bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On the Role of Fragmentary Knowledge in a Sequence Learning Task
Authors: Buchner Axel , Steffens Melanie C. , Rothkegel Rainer
Published: September 2011

There has been considerable debate about whether or not we need to distinguish between the acquisition of implicit—and, independently thereof, the acquisition of explicit—knowledge in sequence learning tasks. Proponents of the view that a unitary knowledge base is formed assume (a) that the knowledge acquired is explicitly available, and (b) that information about sequence fragments forms the core of this explicit knowledge. Both of these issues are addressed empirically in the present article. In two experiments, an adapted process dissociation procedure and a suitable measurement model were used to separate recollective (explicit) and fluency-based (implicit) memory processes in a sequence learning task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that fluency-based processes came into play much later than recollective processes. Such recollective processes have been conceptualized as being based on simple knowledge about sequence fragments or chunks. Indeed, Experiment 2 showed that recollective processes are more likely to contribute to sequence judgements if chunks are readily available at test than if they are not. Together, these results are in line with the view that the learning of an event systematicity can be conceived of as the memorization of chunks of events that support both the speeding up of reaction times to systematic events and explicit, recollective memory processes even after relatively little training.
Understanding Caricatures of Faces
Authors: Lewis Michael B. , Johnston Robert A.
Published: September 2011

Lateral caricatures are transformed faces like caricatures but the transformation is orthogonal (in the face-space, Valentine, 1991) to the direction of caricaturization. It has been reported that lateral caricatures are more difficult to recognize than anti-caricatures (Rhodes & Tremewan, 1994). To investigate this effect, oblique caricatures (transformed obliquely to caricaturing) were generated by morphing between a veridical face and a reference face. Two experiments used a forced-choice similarity task to find which images are perceived to have the least change from the veridical. An advantage for caricatures over anti-caricatures was found, but none was found between oblique and anti-caricatures. Performance of theoretical lateral caricatures was extrapolated from the oblique caricature data. These lateral caricatures would be perceived as more similar to the veridical faces than were the anti-caricatures.
Central Fixations are Inadequately Controlled by Instructions Alone: Implications for Studying Cerebral Asymmetry
Authors: Jordan Timothy R. , Patching Geoffrey R. , Milner A. David
Published: September 2011

A fundamental concern when using visual presentations to study cerebral asymmetry is to ensure that stimuli are presented with the same degree of retinal eccentricity from a central fixation point in either visual field. However, a widely used procedure intended to control fixation location merely instructs participants to fixate appropriately without any other means of ensuring that central fixations actually occur. We assessed the validity of assuming that instructions alone ensure central fixation by using the traditional R VF advantage for words and either (a) only instructions to fixate centrally, or (b) an eye-tracking device that ensured central fixation on every trial. Experiments 1 and 2 found that when only instructions were given, the vast majority of fixations were not central, and more occurred to the right of centre than to the left. Moreover, the prevalence of non-central fixations was otherwise disguised by the finding that both fixation procedures produced similar R VF advantages in overt performance. The impact of typical non-central fixations on performance was revealed by systematically manipulating fixation location in Experiment 3, where deviations in fixation of only 0.25° from centre had a reliable impact on visual field effects. Implications of these findings for studies of cerebral asymmetry are discussed.
On the Strategic Weighting of Spectral Information in Consonant Identification
Authors: Bailey Peter J. , Hodgson Philip , Hill Nicholas I.
Published: September 2011

When identifying speech sounds, do listeners direct attention specifically to those frequency regions in which distinctive phonetic information is located? Scharf, Dai, and Miller (1988) concluded that they do, based on an experiment that involved listeners identifying the members of a pair of voiced stop consonants differing primarily in their third-formant transitions. Adding extra contrastive acoustic energy to the third-formant region of one of the consonants enhanced performance more than did adding energy to a region where the consonants were otherwise identical. The present experiments extended this paradigm to reveal evidence of an interaction between the frequency region in which extra distinctive energy was added and the class of consonant to which it was added. The results were more consistent with an account in terms of the effects of added energy on phonetic identity than one based on spectral selective attention.
Visual Search for a Tilted Target: Tests of Spatial Uncertainty Models
Authors: Morgan M.J. , Ward R.M. , Castet E.
Published: September 2011

We report that spatial cueing of a parafoveal target in the presence of distractors enhances orientational acuity for that target. When no distractors were present, orientation thresholds were in the range 1–4°. For long exposure times, distractors increased threshold by the amount predicted from a winner-takes-all spatial uncertainty model. For short (100-msec) exposures followed by a random dot mask, the rise in threshold with distractors was considerably greater than that predicted from spatial uncertainty. For brief exposures the effect of distractors was greater when the target and distractors were spatially crowded rather than widely spaced. Adding a tilt to the distractors in the opposite direction to the target increased thresholds still further. Cueing the target with a spatial pointer decreased the effect of distractors, even when they were crowded. We suggest that when attention cannot be appropriately focused, discrimination is carried out by a relatively coarse texture analyser, which averages over several elements, and that focused attention permits the analysis of the target over a smaller area of space.
The Face-Space Typicality Paradox: Understanding the Face-Space Metaphor
Authors: Burton A. Mike , Vokey John R.
Published: September 2011

Some recent accounts of human face processing use the idea of “face space”, considered to be a multi-dimensional space whose dimensions correspond to ways in which faces can vary. Within this space, “typicality” is sometimes taken to reflect the proximity of a face to its local neighbours. Intuitions about the distribution of faces within the space may suggest that the majority of faces will be “typical” in these terms. However, when typicality measures are taken, researchers very rarely find that faces cluster at the “typical” end of the scale. In this short note we attempt to resolve this paradox and point out that reasoning about high dimensional distributions requires that some specific assumptions are made explicit.
A Study on Late Closure in Spanish: Principle-grounded vs. Frequency-based Accounts of Attachment Preferences
Authors: Igoa José M. , Carreiras Manuel , Meseguer Enrique
Published: September 2011

A much-debated issue in current research on sentence parsing concerns the resolution of attachment ambiguities. Parsing theories differ on the procedures used to guide on-line attachment decisions: principle-grounded theories (e.g. garden-path/ construal) propose universal principles that minimize processing load; frequency-based accounts (such as linguistic tuning) claim that attachment decisions are shaped by readers’ previous experience with their particular language; lexically based models, in turn, assert that attachment choices are determined by the properties of individual lexical items in the sentence. This paper reports six studies on late closure in the resolution of attachment ambiguities in Spanish: a questionnaire study on attachment preferences and three self-paced reading experiments where ambiguous PPs could be attached as arguments of two VP-hosts in NP-VP1-NPVP2-PP structures. The results show a clear preference towards low attachment (late closure), thus supporting principle-grounded theories. In addition, two corpus studies were carried out to obtain records of relative frequencies of the attachment choices involved in the experiments. A coarse-grained measure revealed that, in accordance with linguistic tuning, low-attachment structures are more common in Spanish NP-VP1-NP-VP2-PP sentences. However, a fine-grained count showed that low-attachment preferences cannot be explained by arguing that the specific verbs positioned lower on the tree (VP2) are more likely to take an extra argument than those located at a higher position (VP1), as lexical models would assume.
The Semantic Simon Effect
Authors: De Houwer Jan
Published: September 2011

Three experiments are reported in which a semantic variant of the Simon paradigm was used. In Experiment 1, participants saw Dutch and English words that corresponded to names of animals (e.g. DOG) or occupations (e.g. TEACHER). Participants were instructed to respond by saying ANIMAL or OCCUPATION, depending on whether the presented word was a Dutch or English word (i.e. relevant stimulus feature) but irrespective of whether the word was the name of an animal or an occupation (i.e. irrelevant stimulus feature). Results showed that responses were facilitated when the correct response corresponded to the name of the semantic category of the presented word (e.g. saying “ANIMAL” to DOG) compared to when it was the name of a different semantic category (e.g. saying “OCCUPATION” to DOG), even though the semantic category of the presented word was irrelevant and had to be ignored. Category membership also influenced response times when letter case (upper- or lower-case: Experiment 2) and grammatical category (noun or adjective: Experiment 3) had to be determined in order to select a category label as a response. The semantic Simon effect offers a new tool that can be used to study automatic semantic processing.
Contextual Interference: A Response Planning Account
Authors: Immink Maarten A. , Wright David L.
Published: September 2011

In two of the three experiments that are reported subjects were trained in either a blocked or a random practice schedule and allowed to self-select the amount of time they used to plan an upcoming movement. According to the reconstruction hypothesis (Lee & Magill, 1985) random practice participants engage greater movement planning processes (i.e. action plan re-construction) during acquisition than do their blocked practice counterparts. It was predicted that such reconstructive activity would be manifest as greater study time being used by random practice subjects as they readied themselves for an imminent response. Data from Experiments 1 and 2 supported this study time prediction while also revealing the typical retention benefit associated with random practice. Interestingly, the acquisition benefit often apparent with blocked practice was not evident when the random practice participants were given sufficient time to plan the upcoming response. These conclusions were supported by data from Experiment 3 that involved a direct manipulation of the amount of study time afforded random and blocked practice participants. Taken together, these data are consistent with the suggestion from the reconstruction hypothesis that more time is necessary for intratrial planning processes during random practice formats. Furthermore, acquisition differences that are commonly observed between high and low contextual interference practice conditions may, at least in part, be associated with the completion of the extra planning processes entertained by random practice participants as the movement is being executed.
Assessing Sequential Knowledge through Performance Measures: The Influence of Short-term Sequential Effects
Authors: Anastasopoulou Theano , Harvey Nigel
Published: September 2011

Studies on implicit sequence learning have employed the methodology of task dissociations to show that tasks of conscious memory fail to reveal knowledge expressed in performance measures of learning. One critical requirement of this methodology is that the conscious memory tests tap the same type of information that is expressed in performance measures. When a deterministic sequence is being repeated during practice, identification of the exact type of sequential information that is learned can be achieved by a trial-by-trial comparison between the practised sequence and a control sequence. In Experiment 1 we examine whether short-term sequential effects are present in choice response time tasks and may therefore contaminate this trial-by-trial comparison. In Experiment 2 we control for these effects and demonstrate how specification of the exact sub-parts of the sequence that are learned is necessary before testing for task dissociations. Our findings indicate a dissociation between a response time task and a free generation task. This dissociation, however, is obtained for selected sub-parts of the sequence and may be caused by the insensitivity of the free-generation task to low confidence knowledge.
An Investigation of Attention Allocation during Sequential Eye Movement Tasks
Authors: Fischer Martin H.
Published: September 2011

Allocation of visuo-spatial attention during dynamic viewing was investigated with a dual task. Primary tasks (reading, scanning, searching) all required sequential left-to-right eye movements. An additional speeded manual response was made to a visual probe that appeared early or late after the onset of a randomly determined fixation (25 or 170 msec probe delay). The probe appeared to the left, directly above, or to the right of the currently fixated character (-10, -5, 0, +5, or +10 characters probe eccentricity). Faster probe detection near the location of the forthcoming eye fixation was found in the search task, but not during reading or scanning. Fixation times increased and saccade lengths decreased as a consequence of probing in all three tasks. Fixations were, however, less prolonged when the probe appeared in the right than when it appeared in the left hemifield, and saccades were greatest when the probe appeared at +10 characters. The results extend the notion of goal-directed attention shifts to free viewing and highlight the impact of task-specific processing requirements.
The Role of Relational Processing in Memory for Actions: A Negative Enactment Effect in Free Recall
Authors: Steffens Melanie C.
Published: September 2011

The enactment effect occurs if people remember items that they enacted or enacted symbolically during study better than items that they were simply asked to remember. Enactment is generally believed to lead to thorough processing of individual items. There has been some controversy as to whether the superior processing of information concerning the relations between action phrases (i.e. whole-list relational information) may additionally contribute to the enactment effect. The extant empirical data on this issue seem contradictory. In the account brough forward here, it is hypothesized that whole-list relational information is processed better during enactment than during verbal learning only if it taps the same aspect of a concept as the verb-object relational information within each action phrase. It is processed worse if these two types of information tap different aspects of a concept. This explanation represents an extension of the three-factor account of positive and negative generation effects to the field of memory for actions. To provide evidence for this account, positive and, notably, negative enactment effects in object recall and in organization scores are demonstrated in three experiments with a total of 246 participants.
Premise Misinterpretation and Syllogistic Reasoning
Authors: Newstead Stephen E. , Griggs Richard A.
Published: September 2011

A study by Ceraso and Provitera (1971) found that elaboration of the premises used in syllogistic reasoning led to substantially improved performance. This finding is of considerable importance because of the implications it has for mental logic and mental models theories of reasoning. Three experiments are reported, which replicated and extended the original findings. It was found that elaboration led to a significant improvement in performance, but that this was confined to multiple model syllogisms, where the elaboration has the effect of reducing the number of models involved. A fourth experiment indicated that elaboration can vary within the same syllogism depending on the direction of the conclusion drawn. These findings are best explained under the assumption that reasoners build mental models when solving problems and that elaboration can reduce the number of possible models.
Community-Acquired Clostridium difficile–Associated Diarrhea, Montréal, 2005–2006: Frequency Estimates and Their Validity
Authors: Allard Robert , Dascal André , Camara Bakary , Létourneau Josiane , Valiquette Louise
Published: September 2011

A retrospective search for community-acquired Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea in 15 hospitals revealed important discrepancies with numbers for the same period reported in real time to the surveillance system. Several of the observed problems could be solved by implementing case-by-case notification with subsequent investigation by local public health, as for other reportable diseases.
A Point-Prevalence Study on Healthcare-Associated Infections in Vietnam: Public Health Implications
Authors: Thu Truong Arm , Hung Nguyen Viet , Quang Nguyen Ngo , Archibald Lennox K. , Thuy Le Thi Thanh , Harun-Or-Rashid Md. , Sakamoto Junichi
Published: September 2011

During 2008, a point-prevalence survey of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) was conducted in 36 Vietnamese hospitals. Of 7,571 inpatients, 590 (7.8%) had HAIs, including pneumonia (41.9%) and surgical-site infections (27.5%). Device use was a significant risk factor; gram-negative microorganisms predominated. A national reporting system needs to be established for monitoring HAIs and enhancing patient outcomes.
Measuring Healthcare Worker Hand Hygiene Activity: Current Practices and Emerging Technologies
Authors: Boyce John M.
Published: September 2011

Monitoring hand hygiene compliance and providing healthcare workers with feedback regarding their performance are considered integral parts of multidisciplinary hand hygiene improvement programs. Observational surveys conducted by trained personnel are currently considered the “gold standard” method for establishing compliance rates, but they are time-consuming and have a number of shortcomings. Monitoring hand hygiene product consumption is less time-consuming and can provide useful information regarding the frequency of hand hygiene that can be used to give caregivers feedback. Electronic counting devices placed in hand hygiene product dispensers provide detailed information about hand hygiene frequency over time, by unit and during interventions. Electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems that utilize wireless systems to monitor room entry and exit of healthcare workers and their use of hand hygiene product dispensers can provide individual and unit-based data on compliance with the most common hand hygiene indications. Some systems include badges (tags) that can provide healthcare workers with real-time reminders to clean their hands upon entering and exiting patient rooms. Preliminary studies suggest that use of electronic monitoring systems is associated with increased hand hygiene compliance rates and that such systems may be acceptable to care givers. Although there are many questions remaining about the practicality, accuracy, cost, and long-term impact of electronic monitoring systems on compliance rates, they appear to have considerable promise for improving our efforts to monitor and improve hand hygiene practices among healthcare workers.
Do discounted journal access programs help researchers in sub‐Saharan Africa? A bibliometric analysis
Authors: DAVIS Philip M.
Published: September 2011

Prior research has suggested that providing free and discounted access to the scientific literature to researchers in low‐income countries increases article production and citation. Using traditional bibliometric indicators for institutions in sub‐Saharan Africa, we analyze whether institutional access to TEEAL (a digital collection of journal articles in agriculture and allied subjects) increases: (i) article production; (ii) reference length; and (iii) number of citations to journals included in the TEEAL collection. Our analysis is based on nearly 20,000 articles – containing half a million references – published between 1988 and 2009 at 70 institutions in 11 African countries. We report that access to TEEAL does not appear to result in higher article production, although it does lead to longer reference lists (an additional 2.6 references per paper) and a greater frequency of citations to TEEAL journals (an additional 0.4 references per paper), compared to non‐subscribing institutions. We discuss how traditional bibliometric indicators may not provide a full picture of the effectiveness of free and discounted literature programs.
The Straussian Approach
Authors: Zuckert Catherine
Published: September 2011

The “Straussian” approach to the history of political philosophy is articulated primarily in the writings of Leo Strauss. Strauss wrote extremely careful, detailed studies of canonical philosophical works along with essays explaining his approach. The most controversial claim Strauss made was that philosophers in the past did not always present their thoughts openly and explicitly. They used an “art of writing” to entice potential philosophers to begin a life of inquiry by following the hints the authors gave about their true thoughts and questions. The overriding purpose of Strauss's own studies was to prove that philosophy in its original Socratic form is still possible by showing the persistence of certain fundamental problems throughout the history of philosophy. The most pertinent of those problems, not merely to political philosophy but to human life as a whole, was the problem of justice. Strauss also insisted that “historicism” is based on a philosophical account of the character and limitations of human knowledge and that it can be refuted, therefore, only on the basis of a philosophical argument.
The Value of the History of Political Philosophy
Authors: Ball Terence
Published: September 2011

To ask, “What is the worth or value of the history of political philosophy?” is a rather complicated question with many competing answers. The answer(s) one gives depends to a very large degree on the approach one takes or the “school” of interpretation to which one belongs. Some answer that there are “perennial questions” and “timeless truths” to be found in classic works of political philosophy that speak to us still. Others answer that such study reveals the roots or origins of present-day political movements such as communism and fascism. This article considers the possibility that the history of political philosophy and its scholarly study are without value. After dispatching this rather philistine view, it shows how various approaches to interpretation assign very different value to the study of the history of political philosophy. These approaches include the “perennial problems,” Marxism, “ideological origins,” feminism, Straussian approach, postmodernism, and the Cambridge School.
Political Thought in the Age of the Reformation
Authors: Baylor Michael
Published: September 2011

This article focuses on the political thought of the Protestant reformers during the Reformation, both those thinkers historians commonly refer to as moderate or “magisterial” reformers (especially Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli) and those they refer to as “radical” reformers. Although the political concerns of Protestantism remained profoundly religious, and most reformers retained in various guises the view that authority was bipartite, the political theory of the reformers was modern in its concentration on secular authority and the essential character, function, and scope of the state's power. The diversity of Reformation political thought also emerged over the issue of whether secular authorities should play a positive, even a leading role in the renewal of Christianity to which Protestant reformers were committed. In the mid-1520s, a massive popular insurrection, known as the German Peasants' War and partly inspired by the Reformation, produced a variety of challenging new political ideas. Its repression fundamentally altered the course of the Reformation and produced new divisions not only between magisterial and radical reformers but also amongst the surviving radicals.
The School of Salamanca
Authors: Pagden Anthony
Published: September 2011

The members of the so-called School of Salamanca (or “Second Scholastic,” as it is sometimes called) were, for the most part, the pupils, and the pupils of the pupils—from Domingo de Soto and Melchor Cano to the great Jesuit metaphysicians Luís de Molina and Francisco Suárez—of Francisco de Vitoria, who held the Prime Chair of Theology at Salamanca between 1526 and his death in 1546. Although they are often described vaguely as “theologians and jurists,” they were all, in fact, theologians. In the early modern world, theology, the “mother of sciences,” was considered to be above all other modes of inquiry, and covered everything that belongs to what today is called jurisprudence, as well as most of moral and political philosophy, and what would later become the human sciences. This article focuses on the Salamanca theologians' discussion of the law of nature—the ius naturae—and of the law of nations (ius gentium), for which reason Vitoria has often been referred to (along with Hugo Grotius) as the “father of international law.”
Early European Socialism
Authors: Beecher Jonathan
Published: September 2011

As a self-conscious movement and ideology, socialism came into being in France and in the Romantic period. The first self-proclaimed socialists were contemporaries of Victor Hugo, Eugene Delacroix, and George Sand; and the word socialisme itself was first used in the early 1830s. This article focuses on the early history of socialism, beginning with the work of the romantic or “utopian” socialists and concluding with a consideration of four new forms of socialism that emerged during the pivotal years following the European revolutions of 1848 and continued to have resonance well into the twentieth century. It traces the early history of Marxism, one of these new forms of socialism. After considering the problem of utopian socialism, the article looks at the challenges posed to Marxism by anarchist socialism and Russian agrarian socialism during the 1860s.
Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Liberalism
Authors: Weinstein David
Published: September 2011

Anglo-American political theory, especially contemporary analytical liberalism, has become too self-referential and consequently insufficiently attentive to its own variegated past. Some analytical liberals fret about whether the good or the right should have priority, while others agonize about whether liberalism is compatible with value pluralism and with multiculturalism. Too many contemporary analytical liberals see liberalism as beginning with Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as next reformulated classically by John Stuart Mill, and then as receding into the wilderness of mere history of political thought thanks to the linguistic turn and the vogue of emotivism before being resurrected so magnificently by John Rawls. The Rawlsian liberal tradition severely marginalizes new liberals and idealists such as T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, L. T. Hobhouse, D. G. Ritchie, and J. A. Hobson. New liberals and idealists alike wrote highly original political philosophy, parts of which contemporary liberals have repeated inadvertently with false novelty. In Rawls's view, classical utilitarianism improved intuitionism by systematizing it but by sacrificing its liberal credentials.
Rights
Authors: Pennington Kenneth
Published: September 2011

One of the most notable characteristics of Western societies has been the development of individual and group rights in legal, theological, and philosophical thought of the first two millennia. It has often been noted that thinkers in Non-Western societies have not had the same preoccupation with rights. The very concept of rights is laden with numerous problems. Universality is the most basic and difficult. If human rights are only a product of Western ideas of justice, they cannot have universality. In an age that is dominated by conceptions of law embracing some form of legal positivism, many scholars recognize only individual rights that have been established by the constitutional jurisprudence of individual countries or their legal systems. Historically, the emergence of rights in European jurisprudence is intimately connected with the terms ius naturale and lex naturalis in Western jurisprudence and theological thought. Human beings may never agree on universal rules of a natural law, but they might agree on universal precepts that shape the penumbra of rights surrounding natural rights.
The State
Authors: Morris Christopher W.
Published: September 2011

It is often said that the subject matter of political philosophy is the nature and justification of the state. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel thinks that political science is “nothing other than an attempt to comprehend and portray the state as an inherently rational entity.” John Rawls famously understands “the primary subject of justice [to be] the basic structure of society,” restricting his attentions to a society “conceived for the time being as a closed system isolated from other societies,” and assuming that “the boundaries of these schemes are given by the notion of a self-contained national community.” Contemporary political philosophers often follow suit, disagreeing about what states should do, and simply assuming that they are the proper agents of justice or reform. The history of philosophy and the development of political concepts seem to be central to understanding the state. The influence of Roman law and republican government, and the rediscovery of Aristotle in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are obvious important influences. The modern state emerged first in Western Europe in early modern times.
Property
Authors: Schmidtz David
Published: September 2011

Working within a Lockean tradition, William Blackstone characterized property as the “sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.” In practice, though, property rights in the Anglo-American tradition have always been hedged with restrictions. Today, the term “property rights” generally is understood to refer to a bundle of rights that could include rights to sell, lend, bequeath, use as collateral, or even destroy. However, the fact remains that at the heart of any property right is a right to say no: a right to exclude non-owners. Claims about natural rights and natural law concern what legal rights ought to be, not what legal rights happen to be. This article discusses several legal cases illustrating the sorts of principles that drive the evolution of the common law of property. It also considers externalities, possession, positive-sum games, transaction costs, justice, zoning, and equality before the law.
Freedom
Authors: Plant Raymond
Published: September 2011

Freedom or liberty—the terms will be used interchangeably in this account—is obviously of fundamental importance to politics. The ideal of a free society is one that animates a range of political positions, and its pursuit has been a galvanizing force in both national and international politics. Ideas about freedom have varied through Western history. One of the major variations is to be found in the contrast between positive and negative liberty. A positive conception of liberty is that freedom is not just or even freedom from coercion and interference but, rather, is realized in living a particular way of life in accordance with a conception of virtue. Positive liberty in this sense is goal directed and implies that to be free involves living in accordance with certain moral values. It is frequently argued that there are two ways of grounding ideas of basic moral rights: liberty and interests. The distinction between negative and positive liberty is important here. On the negative view of rights, a right is a protection against forbidden forms of coercion.
Political Obligation
Authors: Klosko George
Published: September 2011

By political obligation, theorists generally mean a moral requirement to obey the law of one's state or one's country. In the liberal tradition, liberty is a central value, and so the fact that some individuals should obey others must be explained. The liberal—or “modern”—view of political obligation is classically expressed in John Locke's Second Treatise of Government. According to Locke, political obligation must stem from an individual's own consent, and so must be self-assumed, based on a specific action or performance by each individual himself. Thomas Hobbes presented a fully modern theory of political obligation. With Hobbes, the burden of argument shifts. Whereas, in the late medieval period, the default position favored obedience, Hobbes's starting point is individual freedom. Locke's view of tacit consent was classically criticized by David Hume, who believes that his account has the considerable advantage of doing without the fictions of an original state of nature, individual consent, and social contract. Contemporary debates about political obligation have been heavily influenced by the popularity of so-called philosophical anarchism.
The Muslim Tradition of Political Philosophy
Authors: Akhavi Shahrough
Published: September 2011

The doctrine of salvation in Islam centers on the community of believers. Contemporary Muslim political philosophy (or, preferably, political theory) covers a broad expanse that brings under its rubric at least two diverse tendencies: an approach that stresses the integration of religion and politics, and an approach that insists on their separation. Advocates of the first approach seem united in their desire for the “Islamization of knowledge,” meaning that the epistemological foundation of understanding and explanation in all areas of life, including all areas of political life, must be “Islamic.” Thus, one needs to speak of an “Islamic anthropology,” an “Islamic sociology,” an “Islamic political science,” and so on. But there is also a distinction that one may make among advocates of this first approach. Moreover, one can say about many, perhaps most, advocates of the first approach that they feel an urgency to apply Islamic law throughout all arenas of society. This article focuses on the Muslim tradition of political philosophy and considers the following themes: the individual and society, the state, and democracy.
Hindu Political Philosophy
Authors: Dalton Dennis
Published: September 2011

The long tradition of Hindu philosophy in India had several distinct peaks of systematic thought. The apogee of its political theory developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a response to the British imperial authority, commonly known as the Raj. This article describes modern Hindu political philosophy's admixture of its classical tradition with contemporary Indian nationalism as it encountered British theories of freedom, equality, power, and social or political change. The result was an original and cogent system of ideas that at once responded to the British intellectual challenge and reconstituted key elements of the classical Indian philosophical tradition. The leading formulators of this formidable project were four major Hindu theorists: Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore, and Mohandas K. Gandhi. These four are intricately connected by a logical nexus of concepts derived from their common religion, their interpretative intellectual project of reforming Hinduism in the face of British colonialism, and their significant commitment to the cause of Indian independence.
Introduction
Authors: Callender Craig
Published: September 2011

The Introduction starts by discussing the mystery of time. While time as a parameter of the arena of the world seems remote, it states, time is also associated with many features that shape the way we live our lives. It is this juxtaposition between its remoteness and familiarity that makes time one of the great mysteries—and the study of time especially captivating. In philosophy, time has always been a challenging topic. It is hard to separate our egocentric representation of time from a more objective one. This book hopes to have a “prospective” rather than “retrospective” look at the field’s past. It looks as well as at work completed at new work and topics being investigated in the philosophy of time.
The Asymmetry of Influence
Authors: Kutach Douglas
Published: September 2011

This chapter considers the nature of the causal asymmetry, or even more generally, the asymmetry of influence. Putting aside explanations which would appeal to an asymmetry in time as explaining this asymmetry, it aims to show, using current physical theory and no ad hoc time asymmetric assumptions, why it is that future-directed influence sometimes advances one's goals but backward-directed influence does not. The chapter claims that agency is crucial to the explanation of the influence asymmetry. It provides an exhaustive account of the advancement asymmetry that is connected with fundamental physics, influence, causation, counterfactual dependence, and related notions in palatable ways.
Time in Cognitive Development
Authors: Hoerl Christoph , McCormack Teresa
Published: September 2011

This chapter deals with the development of temporal understanding, and in particular the question of when children can be said to be able to grasp temporal concepts such as “before” and “after”. It looks at the idea that the development of temporal understanding, and the emergence of a grasp of temporal concepts, is closely linked to developments in children's understanding of causal relationships. The chapter pays particular attention to the acquisition of a concept of a linear time series and also defends the idea that children first conceive of events without genuinely employing tenses.
Temporal Experience
Authors: Ismael Jenann
Published: September 2011

This chapter begins its analysis with a careful look at the specious present and then surveys many of the psychological temporal structures that arise in creatures like us. It also examines memory, anticipation, and the building up of our experience through time, focusing especially on the contrast between time from an “embedded” perspective and time from an external perspective. The chapter ends with some suggestions for how this work may link to one's conception of the self and also the metaphysics of time. In particular, it claims that the apparent fixity of the past emerges from the adoption of the “embedded” perspective it describes.
Sharpening the Electromagnetic Arrow(s) of Time
Authors: Earman John
Published: September 2011

Time in electromagnetism shares many features with time in other physical theories. But there is one aspect of electromagnetism's relationship with time that has always been controversial, yet has not always attracted the limelight it deserves: the electromagnetic arrow of time. Beginning with a re-analysis of a famous argument between Ritz and Einstein over the origins of the radiation arrow, this chapter frames the debate between modern Einsteinians and neo-Ritzians. It tries to find a clean statement of what the arrow is and then explains how it relates to the cosmological and thermodynamic arrows, representing the most developed and sophisticated attack yet, in either the physics or philosophy literature, on the electromagnetic arrow of time.
Time in Classical Dynamics
Authors: Sklar Lawrence
Published: September 2011

Time in even classical mechanics has yet to be fully appreciated by philosophers. This chapter begins with time as it is presented to us in Newton's famous “Scholium.” It shows how and why Newton developed a notion that has various specific features, namely, those needed for time to play the role it does in classical dynamics, and, first, asks the question of why Newton needed his “absolute” time. The chapter then deals with refining the concept of time; temporal metric and dynamical laws; and the place of time in foundational physics.
Constructing Public Opinion
Authors: Carpini Michael X. Delli
Published: September 2011

This chapter discusses what has come to define public opinion for over the last seventy-five years – the grouping of individual opinions by quantitative analysis, surveys, and sampling – and describes the efforts to discover public opinion before the arrival of systematic surveys. It then presents a detailed review of the origins and institutionalization of scientific survey research from the 1930s until the 1950s, and, finally, discusses the changes that occurred since 1960, emphasizing several challenges and opportunities facing survey research.
Time scales in the context of general relativity
Authors: Guinot Bernard
Published: September 2011

Towards 1967, the accuracy of caesium frequency standards reached such a level that the relativistic effect could not be ignored anymore. Corrections began to be applied for the gravitational frequency shift and for distant time comparisons. However, these corrections were not applied to an explicit theoretical framework. Only in 1991 did the International Astronomical Union provide metrics (then improved in 2000) for a definition of space–time coordinates in reference systems centred at the barycentre of the Solar System and at the centre of mass of the Earth. In these systems, the temporal coordinates (coordinate times) can be realized on the basis of one of them, the International Atomic Time (TAI), which is itself a realized time scale. The definition and the role of TAI in this context will be recalled. There remain controversies regarding the name to be given to the unit of coordinate times and to other quantities appearing in the theory. However, the idea that astrometry and celestial mechanics should adopt the usual metrological rules is progressing, together with the use of the International System of Units, among astronomers.
Ultracold atoms and precise time standards
Authors: Campbell Gretchen K. , Phillips William D.
Published: September 2011

Experimental techniques of laser cooling and trapping, along with other cooling techniques, have produced gaseous samples of atoms so cold that they are, for many practical purposes, in the quantum ground state of their centre-of-mass motion. Such low velocities have virtually eliminated effects such as Doppler shifts, relativistic time dilation and observation-time broadening that previously limited the performance of atomic frequency standards. Today, the best laser-cooled, caesium atomic fountain, microwave frequency standards realize the International System of Units (SI) definition of the second to a relative accuracy of ≈3×10
−16
. Optical frequency standards, which do not realize the SI second, have even better performance: cold neutral atoms trapped in optical lattices now yield relative systematic uncertainties of ≈1×10
−16
, whereas cold-trapped ions have systematic uncertainties of 9×10
−18
. We will discuss the current limitations in the performance of neutral atom atomic frequency standards and prospects for the future.
Prebiotic chemistry: a new
modus operandi
Authors: Powner Matthew W. , Sutherland John D.
Published: September 2011

A variety of macromolecules and small molecules—(oligo)nucleotides, proteins, lipids and metabolites—are collectively considered essential to early life. However, previous schemes for the origin of life—e.g. the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis—have tended to assume the initial emergence of life based on one such molecular class followed by the sequential addition of the others, rather than the emergence of life based on a mixture of all the classes of molecules. This view is in part due to the perceived implausibility of multi-component reaction chemistry producing such a mixture. The concept of systems chemistry challenges such preconceptions by suggesting the possibility of molecular synergism in complex mixtures. If a systems chemistry method to make mixtures of all the classes of molecules considered essential for early life were to be discovered, the significant conceptual difficulties associated with pure RNA, protein, lipid or metabolism ‘worlds’ would be alleviated. Knowledge of the geochemical conditions conducive to the chemical origins of life is crucial, but cannot be inferred from a planetary sciences approach alone. Instead, insights from the organic reactivity of analytically accessible chemical subsystems can inform the search for the relevant geochemical conditions. If the common set of conditions under which these subsystems work productively, and compatibly, matches plausible geochemistry, an origins of life scenario can be inferred. Using chemical clues from multiple subsystems in this way is akin to triangulation, and constitutes a novel approach to discover the circumstances surrounding the transition from chemistry to biology. Here, we exemplify this strategy by finding common conditions under which chemical subsystems generate nucleotides and lipids in a compatible and potentially synergistic way. The conditions hint at a post-meteoritic impact origin of life scenario.
Metabolism and motility in prebiotic structures
Authors: Hanczyc Martin M.
Published: September 2011

Easily accessible, primitive chemical structures produced by self-assembly of hydrophobic substances into oil droplets may result in self-moving agents able to sense their environment and move to avoid equilibrium. These structures would constitute very primitive examples of life on the Earth, even more primitive than simple bilayer vesicle structures. A few examples of simple chemical systems are presented that self-organize to produce oil droplets capable of movement, environment remodelling and primitive chemotaxis. These chemical agents are powered by an internal chemical reaction based on the hydrolysis of an oleic anhydride precursor or on the hydrolysis of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) polymer, a plausible prebiotic chemistry. Results are presented on both the behaviour of such droplets and the surface-active properties of HCN polymer products. Such motile agents would be capable of finding resources while escaping equilibrium and sustaining themselves through an internal metabolism, thus providing a working chemical model for a possible origin of life.
The chemical versatility of RNA
Authors: Hiller David A. , Strobel Scott A.
Published: September 2011

The ability of RNA to both store genetic information and catalyse chemical reactions has led to the hypothesis that it predates DNA and proteins. While there is no doubt that RNA is capable of storing the genetic information of a primitive organism, only two classes of reactions—phosphoryl transfer and peptide bond formation—have been observed to be catalysed by RNA in nature. However, these naturally occurring ribozymes use a wide range of catalytic strategies that could be applied to other reactions. Furthermore, RNA can bind several cofactors that are used by protein enzymes to facilitate a wide variety of chemical processes. Despite its limited functional groups, these observations indicate RNA is a versatile molecule that could, in principle, catalyse the myriad reactions necessary to sustain life.