For decisions between many alternatives, the benchmark result is Hick's Law: that response time increases log-linearly with the number of choice alternatives. Even when Hick's Law is observed for response times, divergent results have been observed for error rates—sometimes error rates increase with the number of choice alternatives, and sometimes they are constant. We provide evidence from two experiments that error rates are mostly independent of the number of choice alternatives, unless context effects induce participants to trade speed for accuracy (...) across conditions. Error rate data have previously been used to discriminate between competing theoretical accounts of Hick's Law, and our results question the validity of those conclusions. We show that a previously dismissed optimal observer model might provide a parsimonious account of both response time and error rate data. The model suggests that people approximate Bayesian inference in multi-alternative choice, except for some perceptual limitations. (shrink)

Each contributor to this book has used personal experience as the basis from which to frame his individual sociological perspectives. Because they have personalized their work, their accounts are real, and recognizable as having come from 'real' persons, about 'real' experiences. There are no objectively-distanced disembodied third person entities in these accounts. These writers are actual people whose stories will make you laugh, cry, think, and want to know more.

BackgroundThe pursuit of a cure for HIV is a high priority for researchers, funding agencies, governments and people living with HIV (PLWH). To date, over 250 biomedical studies worldwide are or have been related to discovering a safe, effective, and scalable HIV cure, most of which are early translational research and experimental medicine. As HIV cure research increases, it is critical to identify and address the ethical challenges posed by this research.MethodsWe conducted a scoping review of the growing HIV cure (...) research ethics literature, focusing on articles published in English peer-reviewed journals from 2013 to 2021. We extracted and summarized key developments in the ethics of HIV cure research. Twelve community advocates actively engaged in HIV cure research provided input on this summary and suggested areas warranting further ethical inquiry and foresight via email exchange and video conferencing.DiscussionDespite substantial scholarship related to the ethics of HIV cure research, additional attention should focus on emerging issues in six categories of ethical issues: (1) social value (ongoing and emerging biomedical research and scalability considerations); (2) scientific validity (study design issues, such as the use of analytical treatment interruptions and placebos); (3) fair selection of participants (equity and justice considerations); (4) favorable benefit/risk balance (early phase research, benefit-risk balance, risk perception, psychological risks, and pediatric research); (5) informed consent (attention to language, decision-making, informed consent processes and scientific uncertainty); and (6) respect for enrolled participants and community (perspectives of people living with HIV and affected communities and representation).ConclusionHIV cure research ethics has an unfinished agenda. Scientific research and bioethics should work in tandem to advance ethical HIV cure research. Because the science of HIV cure research will continue to rapidly advance, ethical considerations of the major themes we identified will need to be revisited and refined over time. (shrink)

In the chapter on multiplicity and unity, the affective or anthropological motifs are both more complex and more interesting. Wölfflin’s initial distinction is between “the articulated system of forms of classic art and the flow of the baroque” . Imagery of fluidity pervades the chapter, for water, according to Wölfflin, “was the period’s favourite element” . “Now, and now only,” he says, “the greatness of the sea could find its representation”, and as if to inculcate this affinity he places the (...) reproduction of a baroque seascape by Jan van Goyen at the head of the introduction to the book and a riverscape by Peter Brueghel at the head of this chapter, even though neither painting is discussed where it is reproduced. In fact it is worth observing that Wölfflin does not discuss any water paintings in this chapter, though of course he does so elsewhere. Where fluidity becomes the meaning of his category, it is absent from the contents of the paintings. Wölfflin’s procedure, as I have argued, is both objectively analytical and subjectively interpretive, and in this chapter he seems careful to preserve the distance between the forms he describes and the significances he reveals. Were he to treat water paintings here, he would obscure the fact that his analyses are always the prelude to translations.Though he conceals the fact, Wölfflin has here effected a translation of the baroque into itself, of water painting into fluidity. Baroque art has declared its true meaning, which is to be an art of flux—of time and, throughout this chapter, of momentariness. Suddenly here the baroque comes into its own, with a surprising reversal in Wölfflin’s categories. Until now he has associated the baroque with lawlessness and confusion, and classicism with the unifying force of symmetrical organization around a center. Unity is repose—the equation had been made explicitly in the discussion in Classic Art of Michelangelo’s Medici Madonna —and clearly in Principles of Art History Wölfflin seems to say that the unification achieved in Leonardo’s Last Supper was later lost Tiepolo’s version.21 As Wölfflin says in the first sentence of chapter 4, “The principle of closed form of itself presumes the conception of the picture as a unity.” But as the baroque now comes into its own, it appears that the unity of classicism is an illusory, “multiple unity,” whereas the true or “unified unity” actually pertains to the baroque. It is the usurping baroque, rather than the deposed classic, that now has “a dominating central motive.” And So Wölfflin returns in this chapter to the two Last Suppers in order to rescind his earlier position. He still claims that Leonardo’s painting is unified, but he offers Tiepolo’s version to illustrate the “possibility of surpassing this unity” . In becoming itself, baroque art has overthrown classicism.21. “Tiepolo composed a Last Supper which, while it cannot be compared with Leonardo as a work of art, stylistically presents the absolute opposite. The figures do not unite in the plane, and that decides”. (shrink)

As Jan Christoph Bublitz (2024) rightly notes, the first international declaration on neurotechnologies and human rights would set the tone for further international and domestic regulations. For t...

We endorse Amy Caruso Brown’s position that clinicians and ethicists should consider the voices of people marginalized by hierarchical family or community structures. In this open peer comme...

In this article I respond to comments and objections raised in the special issue on my book The Dimensions of Consequentialism. I defend my multi-dimensional consequentialist theory against a range of challenges articulated by Thomas Schmidt, Campbell Brown, Frances Howard-Snyder, Roger Crisp, Vuko Andric and Attila Tanyi, and Jan Gertken. My aim is to show that multi-dimensional consequentialism is, at least, a coherent and intuitively plausible alternative to one-dimensional theories such as utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and mainstream accounts of egalitarianism. I (...) am very grateful to all contributors for reading my book so closely and for devoting time and intellectual energy to thinking about the pros and cons of multi-dimensional consequentialism. (shrink)

On 1 July, 1926, Express Wieczorny Ilustrowany [The Illustrated Evening Express] began printing the episodic novel Białe niewolnice [White Female Slaves] by Jan Teodor Grzechota. Twelve days later, the newspaper published an article in which it informed that the printing of the novel was suspended, because the work turned out to be a plagiarism of a novel with the same title by the Scandinavian writer Elizabeth Schoyen. The Jan Teodor Grzechota pseudonym stood for a well-known Łódź-based poet – Mieczysław Braun. (...) The subject of the plagiarism was an extremely popular novel, whose numerous trans- lations appeared in Polish in separate book editions several times in the 1920s and 1930s. The popularity of the motif of human trafficking might have proved itself, as the motif was also used at that time by Polish and European cinematography and theatre. A careful analysis of both works shows that Brown copied the content of Shonyen’s novel almost exactly, i.e. the plot, the characters, and the details. The Polish writer added several initial episodes of the novel in order to set the plot in the reality of Lodz, which was one of the determinants of the poetics of the seg- mental novel. It is probable that the only punishment Braun suffered was public critique of his shameful act, since copyright regulations were not yet in place. (shrink)

Decision theory and folk psychology both purport to represent the same phenomena: our belief-like and desire- and preference-like states. They also purport to do the same work with these representations: explain and predict our actions. But they do so with different sets of concepts. There's much at stake in whether one of these two sets of concepts can be accounted for with the other. Without such an account, we'd have two competing representations and systems of prediction and explanation, a dubious (...) dualism. Folk psychology structures our daily lives and has proven fruitful in the study of mind and ethics, while decision theory is pervasive in various disciplines, including the quantitative social sciences, especially economics, and philosophy. My interest is in accounting for folk psychology with decision theory -- in particular, for believe and wanting, which decision theory omits. Many have attempted this task for belief. (The Lockean Thesis says that there is such an account.) I take up the parallel task for wanting, which has received far less attention. I propose necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in terms of decision theory, for when you're truly said to want; I give an analogue of the Lockean Thesis for wanting. My account is an alternative to orthodox accounts that link wanting to preference (e.g. Stalnaker (1984), Lewis (1986)), which I argue are false. I argue further that want ascriptions are context-sensitive. My account explains this context-sensitivity, makes sense of conflicting desires, and accommodates phenomena that motivate traditional theses on which 'want' has multiple senses (e.g. all-things-considered vs. pro tanto). (shrink)

THE SOCIOLOGICAL TURN The problem we are concerned with is just this: How should we understand science? Are we to account for scientific knowledge (or ...

The analytic movement advertised its 'linguistic turn' as a radical break from the two-thousand-year-old substance tradition. But this is an illusion. On the fundamental level of ontology, there is enough reformulation and presupposition of traditional 'no entity without identity' themes to analogize Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine to Aristotle as paradigmatic of modified realism. Thus the pace of ontology is glacial. Frege and Russell, not Wittgenstein and Quine, emerge as the true analytic progenitors of 'no entity without identity,' offering between (...) them at least twenty-nine private language arguments and sixty-four 'no entity without identity' theories. (shrink)

This reference work aims describes all aspects of the study of meaning in language. It synthesises the latest scholarly positions on the construction, interpretation, clarification, obscurity, illustration, amplification, simplification, negotiation, contradiction, contraction and paraphrasing of meaning.

The aim of this book is a recovery of interest in the experience of meaning. Jan Zwicky defends the claim that we experience meaning in the apprehension of wholes and their internal structural relations, providing examples of such insight in mathematics and physics, literature, music, and Plato's ancient theory of forms. Taken together, these essays constitute a powerful indictment of the aggressive reductionism and the reliance on calculative modes of thought that dominate our present conception of understanding. The Experience of (...) Meaning proposes a more just epistemology, arguing for a new grammar of thought, a new way of understanding the relationship of human intelligence to the world. Engaging with philosophy, psychology, literature, fine arts, music, and environmental studies in a profound way, The Experience of Meaning will interest any reader who ponders the question of meaning and its relation to true human expression. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation is an FDA-approved treatment for the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, dystonia, and epilepsy—with experimental use for mood disorders. DBS systems consist of a signal generator, typically implanted in the user's chest, that sends impulses to electrodes implanted in select areas of the user's brain. These signals change the activity of areas of the brain associated with unwanted symptoms. Several research groups have begun trials to use DBS as a treatment for psychiatric disorders. DBS, however, comes (...) with a... (shrink)

The early Epicurean revival in Florence and Italy -- Medicean Florence : Ficino and Bartolomeo Scala -- Republican Florence : the university lectures of Marcello Adriani -- Niccol Machiavelli and the influence of Lucretius -- Lucretian networks in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries -- Appendix : notes on Machiavelli's transcription of MS Vat. Rossi 884.

En este trabajo identificamos algunos factores que inciden en el tiempo de trabajo de los trabajadores chilenos en 2003. Se concluye que la precariedad laboral incide de modo significativo en las horas trabajadas sin embargo la relación cambia a partir de cierto nivel cuando las personas no pueden trabajar la jornada por falta de oportunidades. Ello sugiere que el sobre-trabajo y el sub-empleo son manifestaciones del mismo fenómeno por lo cual nuevas medidas para flexibilizar los derechos patronales agravarían estos problemas. (...) Asimismo, se devela una relación negativa entre salario por hora y horas trabajadas para cerca del 80% de los trabajadores. Esto hace pensar que las necesidades básicas están insatisfechas; además contradice la porción significativa de la curva de oferta laboral de los libros de texto de microeconomía. Estas relaciones se confirman en un modelo exploratorio añadiendo variables de control de tipo regional, demográfico y productivo. (shrink)

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