As such, this volume represents the transition from one era of social cognition research to the next.

This release includes the code and supplementary information mentioned in: Malaterre, Christophe & Martin Léonard. 2023. "Charting the Territories of Epistemic Concepts in the Practice of Science: A Text-Mining Approach", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

The central role of such epistemic concepts as theory, explanation, model, or mechanism is rarely questioned in philosophy of science. Yet, what is their actual use in the practice of science? In this philosophy of science project, we deploy text-mining methods to investigate the usage of 61 epistemic notions in a corpus of full-text articles from the biological and biomedical sciences (N=73,771). The influence of disciplinary context is also examined by splitting the corpus into sub-disciplinary clusters. The results reveal the (...) intricate semantic networks that these concepts actually form in the scientific discourse, not always following our intuitions, at least in some parts of science. The research is published in: Malaterre, Christophe & Martin Léonard. 2023. "Epistemic markers in the scientific discourse", Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

Over the course of the last four decades, William Leon McBride has distinguished himself as one of the most esteemed and accomplished philosophers of his generation. This volume—which celebrates the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday—includes contributions from colleagues, friends, and formers students and pays tribute to McBride’s considerable achievements as a teacher, mentor, and scholar.

Compiles the photographs taken by Leonard Freed of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 255-259 [Access article in PDF] On the Evolution of Depression Mike W. Martin Keywords: Depression, morality, mental disorders, psychobiology, evolutionary psychiatry. In "Depression as a Mind-Body Problem," Walter Glannon outlines a psychosocial-physiological explanation of depression as a psychological response to chronic stress—today, especially social stress—in which cortisol imbalances disrupt neurotransmitters. Accordingly, treatment for depression should combine psychopharmacology and psychotherapy—a valuable reminder in (...) light of the current restrictions on funding for health care (Hobson and Leonard 2001). My comments focus, however, on Glannon's objections to evolutionary theorists who explain our capacity for depression as adaptive to the natural and social environment. His objections are implausible because he fails to distinguish depression as a mood and a disorder. What Is Depression? Explaining the psychology, sociology, physiology, and evolution of depression presupposes knowing what depression is and hence what is being explained. As a blunt but important distinction, let us contrast depression as a mood and as a mood disorder.As a mood, depression is a state of low spirits, typically involving painful and low affect (of a kind needing further specification). Not all negative low moods are depressions. It is notoriously difficult to distinguish depression from grief, sadness, gloom, and a host of additional ways to feel down—especially because today many people use "I'm depressed" as a blanket expression for virtually any low mood. For the purposes of this paper, it is not necessary to attempt a full-blown analysis of depressed moods (and emotions). I would emphasize, however, that depressed moods involve values. They involve negative evaluations of ourselves, major events in our lives, life in its entirety, or the values that have been guiding us. Typically, to be depressed is to experience such things as feelings of worthlessness, dejection about failures, despair and hopelessness, and loss of caring and commitment. Thus, we might be sad or grieving but not depressed because we retain a solid grip on what is valuable and worthwhile. In any case, there should be no general presumption that depressed moods are all bad or undesirable. Instead, we should be prepared to appreciate the importance of depressed moods in connection with questions of value, identity, and even moral insight (Martin 2000). Depressed persons are not necessarily sick.In contrast, depression as a mood disorder is, by definition, pathologic. Moreover, usually it is not a depressed mood, although it involves depressed moods. On the one hand, depression as a disorder is defined as pathologic, a notion that is itself understood in terms of values—the values of health and, indirectly, moral values that define what is culturally acceptable. Thus, even severe [End Page 255] grief can be nonpathologic, even though it involves depressed moods, when it is within the range of "culturally-sanctioned responses" (APA 2000, xxxi). On the other hand, only sometimes is depression a single pathologic mood, as in major depressive episodes that can strike with a terrifying and suicidal severity (APA 2000, 375). Usually, however, the pathology is not a single depressed mood, but instead a longer-term state involving recurring depressed moods and additional features, such as poor concentration, insomnia, poor appetite or overeating, and so on. For some purposes, such as research funding and billing insurance companies and government health providers, these pathologies can be equated with what is currently in the DSM. Yet, there are many additional states of suboptimal health, in which the DSM criteria are only partly met.What does Glannon mean by depression? He does not define it, but he makes it perfectly clear that he intends depression as a disorder. Or rather, it is a set of mental disorders, including the "depressive disorders" of major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, depressive disorder not otherwise specified, and a variety of bipolar disorders and some anxiety disorders. Glannon sometimes indicates his primary topic is "severe depression," which of course is not a DSM category (nor always a mark of pathology). For the most part, however, he says his topic is "chronic depression," which might suggest dysthymia, "a chronically depressed mood for most of... (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to formulate logical foundations for a theory of actions or performance. Human beings act in various ways, and their actions are intimately interrelated with their use of language. But precisely how actions and the use of language are interrelated is not very clear. One of the reasons is perhaps that we have no precise vocabulary in terms of which such interrelations may be handled. There is need for developing a systematic theory in which different kinds (...) of actions may be discussed, contrasted, and compared. Then the various interrelations between actions and linguistic usage may perhaps be discussed rather more carefully and thoroughly than heretofore. Although much important preliminary work has been done in the analysis of actions, no one it seems has attempted to develop a strict logical theory for such analysis. A few tentative and programmatic steps were taken in the author's Toward a Systematic Pragmatics. Let us attempt here to improve those and take a few more. Any first attempts of this kind are of course fraught with difficulties. There inevitably will be some oversimplification or some overelaboration here or there. Ultimately of course we are interested in interrelating performance with various notions from syntax, semantics, and quantitative pragmatics. But this is not easy and only a few tentative suggestions toward such a development can be given here. In section 1 the distinction between action-kinds and action-events is drawn, and the character of the primitive or primitives needed for the theory of performance is discussed. In section 2 some further notions are then defined. Certain Rules of Performance are suggested in section 3. In section 4 there is discussion of the somewhat tenuous notion of acceptance as a basis for action. In section 5 the fundamental notions required for Parsons and Shils' theory of social action is discussed briefly. In section 6 we attempt to define the two basic notions required in Leonard's recent papers concerning authorship and purpose. Finally, in section 7, the theory of performance is interrelated with von Wright's deontic logic, in which such notions as permission and obligation are considered. (shrink)

Online supplement, "Mulsow: Additions to Notes drawn from the 2002 edition of Moderne aus dem Untergrund" full versions of nearly 300 notes that were truncated in the print edition. Hosted on H. C. Erik Midelfort's website. Martin Mulsow's seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany won awards and renown in its original German edition, and now H. C. Erik Midelfort's translation makes this sensational book available to English-speaking readers. In Enlightenment Underground, Mulsow shows that even in (...) the late seventeenth century some thinkers in Germany ventured to express extremely dangerous ideas, but did so as part of a secret underground. Scouring manuscript collections across northern Europe, Mulsow studied the writings of countless hitherto unknown radical jurists, theologians, historians, and dissident students who pushed for the secularization of legal, political, social, and religious knowledge. Often their works circulated in manuscript, anonymously, or as clandestinely published books. Working as a philosophical microhistorian, Mulsow has discovered the identities of several covert radicals and linked them to circles of young German scholars, many of whom were connected with the vibrant radical cultures of the Netherlands, England, and Denmark. The author reveals how radical ideas and contributions to intellectual doubt came from Socinians and Jews, church historians and biblical scholars, political theorists, and unemployed university students. He shows that misreadings of humorous or ironic works sometimes gave rise to unintended skeptical thoughts or corrosively political interpretations of Christianity. This landmark book overturns stereotypical views of the early Enlightenment in Germany as cautious, conservative, and moderate, and replaces them with a new portrait that reveals a movement far more radical, unintended, and puzzling than previously suspected. (shrink)

Classic analysis of the subject and the development of personal probability; one of the greatest controversies in modern statistcal thought.

Analyzes the meaning expressed in music, the social and psychological sources of meaning, and the methods of musical communication This is a book meant for ...

In the wake of ethical scandals and close ethical scrutiny throughout business and the accounting professional today, Brooks/Dunn's BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, 9E provides the ethical insights and strategies you need for corporate and professional success. Learn why ethical behavior is so important and how to recognize potential pitfalls that involve much more than memorizing rules. You master the skills to develop a corporate culture of integrity that maintains stakeholder support and enables directors and auditors to complete their jobs. You (...) also learn how to use ethical strategies to make decisions, as this edition examines the latest information on governance scandals, legal liability and professional accounting and auditing issues. More than 130 cases and readings highlight new and classic cases of fraud, bankruptcy and unprofessional practices to help you better understand appropriate codes of conduct and sound ethical reasoning while strengthening your persuasive and leadership skills for success. (shrink)

Dr Brandwood's book presents a factual and critical account of the more important of the various attempts that have been made to establish the order of composition of Plato's dialogues by analysing his diction and prose style. Plato's literary activity covered fifty years and there is almost no direct evidence, either external or internal, to help in establishing the relative order of his writings. Until the middle of the nineteenth century people were dependent on personal interpretation of the probable line (...) of development of Plato's thought and doctrines, but then a less subjective method was discovered, which relied instead on the observation of changes in Plato's prose style. Dr Brandwood examines the investigations of each scholar individually, checking the correctness of the methodology and the accuracy of the statistics, before arriving at fairly definite conclusions of his own, at least as far as the works of Plato's middle and old age are concerned. (shrink)

Abstract“Force dynamics” refers to a previously neglected semantic category—how entities interact with respect to force. This category includes such concepts as: the exertion of force, resistance to such exertion and the overcoming of such resistance, blockage of a force and the removal of such blockage, and so forth. Force dynamics is a generalization over the traditional linguistic notion of “causative”: it analyzes “causing” into finer primitives and sets it naturally within a framework that also includes “letting,”“hindering,”“helping,” and still further notions. (...) Force dynamics, moreover, appears to be the semantic category that uniquely characterizes the grammatical category of modals, in both their basic and epistemic usages. In addition, on the basis of force dynamic parameters, numerous lexical items fall into systematic semantic patterns, and there exhibit parallelisms between physical and psychosocial reference. Further, from research on the relation of semantic structure to general cognitive structure, it appears that the concepts of force interaction that are encoded within language closely parallel concepts that appear both in early science and in naive physics and psychology. Overall, force dynamics thus emerges as a fundamental notional system that structures conceptual material pertaining to force interaction in a common way across a linguistic range: the physical, psychological, social, inferential, discourse, and mental-model domains of reference and conception. (shrink)

The majority of North American corporations awakened to the need for their own ethical guidelines during the late 1970s and early 1980s, even though modern corporations are subject to a surprising multiplicity of external codes of ethics or conduct. This paper provides an understanding of both internal and external codes through a discussion of the factors behind the development of the codes, an analysis of internal codes and an identification of problems with them.

Len Bartlotti did his doctoral research on proverbs, Islam, and identity among Pashtuns, and serves as Research Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. He served fourteen years in Asia and is founder and former Executive Director of the InterLit Foundation Publishers and Educational Consultants.

This research investigates gender differences in employer-sponsored medical insurance coverage among full-time male and female workers in the United States and assesses the relevance of human capital theory and its compensating differentials corollary in predicting coverage. Data are analyzed from a subsample of the Quality of Employment Survey, a national probability sample of workers in the United States. Results indicate that men were more likely to have medical insurance coverage from their employers than were women; however, gender differences were minimized (...) in a multivariate context when human capital and structural variables were controlled. Furthermore, human capital variables are, overall, weak predictors of whether both women and men received coverage. More generally, the data suggest that structural conditions of the occupation, rather than individual human capital, may be most relevant for future research. (shrink)

This book educates whilst also challenging the contemporary schools of thought within philosophical and religious ethics. In addition, it underlines the fact that the substance of ethics in general and bioethics/healthcare ethics specifically, is much more expansive and inclusive than is usually thought. Bioethics is a relatively new academic discipline. However, ethics has existed informally since before the time of Hippocrates. The indigenous culture of African peoples has an ethical worldview which predates the western discourse. This indigenous ethical worldview has (...) been orally transmitted over centuries. The earliest known written African text containing some concepts and content of ethics is the “Declaration of Innocence” written in 1500 B.C., found in an Egyptian text. Ubuntu is an example of African culture that presents an ethical worldview. This work interprets the culture of Ubuntu to explain the contribution of a representative indigenous African ethics to global bioethics. Many modern scholars have written about the meaning of Ubuntu for African societies over centuries. Some scholars have viewed Ubuntu as the greatest contribution of African cultures to other world cultures. None of the scholars, however has explored the culture of Ubuntu as providing a representative indigenous ethics that can contribute to global bioethics as discussed in this book.​. (shrink)

Thought-intrusions, automatic inferences, and other unintended thought are beginning to play an important role in the study of psychiatric disease as well as normal thought processes. We examine one method for study of task-unrelated imagery and thought . TUIT likelihood was shown to be reliably measured over a wide range of vigilance tasks, to have high short-term and long-term test-retest reliability, and to be sensitive to information processing demands. Likelihood of TUITs was shown to be different as a function of (...) aging, hyperactivity, time of day, and level of depression. Thus, we now can reliably measure the influence of endogenous and exogenous influences on TUITs. In addition, TUIT measurement was proposed as a minimally interfering and natural second task for determining resource utilization in a primary task. Finally, this method was offered as a reliable approach to quantification of such mental states as obsessions and drug craving and addiction. (shrink)

A model of Zeno's dichotomy paradox is presented in Newtonian collision mechanics. One of several resolutions of the paradox illustrates the point that even in Newtonian ontology there is a spacetime weave. In a Newtonian system in which the base rules permit only spatial contact interactions, we find the mechanical emergence of action-at-a-distance effects.

According to an orthodox view, the capacity for conscious experience (sentience) is relevant to the distribution of moral status and value. However, physicalism about consciousness might threaten the normative relevance of sentience. According to the indeterminacy argument, sentience is metaphysically indeterminate while indeterminacy of sentience is incompatible with its normative relevance. According to the introspective argument (by François Kammerer), the unreliability of our conscious introspection undercuts the justification for belief in the normative relevance of consciousness. I defend the normative relevance (...) of sentience against these objections. First, I demonstrate that physicalists only have to concede a limited amount of indeterminacy of sentience. This moderate indeterminacy is in harmony with the role of sentience in determining moral status. Second, I argue that physicalism gives us no reason to expect that introspection is unreliable with respect to the normative relevance of consciousness. (shrink)

The Postlude, written for this edition, looks back at the predictions made more than twenty-five years ago and speculates about what the coming decades may hold ...

This article reviews the research of “top rebirth scientist” Ian Stevenson on spontaneous past-life memory cases, focusing on three key problems with Stevenson’s work. First, his research of entirely anecdotal case reports contains a number of errors and omissions. Second, like other reincarnation researchers, Stevenson has done no controlled experimental work on such cases; yet only such research could ever resolve whether the correspondences found between a child’s statements and a deceased person’s life exceed what we might find by chance. (...) Finally, the best reincarnation research should at least meet the standards met by typical empirical research, but Stevenson’s methodology does not even meet the standards expected of third- or fourth-year college students. -/- 1. How Controlled Experimental Work is Possible -- 2. The Anecdotal Record - 2.1 Reincarnation and Biology - 2.2 The Imad Elawar Case -- 3. Conclusion. (shrink)

Art interprets the visible world, physics charts its unseen workings--making the two realms seem completely opposed. But in Art & Physics, Leonard Shlain tracks their breakthroughs side by side throughout history to reveal an astonishing correlation of visions. From teh classical Greek sculptors to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, and from Aristotle to Einstein, aritsts have foreshadowed the discoveries of scientists, such as when Money and Cezanne intuited the coming upheaval in physics that Einstein would initiate. In this lively and (...) colorful narrative, Leonard Shlain explores how artistic breakthroughs could have prefigured the visionary insights of physicists on so many occasions throughtout history. Provacative and original, Art & Physics is a seamless integration of the romance of art and the drama of science...and exhilarating history of ideas. (shrink)