The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Soochow Gambling Task (SGT) are two experience-based risky decision-making tasks for examining decision-making deficits in clinical populations. Several cognitive models, including the expectancy-valence learning model (EVL) and the prospect valence learning model (PVL), have been developed to disentangle the motivational, cognitive, and response processes underlying the explicit choices in these tasks. The purpose of the current study was to develop an improved model that can fit empirical data better than the EVL and PVL (...) models and, in addition, produce more consistent parameter estimates across the IGT and SGT. Twenty-six opiate users (mean age 34.23; SD 8.79) and 27 control participants (mean age 35; SD 10.44) completed both tasks. Eighteen cognitive models varying in evaluation, updating, and choice rules were fit to individual data and their performances were compared to that of a statistical baseline model to find a best fitting model. The results showed that the model combining the prospect utility function treating gains and losses separately, the decay-reinforcement updating rule, and the trial-independent choice rule performed the best in both tasks. Furthermore, the winning model produced more consistent individual parameter estimates across the two tasks than any of the other models. (shrink)

In the first part of this article I propose to describe two strongly contrasted situations in the world of thought, one of fifty years ago and the other of to-day. In the second I shall submit to my readers some reflections suggested by the contrast between the two.

One of the most extensive yet least conclusive methodological debates within religious studies revolves around the question of what, precisely, the phenomenology of religion is and what contribution it can make to the study of religion. I do not intend to answer this important question here. To do so satisfactorily would require a range of historical, philosophical and methodological inquiry which would go quite beyond the bounds of a single article. My intention in this paper is, by comparison, unambitious. It (...) is to take one view of what phenomenology of religion is and to consider an area outside that usually explored by students of religion which can, nonetheless, shed some light on how religions might be studied in a way which is in accordance with the phenomenology of religion so understood. What follows will offer an answer to the question of what contribution one particular understanding of phenomenology might make to the study of religion, but no attempt will be made to establish whether or not this particular understanding ought to be regarded as normative. (shrink)

Kant asserts that we cannot represent to ourselves the non-existence of space. In his discussion of the Ontological Argument he maintains that there is nothing whose non-existence is inconceivable. He thus seems to contradict himself. If the non-existence of space is unthinkable, so is the non-existence of a part of space — a place. Indicating a particular place, we might say "There are no objects there", but it would be nonsense to say "There doesn't exist". We can say, as Aristotle (...) saw, "There is a place where there was water and where there is now air"; but to do so is to bind an adverbial variable with a quantifier, not to attach "exists" to the name of a place. To assert of a place, or of space, that it exists or that it does not exist would be nonsense, and the unthinkable in that sense is not something whose negation is, as Kant thought, a necessary truth. (shrink)

In a discussion-note in Mind, Father P. M. Farrell, O.P., gave an account, in what he admitted to be an embarrassingly brief compass, of the Thomist doctrine concerning evil. There is one sentence in this discussion which at first glance appears paradoxical. Father Farrell has been arguing that a universe containing ‘corruptible good’ as well as incorruptible is better than one containing ‘incorruptible good’ only. He continues: ‘If, however, they are to manifest this corruptible good, they must be corruptible and (...) they must sometimes corrupt.’ The final words, despite Father Farrell's italics, strike one as expressing, not a self-evident truth, but a non sequitur. The fact that I am capable of committing murder does not entail that I will at some time commit it. It is not immediately obvious that a similar entailment holds in the case of corruption and corruptibility. (shrink)

This essay explores how Newman’s thought influenced Maurice Blondel’s “new apologetics of action,” as well as the Modernist movement at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Nicholas Oresme's mid-fourteenth-century treatise De moneta falls outside the conventional genres of late medieval scholastic writing: it is neither a commentary, a summa, nor a publicistic tract. Historians of political thought have largely shunned the work. Instead, De moneta has primarily been the object of attention among historians of economic thought. Despite the fact that De moneta certainly contains technical economic analysis of the nature of money in an Aristotelian mode, both the circumstances of its composition and the main lines (...) of its argument suggest that it deserves treatment as a profoundly political work. Oresme's intention is clearly to advise his countrymen in a pragmatic fashion about a matter of public policy. His specialized economic analysis is merely a propedeutic to his main point. In this sense, the political theory contained in De moneta merits serious attention as an attempt to bring economic concerns to bear on the duties of rulers and the needs of their subjects. (shrink)

Cattle production has the potential of being an important component of sustainable agriculture globally. The ability to transform feed not suitable for humans into high-quality food will be of great importance in the long-term for feeding a growing population. Other aspects such as preservation of landscape values and maintenance of rural communities are highly appreciated values, especially in the industrialized part of the world.To exploit the sustainable potential of cattle production systems, problems of pollution (such as ozone destruction, acid rain, (...) and nitrate leaching) and of health and welfare, which are associated with cattle production, are critically reviewed. The possibilities of integrating cattle production with other types of production are evaluated. Cattle can be used for single purposes such as dairy, beef, and draught, but dairy cows can also be used for restricted suckling combining dairy and beef production. In addition a mixture of species makes grazing more efficient, and a combination of cattle and mixed cropping can increase resource efficiency. (shrink)