Threshold- and signal-detection-based models have dominated theorizing about recognition memory. Building upon these theoretical frameworks, we have argued for a dual-process model in which conscious recollection and familiarity contribute to memory performance. In the current paper we assessed several memory models by examining the effects of levels of processing and the number of presentations on recognition memory receiver operating characteristics . In general, when the ROCs were plotted in probability space they exhibited an inverted U shape; however, when they were (...) plotted inzspace they exhibited a U shape. An examination of the ROCs showed that the dual-process model could account for the observed ROCs, but that models based solely on either threshold or signal-detection processes failed to provide a sufficient account of the data. Furthermore, an examination of subjects' introspective reports using the remember/know procedure showed that subjects were aware of recollection and familiarity and were able to consistently report on their occurrence. The remember/know data were used to accurately predict the shapes of the ROCs, and estimates of recollection and familiarity derived from the ROC data mirrored the subjective reports of these processes. (shrink)

Evidence has accumulated that rod activation under mesopic and scotopic light levels alters visual perception and performance. Here we review the most recent developments in the measurement of rod and cone contributions to mesopic color perception and temporal processing, with a focus on data measured using the four-primary photostimulator method that independently controls rod and cone excitations. We discuss the findings in the context of rod inputs to the three primary retinogeniculate pathways to understand rod contributions to mesopic vision. Additionally, (...) we present evidence that hue perception is possible under scotopic, pure rod-mediated conditions that involves cortical mechanisms. (shrink)

Vagueness is the study of concepts that admit borderline cases. The epistemology of vagueness concerns attitudes we should have towards propositions we know to be borderline. On this basis Andrew Bacon develops a new theory of vagueness in which vagueness is fundamentally a property of propositions, explicated in terms of its role in thought.

Douglas Hartree and Hilleth Thomas were graduate students together at Cambridge University in the mid-1920s. Each developed an important approximation method to calculate the electronic structure of atoms. Each went on to make significant contributions to numerical analysis and to the development of scientific computing. Their early efforts were fused in the mid-1960s with the development of an approach to the many-particle problem in quantum mechanics called density functional theory. This paper discusses the experiences which led Hartree and Thomas to (...) their approximations, outlines the similarities in their subsequent careers, and highlights the essential role their work played in the foundational papers of modern density functional theory. (shrink)

One objection to the principle of public reason is that since there is room for reasonable disagreement about distributive justice as well as about human flourishing, the requirement of reasonable acceptability rules out redistribution as well as perfectionism. In response, some justificatory liberals have invoked the argument from higher-order unanimity, or nested inclusiveness. If it is not reasonable to reject having some system of property rights, and if redistribution is just the enforcement of a different set of property rights, redistribution (...) is legitimate if chosen democratically. This article explores two problems with this response. First, there are different ways to describe the set of possible policies, and so different ways to specify the noncoercive default that obtains in the absence of conclusive justification. Second, if the coercive exercise of political power must be conclusively justified, policies that are more coercive ought to require conclusive justification as against policies that are less coercive. These problems about the baseline with respect to which we require public justification raise the question of how we measure coercion, and whether or in what sense there is a presumption against coercion. The article distinguishes and argues against three such presumptions. (shrink)

Detailed studies of people who have experienced the Capgras delusion (the delusion that certain other people, usually close relatives, have been replaced by impostors) have led to advances in constructing an account which can deal with the basic symptomatology, testing alternative possibilities, generating and testing non‐trivial predictions, and broadening the scope of the basic account to encompass other delusions. This paper outlines these developments. It uses them to explore implications for understanding the formation and maintenance of beliefs, and to discuss (...) basic principles of what has come to be known as cognitive neuropsychiatry. (shrink)

Abraham Roth argues that to accept a promise is to intend the performance of the promised action. I argue that this proposal runs into trouble because it makes it hard to explain how promises provide reasons for the performance of the promised action. Then, I ask whether we might fill the gap by saying that a promisor becomes entitled to the reasons for which her promise is accepted. I argue that this fix would implausibly shrink the class of binding promises (...) and suggest that similar difficulties may arise for any theory that casts promises as an exercise of shared agency. (shrink)

The techniques that some large multinational corporations use to reduce their tax liability have come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years, alongside governmental investigations and international commitments aimed at curbing opportunities for tax avoidance. Although discussion of tax avoidance activities, and their regulatory responses, is often conducted with reference to moral concepts, philosophical analysis of the ethics of multinational tax avoidance remains limited. In particular, the virtue ethics tradition that emphasises the agent and the performance of specific roles has (...) not been considered in detail. This paper examines how the contemporary virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre can be applied to the issue of multinational tax avoidance, and considers the role that accountants play in these activities. It argues, firstly, that MacIntyre’s approach provides a more useful philosophical analysis of the issue and, secondly, that the main parties involved are likely to agree with the main tenets of this approach. The paper also contributes by reconceptualising, using MacIntyre’s scheme, the issue of tax avoidance in relation to Donald Cressey’s ‘fraud triangle’. (shrink)

In an important piece of work Derek Parfit distinguishes two different forms of egalitarianism, ‘Deontic’ and ‘Telic’. He contrasts these with what he calls the Priority View, which is not strictly a form of egalitarianism at all, since it is not essentially concerned with how well off people are relative to each other. His main aim is to generate an adequate taxonomy of the positions available, but in the process he draws attention to some of the different problems they face. (...) I shall argue that there are forms of egalitarianism overlooked by Parfit which avoid the problems encountered by Deontic and Telic Egalitarians. (shrink)

Within our chapter, we consider the divide between theorists and activists within the nonhuman animal movement. We consider the recent reflections on the successes and failures of the movement before arguing that instead of a methodological reason that perhaps the source of the movement’s overall lack of success is the result of this theory/practice gulf. In the first part of the chapter we consider how both theory and practice must be linked together in order for the nonhuman movement to become (...) more effective, and argue that activists ought to ground their action more than currently occurs while theorists must focus more on actual, practical ways to aid nonhuman animals while also actively partake in action themselves. In the second part we consider this approach in regard to anthropocentrism and the poorly explored intersection between interspecies ethics and the ethics of war and self-defence. We argue that with the former, anthropocentrism when understood correctly not only results in problems for the movement that need to be confronted but that rejecting anthropocentrism has important implications on theoretical and practical issues, such as intervention. With the latter, we argue that questions concerning direct action and the moral permissibility of using violence to protect nonhuman animals from human oppression cannot be answered within interspecies ethics alone. It is necessary to make use of a more sophisticated and accurate terminology, which can only be found in the ethics of war and self-defence literature. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way many people live their lives. The increasing amount of time spent indoors and isolated during periods of lockdown has been accompanied by an increase in the time people spend playing video games. One such game which soared in popularity during the early stages of the pandemic was Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Through semi-structured interviews with players, and using a theory-informed qualitative analysis, we document and examine players’ motivations and experiences playing Animal Crossing: New (...) Horizons during the pandemic. Findings suggest that playing the game helped satisfy various psychological needs—autonomy, relatedness, and competence—as described by Self-Determination Theory. Conversely, players stopped playing the game when they found that their psychological needs were thwarted or better met through other activities. Our findings offer support that video games can offer psychological relief in stressful contexts by providing opportunities for people to satisfy key psychological needs. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

In this book about metaphysics the author defends a realistic view of universals, characterizing the notion of universal by considering language and logic, the idea of possibility, hierarchies of universals, and causation. He argues that neither language nor logic is a reliable guide to the nature of reality and that basic universals are the fundamental type of universal and are central to causation. All assertions and predications about the natural world are ultimately founded on these basic universals. A distinction is (...) drawn between unified particulars and arbitrary particulars ; unified particulars are the terms of causal relations and thus the real constituents of the world. The world is not made up of events but of unified particulars and basic universals. (shrink)

Evans’ 1968 ANALOGY system was the first computer model of analogy. This paper demonstrates that the structure mapping model of analogy, when combined with high‐level visual processing and qualitative representations, can solve the same kinds of geometric analogy problems as were solved by ANALOGY. Importantly, the bulk of the computations are not particular to the model of this task but are general purpose: We use our existing sketch understanding system, CogSketch, to compute visual structure that is used by our existing (...) analogical matcher, Structure Mapping Engine (SME). We show how SME can be used to facilitate high‐level visual matching, proposing a role for structural alignment in mental rotation. We show how second‐order analogies over differences computed via analogies between pictures provide a more elegant model of the geometric analogy task. We compare our model against human data on a set of problems, showing that the model aligns well with both the answers chosen by people and the reaction times required to choose the answers. (shrink)

This Special Issue commemorates the 60th anniversary of Business & Society with nine rigorous literature reviews that address important societal problems and provide opportunities for theory development in the business and society field; in this introduction we present an overview of the Special Issue. With the theme “Building on Its Past,” the nine articles address a host of contemporary issues, including climate change, wicked problems, business and human rights, human health, certifications standards, the governance of artificial intelligence, stakeholder engagement, stakeholder (...) theory, and corporate political activity. Together, these reviews offer a wealth of suggested themes, theories and approaches that can drive our research forward for the next decades in business and society research and practice. Using the lens of a miner-prospector continuum to categorize the diversity of articles within this special issue, a common theme emerges across the portfolio of reviews: they all call for a more systemic and integrative perspective toward studying the complex interactions that link business and society actors and issues. Building on these findings, we encourage future scholars to fill long-standing researched gaps through a more open systems approach, which supports both contextually sensitive and multi-level and multi-disciplinary approaches to address grand societal challenges. We conclude with specific suggestions as to how business and society scholars might use an open systems approach, including embracing methodologies to address complex causal pathways, theorizing with a view towards spanning external and internal elements of an organization, and reflecting on the temporal and spatial dynamics of complex systems. (shrink)

The contributors to _Somaesthetics and Sport_ explore our embodied experiences of watching and playing sport, including sport’s beauty; the place of exercise in our sense of living a good life; and how we cope with pain and suffering.

If good argument is virtuous, then fallacies are vicious. Yet fallacies cannot just be identified with vices, since vices are dispositional properties of agents whereas fallacies are types of argument. Rather, if the normativity of good argumentation is explicable in terms of virtues, we should expect the wrongness of fallacies to be explicable in terms of vices. This approach is defended through case studies of several fallacies, with particular emphasis on the ad hominem.

Glaucon¿s story about the ring of invisibility in Republic 359d-60b is examined in order to assess the wider role of fictional fabrication in Plato¿s philosophical argument. The first part of the article (I) looks at the close connections this tale has to the account of Gyges in Herodotus (1.8-12). It is argued that Plato exhibits a specific dependence on Herodotus, which suggests Glaucon¿s story might be an original invention: the assumption that there must be a lost ¿original¿ to inspire Plato¿s (...) story of the ring has never accommodated the possibility of Plato drawing, perhaps quite directly, from Herodotus. The next section (II) considers the function of that fable within the larger philosophical and aesthetic structure of the Republic. Appreciation of the entire dialogue as an exercise in fiction, as well as philosophy, helps to reveal the ways in which philosophical argument and fictional invention are closely bound up in the formation of Glaucon¿s fabulous anecdote. Finally (III), a reading of Cicero¿s treatment of the story in De Officiis confirms the degree to which philosophical reasoning and fiction can be quite generally interdependent. Although the arguments in Sections II and III are consistent with the opening contention that the ring story was invented by Plato, they do not presuppose it. (shrink)

Decoherence results from the dissipative interaction between a quantum system and its environment. As the system and environment become entangled, the reduced density operator describing the system "decoheres" into a mixture (with the interference terms damped out). This formal result prompts some to exclaim that the measurement problem is solved. I will scrutinize this claim by examining how modal and relative-state interpretations can use decoherence. Although decoherence cannot rescue these interpretations from general metaphysical difficulties, decoherence may help these interpretations to (...) pick out a preferred basis. I will explore whether decoherence solves nagging technical problems associated with selecting a preferred basis. (shrink)

The article offers a critical but sympathetic reflection on the development of classical and post-classical French sociology. From Comte onwards, I suggest, the modern French treatment of the social has been preoccupied with socio-theological questions; and even with the radical deconstruction of any society-god, this continues to be the case. There are distinctive historical reasons for this (including the Catholic inheritance and an enduring legitimacy problem for the Republican state); but the significance of the issues raised by this intellectual tradition (...) as a result goes beyond the limits of national context. In an age of post-histoire and the `death' of everything, the `French' travails of social ontology, including the quasi-religious register in which these have occurred, have deep and continuing import for any would-be progressive social theory as such. We need to rethink the `we'. With such considerations in mind, the body of the article considers Comte's concept of Humanity and Baudrillard's `end of the social' as exemplifying key aspects of the beginning (reconstructive) and ending (deconstructive) phases of the French sociological story. What began as a detour in the `death of God', I argue, has terminated in a `second death of God' in which a replacement divinity and the rationalist faith associated with it have disintegrated and become impossible to think. But the logic of this development has not been straightforward. It is marked by a double paradox. An interrogation of Comte's `Humanity' reveals it to be a semi-conscious exercise in simulation, haunted by the implications of its own emptiness. On the one hand, then, the attempted religious founding founded nothing (it made a transcendent of its own intended re-socializing effects). On the other hand, as exemplified by Baudrillard's pronouncements about the end of the social, the moment of disintegration has itself seemed to offer a new socio-theological opening. Rather than mourn the anomic or hyper-real impossibility of a transcending `we', Baudrillard would shift terrain in a quasi-Nietzschean (or Bataillian) transvaluation. This implies (against Baudrillard himself) not the definitive end of the French `sociological' project, but the possibility of its continuation, albeit under erasure and in a new key. (shrink)

Purpose A survey of the attitudes of students in eight countries towards the revelations of mass surveillance by the US’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ has been described in an introductory paper and seven country-specific papers. This paper aims to present a comparison of the results from these countries and draws conclusions about the similarities and differences noted. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was deployed in Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, The People’s Republic of China, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. The original survey (...) was in English, translated into German, Japanese and Chinese for relevant countries. The survey consists of a combination of Likert scale, Yes/no and free-text responses. The results are quantitatively analysed using appropriate statistical tools and the qualitative answers are interpreted. Findings There are significant differences between respondents in the countries surveyed with respect to their general privacy attitudes and their willingness to follow Snowden’s lead, even where they believe his actions served the public good. Research limitations/implications Owing to resource limitations, only university students were surveyed. In some countries, the relatively small number of respondents limits the ability to make meaningful statistical comparisons between respondents from those countries and from elsewhere on some issues. Practical implications Snowden’s actions are generally seen as laudable and having had positive results, among the respondents surveyed. Such results should give pause to governments seeking to expand mass surveillance by government entities. Originality/value There have been few surveys regarding attitudes to Snowden’s revelations, despite the significant press attention and political actions that have flowed from it. The context of attitudes to both the actions he revealed and the act of revelation itself is useful in constructing political and philosophical arguments about the balance between surveillance activity for state security and the privacy of individual citizens. (shrink)

_From Romanticism to Critical Theory_ explores the philosophical origins of literary theory via the tradition of German philosophy that began with the Romantic reaction to Kant. It traces the continuation of the Romantic tradition of Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel and Schleiermacher, in Heidegger's approaches to art and thruth, and in the Critical Theory of Benjamin and Adorno. Andrew Bowie argues, against many current assumptions, that the key aspect of literary theory is not the demonstration of how meaning can be deconstructed, (...) but rather the relevation of how questions of language and literature change modern philosophical conceptions of thruth. He shows how the dialogue between literary theory, hermeneutics and analytical philosophy can profit from a re-examination of the understanding of language, thruth and literature in modern German philosophy. _From Romanticism to Critical Theory_ will provide a vital new introduction to central theoretical questions for students of philosophy, literature, German studies, cultural and social theory. (shrink)

This article is reprinted with permission from the Journal of African Christian Thought vol. 4 no. 2, December 2001 published by the Akrofi-Kristaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology, PO Box 76 Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana, [email protected]. We are grateful to the editor Dr Gillian Bediako.

Collective Identity, Oppression, and the Right to Self-Ascription argues that groups have an irreducibly collective right to determine the meaning of their shared group identity, and that such a right is especially important for historically oppressed groups. It provides a novel approach to issues of identity politics, group rights, and racial identity, one which combines and develops the insights of contemporary critical theory and race theory, and will thus be of special interest to scholars in these fields.

I argue that sometimes a group can author a work of art without the work being either co-authored or multiply-authored. Sometimes the group, itself, is an author, rather than any of its members alone or together. I argue that when a group is an author like this, it has mental properties that no individual member of the group possesses. For example, we can consider the groups that authored digital remixes based on a film titled #INTRODUCTIONS created by the artists LaBeouf, (...) Rönkkö & Turner. YouTubers posted their digital remixes online, and the question is: Who authored those remixes? I contend that many digital remixes are authored by groups that are capable of cognition. (shrink)

Our thesis in this paper is that consideration of Wright’s account of what it is to be judgement-dependent leads us to the conclusion that teaching is judgement dependent. We begin with a consideration of Wright’s account of what it is to be judgement-dependent. We then make the case that teaching satisfies the conditions on what it is to be judgement-dependent. Our intention is not to delve into the independent plausibility of such a view. Our focus is simply on showing the (...) connection between Wright’s account of judgement-dependence and what it is to teach. (shrink)