The Unraveling of Scientism, a companion to Joseph Margolis's Reinventing Pragmatism, follows the thread of American analytic philosophy through the second half ...

In this article, we attempt to unravel the misconception about deception and nervous behavior. First we will cite research demonstrating that observers believe lie tellers display more nervous behaviors than truth tellers; that observers pay attention to nervous behaviors when they attempt to detect deception; and that lie tellers actually feel more nervous than truth tellers. This is all in alignment with a lie detection approach based on spotting nervous behaviors. We then will argue that the next, vital, step is (...) missing: Research has found that lie tellers generally do not display more than truth tellers the nervous behaviors laypersons and professionals appear to focus on. If observers pay attention to nervous behaviors but lie tellers do not come across as being nervous, lie detection performance is expected to be poor. Research has supported this claim. We finally discuss ideas for research into lie detection based on non-verbal behaviors. (shrink)

Standard narratives on the relation between Mozi and Mencius portray them as early Chinese masters with consistent philosophies in opposition to each other. However valuable, these narratives tend to rely on the same interpretative choices that have become solidified into hardly questioned facts. Inspired by a “hermeneutic of informed ignorance,” this paper tries to unravel a number of alternative interpretations from the same texts. The focus is a limited set of passages: the four Mencius statements explicitly mentioning Mozi and the (...) Mozi sections that may have inspired them. The resulting picture on for instance the presumed tension between Mo and Ru or on their presumed core values is more varied, tentative, and nuanced than in the standard narratives, even though it does not necessarily invalidate them. (shrink)

Part memoir, part rumination on the declining moral compass of America's political class, this is the first book to place restoring political ethics at the center of the renewal of American democracy. The Unraveling will be essential reading for anyone interested in American politics of the last 50 years--and the next.

According to Hobbes, individuals care about their relative standing in a way that shapes their social interactions. To model this aspect of Hobbesian psychology, this paper supposes that agents have social preferences, that is, preferences about their comparative resource holdings. Introducing uncertainty regarding the social preferences of others unleashes a process of trust-unravelling, ultimately leading to Hobbes’s ‘state of war’. This Trust-unravelling Model incorporates important features of Hobbes’s argument that past models ignore.

Good philosophy doesn't have to be dry and dreary. In Unraveling Philosophy, authors J. P. Moreland and Adam Groza provide a simple yet fascinating interaction with notable themes, figures, eras, and questions of philosophical thought. Professors, students, and armchair learners will discover that Unraveling Philosophy is more than a textbook. it also incorporates interactive exercises and reflective questions to make philosophy more practical and engaging." -- Back Cover.

This multidisciplinary book brings together a series of critical engagements regarding the notion of ethical practice. As a whole, the book explores the question of how the current neo-liberal socio-political moment, and its relationship to the historical legacies of colonialism, white settlement, and racism, informs and shapes our practices, pedagogies, and understanding of encounters in diverse settings. Drawing largely on the work of Sara Ahmed’s Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, each chapter in this book takes up a particular encounter (...) and unravels the elements that created these meetings in specific times and spaces. Sites of encounters included in this volume range from the classroom to social work practice and from literary to media interactions, and take place both within Canada and internationally. Paramount to the discussions is a consideration of how relations of power and legacies of oppression shape self and others, and draw boundaries between bodies within an encounter. From a social justice perspective, Unravelling Encounters exposes the political conditions that configure our meetings with one another, and inquires into what it means to care, to respond, and to imagine oneself as an ethical subject. (shrink)

The book takes the reader on a vivid, imaginative journey towards unraveling the mysteries of our existence, roles in society, and personal loyalties. The book melds science with philosophy and theology and highlights the people who dedicated their lives in pursuit of the seven riddles of the universe.

“Unraveling Braid” analyzes how unconventional, non-linear narrative fiction can help explain the ways in which video games signify. Specifically, this essay looks at the links between the semiotic features of Jonathan Blow’s 2008 puzzle-platform video game Braid and similar elements in Georges Perec’s 1978 novel Life A User’s Manual, as well as in other puzzle-themed literary precursors. Blow’s game design concepts “dynamical meaning” and “game play rhetoric” are explained in relation to a number of Braid levels; along side this (...) analysis is a parallel examination of the relationship between puzzle-makers and puzzle-solvers in Life A User’s Manual, revealed from a close reading of textual and organizational elements of Perec’s novel. Ultimately, Braid and Life A User’s Manual are shown to draw upon the same signifying processes, which are understood by their authors to operate within an implicitly communicative model. “Unraveling Braid”develops this model by positing a theory of storytelling in the imperative mood, in which the representation and arrangement of objects in the visual/organizational space of the text or game world becomes a fundamental rhetorical technique and meaning-maker.This technique signal show the reader/player is meant to progress through the work and interpret it as narrative, telling the reader/player what to do (but not necessarily how to do it). An understanding of “imperative” storytelling, this essay concludes, allows for a discussion of games and other media that denies neither the importance of player interactivity nor that of authorial design. (shrink)

In 1989 Smart problematised law as a masculinist knowledge which disqualified other forms of knowledge, particularly feminism. Twenty-one years later Smart characterises the relationship between law and feminism quite differently. In this account law responds to feminism and outcomes are progressive. Smart suggests that rather than continuing to focus on law’s disciplinary and normalising role, it is more productive to conceptualise contemporary family law as a creative kinning practice. We argue, however, that we must also bring into this account the (...) changes to the state brought about by neo-liberalism. The paper tests these observations about the trajectories of feminism, law and neo-liberalism by reflecting upon our study of the Albert Kennedy Trust (AKT). AKT was established in 1989, in the wake of gay and lesbian resistance to Clause 28, to provide homes with gay and lesbian adults for homeless gay and lesbian teenagers. We are interested in AKT’s shift in its description of the adults’ relationship with the teenagers in their care from ‘brothers and sisters’ to ‘carers’ as it moved from a marginal force to mainstream partner/provider. In this context we explore the complexity of law’s responsiveness to feminism’s dynamism, its contingent recognition of kinning practices and, in the light of neo-liberalism, its continuing disciplinary role. (shrink)

DNA junctions are by‐products of recombinational repair, during which a damaged DNA sequence, assisted by RecA filament, invades an intact homologous DNA to form a joint molecule. The junctions are three‐strand or four‐strand depending on how many single DNA strands participate in joint molecules. In E. coli, at least two independent pathways to remove the junctions are proposed to operate. One is via RuvAB‐promoted migration of four‐strand junctions with their subsequent resolution by RuvC. In vivo, RuvAB and RuvC enzymes might (...) work in a single complex, a resolvasome, to clean DNA from used RecA filaments and to resolve four‐strand junctions. An alternative pathway for junction removal could be via RecG‐promoted branch migration of three‐strand junctions, provided that an as yet uncharacterized endonuclease activity incises one of the strands in the joint molecules. (shrink)

The current study explores the role of individual and environmental determinants on students’ fear of crime. Based on a large-scale survey among students of a Belgian university (n = 1,463), the relationship between perceived social and physical disorder and the three dimensions of fear of crime (perceived risk of victimization, feelings of anxiety, avoidance behaviour) is examined. Support was found for a relationship between perceived social and physical disorder and perceived risk of victimization. Moreover, a relationship was found between students’ (...) perception of social disorder and anxiety and students’ perception of physical disorder and avoidance behaviour. Based on the results, this study suggests that preventing or reducing visible signs of disorder on campus should inevitably be included in the university’s security policy. This research offers universities more insight in the determinants of students’ fear of crime and potential measures to increase their (perception of) safety. (shrink)

While many people, when contemplating the prospect of becoming old, tend to focus on the deteriorating capacities of the aging body, much less attention has historically been paid to the changing social relationships that inevitably accompany old age as peers and life partners age and die. Merleau-Ponty ends the Phenomenology of Perception with Antoine St. Exupéry’s claim that human beings “are a knot of relations.” When we understand a human being as a knot of relations, the social fragility of old (...) age becomes readily apparent, for this knot inevitably begins to unravel as longstanding personal and professional relations are attenuated through retirement, illness, and death. Other factors also increase the social fragility of old age, most notably the fact that the elderly, as Beauvoir notes in The Coming of Age, are most often treated with less dignity and respect than their younger counterparts in social, clinical, and professional encounters. The unraveling of the knot of relations is not the end of the story, however, for different ties are formed as elderly people establish relationships with caregivers, clinicians, and total strangers. To address the social fragility of old age, I argue, we must provide the social supports necessary for elderly people to develop meaningful new bonds, especially in cases where their mobility is severely limited, so that the unraveling of the knot of relations that is an inevitably component of old age does not result in a complete severing of one’s ties to loved ones and to the human community. (shrink)

We construct coverings which unravel given Π11 sets. This in turn is used to prove, from optimal large cardinal assumptions, the determinacy of games with payoff and the determinacy of games with payoff in the σ algebra generated by Π11 sets.

This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how the higher COVID-19 infection rates among South Asians in general, and Punjabis more specifically, have been represented by conservative politicians and their representatives as a consequence of cultural and religious practices. Two counter-narratives are discussed. The first substitutes the negative image of the Sikh Punjabi Canadian community with a celebratory and positive view of Sikh humanitarianism and community service. The second attributes the high numbers to class attributes such as precarious jobs, (...) poverty-level wages, employment insecurity, lack of sick days, over-crowded housing, racism and lack of access to healthcare. We argue that the conservative explanation as well as the first counter-narrative reveal continuities in culturalist understandings of South Asian immigrants, albeit in slightly different ways. The second counter-narrative represents a discursive resistance by advancing a structural analysis of health and disease in immigrant communities. (shrink)

Although several studies provide evidence that trait self-control contributes to subjective well-being, the self-control strategies that promotes happiness and life satisfaction remains unknown. The present study aims to shed light on this relation by investigating the mediating role of four self-control strategies: situation selection, attentional deployment, reappraisal, and inhibition. To test the hypothesis that self-control strategies mediate trait self-control’s effect on well-being, an online questionnaire on trait self-control, self-control strategies, and cognitive and affective well-being was administered to 4,036 participants from (...) four countries (ages 18–65 and 56.4% female), whose responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Our analysis replicates previous studies that trait self-control positively relates to subjective well-being. Moreover, our analysis provides evidence that this relation is indeed mediated by the tendency to employ particular self-control strategies. Attentional deployment and reappraisal positively relate to subjective well-being, whereas inhibition exhibits a negative relation. Situation selection was unrelated to subjective well-being. The incorporation of self-control strategies represents the first attempt to empirically disentangle the positive relation between trait self-control and subjective well-being. The heterogeneous effects of self-control strategies suggest the importance of obtaining a better understanding of which aspects of trait self-control positively contributes to subjective well-being. (shrink)

Experimental studies investigating the contribution of conscious intention to the generation of a sense of agency for one’s own actions tend to rely upon a narrow definition of intention. Often it is operationalized as the conscious sensation of wanting to move right before movement. Existing results and discussion are therefore missing crucial aspects of intentions, namely intention as the conscious sensation of wanting to move in advance of the movement. In the present experiment we used an intentional binding paradigm, in (...) which we distinguished between immediate intention, as usually investigated, and longer standing intention. The results showed that the binding effect was significantly enhanced for distal intentions compared to proximal intentions, indicating that the former leads to stronger sense of agency. Our finding provides empirical support for a crucial distinction between at least two types of intention when addressing the efficacy of conscious intentions. (shrink)

Proteins with seven conserved “helicase domains” play essential roles in all aspects of nucleic acid metabolism. Deriving energy from ATP hydrolysis, helicases alter the structure of DNA, RNA, or DNA:RNA duplexes, remodeling chromatin and modulating access to the DNA template by the transcriptional machinery. This review focuses on the diverse functions of these proteins in the process of RNA polymerase II transcription in eukaryotes. Known or putative helicases are required for general transcription initiation and for transcription-coupled DNA repair, and may (...) play important roles in elongation, termination, and transcript stability. Recent evidence suggests that helicase-domain-containing proteins are also involved in complexes that facilitate the activity of groups of seemingly unrelated genes. BioEssays 20:634–641, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons Inc. (shrink)

Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity,” spanning both the 2013–2014 protests in Kyiv’s city center and the mass mobilization of grass-roots resistance against Russian aggression in 2014–2015 and thereafter, manifest new interpretations of ideas and philosophical concepts. In the first part of the article we unravel the meaning of the Ukrainian word hidnist – a moniker of the revolution whose significance remains underestimated. In the second part we situate Ukraine’s revolution within a broader context of “modernity” and suggest its individualist foundation may (...) be replaced by a form of “personalism” – an ethic that echoes that of Ukraine’s revolutionaries. In the third part of the article, we delve into the substance of the revolution’s agenda: its protagonists’ promise to build a non-hierarchical community of “fairness”. In the fourth and final section, the main argument of the article is summarized, namely: that the shift from individualism to personalism in social interaction and the transition from hierarchy to heterarchy in power relations, particularly with respect to institutionalizing “fairness,” embodied in the various structures and organizations formed during Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, may have been reflective of more comprehensive trends in ideational change affecting European civilization. (shrink)

This book makes a novel contribution to our understanding of Romance SE constructions by combining both diachronic and synchronic theoretical perspectives along with a range of empirical data from different languages and dialects. The collection, divided into four sections, proposes that SE constructions may be divided into one class that is the result of grammaticalization of a reflexive pronoun up the syntactic tree, from Voice and above, and another class that has resulted from the reanalysis of reflexive and anticausative morphemes (...) as an argument expletive or verbal morpheme generated in positions from Voice and below. The contributions, while varied in both empirical content and theoretical approach, all serve to highlight different aspects of the overarching idea that SE constructions have evolved from these two distinct grammaticalization paths. The book appeals to researchers and academics in the field and closes with a unified approach to various SE constructions that makes important use of its status as a verbal morpheme. In addition to aligning a novel string of empirical contributions under a new theoretical umbrella, a clear research direction emerges from this volume based on the morphosyntactic nature of SE itself: Is it a clitic, an agreement morpheme, or a verbal morpheme? (shrink)

A number of cases involving self-locating beliefs have been discussed in the Bayesian literature. I suggest that many of these cases, such as the sleeping beauty case, are entangled with issues that are independent of self-locating beliefs per se. In light of this, I propose a division of labor: we should address each of these issues separately before we try to provide a comprehensive account of belief updating. By way of example, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order (...) to accommodate these issues. Then, putting these other issues aside, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order to accommodate self-locating beliefs. Finally, I propose a constraint on updating rules, the "Learning Principle", which rules out certain kinds of troubling belief changes, and I use this principle to assess some of the available options. (shrink)

This article offers an overview of various theological discourses on the concept of nature. These are illustrated with examples of contributions to reformed theology from within the South African context. It is argued that there is ample room for confusion to reign in the connotations attached to ‘nature’ and the underlying theological problems that emerge. Often such connotations are merely adopted from other disciplines. To juxtapose such discourses would not by itself help to overcome such confusion but is a necessary (...) step in that direction.Contribution: This article analyses the conflicting uses of the term ‘nature’ especially in reformed theological discourse in the South African context. It circumscribes the distinctive theological problems that emerge in each case without seeking to resolve them. (shrink)

This article aims to investigate, starting from both the analysis of Haidt’s Theory of Moral Foundations, and his Intuitionist-social Model, if there is any implicit normative assumption in the author in relation to the value assigned to moral intuitions, both in relation to to its content and possible adaptive functionality (a matter developed in the FMT), as well as to the mechanisms that trigger such intuitions (a topic addressed in the SIM). An attempt is made to unravel whether the author, (...) beyond considering emotional intuitions as the true cause of moral judgments, ascribes a positive or negative value to this situation. To this end, the motivations underlying various moral intuitions (both of biological roots, linked to various adaptive interests; and of social origin) are examined, in order to analyze Haidt’s contributions to the clarification of a problem of normative metaethics of great impact. at present: can the same normative weight be attributed to any moral foundation in force in human societies; or are only some orientations rational, and therefore morally justifiable? Do they all reveal genuine moral concerns, or do some reflect relevant but not specifically moral adaptive interests, or even selfish aspirations functional to the interests of hegemonic sectors? The implications of the FMT are analyzed as a valuable heuristic guide to interpret the moral concerns of conservatives from an evolutionary meta-ethical approach that allows to overcome the monism of the liberal ethical code, for which the spectrum of genuine moral concerns is reduced to questions of justice, rights and protection of the weakest (since only these would be rationally justifiable). The need to achieve a clearer articulation between the SIM, which puts more emphasis on the processes of acquisition of intuitions through learning and social interaction, and the FMT, that focuses on its content and its possible links with various adaptive interests. (shrink)

Resident Evil is a multidimensional, multimedia universe. The essays written for this volume will focus on this particular zombie manifestation and its significance in popular culture, cover a wide range, and discuss numerous issues. Among them are game theory, the idea of silence as well as memory, the connection to iconic stories, posthumanism and much more.

The implementation of corporate social responsibility objectives within companies is often managed by a CSR leader or a small team of CSR leaders. The effectiveness of these CSR leaders depends to a large extent on their competencies. Previous studies have identified the competencies these professionals need, yet it remains unclear how these competencies can be developed. Therefore, the aim of this survey study was to reveal how CSR leaders develop their competencies and to explore which learning activities CSR leaders engage (...) in. The results showed that informal learning activities that center on learning with and from peers outside the company are particularly emphasized. In addition, this study examines whether and how dimensions of companies’ learning climates and CSR leaders’ learning goal orientation affect the competence of CSR leaders. We found significant interaction effects between the learning climate dimensions. Furthermore, we found an even stronger and positive connection between LGO and CSR competence, highlighting the importance of attracting CSR leaders with a strong LGO for driving the CSR implementation process. Moreover, a supportive learning climate further stimulates CSR leaders’ engagement in continuous learning, which is necessary for coping with the complexities associated with implementing CSR. (shrink)

Hindu cosmology as depicted in the diagram; deciphering and interpretation based on the fifth canto of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa.

The Asymmetry in procreative ethics consists of two claims. The first is that it is morally wrong to bring into existence a child who will have an abjectly miserable life; the second is that it is permissible not to bring into existence a child who will enjoy a very happy life. In this paper, I distinguish between two variations of the Asymmetry. The first is the Abstract Asymmetry, the idealized variation of the Asymmetry that many philosophers have been trying to (...) solve. The second is the Real-World Asymmetry, a non-idealized variation that applies explicitly to cases of ordinary human reproduction. I argue that the Real-World Asymmetry can be defended by properly acknowledging the general wrongness of causing someone else to suffer, the limits of what morality can reasonably demand of us, and the significance of respecting women’s autonomy. I then argue that the Abstract Asymmetry is indefensible. (shrink)

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chroniclers call attention to the Incas having had a ‘particular language’, used exclusively by members of the court. The sparse linguistic material attributed to it consists of barely a dozen proper names which ‘El Inca’ Garcilaso de la Vega, unable to explain through his Quechua mother tongue, assumed must belong to the purported secret language. On closer inspection most of these words do turn out to be explicable in terms of either a Quechua or an Aymara origin. (...) Nevertheless, a small amount of extant onomastic material — mostly Inca institutional names — cannot be traced back to either, and points to a third language instead. This chapter makes the case that this could have been Puquina, once a major language of the Titicaca Basin, whence the mythical Incas set out on their journey to Cuzco. Linguistic, mythohistorical, and archaeological evidence are offered support of this hypothesis. (shrink)

Activation of resting T lymphocytes through the T cell antigen receptor complex is initiated by critical phosphorylation and dephosphorylation events that regulate the function and interaction of a number of signaling molecules. Key elements in these reactions are members of the Src, Syk and Csk families of protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) and the phosphotyrosine phosphatases (PTPases) that regulate and/or counteract them, such as CD45. The PTKs can autophosphorylate and phosphorylate each other at multiple sites and, as the result of these (...) interactions, they are induced to phosphorylate other cellular proteins. These phosphorylation events lead to modulation of enzymatic activities and/or serve as binding sites for other signaling molecules having phosphotyrosine‐binding Src homology 2 (SH2) domains. As a result, these proteins translocate to the receptor complexes and are juxtaposed to the kinases that phosphorylate them. Some of the SH2‐domain‐containing polypeptides lack enzymatic activities and, instead, serve as adapter molecules that couple the signal to downstream effectors, such as regulators of the Ras proteins, and further into serine/threonine‐specific protein kinase cascades. Through largely unknown steps these reactions lead to the transcription of previously silent genes, activation of lymphocyte effector functions, progression through the cell cycle and cell proliferation. (shrink)

Current psychological perspectives emphasize “attack” and “defense” as the behavioral mechanisms underlying conflict. Here, we extend this view by highlighting the relevance of pathological altruism and the neuroendocrine pathways associated with hostile behaviors. Specifically, we elucidate the modulatory role of the neuropeptide hormone oxytocin in motivating extraordinary levels of in-group commitment that can promote extreme behaviors and endure conflict with out-groups.

Graphical AbstractDevelopment, life cycle evolution and immunity were among the topics discussed at a recent meeting in Tutzing dedicated to the biology of the ‘basal’ metazoan taxa Porifera, Ctenophora, Placozoa and Cnidaria.

This Perspective adapts the ViolEx Model, a framework validated in several clinical conditions, to better understand the role of expectations in the recovery and/or maintenance of musculoskeletal pain. Here, particular attention is given to the condition in which dysfunctional expectations are maintained despite no longer being supported by confirmatory evidence. While the ViolEx Model suggests that cognitive immunization strategies are responsible for the maintenance of dysfunctional expectations, we suggest that such phenomenon can also be understood from a Bayesian Brain perspective, (...) according to which the level of precision of the priors is the determinant factor accounting for the extent of priors’ updating. Importantly, this Perspective translates the theory behind these two frameworks into clinical suggestions. Precisely, it is argued that different strategies should be implemented when treating MSK pain patients, depending on the nature of their expectations. (shrink)

Analyzes cinematic conventions of transparency, and offers an interpretation of Fight Club.

This article engages with pragmatic sociology to understand an environmental dispute and its underlying moral issues in a direct-democratic and bottom-up setting. The non-establishment of a planned national park in the Swiss Alps serves as a case study to analyse principles of worth presented in national park negotiations. We point to the complex nature of conservation negotiations and argue that loosely defined ideas of the common good can lead to additional difficulties for a bottom-up project. Moreover, we open up new (...) ground for discussion concerning the interplay of nature conservation and direct democracy. (shrink)

Whilst the concept of the subject has been called into question by many diverse approaches within contemporary political and social theory, there remains a focus upon agency, now attributable to reformulated subjectivities or assemblages. I query the persistence of this grammar of agency and ask whether politics can do without a ‘scene of the subject’. Spinoza’s philosophy, in particular, his conception of conatus, has inspired and offered some basis for rethinking agency. I examine two such prominent positions and argue that (...) ultimately neither captures the political promise of Spinoza’s philosophy. Configuring a concept of morphology to analyse this scene, my argument detaches the conatus from a narrow focus upon human desire, and focuses attention upon the scene of the subject as it folded into a wider complex body. My approach also returns a study of power to the discussion: the conatus is the power to persist, but it is also a differential force and site of conflict. By placing the spotlight on the scene of subjectivity in this way, the contemporary political theorist avoids the false antinomy between agency and structure, whilst continuing to track the production and composition of subjectivity in new political forms. (shrink)

Throughout the course of Plato’s Statesman, an Eleatic Stranger makes several suggestions about what a statesman is. The Stranger refers to one of those suggestions, made at 276e, as ‘likely’ providing an ‘outline’ of the statesman. While that outline might not ultimately indicate what a statesman is, it points to some understanding of what it means to inquire into the being of a statesman. Foremost, the outline indicates that the statesman must be understood as a ruler of some kind. Moreover, (...) the statesman is a ruler whose focus should be on the people of the polis and so he must understand something of human nature. However, the statesman is also shaped by the tension created from the way in which rule itself belittles that nature, obscuring if not inhibiting the self-rule that is naturally or ideally human. The outline also acknowledges the reciprocal tendency of people to sacrifice their own self-rule, a tendency that makes ruling both more possible and more problematic. (shrink)