Where Philosophy and Literature merge in the Platonic dialogues

It is no surprise if a good quality communication unit succeeds in seizing the attention of the intended audience (or readership) and is able to let people see precisely what the author wanted them to see, while avoiding that the average addressee become aware of what the author wants to convey in an almost subliminal way. In this respect Plato is no exception. Nevertheless the study of these resources, far from having been somewhat systematic, still is largely neglected, and only a minority of commentators find it important to pay head to the communicational strategies which are at work in Plato's dialogues. It will be argued that the shades of meaning and the contextualization of thought (a) systematically grant to Plato ample room for affecting the way a reader comes to perceive his points of doctrine and (b) often let him convey a biased perception of his arguments.The paper includes an outline of the already longstanding debate on these matters, a case study (Memo 80–82), and a sketchy typology of how the literary working-out is able to affect the reader's perception of the line of thought, esp. within the aporetic dialogues.     

Neoclassical Economics and the Last Dogma of Positivism: Is the Normative-Positive Distinction Justified?

Neoclassical economic theory in its pretensions to scientific status is founded on one of the variants of a now discredited positivism. Neoclassical economic theory claims that there are two distinct areas of economic research: positive economics and normative economics. The former is assumed to deal with the cognitive as scientific content of economics while the later focuses on welfare or equity issues. I argue that the reliance of the whole theoretical structure of economics on the normative postulate of rationality renders neoclassical economics a normative discipline. I also argue that neoclassical economics should thus be viewed as an instance of applied ethics rather than as applied mathematics, say. Finally, it is suggested that neoclassical economics, if its scientific pretensions are to be taken seriously, should be absorbed theoretically into general anthropology.     

Moral Accountancy and Moral Worth

People do good or bad things, and get or do not get good or bad credit for their actions, depending (in part) on knowledge of their actions. I attempt to unfold some of the interconnections between these matters, and between them and the achievement of moral worth. The main conclusion is that the heights of moral worth seem to appear in the oddest places.     

Controlled and automatic uses of memory in depressed patients: effect of retention interval lengths

The present study examines controlled and automatic uses of memory in clinically depressed patients by applying the Process Dissociation Procedure developed by Jacoby (1991) to a stem completion memory task with short and long retention intervals. The results show that the contribution of controlled processes is lower in depressed patients than in controls, especially for the longest retention interval, whereas the contribution of automatic processes is equivalent in both groups and unaffected by the length of the retention interval. These findings are discussed in a cognitive control framework.     

Methodological issues in judgment and decision-making research: Concurrent verbal protocol validity and simultaneous traces of process

This paper examines two dimensions of concurrent verbal protocol validity. First, whether verbalization affects process and outcome (reactivity) was examined by comparing concurrent verbal protocol traces with those from a computer search process tracing method, the latter being a complete trace of information acquisition from experimental materials. Earlier findings that verbalization affects time were confirmed. However, verbalization did not affect amount and pattern of acquisition or accuracy of judgments. Second, whether concurrent verbal protocols are complete was examined by comparing concurrent verbal protocol and computer traces that were simultaneously obtained in a treatment in which subjects verbalized as they acquired information from the computer. The verbal traces less completely captured information acquisition behavior than computer search. This suggests that, although concurrent verbal protocols provide greater insight into decision behavior than computer search, the latter is a more reliable information-acquisition trace. Thus, if information acquisition is of primary interest and if computer search activities can be naturally integrated into performing the primary task, computer search is preferred to concurrent verbal protocols. However, if information use or retrieval from long-term memory is of primary interest, concurrent verbal protocols are preferred to computer search. Finally, this paper examined whether the simultaneous use of concurrent verbal protocols and computer search provides traces of information acquisition and use that are as complete as when each method is independently applied. Although computer search tended to limit subjects verbalizations of evaluative operators, this effect may be eliminated by practice on the computer prior to collecting data.     

Experiments comparing qualitative approaches to rank ordering of multiattribute alternatives

ZAPROS, a method to support rank ordering tasks using ordinal input from decision makers, is discussed and compared with a preference cone technique and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). It provides a means to identify inconsistencies in ordinal decision tasks, yielding verification and explanation of results for partial ordering of a large set of alternatives. The results indicate that ZAPROS provides no less accuracy in task solution, while having some advantages from a behavioural point of view. Comparative analysis of the effectiveness of the methods under consideration in accordance with differences in task characteristics is carried out.     

Without Intuitions

This paper criticizes Analytic philosophy with its reliance on intuitions in pursuit of conceptual analysis. Rejecting naturalism as an alternative philosophical method, I offer in its place a pragmatic and revisionary conception of philosophical method. I explain the method of Analytic philosophy and show why reliance on intuitions is essential to that method, which is unable to provide substantive answers to philosophical problems. I further show that reflective equilibrium or wide analysis requires some criterion of intuition choice and that this criterion can be applied directly to definitions themselves.     

Introducing SYPRENE: An International Practice Research Network for Strategic and Systemic Therapists and Researchers

SYPRENE, a new international Systemic Practice Research Network (PRN), has been established to fill the gap in practice-based research on the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic therapies. This article presents the rationale for the creation of SYPRENE and describes data collection methods, and the encoding system implemented within this PRN. More developments are expected in the recruitment of practitioners, the types of data collected, findings, and the implementation of SYPRENE in supervision, trainings, and professional schools.     

Segment routing based energy aware routing for software defined data center

Despite the fact that most of the data centers are software-defined, the multifaceted network architecture and increase in network traffic make data centers to suffer from overhead. Multipath TCP supports multiple paths for a single routing session and ensures proper utilization of bandwidth over all available links. As rise in number of nodes in data center is frequent and drastic, scalability issue limits the performance of many existing techniques. Segment Routing is vibrant in reducing scalability disputes and routing overhead. Segment routing approach combined with MPTCP traffic result in efficient routing approach. The downfall of the link capacity due to drastic incoming traffic remains as a major concern in data center network which enforces preventing link energy depletion due to high network traffic. Our proposed work, segment routing based energy aware routing approach for software defined data center aims to achieve throughput maximization through preserving link residual capacity and proper utilization of links. As well, our approach shows a decrease in length of segment label stack with respect to maximum segment label depth. Analysis is done by comparing the executions of other existing approaches in a single-controller environment with our energy-aware routing approach in a distributed environment. Distributed controller setup prevents network from single point of failure. It helps to prevent controller overhead and provides improved network performance through throughput.     

Wisdom and memory: Autobiographical memories as the foundation for the recall of wisdom incidents

This article explores how autobiographical memory serves as the foundation for people's accounts of their wisdom. Two complementary approaches to wisdom are introduced: an intrapersonal or person-based approach, which defines wisdom as personal qualities or personality traits, and an interactionist or endeavor-based approach, which focuses on wisdom incidents—people's displays of wisdom in real-life situations. The literatures on autobiographical memory and on wisdom suggest that, when wisdom is defined as personal qualities or personality traits, its foundation in autobiographical memory is self-concept. However, when wisdom is defined as actual displays of wisdom, its foundation in autobiographical memory is specific autobiographical memories. The article discusses how autobiographical memory grounds and constrains the memories of wisdom. Further, using research on autobiographical memory, it argues that memories of wisdom incidents serve self, directive, and social functions, and that such memories are highly accessible, vividly remembered, and reasonably accurate.