The approach adopted by Posner & Raichle in this book, with its strong emphasis on the cognitive level of description, is ideally suited to the study of psychotic illnesses. However, their discussion of depression and schizophrenia is based on a very small number of studies and involves ad hoc arguments derived largely from neuroanatomy. Their conclusions are almost certainly wrong.

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.

Determining what has gone wrong in a malfunctioning body and proposing an effective treatment requires expertise. Since antiquity, philosophers and doctors have wondered what sort of knowledge this expertise involves, and whether and how it can warrant its conclusions. Few people were as qualified to deal with these questions as Galen of Pergamum. A practising doctor with a keen interest in logic and natural science, he devoted much of his enormous literary output to the task of putting medicine on firm (...) methodological grounds. At the same time he reflected on philosophical issues entailed by this project, such as the nature of experience, its relation to reason, the criteria of truth, and the methods of justification. This volume explores Galen's contributions to epistemology, as they arise in the specific inquiries and polemics of his works, as well as their legacy in the Islamic world. (shrink)

This book is a new edition of a short but fascinating treatise by Galen on causal theory. This text survives only in a Latin translation of the fourteenth century, and it is this which appears here. The volume also contains the first translation of the treatise into any modern language, and the first philosophical commentary thereon. The commentary ranges widely in Galen's voluminous œuvre, and compares his views with those of other ancient theorists. The introduction deals in detail with Galen's (...) life and work, with the background both philosophical and medieval to his causal theory, and with the history of the text itself. (shrink)

Q: What did the elephant say to the naked man?A: It looks O.K., but can you breathe through it?Let me begin by justifying that joke for those of you didn’t find it funny. The relationship between the morphology of the physical organs and their activities has long been a vexed issue in the philosophy of biology: the question of whether structure determines function is of course of contemporary importance in evolutionary theory. That there was a relationship between structure and function (...) was not in general a matter of doubt to the Greek theoretical biologists: but both the extent, and crucially the direction, of the dependence was. And the question need not be restricted to a consideration of the function of a particular part in isolation: when Aristotle takes issue with Anaxagoras for asserting that humans are the most intelligent species because they have hands, claiming rather that they have hands because they are intelligent, he is making a claim not just about the direction of explanation involved, but he is also implicitly at least indicating the scope of such explanations. For Aristotle, intelligence is one of the human functions: and that function necessitates the existence and development of certain organic structures. (shrink)

In this chapter, we introduce the perennial and sometimes sprawling topic of properties, with a brief historical sketch from Ancient to Modern philosophy throughout various cultures and traditions. We argue that the importance of properties can be shown by explaining what explanatory work they can do in philosophical theorising across many areas of philosophy. The chapters in this volume do just that in their specific ways. We also outline the structure of the volume and summarise each Part, first describing the (...) larger context of each Part and then the upshot of each chapter. (shrink)

This introductory text divides into two sections - the subject of philosophy, and the history of western philosophy from the Greeks to the present day.

We provide a justification for political liberalism’s Reciprocity Principle, which states that political decisions must be justified exclusively on the basis of considerations that all reasonable citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. The standard argument for the Reciprocity Principle grounds it in a requirement of respect for persons. We argue for a different, but compatible, justification: the Reciprocity Principle is justified because it makes possible a desirable kind of political community. The general endorsement of the Reciprocity Principle, we will (...) argue, helps realize joint political rule and relationships of civic friendship. The main obstacle to the realization of these values is the presence of reasonable disagreement about religious, moral, and philosophical issues characteristic of liberal societies. We show the Reciprocity Principle helps to overcome this obstacle. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 47, Issue 1, Page 72-103, Winter 2019.

Political liberals ask citizens not to appeal to certain considerations, including religious and philosophical convictions, in political deliberation. We argue that political liberals must include a demanding requirement of intellectual modesty in their ideal of citizenship in order to motivate this deliberative restraint. The requirement calls on each citizen to believe that the best reasoners disagree about the considerations that she is barred from appealing to. Along the way, we clarify how requirements of intellectual modesty relate to moral reasons for (...) deliberative restraint. And we argue against attempts to weaken our requirement of intellectual modesty by emphasizing those moral reasons. (shrink)

This elegant edition contains many of the best and most readable English translations of the Dialogues and Letters, including Hackforth's Phaedrus and Philebus, Cornford's Theatetus, Parmenides, and Sophist, Skemp's Statesman, and Shorey's Republic. The index alone, running 132 pages and using the Stephanus pagination, makes this edition invaluable. Judiciously edited, beautifully printed, and modestly priced.--R. J. B.

R. J. Hankinson traces the history of ancient Greek thinking about causation and explanation, from its earliest beginnings through more than a thousand years to the middle of the first millennium of the Christian era. He examines ways in which the Ancient Greeks dealt with questions about how and why things happen as and when they do, about the basic constitution and structure of things, about function and purpose, laws of nature, chance, coincidence, and responsibility.

Introspection, or metacognition, is the capacity to reflect on our own thoughts and behaviours. Here, we investigated how one specific metacognitive ability develops in adolescence, a period of life associated with the emergence of self-concept and enhanced self-awareness. We employed a task that dissociates objective performance on a visual task from metacognitive ability in a group of 56 participants aged between 11 and 41 years. Metacognitive ability improved significantly with age during adolescence, was highest in late adolescence and plateaued going (...) into adulthood. Our results suggest that awareness of one’s own perceptual decisions shows a prolonged developmental trajectory during adolescence. (shrink)

Psychopaths continue to be demonised by the media and estimates suggest that a disturbing percentage of the population has psychopathic tendencies. This timely and controversial new book summarises what we already know about psychopathy and antisocial behavior and puts forward a new case for its cause - with far-reaching implications. Presents the scientific facts of psychopathy and antisocial behavior. Addresses key questions, such as: What is psychopathy? Are there psychopaths amongst us? What is wrong with psychopaths? Is psychopathy due to (...) nature or nurture? And can we treat psychopaths? Reveals the authors' ground-breaking research into whether an underlying abnormality in brain development leaves psychopaths with an inability to feel emotion or fear. The resulting theory could lead to early diagnosis and revolutionize the way society, the media and the state both views and contends with the psychopaths in our midst. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that human pattern recognition can be simulated by automata. In particular, I show that gestalt recognition and recognition of family resemblances are within the capabilities of sufficiently complex Turing machines. The argument rests on elementary facts of automata and computability theory which are used to explicate our preanalytic, informal concepts concerning gestalt patterns and recognition. The central idea is that of a machine which "knows" its own structure. Although the paper thus aims to support mechanism, (...) especially as a framework hypothesis for perception, it contains suggestions for philosophy of science and philosophy of language as well. Some of these suggestions are sketched in the final section. (shrink)

Empathy is a lay term that is becoming increasingly viewed as a unitary function within the field of cognitive neuroscience. In this paper, a selective review of the empathy literature is provided. It is argued from this literature that empathy is not a unitary system but rather a loose collection of partially dissociable neurocognitive systems. In particular, three main divisions can be made: cognitive empathy , motor empathy, and emotional empathy. The two main psychiatric disorders associated with empathic dysfunction are (...) considered: autism and psychopathy. It is argued that individuals with autism show difficulties with cognitive and motor empathy but less clear difficulties with respect to emotional empathy. In contrast, individuals with psychopathy show clear difficulties with a specific form of emotional empathy but no indications of impairment with cognitive and motor empathy. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

It is not the purpose of this short essay to try the impossible and give an adequate historical survey of the Western image (or rather images) of China. There is, moreover, a vast literature on the subject to which both sinologists and historians of European culture have contributed. The following paragraphs will restrict themselves to two poles in this history: the perception and reception of China in the 17th century (with Leibniz as the most significant and impressive representative of the (...) period)—in other words the image of China as current among the philosophes i.e., the pre-enlightenment, still Christian humanists, none of which was (or could have been) a sinologist properly speaking—and again at the end of the 19th century, when academic sinology began to get into stride. Without in any way detracting from the significance of his great predecessors and contemporaries, especially Marcel Granet, we shall limit our discussion to J.J.M. de Groot (Leiden and Berlin, d. 1921). (shrink)

Like Caesar's Gaul, my essay is divided into three parts, according to the subjects mentioned in the subtitle. The “crisis consciousness” of the main title forms less a subdivision of the essay than a leitmotif accompanying all the parts as well as the whole.

The problems and the history of contacts between distant continents in bygone ages and long before the age of fast and easy travel, have always fascinated both professional scholars and the interested public. Was ancient history really nothing but the history of co-existing and isolated geographic, cultural and political “islands?” Already at school we learned too much about migrations of peoples, economic contacts, influences on art styles, conquests, and the rise, expansion and fall of empires to believe that. The (highly (...) improbable) theory that certain archaeological finds in America suggest, or even prove, Mediterranean influence (e.g., the arrival of Phoenician ships), or the alleged Viking discovery of America centuries before Columbus, or Thor Heyerdahl's adventurous journey to prove South American influence on remote Pacific islands did not fail to cause widespread interest and even excitement (although many scholars still feel that Heyerdahl's epic adventure, thrilling as it is, failed to prove what it set out to prove). The island of Madagascar is pretty close to the African continent, but its language exhibits more points of contact with Polynesian than with African tongues. And the blow-bellows used by Malagache smiths are similar to those used in Malaysia and unlike those known to African metalworkers. Clearly the Polynesians, those great ancient mariners, sailed further than originally seemed likely. Musicologists studying the cantillation of the Hebrew Bible in the liturgy of the ancient Jewish communities on the Malabar coast in India discovered to their surprise that it was similar to the cantillation not of the Babylonian but of the Yemenite Jews! This surprise was, of course, no surprise to those who knew anything about trade-winds and shipping routes between South Arabia and the Indian coast. Historians of religion, even more than general historians, studying the spread and expansion of religious ideas and movements have realised long ago that the beginning of all wisdom is a basic knowledge of economic geography. (shrink)

_Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video_ Edited by Patrice Petro Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-253-20890-4 314 pp.

Empirical ethics research is increasingly valued in bioethics and healthcare more generally, but there remain as yet under-researched areas such as pharmacy, despite the increasingly visible attempts by the profession to embrace additional roles beyond the supply of medicines. A descriptive and critical review of the extant empirical pharmacy ethics literature is provided here. A chronological change from quantitative to qualitative approaches is highlighted in this review, as well as differing theoretical approaches such as cognitive moral development and the four (...) principles of biomedical ethics. Research with pharmacy student cohorts is common, as is representation from American pharmacists. Many examples of ethical problems are identified, as well as commercial and legal influences on ethical understanding and decision making. In this paper, it is argued that as pharmacy seeks to develop additional roles with concomitant ethical responsibilities, a new prescription is needed for empirical ethics research in pharmacy—one that embraces an agenda of systematic research using a plurality of methodological and theoretical approaches to better explore this under-researched discipline. (shrink)

This study investigated the performance of boys with psychopathic tendencies and comparison boys, aged 9 to 17 years, on two tasks believed to be sensitive to amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex func- tioning. Fifty-one boys were divided into two groups according to the Psychopathy Screening Device (PSD, P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, in press) and presented with two tasks. The tasks were the gambling task (A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994) and the Intradimensional/ (...) Extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task (R. Dias, T. W. Robbins, & A. C. Roberts, 1996). The boys with psychopathic tendencies showed impaired performance on the gambling task. However, there were no group differences on the ID/ED task either for response reversal or extradimensional set shifting. The implications of these results for models of psychopathy are discussed. (shrink)