Assessments of health care needs are embedded in contracts for health services. Such contracts are the formal link between the identification of health care needs and the purchasing of services to satisfy those needs. They are a central part of the procedural relationship between the British health service (NHS) and the satisfaction of human needs. To evaluate contracts it is necessary to investigate this relationship. A number of headings under which it may be possible to begin to evaluate contracts are (...) described, and the potential of a ‘universalist’ approach to interrogate contract-based decision-making is briefly discussed. (shrink)

Jones and Coleman are among a handful of otherwise normal as a child and the number 5 was red and 6 was green. This the- people who have synesthesia. They experience the ordinary ory does not answer why only some people retain such vivid world in extraordinary ways and seem to inhabit a mysterious sensory memories, however. You might _think _of cold when you no-man’s-land between fantasy and reality. For them the sens- look at a picture of an ice (...) cube, but you probably do not feel es—touch, taste, hearing, vision and smell—get mixed up in- cold, no matter how many encounters you may have had with stead of remaining separate. ice and snow during your youth. Modern scientists have known about synesthesia since Another prevalent idea is that synesthetes are merely being 1880, when Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, pub- metaphorical when they describe the note C flat as “red” or say lished a paper in _Nature _on the phenomenon. But most have that chicken tastes “pointy”—just as you and I might speak of brushed it aside as fakery, an artifact of drug use (LSD and a “loud” shirt or “sharp” cheddar cheese. Our ordinary lan- mescaline can produce similar effects) or a mere curiosity. guage is replete with such sense-related metaphors, and perhaps About four years ago, however, we and others began to un- synesthetes are just especially gifted in this regard. cover brain processes that could account for synesthesia. Along We began trying to find out whether synesthesia is a gen- the way, we also found new clues to some of the most mysteri- uine sensory experience in 1999. This deceptively simple ques- ous aspects of the human mind, such as the emergence of ab- tion had plagued researchers in this field for decades. One nat- stract thought, metaphor and perhaps even language. ural approach is to start by asking the subjects outright: “Is this A common explanation of synesthesia is that the affected just a memory, or do you actually see the color as if it were right people are simply experiencing childhood memories and asso- in front of you?” When we tried asking this question, we did ciations.. (shrink)

On a version of consent theory that tempts many, predatory sexual relations involving significant power imbalances (e.g. between professors and students, adults and teenagers, or employers and employees) are wrong because they violate consent-centric norms. In particular, the wronged party is said to have been incapable of consenting to the predation, and the sexual wrong is located in the encounter’s nonconsensuality. Although we agree that these are sexual wrongs, we resist the idea that they are always nonconsensual. We argue instead (...) that it is possible for students, teenagers, employees, etc. to fully consent to sexually predatory encounters; denying as much renders survivors of predation vulnerable to compounding harms. Survivors face a dilemma: give up either their understanding of their experience as wrong, or their self-conception as an agent capable of consenting. We call the latter phenomenon agential demotion. (shrink)

Many extant theories of placebo focus on their causal structure wherein placebo effects are those that originate from select features of the therapy (e.g., client expectations or “incidental” features like size and shape). Although such accounts can distinguish placebos from standard medical treatments, they cannot distinguish placebos from everyday occurrences, for example, when positive feedback improves our performance on a task. Providing a social-epistemological account of a treatment context can rule out such occurrences, and furthermore reveal a new way to (...) distinguish clinical placebos from standard medical treatments. (shrink)

Block proposes that phenomenal experience overflows conscious access. In contrast, we propose that conscious access overflows overt report. We argue that a theory of phenomenal experience cannot discard subjective report and that Block's examples of phenomenal relate to two different types of perception. We propose that conscious access is more than simply readout of a pre-existing phenomenal experience.

I argue that lying is generally morally better than mere deliberate misleading because the latter involves the exploitation of a greater trust and more seriously abuses our willingness to fulfil epistemic and moral obligations to others. Whereas the liar relies on our figuring out and accepting only what is asserted, the mere deliberate misleader depends on our actively inferring meaning beyond what is said in the form of conversational implicatures as well. When others’ epistemic and moral obligations are determined by (...) standard assumptions of communicative cooperation and no compelling moral reason justifies mere deliberate misleading instead, one had better lie. (shrink)

Scientific models represent aspects of the empirical world. I explore to what extent this representational relationship, given the specific properties of models, can be analysed in terms of propositions to which truth or falsity can be attributed. For example, models frequently entail false propositions despite the fact that they are intended to say something "truthful" about phenomena. I argue that the representational relationship is constituted by model users "agreeing" on the function of a model, on the fit with data and (...) on the aspects of a phenomenon that are modelled. Model users weigh the propositions entailed by a model and from this decide which of these propositions are crucial to the acceptance and continued use of the model. Thus, models represent phenomena when certain propositions they entail are true, but this alone does not exhaust the representational relationship. Therefore, the constraints that produce the choice of the relevant propositions in a model must also be examined and their analysis contributes to understanding the relationship between models and phenomena. (shrink)

Non-invasive neuroimaging in humans permits direct investigation of the potential role for mesodiencephalic structures in consciousness. Activity in the superior colliculus can be correlated with the contents of consciousness, but it can be also identified for stimuli of which the subject is unaware; and consciousness of some types of visual stimuli may not require the superior colliculus. (Published Online May 1 2007).

The study draws attention to the transfer of management theories and practices from traditional capitalist countries such as the USA and UK to post-socialist countries that are currently experiencing radical change as they seek to introduce market reforms. It is highlighted that the efficacy of this transfer of management theories and practices is, in part, dependent upon the extent to which work-related attitudes and values vary between traditional capitalist and former socialist contexts. We highlight that practices such as Human Resource (...) Management (HRM) and Organization Development (OD) are inextricably associated with conceptions surrounding culture and society, as well as to variables such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment. The main aim of this study is to compare various attitudes and values of employees in traditional capitalist countries and post-socialist countries. On the basis of the findings of an attitudinal survey of (N = 5914) workers in 15 countries we conclude that certain aspects of the attitudes and values of workers in post-socialist countries and traditional capitalist countries differ significantly. Specifically, these differences were found in respect of context-related and job-related attitudes, and also in relation to the importance that the respondents attached to the subject of ethics more generally. The implications of the study are discussed particularly in relation to the transfer of management theory and practices between traditional capitalist and post-socialist contexts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Employing utilitarian criteria, Jones and Felps, in “Shareholder Wealth Maximization and Social Welfare: A Utilitarian Critique” (Business Ethics Quarterly23[2]: 207–38), examined the sequential logic leading from shareholder wealth maximization to maximal social welfare and uncovered several serious empirical and conceptual shortcomings. After rendering shareholder wealth maximization seriously compromised as an objective for corporate operations, they provided a set of criteria regarding what a replacement corporate objective would look like, but do not offer a specific alternative. In this article, we (...) draw on neo-utilitarian thought to advance a refined version of normative stakeholder theory that we believe addresses a major remaining criticism of extant versions, their lack of specificity. More particularly, we provide a single-valued objective function for the corporation—stakeholder happiness enhancement—that would allow managers to make principled choices between/among policy options when stakeholder interests conflict. (shrink)

This study examines whether the gender of the directors on fully independent audit committees affects the ability of the committees in constraining earnings management and thus their effectiveness in overseeing the financial reporting process. Using a sample of 525 firm-year observations over the period 2003 to 2005, we are unable to identify an association between the proportion of female directors on audit committees and the extent of earnings management.

This paper examines the metaphysics of interdependence in the work of the Chinese Buddhist Fazang. The dominant approach of this metaphysics interprets it as a species of metaphysical coherentism wherein everything depends upon everything else, no individual is more fundamental than any other, and so reality itself is non-well-founded in the sense that chains of dependence never terminate. I argue, to the contrary, that Fazang's metaphysics is better interpreted as a novel variety of foundationalism. I argue, as well, using set- (...) and graph-theoretic techniques, that there is a consistent way to model this alternative interpretation, and that this model differs in significant ways from a coherentist model. (shrink)

“Pick a card, any card. This has to be a completely free choice.” the magician tells you. But is it really? Although we like to think that we are using our free will to make our decisions, research in psychology has shown that many of our behaviours are automatic and unconsciously influenced by external stimuli (Ariely, 2008; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Newell & Shanks, 2014; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), and that we are often oblivious to the cognitive mechanisms that underpin (...) our decision (Wegner, 2002, 2003). Magicians have exploited this illusory sense of agency for a long time, and have developed a wide range of techniques to influence and control spectators’ choices of such things as card, word, or number (Annemann, 1933; Banachek, 2002a; Jones, 1994; Turner, 2015). These techniques are instances of what is called forcing. -/- Many forces are extremely effective, illustrating various weaknesses in our sense of control over decisions and their outcomes. Researchers have started to investigate them in various ways (Kuhn, Pailh s, & Lan, 2020; Olson, Amlani, Raz, & Rensink, 2015; Pailhes & Kuhn, 2020b, 2020c; Shalom et al., 2013) and are beginning to obtain valuable insights into decision-making processes as well as a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that lead people to experience an illusory sense of free will and of agency. -/- Although magicians have acquired large amounts of knowledge in covertly controlling people’s choices, much of this knowledge is only discussed in the context of individual magic tricks, or in books that are not readily accessible to non-magicans. As we and others have argued elsewhere (Ekroll, Sayim, & Wagemans, 2017; Kuhn, 2019; Kuhn, Amlani, & Rensink, 2008; Kuhn, Caffaratti, Teszka, & Rensink, 2014; Macknik et al., 2008; Olson et al., 2015; Olson, Landry, Appourchaux, & Raz, 2016; Shalom et al., 2013; Thomas, Didierjean, Maquestiaux, & Gygax, 2015), a particularly effective way of making this knowledge more available is via the creation of taxonomies centered around psychological mechanisms (Rensink & Kuhn, 2015). For example, the psychologically based taxonomy of misdirection (Kuhn et al., 2014) helps draw links between misdirection and formal theories of perception and cognition. -/- Our aim here is to apply a similar process to the knowledge magicians have about forcing. The present paper develops a psychologically based taxonomy of forcing techniques with two goals in mind. Firstly, it should help uncover the various psychological mechanisms that underlie forcing techniques. Secondly, it should facilitate knowledge transfer between magicians and psychologists. Among other things, this knowledge will allow researchers to gain new insights into the mechanisms underlying decision-making, and the feeling of free will and of agency over choice. We start by defining the magician’s force and then look at some of the past classifications of forcing. (shrink)

Metacognitions, which are beliefs about our own thinking processes, can modulate worry and rumination and thereby influence emotional distress. This study aimed to develop a self-report measure of unhelpful pain-related metacognitions which might serve as a clinical and research tool to better understand pain catastrophizing, a significant risk factor for adverse pain outcomes. Two phases of validation are presented. Phase 1 reports on how the Pain Metacognitions Questionnaire (PMQ) was empirically developed through a qualitative study of 20 people with chronic (...) back ( n = 15) or knee ( n = 5) pain in secondary or tertiary care and then validated in a large internet sample of people experiencing pain ( N = 864). Rasch analysis yielded a 21-item scale with two dimensions (positive and negative metacognition) assessing how useful and problematic people believe rumination about pain to be, respectively. In Phase 2, further validation using a new sample ( N = 510) replicated initial findings. Both PMQ subscales have good retest reliability ( r = 0.76, r = 0.72) and internal consistency (0.86, 0.87). They correlate negatively with mindfulness and positively with pain intensity, disability, anxiety, depression, catastrophizing, rumination, and metacognition. The PMQ also predicts unique variance in catastrophizing when other variables are controlled and predicts ‘patient’ status for pain catastrophizing. Sensitivity analysis yielded preliminary suggestions for clinically meaningful cut-offs. Unhelpful pain metacognitions can be validly and reliably measured using a self-report instrument. Future studies using the PMQ might shed new light on pain-related thinking processes to develop better interventions for people prone to worry and rumination about their pain. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to expose a basic flaw at the root of perennialism as a method for studying mysticism—its distinction between ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric’ components of mysticism and religion. Rather than being distinct, the specific ‘exoteric’ doctrines of a given mystic’s tradition penetrate the mystics’ knowledge-claims. Thus, the ‘esoteric’ dimension in a mystical tradition is permeated by that mystical tradition’s ‘exoteric’ doctrines, not by the transcultural and ahistorical perennial spine that perennialists postulate. Contrary to what the perennialists (...) suggest, there is no one underlying esoteric set of beliefs embedded in all traditional religions that all mystics share. Rather, in the different religious traditions of the world, there are genuinely different mysticisms with different beliefs, practices, values, and goals. Thus, the perennialist approach distorts the history of mysticism. It is better seen as a theology of religions than as an alleged discernment of timeless truths presented throughout the history of mysticism. (shrink)

Our understanding of emotional labor, while conceptually and empirically substantial, is normatively impoverished: very little has been said or written expressly about its ethical dimensions or ramifications. Emotional labor refers to efforts undertaken by employees to make their private feelings and/or public emotion displays consistent with job and organizational requirements. We formally define emotional labor, briefly summarize research in organizational behavior and social psychology on the causes and consequences of emotional labor, and present a normative analysis of its moral limits (...) focused on conditional rights and duties of employers and employees. Our focus is on three points of conflict involving rights and duties as they apply to the performance of emotional labor: when employees’ and organizations’ rights conflict, when employees’ rights conflict with their duties, and when organizations’ rights conflict with their duties. We discuss implications for future inquiry as well as managerial practice. (shrink)

Mysticism presents a challenge to anyone who is interested in fundamental questions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and how we should live. In this book the author examines questions posed by mysticism. He clarifies the nature of the claims advanced by Western and Asian mystics, and explores the beliefs and values of classical mystical ways of life for their interconnections and reasonableness. Jones discusses whether all mystical experiences and all mystical claims of knowledge are similar, and examines the (...) relation of concepts and experiences in mystics' claims. Also presented are standards for evaluating competing mystical claims, and mystics' problems with language. Whether mystics' arguments are rational is investigated along with the relation of moral and non-moral values and the role of beliefs and values in enlightened mystics' ways of life. Mysticism's relation to the enterprises of science, theology, psychology and ethics is also examined. (shrink)

IntroductionAllocation of research funds relies on peer review to support funding decisions, and these processes can be susceptible to biases and inefficiencies. The aim of this work was to determine which past interventions to peer review and decision-making have worked to improve research funding practices, how they worked, and for whom.MethodsRealist synthesis of peer-review publications and grey literature reporting interventions in peer review for research funding.ResultsWe analysed 96 publications and 36 website sources. Sixty publications enabled us to extract stakeholder-specific context-mechanism-outcomes (...) configurations for 50 interventions, which formed the basis of our synthesis. Shorter applications, reviewer and applicant training, virtual funding panels, enhanced decision models, institutional submission quotas, applicant training in peer review and grant-writing reduced interrater variability, increased relevance of funded research, reduced time taken to write and review applications, promoted increased investment into innovation, and lowered cost of panels.ConclusionsReports of 50 interventions in different areas of peer review provide useful guidance on ways of solving common issues with the peer review process. Evidence of the broader impact of these interventions on the research ecosystem is still needed, and future research should aim to identify processes that consistently work to improve peer review across funders and research contexts. (shrink)

Book III of Aristotle’s De caelo does not feature the Platonic concept of χώρα as a main protagonist. Through mere scarce allusions, Aristotle tends to treat it as just another concept of matter, reminiscent in many respects of those of Presocratic philosophers. In this paper, I argue that this biased presentation should be interpreted as Aristotle’s implicit refusal to acknowledge the role of the χώρα in Plato’s reform of participation, which is expounded in the Timaeus. I refer this refusal to (...) Aristotle’s complex epistemological and methodological criticisms of Platonic paradigmatism. Reconstructing this implicit dialogue between Plato and Aristotle also sheds a new light on the stakes and consistency of book III of De caelo, which had remained elusive in earlier approaches. I suggest that book III does not aim to propose a consistent account of the four elements or of generation, but to build a new Aristotelian framework as an answer to the aporiai of Plato’s Timaeus. (shrink)

Russian Marxism is the outcome of two distinct traditions, namely, nineteenth-century Russian radicalism and Western European Marxism. In this paper I shall briefly trace its descent from these traditions and try to distinguish those features of it which differentiate it both from the older radicalism and from the Marxism of Marx and Engels. I shall deal in turn with three main topics, the nineteenth-century radical tradition, early Russian Marxism, and finally, Leninism.

This chapter reviews the state of research on how consciousness is entwined with the perceptual organization of the sensory input. The first section, Access to consciousness, describes the categorical nature of how our conscious perception is typically viewed and how this can be used to make inferences about the neural correlates of consciousness. The following section, Unconscious perceptual organization, will go into more depth on the interaction between awareness of a stimulus and the brain’s interpretation of it. This also includes (...) a discussion of studies trying to address the question whether there is any information that requires conscious awareness of the stimulus to be processed. The final section, Phenomenological contents of consciousness, describes research going beyond the purely categorical aspects of our awareness but instead concentrating on the mechanisms determining a person’s percept of the environment. (shrink)

As cable television channel bloomed and grew in Taiwan, more and more teenagers watched a wide variety of foreign TV programmers through hundreds of channels. The impact of this media trend among Taiwanese youth stresses the importance of research to assess whether local college students learn from foreign television programming. In this research, which supports the theoretical discussion in this paper, the nature of these learnings was analyzed as well. In general, this study aims to explore the relevant literature and (...) examine whether college students engage in critical thinking when viewing foreign television programs. This research used a popular Korean series shown in Taiwan to examine various perspectives and views related to the issue. Based from the gathered findings, college students appear to pay more critical attention to the program script, character, rhythm, plot and cultural differences. In relation to aesthetic, ideology and cultural identity issues, less response on the educational impact of the program was obtained from the participants. This confirms the claim that Taiwanese youth view television as an entertainment medium rather than an educational one. For this reason, the role of media education, specifically the integration of visual literacy and critical thinking, is highly significant to generate less passive television viewers. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article draws on Daniel Maximin’s extended essay on Caribbean identity, Les fruits du cyclone, to open up the potential in Luce Irigaray’s work for a decolonizing, elemental sublime. In so doing, it hopes to produce the kind of generative crossing that Maximin invokes via the figure of métissage: a term that recalls the forced breeding of the transatlantic slave trade, even as Maximin deploys it to resist the violence of colonialism and to affirm the unmasterable effects of the crossings (...) of difference. The article begins by outlining the importance of the aesthetic in its Kantian sense to Irigaray’s project, showing how Irigaray re-conceptualizes the form-matter relation in ways that also transform the relation between aesthetic judgments and the transcendental aesthetic. It goes on to examine the implications of Irigaray’s subversive re-appropriation of Kant for her approach to nature and art, setting out her reasons for pulling back from the sublime while using the work of other scholars to develop a critique of her privileging of harmony. The final section draws on Maximin’s image of nature as neither in harmony with itself nor with human projects to explore the possibility of an elemental sublime structured by co-existing contraries in ways that allow for a decolonization of difference. (shrink)

One of the most focused research programs in the science-religion dialogue that has taken place up to the present is the series of volumes published jointly by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Originating with the encouragement of Pope John Paul II, this series has produced seven volumes focusing on how divine action can be understood in light of contemporary science. A retrospective volume published in 2008, Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of (...) Challenge and Progress, contains articles reviewing the series as a whole. In this article I analyze the series as a whole as well as some of the pivotal problems discussed throughout the series, such as the zero-sum game, scientific “traction,” falsifiability in theories of divine action, and locating special divine action in the physical world. (shrink)

I apply some of Gash’s interpretation of radical constructivism to an analogous critique of naïve realism in contemporary philosophy of education. It explores the significant potential in ….

The Pursuit of Existentialism explores how Existentialism has survived and how its key themes and concerns remain integral to continental philosophy today. The Pursuit of Existentialism places the creation of Existentialism - in the work of Sartre, Camus and Beauvoir - in its historical context, assessing how it drew on the work of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The book then goes on to focus on the complex heritage of post-Sartrean thinking from Heidegger to today. Theorists and schools covered include: Heidegger's infamous (...) critique of existentialism; (the dissident surrealists÷ from Bataille to Blanchot; feminist thinking from Arendt to Kristeva; postmodernist theorising from Baudrillard and Lyotard; psychoanalytic thinking from Lacan and Zizek; and deconstructive and political philosophy from Derrida and Badiou. (shrink)

Abstract.The present paper is an attempt to describe the observational practices behind a large and homogeneous body of Babylonian observation reports involving planets and certain bright stars near the ecliptic (“Normal Stars”). The reports in question are the only precise positional observations of planets in the Babylonian texts, and while we do not know their original purpose, they may have had a part in the development of predictive models for planetary phenomena in the second half of the first millennium B.C. (...) The paper is organized according to the following topics: (I) Sections 1–3 review the format of the observations and the texts in which they are found; (II) Sections 4–6 discuss the composition of the Normal Star list; (III) Sections 7–8 concern the orientation of the reported celestial directions from star to planet; (IV) Sect. 9 concerns the relationship between the reported distances and the actual angular distances between planet and star; and (V) Sect. 10 discusses the reports of planetary stations, which are the most common reports giving precise locations of planets when they are not near their closest approach to stars, and draws some brief general conclusions about the utility of the Babylonian observations for estimating planetary longitudes and calibrating models in antiquity. (shrink)