Four studies explore the role of perceptual fluency in attenuating bullshit receptivity, or the tendency for individuals to rate otherwise meaningless statements as “profound”. Across four studies, we presented participants with a sample of pseudoprofound bullshit statements in either a fluent or disfluent font and found that overall, disfluency attenuated bullshit receptivity while also finding little evidence that this effect was moderated by cognitive thinking style. In all studies, we measured participants’ cognitive reflection, need for cognition, faith in intuition, and (...) superstitious beliefs. Superstition strongly predicted bullshit receptivity regardless of fluency. Inconclusive results were found for the remaining scales. Potential links for the role of perceptual disfluency in promoting analytic thinking are discussed. (shrink)

Electronic technologies, in general, and computer-oriented technologies specifically have had a tremendous impact on all aspects of business. One area of increased concern is the protection of intellectual properties -- notably copyrights -- within the boundaries of the broadly defined technology industry. While the ability to share copyrighted information has always existed at the most basic levels, the advent of the information age has allowed the sharing of this information to take place in potentially greater quantities and without a loss (...) of quality. As such, copying creates a major threat to industries dealing in the production and distribution of copyrightable creations. The focus of this paper is to better understand how the ethical judgments of employees regarding the opportunities to recreate copyrighted works via traditional and newer technologies impact assessments of copying behavior in the workplace. (shrink)

Latein lernen einmal anders. Gemeinhin gilt Lateinunterricht als nur mäßig spannend, die Autoren von "Latein für Dummies" zeigen Ihnen, wie man mit Spaß Latein lernen, auffrischen oder verbessern kann. Zwischen Konjugationen und Deklinationen erfahren Sie viel über die römische Gesellschaft, Literatur und über den ganzen Rest, der Latein auch noch heute für uns interessant macht. Mit einem kleinen Wörterbuch und vielen Tabellen ist dies der ideale Einsteiger- und Auffrischungskurs für die Lateiner von morgen.

Drawing from both theoretical and empirical research, the literature on basic income (BI) is now voluminous, pronouncing both its merits and its limitations. Burgeoning research documents the impacts of un/conditional cash transfers and negative income tax programs, with many studies highlighting the effectiveness of these programs in reducing poverty, and improving a host of social, economic and health outcomes. We consider possible avenues for BI architecture to be adopted within Canada’s existing constellation of income security programs, to the benefit of (...) disadvantaged groups in society. Identifying key federal and provincial (i.e., Ontario) transfer and tax benefit programs, we highlight which programs might best be maintained or converted to a BI. While opponents decry the (alleged) exorbitant costs of BI schemes, we suggest that the existing approach not only produces an ineffective system—which actually engenders poverty and the health and social problems that accompany it—but an excessively costly one. (shrink)

Insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) is an autoimmune disease whose etiology is complex. Both genetic susceptibility, which is polygenic, and environmental factors, including virus infections, appear to be involved in the development of IDDM. In this review, we have tried to balance the discussion of diabetes by examining both immunological and virological perspectives. Several mouse models, including viral and non‐viral models, have been used to study diabetes. For this review, we include lessons gleaned from the non‐obese diabetic (NOD) mouse and from (...) mouse models of coxsackievirus‐ and encephalomyocarditis‐virus‐induced diabetes. Finally, we present a multi‐stage model in which several viral infections, including the coxsackieviruses, are postulated to play a role in the autoimmune destruction of pancreatic beta cells. (shrink)

The work of Alain Badiou attempts to refound the project of Western philosophy by returning to the platonic celebration of mathematics as the basis for any transmissible knowledge. In “The New Man's Fetish,” Tracy McNulty shows that Badiou's return to Plato is secretly mediated by the French libertine tradition. Badiou derives the militant figure of mathematics less from Plato than from Lautréamont—in whose “Songs of Maldoror” she (mathematics) appears as a stern mistress. Reading McNulty, within the framework of psychoanalytic (...) debates around the clinic of perversion, I show that McNulty's emphasis upon this mediation, despite appearances, functions less to undermine the authority of Badiou's philosophical project than to raise the stakes of perversion. Taking Badiou's libertinism seriously makes it possible to grasp how perversion strives to formalize the death drive and thus to open politics and philosophy to the future. At the same time, McNulty shows that Badiou's theory of number makes it possible to rethink the distinctions between number, trope, figure, and fetish; and thus to reopen a discussion of the relationships between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature. (shrink)

The essence of life in an oligarchy like George Orwell presents in '1984' is that freedom of choice is virtually non-existent. But what happens when so many trivial and meaningless choices inundate a culture such as our own and freedom itself becomes devalued? In 'A Do-It-Yourself Dystopia', through a variety of essays, Steven Carter addresses this and other issues in a wide-ranging search for hidden oligarchies of the American self.

This is the third volume in a trilogy of fables by Steven Carter. Carter's butterflies are naive, worldly, sarcastic, philosophical, and very funny—in short, perfectly human!

I assess Anselm’s claim that the debt of sin is "infinite" by examining the thought-experiment used to illustrate it. The claim crashes due to a conflict with Anselm’s implied (and plausible) view of God’s obligations and due to interesting errors in his thought-experiment. Nevertheless, I defend his "Union-of-Obligation-and-Ability (UOA) strategy and his "Provision-of-Satisfaction" mechanism for explaining atonement, which relied functionally on sin’s infinite demerit, by changing them a bit. I also defend Anselm’s UOA and "Disorder-Avoidance" strategies from objections from Duns (...) Scotus. (shrink)

A Catholic philosophy requires an account of God as the first cause of all being. Descartes provides this, but he does so at a high price, for his Creator of ontologically and causally independent moments of creaturely existence precludes all secondary causes. Descartes’s philosophy thus results in occasionalism, which I try to show is the unhappy result of errors in natural philosophy concerning material forms and duration. Suarez provides a contrasting scholastic account of creation, showing how novel, and problematic, Descartes’s (...) position is. (shrink)

Historical accounts of autonomy hold that the autonomy of pro-attitudes depends, at least in part, on the way in which they came about. Understandably, such accounts tend to focus the bulk of their attention on identifying the historical conditions necessary for the development of autonomous pro-attitudes. As Alfred Mele has argued, however, in addition to autonomy with respect to the development of one’s pro-attitudes, full or robust personal autonomy requires as well that one be autonomous with respect to the continued (...) possession of one’s pro-attitudes, and with respect to the influence those pro-attitude have on one’s behavior. These non-historical aspects of personal autonomy have not, though, been adequately addressed by recent historical accounts. This paper aims to draw attention to, and hopefully go some way toward remedying, the need for further illumination of the two ongoing aspects of autonomy. I argue first that in order for a pro-attitude to be autonomously possessed, it is not enough that it developed in an autonomous manner; it must also be maintained in an autonomous manner. I examine two proposed “autonomous-maintenance” conditions, one by Mele, the other by Richard Arneson, and argue that, as those conditions stand, neither is satisfactory. What we need, I argue, is an autonomous-maintenance condition that adjusts and combines the requirements of those two conditions, such as that I go on to offer. According to that condition, the autonomous possession of a pro-attitude requires that the agent remain disposed and able to review the pro-attitude in the light of new and relevant evidence, and that she is capable of shedding the pro-attitude should such review issue in a rational judgment that it is best to do so. I then examine Mele’s discussion of the behavioral aspect of autonomy relative to a pro-attitude. I argue that by requiring that an agent be able to construct and execute a plan for acting on the basis of a pro-attitude that has some objectively determined likelihood of success, Mele’s treatment of the behavioral aspect of autonomy confuses the ability to autonomously pursue one’s ends with the ability to achieve them. The behavioral aspect of autonomy, I argue, ought instead require merely that an agent be able to employ her adequate self-control capacities in determining for herself whether and how to go about acting on her autonomously possessed pro-attitudes. (shrink)

One of the central considerations to be taken into account in evaluating the ethics of compensation for donated plasma is respect for donor autonomy. And one of the main arguments against compensated donation systems is that many donors do or would come from circumstances of poverty that restrict their alternatives in a way that compromises those donors’ autonomy. In this paper, I develop and defend a novel version of this “compromised autonomy argument” which improves upon extant versions by employing a (...) more nuanced account of the relationship between alternatives and autonomy. According to the version of that argument I offer, donors lack autonomy with respect to the sale of their plasma if their economic circumstances leave them with no choice but to sell their plasma on the basis of a desire they have had no choice but to hold. After explicating the key terms of this argument, I examine its policy implications. I argue that, given several reasonable empirical assumptions, my argument implies that a majority of individuals whose income falls below a specified threshold would indeed lack autonomy with respect to the sale of their plasma. Most individuals whose income falls above that threshold, on the other hand, would be able to autonomously sell their plasma. I argue that respect for donor autonomy therefore speaks in favor of an income-restricted system of compensated donation which permits collection centers to purchase plasma from those whose income falls above the relevant threshold, but not those below it. (shrink)

This study explores the prevalence and predictors of three sexual contact and conduct risks through mobile phone use among adolescents : the exchange of sexually explicit content, the sharing of one's mobile phone number with a stranger from the opposite sex, and participation in anonymous chat rooms on TV. One in three adolescents admits having exchanged sexual content, one in five reports having shared their number with a stranger, and one in ten has participated in TV chat rooms. Contextual predictors (...) were gender, age, having a partner, self-esteem, popularity, susceptibility to peer pressure, parent attachment and attitude towards school. Strong mobile phone use predictors were the frequency of text messaging, problematic phone use and using one's phone to avoid face-to-face interactions. However, different patterns emerged for the different mobile phone practices and for girls and boys, indicating the need for further research. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's Concepts is a comprehensive, multi-volume survey of the key concepts and categories that inform Kierkegaard's writings. Each article is a substantial, original piece of scholarship, which discusses the etymology and lexical meaning of the relevant Danish term, traces the development of the concept over the course of the authorship, and explains how it functions in the wider context of Kierkegaard's thought. Concepts have been selected on the basis of their importance for Kierkegaard's contributions to philosophy, theology, the social sciences, (...) literature and aesthetics, thereby making this volume an ideal reference work for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines. (shrink)

A revised edition of Steven Cahn's book of short philosophical essays.

The concept of a G‐quartet, a unique structural arrangement intrinsic to guanine‐rich DNA, was first introduced by Gellert and colleagues1 over 40 years ago. For decades, it has been uncertain whether the G‐quartet and the structure that it gives rise to, the G‐quadruplex, are purely in vitro phenomena. Nevertheless, the presence of signature G‐rich motifs in the eukaryotic genome, and the plethora of proteins that bind to, modify or resolve this nucleic acid structure in vitro have provided circumstantial evidence for (...) its physiological relevance. More recently, direct visualisation of G‐quadruplex DNA at native telomeres was achieved, bolstering the evidence for its existence in the cell. Furthermore, G‐quadruplex folded telomeric DNA has been found to perturb telomere function and to impede the action of telomerase, an enzyme overexpressed in >85% of human cancers, hence opening up a novel avenue for cancer therapy in the form of G‐quadruplex stabilising agents. BioEssays 29: 155–165, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this reply I consider David O’Connor’s article “A Variation on the Free Will Defense” in which he tries to show that natural evil is necessary for free will by showing that it is required for the possibility of “morally creditable free choice.” I argue that O’Connor’s reply to an anticipated objection was unsuccessful in showing that humans can be moral without the property he calls “p.” that an altered understanding of what “morally creditable free choice” is would not help. (...) and finally, that if God’s moral condition is fundamentally different than ours, it could not be used as an example of p being inessential for humans being moral. (shrink)

Albert the Great does not regard the creation of the world as philosophically demonstrable. In this article, it is shown why this is so: because Albert regards the temporal beginning of the world as essential to the meaning of creation, and because he holds that it is impossible to demonstrate the temporal beginning of the world, he concludes that the creation of the world is philosophically indemonstrable. Albert insists that creation must imply a temporal beginning because he thinks that temporal (...) duration can only be created if it is created at a first instant. Albert’s position necessitates a sharp distinction between creation and conservation. Particular attention is given to Albert’s De causis et processu universitatis and Summa theologiae. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:146 BOOK REVIEWS the years passed since Father Garrigou-Lagrange last published his De Revelatione would have allowed Thomistic scholars to retrieve and de· velop Aquinas's theological insights in their fullness. The danger of apologetics is that it can lead one to develop a teaching only along the lines set by those challenging the traditional teaching of the Church. In this particular instance, the Catholic apologists of the antimodernist period (...) were led to overstress the epistemological dimension of the theology of Revelation, leaving unstated that for Saint Thomas the primary term of analysis in this question is the knowledge of God. The need of Revelation for Saint Thomas stems from the call to man to share in the beatific vision. A paper on the relation of finality between faith and the beatific vision would have underlined the originality and true significance of the Thomistic tradition in theology. Saint John's Priory Laredo, Texas JOSEPH D'AMECOURT, F.J. The Eternity of the World in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas and his Contemporaries. Edited by J. B. M. WISSINK. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, edited by A. ZIMMERMAN, vol. 27. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990. Pp. viii+ 100. $28.75 (paper). This volume contains six short studies by five different scholars from the Netherlands on a topic accurately indicated by its title. These studies are a product of a symposium held by the Thomas Aquinas Workgroup, a scholarly association dedicated to investigating the thesis " that Aquinas first of all has to be understood as a theologian " and to " a rediscovery of the original Aquinas and his authentic thought" (p. vii). The topic chosen for these studies is a suitable one for the aims of the Workgroup, for it is one that requires a clear dis· tinction to be made between the realms of philosophy and theology, and it is one that has generated much interest and dispute-in the Middle Ages no less than today. This small collection of studies makes a con· tribution to scholarship, although there are weaknesses in some of the studies, as I shall note. F. J. A. de Grijs (pp. 1-8) argues that Thomas's purpose in writing the De aeternitate mundi was theological rather than philosophical in that Thomas provides a meditation on the meaning of eternity. This meditation, so de Grijs argues, is not only about the temporal eternity of the world but is even more about God's eternity. It shows us how BOOK REVIEWS 147 little we grasp of God's duration, or how we do not understand it rather than how we do understand it. J. A. Aertsen (pp. 9-19) ·responds to de Grijs by arguing that the work has a philosophical character. First, Aertsen explains, the fact that Thomas begins the De aeternitate mundi with the supposition on faith that the world had a temporal beginning in the past does not of itself (as de Grijs had thought) mean that the work is theological. Rather, it simply means that all believers agree that in fact the world had a temporal beginning, but the question at issue remains a philosophical one: could the world possibly have existed eternally in the past? Second, Aertsen points out that the reasoning in the De aeternitate mundi is much like that of Thomas's Disputed Question De potentia Dei, q. 3, a. 14, which has an explicitly philosophical character. Third, Thomas has already made it clear in his Commentary on the Sentences, bk. 2, d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, that the doctrine of creation, excluding the part of the doctrine that the world had a temporal beginning, is philosophically knowable in principle and known to philosophers in fact. Since the fact of creation is philosophically knowable and can he demonstrated without prejudice to the question of eternity, it cannot he said that an eternal past existence is incompatible with creation. Hence, the question of the compatibility of being eternal and being created-the very question for the De aeternitate mundi-is regarded by Thomas as philosophical rather than as theological. Aertsen's criticisms of de Grijs are sound, yet de Grijs's central point can he saved. De Grijs... (shrink)

The claim that we have free will is so important to Kant that many of his commentators suggest that the entire structure and machinery of his Critique of Pure Reason is constructed solely for the purpose of sheltering free will from the devastating effects it suffers from empiricism. Indeed, Kant himself, in a famous line in the preface, tells us, “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith” [Bxxx]. The question of whether (...) people are free willed or determined in their actions is the central issue of the Third Antinomy, and perhaps arguably, the main issue of the whole Critique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dante’s Poetics Of The Sacred WordSteven BotterillI hope to make a case that, until recently, would probably have seemed self-evident, or at least uncontroversial: namely, that a positive valuation of the power of human language to express and to represent informs the textual practice of Dante’s Commedia—or, to put it more bluntly, that Dante believes in words.1The language of poetry was, for Dante, the supremely demanding and supremely rewarding (...) form of human eloquence. This much is made clear in his significantly titled treatise De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular), which, having set out—and failed—to identify a truly noble form of the Italian vernacular, takes it as axiomatic that if (or rather when) such a language is brought into being, it will primarily be used by poets in the composition of their poetry. Despite the many subsequent developments in his thought, and despite, above all, the drastic and often underestimated effects of his shift after 1300 from lyric to narrative-dramatic forms and techniques, nothing in Dante’s later works gives us any reason to think that he ever modified this view.Within the narrative of the Commedia, the overriding importance of eloquence is amply demonstrated by the fact that, without it, Dante-character’s journey would never have taken place. It is to poetic eloquence that Dante owes both his visionary experience and his eventual salvation. Confirmation of this initially startling proposition occurs in canto II of Inferno, where Virgil describes his commission from Beatrice to come to the aid of her errant admirer, and explains that he is charged to do so through the use of his “parola ornata” (“ornamented [End Page 154] word”: Inf., II. 67)—not merely a word plucked from the dictionary, however potently charged with salvific meaning, but a word (or, by synecdoche, a language) that is perceptibly embellished with the technical and rhetorical devices recognized by its hearers as constituting eloquence. Virgil, then, is not just to speak the saving word but to pay attention, as both his historical identity and his creator’s agenda require, to the aesthetic and intellectual implications of its usage; and the efficacy of his speech is manifestly dependent on the elegance and persuasiveness of its formulation.Dante-character’s initial recognition of his mysterious interlocutor in Inferno I as “quella fonte / che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume” (“that spring / that pours forth so rich a stream of speech”: Inf., I. 79–80) is thus retrospectively justified: this is the immediately relevant aspect of Virgil’s historical personality, the one that best equips him to become Dante-character’s guide and mentor in Hell and (most of) Purgatory. Likewise, it is under the auspices of another renowned possessor of eloquence, Bernard of Clairvaux, that Dante’s journey reaches its appointed end. The narrative movement through the Commedia is, among much else, a movement from one “parola ornata” to another, from Virgil’s eloquence to Bernard’s, from the pagan word that offers worldly renown to the Christian word that both transfigures the believer in this life and promises bliss in the life to come. The former, however, grounds the process that leads to the latter; and at both ends of the journey the functional significance of the word and its usage remains paramount.We need, however, to be careful at this point, lest we begin too quickly to entertain the notion that the centrality of eloquence in Dante’s thought immediately justifies the conclusion that he accepted the intrinsic validity of poetic language, or, more controversial still, its supremacy over other forms of eloquent discourse. Firstly, Virgil’s is not the only word in the poem distinguished as “ornata.” The epithet recurs in the bolgia of the seducers, as part of the tale of Jason, who “con segni e con parole ornate” (“with signs and with ornamented words”: Inf., XVIII. 91) led Hypsipyle astray and earned himself damnation. Clearly, Jason’s “parole ornate” are morally quite different from Virgil’s: instead of saving they betray, instead of embodying the truth they act as a vehicle of deceit. Their ornamental quality is specious, employed to conceal their... (shrink)

This article assesses Richard Vernon's attempted reconciliation of compatriot preference with global justice by analyzing the iteration proviso (IP), which says that a group of people can legitimately set out to confer special advantages upon each other if others, outside that group, are free to do the same in their own case. Part I outlines how duties to outsiders are typically characterized in two leading accounts of global justice — moral universalism and associativism. The IP is motivated by Vernon's desire (...) to transcend the binary opposition between, and the limitations of, these two views. Part II sketches the version of contractualism that Vernon deploys to surmount these limitations and explains the role of the IP therein. Part III elucidates two different interpretations of the IP and shows that neither seems plausible. (shrink)