Probabilism is committed to two theses: 1) Opinion comes in degrees—call them degrees of belief, or credences. 2) The degrees of belief of a rational agent obey the probability calculus. Correspondingly, a natural way to argue for probabilism is: i) to give an account of what degrees of belief are, and then ii) to show that those things should be probabilities, on pain of irrationality. Most of the action in the literature concerns stage ii). Assuming that stage i) has been (...) adequately discharged, various authors move on to stage ii) with varied and ingenious arguments. But an unsatisfactory response at stage i) clearly undermines any gains that might be accrued at stage ii) as far as probabilism is concerned: if those things are not degrees of belief, then it is irrelevant to probabilism whether they should be probabilities or not. In this paper we scrutinize the state of play regarding stage i). We critically examine several of the leading accounts of degrees of belief: reducing them to corresponding betting behavior (de Finetti); measuring them by that behavior (Jeffrey); and analyzing them in terms of preferences and their role in decision-making more generally (Ramsey, Lewis, Maher). We argue that the accounts fail, and so they are unfit to subserve arguments for probabilism. We conclude more positively: ‘degree of belief’ should be taken as a primitive concept that forms the basis of our best theory of rational belief and decision: probabilism. (shrink)

Objectification is a notion central to contemporary feminist theory. It has famously been associated with the work of anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and more recently with the work of Martha Nussbaum. However, objectification is a notion that has not yet been adequately defined. It has been used rather vaguely to refer to a broad range of cases involving, in some way or another, the treatment of a person as an object. My purpose in this paper is to (...) offer a plausible understanding of objectification. I do that by focusing on the work of four prominent thinkers: Immanuel Kant, and contemporary feminists Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Martha Nussbaum. Through drawing on these thinkers' conceptions of objectification, I am finally led to a more complete and coherent understanding of this notion. (shrink)

The paper’s target is the historically influential betting interpretation of subjective probabilities due to Ramsey and de Finetti. While there are several classical and well-known objections to this interpretation, the paper focuses on just one fundamental problem: There is a sense in which degrees of belief cannot be interpreted as betting rates. The reasons differ in different cases, but there’s one crucial feature that all these cases have in common: The agent’s degree of belief in a proposition A does not (...) coincide with her degree of belief in a conditional that A would be the case if she were to bet on A, where the belief in this conditional itself is conditioned on the supposition that the agent will have an opportunity to make such a bet. Even though the two degrees of belief sometimes can coincide (they will coincide in those cases when the bet has no expected causal bearings on the proposition A and the opportunity to bet have no evidential bearings on that proposition), it is the latter belief rather than the former that guides the agent’s rational betting behaviour. The reason is that this latter belief takes into consideration potential interferences that bet opportunities and betting itself might create with regard to the proposition to be betted on. It is because of this interference problem that the agent’s degree of belief in A cannot be interpreted as her betting rate for A. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have recently suggested that some abstract, plausibly non-causal and/or mathematical, explanations explain in a way that is radically dif- ferent from the way causal explanation explain. Namely, while causal explanations explain by providing information about causal dependence, allegedly some abstract explanations explain in a way tied to the independence of the explanandum from the microdetails, or causal laws, for example. We oppose this recent trend to regard abstractions as explanatory in some sui generis way, and argue (...) that a prominent ac- count of causal explanation can be naturally extended to capture explanations that radically abstract away from microphysical and causal-nomological details. To this end, we distinguish di erent senses in which an explanation can be more or less abstract, and analyse the connection between explanations’ abstractness and their explanatory power. According to our analysis abstract explanations have much in common with counterfactual causal explanations. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 32-33.

The article analyzes one of the fundamental rights – the right to maintenance, which proper implementation ensures normal development of the child. This right matches with the duty of parents to maintain their minor children. Paragraph 6 of Article 38 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania states that parents have a duty to educate their children to be honest people and loyal citizens, supporting them until adulthood. The obligation to maintain children is established in the first 3.192 Article (...) paragraph of the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania, and the responsibility for avoiding to maintain a child is provided in Article 164 of the Criminal Code. The article discusses the fact that the analysis of criminal law rate is not precise enough. Article 164 of the Criminal Code does not match with the child maintenance methods specified in the CC Article 3.196 paragraph 1. Since criminal liability is only for judgment in default in civil cases, a person shall only be liable for breaking the right to maintain a child, provided in the CC 3.196 paragraph 1. This article deeply analyzes the problematic qualification aspects of the avoidance to maintain a child. Some alternative ways of child maintenance are mentioned, as can be chosen from other law instruments (bailiffs, Guarantee child support fund) and it leads to the ultima ratio principle. On the other hand, it is not required to seek alternative remedies for affected interests, and it is possible to initiate a pre-trial investigation. Therefore, this article seeks to identify specific civil and criminal law rules delimitation. Avoidance of child maintenance is an ongoing crime. The main problem in legal practice is to determine an end of this ongoing criminal conduct. The practice of the Supreme Court of Lithuania is not unanimous. In some cases, the end of this ongoing conduct is considered to be a moment when the past judgment has entered into force, in other cases – the moment of indictment. These positions are criticized by many authors and it is suggested to follow the Supreme Court’s practice, according to which the moment when a judgment of conviction for the criminal act is passed should be considered as an end of an ongoing criminal conduct. (shrink)

Este artículo da los siguientes pasos: 1. Expone las principales tesis de E. Husserl que sustentan la psicología fenomenológica como estudio de la subjetividad: región de las regiones, en sus vertientes empírica y trascendental, en dos de sus obras: Psicología fenomenológica e Ideas II; 2) Desde esta orientación teórica plantea la recepción de la psicología fenomenológica en Colombia en las primeras décadas de este siglo, sintetizadas así: a) el proyecto de naturalización, b) fenomenología y psiquiatría, c) la vía psicológica: inteligencia (...) artificial ―IA―, y d) fenomenología y psicología de la individuación; 3) A manera de colofón, muestra que la relación indisoluble entre lo empírico y lo trascendental mantiene vivo el aporte de la fenomenología a la psicología contemporánea. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Our aim in this article is to offer a new justification for preferring theories that are more quantitatively parsimonious than their rivals. We discuss cases where it seems clear that those involved opted for more quantitatively parsimonious theories. We extend previous work on quantitative parsimony by offering an independent probabilistic justification for preferring the more quantitatively parsimonious theories in particular episodes of theory choice. Our strategy allows us to avoid worries that other considerations, such as pragmatic factors of computational (...) tractability and so on, could be the driving ones in the historical cases under consideration. _1_ Introduction _2_ Three Desiderata _2.1_ Limiting _2.2_ Robustness _2.3_ Breadth _2.3.1_ A limited success for Baker _2.3.2_ Rejecting Baker’s analysis _2.4_ The proposal _3_ Probabilistically Additive Hypotheses and a Bayesian Account: The Limpid Rationale Relativized and Reconsidered _3.1_ Neutrinos and beta decay _3.2_ Avogadro’s hypothesis _3.3_ Postulation of Neptune _4_ Conclusion. (shrink)

Kant has famously argued that monogamous marriage is the only relationship where sexual use can take place "without degrading humanity and breaking the moral laws." Kantian marriage, however, has been the target of fierce criticisms by contemporary things: it has been regarded as flawed and paradoncal, as being deeply at odds with feminism, and, at best, as plainly uninteresting. In this paper, I argue that Kantian marriage can indeed survive these criticisms. Finally, the paper advances the discussion beyond marriage. Drawing (...) on Kant 's conception of friendship, I suggest that he might have overlooked the possibility of sex being morally permissible in yet another context. (shrink)

The problem of explanatory non-symmetries provides the strongest reason to abandon the view that laws can figure in explanations without causal underpinnings. I argue that this problem can be overcome. The solution that I propose starts from noticing the importance of conditions of application when laws do explanatory work, and I go on to develop a notion of nomological dependence that can tackle the non-symmetry problem. The strategy is to show how a strong notion of counterfactual dependence as guaranteed by (...) the laws is a plausible account of what we aim towards when we give law-based explanations. The aim of this project is not to deny that causal relations can do explanatory work but to restore laws of nature as capable of being explanatory even in the absence of any knowledge of causal underpinnings. (shrink)

RNA modifications have recently emerged as an important regulatory layer of gene expression. The most prevalent and reversible modification on messenger RNA (mRNA), N6‐methyladenosine, regulates most steps of RNA metabolism and its dysregulation has been associated with numerous diseases. Other modifications such as 5‐methylcytosine and N1‐methyladenosine have also been detected on mRNA but their abundance is lower and still debated. Adenosine to inosine RNA editing is widespread on coding and non‐coding RNA and can alter mRNA decoding as well as protect (...) against autoimmune diseases. 2′‐O‐methylation of the ribose and pseudouridine are widespread on ribosomal and transfer RNA and contribute to proper RNA folding and stability. While the understanding of the individual role of RNA modifications has now reached an unprecedented stage, still little is known about their interplay in the control of gene expression. In this review we discuss the examples where such interplay has been observed and speculate that with the progress of mapping technologies more of those will rapidly accumulate. (shrink)

The notions of ground and ontological dependence have made a prominent resurgence in much of contemporary metaphysics. However, objections have been raised. On the one hand, objections have been raised to the need for distinctively metaphysical notions of ground and ontological dependence. On the other, objections have been raised to the usefulness of adding ground and ontological dependence to the existing store of other metaphysical notions. Even the logical properties of ground and ontological dependence are under debate. In this article, (...) I focus on how to account for the judgements of non-symmetry in several of the cases that motivate the introduction of notions like ground and ontological dependence. By focusing on the notion of explanation relative to a theory, I conclude that we do not need to postulate a distinctively asymmetric metaphysical notion in order to account for these judgements. (shrink)

abstract ‘Time is money’, Benjamin Franklin's ‘Poor Richard’ tells us. But instead of converting time expenditures into monetary equivalents, it makes more sense in many cases to convert money into temporal equivalents. The difficulty in putting a monetary value on time in unpaid household labour, when adjusting the National Accounts, points to the problems of the first approach. The advantages of the latter approach are illustrated by the Swedish system of specifying criminal fines in terms of the number of days (...) the offender would have to work to pay them off. (shrink)

Protecting consumers' rights set higher standards on the rights of security compared with other participants of civil turnover, so the concept of consumer acquires not only theoretical but also practical significance. Definition of consumer must be sufficiently clear and precise as the proper subject of classification depends on what rules will apply to legal relationships arising. To this purpose, the concept of consumer is formulated as the concept of both the European Union and national legislation. Both presented the concept of (...) consumer that is defined in accordance with the formal characteristics and prejudices that individuals are the weaker party without the actual value of that person experiences and knowledge and so on. (shrink)

Objective: To investigate the relationship between psychological empowerment, psychological capital, job involvement, and the retention intention of kindergarten teachers in mainland China and the internal mechanism of action.Methods: A total of 554 kindergarten teachers were investigated by scales for psychological empowerment, psychological capital, job involvement, and retention intention.Results: Psychological empowerment was positively correlated with psychological capital and job involvement. Psychological capital was positively correlated with job involvement. Psychological empowerment, psychological capital, and job involvement were significantly and positively correlated with retention (...) intention. Psychological empowerment influences kindergarten teachers' retention intention mainly through three indirect effects: the single intermediary effects of psychological capital and job involvement and the chain intermediary effect of psychological capital → job involvement.Conclusion: Psychological empowerment can not only indirectly predict the retention intention of kindergarten teachers through the single intermediary effects of psychological capital and job involvement, but also indirectly predict the retention intention of kindergarten teachers through the chain intermediary effect of psychological capital and job involvement. (shrink)

At the heart of Kantian theory lies the prohibition against treating humanity merely as a means. Two of the most influential interpretations of what this means are Wood's and O'Neill's. Drawing on these thinkers' ideas, Kerstein formulates two accounts of what is involved in the idea of treating a person merely as a means: the and accounts. Kerstein's attempt is to show that they are problematic. He introduces his to alleviate the problems they face. I argue that the end-sharing and (...) possible consent accounts are not vulnerable to Kerstein's criticism. However, they both face a shortcoming: they fail to support the Kantian conclusion that the prostitute and the servile person are treated merely as means. Through reconstructing these accounts, I surmount this difficulty. Moreover, my proposal helps Kerstein's own account overcome a problem he admits it has, without the need to resort to consequentialism. (shrink)

Hindriks describes institutions as norm-governed social practices, and argue that his theory help bring together and complete earlier theories of institutions. In this comment on his paper, I argue that his argument would be even better if he clarified certain parts of his argument with regards to the nature of institutions and the relationship between institutions and social norms. I also argue that he should reconsider his claim that institutions (and social norms) exist in order to solve cooperation and coordination (...) problems. (shrink)

Everettian quantum mechanics faces the challenge of how to make sense of probability and probabilistic reasoning in a setting where there is typically no unique outcome of measurements. Wallace has built on a proof by Deutsch to argue that a notion of probability can be recovered in the many worlds setting. In particular, Wallace argues that a rational agent has to assign probabilities in accordance with the Born rule. This argument relies on a rationality constraint that Wallace calls state supervenience. (...) I argue that state supervenience is not defensible as a rationality constraint for Everettian agents unless we already invoke probabilistic notions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 2 Seiten: 289-307.

In large and small villages, regardless of tourist attraction, cultural life is faded; people's initiative is low as urban migration is extremely high. Many ethnographic villagers do not realize that they live in a significant for the state areas. The younger generation is embarrassed by local traditions, folklore. The low level of aesthetic education, and the poor possibilities of organizing artistic celebrations for the younger generation make them the users of the lowest level of urban culture. The relevance of the (...) research: employees of Lithuanian rural culture centers - a group uniting almost three thousand people, invited to make sense of rural people's leisure time, to create conditions for the development of amateurism in small villages. 882 country cultural centers in villages, towns and cities are institutions of universal use or specific activities. Their work varies, depending on what traditions have formed, the ambitions of the district or eldership that local cultural and sports departments seek. You will not find a cultural center where they would not sing, dance, play, perform, or celebrate. Also, exhibitions are regularly opened. Obviously, more intensive activity takes place in metropolitan areas, district centers, and in resorts during the summer. As here there is more space, more culture and more communities. Village and town culture institutions that are constantly communicating with schools, libraries, religious communities, neighborhoods, and sports clubs are also gaining significant results. However, it is appropriate to move to specific data from the theoretical point of view. Those members of rural communities who go in for sport individually face health supervision problems. Inadequate attention is paid to the development of personal responsibility for one's health and the promotion of a healthy life: proper nutrition, active rest, less health-hazardous environment, abandoning harmful habits and etc. in an environment contrary to life in the countryside. It is important to develop a physically active and healthy society, consciously aware of the importance of a healthy lifestyle, to create a favorable environment for leisure time and sport and for the improvement of health of rural population, moreover, to increase the development of physical education and sports services in rural districts of Lithuania, to increase the quality of sports services, giving rural residents wider opportunities to meet their needs. The problem of the research: the lack of cultural and sporting services in rural communities. The analysis of the problem is based on scientific data of Aleksandravičius and Žukovskis, Baršauskienė, Leliūgienė, Kroeber A., Kluckhohn, Nefas, Paulikas, Adomonis, Putnam, Biologur, documents regulating the activities of rural communities. Methodology of the research: In order to achieve the goal, the analysis and synthesis of scientific literature, legal documents and other information sources and statistical data are used. The aim of the research: to reveal the factors of cultural and sports development in rural communities. Research objectives: to describe the development of cultural and sports services in the context of rural communities' activities; to identify the most significant factors in the development of cultural and sporting services in rural communities. Conclusion. Activities carried out by organizations of rural communities include a wide range of community needs, including the organization of cultural and sporting events, improvement of environmental management assistance, and others. As the main problems of rural community activities, the poor condition of rural social infrastructure objects are mentioned, therefore the process of establishment of community centers for the establishment of universal multifunctional centers is one of the significant tools for the development of rural communities and thus the development of cultural and sports activities. (shrink)

Prolonging working hours and presenteeism have been conceptualized as self-endangering coping behaviors in employees, which are related to health impairment. Drawing upon the self-regulation of behavior model, the goal achievement process, and Warr's vitamin model, we examined the antecedents and moderation effects regarding quantitative demands, autonomy, emotion regulation, and self-motivation competence of university students' self-endangering coping behaviors. Results from a cross-sectional survey of 3,546 German university students indicate that quantitative demands are positively related and autonomy has a u-shape connection with (...) self-endangering coping. Emotion regulation was shown to be a protective factor for prolonging working hours. Moreover, self-motivation moderated the relationship between quantitative demands and prolonging of working hours, but not in the assumed direction. Self-motivation showed a systematic positive relationship with prolonging of working hours, but no relationship with presenteeism. Autonomy moderated the relationship of quantitative demands with both self-endangering behaviors. We found no moderating effects for emotion regulation of quantitative demands or autonomy and self-endangering behaviors. Besides further practical implications, the results suggest that lecturers should design their courses accordingly with less time pressure and university students should be trained in the use of autonomy. (shrink)

The article analyzes the discursive establishment of the miracle in the religious sensibilities of the population of the Nuevo Reino de Granada, the Spanish American colony Empire, based in Bogota, during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He turned to the identification of miraculous events both in the territory as the reports and descriptions of them are made in relationships or travel diaries written by clerics of different regular and secular orders and a typology of the facts identified was performed. (...) The methodology was oriented from three views of miracles: the discursive construction from the social appropriation of these phenomena, the popular acceptance of an unexpected event and symbolic configuration that these were in the process of social cohesion between this and other provinces of Nueva Granada territory; also four categories of miracles were identified: those of an image on itself, assistance, physical and thaumaturgic; these, in turn, were grouped as impersonal, individual or collective. (shrink)

These are my comments and responses to questions and comments by my colleagues at the Handbook symposium that took place last fall.