Chater & Loewenstein offer an incisive criticism of how behavioral sciences and public policy have become complicit with corporations in blaming public health and societal problems on individual weaknesses, thus deflecting support away from systemic reforms. However, their analysis stops short of holding the field to account in one important respect: its preoccupation with human irrationality and weakness.

Although shared decision-making is a standard in medical care, unilateral decisions through process-based conflict resolution policies have been defended in certain cases. In patients who do not stand to receive proportional clinical benefits, the harms involved in interventions such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation seem to run contrary to the principle of non-maleficence, and provision of such interventions may cause clinicians significant moral distress. However, because the application of these policies involves taking choices out of the domain of shared decision-making, they face (...) important ethical and legal problems, including a recent challenge to their constitutionality. In light of these concerns, we suggest a re-conceptualization of informed non-dissent as an alternative approach in cases where the application of process-based policies is being considered. This clinician-directed communication model still preserves what is valuable in such policies and salvages professional integrity, while minimising ethical and legal challenges. (shrink)

Our response amplifies our case for scientific realism and the unity of science and clarifies our commitments to scientific unity, nonreductionism, behaviorism, and our rejection of talk of “emergence.” We acknowledge support from commentators for our view of physics and, responding to pressure and suggestions from commentators, deny the generality supervenience and explain what this involves. We close by reflecting on the relationship between philosophy and science.

Low heart rate causes a risk of death, heart disease, and cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, monitoring the heart rate is critical because of the heart’s function to discover its irregularity to detect the health problems early. Rapid technological advancement allows healthcare sectors to consolidate and analyze massive health-based data to discover risks by making more accurate predictions. Therefore, this work proposes a real-time prediction system for heart rate, which helps the medical care providers and patients avoid heart rate risk (...) in real time. The proposed system consists of two phases, namely, an offline phase and an online phase. The offline phase targets developing the model using different forecasting techniques to find the lowest root mean square error. The heart rate time-series dataset is extracted from Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care. Recurrent neural network, long short-term memory, gated recurrent units, and bidirectional long short-term memory are applied to heart rate time series. For the online phase, Apache Kafka and Apache Spark have been used to predict the heart rate in advance based on the best developed model. According to the experimental results, the GRU with three layers has recorded the best performance. Consequently, GRU with three layers has been used to predict heart rate 5 minutes in advance. (shrink)

Causation is everywhere in the world: it features in every science and technology. But how much do we understand it? Mumford and Anjum develop a new theory of causation based on an ontology of real powers or dispositions. They provide the first detailed outline of a thoroughly dispositional approach, and explore its surprising features.

ABSTRACT The underlying cause of the financial meltdown was much more mundane than a “crisis of capitalism”: The real origins lay in mostly obscure housing, tax, and regulatory policies of the U.S. government. The Community Reinvestment Act, the affordable‐housing “mission” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, penalty‐free refinancing of home loans, penalty‐free defaults on home loans, tax preferences for home‐equity borrowing, and reduced capital requirements for banks that held mortgages and mortgage‐backed securities combined with each other to create the (...) incentives for both subprime lending and the housing bubble that eventually led to the financial collapse. (shrink)

It helps ordinary citizens evaluate their options and their responsibility for global institutional factors, and it challenges social scientists to address the causes of poverty and hunger that act across borders.The present volume ...

In VI.ii.3 of The Search After Truth Malebranche offers an argument for the view that only God is a cause. Here I defend an interpretation of the argument according to which Malebranche is supposing (quite rightly) that if there is a necessary connection between a cause and its effect, then if creatures were real causes, God's volitions would not be sufficient to bring about their intended effects. I then consider the argument from constant creation that Malebranche offers in (...) Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion. If Malebranche holds that God is literally creating things in their entirety at each and every moment, it is difficult to understand how his system could make room for finite substances, and it is difficult to understand how he can allow that finite minds are to be held accountable for what they do. Here I defend a weakened version of the doctrine of constant creation according to which God is constantly creating the modifications of things but is not constantly creating things in their entirety. (shrink)

The body of this essay is free of philosophical jargons. Since however some readers are accustomed to thinking about the free-will problem in terms of the compatibilism/incompatibilism divide, I wish to briefly comment on why this emphasis is not very helpful. If by “freedom” one means that a person’s will is the ultimate choicemaker free from prior causes, then the position of this essay is that “freedom is incompatible with determinism”; but if by “freedom” one means that there is (...) harmony between the intended consequences of a choice and the nature of the choice-maker, the position of this essay is that “freedom is compatible with determinism.” This illustrates that unless there is first an agreement on what is meant by “freedom,” it is premature to put the focus on whether freedom is compatible with determinism. (shrink)

As a Franciscan friar, student, teacher, philosopher, theologian, and political theorist, William of Ockham was and remains one of the most stimulating thinkers of the Middle Ages. The one consistent characteristic of his professional output—both as a student and later as an opponent of papal authoritarianism—was the provocative nature of his ideas. In required commentaries on standard theological texts as well as in his later, more independently inspired treatises, Ockham demonstrated a genuine talent for suggesting and sustaining a number of (...) original, unorthodox and, occasionally, even outrageous ideas. Accordingly, Ockham holds the distinction of being the most rejected but influential philosopher-theologian of the fourteenth century, an observation that applies to his views on causality in which, for example, Ockham held the principle of action at a distance in order to save the causal account of some phenomena. One of the more interesting distinctions that he made, however, occurs in his treatment of sacramental theology as part of his account of God's causal activity with respect to the sacraments. (shrink)

Given his known predilection for ontological parsimony, Ockham’s ontology of artifacts is unsurprisingly reductionist: artifacts are nothing over and above their existing and appropriately ordered parts. However, the case of artifacts is notable in that they are real objects that human artisans produce by bringing about a real change: they spatially rearrange existing natural thing(s) or their parts for the sake of some end. This article argues that the human contribution to the nature and production of artifacts is (...) two-fold: (1) the artisan’s cognitive grasp of her expertise and her decision to deploy that expertise are the two efficient causes necessary to explain the existence of an artifact, and (2) the purpose that the artisan had in mind when she decided to make an artifact fixes the function(s) of the artifact such that an artisan’s purpose is the final cause necessary to explain what an artifact is. Artifacts indeed exist, owing what they are and that they are to intelligent and volitional human activity, which Ockham never denies. The article submits that a myopic focus on Ockham’s indisputable reductionism does not exhaust what is metaphysically interesting and relevant about artifacts. (shrink)

The chapter deals with the notion of phenomenal realness, which was first systematically explored by Albert Michotte. Phenomenal realness refers to the impression that a perceptual object is perceived to have an autonomous existence in our mind-independent world. Perceptual psychology provides an abundance of phenomena, ranging from amodal completion to picture perception, that indicate that phenomenal realness is an independent perceptual attribute that can be conferred to perceptual objects in different degrees. The chapter outlines a theoretical framework that appears particularly (...) well-suited for dealing with corresponding phenomena. According to this framework, perception can be understood as a triggering of conceptual forms by sensor inputs. It is argued that the attribute of phenomenal realness is based on specific types of internal evaluation functions which deal with the segregation of causes conceived as ‘external’ from those conceived as ‘internal’. These evaluation functions integrate different internal sources of ‘knowledge’ about the potential causes for the activation of conceptual forms and provide markers by which conceptual forms can be tagged as ‘external world objects’. (shrink)

Response-dependent (R-D) properties have a big epistemological advantage: when we are the responders, they give us real knowledge of what their bearers can do or cause. But accounts vary substantially with respect to the underlying metaphysics, and the epistemological advantage is easily lost. In this paper, I explain how this occurs in Pettit’s influential account. I begin by outlining the epistemological motivation for dealing with R-D properties, in particular for some, more demanding, empiricist theories of knowledge. I then explain (...) how dispositional accounts of R-D properties, like Johnston’s, invite in accounts involving judgments, like Pettit’s. In Pettit’s account, responses are effectively judgments of salient similarities between objects, and thereby second-order, so that it is not the properties, but our concepts of the properties that are “response-privileging” and thereby ultimately R-D. This account is then extended to all concepts. Pettit thus gives us a R-D genealogy of concepts, but relinquishes the epistemological asset inherent in (first-order) accounts of R-D properties as consisting in (“real”) response events. (shrink)

We examine Fārābī’s ideas through a set of formal heresiography, since there is parallel between his claims and the classification of Islamic sects. In him, there is a kind of heresiography of the cities based on philosophical criteria: the leader, the inhabitants, the religion and individual or collective destiny. Obviously, he substitutes philosophical criteria for Islamic heresiographical ones: true or wrong opinions and good or bad actions. These criteria determine the human destiny: eternal happiness for the one who has true (...) opinions and virtuous actions, eternal suffering for the one who has true opinions but bad actions, and nothingness for the one who has false opinions and bad actions.Hence, we can conclude that:- The combination of the components of the city gives only these three possible destinies.- The theoretical dimension, be it philosophical or religious, is the real cause of survival after death... (shrink)

As a way to make medical decisions, Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) has failed. EBM's failure arises from not being founded on real-world decision-making. EBM aspires to a scientific standard for the best way to treat a disease and determine its cause, but it fails to recognise that the scientific method is inapplicable to medical and other real-world decision-making. EBM also wrongly assumes that evidence can be marshaled and applied according to an hierarchy that is determined in an argument by (...) authority to the method by which it has been obtained. If EBM had valid theoretical, practical or empirical foundations, there would be no hierarchy of evidence. In all real-world decision-making, evidence stands or falls on its inherent reliability. This has to be and can only be assessed on a case-by-case basis applying understanding and wisdom against the background of all available facts—the "factual matrix." EBM's failure is structural and was inevitable from its inception. EBM confuses the inherent reliability and probative value of evidence with the means by which it is obtained. -/- EBM is therefore an ad hoc construct and is not a valid basis for medical decision-making. This is further demonstrated by its exclusion of relevant scientific and probative real-world decision-making evidence and processes. It draws upon a narrow evidence base that is itself inherently unreliable. It fails to take adequate account of the nature of causation, the full range of evidence relevant to its determination, and differing approaches to determining cause and effect in real-world decision-making. EBM also makes a muddled attempt to emulate the scientific method and it does not acknowledge the role of experience, understanding and wisdom in making medical decisions. (shrink)

This study evaluates responses to the Real Estate Ethical Code. Voice Stress Analysis (VSA) is used to evaluate the responses of real estate sales people to ethically-based questions. The process and the responses given enabled the authors to gain insight into pressure-causing ethical situations and to explore new uses of VSA. Some respondents were stressed while following the ethical code guidelines. Others showed no stress about breaking the formal code. The study reaffirms that the presence of formal ethical (...) guidelines does not assure that the rules will be willingly followed. (shrink)

The idea that a just political system must ignore or nullify socially caused initial advantages in competing for positions and other social benefits is as old as political philosophy itself. Plato called for social mobility among his classes so that all could gravitate toward the classes for which their temperaments naturally suited them. The idea that the system must take positive steps to correct for these differences among individuals is likewise as old as the concept of public education, the supposed (...) great equalizer. But the claim that society must correct also for natural differences among individuals – differences in intelligence, talents, beauty, and physical prowess – is far more recent, having been articulated most forcefully by Rawls. The reasoning underlying this further step toward a more radical notion of equal opportunity appeals to the fact that natural differences are equally arbitrary from a moral point of view as a basis for differential rewards as are socially caused differences. A person no more deserves to be born smart than rich. Why then should the former but not the latter be allowed to influence future benefits and rewards? A negative answer, however, creates a tension within a liberal theory of justice between the demand to nullify natural differences, or to use them to the benefit of those least well endowed, and the demand to respect distinct individuals that supposedly grounds such a theory. (shrink)

John Arbuthnot's celebrated but flawed paper in the Philosophical Transactions of 1711-12 is a philosophically and historically plausible target of Hume's probability theory. Arbuthnot argues for providential design rather than chance as a cause of the annual birth ratio, and the paper was championed as a successful extension of the new calculations of the value of wagers in games of chance to wagers about natural and social phenomena. Arbuthnot replaces the earlier anti-Epicurean notion of chance with the equiprobability assumption of (...) Huygens's mathematics of games of chance, and misrepresents the birth ratio data to rule out chance in favour of design. The probability sections of Hume's Treatise taken together correct the equiprobability assumption and its extension to other kinds of phenomena in the estimation of wagers or expectations about particular events. Hume's probability theory demonstrates the flaw in this version of the design argument. (shrink)

In this paper I shall put forward a version of the so-called logical connection argument to try to show that desires cannot be causes of actions. Now for anyone who wishes to use that kind of argument to show this, the ideal way of proceeding would be to first set out a complete analysis of the causal relation, and then to go on to argue that the relation between desires, certain other conditions, and actions fails to match some essential (...) feature revealed by that analysis. But I cannot proceed in this way; for I do not possess any full-blooded analysis of the causal relation. Nonetheless, I do not think that this places me in a position of real weakness. For the argument I shall present requires the truth of only one claim with respect to the nature of the causal relation. This is the claim that the causal relation is a contingent relation. I think that this claim is a relatively uncontroversial one; I am going to assume that it is true; and the argument which follows will exploit that claim. (shrink)

It was widely believed among post-classical thinkers that the classical Mutakallimūn held that the cause of dependence of an effect on a cause was its origination, or a combination of origination and contingency, or its contingency on condition of its origination. Some post-classical thinkers, led by al-Sayyid al-Sharif al-Jurjānī, went further by interpreting Abu’l-Hasan al-Ashʿarī’s denial of the persistence of accidents was a consequence of his view that origination was the cause of dependence. This is because the origination view entailed (...) that the world was no longer in need of the Creator after its origination, and thus, him and his followers sought to deflect this consequence by holding that accidents do not persist, and since the persistence of substances was dependent on those accidents, and accidents do not persist more than one moment, those substances remained in need of the Creator for those accidents after their origination. This article seeks to investigate this analysis of the Shaykh al-Ashʿarī’s view, alongside the leading scholars of his school. After examining the original sources of classical Ashʿarī thinkers, along with the Baṣran Mu’tazila, and the texts of Ibn Sina, it becomes clear that the Ashꜥarīs did not hold that accidents did not persist in order to deflect that purported consequence. Indeed, it becomes clear that they did not hold that origination was the cause of dependence, but rather, that it was contingency. As for the Mu’tazila, they are explicit that the cause of dependence is origination, and that is based on their view on the reality of the nonexistent. Since essences are real in their state of nonexistence, they are not in need of a cause; and everything that obtains for those essences after they come into exist are entailments of that essence; thus, they only stand in need of a cause in their origination, that is, going from nonexistence into existence. Indeed, they are also explicit that effects do not need the Creator after their origination, and they clarified this through a comparison with a builder and a building. Indeed, the classical Ashꜥarīs criticized them for this, just as Ibn Sina did in the Ishārāt wa’l-tanbīhāt, al-Najāt, and al-Shifā. Thus, those post-classical scholars generalized the statement that origination is the cause of dependence to all classical mutakallimūn, and then they interpreted Ashʿarī’s motivation behind the denial of the persistence of accidents in accordance with that. The truth, however, is that his view on accidents is based on contingency, and that is because a substance is possible of persistence and possible of non-persistence, and therefore, it stands in need of cause to determine its state in the subsequent moment. That determination must entail something additional to the substance itself, otherwise, the effect is redundant. That additional property must be an accident, and since it is impossible for an accident to subsist in an accident, it is not possible for an accident to persist, because it is not receptive to the property which entails persistence; meanwhile, it is possible for substances, because they can sustain accidents. (shrink)

I argue that authentic photography is not able to develop to the full as a communicative representational art. Photography is authentic when it is true to its self-image as the imprinting of images. For an image to be imprinted is for its content to be linked to the scene in which it originates by a chain of sufficient, mind-independent causes. Communicative representational art (in any medium: photography, painting, literature, music, etc.) is art that exploits the resources of representation to (...) achieve artistically interesting communication of thought. The central resources of representation are content, vehicle properties, and the interplay between these two. Whereas painting and other representational arts are able to exploit all three to communicate thought, authentic photography can exploit interplay only to a very limited degree. However, the exploitation of interplay is the culmination of communicative representational art: the natural endpoint in its development. (shrink)

Introduction: We live in a society that encourages self-medication and one reason is the availability of drugs that do not require a prescription and are easily accessible, the abuse of these have important implications for the health of the general population; being the most commonly used drugs: analgesics, antibiotics, antihistamines and others. Objective: Determine the causes that induce self-medication in freshmen and fifth year of the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad Mayor, Real y Pontificia de San Francisco (...) Xavier de Chuquisaca - Bolivia, 2012. Methodology: Quantitative and descriptive cross-sectional approach. A sample of 284 students which they apply structural survey was obtained. Results.A high percentage of students who are self-medicating themselves without.medical.supervision. Conclusions: We can say that self-medication on freshmen and fifth year of medical school at the University Of San Francisco Xavier De Chuquisaca is induced by influence of social circle (friends and parents), advertising of certain medications, access to internet and lack of time. (shrink)

This book represents the first major attempt by any author to provide an integrated account of the evidence for bias in human reasoning across a wide range of disparate psychological literatures. The topics discussed involve both deductive and inductive reasoning as well as statistical judgement and inference. In addition, the author proposes a general theoretical approach to the explanations of bias and considers the practical implications for real world decision making. The theoretical stance of the book is based on (...) a distinction between preconscious heuristic processes which determine the mental representation of 'relevant' features of the problem content, and subsequent analytic reasoning processes which generate inferences and judgements. Phenomena discussed and interpreted within this framework include feature matching biases in propositional reasoning, confirmation bias, biasing and debiasing effects of knowledge on reasoning, and biases in statistical judgement normally attributed to 'availability' and 'representativeness' heuristics. In the final chapter, the practical consequences of bias for real life decision making are considered, together with various issues concerning the problem of 'debiasing'. The major approaches discussed are those involving education and training on the one hand, and the development of intelligent software and interactive decision aids on the other. (shrink)

A truism of art history is that the lifespan of artworks can exceed their original social spaces: Artworks can sometimes be successfully transplanted into completely different settings where they continue to be valued. Does their potential to outlive their original context have to do with a specific feature of artworks’ ontology? Or with how human brains are wired? Or is it a mere function of their historical and social circumstances? I argue that David Summers’s magisterial _Real Spaces: World Art History (...) and the Rise of Western Modernism_ contains elements of a different answer. This answer focuses on what in artworks’ appearance causes them to be effective under various circumstances, without subscribing to the view that art is an irreducibly and inexhaustibly complex source of meaning. In delineating the Summersian perspective, I contrast it with the position (exemplified by the recent work of the archaeologist David Wengrow and the anthropologist Philippe Descola) that treats the art object as a document of underlying structures or currents. (shrink)

The real issues in the debate over whether historical explanations conform to the covering-law model concern not only history but human nature, human action, and human freedom. Modifications of the coveringlaw model are possible which may remove some of the objections to it. Human behavior is rule-governed. Rules are made by human agents and learned by human actors. Cultural rules alone do not explain behavior and cannot be used as "covering" generalizations. But when they are combined with appropriate deviance (...) data to yield conformity statements, these statements can be used as explanatory generalizations - with a certain amount of leeway and the understanding that such rules can be changed or eliminated. These generalizations, such as those found in anthropology, perform the function of general laws in history. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relevance of empirical evidence to real causes. I argue for the claim that instrumentally mediated empirical results are causally dependent on unobservable entities. I develop this idea in the context of discussions on entity realism. As a consequence of my argument, an antirealist version of empiricism, which underlines the significance of empirical evidence but which abstains from real causation, is incoherent.

In recent years, some scholars have argued that Kant embraces a theory of “real grounds” that is akin to contemporary accounts of grounding. In their view, Kantian real grounds are ‘explanatory’ grounds, and (real) grounding is an ontological dependence relation. Whilst they acknowledge causality as the paradigmatic case of grounding, these readers think that causality is by no means the only one. Other examples allegedly include mathematical grounding, grounds of possibility, substance-accident and whole-part relations, and noumenal affection. (...) I shall argue that this reading is mistaken. A compelling textual case can be made that, according to Kant, all real grounds are causes. Thus, if one wanted to argue against this view, one would need to establish that he considers certain kinds of non-causal grounds as real grounds. The arguably most promising candidate for that are “grounds of being” (rationes essendi). Although Kant put some efforts into finding a place for grounds of being within his classification of grounds, he apparently did not reach a solution that he himself considered satisfactory. Notwithstanding this, I argue that an account would have been available to him that captures the modal intuition behind grounds of being without being real grounds in Kant’s sense. I conclude that grounds of being cannot serve as an example for non-causal real grounds. (shrink)

Fred Dretske’s account of mental causation, developed in Explaining Behavior and defended in numerous articles, is generally regarded as one of the most interesting and most ambitious approaches in the field. According to Dretske, meaning facts, construed historically as facts about the indicator functions of internal states, are the structuring causes of behavior. In this article, we argue that Dretske’s view is untenable: On closer examination, the real structuring causes of behavior turn out to be markedly different (...) from Dretske’s meaning facts. Our argument proceeds in three steps. First, we set forth the problem of meaning individuation: We argue that the proposal that meaning facts are structuring causes of behavior commits Dretske to a very fine-grained individuation of meanings that is deeply counterintuitive. In a second step, we show that even these finely individuated meaning facts cannot do the job that they are supposed to do, since information facts—which are constitutive of, but distinct from Dretske’s meaning facts—are better candidates for the role of structuring causes. Finally, we argue that it is not even information facts, but facts of co-instantiation which are the real structuring causes of behavior. In concluding, we briefly consider the options that are left for Dretske if our arguments succeed. (shrink)

I argue that, on a dispositionalist account of causation and indeed on any other view of causation according to which causation is a real relation, general relativity does not give causal principles a role in explaining phenomena. In doing so, I bring out a surprisingly substantial constraint on adequate views about the explanations and ontology of GR, namely the requirement that such views show how GR can explain motion that is free of disturbing influences.

Criminal juries make decisions of great importance. A key criticism of juries is that they are unreliable in a multitude of ways, from exhibiting racial or gendered biases, to misunderstanding their role, to engaging in impropriety such as internet research. Recently, some have even claimed that the use of juries creates injustice on a large-scale, as a cause of low conviction rates for sexual criminality. Unfortunately, empirical research into jury deliberation is undermined by the fact that researchers are unable to (...) study live juries. The indirect sources of evidence used by researchers suffer from various problems, the most important of which is dubious levels of ecological validity. Real jury research—studying live jury deliberation—is controversial. However, as I argue, the objections to it are unconvincing. There is in fact a moral imperative to facilitate real jury research. (shrink)

William Whewell’s philosophy of scientific discovery is applied to the problem of understanding the nature of unification and explanation by the composition of causes in Newtonian mechanics. The essay attempts to demonstrate: the sense in which ”approximate’ laws successfully refer to real physical systems rather than to idealizations of them; why good theoretical constructs are not badly underdetermined by observation; and why, in particular, Newtonian forces are not conventional and how empiricist arguments against the existence of component (...) class='Hi'>causes, and against the veracity of the fundamental laws, are flawed. (shrink)

This paper aims to improve critical realism's understanding of emergence by discussing, first, what emergence is and how it works; second, the need for a compositional account of emergence; and third, the implications of emergence for causation. It goes on to argue that the theory of emergence leads to the recognition of certain hitherto neglected similarities between real causal powers and actual causation. (edited).

I believe that corporations should be held responsible for their actions. Traditional discussions about the moral responsibility of an organization have relied on a model of criminal intent. Demonstrating intent demands that we find a moral agent capable of intending, and this has led to problems. Here I replace the analysis based on criminal law by one based on tort law. Under this framework I suggest that corporations can be held responsible for the harms caused by their activities even if (...) no person or persons in their decision making structure had formed malicious intent, since the sheer fact that the corporate environment encouraged or allowed negligence will be sufficient. (shrink)

Car driving is considered a very complex activity, consisting of different concomitant tasks and subtasks, thus it is crucial to understand the impact of different factors, such as road complexity, traffic, dashboard devices, and external events on the driver’s behavior and performance. For this reason, in particular situations the cognitive demand experienced by the driver could be very high, inducing an excessive experienced mental workload and consequently an increasing of error commission probability. In this regard, it has been demonstrated that (...) human error is the main cause of the 57 % of road accidents and a contributing factor in most of them. In this study, 20 young subjects were involved in a real driving experiment, performed under different traffic conditions (rush hour and not) and along different road types (main and secondary streets). Moreover, during the driving tasks different specific events, in particular a pedestrian crossing the road and a car entering the traffic flow just ahead of the experimental subject, were acted. A Workload Index based on the Electroencephalographic (EEG), i.e. brain activity, of the drivers has been employed to investigate the impact of the different factors on the driver’s workload. Eye-Tracking technology and subjective measures were also employed in order to have a comprehensive overview of the driver’s perceived workload and to investigate the different insights obtainable from the employed methodologies. The employment of such EEG-based Workload index confirmed the significant impact of both traffic and road types on the drivers’ behavior (increasing their workload), with the advantage of being under real settings. Also, it allowed to highlight the increased workload related to external events while driving, in particular with a significant effect during those situations when the traffic was low. Finally, the comparison between methodologies revealed the higher sensitivity of neurophysiological measures with respect to Eye-Tracking and subjective ones. In conclusion, such an EEG-based Workload index would allow to assess objectively the mental workload experienced by the driver, standing out as a powerful tool for research aimed to investigate drivers’ behavior and providing additional and complementary insights with respect to traditional methodologies employed within road safety research. (shrink)

Although a succession of fashions swept the American philosophical scene, C. J. Ducasse was throughout his long career an effective practitioner of analytic philosophy in the classic tradition. As he explained in 1924 "[i]t is only with truths about such questions as the meaning of the term 'true', or 'real', or 'good', and the like . . . that philosophy is concerned. " Such truths are to be discovered inductively by comparing and analyzing concrete cases of the admittedly proper (...) u/le . . . The pressing problems of philosophy are thus in my view primarily problems of def'mition, and moreover, problems of framing def'mitions which must be in formal terms, under penalty of not being otherwise understandable by or acceptable to one or another philosophical school, since the formal elements of thought and tp. ey only are common to all schools. These def'mitions, of course are not to be arbitrary; their relation to the facts of admittedly meaningful linguistic usage is the same as exists between any scientific hypothesis and the facts which it attempts to 1 construe. (shrink)

In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume offers two definitions of ‘cause’. The first is framed in terms of the precedence and contiguity of objects. The second also mentions precedence and contiguity of objects but speaks also of the mind’s tendency on the appearance of the first object to form the idea of the second. Scholars disagree as to which constitutes Hume’s definition of cause properly speaking. Some hold that the ‘constant conjunction of objects’ version is Hume’s real definition, (...) while others opt for the second, psychological version. I argue that Hume’s method of analysis holds that we explicate the meaning of words by tracing ideas back to their antecedent impressions. Since there are two different sets of antecedent impressions, one consisting of preceding and continuous objects and the other of such objects plus psychological determination, we must attribute to Hume the existence of two non-equivalent definitions of the term. (shrink)

This essay is one more attempt of understanding the non-dual philosophical position of Abhinavagupta viz-a-viz the problem of reflection. Since when my first essay on ‘Abhinavagupta on Reflection’ appeared in JIP, I have once again focused on the non-dual Śaiva theory of reflection (_pratibimbavāda_) (3.1-65) as discussed by Abhinavagupta (_fl.c._ 975-1025 CE) in the _Tantrāloka_ and his commentator Jayaratha (_fl.c._ 1225-1275 CE). The present attempt is to understand their philosophical position in the context of Nyāya realism where a reflection is (...) simply caused by an erroneous apprehension of an entity. For Naiyāyikas, according to both Abhinavagupta and Jayaratha, a reflection (_pratibimba_) does not have a real existence at all. There are only two ways of looking at a reflection: it can either simply be an original image (_bimba_) or an illusion (_bhrānti_). There is no scope for any third entity apart from something being an error or a non-error. In contrast to this, establishing a Śaiva theory of reflection, Abhinavagupta is corroborating a valid ontological status for the seemingly illusory objects of perception or imagined objects, such as, to use Abhinavagupta’s own language, ‘an elephant with five trunks and four tusks who is running in the sky’. In other words, he is pleading for the valid cognition of objects which are otherwise deemed to be an error or external to consciousness. While Abhinavagupta’s system has generally been referred to as ‘idealism’, I argue that by establishing the dynamism of reflective awareness that is deemed to be absolutely real, his system should be referred to as ‘dynamic realism’ i.e., the ‘dynamism’ that is common to both ‘real’ and ‘ideal’. This is why he uses the metaphor _consciousness-as-mirror_ (_ciddarpaṇa_) in establishing a non-erroneous ontological status for otherwise illusive idea of reflection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 497 interaction and interdependence. Our practice can be governed by that ontological hypothesis. Much of Timpanaro's ranting and raving and name calling rests upon his unhelpful conflation of the epistemological and the ontological and upon a false dichotomy between materialism and idealism that no longer is or ought to be the basic and important issue in Marxism. DONALDC. LEE University of New Mexico Causing, Perceiving and Believing: (...) An Examination of the Philosophy of C. J. Ducasse. By Peter H. Hare and Edward H. Madden. (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1975. Pp. vii + 211. $26.00) Hare and Madden have performed a service to the philosophical community in summarizing and evaluating the contributions to philosophy of C. J. Ducasse. They have distilled from ten books, scores of articles, and some unpublished manuscripts of Ducasse, analyses of causality, sensation, perception, substance, agency, belief, knowledge, mind, beauty, education, and religion that can fairly be regarded as the philosophy of Ducasse. They point out some inconsistencies in Ducasse's views, but they suggest emendations to overcome the difficulties-emendations that Hare and Madden have developed in their own writings, so that the reader is offered, in effect, a composite Ducasse-Hare-Madden system of philosophy. I agree with most of the authors' judgments regarding the defects of Ducasse's views, but I doubt that their proposed improvements succeed in making the overall vision coherent. In the first three chapters the authors explain Ducasse's theories of causality and agency and claim that his account of causality as a necessary but nonlogical connection was a significant advance over Hume. They consider Ducasse to have been wrong in limiting causality to events and in maintaining that it is directly observable. They argue that an effect is deducible from the "nature" of its cause, although not from the nontheoretical description of its cause. This proposed improvement on Ducasse and Hume seems to me either a mere gloss on Hume or a muddle. If Hare and Madden mean that scientific theories establish entailments between concepts such as pressure and volume or mass and acceleration, and that the explanatory and predictive success of such entailments serves as a criterion of causal processes, they are right. But what they have identified is not a relation of nonlogical necessity but rather two relations: a logical relation between two theoretical concepts, and a contingent relation between two classes of events that correspond to the theoretical concepts. If, on the other hand, they mean to agree with Aristotle and the scholastics that the nature of a thing is an entity or process inside it that compels it to behave as it does, then, like their ancient predecessors, they make causal explanation into a "dormative virtue" fallacy; for the nature of a thing is then identical with its causal powers, and the latter follow vacuously from the concept of its nature. They seem to ignore the fact that any conceptual relation between theoretical concepts is only a rough approximation to actual events. It is a logically necessary truth that EMF is proportional to current times resistance, but it is neither logically nor nonlogically necessary that a booster battery will start a recalcitrant car. In brief, theoretical relations are idealizations of real processes in nature. Hare and Madden claim that their conceptual connection analysis of causality blunts the edge of the "logical connection argument" that motives cannot be causes of actions. They fail to realize that the "logical connection argument" applies to the nontheoretical descriptions of motives and actions (there are no theories worth considering), while their own conceptual relation analysis applies only to theoretical descriptions of natural processes. The Hare-Madden emendation produces special difficulties when applied to Ducasse's account of human agency and mind-body interaction. Ducasse defended the dualist conception of voluntary action as bodily movement caused by mental volitions. The possibility of 498 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY such causal intereaction makes some sense on Ducasse's basically Humean view that causality can hold between any two kinds of event but not on the Hare-Madden view that cause and effect must be conceptually related. For we have no well-confirmed theories, nor is it likely that we ever will... (shrink)

While I, as may be said, “groaned” and “puffed” over the last chapter of the third book of the second series of my writings, in the process of my “subconscious mentation,” that is to say, in my automatically flowing thoughts, the center of gravity of interest was concentrated by itself on the question: how should I begin the third series of books predetermined by me for writing, namely, that series of books which according to my conviction was destined to become (...) in a short time so to say “edifyingly instructive” for all the creatures of Our Common Father similar to myself; but here I must sincerely confess that soon after I had chosen for myself the profession of a writer, as the most corresponding to my unexpectedly arisen physical state, and when, parallel to the improvement in my physical state, I clearly understood that, thanks to my personal written explanations, a great benefit will arise for the majority of contemporary people as well as for future generations, I determined by this very series of books consciously to acquit myself with Great Nature for my arising and existence, chiefly for an existence not merely as an “ordinary life,” automatically fulfilling some purpose necessary for the general realizations of Great Nature, but rather as an existence determinate and conscious, impartially evaluating itself and, in addition, gifted with the capacity of all-round perfecting and independent unity. The outcome of these recent reflections, combined with my conscious thoughts of today upon finishing this last-mentioned book, brought me to the categorical decision to begin this “edifyingly instructive” series of books with the description of the events connected with my last two visits to some of the cities of North America, and to cite in concise form the talks delivered by me there to a certain group of the followers of my ideas which had already been organized ten years before during my first visit in New York. I wish to begin with this description chiefly because upon these talks, as I planned them in my thoughts, a corresponding foundation may be built for everything which I have decided to introduce into the conscious life of people by means of this third and last series of my writings; furthermore, because the publication of these lectures, combined with the description of the events and causes which provoked them, to which events and causes I reacted by means of these very talks of definite form and sequence, will, I have almost no doubt, create in their totality a so to say “automatically acting factor” for the possible saving from their total ruination of many thousand people of both sexes from various countries in Europe, Asia and America. In this introductory book of the third series, I shall expose the “quintessence” of five talks, four of which were delivered by me at the end of 1930 and the beginning of 1931, and one other at the end of 1931 or the beginning of 1932. For the readers of this series of my expositions, no matter in which degree of consciousness they may rank themselves, it would not in my opinion be superfluous to know, among other things, from which of my conceptions and instinctive suppositions was derived the phrase I used: “consciously to acquit myself with Great Nature.” This phrase burst forth from me almost involuntarily and took a shape which derived from the totality of my instinctive and conscious conviction that by this act of making known this last series of my writings, I could rely on fulfilling what is in my opinion the most important duty of a man who has reached responsible age, which consists in preparing without fail for the benefit of posterity, according to one’s own individuality, certain profitable instructions; furthermore, I could by this same act, albeit quite subjectively, justify the sense of all my past intentional labors and conscious renunciations of all kinds of benefits which are generally crystallized in the life of contemporary people, and which have always been very easy for me to obtain; and finally, I hope, in the moment of my last breathing, to experience with no possible mental, sensitive or instinctive doubt the impulse, sacred for a man, which was called by the ancient Essenes “impartial self-satisfaction.” In order that there should arise in the mentation of the readers of this book, for a better orientation and an easier logical confrontation with what will follow, a “something” which existed on Earth before the Babylonian civilization in a branch of science named “Theomathos” and was called “a vivifying factor for objective assuming”—I refer, of course, to the mentation of those readers who, as soon as they became acquainted with my expositions, were guided by and closely followed my advice—I wish first of all to try, for their inner sight, to depict by a verbal description various information, the totality of which might help them to represent in true perspective and clearly understand two situations which occurred in the process of my ordinary life during the time of my writing activity. 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According to the received view, philosophy of action took a justified turn towards causalism because anti-causalists failed the causalist challenge about efficacious reasons. This paper contests that view by examining the ways in which Georg Henrik von Wright responded to causalism in his later philosophy. First, von Wright attacked the subjectivism of causalism by arguing for an objectivist view that construes reasons not as subjective mental states but as external facts of the agent's situation. Second, von Wright fundamentally disagreed with (...) the view of philosophical inquiry that underpinned causalism. For von Wright, the task of philosophy was conceptual: to explicate what one is looking for when one is looking for the real reasons for action. In contrast, for causalists the task was ontological: to determine what kind of item in the world the real reason for action is. Examining von Wright's account contributes to contemporary assessments of the metaphilosophical dimension of the reasons/causes debate. (shrink)

Approximately twenty years after it was necessary to fight for human rights, the time came when it was necessary to do it again. Or to begin at the very least to protect them very strongly and thoroughly in a preventive manner. Other methods and means will revert to time when human rights were formally anchored but their material establishment is not yet realized, or not at least to the extent expected corresponding to their real substance. The beginning of the (...) 90’s in Central and Eastern Europe was a success in that human rights began to be looked on as natural, forming the basis of democratic State respecting the rule of law. Today we are increasingly more often encountering the reality that human rights, on the contrary, to the same extent that they have been able to be established, they are losing in value. The biggest danger consists in the fact that limiting of human rights often is attended by silence, without wider public discussion or deliberations. The lack of qualified discussion during the limiting of human rights by way of laws and implementing regulations is however a systemic problem. Correction of its results can be often very complex and doing away with the causes a long term effort. It is dependent on the quality of representative democracy and of the civil society as well. This article is devoted to problem of implementation of evidence of data accompanying telecommunications traffic, the so-called data retention, and in its development from lack of legal regulation to roughly unconstitutional legal regulation and finally to hope for a reasonably constitutional solution. (shrink)

Verbal autopsy presents the opportunity to understand the disease burden in many low-income countries where vital registration systems are underdeveloped and most deaths occur in the community. Advances in technology have led to the development of software that can provide probable cause of death information in real time, and research considering the ethical implications of these advances is necessary to inform policy. Our research explores these ethical issues in rural Nepal using a public health ethics framework. We considered the (...) burdens and benefits of VA and giving cause of death information to families of the deceased through qualitative research with VA interviewers, community members, national policy stakeholders and international academics. Burdens can be experienced differently, and it is important to balance the emotional burden of VA with utilization of the data to inform planning and increased access to health services. The training, support and supervision of VA interviewers should be prioritized if VA is taken to scale. Initial and ongoing community engagement is recommended in addition to engaging ethical, legal, health and policy personnel in developing protocols and systems. Integrating rigorous research while cautiously moving forward is recommended to ensure systems and responses to concerns are relevant to contexts. (shrink)

According to one of the most influential definitions, formulated by Michel Foucault in his Les anormaux, the monster is, since the Middle Ages, a violation of a “bio-juridical” order. In critically discussing the historical plausibility of this claim this article explores medical and philosophical conceptions of monsters between medieval and early modern period, addressing in particular the matter of the relationships between first and second causes in nature's errors. The main authors dealt with are Thomas Aquinas, Ambroise Paré, Francisco (...) Toledo and Fortunio Liceti. What emerges is that up to the 17 th century monsters were always conceived as products – and not as real contradictions – of a nature ordered by God's will, goodness and perfection, without a real “bio-juridical” order (as Foucault thinks). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 23-42 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming the Grip of Consumerism Stephanie KazaUniversity of VermontFor fifteen years the Worldwatch Institute of Washington, D. C. has been publishing a review of the declining condition of the global environment (Brown et al. 1998). For the most part, the picture is not good. Much of the deterioration can be traced directly to human activities--urban expansion equates to species loss, (...) industrial manufacturing to air pollution, factory farming to water pollution, chemical agriculture to poisoned soil. Accelerating these environmental impacts are rapidly rising population numbers, increasingly efficient technologies, and consumption rates beyond the planet's capacity. These three have been linked by the equation I=PAT, or environmental impact=population size multiplied by affluence (or degree of consumption) multiplied by technology. Reduce any one of these and the impact drops; increase one or all three, and the impact rises, in some cases dramatically.Much of the conversation among scientists and technologists has focused on the P (population) and T (technology) parts of the equation, with grave concerns that rising population numbers are swamping earth systems, yet often with buoyant optimism that technological breakthroughs will solve everything. These two perspectives dominated political discussion for much of the 1960s and 1970s (Ehrlich et al. 1977 and Lovins 1977, among others). But by the 1980s the facts were incontrovertible: high rates of consumption were driving environmental destruction just as fast if not faster than rising population. At the 1992 Rio Summit in Brazil, representatives of southern countries demanded that high-consuming northern countries examine their own contribution to the environmental crisis rather than placing blame elsewhere. It is our obligation in the North to respond to these serious requests.How much do people in northern industrialized countries consume? Here are some indicator figures: Americans consume their average body weight (120 pounds) every day in materials extracted and processed from farms, mines, range lands, and forests (Ryan and Durning 1997, 5). In the United States, the number of shopping malls (close to 35,000) eclipsed the number of high schools in 1987 (Dunning 1992, 130). Since 1950 the per capita consumption of energy, meat, and lumber has doubled, use of plastic has increased five times, use of aluminum seven times, and average airplane miles per person has soared 33-fold (Durning 1992, 29). As products have proliferated, we see the swelling ecological footprint behind each new thing: clear-cut forests replacing paper plantations in Thailand, toxic oil polluting native lands of Ecuador, women earning poverty wages assembling computer chips in [End Page 23] Malaysia--the stories are not as pretty as the products. Materials extraction, production, distribution, use, and waste disposal--all of these have ecological costs, many of which are life threatening.Why should Buddhists and Christians address consumption? For starters, it is a nonsectarian issue; responsibility cuts across denominations and religious belief systems. Collaboration of all kinds is needed to take apart this juggernaut of complex causes and conditions. I believe the Buddhist tradition has powerful analytical tools and spiritual practices which may be helpful in this undertaking. These may aid or inspire similar efforts explored through the Christian heritage. A survey of the landscape and the literature shows it is shockingly clear: the challenge here is enormous. It will require all the spiritual insight, dedication, and sheer stamina we can bring to it. This work cannot be done alone; we need each other's help to keep going through the many obstacles.To date, Buddhist initiatives in this conversation have been modest. Several popular books have brought Buddhist perspectives to bear on consumption issues, most notably E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (1975) and Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild (1990). Both works popularize practices of simplicity and restraint, flavored by the exotic Western fascination with Eastern thought. Several Buddhist teachers in the U.S. have taken up particular sub-themes addressing over-consumption. Philip Kapleau has sounded an ethical call for vegetarianism based on the first precept, "no killing" (1982). Robert Aitken has taken a stand for reducing wants and needs to simplify... (shrink)