Intuitive Level Research Articles

Autonomy under threat: a revised Frankfurtian account

In the early 1970s Harry Frankfurt argued that so-called ‘coercive threats’ cause a violation of their victim's autonomy, thereby excluding him from moral responsibility. A person is therefore not responsible for doing what he is forced to do. Although this seems correct on an intuitive level, I will use Frankfurt's later vocabulary of ‘care’ and ‘love’ in order to show that threats essentially involve an abuse of a person's autonomy instead of an infringement or violation thereof. Still, if we want to understand the sense of reluctance that is involved in acting under threat, as well as the sense of responsibility that befalls both the victim as well as the perpetrator, then we have to move beyond the Frankfurtian framework.

Intuitive Level System Rules: Commentary on “Utilitarianism and the Evolution of Ecological Ethics”

Intuitive Level System Rules: Commentary on “Utilitarianism and the Evolution of Ecological Ethics”

Intuition versus analysis: Strategy and experience in complex everyday problem solving

Research on dual processes in cognition has shown that explicit, analytical thought is more powerful and less vulnerable to heuristics and biases than is implicit, intuitive thought. However, several studies have shown that holistic, intuitive processes can outperform analysis, documenting the disruptive effects of hypothesis testing, think-aloud protocols, and analytical judgments. To examine the effects of intuitive versus analytical strategy and level of experience on problem solving, 1st- through 4th-year undergraduates solved problems dealing with college life. The results of two studies showed that the appropriateness of strategy depends on the problem solver's level of experience. Analysis was found to be an appropriate strategy for more experienced individuals, whereas novices scored best when they took a holistic, intuitive perspective. Similar effects of strategy were found when strategy instruction was manipulated and when participants were compared on the basis of strategy preference. The implications for research on problem solving, expertise, and dual-process models are discussed.

On Wright–Fisher diffusion and its relatives

We present a series of elementary stochastic models arising from population genetics.Various mathematical aspects are investigated at the intuitive level. Special emphasis is puton the diffusion method. The focus is on the Wright–Fisher diffusion model and itsvariations, describing the forward evolution of one colony undergoing random sampling,possibly under the additional forces arising from mutation and selection with or withoutdominance. Some aspects of their dual coalescents obtained while running the diffusionprocess backward in time are also investigated.

Genetic algorithms and non-ESS solutions to game theory models

Game theory is not only the primary method for the formal modelling of interactions between individuals, but it also underlies how biologists think about social interactions on an intuitive level. Most biologists equate game theory with the notion of an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS). Maynard Smith's definition of an ESS formalized an intuitive concept of stable population equilibria in game theory models. This has proven extremely useful, both to formal modelling efforts, and to a much wider range of biologists in general. The formal definition of an ESS often cannot be met for an entire class of games, extensive form games with nodes off the supported path. Games of this form are the most reasonable models for a great many animal behaviours. This means that formal ESSs will not exist for these games, even though evolutionary stable strategies, in the intuitive sense, do exist. More powerful analytical solution concepts, such as evolutionarily stable sets (ES sets), are required to describe stable endpoints formally, but finding such solutions can be extremely difficult. In this paper we use genetic algorithms as an alternative method of searching for such solutions in a well-studied game of biological communication. Using this technique, we show a previously unknown solution to this game. We discuss the properties of biological communication that make it a particularly difficult subject to model using ESSs as the solution concept, and suggest that these issues also apply to a larger class of social models.

Learning Environment at Work: Dilemmas Facing Professional Employees

In an effort to increase efficiency and democracy, the modernization of the public sector has involved an increase in market and user control, an increased application of technology, a decentralization of responsibilities and competencies, and more management and personnel development initiatives. The concept of modernization signals a novel use of language and related concepts such as decentralization , self-management , self-government , de-bureaucratization , quality control , and user influence . These terms may sound positive on an intuitive level but constitute a source of uncertainty as to what is actually taking place. The article analyzes the learning environment in two governmental worksites in Denmark and shows how professional employees respond to the dilemmas posed by modernization at work.

A hybrid global–local approach for optimization of injection gate locations in liquid composite molding process simulations

Abstract The optimization of injection gate locations in liquid composite molding processes by trial and error based methods is time consuming and requires an elevated level of intuition, even when high fidelity physics-based numerical models are available. Optimization based on continuous sensitivity equations (CSE) and gradient search algorithms focused towards minimizing the mold infusion time gives a robust approach that will converge to local optima based on the initial solution. Optimization via genetic algorithms (GA) utilizes natural selection as a means of finding the optimal solution in the global domain; the computed solution is at best, close to the global optimum with further refinement still possible. In this paper, we present a hybrid global–local search approach that combines evolutionary GAs with gradient-based searches via the CSE. The hybrid approach provides a global search with the GA for a predetermined amount of time and is subsequently further refined with a gradient-based search via the CSE. In our hybrid method, we utilize the efficiency of gradient searches combined with the robustness of the GA. The resulting combination has been demonstrated to provide better and more physically correct results than either method alone. The hybrid method provides optimal solutions more quickly than GA alone and more robustly than CSE based searches alone. A resin infusion quality parameter that measures the deviation from a near uniform mold volume infusion rate is defined. The effectiveness of the hybrid method with a modified objective function that includes both the infusion time and the defined mold infusion quality parameter is demonstrated.

A method for structure sharing to enhance resource effectiveness

Structure sharing is said to be observed in a product when more than one function is performed by the same structure at the same time and it is claimed to make a product more resource effective. While understood at an intuitive level, however, and although some initial measures are mooted, unless the concepts of structure sharing and resource effectiveness are understood at a more concrete level, their relationships are hard to establish, and harder to instil in a product. Being able to develop measures of, and relationships between, these two concepts should help develop products that are better structure-shared and resource-effective, and hence more innovative yet competitive. This is because structure-shared products are often considered more innovative than non-structure-shared products, and being more resource effective should amount to being simpler and less expensive. The goal of this paper is to develop a method for assessing resource effectiveness and structure sharing in a product, and enhancing resource effectiveness through structure sharing.

The relative efficiencies of various predictors in spatial econometric models containing spatial lags

The purpose of this paper is to describe prediction efficiencies of various suboptimal predictors relative to the efficient (kriging) minimum mean square error predictor in spatial models containing spatial lags in both the dependent variable and the error term. Suboptimal predictors have been suggested in the literature. One reason is that they are suggested on an intuitive level; another is that they are computationally less tedious. We describe these relative efficiencies theoretically, as well as empirically. Among other things our results suggest that one of the intuitively suggestive suboptimal predictors is especially inefficient.

On complex adaptive systems and agent‐based modelling for improving decision‐making in manufacturing and logistics settings

PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to the tactical and operational decision making of manufacturing and logistics operations by providing novel insights into modelling and simulation, based on complex adaptive systems (CAS).Design/methodology/approachThe research approach is theoretically based on CAS with agent‐based modelling (ABM) as the implementation method. A case study is presented where an agent‐based model has contributed to increased understanding and precision in decision making at a packaging company in the UK.FindingsThe results suggest that ABM provides decision‐makers with robust and accurate “what‐if” scenarios of the dynamic interplay among several business functions. These scenarios can guide managers in the process of moving from policy space to performance space, i.e. concerning priorities of improvement efforts and choices of production/manufacturing policies, warehouse policies, customer service policies and logistics policies. Furthermore, it is found that ABM can include and pay attention to several aspects of CAS and thus provide understanding of, and explanation for, the patterns and effects which emerge in manufacturing and logistics settings.Practical implicationsAided by agent‐based models and simulations, practitioners' levels of intuition can be enhanced since patterns on the macro level emerge from agents' interactive behaviour. Together with insights from CAS these emergent patterns can be explained and understood, and are thus beneficial for the improvement of decision making in companies.Originality/valueThe case presented distinguishes this paper from what has been written in previous articles on the application of ABM, since such articles have not produced any empirically verified results after implementation of ABM.

Knowledge Restructuring in the Development of Children’s Cosmologies

The development of children’s cosmologies was investigated over a 13‐year period, using multi‐modal, in‐depth interviews with 686 children (217 boys, 227 girls from New Zealand and 129 boys, 113 girls from China), aged 2–18. Children were interviewed while they observed the apparent motion of the Sun and Moon, and other features of the Earth; drew their ideas of the shape and motion of the Earth, Moon and Sun, and the causes of daytime and night‐time; then modelled them using play‐dough; which led into discussion of related ideas. These interviews revealed that children’s cosmologies were far richer than previously thought and surprisingly similar in developmental trends across the two cultures. There was persuasive evidence of three types of conceptual change: a long‐term process (over years) similar to weak restructuring; a medium‐term process (over months) akin to radical restructuring; and a dynamic form of conceptual crystallisation (often in seconds) whereby previously unconnected/conflicting concepts gel to bring new meaning to previously isolated ideas. The interview technique enabled the researchers to ascertain children’s concepts from intuitive, cultural, and scientific levels. The evidence supports the argument that children have coherent cosmologies that they actively create to make sense of the world rather than fragmented, incoherent “knowledge‐in‐pieces”.

Ownership as a conceptual modeling construct

Ownership is a relationship that pervades many aspects of our lives, from the personal to the economic, and is particularly important in the realm of the emerging electronic economy. As it is understood on an intuitive level, ownership exhibits a great deal of complexity and carries a rich semantics with respect both to the owner and the possession. A formal model of an ownership relationship that inherently captures varied ownership semantics is presented. This ownership relationship expands the repertoire of available conceptual data modeling primitives. It is built up from a set of characteristic dimensions, namely, exclusiveness, dependency, documentation, transferability, and inheritance, each of which focuses on a specific aspect of ownership semantics. The data modeler has the ability to make a variety of choices along these five dimensions, and thus has access to a wide range of available ownership features in a declarative fashion. These choices ultimately impose various constraints (specified in OCL) on the states of data objects and their respective ownership activities, including transactions such as acquiring and relinquishing ownership. To complement the formal aspects of the ownership model and enhance its usability, we present a graphical ownership notation that augments the Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagram formalism. An implementation of the ownership relationship in a commercial object-oriented database system is discussed.

Examining the relationship between leadership, emotional intelligence and intuition in senior female managers

PurposeTo assess the relationship between leadership style, intuition, and emotional intelligence (EI) measured by a general and a workplace specific measure of EI in female managers.Design/methodology/approachThe study consisted of 176 female managers from several industries across Australia who completed a questionnaire battery consisting of the multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ), the cognitive style index (CSI), the trait meta‐mood scale (TMMS), and the workplace Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test (workplace SUEIT).FindingsThe results indicated that female managers displaying transformational leadership behaviours were more likely to display higher levels of EI and intuition than female managers displaying less transformational leadership behaviours. The workplace measure of EI was found to be the better predictor of transformational leadership behaviours than the general measure of EI, which was attributed to the workplace specific nature of the workplace SUEIT.Research limitations/implicationsThe implications of this research suggested the greater utility of workplace specific EI measures when concurrently assessing workplace outcomes. Research into leadership, EI and intuition may increase our understanding of effective leadership and could lead to the development of better tools for the selection, training and development of leaders.Originality/valueThis paper extends upon prior research that has identified a relationship between transformational leadership and EI, and also explores their relationship to the construct of intuition in female managers. It also addresses the important issue of the utility of two measures of EI in light of the workplace nature of the research.

Empty Fullness in the Eternal Now: Eckhart and the Buddhists

I do not know if Meister Eckhart counted any Buddhists among his ‘friends of God’, but I do know that the Meister is considered a friend of many Buddhists, Hindus, and other pilgrims from the spiritual traditions of the East. It seems to me that Eckhart’s writings create a wonderful forum for dialogue with people of other religious traditions largely because he approached the Great Mystery we call God on an intuitive and spiritual level. As a preacher, he artfully used words to point to the Great Mystery, but as mystic he was careful not to allow his experience of God to be fenced in by those very same words. Eckhart communed with the scriptures sacramentally, thus allowing him to do far more than provide information about God. His sermons, in a way not so unlike the koans of a Zen master, have the ability to shake us into a new way of seeing, making it possible to glimpse the face of God. Though Eckhart probably did not engage in any kind of direct dialogue with people of other religions, his style and his insights certainly prepared the way for what – many centuries later – would become the Second Vatican Council’s bold challenge to enter into friendly and respectful dialogue with people of other faith and spiritual traditions: ‘The Catholic Church ... regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings [of other world religions] which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all people’.1 The late Pope John Paul II, in words that sound surprisingly fresh today, made an even more urgent appeal, emphasizing the link between dialogue and love:

Templates for Analysis of Individual‐Level Prescription Data

The advent of large population-based prescription databases has enabled us to study drug use with the individual user as our unit of analysis. This review presents three non-specific analytic templates that may be applied to individual-level prescription data. The ratio of prevalence odds to incidence rate can estimate the average duration for drug use. Limitations and pitfalls are discussed. Although it should be cautiously interpreted, it provides a reasonable ranking of drugs with respect to their retention in users. The Lorenz curve is an analytic tool to express skewness in drug use. It shows the proportion of drug use that is accounted for by percentiles of drug users, ranked according to their volume of drug intake. It may express the extent of heavy users as well as sporadic small-volume users and may, for example, be used to screen for an unsuspected abuse potential of a drug. The waiting-time distribution is a frequency distribution of first occurrences of drug use within a time-window. It forms the basis for a theoretical model for robust estimates of prevalence and incidence rate. On an intuitive level, it displays visual correlates of epidemiological prescribing parameters such as period prevalence, point prevalence, incidence rate, duration, prescription renewal rate, relapse of treatments and seasonality. Each measure may be incorporated into an integral matrix that reflects various traits in utilization of every drug or drug class, thereby possibly finding abnormalities that suggest sub-optimal prescribing.

Why Trade Law Needs a Theory of Justice

I. DOES TRADE LAW NEED A THEORY OF JUSTICE? I'd like to begin by noting what today's question itself might imply. It may suggest to some that trade law does not already have a theory of justice, and to others perhaps even that it does not need one. Both implications would be mistaken. In my remarks I would like to make four points: first, that trade law necessarily involves theories of justice; second, that while the notion of trade and justice can raise several objections, these objections can be answered; third, that contemporary trade discourse reveals that in fact we already have a dominant theory of trade justice, utilitarianism, which needs to be outed as such and seriously re-examined; and finally, to illustrate the kind of work that is going on, and needs to go on, if we are going to take justice seriously in trade law. (1) Let me take a first casual pass at our question by juxtaposing a different one: does our federal income tax law or health care delivery system need a theory of justice? To this question we generally answer yes. Our income tax and health care systems are both fundamental social institutions involving significant resources, and both systems involve decisions about how those resources are allocated. In such cases we intuitively want to know if those decisions are fair. Theories of justice play an essential role in answering that question. Tax law and health care are two areas in which academics and policy makers routinely refer to principles of justice in working out their intuitions about fairness, and in analyzing, criticizing, and proposing reforms for these institutions. In a similar sense, I think we would be inclined to say that trade law also needs a theory of justice. The international trade law system (for example, the WTO) involves significant resources, and decisions about how those resources are allocated. So, as with tax law or health care policy, we intuitively want to know, is it fair? However, to go beyond this immediate intuitive level and answer in a more rigorous way, we need to consider a few elements of political theory: what does justice involve? What does a theory of justice do? One way to understand the idea of justice is as Through their decisions, social institutions produce some kind of social order, and we have many tools and disciplines with which to evaluate this order. The task of justice, in particular, is to ask whether these social decisions and institutional outcomes are right and consistent with a community's core values. How do we know if the inquiry of justice is relevant to a given situation? One way is to look at whether the situation involves public decision making about social goods. When people use social institutions to make decisions allocating social goods, this is the domain of justice. The decisions which these institutions make, and their method of decision making, are evaluated according to principles of justice. Trade law is one such social system, part of what Rawls calls the basic structure--that set of major institutions, including economic arrangements, which together distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of the advantages from social cooperation. If we think about the scope of WTO law, for example, we can see that trade law involves numerous decisions allocating social goods such as wealth, economic opportunity, trade-related knowledge, preferences, market access, etc. To say that trade law does not need a theory of justice suggests that we need not consider the normative implications of this allocative system, that the question of fairness is irrelevant. We don't say that about any other social institution--why would we say that about trade law? II. OBJECTIONS TO THE APPLICATION OF THEORIES OF JUSTICE TO TRADE LAW There are several kinds of objections one can make to the idea of justice as applied to international institutions. …

An application of data envelopment analysis to the evaluation of audit risk: a reinterpretation

This paper, which reinterprets previous work by Bradbury and Rouse (2002), addresses the risk quantification issue at an intuitive level. The insights provided by such quantification are discussed. Risk factors are associated with the risk‐return concept. This allows measuring whether risks taken on are appropriately rewarded. The paper gives a non‐technical exposition of DEA and outlines possible applications to accounting and finance. Using data for a large multinational, it shows how DEA analysis can be combined with internal audit procedures. It explains how the results obtained can be used to improve risk management.

The matching, birthday and the strong birthday problem: a contemporary review

This article provides a contemporary exposition at a moderately quantitative level of the distribution theory associated with the matching and the birthday problems. A large number of examples, many not well known, are provided to help a reader have a feeling for these questions at an intuitive level.

Potassium Channels and the Atomic Basis of Selective Ion Conduction

All living cells are surrounded by a thin, approximately 40 A thick lipid bilayer called the cell membrane. The cell membrane holds the contents of a cell in one place so that the chemistry of life can occur, but it is a barrier to the movement of certain essential ingredients including the ions Na, K, Ca, and Cl. The barrier to ion flow across the membrane—known as the dielectric barrier—can be understood at an intuitive level: the interior of the cell membrane comprises an oily substance and ions are more stable in water than in oil. The energetic preference of an ion for water arises from the electric field around the ion and its interaction with neighboring molecules. Water is an electrically polarizable substance, which means that its molecules rearrange in an ion’s electric field so that negative oxygen atoms point in the direction of cations and positive hydrogen atoms point toward anions. These electrically stabilizing interactions are much weaker in a less polarizable substance such as oil. Thus, an ion will tend to stay in the water on either side of a cell membrane rather than enter and cross the membrane. Yet numerous cellular processes, ranging from electrolyte transport across epithelia to electrical signal production in neurons, depend on the flow of ions across the membrane. To mediate the flow, specific protein catalysts known as ion channels exist in the cell membrane. Ion channels exhibit the following three essential properties: (1) they conduct ions rapidly; (2) many ion channels are highly selective, which means only certain ion species flow while others are excluded; (3) their function is regulated by processes known as gating, that is, ion conduction is turned on and off in response to specific environmental stimuli. Fig. 1 summarizes these properties. The modern history of ion channels began in 1952 when Hodgkin and Huxley published their seminal papers on the theory of the action potential in the squid giant axon [1–4]. A fundamental element of their theory was that the axon membrane undergoes changes in its permeability to Na and K ions. The Hodgkin–Huxley theory did not address the mechanism by which changes in the membrane perme-

Moral thinking, sports rules and education1

The purpose of this study is to resolve ‘moral conflict’ in sport and to present a better approach with respect to right actions for sports participants. While acknowledging that there are many positive values or principles (e.g. Olympism) in sport, some ‘moral conflict’ in sport might still arise and therefore cannot be easily resolved. By introducing Hare's two levels of moral thinking (i.e. intuitive level and critical level), I first clarify the question ‘Why do moral conflicts appear?’ That moral conflicts may arise normally is because people or philosophers tend to think that moral principles ought to be simple and general. In the general situation, it would be fine to follow these kinds of principles when there is no conflicting situation. But in a particular context, there might be a problem. It would be impossible to resolve a conflicting problem if we do not think critically. Second, I suggest that ‘keep the rules’ can be seen as a prima facie principle or duty for sports participants. However, this prima facie principle may not be sufficient or appropriate to resolve the problem of conflict by using the intuitive thinking, since one might face a conflict between ‘keep the rules’ and ‘not to keep the rules’ and s/he cannot select in between. Thus, critical thinking is needed. Third, I try to differentiate critical thinking from intuitive thinking. Critical thinking aims not only to select the best set of prima facie principles for use in intuitive thinking, but also to resolve conflicts between them. So, if we are able to think critically, a prima facie duty sometimes can be overridden by other more important duties (sound and ethical) in a particular situation. However, as not all sports participants are capable enough to think critically, moral education regarding how to develop athletes' ‘critical thinking’ in sport is needed. It may be recommended that virtue ethics play an important role in sport not just through initiating participants into rule‐following but also in cultivating certain dispositions and educating their desires. As it is, what we also need is a good sports education system which can enlighten people toward a better understanding of sport and its values.