Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

The book "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" is an engaging criticism of cognitive neuroscience from the perspective of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of ordinary language. The authors' main claim is that assertions like "the brain sees" and "the left hemisphere thinks" are integral to cognitive neuroscience but that they are meaningless because they commit the mereological fallacy—ascribing to parts of humans, properties that make sense to predicate only of whole humans. The authors claim that this fallacy is at the heart of Cartesian (...) dualism, implying that current cognitive neuroscientists are Cartesian dualists. Against this claim, we argue that the fallacy cannot be committed within Cartesian dualism either, for this doctrine does not allow for an intelligible way of asserting that a soul is part of a human being. Also, the authors' Aristotelian essentialistic outlook is at odds with their Wittgensteinian stance, and we were unconvinced by their case against explanatory reductionism. Finally, although their Wittgensteinian stance is congenial with radical behaviorism, their separation between philosophy and science seems less so because it is based on a view of philosophy as a priori. The authors' emphasis on the a priori, however, does not necessarily commit them to rationalism if it is restricted to conceptual or analytical truths. (shrink)

This article seeks to entangle two current philosophic praxes: New Materialism, and Sensory Ethnography. Jane Bennett has become one of New Materialism's most prominent proponents since the release of her now-seminal text, Vibrant Matter in 2010. Due to the varied ground upon which New Materialism stands, Bennett's work will be looked at idiosyncratically, then pushed into the realm of the cinematic via an analysis of the documentary, Leviathan. Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, this film was among (...) the first exemplary works to emerge from the Sensory Ethnography Lab, based at Harvard University. In striving for a revitalization of ethnographic film practices, the Lab aligns itself with similarly non-anthropocentric, and non-discursive, aspects of experience to the New Materialism of Jane Bennett. By placing these two contemporary camps into conversation, this article intends to r... (shrink)

"Neuroscience and Philosophy" begins with an excerpt from "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience," in which Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker question the ...

In addition to ethical aspects Citizen Science projects also involve social, economic and—not least—regulatory challenges that arise from their very openness and opportunities for participation. So...

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

The Protestant ethic — a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God — was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over (...) salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms. (shrink)

History of Cognitive Neuroscience documents the major neuroscientific experiments and theories over the last century and a half in the domain of cognitive neuroscience, and evaluates the cogency of the conclusions that have been drawn from them. Provides a companion work to the highly acclaimed Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience – combining scientific detail with philosophical insights Views the evolution of brain science through the lens of its principal figures and experiments Addresses philosophical criticism of Bennett and Hacker?s previous book (...) Accompanied by more than 100 illustrations. (shrink)

In 1997, a court in Cyprus jailed Pavlos Georgiou for fifteen months for knowingly infecting a British woman, Janet Pink, with HIV-1 through unprotected sexual intercourse. Pink met Georgiou in January 1994 whilst on holiday. She discovered that she had contracted the virus from him in October 1994 but continued the relationship until July 1996 when she developed AIDS. She returned to the UK for treatment and reported Georgiou to the Cypriot authorities.1There have been a number of legal cases involving (...) deliberate transmission of HIV, but most have involved forced exposure to infected bodily fluids for example, rape or biting, and have been dealt with using the existing legislation for rape or assault. While it is often difficult to prove responsibility for transmission in cases of forced exposure to HIV, it is even more contentious in cases like those of Janet Pink where an individual has consented to sex but claims that he/she was not forewarned of his/herpartner's HIV-positive status. At present there is no specific criminal offence of having unprotected sexual intercourse without disclosing one's HIV-positive status but a prosecution could possibly be brought under any one of a number of existing offences.2 Perhaps a change of policy needs to be considered. The Home Office has issued a consultation document which outlines a proposal that will allow the criminalisation of intentional transmission of diseases, like HIV, that are likely to cause serious harm. This revised legislation would cover all other potentially fatal diseases but seems primarily to be targeted at HIV transmission. Should transmission of HIV through consensual sex, without the HIV-positive status of the individual being disclosed, be an offence? This question, and that of whether there is a moral obligation to disclose a positive HIV status prior to having a sexual relationship is the subject of this paper. (shrink)

While I am inclined to agree that in most cases a choice to become pregnant and bring to birth a child is an irrational choice, unlike Professor Häyry,1 I believe that choosing to do so is far from being necessarily immoral. In fact I will argue that it is often these irrational choices which make human life the valuable commodity many of us believe it is.Häyry argues that not only is the choice to have children always an irrational choice, but (...) also it is necessarily an immoral choice. Thus, for Häyry “human reproduction is fundamentally immoral”.1 He claims it is important to point out to prospective parents that their urge to have children is irrational. From this, he argues, it follows that once this is accepted the use of advance technologies to assist conception should be reassessed, and furthermore, the irrationality and immorality of having children should become a legitimate part of guidance given to those expressing a wish to have children.According to Häyry the reason it is irrational and immoral to choose to bring to birth a child is that “having a child can always realistically lead to the worse possible outcome, when the alternative is not having a child”.1 He argues that when people consider having children they are faced with the choice between deciding not to have children and thus harming or benefiting no-one , or having children where this life may be good or bad, and thus the value of this choice can be …. (shrink)

This paper considers the ethics of routine antenatal HIV testing and the role of informed consent within such a policy in order to decide how we should proceed in this area—a decision that ultimately rests on the relative importance we give to public health goals on the one hand and respect for individual autonomy on the other.A recent illuminating qualitative study by Zulueta and Boulton1 explores the practicalities of informed consent in routine antenatal HIV testing. Its results support what I (...) have argued1 is inevitable with routine testing policies of this kind: that routine antenatal testing regimes are incompatible with requirements for informed consent. It has become clear that intervention could reduce the risk of transmitting HIV from mother to child from 15–20%2 to around 8%,3 or possibly as low as 2%.4,5 The evidence of this possibility produced a general trend towards introducing routine antenatal HIV screening in developed countries worldwide.6,7,8,9,10 The aim was to dramatically reduce the rate of HIV transmission from mother to child by encouraging universal antenatal HIV testing. The UK has been no exception, and in 1999 the government instructed health authorities to implement a policy of offering and recommending an HIV test to all pregnant women.11This UK antenatal screening policy and others like it, although well-meaning, are problematic in their formulation. In order to reflect contemporary ethical and legal practice, such policies attempt to marry the public health aims of maximising uptake of testing with a commitment to respect the choices of patients by requiring informed consent before they participate in screening. Thus, in the case of UK policy, health professionals are instructed to recommend the HIV test to all pregnant women in order to achieve the target of a 90% …. (shrink)

Classical Christian education has ancient roots in the Christian church. In recent days, Christians have attempted to recover this classical tradition. Many cite the intellectual rigor vis-à-vis public schools as the reason for choosing classical Christian education. However, intellectual rigor is only one part of the classical tradition. More importantly, classical Christian education seeks to develop morally upright Christians. This education forms the character of Christians so that they may live faithfully in the world. This article describes how classical Christian (...) education works at Highlands Latin School in Louisville, KY. Specifically, the implementation of the classical curriculum in middle school Latin and Greek courses is addressed with an eye toward spiritual/moral formation. (shrink)

The McNaughton rules for determining whether a person can be successfully defended on the grounds of mental incompetence were determined by a committee of the House of Lords in 1843. They arose as a consequence of the trial of Daniel McNaughton for the killing of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s secretary. In retrospect it is clear that McNaughton suffered from schizophrenia. The successful defence of McNaughton on the grounds of mental incompetence by his advocate Sir Alexander Cockburn involved a profound (...) shift in the criteria for such a defence, and was largely based on the then recently published scientific thesis of the great US psychiatrist Isaac Ray, entitled A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity. Subsequent discussion of this defence in the House of Lords led to the McNaughton rules, still the basis of the defence of mental incompetence in the courts of much of the English-speaking world. This essay considers one of these rules in the light of the discoveries of cognitive neuroscience made during the 160 years since Ray’s treatise. A major consideration is the relationship between the power of self-control and irresistible impulse as conceived by Cockburn on the one hand, and by cognitive neuroscience on the other. The essay concludes with an analysis of the notion of free will and of the extent to which a subject can exert restraint in the absence of particular synaptic connections in the brain. (shrink)

The vast number of high quality corporate image and advocacy films, combined with the many other instruments of persuasion and control by corporations, powerfully direct the attitudes of the populace. In the absence of equal access, the best protection against deception from any powerful institution is skepticism — minds trained in critical thinking. But technically proficient, expensive films (costing from $50,00 to $600,000) encourage credulity instead of thought. The schools should train young people, therefore, how to resist corporate film propaganda (...) by teaching them the kinds of questions to ask. An analysis of Chesebrough-Pond Corporation's Family offers an effective method through combining traditional rhetorical awareness of the speaker in a communication, knowledge of informal fallacies, the National Council of Teachers of English Committee on Public Doublespeak's intensify/downplay approach, and Richard Ohmann's method in Doublespeak and Ideology in Ads. (shrink)

Saturday Review's long, commendable effort to identify corporations willing to promote the general good through their advertising was damaged in 1977 because of procedural changes in the awards. Prior to 1977 the named judges made the important distinction between public-service (non-image) and public-relations (corporate image) advertising. But in 1977 the judges were not named and the public service/public relations distinction was eliminated, replaced by the single category of public spirited ads. Most of these ads, however, were not public spirited, but (...) were public relations ads. But in 1978 this deception was ended by the empaneling of a new kind of jury, one drawn from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. (shrink)

Mental timing studies may be influenced by powerful cognitive illusions that can produce an asymmetry in their rate of progress relative to neuronal timing studies. Both types of timing research are also governed by a temporal asymmetry, expressed by the fact that the direction of causation must follow time's arrow. Here we refresh our earlier suggestion that the temporal asymmetry offers promise as a means of timing mental activities. We update our earlier analysis of Libet's data within this framework. Then (...) we consider the surprises which often occur on those rare occasions when neural timing experiments parallel mental timing work exactly. Together, these surprises and asymmetries prescribe a relentlessly meticulous and fully transparent exposition of timing methods, terms, and concepts which shuns plausible narratives, even when buttressed by rigorous formal models, unless guided by apposite empirical evidence. (shrink)