Approach to Aesthetics represents the realization of a project that Frank Sibley, who died in January 1996, did not live to complete on his own. The volume not only brings together Sibley’s major published papers on philosophical aesthetics but also includes five hitherto unpublished pieces written in his later years. These five pieces, some originally prepared by Sibley for oral presentation, were left by him in virtually complete versions and have needed only the kind of editorial attention required to meet (...) the exigencies of publication. Never having presented his views on aesthetics in a single book-length study, Sibley eventually came to see the publication of a collection of his most significant papers as a viable substitute. In asking the editors, shortly before his death, to undertake this project, Sibley himself provided a list of the published papers that he wanted to include as well as a second list of unpublished work that he wanted the editors to consider. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the current volume faithfully reflects Sibley’s wishes and intentions—and this to a very fine detail. The first eleven items in the collection are presented in the precise order in which Sibley listed them for the editors. Moreover, the title of the volume and even the two epigraphs were his choice. (shrink)

Community Partnered Participatory Research is grounded in the ethical principle of respect for persons participating in the research enterprise. The critical importance of respect for person...

Corballis presents a plausible evolutionary mechanism to explain the tight linkage between cerebral lateralization for language and for handedness in humans. This argument may be bolstered by invoking Stokoe's notion of semantic phonology to explain the role of Broca's area in grammatical functions.

This paper points to the need in ape language research to shift from experimentation to ethnography. We cannot determine what goes on inside the head of an ape when it communicates with a human being, but we can learn about the nature and content of the communication that occurs in such face-to-face interaction. This information is fundamental for establishing a baseline for the abilities of an ape-human common ancestor.

The dominant unspoken philosophical basis of medical care in the United States is a form of Cartesian reductionism that views the body as a machine and medical professionals as technicians whose job is to repair that machine. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for an alternative philosophy of medicine based on the concept of healing relationships between clinicians and patients. This is accomplished first by exploring the ethical and philosophical work of Pellegrino and Thomasma and then by connecting (...) Martin Buber's philosophical work on the nature of relationships to an empirically derived model of the medical healing relationship. The Healing Relationship Model was developed by the authors through qualitative analysis of interviews of physicians and patients. Clinician-patient healing relationships are a special form of what Buber calls I-Thou relationships, characterized by dialog and mutuality, but a mutuality limited by the inherent asymmetry of the clinician-patient relationship. The Healing Relationship Model identifies three processes necessary for such relationships to develop and be sustained: Valuing, Appreciating Power and Abiding. We explore in detail how these processes, as well as other components of the model resonate with Buber's concepts of I-Thou and I-It relationships. The resulting combined conceptual model illuminates the wholeness underlying the dual roles of clinicians as healers and providers of technical biomedicine. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that health care should be focused on healing, with I-Thou relationships at its core. (shrink)

The ability to learn the direction of causal relations is critical for understanding and acting in the world. We investigated how children learn causal directionality in situations in which the states of variables are temporally dependent (i.e., autocorrelated). In Experiment 1, children learned about causal direction by comparing the states of one variable before versus after an intervention on another variable. In Experiment 2, children reliably inferred causal directionality merely from observing how two variables change over time; they interpreted Y (...) changing without a change in X as evidence that Y does not influence X. Both of these strategies make sense if one believes the variables to be temporally dependent. We discuss the implications of these results for interpreting previous findings. More broadly, given that many real-world environments are characterized by temporal dependency, these results suggest strategies that children may use to learn the causal structure of their environments. (shrink)

Comprehension of moral reasoning is important both for successful moral education and for Kohlbergian claims that moral reasoning development is cognitive in nature. Because a psychometrically appropriate moral comprehension instrument does not appear to exist, the Moral Comprehension Questionnaire (MCQ) was constructed in Study 1 and displayed some positive reliability and validity findings. Study 2 used this questionnaire to examine whether the increased Defining Issue Test (DIT) p scores shown by liberals is indicative of increased cognitive development. While liberals displayed (...) slightly greater moral comprehension than conservatives, moral comprehension and political orientation mostly appear to contribute independently to high p scores. Additionally, consistent with Kohlbergian theory, comprehension of Stage 5 moral reasoning is more challenging than comprehension of Stage 3 or 4 reasoning. Consequently, while p scores are somewhat cognitive developmental in nature, they also are independently predicted by political orientation. (shrink)

In spite of vast global improvements in living standards, health, and well-being, the persistence of absolute poverty and its attendant maladies remains an unsettling fact of life for billions around the world and constitutes the primary cause for the failure of developing states to improve the health of their peoples. While economic development in developing countries is necessary to provide for underlying determinants of health – most prominently, poverty reduction and the building of comprehensive primary health systems – inequalities in (...) power within the international economic order and the spread of neoliberal development policy limit the ability of developing states to develop economically and realize public goods for health. With neoliberal development policies impacting entire societies, the collective right to development, as compared with an individual rights-based approach to development, offers a framework by which to restructure this system to realize social determinants of health. The right to development, working through a vector of rights, can address social determinants of health, obligating states and the international community to support public health systems while reducing inequities in health through poverty-reducing economic growth. At an international level, where the ability of states to develop economically and to realize public goods through public health systems is constrained by international financial institutions, the implementation of the right to development enables a restructuring of international institutions and foreign-aid programs, allowing states to enter development debates with a right to cooperation from other states, not simply a cry for charity. (shrink)