Skiing and its Discontents: Assessing the Turist Experience from a Psychoanalytical,a Neuroscientific and a Sport Philosophical Perspective

Abstract

This article addresses the question whether skiing as a nature sport enables practitioners to develop a rapport with nature, or rather estranges and insulates them from their mountainous ambiance. To address this question, I analyse a recent skiing movie (Turist, 2014) from a psychoanalytical perspective (skiing as a quest for self-knowledge and as therapy) and from a neuro-scientific perspective (ski resorts as laboratory settings for testing physical and psychic responses to a variety of cues). I conclude that Jean-Paul Sartre’s classical but egocentric account of his skiing experiences disavows the technicity involved in contemporary skiing as a sportive practice for the affluent masses, which actually represents an urbanisation of the sublime, symptomatic for the current era (the anthropocene).     

An impossibility theorem for verisimilitude

In this paper, we show that Arrow’s well-known impossibility theorem is instrumental in bringing the ongoing discussion about verisimilitude to a more general level of abstraction. After some preparatory technical steps, we show that Arrow’s requirements for voting procedures in social choice are also natural desiderata for a general verisimilitude definition that places content and likeness considerations on the same footing. Our main result states that no qualitative unifying procedure of a functional form can simultaneously satisfy the requirements of Unanimity, Independence of irrelevant alternatives and Non-dictatorship at the level of sentence variables. By giving a formal account of the incompatibility of the considerations of content and likeness, our impossibility result makes it possible to systematize the discussion about verisimilitude, and to understand it in more general terms.     

Procedural learning across the lifespan: A systematic review with implications for atypical development

This systematic review aimed to investigate procedural learning across the lifespan in typical and atypical development. Procedural learning is essential for the development of everyday skills, including language and communication skills. Although procedural learning efficiency has been extensively studied, there is no consensus yet on potential procedural learning changes during development and ageing. Currently, three conflicting models regarding this trajectory exist: (1) a model of age invariance; (2a) a model with a peak in young adulthood; and (2b) a model with a plateau in childhood followed by a decline. The aims of this study were (1) to investigate this debate on procedural learning across the lifespan by systematically reviewing evidence for each model from studies using the serial reaction time task; and (2) to review procedural learning in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (SLI), two developmental disorders characterized by deficits in communication skills, in the light of these models. Our findings on typical development strongly support a model of age-related changes (Model 2a or 2b) and show that mixed findings regarding the developmental trajectory during childhood can be explained by methodological differences across studies. Applying these conclusions to systematic reviews of studies of ASD and SLI makes it clear that there is a strong need for the inclusion of multiple age groups in these clinical studies to model procedural learning in atypical development. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed. Future research should focus on the role of declarative learning in both typical and atypical development.     

Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for Research Performing Organisations: The Bonn PRINTEGER Statement

This document presents the Bonn PRINTEGER Consensus Statement: Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for research performing organisations. The aim of the statement is to complement existing instruments by focusing specifically on institutional responsibilities for strengthening integrity. It takes into account the daily challenges and organisational contexts of most researchers. The statement intends to make research integrity challenges recognisable from the work-floor perspective, providing concrete advice on organisational measures to strengthen integrity. The statement, which was concluded February 7th 2018, provides guidance on the following key issues:

1. § 1.
   Providing information about research integrity
    
2. § 2.
   Providing education, training and mentoring
    
3. § 3.
   Strengthening a research integrity culture
    
4. § 4.
   Facilitating open dialogue
    
5. § 5.
   Wise incentive management
    
6. § 6.
   Implementing quality assurance procedures
    
7. § 7.
   Improving the work environment and work satisfaction
    
8. § 8.
   Increasing transparency of misconduct cases
    
9. § 9.
   Opening up research
    
10. § 10.
    Implementing safe and effective whistle-blowing channels
     
11. § 11.
    Protecting the alleged perpetrators
     
12. § 12.
    Establishing a research integrity committee and appointing an ombudsperson
     
13. § 13.
    Making explicit the applicable standards for research integrity
     

     

DISCUSSION: USING PEERS TO INCREASE BEHAVIORS OF ISOLATED CHILDREN IN SCHOOL SETTINGS: AN ANALYSIS OF GENERALIZATION EFFECTS

This review evaluates the effectiveness of peer mediation in increasing the social behaviors of isolated children in school settings. Studies indicate that peer assisted interventions can produce increases in social behavior and the generalization of treatment effects across a variety of situations. Discussion also focuses on ethical considerations when peers serve as behavior change agents, maximizing generalization effects, and suggestions for future research.     

Suggestions to Improve the Comprehensibility of Current Definitions of Scientific Authorship for International Authors

Science and Engineering Ethics - Much has been said about the need for improving the current definitions of scientific authorship, but an aspect that is often overlooked is how to formulate and...     

A Semantics for Means-end Relations

There has been considerable work on practical reasoning in artificial intelligence and also in philosophy. Typically, such reasoning includes premises regarding means–end relations. A clear semantics for such relations is needed in order to evaluate proposed syllogisms. In this paper, we provide a formal semantics for means–end relations, in particular for necessary and sufficient means–end relations. Our semantics includes a non-monotonic conditional operator, so that related practical reasoning is naturally defeasible. This work is primarily an exercise in conceptual analysis, aimed at clarifying and eventually evaluating existing theories of practical reasoning (pending a similar analysis regarding desires, intentions and other relevant concepts). “They were in conversation without speaking. They didn’t need to speak. They just changed reality so that they had spoken.” Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man     

The Problem of Many Hands: Climate Change as an Example

In some situations in which undesirable collective effects occur, it is very hard, if not impossible, to hold any individual reasonably responsible. Such a situation may be referred to as the problem of many hands. In this paper we investigate how the problem of many hands can best be understood and why, and when, it exactly constitutes a problem. After analyzing climate change as an example, we propose to define the problem of many hands as the occurrence of a gap in the distribution of responsibility that may be considered morally problematic. Whether a gap is morally problematic, we suggest, depends on the reasons why responsibility is distributed. This, in turn, depends, at least in part, on the sense of responsibility employed, a main distinction being that between backward-looking and forward-looking responsibility.     

What Are You Waiting For? Real‐Time Integration of Cues for Fricatives Suggests Encapsulated Auditory Memory

Speech unfolds over time, and the cues for even a single phoneme are rarely available simultaneously. Consequently, to recognize a single phoneme, listeners must integrate material over several hundred milliseconds. Prior work contrasts two accounts: (a) a memory buffer account in which listeners accumulate auditory information in memory and only access higher level representations (i.e., lexical representations) when sufficient information has arrived; and (b) an immediate integration scheme in which lexical representations can be partially activated on the basis of early cues and then updated when more information arises. These studies have uniformly shown evidence for immediate integration for a variety of phonetic distinctions. We attempted to extend this to fricatives, a class of speech sounds which requires not only temporal integration of asynchronous cues (the frication, followed by the formant transitions 150–350 ms later), but also integration across different frequency bands and compensation for contextual factors like coarticulation. Eye movements in the visual world paradigm showed clear evidence for a memory buffer. Results were replicated in five experiments, ruling out methodological factors and tying the release of the buffer to the onset of the vowel. These findings support a general auditory account for speech by suggesting that the acoustic nature of particular speech sounds may have large effects on how they are processed. It also has major implications for theories of auditory and speech perception by raising the possibility of an encapsulated memory buffer in early auditory processing.     

Belief Revision and Verisimilitude Based on Preference and Truth Orderings

In this rather technical paper we establish a useful combination of belief revision and verisimilitude according to which better theories provide better predictions, and revising with more verisimilar data results in theories that are closer to the truth. Moreover, this paper presents two alternative definitions of refined verisimilitude, which are more perspicuous than the algebraic version used in previous publications.