Contingent Consequences Research Articles

Epidemiological Studies on COVID-19 and Mental Health in Mexico: Better Methodology for Better results: a Literature Review

Background. Updated information is required on studies conducted in Mexico on the mental health consequences of COVID-19. Objective. In comparison with previous efforts, we increased the timeframe of the literature search to February 2023 and used a larger list of potential mental health outcomes. Method. We used common international literature databases and more local databases, such as SciELO, and the Biblioteca Virtual en Salud (BVS). We focussed on the methodological issues of these studies, their prevalence estimates and suspected risk factors. Results. We reported on ninety-five studies that included Mexican data on symptoms of alcohol use, anxiety, depression, gaming, sleep problems and suicidal thoughts and behaviours. In most cases, we found a cross-sectional survey with self-reported information on mental health symptoms usually although not always with validated screening instruments and scales. These studies were implemented on websites, and sometimes over the phone, on self-selected volunteers. We found a small subset of fourteen longitudinal datasets (for alcohol use, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and behaviours) that suggested a more cautious interpretation of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of Mexicans. Discussion and conclusion. Although the initial rapid studies during the early phases of the pandemic yielded warning signs, they did not necessarily follow standard epidemiological principles. Methodological improvements are required for future studies on the mental health consequences of natural, man-made disasters and epidemic contingencies.

Differential representation of sensory information and behavioral choice across layers of the mouse auditory cortex

The activity of neurons in sensory areas sometimes covaries with upcoming choices in decision-making tasks. However, the prevalence, causal origin, and functional role of choice-related activity remain controversial. Understanding the circuit-logic of decision signals in sensory areas will require understanding their laminar specificity, but simultaneous recordings of neural activity across the cortical layers in forced-choice discrimination tasks have not yet been performed. Here, we describe neural activity from such recordings in the auditory cortex of mice during a frequency discrimination task with delayed report, which, as we show, requires the auditory cortex. Stimulus-related information was widely distributed across layers but disappeared very quickly after stimulus offset. Choice selectivity emerged toward the end of the delay period-suggesting a top-down origin-but only in the deep layers. Early stimulus-selective and late choice-selective deep neural ensembles were correlated, suggesting that the choice-selective signal fed back to the auditory cortex is not just action specific but develops as a consequence of the sensory-motor contingency imposed by the task.

Risk assessment and alleviation of regional integrated energy system considering cross-system failures

Regional integrated system (RIES) bridges the gaps among different energy systems by various energy conversion equipment. While this integration brings forth numerous benefits, it introduces cross-system failures, where a contingency in one system may affect others. This poses significant challenges when evaluating the consequences of such contingencies. To address this, a risk assessment approach is developed for RIES, considering cross-system failures, as well as fluctuations in renewable generation and multi-energy loads. Event tree analysis (ETA) is adopted to simulate the propagation of failures and identify the affected components. Nine risk indices are proposed to quantify the operational risk of RIES at various levels. Additionally, root cause identification and weak point location are developed to formulate risk alleviation strategies. To validate the proposed method, a RIES with 101 nodes is utilized for risk assessment, and multiple risk alleviation strategies are determined. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, providing valuable insights for operators in ensuring the safety of RIES.

When narcissists exemplify ethics: Contingent consequences of ethical leadership.

Organizations increasingly encourage, recognize, and reward ethical leadership to preempt the economic and reputational risks associated with ethical failures. At the same time, organizational leadership positions are disproportionately occupied by individuals higher in narcissism. We highlight how the combination of these two phenomena carries important organizational implications by examining how ethical leadership behaviors differentially impact leaders based on their level of narcissism. Building upon self-concordance theory, we introduce a model of contingent consequences of ethical leadership. Our model identifies motivational (i.e., self-efficacy of the leader) and social (i.e., admiration of the leader) mechanisms that explain why ethical leadership positively predicts leadership effectiveness for some leaders, but not for others. We test our model using a field study and two experiments. Findings from these three studies point to a problematic leadership paradox: When leaders higher in narcissism behave more ethically, they incur higher motivational costs and reap fewer social benefits compared to their peers who are lower in narcissism. Results reveal risks to leadership effectiveness for narcissistic leaders who attempt to lead more ethically. We discuss implications for ethical leadership research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A New Anatomy of Storyworlds: What Is, What If, As If by Marie-Laure Ryan

Reviewed by: A New Anatomy of Storyworlds: What Is, What If, As If by Marie-Laure Ryan Edward Wells (bio) Marie-Laure Ryan, A New Anatomy of Storyworlds: What Is, What If, As If, The Ohio State University Press, 2022, ISBN: 978-0-8142-1508-1, 226 pages, $89.95 A New Anatomy of Storyworlds: What Is, What If, As If is a scholarly work on a storyworld-based theory of narratology. However, its strengths lie beyond the scope arguing the merits of such a theory. They include its thorough address of fundamental concepts connected to narrative including, truth, fiction, narrators, and representation. The book's systematic address of these topics in a relatively easy-to-access manner allows the book to serve as a useful resource for educators focused on narratology and related concepts. If one is interested in wading quickly into the depths of "the implications of the concepts of world for narratology" (1), this book is an accessible entry point. The ideas present may also offer considerable provocation for scholars of narratology. Ryan includes primers and exploration not only of their central topic but for many of the concepts fundamental to narrative and fiction. The Introduction alone offers insight and detail of the history of narratology and a foundational understanding of the theory Ryan develops: "[n]arrative texts cannot represent 'all that exists,' but they can, and should, represent how individual existents relate to the people and objects that define their living environment" (7). The book is written in a way that allows each chapter to familiarize the reader with the chapter's focal topic within the context of narratology rather than foregrounding Ryan's storyworld theory of narratology. The chapter topics follow: Truth, Fiction, Narrator, Characters, Plot, Mimesis and Diegesis, Parallel Worlds, Impossible Worlds, Virtual Worlds, and Transmedia Worlds. The expansive and historical orientations present throughout are one of the recurring strengths of A New Anatomy of Storyworlds. They offer straightforward perspective and dominant ideas to which one may align or work against to form one's position. As one moves through the text, within the thoroughness of Ryan's thought, one faces the foundational consideration that any character, any event, must have a world, in the sense of a container, even if that container is a fictional nothingness. This consideration alone makes evident that storyworlds do have a fundamental place within narratives, if not a primacy. The first chapters are particularly interesting though their content makes clear that the body of the text is not limited to pressing major points of the argument for a storyworld-based theory of narratology, so much as immersing the reader in a broad perspective which itself is informed by the storyworld-theory. The first chapter, as an illustration of the approach and tone throughout much of the book, considers in detail the practical consideration of whether truth is an apt defining characteristic of fiction. If one is interested in concepts of truth, this chapter is a highly functional introduction and map of the highlights. It clearly lays out many of the relevant primary texts, such as Aristotle's Metaphysics; Alfred Tarski's The Semantic Conception of Truth (1969); Richard Rorty's Consequences of Pragmatism (1982) and Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (1989); [End Page 127] David Lewis' Truth in Fiction (1978); and Kendall Walton's Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (1990), among others. Toward the end of the chapter, there are three sections on truth from a perspective more attuned to narratology. These sections—Fictional Truth, Literary Truth, and Mythical Truth—are additional examples of what makes the book so functional as a broad reader which can take one from beginner toward expert remarkably swiftly. Following these sections, Ryan's reflective conclusion to the Truth chapter returns to a thought introduced at the beginning of the chapter, Alan D. Sokal's 1996 challenge of the postmodernist critique of scientific truth in "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" reprinted in The Sokal Hoax (2000). Ryan conversationally wonders "what would happen if the postmodern critique of truth as correspondence succeeded in bringing the scientific community down to its knees" (33). While it...

Relational and Distributive Discrimination

Recent philosophical accounts of discrimination face challenges in accommodating robust intuitions about the particular way in which it is wrongful—most prominently, the intuition that discriminatory actions intrinsically violate equality irrespective of their contingent consequences. The paper suggests that we understand the normative structure of discrimination in a way that is different from the one implicitly assumed by these accounts. It argues that core discriminatory wrongs—such as segregation in Apartheid South Africa—divide into two types, corresponding to violations of relational and distributive equality; and that a pluralistic view of the internal structure of each type should be adopted. This normative structure serves to appropriately vindicate the mentioned intuitions; it also contributes to clarifying the normative underpinnings of legal concepts associated with discrimination (including the distinctions between direct and indirect, or ‘disparate treatment/impact’ discrimination, and intentional vs. unintentional discrimination), and developing a more productive public discourse around allegations of discrimination.

On Material Indeterminacy

‘Material indeterminacy’ is the term I use to discuss how my work since 2010 has explored the consequences of placing materiality, indeterminacy, and responsiveness at the centre of a compositional practice, and what means for the relationships between instrument, player, and score. I propose that the structural consequence of contingency in instrumental performance is an underexplored aspect of experimental composition, which has historically tended to focus on models that either control contingency or obviate its consequences. ‘Material indeterminacy’ is proposed as a third way that folds the emergent consequences of contingency back into meaningful relation with the unfolding structure. This research is framed by theoretical perspectives on materiality: Andrew Pickering’s performative ontology of human and material agencies, specifically his ‘dance of agency’ between human and material; anthropologist Tim Ingold’s phenomenological approach to materiality that valorises the relational ‘working-with’ of human and material. The liveliness of materiality is considered in relation to Lucy Suchman’s work on situatedness and the entwined nature of plans and actions, and then returned to a musical context via listening and the discourse of improvisation as response-to-contingency. Finally, I discuss these ideas via examples of my own work from the Garden of Forking Paths compositional project (2019–2021).

The Mental Health Consequences of Vicarious Adolescent Police Exposure

Abstract Police stops are a pervasive form of criminal justice contact among adolescents, particularly adolescents of color, that have adverse repercussions for mental health. Yet, the mental health consequences of adolescent police stops likely proliferate to parents of adolescents exposed to this form of criminal justice contact. In this article, I conceptualize adolescent police stops as a stressor, drawing on the stress process perspective to examine how and under what conditions this form of criminal justice contact damages the mental health of adolescents’ mothers. The results, based on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, suggest three conclusions. First, the mental health consequences of adolescent police stops proliferate, increasing the likelihood of depression and anxiety among adolescents’ mothers. These relationships persist across modeling strategies that adjust for observed confounders, including adolescent characteristics such as delinquency and substance use. Second, the relationship between adolescent police stops and mothers’ mental health is contingent, concentrated among mothers with prior exposure to the criminal justice system (either via themselves or their adolescents’ fathers). Third, mothers’ emotional support buffers the relationship between adolescent police stops and mothers’ mental health. Taken together, this research highlights the role of police exposure as a stressor that is experienced vicariously and that has contingent consequences and, accordingly, documents the expansive and proliferating repercussions of police contact. Given the concentration of police contact among marginalized adolescents, including adolescents of color, these findings highlight another way the criminal justice system exacerbates structural inequalities.

La regla de precedente

This paper explains the main features of the rule of precedent (RP). The RP –in lato sensu– is the rule that defines the legal operation of judicial precedents (PJ). It is possible that each legal order contains a contingent RP in stricto sensu to define the conditions of binding and mandatory PJ. About this matter, the RP carries out three principal functions: 1) to establish the conditions to identify PJ; 2) to fix the legal powers for create, overrule and apply the PJ, and 3) to define the way in which the PJ commands actions and the consequences of non-compliance. Based on distinction between binding and obligation, it is highlighted that sanctions are the contingent consequences of disobey RP and that nullity (or invalidity) is the necessary consequence of the non-compliance of the binding conditions defined by the RP.

Screening Hidden N-$k$ Line Contingencies in Smart Grids Using a Multi-Stage Model

This paper addresses an issue in the contingency screening that the probabilities of some high-order N- k contingencies involving multiple element failures may be significantly underestimated in the traditional screening processes. Considering the severe consequences of these hidden contingencies, this practice would impose a potential risk to the system operations. In this paper, we propose a multi-stage approach to screen out these N- k contingencies and reveal their hidden probabilities. The approach is formulated as a bi-level mixed integer linear programming problem and validated by simulations on the IEEE 14-bus and 118-bus systems.

Writing off the Flâneur

Although repudiation of Benjaminian orthodoxy as regards the identity and significance of the figure of the flâneur is now commonplace, there has been little substantial work that places this Parisian phenomenon in a precisely delineated historical context. The three books in question here revisit the topic from different angles: flânerie as a genre of the essay; the flâneur as something largely irrelevant to late nineteenth-century visual culture; and the flâneuse as a generic modern and contemporary literary persona. The chapters in Promenade et flânerie suggest how forms of writing (here specifically the tradition of the essay) shape representations of kinds of walking (and the thoughts elicited thereby, or not) and their locations, formats, and styles, primarily within a French literary tradition. The word itself—essai—implies an attempted action, with an inherent element of unpredictability, which lends itself to the contingent consequences of flâneurs’ motion, more than the structured conventions of the original promenade. The premise is that the two terms, ‘promenade’ and ‘flânerie’, correspond to different ‘poetics’ of walking. In this sense, the volume is oriented towards literary history, in a way that complements Le Promeneur à Paris aux XVIIIe siècle (2007) by the historian Laurent Turcot, the best book on walking in Paris, in any century, not just the eighteenth, and an essential reference for any study of the subsequent phenomenon of the flâneur as a variety of pedestrian

Rorty, irony and the consequences of contingency for liberal society

This article examines Richard Rorty’s much criticized figure of the ironist, and the role that it plays in liberal society. It argues that, against Rorty’s own presentation, irony might have positive social consequences. It does so by examining Rorty’s description of the ironist, arguing that it contains different ideas which emerge at different points in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It takes up William Curtis’ claim that irony is a civic virtue, one closely associated with liberal ideas such as tolerance and pluralism. Curtis is insightful in identifying this aspect of irony, but I argue that it might also play a further role. The ironist is concerned with self-creation, something which Rorty takes to be a private activity, but I argue that the selves ironists create might potentially benefit liberal society, with the ironist’s redescriptions calling into question received wisdom and alerting us to unnoticed forms of cruelty.

THE SOCIAL ONTOLOGY OF INSTITUTIONS: A REASSESSMENT.

1. IntroductionSocial entities and mechanisms are extremely dissimilar in their constitution and underlying forces. The features of social entities alter notably in time, as a due to the purposive and unplanned conduct of the socially composed individuals who constitute a society. There is a considerable degree of mobility in the social world. Social results exhibit a significant level of likelihood and route dependency in their architecture and development. Social entities, mechanisms, and types of impact are eventually originated in separate participants. The latter are involved in continuous social connections and routines (Androniceanu and Ohanyan, 2016; Basboll, 2015; El-Montasser et al., 2016) that are external and unbiased. Social agreements are intensified via a mechanism of covering and constitution from lower-level distinct and social undertakings. Social arrangements and institutions have a level of constancy and causal force that define them as entities, not simply unplanned compositions. Social causes are dissimilar, probabilistic, participant-driven, exception laden, and interrelated. (Little, 2016)2. The Ontology of the Social WorldThe social world is as responsive to causal connections as the natural one, being a combination of various kinds of institutions, types of human conduct, natural and environmental limitations, and contingent events. The individual is socially constituted, i.e. her types of conduct, thought, and interpretation are conceived via a particular series of previous social interplays. Her undertakings are socially established, i.e. they are reactive to the institutional framework in which she prefers to operate. Purposive individuals, assimilating with capacities and limitations (Becerra Alonso et al.; 2016; Borbone, 2016; Brown, 2016), pursue their objectives in particular institutional frameworks. Configurations of social results frequently arise. The social world comprises mixtures, combinations, accumulations, and intricate systems of these types of socially situated agency, its features deriving from the undertakings, thoughts, incentives, emotions, and interplays of socially situated individuals. (Little, 2016)The social world is a totality, a vibrant combination, and a constant interplay of forces, participants, arrangements, and mindsets. Social results are the summative outcome of manifold lower-level mechanisms and institutions that generate them, and are contingent consequences of interplay and integration of these lower-level mechanisms. Intricate social events are comprised of various causal mechanisms and constituents. The phenomena of a considerable social aggregate are the totality of a substantial amount of distinct mechanisms (Canovas, 2015; Chapman, 2016; Cimatti, 2016) with intertwining connections and frequently extremely different tempos. Individuals within institutions alter their features via (i) their own conduct, (ii) their intentional endeavors to amend them, and (iii) the growing impact of participants and their conduct over time and place. (Little, 2016)Social constructs are generated and carried out within a substrate of thoughtful and dynamic participants whose conduct and mindset at a specified time regulate the characteristics of the social entity. As individuals operate, pursue their concerns, detect novel chances, and innovate, they at the same time mirror a certain institution and disintegrate or alter the latter. Individuals modify their positions and values gradually (Schneider, 2015; Scott and Stevens, 2016; Sharp, 2016), via exposure to other persons and conducts. The positions and values of a new age group are typically conveyed via mechanisms that are greatly dispersed. Institutions are human creations, are integrated in human undertakings and beliefs, and fix social issues, harmonizing separate undertakings, handling resources, and distributing benefits and responsibilities. Institutions either preserve their structure or alter it being contingent upon the concerns and undertakings of the participants. …

Między przeznaczeniem a wolnym wyborem. Przygodność człowieka w filozofii Alberta Schweitzera

The world described by science is, according to Schweitzer, terrible despite its greatness. The order of the world remains a mystery to man, and any attempts to justify the sovereignty of man’s will meet the insurmountable barrier of objective determinants of human existence (our birth, imperfect intellect, shortness of life; what limits man as a thinking and active subject).The world of civilisation and culture created by man is also becoming independent of man and opposes man as a hostile force. The ominous consequences of this double contingency may, to some extent, be neutralised by establishing a universal moral signpost that is binding for all people. In Schweitzer’s philosophy, this role is performed by the ethics of reverence for life. The principles, consequences, cohesion, and credibility of his programme of transforming man are the subject of consideration in the article.

Emotions as dynamic systems in viability sets

Emotions are viewed as dynamic systems with potentially varied contingent consequences and under viability constraints, responding to the principle of maintenance or acquisition of desired properties. Most emotions are classified by their memberships of viability sets, which in turn conceal the quantifiers ‘there exists’ (‘’) and ‘for all’ (‘’). Describing emotions in this way uses most of the concepts of viability theory, because emotions and viability sets both deal with survival and change. Emotion regulation mirrors mathematical controls, which can be operated in various ways, optimally or not, and that allow for improvement by learning. Application is to Maupassant’s A Woman’s Life, with viability kernels and capture basins succeeding each other in a description of the sequence of emotions felt by the heroine, and to a reappraisal of Laura and Petrarch’s emotional cycle.

Using Most-to-Least Prompting and Contingent Consequences to Teach Numeracy in Inclusive Early Childhood Classrooms

Mathematics and numeracy are valuable cognitive learning areas that need to be addressed during the early childhood years. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an intervention strategy comprised of creating opportunities, prompting, providing consequences, and prompt fading when teaching preschool children with disabilities numeracy/math skills in the context of identified classroom activities. A single subject multiple-baseline probe design within participants, replicated across three participants, was used to explore the effects of the intervention. The results of this study support the use of the strategy within inclusive preschool settings.

Collective efficacy and the contingent consequences of exposure to life-threatening violence.

Neighborhood research has increasingly emphasized the potential for contextual characteristics to moderate the effects of youths' experiences on their outcomes. Drawing on collective efficacy theory, we examine the variable consequences of youths' exposures to life-threatening violence across neighborhoods. We argue that strong community normative orientations supporting the control of violence diminish the negative effect of exposure to severe violence on subsequent mental health among urban youth. We also consider the extent to which the consequences of exposure to violence vary by gender. Employing data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, we estimate a series of multivariate, multilevel linear models of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Results indicate that, for girls, exposure to life-threatening violence (witnessing someone being attacked with a weapon or shot) increases both internalizing and externalizing symptoms. However, this effect achieves statistical significance only for girls who reside in neighborhoods with lower collective efficacy. For boys, our analyses offered weaker evidence of violence exposure effects on mental health. Implications for research on the social context of mental health are discussed.

Evolutionary contingency and SETI revisited

The well-known argument against the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) due to George Gaylord Simpson is re-analyzed almost half a century later, in the light of our improved understanding of preconditions for the emergence of life and intelligence brought about by the ongoing “astrobiological revolution”. Simpson’s argument has been enormously influential, in particular in biological circles, and it arguably fueled the most serious opposition to SETI programmes and their funding. I argue that both proponents and opponents of Simpson’s argument have occasionally mispresented its core content. Proponents often oversimplify it as just another consequence of biological contingency, thus leaving their position open to general arguments limiting the scope of contingency in evolution (such as the recent argument of Geerat Vermeij based on selection effects in the fossil record). They also tend to neglect that the argument has been presented as essentially atemporal, while referring to entities and processes that are likely to change over time; this has become even less justifiable as our astrobiological knowledge increased in recent years. Opponents have failed to see that the weaknesses in Simpson’s position could be removed by restructuring of the argument; I suggest one way of such restructuring, envisioned long ago in the fictional context by Stanislaw Lem. While no firm consensus has emerged on the validity of Simpson’s argument so far, I suggest that, contrary to the original motivation, today it is less an anti-SETI argument, and more an astrobiological research programme. In this research programme, SETI could be generalized into a platform for testing some of the deepest assumptions about evolutionary continuity and the relative role of contingency versus convergence on unprecedented spatial and temporal scales.

Lawmaking for Legal Realists

This article provides a concise analysis of lawmaking, inspired by what I perceive to be the realist conception of law. Legal realism, as I reconstruct it, stands for the proposition that law is a going institution (or set of institutions) distinguished by the difficult accommodation of three constitutive, yet irresolvable, tensions between power and reason, science and craft, and tradition and progress. Unlike some caricatures of legal realism, this understanding of legal realism explains why the original legal realists invested time and energy in various arenas of lawmaking, shaping and reshaping the various rules and standards that are to govern society. This sustained effort reflects a mature position regarding the rule of law whereby, notwithstanding the malleability of legal doctrine as such, the social practice of law implies stable expectations as to the content of the law at any given time and place. Redrawing the line between promulgation and application along these conventionalist lines paves the way for a realist account of lawmaking. This account is likely to rely on contextual and pragmatic analyses of the pertinent issues at hand. Thus, it implies that, rather than opting for either bright-line rules or vague standards, legal realists would recommend using both precise rules and informative standards founded on the regulative principles of the doctrines at hand, enabling people to predict the consequences of future contingencies and to plan and structure their lives accordingly. Legal realists would likewise avoid binary institutional choices and, in many contexts, appreciate the comparative advantages of both legislatures and courts–in terms of both expected performance and legitimacy–as potential contributors to the development of the law.

A Double-Edged Sword: The Antecedents and Consequences of Work Contingency of Self-Worth

Organizations often motivate employees by adopting strategies that enhance the relevance of work for individualsi self-worth. However, few studies have investigated the consequences that follow fro...