Quilty-Dunn et al.'s wide-ranging defense of the Language of Thought Hypothesis (LoTH) argues that vision traffics in abstract, structured representational formats. We agree: Vision, like language, is compositional – just as words compose into phrases, many visual representations contain discrete constituents that combine in systematic ways. Here, we amass evidence extending this proposal, and explore its implications for how vision interfaces with the rest of the mind.

When a piece of fruit is in a bowl, and the bowl is on a table, we appreciate not only the individual objects and their features, but also the relations containment and support, which abstract away from the particular objects involved. Independent representation of roles (e.g., containers vs. supporters) and “fillers” of those roles (e.g., bowls vs. cups, tables vs. chairs) is a core principle of language and higherlevel reasoning. But does such role-filler independence also arise in automatic visual processing? (...) Here, we show that it does, by exploring a surprising error that such independence can produce. In four experiments, participants saw a stream of images containing different objects arranged in forcedynamic relations — e.g., a phone contained in a basket, a marker resting on a garbage can, or a knife sitting in a cup. Participants had to respond to a single target image (e.g., a phone in a basket) within a stream of distractors presented under time constraints. Surprisingly, even though participants completed this task quickly and accurately, they false-alarmed more often to images matching the target’s relational category than to those that did not — even when those images involved completely different objects. In other words, participants searching for a phone in a basket were more likely to mistakenly respond to a knife in a cup than to a marker on a garbage can. Follow-up experiments ruled out strategic responses and also controlled for various confounding image features. We suggest that visual processing represents relations abstractly, in ways that separate roles from fillers. (shrink)

This book is a collection consisting of an introduction and nine essays that explore foundational aspects of criminal law. As the introduction makes clear, the book is eclectic and the essays can be classified under three main headings. The first group of essays explores the political constitution of criminal law as part of the institutional structure of the state. The second group of essays investigates the question of the authority of criminal law and its potential to create reasons for action. (...) The third group deals with transnational and international criminal law. The essays are primarily normative but they also contain historical and sociological discussions. The book will therefore be of interest to criminal lawyers, political and legal philosophers, political scientists and policy-makers. I will review separately some of the essays.Nicola Lacey’s essay, “What Constitutes Criminal Law?,” touches upon the fundamental question of criminal law: the question of legitimation. Lacey ap .. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine Heidegger’s critique of Hegel and to determine whether it is justified. Heidegger claims that Hegel tries to reduce everything to a single absolute entity, to the absolute knowing subject. The result is the identification of being and nothing, as Hegel formulates it at the beginning of his Logic. Hegel identifies being with nothing because being has no references, no predicates, no properties. Heidegger agrees with Hegel that being and nothing are the same, (...) but in completely different respects. They are the same because only entity actually exists, i.e. as an existent being. But Being itself does not exist, and should be conceived in an utterly different way from entity. And since Being cannot “be” it is a non-entity and therefore nothing. (shrink)

This paper provides an economic justification for the exemption from liability for omissions in torts and for the exceptions to this exemption. It interprets the differential treatment of acts and omissions under tort law as a proxy for a more fundamental distinction between harms caused by multiple injurers, where each one can single-handedly prevent the harm, and harms caused by a single injurer. Since the overall cost to which a group of injurers is exposed is constant, attributing liability to many (...) injurers reduces the part each has to pay and, consequently, reduces each one’s incentives to take precautions. Broad exemption from liability for omissions is a way of carving a simple, practical rule to distinguish between the typical cases in which an agent can be easily selected and provided with sufficient incentives and cases in which there is a serious problem of dilution of liability. The exceptions to the rule exempting from liability for omissions are explained in terms of efficiency. The imposition of liability for omissions depends on the ability to identify a salient agent, i.e., to single out one or few liable agents and differentiate their role from that of others. Tort law designs three types of "salience rules." It either creates salience directly, or it can exploit salience created "naturally," or it can induce injurers to create salience voluntarily. (shrink)

The patient preference predictor is a proposed computer-based algorithm that would predict the treatment preferences of decisionally incapacitated patients. Incorporation of a PPP into the decision-making process has the potential to improve implementation of the substituted judgement standard by providing more accurate predictions of patients’ treatment preferences than reliance on surrogates alone. Yet, critics argue that methods for making treatment decisions for incapacitated patients should be judged on a number of factors beyond simply providing them with the treatments they would (...) have chosen for themselves. These factors include the extent to which the decision-making process recognises patients’ freedom to choose and relies on evidence the patient themselves would take into account when making treatment decisions. These critics conclude that use of a PPP should be rejected on the grounds that it is inconsistent with these factors, especially as they relate to proper respect for patient autonomy. In this paper, we review and evaluate these criticisms. We argue that they do not provide reason to reject use of a PPP, thus supporting efforts to develop a full-scale PPP and to evaluate it in practice. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Where research was once strictly confined to one laboratory or office, investigators now widely share and compare their plans, analyses, and results. With the advent of genomic knowledge, researchers are seeking to understand the genetics and genomics of complex human disease. They are combining their efforts into international consortia in order to take on problems that face individuals around the world, such as cancer and malaria — problems that are too large to solve by one country alone. These consortia bring (...) together diverse research groups from different parts of the world to focus on a common goal. Their projects may all focus on one disease or condition, but examine it from different perspectives and share the newly gained information with each other and the wider scientific community. (shrink)

The business of philosophy is “to think things together,” so far as the reality of things and the capacity of thought allow. That reality presents many contrasts, physical, ethical, metaphysical, light and darkness, life and death, good and evil, right and wrong, the One and the many, the Infinite and the finite, the Eternal and the temporal, and what we mention as last, but not least, for our immediate purpose, Being and Becoming, the Constant and the Contingent. The contrasts need (...) not be regarded as contradictions, negations one of another, as thought the Eleatics with their emphasis on Being, or the Heraclitics with their preference for Becoming. To our immediate scrutiny all stands and all flows may be irreconcilable oppositions; but Einstein is teaching us that there is relativity in all our interpretations of reality. We need not with Indian thought declare Brahma alone real, and all else Maya , illusion. (shrink)

Louis Althusser remained until his death in 1990 the most controversial of the “master thinkers” who emerged from the turbulent Parisian intellectual scene of the 1960s. The publication of his bestselling posthumous “autobiography”, L'avenir dure longtemps, has now refueled some of these controversies. Hugely influential, whether lauded or vilified, Althusser occupies a unique place in contemporary philosophy. What is certain is that Althusserian themes and motifs continue to constitute a vital region in materialist thought. The Althusserian Legacy is the first (...) collective attempt to draw up a balance sheet, not on Althusser alone but on the questions that his work helped to bring to the forefront of Marxist theory. The volume brings together work in history, philosophy, economics, sociology, and literary criticism, all of it derived from or significantly inflected by Althusser. Taken together, the essays assess soberly, critically, but always generously, the full extent of his legacy. The volume contains a lengthy interview with Jacques Derrida, a long-time friend and colleague of Althusser at the Ecole Normale in Paris, and concludes with obituaries by Derrida and Gregory Elliott. Perhaps only now, more than a decade after his active intellectual life has come to a close, is it possible to render sound, just judgments on the meaning and significance of this much-debated body of work. The Althusserian Legacy is a rich beginning to that important task. (shrink)

Three different concepts of matter are identified: matter as what a thing is immediately made of, matter as stuff of a certain kind, and matter in the (dubious) sense of material ‘substratum’. The doctrine of hylomorphism, which regards every individual concrete thing as being ‘combination’ of matter and form, is challenged. Instead it is urged that we do well to identify an individual concrete thing with its own particular ‘substantial form’. The notions of form and matter, far from being correlative, (...) are relatively independent. There is nothing absurd in the notion of form without matter. Matter provides neither a principle of individuation nor a criterion of identity for individual concrete things: their form alone provides both. Finally, a substance ontology which admits also the existence of particular qualities, or tropes, is to be preferred both to a substance ontology which denies the existence of tropes and to a pure trope ontology. (shrink)

Born of a terrible insomnia--"a dizzying lucidity which would turn even paradise into hell"--this book presents the youthful Cioran, a self- described "Nietzsche still complete with his Zarathustra, his poses, his mystical clown's tricks, a whole circus of the heights." On the Heights of Despair shows Cioran's first grappling with themes he would return to in his mature works: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence. It also presents Cioran as a connoisseur of apocalypse, a (...) theoretician of despair, for whom writing and philosophy both share the "lyrical virtues" that alone lead to a metaphysical revelation. "No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran's dexterity. . . . His writing . . . is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion."--Bill Marx, Boston Phoenix "The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. . . . Puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."-- Publishers Weekly, starred review "This is self-pity as epigram, the sort of dyspeptic pronouncement that gets most people kicked out of bed but that has kept Mr. Cioran going for the rest of his life."--Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review Emil M. Cioran (1911-1995) is the author of numerous works, including The Fall into Time, A Short History of Decay, and Tears and Saints. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Interpretation of Plato's Parmenides: Zeno s Paradox and the Theory of Forms R. E. ALLEN PLATO'S Parmenides is divided into three main parts, of uneven length, and distinguished from each other both by their subject matter and their speakers. In the first and briefest part (127d-130a), Socrates offers the Theory of Forms in solution of a problem raised by Zeno. In the second (130a-135d), Parmenides levels a series (...) of objections against Socrates' theory, objections putatively meant as refutation. Then, after an interlude to explain an unfamiliar method of dialectic (135d-137c), that method is applied in the third part by Parmenides, with the help of the young Aristoteles (137c-166c). This final part forms more than two-thirds of the whole. I propose here to examine the first part of the dialogue, the interchange between Zeno and Socrates, and to examine it with special attention to the bearing which questions of dialectical structure and dramatic characterization may have upon its interpretation. It is perhaps here proper to indicate the general view of the dialogue which this discussion will help serve to recommend. Briefly, it is this. The Parmenides is a sustained examination of Plato's Theory of Forms, and the manner of examination is Socratic: the student is presented, not with a body of conclusions, but with a series of arguments whose implications he is left to think through for himself. When he has done so, he will realize that the Theory of Forms is proof against the objections here brought against it: the Parmenides provides no direct support for the thesis, currently popular, that Plato in later life ceased to believe that Forms exist. But though sound as far as it goes, the Theory of Forms does not go far enough: the Parmenides demonstrates that there is a range of problems, bound up with the application of unrestricted predicates, which Forms do not solve but are prey to. A broader theory is required, though a theory which may well contain the Theory of Forms as a part. The Parmenides, whose purpose is critical, leaves unanswered the question of what that theory may be. Zeno's Paradox and the Theoryof Forms (127d-130a) It is Zeno who begins the dialectic of the Parmenides,and fittingly, he begins it with a paradox. If there are many things, the same things must be both [143] 144 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY like and unlike. But this is impossible: unlike things cannot be like, nor like things unlike. Therefore, there cannot be many things (127e). Socrates' reply begins with a solution, and ends with a challenge. There exists, alone by itself, a Form of Likeness, and also a Form of its opposite, Unlikeness. The things we call 'many' are both like and unlike; but in this they differ from the Forms in which they partake. For things which are just alike (abr& r& 6uoLa)1 cannot be unlike, nor things just unlike alike. But it is no more surprising that the same things should partake both in Likeness and Unlikeness than it is that a thing should be both one and many by partaking in both Unity and Plurality. Still, Unity itself is not many, nor Plurality one. And so with other Forms: Socrates would be filled with wonder if someone could show that Likeness and Unlikeness, Unity and Plurality, Rest and Motion, and the other Forms, can be combined with (~v'rK~p&vvwOaO and separated from (SLaKotp~0a,) each other. Forms cannot be qualified by their opposite. 2 Socrates' denial is a conjunction. Several translators, including Cornford and Taylor, have rendered ~v3,~p&vvvaOa~ ~as &aKps as though it were a disjunction, 'combined or separated'. The reason for this was no doubt stylistic; but the Greek means, not 'or' but 'and', and logically, the difference is important. Zeno and Parmenides are challenged to prove, not one of two alternatives, but both together. This conclusion rests on more than a Kas In the Sophist, knowing how to separate (&a~ps 253e 3) according to kinds is equivalent to distinguishing (&a~m~a0a~ 253d 1) according to kinds, and both are equivalent to not believing that the same Form is different or a different Form the same (253d 1... (shrink)

I want to state as clearly as I can the sense in which Kant is, and the sense in which he is not, a phenomenalist. And I also want to state the argument which Kant presents, in the Transcendental Deduction, for his particular version of phenomenalism. Since that doctrine has been stated by Kant himself as the view that we have knowledge of “appearances” only, and not of things in themselves, or that material objects are nothing but a species of (...) our “representations,” it will of course be part of my task in this paper to deal with these fundamental notions. Some recent works on Kant have completely misinterpreted these notions, and because of this they have failed to capture the peculiar character of Kant’s phenomenalism. Jonathan Bennett, for example, interprets Kant’s claim that “objects are nothing but representations” as the claim that “statements about objects must be translatable into statements about intuitions.” I shall call such a view a reductive phenomenalism and argue in this paper that Kant is not a reductive phenomenalist. But Kant is, all the same, a phenomenalist. I shall call him an existential phenomenalist. The difference is this: Kant does not maintain, as Bennett claims, that all propositions which assert or presuppose the existence of objects must be translatable into statements which refer to intuitions alone, but he does hold that all such propositions are translatable into statements about the existence of intuitions alone. When Kant tells us, therefore, that objects are mere “appearances,” he is not offering a theory about what empirical objects are or about what we are really referring to when we refer to such objects, but he is offering a theory about the sense in which any empirical objects can meaningfully be said to exist. The significance of the distinction between reductive and existential phenomenalism is great. For it both allows Kant to do justice to those considerations which appear to lead to idealism or phenomenalism, while it does not at the same time require him to deny that the level at which we speak of material bodies and states is, and must be, a basic level of our conceptual framework. It cannot be one which is itself built upon, or constructed out of, some more basic level, e.g., out of talk about sense-data or sensory states. The uniqueness of Kant’s phenomenalism lies precisely at this point. (shrink)

The work of the eye has a powerful influence across culture and philosophy—not least in Goethe's approach to understanding. Aligned to aesthetic appreciation, seeing has the potential to offer an authorial gift of ‘other-ness’ when brought to bear on evaluative relationships. Yet this penetrating gaze might also be seen as limiting when put to work in the services of ‘other’. From the subtle sideways glance, to the lingering gaze of lovers, a look can mean many things. But the eye does (...) not work alone—what can be seen is directly impacted by the ideologies that influence interpretation, the time and space of its origin, and the genre of its capture. But it is only later, through post-modern eyes, that the image finally falls victim to its subjective stance and can be thus rendered obsolete. As such, the work of the eye far exceeds literal notions of visuality. These same tensions are evident in the work of the early Bakhtin Circle through their engagement with neo-Kantism, Russian formalism, phenomenology and Russian Avant-Gardes. In this article the art of seeing is reconciled in educational practice for the early years as a relational event through Goethian-inspired interpretations of visual surplus and aesthetics. Through this lens seeing is brought to life as an encounter of authorship—implicating the ‘I’—as a potential relationship of meaning and accountability at the centre of visuality. (shrink)

Locke's main semantic thesis is that words stand for, or signify, ideas. He says this over and over again, though the phraseology he employs varies. In Book III chapter 2 alone we find the following statements of the thesis: ‘ … Words … come to be made use of by Men, as the Signs of their Ideas’ [III.2.1; 405:10-11); The use then of Words, is to be sensible Marks of Ideas; and the Ideas they stand for, are their proper and (...) immediate Signification’ [III.2.1; 405:15-17]; ‘Words in their primary or immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them’ [III.2.2; 405:21-2]; That then which Words are the Marks of, are the Ideas of the Speaker’ [III.2.2; 405:27-8]; ‘ …. (shrink)

In the Monumentum Ancyranum Augustus makes some interesting and, if we can unravel them, undoubtedly important statements, from which certain deductions seem possible as to the number of his legionary soldiers, the rate of mortality among them, their length of service and the provisions made for them after their dicharge. Quite early in the Monument we get the following general assertion: ‘About five hundred thousand Roman citizens were bound to me by the military oath. Of these, after the due expiry (...) of their service, I settled in colonies or sent back to their own municipia somewhat more than three hundred thousand. And to all of them I gave land purchased by myself, or in lieu of land sums of money out of my own resources.’ From the place of this statement in that part of the record relating to his earlier career we might be tempted to infer that the five hundred thousand legionaries were those who formed his armies at the time of Antony's collapse, and that the discharge of three hundred thousand of them, whether planted in colonies or sent back to their domiciles, took place at one and the same time. With regard to the second point, we shall see presently that the vague and indiscriminate statement made here is cleared up by a later passage , from which it appears that the assignation of land belongs to two distinct schemes of colonizations, separated by sixteen years, and that the restoration of discharged soldiers to their municipalities, to whom alone the words ‘pecuniam pro agris dedi’ are applicable, belongs to a still later date. (shrink)

Scale invariance is considered in the context of gravitational theories where the action, in the first order formalism, is of the form S=∫ L 1 Φ d 4 x+∫ L 2 $\sqrt{-g}$ d 4 x where the volume element Φ d 4 x is independent of the metric. For global scale invariance, a “dilaton” φ has to be introduced, with non-trivial potentials V(φ)=f 1 eαφ in L 1 and U(φ)=f 2 e 2αφ in L 2 . This leads to non-trivial (...) mass generation and a potential for φ which is interesting for inflation. Interpolating models for natural transition from inflation to a slowly accelerated universe at late times appear naturally. This is also achieved for “Quintessential models,” which are scale invariant but formulated with the use of volume element Φ d 4 x alone. For closed strings and branes (including the supersymmetric cases), the modified measure formulation is possible and does not require the introduction of a particular scale (the string or brane tension) from the begining but rather these appear as integration constants. (shrink)

In the fifth and sixth letter of Friedrich Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man [Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen], which is based on letters written from 1793 to 1795 to his patron, the Duke of Augustenburg, Schiller critiques his contemporary society and culture. He describes how the organization of a state based on rationality alone does not develop but rather alienates man in a society in which "the dead letter succeeds the living intellect and a trained memory leads (...) more securely than genius and sensibility."1 In other words, he describes a society based on scientific knowledge, habit, and rote learning that doesn't leave room for judgment, imagination, and sensibility—and thereby neither... (shrink)

There can be few other uses in the Latin language which afford us so great an insight into the mental attitude of a writer at the moment of his writing, or which endow writing with so much of that personal colour which the voice alone gives in perfection, as does the singular use of the pronoun nos. All forms of this word which occur in the speeches of individuals, who are at the moment speaking independently, are either wholly singular uses, (...) or partly plural uses with more or less justification for the plural form according to the extent to which the speaker is identifying himself with his surroundings. Thus we find all degrees of plurality in such forms, and it is those instances in which the plural form can be least definitely justified which we call ‘singular’ or ‘unreal plural’ uses, and which prove to be the most fascinating from a psychological point of view. The object of the present essay is to inquire how far the varieties of meaning in the singular use of nos, which Professor R. S. Conway has pointed out in Cicero, appear also in Vergil. (shrink)

[The Catcher in the Rye's] catalogue of characters, incidents, expressions could be extended indefinitely, all of them suggesting that Holden's sickness of soul is something deeper than economic or political, that his revulsion at life is not limited to social and monetary inequities, but at something in the nature of life itself - the decrepitude of the aged, the physical repulsiveness of the pimpled, the disappearance and dissolution of the dead, the terrors of sex, the hauntedness of human aloneness, the (...) panic of individual isolation. Headlines about Korea, Dean Acheson, and the cold war seem, if not irrelevant, essentially wide of the mark - if we define the mark as the heart and soul of Catcher. James E. Miller, Jr., author of "Henry James in Reality" and numerous books and articles on American literature, responds in this essay to Carol and Richard Ohmann's "Reviewers, Critics, and The Catcher in the Rye. The Ohmann's answer will appear in our summer issue. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAt present, the consequences and functions of experiences of shame are not yet well understood. Whereas psychology literature typically portrays shame as being bad for social relations, motivating social avoidance and withdrawal, there are recent indications that shame can be reinterpreted as having clear social tendencies in the form of motivating approach and social affiliation. Yet, until now, no research has ever put these alternative interpretations of shame-motivated behaviours directly to the test. The present paper presents such a test by (...) studying the extent to which shame motivates a preference for social withdrawal versus a preference for social approach. Two studies using different shame inductions both showed people experiencing shame to prefer to be together with others over being alone. In addition, the preference for a social situation was found to be unique for shame; it was not found for the closely related emotion of gui... (shrink)

Although for the last 50 years, ethicists dealing with human experimentation have focused primarily on the need to protect individual research subjects and vulnerable groups, biomedical research, especially in genetics, now requires the establishment of standards for the protection of communities. We have developed such a strategy, based on five steps. (i) Identification of community characteristics relevant to the biomedical research setting, (ii) delineation of a typology of different types of communities using these characteristics, (iii) determination of the range of (...) possible community protections, (iv) creation of connections between particular protections and one or more community characteristics necessary for its implementation, and (v) synthesis of community characteristics and possible protections to define protections appropriate for each type of community. Depending on the particular community, consent and consultation, consultation alone, or no added protections may be required for research. (shrink)

This chapter presents an essay by W. E. B. Du Bois on the strivings of the American Negro. He cites the double-consciousness of the Negro, the sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength (...) alone keeps it from being torn asunder. He argues that the history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self—conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. (shrink)

Suppose you are on a commercial airplane that is flying at 35,000 feet. Next to you sits a man who appears to be sleeping. In fact, this man has been drugged and put upon the plane without his knowledge or consent. He has never flown on a plane before and, indeed, has no idea what an airplane is. Suddenly the man awakes and looks around him. Terrified by the alien environment in which he finds himself, he searches for a door (...) or window from which to make an escape. As luck would have it, he is seated right next to a window exit and he begins to pull the handle that will open the window. You are aware that opening the window exit at this altitude will cause the cabin to quickly depressurize and that this man, you, and probably several other passengers will be sucked out the window to your deaths. You desperately want to stop him from opening the window. Now assume that for some reason it is impossible to prevent him physically from performing the deadly act. Your only option is to rationally persuade him to leave the window exit alone. You cry out to him and, with both hands on the handles, he turns to face you and waits to hear what you have to say. What sort of argument would you make? (shrink)

Derek Parfit argues that fission is prudentially better for you than ordinary death. But is having more fission products with good lives prudentially better for you than having just one? In this paper, we argue that it is. We argue that, if your brain is split and the halves are transplanted into two recipients (who both have good lives), then it is prudentially better for you if both transplants succeed than if only one of them does (other things being equal). (...) This upshot rules out, among other things, that the prudential value of standing in the relation that matters in survival to multiple people is equal to their average well-being. (shrink)

J. Baird Callicott seeks to resolve the problem of the intrinsic value of nature by utilizing a nondualistic paradigm derived from quantum theory. His approach is twofold. According to his less radical approach, quantum theory shows that properties once considered to be “primary” and “objective” are in fact the products of interactions between observer and observed. Values are also the products of such interactions. According to his more radical approach, quantum theory’s doctrine of internal relations is the model for the (...) idea that everything is intrinsically valuable because the “I” is intrinsically valuable and related to everything else. I argue that humanity’s treatment of nature will become respectful only as humanity’s awareness evolves toward nondualism, and that such nondualistic awareness will not be produced by changes in scientific theory alone. Nevertheless, as Callicott suggests, such changes may be harbingers of evolutionary trends in human awareness. I conclude with a sketch of how nondualism, especially in its panentheistic version, provides the basis for environmental ethics. (shrink)

A healthy work-life balance has become increasingly important to people trying to cope with the pressures of contemporary society. This trend highlights the fallacy of assessing well-being in terms of finance alone; how much time we have matters just as much as how much money. The authors of this book have developed a novel way to measure 'discretionary time': time which is free to spend as one pleases. Exploring data from the US, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden and Finland, they show (...) that temporal autonomy varies substantially across different countries and under different living conditions. By calibrating how much control people have over their time, and how much they could have under alternative welfare, gender or household arrangements, this book offers a new perspective for comparative cross-national enquiries into the temporal aspects of human welfare. (shrink)

There is ambiguity with regard to what counts as an acceptable level of risk in clinical research in pregnant women and there is no input from stakeholders relative to such research risks. The aim of our paper was to explore what stakeholders who are actively involved in the conduct of clinical research in pregnant women deem an acceptable level of risk for pregnant women in clinical research. Accordingly, we used the APOSTEL VI study, a low-risk obstetrical randomised controlled trial, as (...) a case-study. We conducted a prospective qualitative study using 35 in-depth semi-structured interviews and one focus group. We interviewed healthcare professionals, Research Ethics Committee members and regulators who are actively involved in the conduct of clinical research in pregnant women, in addition to pregnant women recruited for the APOSTEL VI case-study in the Netherlands. Three themes characterise the way stakeholders view risks in clinical research in pregnant women in general. Additionally, one theme characterises the way healthcare professionals and pregnant women view risks with respect to the case-study specifically. First, ideas on what constitutes an acceptable level of risk in general ranged from a preference for zero risk for the foetus up to minimal risk. Second, the desirability of clinical research in pregnant women in general was questioned altogether. Third, stakeholders proposed to establish an upper limit of risk in potentially beneficial clinical research in pregnant women in order to protect the foetus and the pregnant woman from harm. Fourth and finally, the case-study illustrates that healthcare professionals’ individual perception of risk may influence recruitment. Healthcare professionals, RECs, regulators and pregnant women are all risk adverse in practice, possibly explaining the continuing underrepresentation of pregnant women in clinical research. Determining the acceptable levels of risk on a universal level alone is insufficient, because the individual perception of risk also influences behaviour towards pregnant women in clinical research. Therefore, bioethicists and researchers might be interested in changing the perception of risk, which could be achieved by education and awareness about the actual benefits and harms of inclusion and exclusion of pregnant women. (shrink)

Ethological theory standardly attributes representational content to animal signals. In this article I first assess whether Ruth Millikan’s teleosemantic theory accounts for the content of animal signals. I conclude that it does not, because many signals do not exhibit the required sort of cooperation between signal‐producing and signal‐consuming devices. It is then argued that Kim Sterelny’s proposal, while not requiring cooperation, sometimes yields the wrong content. Finally, I outline an alternative view, according to which consumers alone are responsible for conferring (...) representational status and determining content. I suggest that consumer‐based teleosemantics reconstruct the content of both cooperative and noncooperative signals and explain how a given trait can mean different things to different consumers. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K.; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Affective theory of mind (aToM) impairments associated with the youth antisocial phenotype callous-unemotional (CU) traits predict antisocial behaviour above CU traits alone. Importantly, CU traits associate with decrements in complex but not basic aToM. aToM is modulated by cognitive control and CU traits associate with cognitive control impairments; thus, cognitive control is a plausible mechanism underlying aToM impairments in CU traits. Because cognitive control is dependent on the availability of cognitive resources, youth with CU traits may have difficulty with allocating (...) cognitive resources under greater demands that impact complex aToM. To test this, 81 participants (ages 12–14, Female = 51.8%, Male = 48.2%) were recruited to complete a behavioural paradigm that involved an initial aToM task with complex and basic emotions followed by placing additional demands on cognitive control and a final repeat of the same aToM task. Results indicate adolescents higher in CU traits had intact basic aToM but less accuracy in complex aToM that worsened after taxing cognitive control; and this load only required a short duration to account for ToM decrements (200 ms [range 150–1600 ms]). These results demonstrate CU traits association with cognitive control limitations that impact complex aToM. This may partially explain antisocial behaviour associated with CU traits. (shrink)

The problem of the nature and scope of Causation has again been raised into prominence by recent research on atomic structures and processes, the result being that many physicists maintain that the causational principle must now be restricted to macroscopic changes regarded as the averaged outcome of microscopic events, each of which alone may not be causally determined, or at least not completely so. Of this markedly new departure Professor Eddington is perhaps the best-known advocate. “Physics,” he asserts, “is no (...) longer pledged to a scheme of deterministic law; the search for a scheme of strictly causal law not practical politics.” But the issue concerns not Physics only, for Dr. Eddington at once proceeds to interpret his viewpoint by contending that “science withdraws its opposition to free will”; and thus the realms of consciousness and conduct are once more brought into intimate connection with the realm of physical phenomena. It must of course be recognized that the question still remains highly debatable; for, as Sir Oliver Lodge has recently urged, “break down causality, and we are left with chance. That is wholly unsatisfactory. Chance is no solution”; and he likewise expands his survey beyond Physics by adding, “not in that way would I aim at freedom.” It is scarcely necessary to refer to current controversy in the biological sphere, between those who regard living processes as falling, if only to some degree, outside the domain of causal action, and those who insist that such action is universal, the indubitable proof of their position being prevented only by the difficulties of investigation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe goal of this paper is to challenge the standard view that Socrates of the early Platonic dialogues is an intellectualist with respect to virtue. Through a detailed analysis of the educational theory laid out in the early dialogues, it will be argued that Socrates believes that the best way to cultivate virtues in his interlocutors is not to convince them of ethical truths by way of reason and argument alone, but to encourage them to participate in the practice of (...) virtue. Habit and practice are essential to the cultivation of virtue because they mould the desires and dispositions of the agent and promote a kind of knowledge that cannot be achieved discursively – craft-knowledge. Only when agents have achieved craft-knowledge can they be counted on to act virtuously on every occasion; and craft-knowledge can only be achieved by way of practice and habituation. (shrink)

For 35 years, the critical and creative writings of Robert E. Butts have been a notable and welcome part of European and North American philosophy. A few years ago, James Robert Brown and Jiirgen Mittelstrass feted Professor Butts with a volume entitled An Intimate Relation (Boston Studies vol. 116, 1989), essays by twenty-six philosophers and historians of the sciences. And that joining of philosophers and historians was impressive evidence of the 'intimate relation' between historical illumination and philosophical understanding which is (...) characteristic of Butts throughout his work. Not alone, Butts has been, and is, one of this generation's most incisive thinkers, devoted to responsible textual scholarship and equally responsible imaginative interpretation. Brown and Mittelstrass said that "throughout his writings, science, its philosophy, and its history have been treated as a seamless web", and I would add only that philosophy per se is a part of the web too. Here in this book before us are the results, a lovely collection from the work of Robert Butts, who is for so many of his colleagues, students and readers, Mr. HPS, the model philosophical historian and historical philosopher of the sciences. July 1993 Robert S. Cohen Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University TABLE OF CONTENTS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE IX INTRODUCTION Xl PART I EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 1 1. Some tactics in Galileo's propaganda for the mathematization of scientific experience 3 2. (shrink)

Language and culture endow humans with access to conceptual information that far exceeds any which could be accessed by a non-human animal. Yet, it is possible that, even without language or specific experiences, non-human animals represent and infer some aspects of similarity relations between objects in the same way as humans. Here, we show that monkeys’ discrimination sensitivity when identifying images of animals is predicted by established measures of semantic similarity derived from human conceptual judgments. We used metrics from computer (...) vision and computational neuroscience to show that monkeys’ and humans’ performance cannot be explained by low-level visual similarity alone. The results demonstrate that at least some of the underlying structure of object representations in humans is shared with non-human primates, at an abstract level that extends beyond low-level visual similarity. Because the monkeys had no experience with the objects we tested, the results suggest that monkeys and humans share a primitive representation of object similarity that is independent of formal knowledge and cultural experience, and likely derived from common evolutionary constraints on object representation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces by Ivo Assad IbriRobert E. InnisIvo Assad Ibri Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces Springer, 2022, xxvii + 341 pp., incl. indexIn the chapter on 'The Heuristic Power of Agapism in Peirce's Philosophy' in his recent book, Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces, Ivo Ibri points out that access to Peirce's work requires something on the part of the reader that is "not readily available (...) in everyone's spirit: a sense of poetry, an aesthetic sensitivity that will, ultimately, become the sharpest and strongest tool to penetrate the deepest meaning of his philosophy" (116). Such a sensitivity is manifested in Ibri's own responsiveness to Peirce's accounts of the permeating qualities of things in a dynamic universe of emerging novel orders and patterns. Ibri's book presents the record, indeed the culmination, of a well-known and wide-ranging long-term engagement with the work of Peirce. It makes available in English translation the contents of the two-volume [End Page 257] collection of his papers in Portuguese published in 2020 and 2021, although a number of them were originally published in English. The title of the book indicates the dynamic triadic nature of Ibri's central Peircean themes: semiotics and pragmatism and their theoretical as well as historical 'interfaces.'Paradoxically, taken alone, the book's main title, 'Semiotics and Pragmatism,' gives no indication that it is principally about Peirce. The reason, I think, is that there is an interwoven duality of, or tension between, the tasks that Ibri has taken upon himself to accomplish in the intellectual journey manifested in the book's contents: (a) Thinking about Peirce, on the one hand, and (b) Thinking with and through Peirce, on the other. This duality of tasks accounts both for the expository and argumentative richness of Peircean themes and the accompanying sense of intellectual engagement and exploration as they are taken up in the various parts of the book: art as an articulated realm of 'nameless things,' the presence of a poetic ground and its links to Schelling in Peirce's philosophy, the nature of abduction and of agapism as heuristic principles, the scope of Peirce's theory of signs and interpretants, the theory of beliefs and the intellectual dangers and poverty of dogmatism, the nature of habits and rational conduct, the centrality of the categories for Peircean pragmatism and objective idealism, the relations between pragmatism, pragmaticism, and neopragmatism, and other technical and subsidiary topics of current social and political importance. The discussion of these themes involves wide-ranging and generous linkages to other parallel discussions that support or expand Ibri's own positions and existential commitments.Ibri frames in a variety of ways the inextricably intertwined strands of semiotics and pragmatism (or pragmaticism) in Peirce's work and argues forcefully in other chapters for Peirce's metaphysical vision of an emergent creative universe marked by the "infinite faces of chance" (122), a vision rooted in Schelling's objective idealism and in scientific discoveries of the 19th century. The organization of the book is thematic and does not develop in linear fashion as a treatise. It can be seen as sequence of engagements or as a series of analytical spirals in which the topics and issues of the book, focused on Peirce's heuristic fertility, are taken up in a kind of dialectical dance of 'retrievals and continuations,' leading inevitably, as Ibri points out, to a high number of repetitions and recapitulations. This is partially due to each chapter in the book, while free standing, functioning as a heuristic device for exploring and arguing for the nature and power of Peirce's interlocking main positions and their shared conceptual underpinnings.In a stimulating chapter on 'The Poetics of Nameless things,' Ibri writes that the Peircean claim of a "correspondence between external and internal worlds" is the "deepest root of pragmatism" (60). This root gives rise to a system of spiraling tendrils marking the growth of the [End Page 258] Peircean philosophical project. We can think of the chapters of Ibri's book as themselves spiraling, and at times entangled, analytical tendrils that support the growth of our... (shrink)

This article addresses two longstanding challenges for human resource (HR) managers; how far they can and should represent the interests of both management and workers and how they can gain the power to do so. Adopting a Kantian perspective, it is argued that to pursue an ethical human resource management (HRM), HR managers need to go some way to resolving both. Three possible avenues are considered. Contemporary approaches to organisation of the HR role associated with the work of Ulrich are (...) explored as a means of enhancing power, but rejected on the basis of research evidence as unlikely to succeed. Promotion of worker outcomes in the context of developing the link between HRM and performance offers the potential for a more ethical HRM but has not been seized by most HR managers. Finally, implementation of legislative and moral requirements to promote quality of working life is explored through the case of bullying at work. This highlights the boundaries of the HR role in a context of limited power and leads to the conclusion that it is unrealistic to look to HR managers, or at least HR managers alone, to achieve an ethical HRM. (shrink)

It is by now something of a cliché of Green discourse that environmental degradation and devastation is grounded in a sharp opposition – the legacy, it is often charged, of Christian metaphysics – between the human and the non-human, between the realms of culture and nature. If one is to understand, let alone endorse, the very general environmentalist ambition to dissolve the dualism of the human and the non-human, it is by questioning rather more tractable and particular dichotomies, like that (...) between art and nature appreciation, where it would seem wise to begin. (shrink)

The Toronto experience suggests that there may be several general lessons for academic health sciences complexes to learn from the Olivieri/Apotex affair regarding the ethics, independence, and integrity of clinical research sponsored by for profit enterprises. From a local perspective, the OAA occurred when there already was a focus on the complex and changing relationships among the University of Toronto, its medical school, the fully affiliated teaching hospitals, and off campus faculty because of intertwined interests and responsibilities. The OAA became (...) a catalyst that accelerated various systemic reforms, particularly concerning academic/industry relations. In this article, the evolving governance framework for the Toronto academic health sciences complex is reviewed and these policy and process reforms discussed. These reforms have created collaborative activity among research ethics boards and contract research offices of the partner institutions, and allowed the joint university/hospital ethics centre to play a role in governance and policy, while respecting the missions and mandates of the involved institutions. Although few of the policies are dramatically innovative, what is arguably novel is the elaboration of an overarching governance framework that aims to move ethics to a central focus in the academic complex. Time alone will tell how sustainable and effective these changes are. (shrink)

This Article explores the connections between disability and health justice in service of further tethering the two theories and practices. The author contends that disability should shift from marker of health inequity alone to critical demographic in the analytical and practical application of health justice. This theoretical move creates a more robust understanding of the harms of health injustice, its complexities, and, remedially, reveals underexplored legal and policy pathways to promote health justice.