The Extreme Claim, Psychological Continuity and the Person Life View

Marya Schechtman has raised a series of worries for the Psychological Continuity Theory of personal identity (PCT) stemming out of what Derek Parfit called the ‘Extreme Claim’. This is roughly the claim that theories like it are unable to explain the importance we attach to personal identity. In her recent Staying Alive (2014), she presents further arguments related to this and sets out a new narrative theory, the Person Life View (PLV), which she sees as solving the problems as well as bringing other advantages over the PCT. I look over some of her earlier arguments and responses to them as a way in to the new issues and theory. I argue that the problems for the PCT and advantages that the PLV brings are all merely apparent, and present no reason for giving up the former for the latter

Am I my brother’s keeper? on personal identity and responsibility

The psychological continuity theory of personal identity has recently been accused of not meeting what is claimed to be a fundamental requirement on theories of identity - to explain personal moral responsibility. Although they often have much to say about responsibility, the charge is that they cannot say enough. I set out the background to the charge with a short discussion of Locke and the requirement to explain responsibility, then illustrate the accusation facing the theory with details from Marya Schechtman. I aim some questions at the challengers' reading of Locke, leading to an argument that the psychological continuity theory can say all that it needs to say about responsibility, and so is not in any grave predicament, at least not with regard to this particular charge.Web of Scienc

Online Embeddings

13th International Workshop, APPROX 2010, and 14th International Workshop, RANDOM 2010, Barcelona, Spain, September 1-3, 2010. ProceedingsWe initiate the study of on-line metric embeddings. In such an embedding we are given a sequence of n points X = x [subscript 1],...,x [subscript n] one by one, from a metric space M = (X,D). Our goal is to compute a low-distortion embedding of M into some host space, which has to be constructed in an on-line fashion, so that the image of each x i depends only on x [subscript 1],...,x [subscript i] . We prove several results translating existing embeddings to the on-line setting, for the case of embedding into ℓ [subscript p] spaces, and into distributions over ultrametrics

Use of a bacterial hygromycin B resistance gene as a dominant selectable marker in Neurospora crassa transformation

Dominant transformation markers allow maximum flexibility in the choice of transformation recipients

Sleep reactivation did not boost suppression-induced forgetting.

Sleep's role in memory consolidation is widely acknowledged, but its role in weakening memories is still debated. Memory weakening is evolutionary beneficial and makes an integral contribution to cognition. We sought evidence on whether sleep-based memory reactivation can facilitate memory suppression. Participants learned pairs of associable words (e.g., DIET-CREAM) and were then exposed to hint words (e.g., DIET) and instructed to either recall ("think") or suppress ("no-think") the corresponding target words (e.g., CREAM). As expected, suppression impaired retention when tested immediately after a 90-min nap. To test if reactivation could selectively enhance memory suppression during sleep, we unobtrusively presented one of two sounds conveying suppression instructions during sleep, followed by hint words. Results showed that targeted memory reactivation did not enhance suppression-induced forgetting. Although not predicted, post-hoc analyses revealed that sleep cues strengthened memory, but only for suppressed pairs that were weakly encoded before sleep. The results leave open the question of whether memory suppression can be augmented during sleep, but suggest strategies for future studies manipulating memory suppression during sleep. Additionally, our findings support the notion that sleep reactivation is particularly beneficial for weakly encoded information, which may be prioritized for consolidation

Quantum W-algebras and Elliptic Algebras

We define quantum W-algebras generalizing the results of Reshetikhin and the second author, and Shiraishi-Kubo-Awata-Odake. The quantum W-algebra associated to sl_N is an associative algebra depending on two parameters. For special values of parameters it becomes the ordinary W-algebra of sl_N, or the q-deformed classical W-algebra of sl_N. We construct free field realizations of the quantum W-algebras and the screening currents. We also point out some interesting elliptic structures arising in these algebras. In particular, we show that the screening currents satisfy elliptic analogues of the Drinfeld relations in U_q(n^).Comment: 26 pages, AMSLATE

Moral enhancement: do means matter morally?

One of the reasons why moral enhancement may be controversial, is because the advantages of moral enhancement may fall upon society rather than on those who are enhanced. If directed at individuals with certain counter-moral traits it may have direct societal benefits by lowering immoral behavior and increasing public safety, but it is not directly clear if this also benefits the individual in question. In this paper, we will discuss what we consider to be moral enhancement, how different means may be used to achieve it and whether the means we employ to reach moral enhancement matter morally. Are certain means to achieve moral enhancement wrong in themselves? Are certain means to achieve moral enhancement better than others, and if so, why? More specifically, we will investigate whether the difference between direct and indirect moral enhancement matters morally. Is it the case that indirect means are morally preferable to direct means of moral enhancement and can we indeed pinpoint relevant intrinsic, moral differences between both? We argue that the distinction between direct and indirect means is indeed morally relevant, but only insofar as it tracks an underlying distinction between active and passive interventions. Although passive interventions can be ethical provided specific safeguards are put in place, these interventions exhibit a greater potential to compromise autonomy and disrupt identity

The narrative self, distributed memory, and evocative objects

In this article, I outline various ways in which artifacts are interwoven with autobiographical memory systems and conceptualize what this implies for the self. I first sketch the narrative approach to the self, arguing that who we are as persons is essentially our (unfolding) life story, which, in turn, determines our present beliefs and desires, but also directs our future goals and actions. I then argue that our autobiographical memory is partly anchored in our embodied interactions with an ecology of artifacts in our environment. Lifelogs, photos, videos, journals, diaries, souvenirs, jewelry, books, works of art, and many other meaningful objects trigger and sometimes constitute emotionally-laden autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memory is thus distributed across embodied agents and various environmental structures. To defend this claim, I draw on and integrate distributed cognition theory and empirical research in human-technology interaction. Based on this, I conclude that the self is neither defined by psychological states realized by the brain nor by biological states realized by the organism, but should be seen as a distributed and relational construct

Dosing pole recommendations for lymphatic filariasis elimination: A height-weight quantile regression modeling approach

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization (WHO) currently recommends height or age-based dosing as alternatives to weight-based dosing for mass drug administration lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination programs. The goals of our study were to compare these alternative dosing strategies to weight-based dosing and to develop and evaluate new height-based dosing pole scenarios. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Age, height and weight data were collected from \u3e26,000 individuals in five countries during a cluster randomized LF clinical trial. Weight-based dosing for diethylcarbamazine (DEC; 6 mg/kg) and ivermectin (IVM; 200 ug/kg) with tablet numbers derived from a table of weight intervals was treated as the gold standard for this study. Following WHO recommended age-based dosing of DEC and height-based dosing of IVM would have resulted in 32% and 27% of individuals receiving treatment doses below those recommended by weight-based dosing for DEC and IVM, respectively. Underdosing would have been especially common in adult males, who tend to have the highest LF prevalence in many endemic areas. We used a 3-step modeling approach to develop and evaluate new dosing pole cutoffs. First, we analyzed the clinical trial data using quantile regression to predict weight from height. We then used weight predictions to develop new dosing pole cutoff values. Finally, we compared different dosing pole cutoffs and age and height-based WHO dosing recommendations to weight-based dosing. We considered hundreds of scenarios including country- and sex-specific dosing poles. A simple dosing pole with a 6-tablet maximum for both DEC and IVM reduced the underdosing rate by 30% and 21%, respectively, and was nearly as effective as more complex pole combinations for reducing underdosing. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Using a novel modeling approach, we developed a simple dosing pole that would markedly reduce underdosing for DEC and IVM in MDA programs compared to current WHO recommended height or age-based dosing