At the beginning of the pandemic, many music ensembles had to stop their activities due to the confinement. While some found creative ways to start making music again with the help of technologies, the transition from “real” rehearsals to “online” rehearsals was challenging, especially among older amateur musicians. The aim of this case study was to examine the effects of this transition on three community band conductors and three older amateur musicians. Specific objectives were to explore intergenerational relationships to support (...) online group music-making; digital literacy and access in later life; and online music-making in a COVID-19 context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and theoretical thematic analysis was undertaken. Results were analyzed from the conductors’ and older musicians’ perspectives, and common trends were combined to facilitate interpretation. The first theme showed that being part of an intergenerational ensemble contributed positively to the learning experience online. The second theme demonstrated that because both conductors and musicians were new to the online rehearsals, it contributed to attenuate the age-related digital divide that may have been observed in other studies. Regarding access in later-life, older musicians reported benefits associated with rehearsing online, specifically in terms of distance/commute, time, energy, and cost. However, for those who did not already have internet and electronic devices, the cost of acquiring all the necessary equipment to make music online could have been too high. Finally, the third theme revealed that musicians appreciated the opportunity to make music online and indicated that it was definitely better than having nothing, especially for its social aspects. In conclusion, while participants noted several challenges associated with online music-making, they were also appreciative of the opportunity to continue making music at a time when in-person rehearsals were not possible. Pedagogical implications are discussed, specifically the importance of the support network, of meeting people where they are, of learning to adapt, and of collaborative teaching. (shrink)

La sapienza di partire da sè è una via che si sottrae alle molte contrapposizioni che sono iscritte nel simbolico dominante: quella tra soggettivo e oggettivo, tra individuo e comunità e tra locale e generale: apre un'altra strada.

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG) recently provided two recommendations about predictive genetic testing of children. The Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium's Pediatrics Working Group compared these recommendations, focusing on operational and ethical issues specific to decision making for children. Content analysis of the statements addresses two issues: (1) how these recommendations characterize and analyze locus of decision making, as well as the risks and benefits of testing, and (2) whether the guidelines conflict (...) or come to different but compatible conclusions because they consider different testing scenarios. These statements differ in ethically significant ways. AAP/ACMG analyzes risks and benefits using best interests of the child and recommends that, absent ameliorative interventions available during childhood, clinicians should generally decline to order testing. Parents authorize focused tests. ACMG analyzes risks and benefits using the interests of the child and other family members and recommends that sequencing results be examined for additional variants that can lead to ameliorative interventions, regardless of age, which laboratories should report to clinicians who should contextualize the results. Parents must accept additional analysis. The ethical arguments in these statements appear to be in tension with each other. (shrink)

This précis summarizes my book _Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief_,_ Imagination_,_ and Group Identity_ for its book symposium in _Philosophia._.

In combating the ongoing global health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, decision-makers have to take actions based on a multitude of relevant health data with severe potential consequences for the affected patients. Because of their presumed advantages in handling and analyzing vast amounts of data, computer systems of algorithmic decision-making are implemented and substitute humans in decision-making processes. In this study, we focus on a specific application of ADM in contrast to human decision-making, namely the allocation of COVID-19 vaccines to (...) the public. In particular, we elaborate on the role of trust and social group preference on the legitimacy of vaccine allocation. We conducted a survey with a 2 × 2 randomized factorial design among n = 1602 German respondents, in which we utilized distinct decision-making agents and prioritization of a specific social group as design factors. Our findings show that general trust in ADM systems and preference for vaccination of a specific social group influence the legitimacy of vaccine allocation. However, contrary to our expectations, trust in the agent making the decision did not moderate the link between social group preference and legitimacy. Moreover, the effect was also not moderated by the type of decision-maker. We conclude that trustworthy ADM systems must not necessarily lead to the legitimacy of ADM systems. (shrink)

The existence of group agents is relatively widely accepted. Examples are corporations, courts, NGOs, and even entire states. But should we also accept that there is such a thing as group consciousness? I give an overview of some of the key issues in this debate and sketch a tentative argument for the view that group agents lack phenomenal consciousness (pace Schwitzgebel 2015). In developing my argument, I draw on integrated information theory, a much-discussed theory of consciousness. I (...) conclude by pointing out an implication of my argument for the normative status of group agents. (shrink)

Human brain organoids (HBOs) are three-dimensional structures derived from human stem cells that model aspects of brain development and function, offering potentially unprecedented opportunities for studying neurological disorders and for developing treatments. This consensus paper presents recommendations from the Asia Pacific Neuroethics Working Group, developed through interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, bioethicists, philosophers, and legal scholars who convened in Singapore in November 2024. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the ethical, legal, and sociocultural dimensions of HBO research, addressing both current (...) realities and future possibilities. The paper examines key ethical considerations, including the potential moral status of HBOs, particularly regarding sentience and consciousness, while identifying and dispelling common misconceptions and “ethical red herrings” arising from sensationalized portrayals. We analyze consent frameworks for cell donation, privacy concerns, dual-use risks, and questions of distributive justice. Legal challenges are explored, including the categorical ambiguity of HBOs within existing regulatory frameworks, intellectual property issues, and cross-border inconsistencies in standards. Sociocultural perspectives emphasize the importance of public understanding, cross-cultural engagement, and empirical research on diverse community attitudes toward HBO research. In our recommendations, we advocate for evidence-based ethical discussions, anticipatory frameworks addressing potential future developments, contextualized analysis comparing HBOs to related experimental models, robust informed consent processes, proportionate responses to consciousness concerns, development of adaptive regulatory frameworks, responsible science communication to manage public expectations, and sustained interdisciplinary collaboration. We emphasize a balanced approach that promotes scientific innovation while maintaining rigorous ethical oversight, recognizing HBOs’ significant potential for advancing neuroscience and medicine. This represents the first comprehensive ethical framework for HBO research from the Asia Pacific region, helping to establish foundational principles for responsible development of this rapidly advancing field. (shrink)

Actions are usually generalized among social group members. Importantly, the efficiency of an action with respect to achieving an external target determines action understanding, and it may have different degrees of social relevance to social groups. Thus, this study explored the role of action efficiency in action generalization. We used computer animations to simulate actions in social groups initiated by visual action cues or category labels, and we measured differences in response times between identifying actions that were and were (...) not consistent with group members, without explicit requirements regarding generalization. It was found that in both visually introduced and explicitly labeled social groups, when the group members acted inefficiently toward the external object, perceivers identified group‐consistent actions faster than group‐inconsistent actions, indicating that the exemplars' common inefficient actions are generalized to the unknown ingroup member, accordingly facilitating the identification of expected consistent inefficient action (Experiment 1). As this effect was not present when removing social group cues, it was determined to be specific to social groups (Experiment 2). Importantly, such generalization was not observed when the identical action was deemed efficient toward the external object (Experiment 3) and was specific to the demonstration of the action being completed by multiple group members rather than being repeated twice by one group member, supporting the group‐based inference and ruling out the possibility of the increased memorability of inefficient actions leading to more generalization relative to efficient actions (Experiment 4). Therefore, the efficiency of an action bounds the generalization of the action across social group members through a process that is spontaneous and implicit. This constrained action generalization may be due to inefficient actions being represented as culture‐specific conventional forms. (shrink)

The ‘right to be known’ has traditionally been interpreted from a human-centric and individualistic perspective unsuitable for resolving the environmental crises of our epoch. Given the political need to raise collective awareness about the interconnectedness of the human and more-than-human worlds, we establish a dialogue between Indigenous and Western philosophies about the rights of more-than-human entities to be known and cared for. We consider a Western Australian Indigenous community’s advocacy on behalf of ‘Martuwarra’, a non-anthropocentric socio-environmental structure that encompasses the (...) cultural ecosystem of a river (the ‘Fitzroy River’ in colonial nomenclature) and the Indigenous groups with ontologies and First Laws belonging to that ecosystem. For the First Peoples of Martuwarra, their cultural ecosystem is a custodial group agent that is the victim of an epistemic injustice. The advocacy on behalf of Martuwarra, we suggest, is an act of Indigenous truth-telling that establishes the custodial group agent’s right to be known and which seeks to entrench restorative norms of justice as part of a moral revolution. We address contractualist and other objections to our proposal and discuss the benefits of theorising the rights of custodial group agents. (shrink)

Group 3 as Sc–Y–La, rather than Sc–Y–Lu, dominates the literature. The history of this situation, including involvement by the IUPAC, is summarised. I step back from the minutiae of physical, chemical, and electronic properties and explore considerations of regularity and symmetry, natural kinds, and quantum mechanics, finding these to be inconclusive. Continuing the theme, a series of ten interlocking arguments, in the context of a chemistry-based periodic table, are presented in support of lanthanum in Group 3. In so (...) doing, I seek to demonstrate a new way of thinking about this matter. The last of my ten arguments is recast as a twenty-word categorical philosophical (viewpoint-based) statement. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a non-geometrodynamic quantum Yang–Mills theory of gravity based on the homogeneous Lorentz group within the general framework of the Poincare gauge theories. The obstacles of this treatment are that first, on the one hand, the gauge group that is available for this purpose is non-compact. On the other hand, Yang–Mills theories with non-compact groups are rarely healthy, and only a few instances exist in the literature. Second, it is not clear how the (...) direct observations of space–time waves can be explained when space–time has no dynamics. We show that the theory is unitary and is renormalizable to the one-loop perturbation. Although in our proposal, gravity is not associated with any elementary particle analogous to the graviton, classical helicity-two space–time waves are explained. Five essential exact solutions to the field equations of our proposal are presented as well. We also discuss a few experimental tests that can falsify the presented Yang–Mills theory. (shrink)

Most donated organs in the United States come from brain dead donors, while a small percentage come from patients who die in “controlled,” or expected, circumstances, typically after the family or surrogate makes a decision to withdraw life support. The number of organs available for transplant could be substantially if donations were permitted in “uncontrolled” circumstances–that is, from people who die unexpectedly, often outside the hospital. According to projections from the Institute of Medicine, establishing programs permitting “uncontrolled donation after circulatory (...) determination of death,” or uDCDD, throughout the United States has the potential to provide 22,000 more donation opportunities annually. In contrast, U.S. controlled donation after circulatory determination of death, or cDCDD, cases have increased progressively over the past decade from 87 to 848 donors, but currently account for only 10.6 percent of all deceased donors. Following the IOM recommendations, several projects exploring the feasibility of uDCDD were funded by the federal government, including a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that supported a pilot project in New York City in which the authors of this article participated.A key feature of our protocol, and indeed of many uDCDD protocols, is the initiation of preservation methods such as chest compressions and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation shortly after death in order to perfuse and preserve the donor's organs. Critics of uDCDD argue that the means of determining death deviates from generally ascribed principles. They assert that reinstituting circulation in order to preserve organs has the effect of “undoing” the prior determination of death. The result is that cDCDD is widely accepted and practiced routinely even though it only marginally increases the number of organs available for transplantation, and uDCDD is widely considered unacceptable despite being ethically embraced and proven to significantly increase organ donation opportunities in other countries. This article explores the evolution of this counterintuitive state of affairs and calls for a policy that, in line with the IOM report, allows for both cDCDD and uDCDD protocols. (shrink)

_Background:_ Literature has documented the role of family in the outcome of chronic schizophrenia. In the light of this, family interventions (FIs) are becoming an integral component of treatment for psychosis. The First Episode of Psychosis (FEP) is the period when most of the changes in family atmosphere are observed; unfortunately, few studies on the relatives are available. _Objective:_ To explore burden of care and emotional distress at baseline and at 9-month follow-up and the levels of service satisfaction at follow-up (...) in the two groups of relatives (experimental treatment EXP vs. treatment as usual TAU) recruited in the cluster-randomized controlled GET UP PIANO trial. _Methods:_ The experimental treatment was provided by routine public Community Mental Health Centers (Italian National Health Service) and consisted of Treatment as Usual plus evidence-based additional treatment (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis for patients, Family Intervention for psychosis, and Case Management). TAU consisted of personalized outpatient psychopharmacological treatment, combined with non-specific supportive clinical management and informal support/educational sessions for families. The outcomes on relatives were assessed by the Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ-EU), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), and the Verona Service Satisfaction Scale (VSSS-EU). Differences within and between groups were evaluated. _Results:_ At baseline, 75 TAU and 185 EXP caregivers were assessed. In the experimental group 92% of relatives participated in at least 1 family session. At follow-up both groups experienced improvement in all IEQ and GHQ items, but caregivers belonging to the EXP arm experienced a significantly greater change in 10 IEQ items (mainly pertaining to the “Tension” dimension) and in GHQ items. Due to the low sample size, a significant effectiveness was only observed for 2 IEQ items and 1 GHQ-12 item. With respect to VSSS data at follow-up, caregivers in the EXP arm experienced significantly greater satisfaction in 8 items, almost all pertaining to the dimensions “Relatives' Involvement” and “Professionals' Skills and Behavior.” _Conclusions:_ The Family intervention for psychosis delivered in the GET UP PIANO trial reduced family burden of illness and improved emotional distress and satisfaction with services. These results should encourage to promote FIs on caregivers of first-episode psychosis patients. (shrink)

The numerical representations of measurement, geometry and kinematics are here subsumed under a general theory of representation. The standard theories of meaningfulness of representational propositions in these three areas are shown to be special cases of two theories of meaningfulness for arbitrary representational propositions: the theories based on unstructured and on structured representation respectively. The foundations of the standard theories of meaningfulness are critically analyzed and two basic assumptions are isolated which do not seem to have received adequate justification: (...) the assumption that a proposition invariant under the appropriate group is therefore meaningful, and the assumption that representations should be unique up to a transformation of the appropriate group. A general theory of representational meaningfulness is offered, based on a semantic and syntactic analysis of representational propositions. Two neglected features of representational propositions are formalized and made use of: (a) that such propositions are induced by more general propositions defined for other structures than the one being represented, and (b) that the true purpose of representation is the application of the theory of the representing system to the represented system. On the basis of these developments, justifications are offered for the two problematic assumptions made by the existing theories. (shrink)

1 The epistemology of Otto Hölder This special issue is devoted to the philosophical ideas developed by Otto Hölder (1859-1937), a mathematician who made important contributions to analytic functions and group theory. Hölder’s substantial work on the foundations of mathematics and the general philosophical conception outlined in this work are, however, still largely unknown. Up to the present, philosophical interest in Hölder’s work has been limited to his axiomatic formulation of a theory of..

This paper argues that we can see our lives as a snapshot happening now or as a moving picture extending across time. These dual ways of seeing our lives inform how we conceive of the problem of age group justice. A snapshot view sees age group justice as an interpersonal problem between distinct age groups. A moving picture view sees age group justice as a first-person problem of prudential choice. This paper explores these different ways of thinking (...) about age group justice and illustrates them using a principle of respect for human dignity, understood in terms of reasonable support for floor level central human capabilities at each stage of life. I argue that different frames are suitable for different kinds of decisions, and each provides a true, but partial, picture of aging and age group justice. (shrink)

There has been a movement aiming to teach agents about their privilege by making the information about their privilege as costless as possible. However, some argue that in risk-sensitive frameworks, such as Lara Buchak’s (2013), it can be rational for privileged agents to shield themselves from learning about their privilege, even if the information is costless and relevant. This threatens the efficacy of these information-access efforts in alleviating the problem of elite-group ignorance. In response, I show that even within (...) the same framework, in this case David Kinney and Liam Kofi Bright’s (2021), the rationality of this information avoidance rests on shaky ground in practice. In this framework, whether an agent should avoid information depends on the precise details of (1) how relevant they expect the information to be, (2) their priors about the value of various options, and (3) their risk attitudes. The model suggests that the rationality of elite-group ignorance is a function of structural factors that are pervasive but nonetheless not insurmountable, thus offering a way out of pessimism about elite group education. (shrink)

Business ethics research has long examined the dichotomy between remaining silent or reporting ethical misconduct to a third party. Little is known, however, about ethical conversations within a work group after observing misconduct. Specifically, we do not know how many members of their work group individuals choose to communicate with. These conversations could have important implications for creating an ethical workplace. We propose that psychological standing is an important driver of individuals’ decisions not to remain silent and to (...) instead raise moral concerns with a greater number of others in their work group. In addition, integrating existing work on structural power, psychological standing, and the bystander effect, we develop a moderated mediation model with both structural power position and work group size as contextual drivers of psychological standing. Our model is supported across four studies using different designs and methodological approaches. Our results contribute to the understanding of when and why individuals raise moral concerns, and they provide insights into how an ethical context is created in organizations. (shrink)

Moral foundations research suggests that liberals care about moral values related to individual rights such as harm and fairness, while conservatives care about those foundations in addition to caring more about group rights such as loyalty, authority, and purity. However, the question remains about how conservatives and liberals differ in relation to group-level moral principles. We used two versions of the moral foundations questionnaire with the target group being either abstract or specific ingroups or outgroups. Across three (...) studies, we observed that liberals showed more endorsement of Individualizing foundations with an outgroup target, while conservatives showed more endorsement of Binding foundations with an ingroup target. This general pattern was found when the framed, target-group was abstract and when target groups were specified about a general British-ingroup and an immigrant-outgroup. In Studies 2 and 3, both Individualizing-Ingroup Preference and Binding-Ingroup Preference scores predicted more Attitude Bias and more Negative Attitude Bias toward immigrants, more Implicit Bias, and more Perceived Threat from immigrants. We also demonstrated that increasing liberalism was associated with less Attitude Bias and less Negative Bias toward immigrants, less Implicit Bias, and less Perceived Threat from immigrants. Outgroup-individualizing foundations and Ingroup-Binding foundations showed different patterns of mediation of these effects. (shrink)

We study algebraic and model-theoretic properties of existentially closed fields with an action of a fixed finite group. Such fields turn out to be pseudo-algebraically closed in a rather strong sense. We place this work in a more general context of the model theory of fields with a group scheme action.

Discussion Christian List, Philip Pettit, Episteme, FirstView Article.

The recognition of artificial agents such as group agents and computer AIs introduces undesirable ambiguities. With this expanded social ontology, it becomes all too easy to undergeneralize or overgeneralize when invoking concepts traditionally used to describe humans. Furthermore, prominent accounts of group agency feature criteria such that antecedent qualifying terms such as ‘individual’ and ‘group’ are irrelevant to the realization of agency itself. Yet there are obviously important moral differences between individual human beings and groups of human (...) beings. The existence of group agents calls for a clear and explicit recognition of a distinct category: obligation-bearing social entities which lack the essential ingredient for moral worth. (shrink)

While nurses can and do behave as intentional political agents, claims that nurses collectively do , should or must act to advance political objectives lack credibility. This paper challenges the coherence and legitimacy of political demands placed upon nurses. It is not suggested that nurses ought not to contribute to political discourse and activity. That would be foolish. However, the idea that nursing can own or exhibit a general political will is discarded. It is suggested that to protect and (...) advance political discussion, to aid explanatory adequacy and clarity, the form in which nursing associates itself with political claims merits critical appraisal. Thus significant numbers of nurses probably reject or disagree with many of the political claims that attach to them – claims often made on their behalf. More specifically, the individual beliefs and goals of nurses can be in conflict with the political pronouncements of nursing scholars and organizations . It is proposed that nurses need not share substantive normative beliefs/goals and, if this proposal holds, group descriptors such as ‘nurses’ and ‘nursing’ cannot meaningfully or easily attach to political claims. Shared value theory is linked to the fallacy of composition and the concept of collective ascription error is introduced to explore the implausibility of using group descriptors such as ‘nurses’ and ‘nursing’ to refer to the beliefs/goals of all nurses. (shrink)

MacDonald develops an evolutionary perspective on Judaism. Judaism is conceptualized as a group evolutionary strategy characterized by a high degree of endogamy and resistance to genetic and cultural assimilation. Data are provided to support the author's theory that Judaism is characterized by a high level of within-group altruism and competition with outgroups. Finally, MacDonald argues that Judaism has been characterized by eugenic practices aimed at high intelligence and high investment parenting. After outlining a theory of evolutionary group (...) strategies, MacDonald discusses the evidence from modern studies showing population genetic differences between Jews and Gentiles. He then shows that Jewish religious writing points to a pronounced tendency toward idealizing endogamy and condemning exogamy, and he points to the ways religious ideology and practice have facilitated the genetic and cultural separation of Jews and Gentiles. He then reviews evidence for resource and reproductive competition and the importance of kin-based cooperation and altruism as well as assortative mating for intelligence and resource aquisition ability among Jews. This study is a highly original attempt to develop an evolutionary understanding of one of the world's great religions. As such, it will be of concern to scholars and researchers in the fields of sociobiology and religion as well as the general reading public. (shrink)

Philosophers of earlier ages have usually spent time in considering thenature of marital, and in general familial, duty. Paley devotes an entire book to those ‘relative duties which result from the constitution of the sexes’,1 a book notable on the one hand for its humanity and on the other for Paley‘s strange refusal to acknowledge that the evils for which he condemns any breach of pure monogamy are in large part the result of the fact that such breaches are (...) generally condemned. In a society where an unmarried mother is ruined no decent male should put a woman in such danger: but why precisely should social feeling be so severe? Marriage, the monogamist would say, must be defended at all costs, for it is a centrally important institution of our society. Political community was, in the past, understood as emerging from or imposed upon families, or similar associations. The struggle to establish the state was a struggle against families, clans and clubs; the state, once established, rested upon the social institutions to which it gave legal backing. (shrink)

In recent papers, Eric Schwitzgebel argues that if physicalism is true, then the United States is probably conscious. My primary aim here is to demonstrate that the source of Schwitzgebel’s conditional argument is the “Problem of Other Minds,” which is a general problem; wherefore, Schwitzgebel’s conclusion should be revised and applied not only to physicalism, but to most contemporary theories of the mind. I analyze the difference between Schwitzgebel’s argument and other arguments against functionalism, arguing that the difference between (...) them is rooted in referring to the causal role of the whole system, rather than referring to the casual role of the system’s parts. This key difference between functionalism and behaviorism explains why the source of Schwitzgebel’s argument stems from the problem of other minds. I conclude that however counterintuitive from a metaphysical point of view, the United States may have its own stream of consciousness, but it has nothing to do with physicalism in particular. (shrink)

This book contains ten essays on the philosophical basis of religious thought as it has been represented in the Western and Islamic traditions. While the essays deal with a wide range of thinkers and intellectual developments--Greek philosophy, Christians, philosophers--the author states that they represent a general thesis: that Philo, as the unifier of Greek and Hebrew thought, "revolutionized philosophy and remade it into what became the common philosophy of the three religions with cognate scriptures.... This triple scriptural religious philosophy, (...) which was built up by Philo, reigned supreme as a homogeneous, if not thoroughly unified, system of thought until... it was pulled down by Spinoza." Wolfson brings a wealth of knowledge and scholarly detail together in a lively style.--D. T. C. (shrink)

If we first ask about the goals Machiavelli urges us to embrace as citizens, these all turn out to be feminine: wealth, liberty, and civic greatness. If we next ask about the type of community we need to sustain in order to realize these goals, we find that this is seen by contrast as masculine: it must be a vivere politico, a vivere civile, a vivere libero--terms usually translated as a 'free state.' If we go on to ask about the (...) qualities needed to uphold such a community, these again prove to be feminine, including virtu itself as well as the attribute of prudence, the greatest of political virtues. But if we ask finally about the institutions and arrangements we need to establish in order to promote civic virtues, we find that these--the most basic and shaping elements--are entirely masculine: not merely the term for the general condition of public life (lo stato), but also the words used to describe specific institutions (including the Senate and the various magistracies) and the ordini or ordinances that bind the whole edifice together. (shrink)

In order to avoid trivializing moral issues concerning mentoring, a specialized “strong” concept of a Mentor is proposed that is based on the original model in Homer’s Odyssey. It is argued that mentorship embodies a highly personal and bonding relationship that comes as a free gift and is based on an affinity of some sort. It is further argued that morally such a relationship may be especially appropriate in a racial setting.

We analyze model-theoretic connected components in extensions of a given group by abelian groups which are defined by means of 2-cocycles with finite image. We characterize, in terms of these 2-cocycles, when the smallest type-definable subgroup of the corresponding extension differs from the smallest invariant subgroup. In some situations, we also describe the quotient of these two connected components. Using our general results about extensions of groups together with Matsumoto–Moore theory or various quasi-characters considered in bounded cohomology, we (...) obtain new classes of examples of groups whose smallest type-definable subgroup of bounded index differs from the smallest invariant subgroup of bounded index. This includes the first known example of a group with this property found by Conversano and Pillay, namely the universal cover of [Formula: see text], as well as various examples of different nature, e.g. some central extensions of free groups or of fundamental groups of closed orientable surfaces. As a corollary, we get that both non-abelian free groups and fundamental groups of closed orientable surfaces of genus [Formula: see text], expanded by predicates for all subsets, have this property, too. We also obtain a variant of the example of Conversano and Pillay for [Formula: see text] instead of [Formula: see text], which was not accessible by the previously known methods. (shrink)

This paper examines the critique of capitalism provided by the New World Group. Emerging from the West Indian Society for the Study of Social Issues at The University of The West Indies, Mona, the Group was formed in 1963 specifically to address the reconfiguration of social and political forces in the wake of Caribbean territories gaining formal independence from European colonial powers. This reconfiguration went beyond matters of political economy, and included psychological and ideological reworkings, all items necessary (...) to evaluate the kinds of societies West Indians could strive for. Set within intra-Marxist debates on early capitalist development, this paper focuses on the collaboration and creative tensions between Norman Girvan, George Beckford, and Lloyd Best as they helped one another construct their respective political philosophy, social theory, and economic analysis of the logic of plantation societies, which while incomplete from our vantage point, did mostly capture the historical dynamics found in the Caribbean. (shrink)

The majority of analyses investigating the professionalisation of scientific domains tend to assume the linear and general features of this transformation. These studies focus on the shift from a non-professionalised state to a professionalised state. This dual approach, however, crucially lacks some other aspects of the process of professionalisation. This issue is discussed within the context of the growth of prehistoric archaeology in France from the 1940s, by observing scientific societies, national research organisations and their social networks. Looking at (...) the scale of Georges Laplace’s career and that of his research group, which studied the typologie analytique method, this article demonstrates the benefits of a ternary model which also encompasses the modes of refusal of professionalisation. (shrink)

These brief remarks highlight three aspects of Christian List and Philip Pettit's Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents that illustrate its constructivist nature: its stress on the discursive dilemma as a primary challenge to group rationality and reasoning; its general though qualified support for premise-based decision-making as the preferred way to cope with the problems of judgment aggregation; and its account of rational agency and moral responsibility. The essay contrasts List and Pettit's constructivist (...) analysis of group rationality with an ecological approach, inspired by social theorists such as F A. Hayek, Vernon L. Smith and Gerd Gigerenzer.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.CONSTRUCTIVIST AND ECOLOGICAL MODELING OF GROUP RATIONALITYVolume 9, Issue 3Gerald GausDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.14Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. CONSTRUCTIVIST AND ECOLOGICAL MODELING OF GROUP RATIONALITYVolume 9, Issue 3Gerald GausDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.14Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. CONSTRUCTIVIST AND ECOLOGICAL MODELING OF GROUP RATIONALITYVolume 9, Issue 3Gerald GausDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.14Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

In recent years, we have been observing the phenomenon of an emerging scientific field: _digital transformation research_ (DTR). Due to the diversity and complexity of its object of research digital, transformation is not effectively researchable if confined to the boundaries of individual disciplines. In the light of Scientific/Intellectual Movement theory (Frickel and Gross 2005 ), we wonder how interdisciplinarity could and should be mobilized to further advance the development of the field of DTR. To answer this question, we (a) need (...) to understand how interdisciplinarity is conceived and (b) how it is considered in research practice by researchers in the emerging field. This is important, as scientists’ application of interdisciplinarity will highly influence an emerging field, shape its growth, consolidation as well as its academic establishment. We conducted six group discussions with 26 researchers from different disciplines and career levels (PhD students, postdocs, professors). The discussions were studied with a structuring qualitative content analysis. The results reflect the vagueness of the concept of interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinarity is largely conceived as multidisciplinarity. Further, the interviewees mentioned more challenges than opportunities when it comes to interdisciplinary DTR. The present study widens the scientific understanding about how researchers of different career levels perceive, learn, and practice interdisciplinarity in DTR. It further provides valuable indications of how interdisciplinary research in an emerging field can be profitably shaped for practice. (shrink)

We show that the Lascar group $\operatorname {Gal}_L$ of a first-order theory T is naturally isomorphic to the fundamental group $\pi _1|)$ of the classifying space of the category of models of T and elementary embeddings. We use this identification to compute the Lascar groups of several example theories via homotopy-theoretic methods, and in fact completely characterize the homotopy type of $|\mathrm {Mod}|$ for these theories T. It turns out that in each of these cases, $|\operatorname {Mod}|$ is (...) aspherical, i.e., its higher homotopy groups vanish. This raises the question of which homotopy types are of the form $|\mathrm {Mod}|$ in general. As a preliminary step towards answering this question, we show that every homotopy type is of the form $|\mathcal {C}|$ where $\mathcal {C}$ is an Abstract Elementary Class with amalgamation for $\kappa $ -small objects, where $\kappa $ may be taken arbitrarily large. This result is improved in another paper. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that treating organized groups as agents, in the way Lackey proposes to do, has implications that are more far-reaching than appears to be recognized in Lackey’s book itself. To bring this out I discuss (1) the epistemic significance of the Condorcet Jury Theorem, (2) a potential counterexample to her Group Epistemic Agent account of group justification, and (3) the bearing of group agency (as understood by Lackey) on the scope of the domain (...) of group epistemology. None of the points I am making is a decisive objection to the general framework Lackey adopts in her book; I offer them, instead, in an attempt to situate Lackey’s epistemology of groups into a more inclusive social epistemology framework. (shrink)

Software quality is one of the important elements of project management. Software review is one of the most cost effective techniques for detect and remove defects for improving software quality during software development life cycle. Literature suggests that experience and training have positive effect on software review performance. However, there is no empirical study conducted to analysis the important relationships between, experience, training and performance. A laboratory study was conducted with 192 volunteer university students to examining the above relationships in (...) a software review task. The results suggests that (1) there is positive relationships between role experience and performance, (2) training has no impact on performance, (3) working experience has an positive effect on performance (4) working experience has an impact and (5) role experience has no impact on performance. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to offer a view of the current status of women in medical physics and biomedical engineering, while focusing on solutions towards gender balance and providing examples of current activities carried out at national and international levels. The International Union of Physical and Engineering Scientists in Medicine is committed to advancing women in science and health and has several initiatives overseen by the Women in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering Task Group. Some of the (...) main strategies proposed by the Task Group to attain gender balance are: (a) identify and promote female role models that achieve successful work-life balance, (b) establish programs to develop female leaders, (c) create opportunities for females to increase the international visibility within the scientific community, and (d) establish archives and databases of women in STEM. (shrink)

The study was conducted to identify significant predictors of psychological distress in the group of young Polish adults during COVID-19 epidemic outbreak. The web-based cross-sectional survey was applied to 975 Polish respondents (755 female, 77.44%) aged 18-35 years. They were divided into two age groups: younger (18-25) and older (25-35). All participants completed: General Functioning Questionnaire (GFQ), COVID-19 Risk Perception Scale (C-RPS), State Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S), and General Sense of Threat to Life Scale (GSTLS). The Polish adults (...) aged 18-25 years manifested significantly higher psychological distress, state anxiety, and a sense of threat to life, but they perceived less risk in COVID-19 epidemic compared to older participants. Risk perception and a sense of threat to life were indirectly related to state anxiety and psychological distress. Significant predictors of psychological distress in the group of young adult Poles during the COVID-19 epidemic are: state anxiety, risk perception, and a sense of threat to life, where risk perception and a sense of threat to life mediate the relation between state anxiety and psychological distress. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the notion of social machines as a way of conceptualising and formalising the interactions between people and private networked technology for problem-solving. It is argued that formalisation of such ‘social computing’ will generate requirements for information flow within social machines and across their boundaries with the outside world. These requirements provide the basis for a notion of group privacy that is neither derivative from the idea of individual privacy preferences, nor founded in political or moral argument, (...) but instead related to the integrity of the social machine and its capabilities for bottom-up problem-solving. This notion of group privacy depends on a particular technological setup, and is not intended to be a general definition, but it has purchase in the context of pervasive technology and big data which has made the question of group privacy pressing and timely. (shrink)

Many members of the public think of the General Medical Council (GMC) as the body which tries doctors: the doctors' law courts, as it were. And, except in the more sober of newspapers and news reports, the 'offences ' which receive the most publicity are those concerning alleged improper relations between doctors and patients. Professor Sir Denis Hill, in the following paper, which he read in the spring of this year to the annual conference of the London Medical (...) class='Hi'>Group devoted to a discussion of human sexuality, chose to examine the whole function of the General Medical Council as a frame of moral reference for doctors. Judging allegations of professional misconduct by doctors is the function of the Council's Disciplinary Committee. Judging sexual misconduct forms only a small part of their work. The GMC's responsibility covers the whole notion of morals and morality as it concerns doctors in their professional work. Sir Denis Hill stresses the modern thinking that morality must be learned and that attitudes are always shifting as society alters its norms of what is moral conduct. That is not to say that all that was previously considered not to be moral has now become acceptable but rather that other concepts have entered the field of moral debate. Therefore the GMC must constantly review the frame of reference it offers to doctors and the public may be surprised to learn that that process is never static. Sir Denis Hill in this paper is speaking personally and not as a member of the General Medical Council or of any of that body's special committees. (shrink)

Operation within the framework of multi-stakeholder organizations is a big opportunity for an improvement of the financial situation of small and medium-sized enterprises. Group purchasing organizations (GPOs) are one of the popular examples of such organizations. In such institutions companies start working together to improve their market position and financial performance. They are growing dynamically. The analysis was carried out on a group of 32 trading companies operating in Poland in the branch group purchasing organizations. The analyzed (...) enterprises are functioning in a construction industry. The study period was 2011–2015. The research was conducted with the use of a preliminary financial analysis and a financial analysis. The appropriate financial ratios were selected for the study. The analysis shows that net positive working capital is present in the audited entities. The companies have a high level of liquidity and a high level of profitability of sales. Functioning of small and medium enterprises together as part of GPOs has a positive impact on financial liquidity and profitability of enterprises. In general, high financial liquidity adversely affects the level of profitability, and high profitability reduces the level of financial liquidity. The analysis conducted showed that functioning within the branch group purchasing organization allows maintaining a high financial liquidity, and at the same time high profits, which is the basis for building a competitive advantage for small and medium enterprises and a further development of enterprises. (shrink)

Many liberals maintain that individuals have a right to autonomy while at the same time insisting that strong group rights are unjustified. The traditional justification for this position implicitly relies on assumptions about the nature of personal identity that are increasingly controversial—in particular, the assumption that individual persons, unlike groups, persist self-identically (or “endure”) through time. If instead we assume an increasingly popular alternative four-dimensionalist (“perdurantist”) account of the nature of personal identity, then the asymmetrical treatment of individual and (...) strong groups rights to autonomy appears prima facie inconsistent. For, from the perspective of four-dimensionalism, exercises of individual autonomy are metaphysically on a par with exercises of group authority: each involves exercises of authority among numerically distinct person-stages, justified by a unity relation. This raises a challenge for liberals. If perdurantism turns out to be the correct account of personal identity over time, what—if anything—would justify attributing a right to autonomy to individuals, while denying it to groups? I consider several possible responses to this challenge, none of which succeed in vindicating the orthodox liberal position fully. (shrink)

In contemporary scientific discourse, interest in memory problems has increased significantly. This trend, in our opinion, is due to a number of factors, among which one of the leading places is «democratization» of history. This process began to a large extent under the influence of a violent wave of emancipation of peoples and ethnic groups, which began at the end of the twentieth century. It actualized the need to rethink the past and revive a large part of the cultural heritage (...) of a number of ethnic and ethno-regional communities.Growth of attention to memory studios was facilitated by globalization. Itsliberal-oriented universalist intentions led to the erosion of the foundations of national identity without deprecating sociality as such. The fluidity and rapid change in social standards that have become a logical consequence of this process have shown the urgent need to find those ideological landmarks that can provide certainty at least on a daily basis. Here, a person feels the need for group consolidation, which is perceived directly through participation in social practices. Such practices reproduce the identity of the group and at the same time broadcast a historically formed and established system of group values. The revival of local forms of identity, which takes place under the influence of globalization in the conditions of the rapidity of social standards, can be regarded as a completely positive phenomenon. Meanwhile, in cases of politicization of collective memories, such local groups can significantly undermine the stable development of national states. The purpose of the study is to reveal the value of collective memories in the process of forming and preserving group identity.The task of the paper was to identify the universal foundations of human sociality and to reveal the importance of collective memories in the process of formation and preservation of group identity. Methods. The methodological basis of the study was the multidisciplinary approach, which was combined with the principles of objectivity and impartiality. The basic place in the process of scientific understanding of the role of memory in the process of formation and preservation of group identity was played by general scientific principles and methods, namely: the principles of historical and logical unity, objectivity, integrity and comprehensiveness. Also were used such general scientific methods as analysis and synthesis, induction, analogy, retrospective,comparison, etc. Along with the mentioned methods were widely used methods of cultural, social and categorical analysis, as well as the principles of philosophical hermeneutics. Results In the course of the study, M. Halbwachs’es implicit conclusion about the key role of collective memories in the process of formation of collective identity was refuted, some aspects of collective memory theory developed by him were specified. In particular, the provision on the decisive role of collective memory in the process of formation of group identity was revised and the importance of social friendship in the process of formation of the social community was shown, the persistence and moral significance of which is determined by common memories.Memories provide the appearance of images that become the status of collective identity symbols, which contain behavioral patterns and moral teachings for members of the community. Common memories can be transmitted through direct communication that covers a limited social space, or to be executed in a ritual and/or text. Due to rites or texts reinterpretations, a significant part of the memorization that is important for the collective identity can remain unchanged for a long time. (shrink)

Domain-general mechanisms are evolutionarily ancient, resulting from the evolution of affective cues signaling the attainment of evolutionary goals. Explicit processing is a particularly important set of domain-general mechanisms for constructing human groups – enabling ideologies specifying future goal states and rationalizing group aims, enabling knowledge of others' reputations essential to cooperation, understanding the rights and obligations of group membership, monitoring group members, and providing appropriate punishments to those who deviate from group aims.

Wlodek Rabinowicz suggested in an e-mail conversation (2001) to me that one might be able to use a particular Hats Puzzle to make a Dutch Book against a group of individually rational persons. I present a fanciful story here that has the same structure as Rabinowicz’s Dutch Book.

Our self-concept is how we see ourselves in our minds. The goal of this research was to discover any significant differences in the dimensions of self-concept between clinical nurses employed in an intensive care unit in Slovenia and Slovenian women from the general population, who represented the control group. The research included 603 women aged 20—40 years (mean 29.94; standard deviation ±6.0) who had a high-school education. To determine the differences between the groups statistically we used one-way analysis (...) of variance. The results revealed that clinical nurses had a more positive self-concept than members of the control group. Self-concept is very important in nursing because it is closely connected to the existing value system of individuals and their behaviour. Self-concept gives nurses a sense of how they use their abilities and how they perform in relation to patients. (shrink)