Information theory and statistical mechanics II.

Many statistical problems, including some of the most important for physical applications, have long been regarded as underdetermined from the standpoint of a strict frequency definition of probability; yet they may appear wellposed or even overdetermined by the principles of maximum entropy and transformation groups. Furthermore, the distributions found by these methods turn out to have a definite frequency correspondence; the distribution obtained by invariance under a transformation group is by far the most likely to be observed experimentally, in the (...) sense that it requires by far the least “skill.” These properties are illustrated by analyzing the famous Bertrand paradox. On the viewpoint advocated here, Bertrand's problem turns out to be well posed after all, and the unique solution has been verified experimentally. We conclude that probability theory has a wider range of useful applications than would be supposed from the standpoint of the usual frequency definitions. (shrink)

Information theory and statistical mechanics.

Of course, the rationale of PME is so different from what has been taught in “orthodox” statistics courses for fifty years, that it causes conceptual hangups for many with conventional training. But beginning students have no difficulty with it, for it is just a mathematical model of the natural, common sense way in which anybody does conduct his inferences in problems of everyday life.The difficulties that seem so prominent in the literature today are, therefore, only transient phenomena that will disappear (...) automatically in time. Indeed, this revolution in our attitude toward inference is already an accomplished fact among those concerned with a few specialized applications; with a little familarity in its use its advantages are apparent and it no longer seems strange. It is the idea that inference was once thought to be tied to frequencies in random experiments, that will seem strange to future generations. (shrink)

Las obras históricas escritas en la época de la Reforma y el Segundo Imperio Mexicano, así como su discusión en la prensa, son importantes para la construcción del Estado mexicano moderno. Se analiza la recepción que tuvo en los periódicos un corpus de obras históricas representativas escritas por liberales y conservadores, publicadas entre 1856 y 1874.

For the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original (SAMCRO), loyalty to the club's other members is the most important quality in a member. Tig's attempt on Laroy's life is a case of misplaced loyalty, in aid of a murderer and inspired by a lie. Some philosophers are highly suspicious of loyalty, because they see it as focused on something higher than another person or group. Loyalty to fellow members is what the club is and disloyalty to fellow members is (...) a serious threat to its existence. While SAMCRO's punishment for disloyalty is severe, some kind of sanction for disloyalty is required for any club or group to survive. Since loyalty itself does not require any particular act, it does not require an act of wrongdoing. But we can be fairly certain that Tig would agree that loyal brothers are good to have if you ever need an escort home. (shrink)

The excessive use of social networks needs to be addressed, and this phenomenon needs to be measured for the purpose of evaluation, prevention, and intervention among adolescents and young people. The objective of the study was to adapt and psychometrically validate the Brief Scale of Addiction to Social Networks among Mexican adolescents and young adults. The participating sample consisted of 2,789 students from 6 public educational campuses in Cuernavaca. Data collection was carried out through a web platform to strictly maintain (...) anonymity, voluntary participation, and confidentiality. Data analysis first focused on the detection of possible response biases, the quality of the response structure partial credit model, dimensionality, and the relationship with external variables. It was found that when the range of efficient response options was limited to less than five, reliability was high, and unidimensionality was maintained. Response biases slightly affected the dimensional structure of the instrument. Measurement invariance reached scalar invariance in the sex, age, and campus groups. The association with sensation seeking and depression, controlling for sex and age covariates, was statistically significant, small, and theoretically consistent. Implications of the results are discussed. (shrink)

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156056/1/Mind-Body Union.pdf.

Esta investigación postula que la identidad narrativa ricoeuriana y el habitar poético heideggeriano se pueden complementar y potenciar recíprocamente para generar un arraigo que permita convivir adecuadamente con el mundo tecnológico científico. En el mundo contemporáneo todos los aspectos de la acción humana adquieren una dependencia casi total de la técnica y de sus estructuras de despliegue óntico. Dentro de este horizonte, cada faceta de la vida humana sufre una determinada modificación, y, por ende, una afectación existencial. De esta forma, (...) nuestra vivencia espacio-temporal del mundo también es fundamentalmente modificada. Como herramienta metódica para desplegar el diálogo entre la identidad narrativa y el habitar poético, se tomará a la morada como lugar eminente para pensar el juego espacio-temporal de mundo desde donde el ser humano se reconoce. Con esta finalidad, en primer lugar, se describirá la manera en que el arraigo del habitar poético y la identidad narrativa reiteran, a su manera, nuestro sí mismo en el nivel ontológico existencial. En segundo lugar, se especificarán algunas modalidades de afectación espacio-temporales provocadas por los cambios tecnológico-científicos de nuestra era. Finalmente, como objetivo fundamental, se pretende generar una comprensión amplia de la reciprocidad entre la identidad narrativa y el habitar poético; mostrando su potencial relación dinámica, conceptual y de co-potenciación. (shrink)

Adults who give proxy consent for medical treatment for adolescents must decide how much weight to give to adolescents' own preferences. There is evidence that some adolescents choose treatments different from what adults see as most reasonable. It is argued that adolescents choose according to age-specific values, i.e. values they hold, as adolescents, and which fulfil important developmental needs. Because not fulfilling these needs may do serious psychological damage, it is urged that proxies give weight to these values, up to (...) the limit where it would endanger or profoundly limit future life. (shrink)

Dieser Sammelband vereint Schriften, Artikel und Essays von Brigadier Mag. Dr. Edwin Rudiger Micewski. Die Kompilation wurdigt sein Wirken als Offizier und Philosoph und stellt einem an militarphilosophischen Fragen und humanistischen Aspekten der militarischen Lebenswelt interessierten Leserkreis eine zusammenfassende Gesamtschau deutscher wie englischer Veroffentlichungen des Autors zur Verfugung. Die philosophisch und grundwissenschaftlich orientierten Beitrage behandeln Grundfragen von Sicherheitspolitik und Militarphilosophie und sind aufgrund ihres zeitlosen Charakters auch fur aktuelle Herausforderungen von Relevanz. Infolge der thematischen Bezuge des publizistischen OEvres des (...) Autors gliedert sich die Arbeit in drei Kapitel, die den philosophischen und ethischen Schriften, den Beitragen zur Sicherheitspolitik und politisch-militarischen Beziehungen sowie den Fragen von Fuhrung, Bildung und militarischem Professionalismus gewidmet sind. Ein einleitender Abschnitt beinhaltet Reflexionen zu Person, Werk und Wirken von Edwin Rudiger Micewski, die von vier herausragenden Personlichkeiten des internationalen akademisch-sicherheitspolitischen Diskurses verfasst wurden.". (shrink)

John Dewey relates ethics in general with the mode of inquiry. Against the mainstream ethics and moral theories, Dewey reconstructed morality in light of empirical science, providing the necessary steps of pragmatic ethical investigations. In this study, I have revisited Dewey’s ethical inquiry and recent developments of the methods of pragmatist bioethics. Using this approach in ethics, I have examined the development of reproductive technologies and genetics, precisely the moral dilemma of gestational surrogacy at the level of a public issue (...) that needs social policy. In the final part, I have suggested the significance of Dewey’s emphasis on education, deliberative democracy, and institutions and agents’ role as the basis to solve bioethical issues arising in different societal contexts. (shrink)

Using data from user comments to the official social networking account of the Hubei Red Cross Foundation on a participatory web platform, this study attends to the offensive and hateful comments produced by ordinary Internet users to blame the elite authorities for their malfeasance in managing the donation during the COVID-19 in China. Drawing on Discursive Psychology, we focus on the rhetorical strategies that users employ to legitimise their actions as well-founded evidential blame against a norm-breaking act rather than radical (...) extremist speech. The associated hatred among discussants are moral, social judgements. That said, hate speech also helps construct the moral standards of a normalised society. (shrink)

This article approaches the ethical dilemma of healthcare allocation and rationing from the perspective of pragmatist ethics, mainly following John Dewey’s ethics. The moral dilemma of healthcare allocation arises whenever we allocate limited resources, and rationing is a necessary option for distributing available resources. In a broader sense, the moral problems of healthcare allocation also encompass the issue of access to primary healthcare, especially for low-income sections of communities. In this sense, allocation always entails rationing – denying service to someone (...) for the benefit of others. Such aspects of allocation and rationing and the relational aspect of disease and health make the problem morally controversial, which makes it difficult to agree on a principle or principles of allocation and rationing applicable across different contexts. Hence, this paper argues that moral challenges of healthcare rationing ought not to be addressed through the appeal to principles, but rather through deliberation that embraces a more pragmatic and democratic approach to negotiating health resource allocation and rationing. However, this does not mean that moral principles and values are insignificant in healthcare allocation. (shrink)

This study examined the association between employee perceptions of two foci of corporate social responsibility and work attitudes in different countries. Using data collected as part of a multinational research project with a core team in the United States, we found that perceptions of externally focused CSR enactment were positively associated with employee engagement and affective commitment. Perceptions of internally focused CSR enactment were positively associated with affective commitment but not with employee engagement. Analyses across countries revealed more cultural than (...) economic differences. For example, perceptions of internally focused CSR enactment were consistently associated with affective commitment across cultural contexts, indicating that they might serve as a general foundation for building commitment. Perceptions of externally focused CSR were more strongly associated with affective commitment in Anglo than in Confucian and Latin American countries, suggesting a need for country-specific tailoring. Based on these results, we provided recommendations for planning and implementation of CSR. (shrink)

Jamgön Kongtrul's encyclopedic Treasury of Knowledge presents a complete account of the major lines of thought and practice that comprise Tibetan Buddhism. Among the ten books that make up this tour de force, Book Six is by far the longest—concisely summarizing the theoretical fields of knowledge to be studied prior to the cultivation of reflection and discriminative awareness. The first two parts of Book Six, contained in this volume, respectively concern Indo-Tibetan classical learning and Buddhist phenomenology. The former analyzes the (...) traditional subjects of phonology and Sanskrit grammar, logic, fine art, and medicine, along with astrology, poetics, prosody, synonymics, and dramaturgy. The principal non-Buddhist philosophical systems of ancient India are then summarized and contrasted with the hierarchical meditative concentrations and formless absorptions through which the “summit of cyclic existence” can genuinely be attained. Part Two examines the phenomenological structures of Abhidharma—the shared inheritance of all Buddhist traditions—from three distinct perspectives, corresponding to the three successive turnings of the doctrinal wheel. (shrink)

The occurrence of a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 cannot be ruled out. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate the possible effects of a hypothetical imperfect anti-COVID-19 vaccine on the control of not only the first variant of SARS-CoV-2 but also the second variant of SARS-CoV-2. We further examine the rates and a, escape of quarantined infectious individuals from isolation centers. The control R c and basic reproduction numbers R 0 are computed which gives assess to obtain asymptotic stability of disease-free (...) equilibrium point globally and the existence of a unique persistent equilibrium solution. Numerical results reveal that people infected with the second strain who are vaccinated with an imperfect vaccine are under control but the prevalence of the second variant enhances the prevalence of the first variant. Thus, discovering a vaccine that is effective for the prevention of variant 2 is necessary for the control of COVID-19. Numerical results also reveal that increase in the rate at which individuals infected with the first variant escape the isolation center gives rise to the population infected with the first variant and lowers the peak of the population infected with the second variant. This is probably because individuals infected with the second variant appear to be more careful with their lives and get vaccinated more than individuals infected with the first variant. (shrink)

Malgré l’usage peu fréquent qu’il fait des termes epistrophè, epistrepheïn, metanoïa et metanoeïn, Paul n’accorde pas moins d’importance à la conversion dans ses écrits. À partir de la distinction qu’il établit entre la conversion- epistrophè et la conversion- metanoïa et du double mouvement qui les caractérise, il appelle ses auditeurs à la conversion au moyen d’un langage nouveau, notamment de nouvelles métaphores.

Organizations need enterprise content management (ECM) to play a more important role in business initiatives as video, social networking, analytics and other trends place greater demands on ECM applications. Gartner has revised its Maturity Model for ECM to reflect these new demands. Enterprise architects, information managers and leaders of ECM initiatives can use the model to assess where their organization is today and what level of maturity it must reach to achieve its business goals. Key Findings Gartner's Maturity Model for (...) ECM defines five levels of increasing ECM maturity: Initial (Level 1), Opportunistic, Organized, Enterprise and Transformative (Level 5). ECM maturity is about achieving the right level of ECM capabilities for a particular organization, and optimizing its investment. The majority of organizations are at the Opportunistic and Organized levels. At first, information governance occurs within the scope of tactical content management projects, which typically span two or three information silos. People perform governance roles informally. At Level 3, the ECM strategy supports organization goals, and ECM leaders use business metrics to measure their program. Recommendations At Level 1, look for areas where content silos hurt the business and operations. Then establish governance to start bridging the gaps. At Level 2, work with business process owners to understand the role of content. Identify areas where ECM and business process management (BPM) suites can be integrated. At Level 3, survey the metadata schemas in use for content within the organization. Work toward normalizing and standardizing all metadata efforts across the organization. (shrink)

Although much has been written about the use of metaphors during psychotherapy sessions, the complementary question of how the therapeutic process might itself be metaphorically conceptualized is seldom asked. This article adopts the notion of ‘discourse metaphors’ and provides a case study of the metaphor THERAPY IS A JOURNEY across various levels of psychotherapeutic discourse, including the formulation of theoretical constructs, pedagogical frameworks and transcripts of actual therapeutic talk. I show how the inherent meaning stability as well as flexibility afforded (...) by conceptual metaphors renders them particularly suitable for conveying a necessary sense of theoretical continuity across the levels, while accommodating variations according to situated discourse objectives within each level. Answering calls for metaphor research to be more practically relevant, I also suggest how the present approach can contribute to the increasing therapeutic concern with establishing ‘feedback’ across the different participatory levels of psychotherapy. (shrink)

Feminist epistemology aims to propose epistemic reasons for increasing the representation of women or socially subordinated people in science. This is typically done—albeit often only implicitly—by positing a causal mechanism through which the representation of sociodemographic minorities exerts a positive effect on scientific advancement. Two types of causal theories can be identified. The “epistemic diversity thesis” presents a causal path from sociodemographic diversity to scientific progress mediated by epistemic diversity. The “thesis of epistemic advantage” proposes a causal path from social (...) subjugation to capacity for inquiry. The latter theory is defined with substantial ambiguity in the existing literature, and I present an explicit causal reformulation that disambiguates it. The epistemic diversity thesis focuses on the effect of group composition on collective epistemic performance and is largely silent about what kind of characteristics lead to individual epistemic excellence. On the other hand, the thesis of epistemic advantage seeks to identify sociodemographic background conditions that make certain epistemic agents strictly better knowers or inquirers than others and pays little attention to the synergistic effects of diverse group composition. Such a difference in the causal structure reflects the diverging political characteristics of the two theories. (shrink)

This article explores the interfaces between two constructs in linguistics and psychotherapy—metaphor and the human body—as a means of illustrating meaningful exchange between linguistic and mental health research. Three distinctly well-motivated research strands with underexplored overlaps: the theoretical relationship between metaphor and the body, the use and management of metaphors in therapy, and the body as a therapeutic resource complementing verbal interaction, are first described. Taking a practitioner-informed approach called “correspondent analysis,” which combines the methods and insights of the metaphor (...) researcher and psychotherapist, a series of session extracts are then analyzed to illustrate the connections between the three strands and what they imply for both metaphor research and therapeutic practice. This culminates in the proposal of a triangle model for the metaphor–body–psychotherapy relationship, with wider implications for applied metaphor research also discussed. (shrink)