yet attention to this fact reveals that it does not go without (...) saying how it is possible to show such things as thoughts, feelings or moods; we need an account of how this is possible, and I offer a partial such account in Sect. 4. Second, much of the attraction of Davis’ program depends on its ability to explain how linguistic meaning can be arrived at without covertly presupposing linguistic conventions. This in turn depends, in Davis’ hands, upon the claim that it is possible to express any of a wide range of ideas in the absence of conventions. I argue in Sect. 5 that the account of showing at which we will by then have arrived makes clear that Davis needs, and lacks, an explanation of how it is possible to do this. (shrink)

In this paper I shall first illustrate the variety of uses the concept of "nature" can and does have. Then I shall indicate that the confusing variety is not without rhyme or reason. I shall end by saying a few words about the notion of "progress". This may sound surprising but the notion of "progress" does tie up with what I shall try to say about the contrast between nature and convention.

Increased pressures on agri-food systems have indicated the importance of intermediaries to facilitate sustainability transitions. While producer organizations are acknowledged as intermediaries between individual producers and other food system actors, their role as sustainability transition intermediaries remains understudied. This paper explores the potential of producer organizations as transition intermediaries to support producers in their needs to adopt sustainable production practices. Ten cases of producer organizations in conventional (regime) and organic (niche) vegetable systems in Uruguay were studied qualitatively. Findings show (...) that the classic intermediary roles that producer organizations fulfil in food systems also address the needs of producers in their transition to sustainable food systems. By providing organic inputs, organizing access to output markets, sharing knowledge, and facilitating sustainable production practices, producer organizations support producers within and across regime and niche. Producer organizations mostly function as implicit transition intermediaries, facilitated by their legitimacy among producers, their embeddedness in rural networks, and by refraining from taking a strong normative position. Producer organizations have the potential to be more explicit transition intermediaries, however this position comes with limitations. We provide policy recommendations to optimize the transition intermediary potential of producer organizations in their facilitation towards sustainable food systems. (shrink)

Prominent theories in moral psychology maintain that a core aspect of moral competence is the ability to distinguish moral norms, which derive from universal principles of justice and fairness, from conventional norms, which are contingent on a specific group consensus. The present study investigated the psychological bases of the moral-conventional distinction by manipulating the framing of the test question, the authority’s license, and the historical context. Participants evaluated moral and conventional transgressions by answering an ‘okay for you’ (...) test question (i.e., judging according to their opinion) or an ‘okay in context’ test question (i.e., judging by imagining being a contemporary of the story protagonist). In evaluating moral transgressions that happened in a distant context or with the authority’s license, most of the participants condemned the violations when responding to the ‘okay for you’ test question, but did not do so when responding to the ‘okay in context’ test question. A similar effect of the question framing was found also on scenarios presenting conventional violations suggesting that subtle changes in the framing of the test question can influence people’s evaluations of both moral and conventional prototypical transgressions. We propose that these effects indicate the presence of moral and conventional construals of social actions that are highly flexible and context-sensitive. (shrink)

There are reasons to believe that conventional obligations are impossible. Thus, it could be argued that for me to have an obligation to Φ in virtue of the fact that a convention so requires, it must be the case that I have a convention-independent obligation to do something else such that, given the existence of the convention, Φing is a way of doing just that. But, then, my obligation to Φ would not really be conventional at all. On (...) closer inspection, so-called conventional obligations turn out to be no more than a specification of what our nonconventional obligations require given the circumstances. In this paper, I shall argue that contra to what this argument suggests, there can be genuinely conventional obligations. To do so, I develop a second-personal account of conventional obligations, according to which obligations are grounded by conventions in virtue of an explanation that does not follow the indicated pattern. (shrink)

We sometimes have reasons to perform actions due to what they would communicate. Those who have discussed such reasons have understood what an action ‘communicates’ as what it conventionally expresses. Brennan and Jaworski argue that when a convention ensures that expressing the appropriate thing would be costly, we should change or flout the convention. I argue that what really matters is often what attitudes we indicate rather than conventionally express, using social science to show that indicating our attitudes is often (...) unavoidably costly, and sometimes worth the cost. I use this account to defend communicative arguments for egalitarian distributive policies. (shrink)

I defend the view that the truth conditions of the ordinary indicative conditional are those of the material conditional. This is done via a discussion of assertability and by appeal to conventional implicature rather than conversational implicature.

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We introduce an epistemic theory of truth according to which the same rational degree of belief is assigned to Tr(. It is shown that if epistemic probability measures are only demanded to be finitely additive (but not necessarily σ-additive), then such a theory is consistent even for object languages that contain their own truth predicate. As the proof of this result indicates, the theory can also be interpreted as deriving from a quantitative version of the Revision Theory of Truth.

Grice argues that indicative conditionals ‘if p then q’ have conventional, truth conditional meaning according to the material conditional ‘p  q’. In order to explain away the known paradoxes with this interpretation, he distinguishes between truth conditions and assertion conditions, attempting to demonstrate that the assumed connection between ‘p’ and ‘q’ (the Indirectness Condition) is a conversational implicature; hence a matter only relevant for the assertion conditions of a conditional. This paper argues that Grice fails to demonstrate i) (...) that the Indirectness Condition is cancellable, hence a conversational implicature, ii) that the Indirectness Condition is not part of the conventional, truth-relevant meaning of ‘if’, and accordingly, iii) semantic or logical equivalence between indicative and material conditionals. (shrink)

As part of his recent study of ‘Narration and allusion in Archaic Greek Art’, Professor A. M. Snodgrass has cause to treat of the famous Attic black-figure vase which depicts Circe handing a cup containing her sinister brew to one of Odysseus’ sailors. She is stirring it with her wand the while, and yet this sailor, and three companions besides, have already been transformed into various animals. Professor Snodgrass has no difficulty in explaining the apparent simultaneity of separate events here (...) and elsewhere on this vase-painting as relating to what he calls the ‘synoptic’ technique of early Greek Art, that familiar device whereby several successive episodes in a narrative are presented together within the same picture. And he is inclined towards a similar line of explanation as regards the partial transformation of Odysseus’ ἑταῖροι: the artist ‘wished to express the passage of time by indicating a half-way stage in the transformation’. (shrink)

Much contemporary scholarship on ziran and wuwei views these concepts, which are often coupled, as being 1) anti-intention, effort, purpose, and self-consciousness; 2) indicative of a distinct type of ethics and/or morality; and 3) a rejection of following custom and convention. This paper will draw largely on the philosophy of Guo Xiang to demonstrate that these widely agreed upon avenues of interpretation are limited and run contrary to other more nuanced readings of ziran and wuwei. I argue that ziran and (...) wuwei are better appreciated as speaking to attitudes, that they should be understood in terms of degrees rather than categories, and that the Laozi and Zhuangzi offer them as advice for ways of reflecting—they are not standardizable ethical rules. In this way, we can see how ziran and wuwei include intention and effort, are anti (most forms of) ethics and morality, and are inherently intertwined with customs and convention. (shrink)

Based on a sample of 54 Islamic indices over the period 2007–2014, we investigate the effect of Shariah board members' educational background on Islamic indices' risk and return characteristics via the screening criteria. Using a capital asset pricing model benchmark analysis, we assess the sensitivity of Islamic indices to their conventional peers in terms of beta and derive a measure of return (Jensen's alpha). First, we observe that the higher the number of members in common among the boards, the (...) higher the risk–return profile of Islamic indices. Second, commonalities among board members lead to standardization of the screening criteria and to similar Islamic indices' performance. Third, we show that different betas across providers depend on the screening criteria, while the economic educational background of board members affects performance in terms of Jensen's alpha. Our study aims at contributing to the governance literature related to board composition and its importance as a possible driver of performance. In addition, given the impressive growth that Islamic finance has experienced during the last decade, this topic is of great interest to the asset management industry. (shrink)

Organizations increasingly use technology-mediated interviews. However, only limited research is available concerning the comparability of different interview media and most of the available studies stem from a time when technology-mediated interviews were less common than in the present time. In an experiment using simulated selection interviews, we compared traditional face-to-face (FTF) interviews with telephone and videoconference interviews to determine whether ratings of interviewees’ performance, their perceptions of the interview, or their strain and anxiety are affected by the type of interview. (...) Before participating in the actual interview, participants had a more positive view of FTF interviews compared to technology-mediated interviews. However, fairness perceptions did not differ anymore after the interview. Furthermore, there were no differences between the three interview media concerning psychological and physiological indicators of strain or interview anxiety. Nevertheless, ratings of interviewees’ performance were lower in the technology-mediated interviews than in FTF interviews. Thus, differences between different interview media can still be found nowadays even though most applicants are much more familiar with technology-mediated communication than in the past. The results show that organizations should take this into account and therefore avoid using different interview media when they interview different applicants for the same job opening. (shrink)

In classifications of vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary size and depth have often been separately conceptualized (Schmitt, 2014). Although size and depth are known to be substantially correlated, it is not clear whether they are a single construct or two separate components of vocabulary knowledge (Yanagisawa & Webb, 2020). This issue has not been addressed extensively in the literature and can be better examined using structural equation modeling (SEM), with measurement error modeled separately from the construct of interest. The current study reports (...) on conventional and Bayesian SEM approaches (e.g., Muthén & Asparouhov, 2012) to examine the factor structure of the size and depth of second language vocabulary knowledge of Japanese adult learners of English. A total of 255 participants took five vocabulary tests. One test was designed to measure vocabulary size in terms of the number of words known, while the remaining four were designed to measure vocabulary depth in terms of word association, polysemy, and collocation. All tests used a multiple-choice format. The size test was divided into three subtests according to word frequency. Results from conventional and Bayesian SEM show that a correlated two-factor model of size and depth with three and four indicators, respectively, fit better than a single-factor model of size and depth. In the two-factor model, vocabulary size and depth were strongly correlated (r =.945 for conventional SEM and.943 for Bayesian SEM with cross loadings), but they were distinct. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Restoration skills training is a mindfulness-based course in which participants draw support from a natural practice setting while they learn to meditate. Well-established conventional mindfulness training can improve psychological functioning but many perceive it as demanding and fail to sustain practice habits. Applying non-inferiority logic, previous research indicated that ReST overcomes compliance problems without compromising the benefits gained over 5 weeks’ training. This article applies similar logic in a 6-month follow-up. Of 97 contacted ReST and CMT course completers, 68 (...) responded and 29 were included with multiple imputation data. The online survey included questions about their psychological functioning in three domains and the forms and frequencies with which they had continued to practice mindfulness after the course. Former ReST participants continued, on average, to show higher dispositional mindfulness and fewer cognitive lapses compared to pre-course ratings. Improved psychological functioning in one or more domains was demonstrated by 35%, as determined by a reliable change index. Again, analyses detected no indications of any substantive disadvantages compared to the more demanding, established CMT approach. Compared to the CMT group, more ReST participants had also continued to practice at least occasionally. Continued practice was linked to sustained improvements for ReST but not clearly so for CMT. ReST participants thus continued to use the skills and sustained the improvements in psychological functioning that they had gained in the course, further supporting the utility of ReST as a health intervention. (shrink)

Processes of globalization and decentralization are changing the relationship among statistical knowledge production, nation, and state. This article explores these changes through a comparison of five projects to design and implement indicators of sustainable development to replace conventional measures of economic welfare and social demographics—community sustainability indicators, Metropatterns, greening the gross domestic product, the Living Planet Index, and standardized accounting rules for inventorying greenhouse gas emissions. Drawing on a coproductionist idiom, the article argues that these projects constitute experiments in (...) modifying the civic epistemologies of democratic societies, transforming not only knowledge production but also political identities, relationships, and institutions. (shrink)

Socially responsible investment is a rapidly emerging phenomenon within the field of personal investment. However, the factors that lead investors to choose socially responsible investment products are not well understood, especially in an Australian context. This study provides a comparative examination of conventional and socially responsible investors, with the aim of identifying such factors. A total of 55 conventional investors and 54 ethical investors participated in the study by completing mailed questionnaires about their investment and general behaviour and (...) their attitudes and beliefs. Results indicated some important differences between socially responsible and conventional investors in their beliefs of the importance of ethical issues, their investment decision-making style, and their perceptions of moral intensity. These results support the notion that socially responsible investors differ in critical ways to conventional investors, and are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

In this paper we use an experimental approach to investigate how linguistic conventions can emerge in a society without explicit agreement. As a starting point we consider the signaling game introduced by Lewis. We find that in experimental settings, small groups can quickly develop conventions of signal meaning in these games. We also investigate versions of the game where the theoretical literature indicates that meaning will be less likely to arise---when there are more than two states for actors to transfer (...) meaning about and when some states are more likely than others. In these cases, we find that actors are less likely to arrive at strategies where signals have clear conventional meaning. We conclude with a proposal for extending the use of the methodology of experimental economics in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

This study is an attempt to construct a quantitative link for international regimes with global leadership. The country's willingness to lead in solving global issues as the first mover in the formation of an international regime is measured and characterized by analyzing their ratification behavior in multilateral conventions deposited to the United Nations which shape of the global community. For this purpose, a set of quantitative indicators, the Index of Global Leadership Willingness and the Global Support Index, was defined and (...) calculated for each country based on its actual ratification year data for 120 multilateral conventions covering global issues such as peace and security, environment, commerce, communication, intellectual property protection, human rights, and labor. By proposing a framework of global leadership analysis, the study seeks to provide an empirical testing of the transformation of global governance towards cooperation without hegemony paradigm. The paper analyses changes in the leadership willingness indices of selected country groups, such as the G3, G7/8, and G20, over the century and finds that the will to drive the international agenda of these groups of leaders is in decline. Moreover, our study provides evidence to argue that our current world is actually without consistent global leadership across domains of the world affairs. Although several countries still show visible leadership in specific policy domains, such as environment and intellectual property, neither the G7/8 nor the G20 was playing a comparable role to those performed by the G3 a hundred years ago. (shrink)

The subject of general utterances (al-lafdh al-āmm) being certain or presumptive in their usage as an indication to all their members is controversial amongst the methodists. Ḥanafī methodists suggest that the indication of general utterances to all of their members as certain and unless they are specified with a certain evidence, they can’t be specified with a presumptive evidence. Like the ḥanafī methodists, the ẓāhirī methodists also suggest that the general utterance is certain indicant for all of its members and (...) can be specified only with another evidence in the same rank. The main difference between the two groups focuses on whether al-khabar al-wāhid (single prophetic narration) is a certain or a presumptive evidence in terms of certitude. According to ḥanafīs, al-khabar al-wāhid is a presumptive evidence and unless the general utterances in Qur’ān are specified initially with another certain evidence, they can’t be specified with al-khabar al-wāhid. However, al-khabar al-wāhid is a certain evidence according to ẓāhirīs and it can specify general utterances in Qur’ān. In this study, the comparison of the views of the methodists of two schools regarding the indication of general utterances in Quran and their specification (takhsīs) with al-akhbar al-wāhid is made and their influence on Islamic Law regulations is studied afterwards. In this study, the two sect’s approaches are compared over the provision of reading al-Fatehah during prayer, the number of milk sucking to establish the kinship, the rights of women divorced with bain talaq and the execution of the death penalty in the Harem region.Summary: The purpose of this study is to try to demonstrate that an assertion in the Ph.D. thesis, The History and Doctrine of Ẓāhirī Madhhab, completed by Amr Osman in 2010 is incorrect. It can be summarized that in his study, Amr Osman claims that the affiliation of the schools to ahl-al-hadith and ahl-al-ra’y in conventional classification is wrong. According to him, contrary to what is known, the School of Ẓāhiriyya is closer to School of Ḥanafiyya rather than schools coming out of ahl-al-hadith. In this study, one of the arguments that he relied on to support his claim is studied in order to prove that his claim was inaccurate. Osman claims that ẓāhirīs are closer to ḥanifīs, based on the view that in both schools the general utterances embrace all of their members in their usage and they are a certain indicant to all of their members. At this stage, although the views of both schools are common, the ḥanifīs don’t accept the idea that the general statements of Qur’ān can be established with al-khabar-al-wāhid, those which they acknowledge as presumptive as of certitude. However, according to the ẓāhirīs, the certitude of al-khabar al-wāhid is as precise as the narrated report, so it can specify the general statements of Qur’ān which are in equal power. The related dispute between the schools has been reflected on many Islamic law regulations. Some of them are:1. Ḥanafīs state that the correct Quranic prayer may be performed by reading any or a few verses of the Qur’ān in prayer, which is a practice based on the verse “Read what you can read from the Qur’ān now”. On the other hand, the ẓāhirīs have established the related order based on the report “There is no prayer without reading Umm Al-Quran (Surah al-Fatehah)” and it is obligatory (fardh) to read Surah al-Fatehah in prayers.2. Because that the terms milk-mother and milk sister are in general form in the verse “It is forbidden to you to marry these people...Your milk-mothers who nursed you, your milk-sisters who nursed you” the ḥanafīs clarify that it is sufficient for a child to breastfeed only one time in order to form a milk-kinship. They do not act in accordance with the solitary report (al-khabar-al-wāhids) which indicate that the milk kinship specifying the verse shall only be formed with at least three or five breastfeeding. However, one of the ẓāhirīs, Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, has specified the verse with the report indicating that the kinship shall not be formed with less than three breastfeeding by the child, and Ibn Ḥazm has specified it with Salim hadith which indicates that the kinship shall be formed with five breastfeeding.3. According to ḥanafīs, there is an alimony and inhabiting right of the widow woman to be procured by the husband within the period of delay who divorced her either with irreversible divorce (talāq al-bāin) or reversible divorce (talāq al-ric‘ī) according to the generalization of the verse “Give shelter to them (the women you have divorced) in some part of your household within your capacity.” They did not act with the report of Fātima binti Qays, who specified the generalization of the verse. On the other hand, the ẓāhirīs recognize the abovementioned rights only for the women who got divorced with irreversible divorce or the ones who are pregnant, specifying the verse with the report indicating that His Holiness the Prophet does not grant alimony and inhabiting to the woman who was divorced with reversible divorce.4. According to ḥanafīs, the criminal who committed a crime that would require a death penalty and took refuge in the Harem region could not be executed while in Ḥarem, according to the common statement of the verse, “Whoever enters there, will be safe.” Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, one of the ẓāhirīs has specified the verse with the report indicating that His Holiness the Prophet has authorized the execution of the sentence to Ibn Khattal in Ḥarem on the day of the conquering of Mecca and he states that the death sentence can be executed wherever the criminal is caught, even if it is inside the Harem. Ibn Ḥazm shares the same view with ḥanafīs regarding the provision of this issue. However, the reason for his opinion stems from the fact that the report about Ibn Khattal was an event specific to that day. As it is seen, even though the ḥanefīs and ẓāhirīs share the same opinion about the general utterances being a certain indicant to all their members, they have disagreements upon the argument about the general utterances of Quran being specified by al-khabar al-wāhid and many Islamic Law regulations have been issued by these schools based on such disagreements. According to us, in the final analysis, Amr Osman’s claim must be met with caution. (shrink)

Refusal is considered a face-threatening act (FTA), since it contradicts the inviter’s expectations. In the case of Japanese, native speakers (NS) are known to prefer to leave sentences unfinished for a conventional indirect refusal. Successful comprehension of this indirect refusal depends on whether the addressee is fully conventionalized to the preference for syntactic unfinishedness so that they can identify the true intention of the refusal. Then, non-native speakers (NNS) who are not fully accustomed to the convention may be confused (...) by the indirect style. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) of electroencephalography in an attempt to differentiate the neural substrates for perceiving unfinished sentences in a conventionalized indirect refusal as an FTA between NS and NNS, in terms of the unfinishedness and indirectness of the critical sentence. In addition, we examined the effects of individual differences in mentalization, or the theory of mind, which refers to the ability to infer the mental states of others. We found several different ERP effects for these refusals between NS and NNS. NNS induced stronger P600 effects for the unfinishedness of the refusal sentences, suggesting their perceived syntactic anomaly. This was not evoked in NS. NNS also revealed the effects of N400 and P300 for the indirectness of refusal sentences, which can be interpreted as their increased processing load for pragmatic processing in the inexperienced contextual flow. We further found that the NNS’s individual mentalizing ability correlates with the effect of N400 mentioned above, indicating that lower mentalizers evoke higher N400 for indirect refusal. NS, on the contrary, did not yield these effects reflecting the increased pragmatic processing load. Instead, they evoked earlier ERPs of early posterior negativity (EPN) and P200, both of which are known as indices of emotional processing, for finished sentences of refusal than for unfinished ones. We interpreted these effects as a NS’s dispreference for finished sentences to realize an FTA, given that unfinished sentences are considered more polite and more conventionalized in Japanese social encounters. Overall, these findings provide evidence that a syntactic anomaly inherent in a cultural convention as well as individual mentalizing ability plays an important role in understanding an indirect speech act of face-threatening refusal. (shrink)

The existing differential item functioning detection approaches relying on item difficulty or item discrimination are limited for understanding the associates of DIF items, and consequently, DIF items were conventionally either deleted or ignored. Given the importance of minimizing DIF items in test construction, teachers or testing practitioners need more information regarding possible associates of DIF items. Using an example of a teacher-made mathematics achievement test, this study aimed to examine how the Poly-BW indices contributed to the properties of gender-related DIF (...) items. Data from a 34-item mathematics achievement test that involved 1,439 seventh-grade students from Taiwan showed that the differences of the defenselessness and power indices between men and women served as salient predictors of the DIF measures estimated by the Poly Simultaneous Item Bias Test procedure and with satisfactory accuracy of hit rates. Items with relatively large defenselessness for men were likely to present male-favoring DIFs, whereas items with relatively large power for men were likely to present female-favoring DIFs. The Poly-BW indices yielded directions for modifying items for teachers in practice. (shrink)

Philosophy and its descendents in the behavioral sciences have traditionally divided incentives into those that are sought and those that are avoided. Positive incentives are held to be both attractive and memorable because of the direct effects of pleasure. Negative incentives are held to be unattractive but still memorable (the problem of pain) because they force unpleasant emotions on an individual by an unmotivated process, either a hardwired response (unconditioned response) or one substituted by association (conditioned response). Negative incentives are (...) divided into those that are always avoided and those that are avoided only by higher mental processes—archetypically the passions, which are also thought of as hardwired or conditioned. Newer dichotomies within the negative have been proposed, hinging on whether a negative incentive is nevertheless sought (“wanted but not liked”) or on an incentive's being negative only because it is confining (the product of “rule worship”). The newer dichotomies have lacked motivational explanations, and there is reason to question conditioning in the motivational mechanism for the older ones.

Both experimental findings and the examination of common experience indicate that even the most aversive experiences, such as pain and panic, do not prevail in reflex fashion, but because of an urge to attend to them. The well-established hyperbolic curve in which prospective rewards are discounted implies a mechanism for such an urge, as well as for the “lower” incentives in the other dichotomies. The properties of these lower incentives are predicted by particular durations of temporary preferences on a continuum that stretches from fractions of a second to years. (shrink)

To study the different mechanisms of understanding figurative language in a speaker’s native language and their second language, this study investigated how scientific metaphors in Chinese and English are electrophysiologically processed via event-related potential experimentation. Compared with the metaphors from daily life or in literary works, scientific metaphors tend to involve both a more complicated context structure and a distinct knowledge-inferencing process. During the N400 time window, English scientific metaphors elicited more negative N400s than Chinese ones at the parietal region. (...) In the late positive component time window, English scientific metaphors elicited less positive LPCs than Chinese ones at the parietal region, and larger late negativities encompassing smaller areas of the brain. The findings might indicate that for late unbalanced bilingual speakers, L2 scientific metaphor comprehension requires more effort in information retrieval or access to the non-literal route. Altogether, the possible findings are that non-native and non-dominant language processing involves decreased automaticity of cognitive mechanisms, and decreased sensitivity to the levels of conventionality of metaphoric meanings. (shrink)

This research investigates the growing impact of virtual currencies, with a specific focus on how Bitcoin, a leading digital currency, influences gold prices. It delves into the evolving role of Bitcoin in the traditional financial sphere, examining its effect on gold, a classical asset and a benchmark of economic stability. Through this study, we aim to understand the nuances of this unique interaction and its implications for the broader financial landscape. This paper presents an in-depth case study that examines the (...) correlations and potential causal relationships between the volatility in virtual currency markets and gold price fluctuations, a traditional indicator of economic stability and a renowned safe-haven asset, with a particular focus on the period encompassing the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a range of econometric methods, including time-series analysis and the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model, this research analyzes historical price data from the past decade, with a special emphasis on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic alongside other key geopolitical events and macroeconomic factors, to elucidate the interplay between these distinct asset classes. (shrink)

Comparing preferences for sport participation between alternative and conventional sports, this article exhibits some differences across sport contexts, as well as across gender and class. However, the main finding is the major similarities of preferences and dominating social groups across the contexts. This indicates that a similar habitus is in play in the alternative context as in the conventional one, and that "real alternatives" are merely to occur inside established frames of sport provision.

According to a common account, grammatical mood is merely a conventional indicator of force with no semantic significance. Focusing on indicatives, interrogatives and imperatives, I advance two reasons to reject this “force treatment” of mood. First, it can be shown that the mood of a subordinate clause can have semantic significance that affects the sense of a sentence in which it is embedded—which the force treatment cannot accommodate. Second, the speech acts of asserting, asking and ordering have something in (...) common even when they do not involve the same descriptive content, namely, the commitment that is present when one speaks seriously for oneself. The force treatment cannot accommodate the fact that when we subtract this positive force from the act, what we are left with is not bare descriptive content, but the mere expression of a proposition, question or order (as appropriate). I conclude by suggesting that the sense of a mood indicator is a function from descriptive content to a proposition, question or order. (shrink)

I defend a semantic theory of quotation marks, according to which these are ambiguous, as they have several different acceptations involving corresponding different conventional indications. In particular, in allusion (“mixed”) uses, the corresponding conventional indication is one with an adverbial or prepositional content, roughly equivalent to “using the quoted expression or an appropriate version of it”. And in “scare” uses, the corresponding conventional indication is that the enclosed expression should be used not plainly but in some (...) broadly speaking distanced way, or that it is being so used by the utterer. I also defend this view against some alternative views on which allusion and distance indications are to be seen as pragmatically conveyed. In particular, I consider several views that attempt to explain especially allusion and distance indications as pragmatic suggestions generated from a meager conventional basis, and I argue that they cannot accommodate a number of linguistic phenomena and reflectively supported theses about the use of quotation marks. I lay special emphasis on the fact that the main pragmatic theories fail to pass an extremely plausible test for challenges to polysemic accounts of an expression. (shrink)

Quotation marks are ambiguous, although the conventional rules that govern their different uses are similar in that they contain quantifications over quotable expressions. Pure uses are governed by a simple rule: by enclosing any expression within quotation marks one gets a singular term, the quotation, that stands for the enclosed expression. Impure uses are far less simple. In a series of uses the quotation marks conventionally indicate that (part of) the enclosed expression is a contextually appropriate version of expressions (...) uttered by some relevant agent. When the quotation marks have this meaning, it is tempting to think of them as contributing that indication to the truth-conditional content of the utterance. I adopt a cautious attitude towards this hypothesis, for the evidence in its favor is inconclusive. In other uses the quotation marks conventionally indicate that the enclosed expression should be used not “plainly” but in some broadly speaking “distanced” way, or that it is being so used by the utterer, and typically context makes clear the exact nature of the “distance” at stake. In these cases the quotation marks do not even appear to contribute that indication to the truth-conditional content of the utterance. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom has it that chaotic behavior is either strongly suppressed or absent in quantum models. Indeed, some researchers have concluded that these considerations serve to undermine the correspondence principle, thereby raising serious doubts about the adequacy of quantum mechanics. Thus, the quantum chaos question is a prime subject for philosophical analysis. The most significant reasons given for the absence or suppression of chaotic behavior in quantum models are the linearity of Schrödinger’s equation and the unitarity of the time-evolution (...) described by that equation. Both are shown in this essay to be irrelevant by demonstrating that the crucial feature for chaos is the nonseparability of the Hamiltonian. That demonstration indicates that quantum chaos is likely to be exhibited in models of open quantum systems. A measure for probing such models for chaotic behavior is developed, and then used to show that quantum mechanics has chaotic models for systems having a continuous energy spectrum. The prospects of this result for vindicating the correspondence principle (or the motivation behind it, at least) are then briefly examined. (shrink)

Power indices are commonly required to assign at least as much power to a player endowed with some given voting weight as to any player of the same game with smaller weight. This local monotonicity and a related global property however are frequently and for good reasons violated when indices take account of a priori unions amongst subsets of players (reflecting, e.g., ideological proximity). This paper introduces adaptations of the conventional monotonicity notions that are suitable for voting games with (...) an exogenous coalition structure. A taxonomy of old and new monotonicity concepts is provided, and different coalitional versions of the Banzhaf and Shapley–Shubik power indices are compared accordingly. (shrink)

Courtship conventions are premised on widespread and deeply held cultural beliefs that men and women need and want different things from their romantic relationships. Yet queer relationships challenge the notion of distinct gendered behaviors in romantic relationships, and queer people often explicitly seek to undermine conventional relationship practices. Using interview data from 40 LGBTQ-identified respondents, I examine how queer people negotiate culturally dominant gendered dating and courtship practices. My findings show that, rather than replicate heterosexual norms, respondents actively reject (...) them, seeking new and more egalitarian ways of building romantic relationships. Significantly, the narratives drawn on to justify egalitarian dating practices are similar to those used in their committed relationships. Respondents emphasized egalitarian, flexible, and non-gendered care work in committed relationships, indicating that how people date may potentially set the stage for the dynamics in their relationships. The importance placed on these alternative norms in queer communities, however, contradicts respondents’ assertions that they can create relationships free from cultural constraints, demonstrating how emerging norms can breed their own pressures for conformity. (shrink)

Indicates that post-modernist and mainstream psychologists who accept social constructionist arguments that posit a social context within which to describe human thought, emotion, and language as discourse conventions, in fact, support context as a class of events that can neither be opposed nor superseded. When scientific power-positioning is attributed to psychologists, while social contextualism is walled off from the same accusation, power over categories results. The elimination of dualities of mind and body and of thought and language, and a resulting (...) inability of the individual to assign meanings or think about emotions, isolates emotion and thought from logic and meaning. It is argued that the assumption that political context surrounds all psychological thinking suspends a host of contraries; and that the egalitarian counterclaim of post-modernists is contradicted by the very political power matrix within which it is stated. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)