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Topic Review
Envy-Free Item Assignment
Envy-free item assignment (EF assignment) is a fair item assignment problem, in which the fairness criterion is envy-freeness - each agent should receive a bundle that he believes to be at least as good as the bundle of any other agent. Since the items are indivisible, an EF assignment may not exist. The simplest case is when there is a single item and at least two agents: if the item is assigned to one agent, the other will envy. Therefore, the division procedures provide various kinds of relaxations.
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Topic Review
Constructivist Epistemology
Constructivist epistemology is a branch in philosophy of science maintaining that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, who seek to measure and construct models of the natural world. Natural science therefore consists of mental constructs that aim to explain sensory experience and measurements. According to constructivists, the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction. Constructivism opposes the philosophy of objectivism, embracing the belief that a human can come to know the truth about the natural world not mediated by scientific approximations with different degrees of validity and accuracy. According to constructivists there is no single valid methodology in science, but rather a diversity of useful methods.
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Topic Review
Fault (Legal)
Fault, as a legal term, refers to legal blameworthiness and responsibility in each area of law. It refers to both the actus reus and the mental state of the defendant. The basic principle is that a defendant should be able to contemplate the harm that his actions may cause, and therefore should aim to avoid such actions. Different forms of liability employ different notions of fault, in some there is no need to prove fault, but the absence of it. In criminal law, the mens rea is used to decide if the defendant has criminal intent when he commits the act and, if so, he is therefore liable for the crime. However, this is not necessary for strict liability offences, where no particular state of mind is required to satisfy the burden of proof.
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Topic Review
Phenomenology
Phenomenology (from Greek φαινόμενον, phainómenon "that which appears" and λόγος, lógos "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl and was later expanded upon by a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany . It then spread to France , the United States , and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work. Phenomenology is not a unified movement; rather, the works of different authors share a 'family resemblance' but with many significant differences. Gabriella Farina states:Phenomenology, in Husserl's conception, is primarily concerned with the systematic reflection on and study of the structures of consciousness and the phenomena that appear in acts of consciousness. Phenomenology can be clearly differentiated from the Cartesian method of analysis which sees the world as objects, sets of objects, and objects acting and reacting upon one another. Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticized and developed not only by him but also by students and colleagues such as Edith Stein, Max Scheler, Roman Ingarden, and Dietrich von Hildebrand, by existentialists such as Nicolai Hartmann, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre, by hermeneutic philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur, by later French philosophers such as Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida, by sociologists such as Alfred Schütz and Eric Voegelin, and by Christian philosophers, such as Dallas Willard.
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Topic Review
Medical Psychology
Medical psychology, or Medico-psychology, is the application of psychological principles to the practice of medicine, primarily drug-oriented, for both physical and mental disorders. A medical psychologist who holds prescriptive authority for specific psychiatric medications and other pharmaceutical drugs must first obtain specific qualifications in psychopharmacology. A trained medical psychologist, or clinical psychopharmacologist who has prescriptive authority, is equated with a mid-level provider who has the authority to prescribe psychotropic medication such as antidepressants for mental health disorders. However, a medical psychologist does not automatically equate with a psychologist who has the authority to prescribe medication. In fact, most medical psychologists do not prescribe medication and do not have the authority to do so. Medical psychologists apply psychological theories, scientific psychological findings, and techniques of psychotherapy, behavior modification, cognitive, interpersonal, family, and lifestyle therapy to improve the psychological and physical health of the patient. Psychologists with postdoctoral specialty training as medical psychologists are the practitioners with refined skills in clinical psychology, health psychology, behavioral medicine, psychopharmacology, and medical science. Highly qualified and postgraduate specialized doctors are trained for service in primary care centers, hospitals, residential care centers, and long-term care facilities and in multidisciplinary collaboration and team treatment.
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Topic Review
Fair Item Assignment
Fair item assignment is a kind of a fair division problem in which the items to divide are indivisible. The items have to be divided among several partners who value them differently, and each item has to be given as a whole to a single person. This situation arises in various real-life scenarios: The indivisibility of the items implies that a fair division may not be possible. As an extreme example, if there is only a single item (e.g. a house), it must be given to a single partner, but this is not fair to the other partners. This is in contrast to the fair cake-cutting problem, where the dividend is divisible and a fair division always exists. In some cases, the indivisibility problem can be mitigated by introducing monetary payments or time-based rotation, or by discarding some of the items.:285 But such solutions are not always available. An item assignment problem has several ingredients: These ingredients are explained in detail below.
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Topic Review
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state actors also), in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. Truth commissions are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship. In both their truth-seeking and reconciling functions, truth commissions have political implications: they "constantly make choices when they define such basic objectives as truth, reconciliation, justice, memory, reparation, and recognition, and decide how these objectives should be met and whose needs should be served". According to one widely cited definition: "A truth commission (1) is focused on the past, rather than in ongoing events; (2) investigates a pattern of events that took place over a period of time; (3) engages directly and broadly with the affected population, gathering information on their experiences; (4) is a temporary body, with the aim of concluding with a final report; and (5) is officially authorized or empowered by the state under review". The term used in the Australian context of reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples is truth telling.
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Topic Review
Informational Social Influence
Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake behavior in a given situation. The term was coined by Robert Cialdini in his 1984 book Influence: Science and Practice, and the concept is also known as informational social influence. Social proof is considered prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that the surrounding people possess more knowledge about the current situation. The effects of social influence can be seen in the tendency of large groups to conform. This is referred to in some publications as the herd behavior. Although social proof reflects a rational motive to take into account the information possessed by others, formal analysis shows that it can cause people to converge too quickly upon a single distinct choice, so that decisions of even larger groups of individuals may be grounded in very little information (see information cascades). Social proof is one type of conformity. When a person is in a situation where they are unsure of the correct way to behave, they will often look to others for clues concerning the correct behavior. When "we conform because we believe that others' interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more accurate than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course of action", it is informational social influence. This is contrasted with normative social influence wherein a person conforms to be liked or accepted by others. Social proof often leads not only to public compliance (conforming to the behavior of others publicly without necessarily believing it is correct) but also private acceptance (conforming out of a genuine belief that others are correct). Social proof is more powerful when being accurate is more important and when others are perceived as especially knowledgeable. In 2020, a young scientist from Poland , Michal Klichowski, proved that this phenomenon also applies to interactions with artificial intelligence. His results show a new AI proof mechanism: AI that people have more and more contact with is becoming a new source of information about how to behave and what decisions to take.
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Topic Review
Facet (Psychology)
In psychology, a facet is a specific and unique aspect of a broader personality trait. Both the concept and the term "facet" were introduced by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae in the first edition of the NEO-Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) Manual. Facets were originally elaborated only for the neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion traits; Costa and McCrae introduced facet scales for the agreeableness and conscientiousness traits in the Revised NEO-PI (NEO PI-R). Each of the Big Five personality traits in the five factor model contains six facets, each of which is measured with a separate scale. The use of facets and facet scales has since expanded beyond the NEO PI-R, with alternative facet and domain structures derived from other models of personality. Examples include the HEXACO model of personality structure, psycholexical studies, circumplex models (e.g., Goldberg's Abridged Big-Five Dimensional Circumplex), the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), and the California Psychological Inventory.
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Outline of Green Politics
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to green politics, a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy. It began taking shape in the western world in the 1970s; since then Green parties have developed and established themselves in many countries across the globe, and have achieved some electoral success.
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