Previous research has shown a source memory advantage for faces presented in negative contexts. As yet it remains unclear whether participants remember the specific type of context in which the faces were presented or whether they can only remember that the face was associated with negative valence. In the present study, participants saw faces together with descriptions of two different types of negative behaviour and neutral behaviour. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the participants were able to discriminate between two (...) types of other-relevant negative context information (cheating and disgusting behaviour) in a source memory test. In Experiment 2, we assessed source memory for other-relevant negative (threatening) context information (other-aggressive behaviour) and self-relevant negative context information (self-aggressive behaviour). A multinomial source memory model was used to separately assess partial source memory for the negative valence of the behaviour and specific source memory for the particular type of negative context the face was associated with. In Experiment 1, source memory was specific for the particular type of negative context presented (i.e., cheating or disgusting behaviour). Experiment 2 showed that source memory for other-relevant negative information was more specific than source memory for self-relevant information. Thus, emotional source memory may vary in specificity depending on the degree to which the negative emotional context is perceived as threatening. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 106-123 [Access article in PDF] The (Mis)Uses of Cannibalism in Contemporary Cultural Critique C. Richard King At least since 1979, when W. Arens demystified what he termed "the man-eating myth," cannibalism, once a fundamental feature of the anthropological imagination and a primary trope for interpreting cultural difference, has become subject to serious debate and lingering doubt [see Osborne]. Even as some anthropologists have sought to recuperate (...) anthropophagy as a tangible symbolic, ideological, and ritual complex [Brown and Tuzin; Conklin, "'Thus are our Bodies'"; Forsyth; Harris, Good to Eat 199-234; Sanday], a constellation of scholarly projects and popular works has complicated cannibalism by relocating it in the West. Perhaps most visibly, Hollywood cinema has reclaimed cannibalism. Although a handful of films have revived well-worn clichés of dark-skinned savages preparing to consume Westerners, as in King Solomon's Mines and Crocodile Dundee, others have cast the Western subject as cannibal to grapple with the horrors of reluctant cannibalism, as in Alive! [see Fiddes 121-31], to work through the transgressive and terrifying desires associated with psychopathic cannibalism, as in The Silence of the Lambs [Fuss; Halberstam], and importantly to parody the normative beliefs and behaviors of white, middle-class, heterosexual EuroAmericans, as in Eating Raoul and Parents. At the same time, an array of scholars, artists, and activists have invoked cannibalism to fashion critical perspectives on Western cultural practices. In his film Cannibal Tours (1987), Dennis O'Rourke encourages his audiences to think critically about tourists who travel to the Sepik River Valley to encounter reformed cannibals, asking implicitly who the cannibals are, the Melanesians who formerly (were thought to/claim to have) practiced anthropophagy or the tourists who travel to New Guinea to consume them [see Bruner]. Others have pushed the metaphor. Michael Ames, borrowing explicitly from O'Rourke, uses the cannibal to reframe ethnographic museums and their practices. Similarly, Jane Tompkins asserts that "Museums are a form of cannibalism made safe for polite society" [533]. More generally, Crystal Bartolovich playfully glosses consumerism as the cultural logic of the late cannibalism; bell hooks speaks of the EuroAmerican desires for and incorporation of things ethnic as "eating the other"; and Rosalind Morris suggests that cannibalism is the essential metaphor for late capitalism. More telling, however, are a set of overlapping critical projects that offer detailed theorizations [End Page 106] [Begin Page 108] of contemporary anthropophagy. Here, I will examine three that have had an important impact on discussions of tourism, museums, cultural appropriation, and consumption. Dean MacCannell, in an exciting exploratory review of the documentary Cannibal Tours, makes explicit what O'Rourke left unsaid: we are cannibals, and contemporary capitalism is neocannibalism. Perhaps more radically, Jack Forbes argues that Western civilization fosters cannibalism as an embodied, psychosocial condition or psychosis rooted in exploitation and consumption. Inspired at least in part by Forbes, Deborah Root rethinks Western civilization as cannibal culture.Although I am terribly sympathetic with these perspectives, particularly their political commitments and theoretical creativity, I am disturbed by the practices and effects that animate them. Indeed, as powerful as this critical field promises to be, it is at the same time troubling and dangerous. Although it defamiliarizes practices of cultural production and consumption, it does not enhance understanding of the contexts in which individuals and institutions deploy them and does less to effectively challenge or undermine them. In reframing beliefs and behaviors to accentuate productivity and power, it reinstates and reaffirms binaries and, worse, often turns on the same forms of appropriation.* * *Arguably, flesh eating has always promoted the elaborations of differences. Works central to the Western canon mobilize cannibalism to make (sense of) the world. Herodotus offers an early anthropophagic distinction:These Scythian husbandmen then occupy the country eastward for three days' journey.... Beyond this region the country is desert for a great distance; and beyond the desert Androphagi dwell.... The Androphagi have the most savage customs of all men; they pay no regard to justice, nor make use of any established law. They are nomads and wear a dress like a Scythian; they... (shrink)

The deontic model of justice and ethical behavior proposes that people care about justice simply for the sake of justice. This is an important consideration for business ethics because it implies that justice and ethical behavior are naturally occurring phenomena independent of system controls or individual self-interest. To date, research on the deontic model and third-party reactions to injustice has focused primarily on individuals’ tendency topunishtransgressors. This research has revealed that witnesses to injustice will consider sacrificing their own resources if (...) it is the only way to sanction an observed transgressor. In this paper we seek to extend this model by arguing that punishment may not be the only “deontic” reaction, and that in fact, third-party observers of injustice may engage in moral self-regulation that would lead them to conclude that the most ethical response is to do nothing. We provide preliminary evidence for our propositions using voiced cognitions data collected during a resource allocation task. Results indicate that deonance may be more complex than originally thought, and previous tests of the model conservative in nature. (shrink)

This study examines the varying roles of power, status, and national culture in unethical decision-making. Most research on unethical behavior in organizations is grounded in Western societies; empirical comparative studies of the antecedents of unethical behavior across nations are rare. The authors conduct this comparative study using scenario studies with four conditions in both China and Canada. The results demonstrate that power is positively related to unethical decision-making in both countries. Status has a positive effect on unethical decision-making and facilitates (...) the unethical decisions of Canadian participants who have high power but not Chinese participants who have high power. To explicate participants’ unethical decision-making rationales, the authors ask participants to justify their unethical decisions; the results reveal that Chinese participants are more likely to cite position differences, whereas Canadian participants are more likely to cite work effort and personal abilities. These findings expand theoretical research on the relationship between social hierarchy and unethical decision-making and provide practical insights on unethical behavior in organizations. (shrink)

The deontic model of justice and ethical behavior proposes that people care about justice simply for the sake of justice. This is an important consideration for business ethics because it implies that justice and ethical behavior are naturally occurring phenomenaindependent of system controls or individual self-interest. To date, research on the deontic model and third-party reactions to injustice has focused primarily on individuals’ tendency to punish transgressors. This research has revealed that witnesses to injustice will consider sacrificing their own resources (...) if it is the only way to sanction an observed transgressor. In this paper we seek to extend this model by arguing that punishment may not be the only “deontic” reaction, and that in fact, third-party observers of injustice may engage in moral self-regulation that would lead them to conclude that the most ethical response is to do nothing. We provide preliminary evidence for our propositions using voiced cognitions data collected during a resource allocation task. Results indicate that deonance may be more complex than originally thought, and previous tests of the model conservative in nature. (shrink)

This paper provides a description of the role of the clinical ethicist as it is generally experienced in Canada. It examines the activities of Canadian ethicists working in healthcare institutions and the way in which their work incorporates more than ethics case consultation. The Canadian Bioethics Society established a Taskforce on Working Conditions for Bioethics (hereafter referred to as the Taskforce), to make recommendations on a number of issues affecting ethicists and to develop a model role description. This essay carefully (...) assesses this model role description. (shrink)

This paper provides a description of the role of the clinical ethicist as it is generally experienced in Canada. It examines the activities of Canadian ethicists working in healthcare institutions and the way in which their work incorporates more than ethics case consultation. The Canadian Bioethics Society established a “Taskforce on Working Conditions for Bioethics” (hereafter referred to as the Taskforce), to make recommendations on a number of issues affecting ethicists and to develop a model role description. This essay carefully (...) assesses this model role description. (shrink)

In recent years, protesters around the world have been calling for the removal of commemorations honouring those who are, by contemporary standards, generally regarded as seriously morally compromised by their racism. According to one line of thought, leaving racist memorials in place is profoundly disrespectful, and doing so tacitly condones, and perhaps even celebrates, the racism of those honoured and memorialized. The best response is to remove the monuments altogether. In this article, I first argue against a prominent offense-based account (...) of the wrong of simply leaving memorials in place, unaltered, before offering my own account of this wrong. In at least some cases, these memorials wrong insofar as they express and exemplify a morally objectionable attitude of race-based contempt. I go on to argue that the best way of answering this disrespect is through a process of expressively ‘dehonouring’ the subject. Removal of these commemorations is ultimately misguided, in many cases, because removal, by itself, cannot adequately dishonour, and simple removal does not fully answer the ways in which these memorials wrong. I defend a more nuanced approach to answering the wrong posed by these monuments, and I argue that public expressions of contempt through defacement have an ineliminable role to play in an apt dishonouring process. (shrink)

There is currently little empirical information about attitudes towards cognitive enhancement - the use of pharmaceutical drugs to enhance normal brain functioning. It is claimed this behaviour most commonly occurs in students to aid studying. We undertook a qualitative assessment of attitudes towards cognitive enhancement by conducting 19 semi-structured interviews with Australian university students. Most students considered cognitive enhancement to be unacceptable, in part because they believed it to be unethical but there was a lack of consensus on whether it (...) was similar or different to steroid use in sport. There was support for awareness campaigns and monitoring of cognitive enhancement use of pharmaceutical drugs. An understanding of student attitudes towards cognitive enhancement is important in formulating future policy. (shrink)

Introduction -- 1. Problem of the New -- 2. Problem of Relations -- 3. Problem of Emergence -- 4. Problem of One and Many -- 5. Plato and the Third Man Argument -- 6. Bradley and the Problem of Relations -- 7. Moore, Russell and the Birth of Analytic Philosophy -- 8. Russell and Deleuze on Leibniz -- 9. On Problematic Fields -- 10. Kant and Problematic Ideas -- 11. Armstrong and Lewis on the Problem of One and Many -- (...) 12. Determinables and Determinates -- 13. The Limits of Representational Thought -- 14. Learning from a Cup of Coffee -- 15. Carnap and the Fate of Metaphysics -- 16. Truth and Relevance -- Conclusion. (shrink)

Abstract:Vulnerability is an important criterion to assess the ethical justification of the inclusion of participants in research trials. Currently, vulnerability is often understood as an attribute inherent to a participant by nature of a diagnosed condition. Accordingly, a common ethical concern relates to the participant’s decisionmaking capacity and ability to provide free and informed consent. We propose an expanded view of vulnerability that moves beyond a focus on consent and the intrinsic attributes of participants. We offer specific suggestions for how (...) relational aspects and the dynamic features of vulnerability could be more fully captured in current discussions and research practices. (shrink)

Abstract:Vulnerability is an important criterion to assess the ethical justification of the inclusion of participants in research trials. Currently, vulnerability is often understood as an attribute inherent to a participant by nature of a diagnosed condition. Accordingly, a common ethical concern relates to the participant’s decisionmaking capacity and ability to provide free and informed consent. We propose an expanded view of vulnerability that moves beyond a focus on consent and the intrinsic attributes of participants. We offer specific suggestions for how (...) relational aspects and the dynamic features of vulnerability could be more fully captured in current discussions and research practices. (shrink)

In recent years, protesters around the world have been calling for the removal of commemorations honouring those who are, by contemporary standards, generally regarded as seriously morally compromised by their racism. According to one line of thought, leaving racist memorials in place is profoundly disrespectful, and doing so tacitly condones, and perhaps even celebrates, the racism of those honoured and memorialized. The best response is to remove the monuments altogether. In this article, I first argue against a prominent offense-based account (...) of the wrong of simply leaving memorials in place, unaltered, before offering my own account of this wrong. In at least some cases, these memorials wrong insofar as they express and exemplify a morally objectionable attitude of race-based contempt. I go on to argue that the best way of answering this disrespect is through a process of expressively ‘dehonouring’ the subject. Removal of these commemorations is ultimately misguided, in many cases, because removal, by itself, cannot adequately dishonour, and simple removal does not fully answer the ways in which these memorials wrong. I defend a more nuanced approach to answering the wrong posed by these monuments, and I argue that public expressions of contempt through defacement have an ineliminable role to play in an apt dishonouring process. (shrink)

This paper presents a new theory of modal reasoning, i.e. reasoning about what may or may not be the case, and what must or must not be the case. It postulates that individuals construct models of the premises in which they make explicit only what is true. A conclusion is possible if it holds in at least one model, whereas it is necessary if it holds in all the models. The theory makes three predictions, which are corroborated experimentally. First, conclusions (...) correspond to the true, but not the false, components of possibilities. Second, there is a key interaction: it is easier to infer that a situation is possible as opposed to impossible, whereas it is easier to infer that a situation is not necessary as opposed to necessary. Third, individuals make systematic errors of omission and of commission. We contrast the theory with theories based on formal rules. (shrink)

This article reflects on context effects in the study of behavioral ethics and organizational justice. After a general overview, we review three key challenges confronting research in these two domains. First, we consider social scientific versus normative approaches to inquiry. The former aims for a scientific description, while the latter aims to provide prescriptive advice for moral conduct. We argue that the social scientific view can be enriched by considering normative paradigms. The next challenge we consider, involves the duality of (...) morally upright versus morally inappropriate behavior. We observe that there is a long tradition of categorizing behavior dichotomously rather than continuously. We conclude by observing that more research is needed to compare the dichotomous versus continuous perspectives. Third, we examine the role of “cold” cognitions and “hot” affect in making judgments of ethicality. Historically speaking, research has empathized cognition, though recent work has begun to add greater balance to affective reactions. We argue that both cognition and affect are important, but more research is needed to determine how they work together. After considering these three challenges, we then turn to our special issue, providing short reviews of each contribution and how they help in better addressing the three challenges we have identified. (shrink)

Neuroscientists are increasingly put into situations which demand critical reflection about the ethical and appropriate use of research tools and scientific knowledge. Students or trainees also have to know how to navigate the ethical domains of this context. At a time when neuroscience is expected to advance policy and practice outcomes, in the face of academic pressures and complex environments, the importance of scientific integrity comes into focus and with it the need for training at the graduate level in the (...) responsible conduct of research . I describe my experience teaching RCR in a graduate neuroscience program and identify three personal reflections where further dialogue could be warranted: mobilizing a common set of competencies and virtues standing for professionalism in the neurosciences; tailoring RCR for the neurosciences and empowering students through the active engagement of mentors; soliciting shared responsibility for RCR training between disciplines, institutions and governmental or funding agencies. (shrink)

A central tenet of moral individualism is that only an entity’s intrinsic (non-relational) properties can ground moral status because only intrinsic properties give rise to agent-neutral reasons. However, I show that the two main approaches to making the agent-neutral/agent-relative distinction fail to exclude morally salient relational (extrinsic) properties from giving rise to agent-neutral reasons. As such, moral individualism accounts of moral status are false. Further, arguments that depend on moral individualism’s central tenet—like the argument from “marginal” cases—are unable to defend (...) their thesis by merely claiming that special relations cannot ground moral status. (shrink)

Dear Jacques Derrider,Today is my birthday. I received a considerable number of messages, almost all written and sent by computer programs. Because most of my contacts have died, or else they are too busy to write me.I'm not bothered by the fact that these letters were written by programs. I am troubled, however, when they remind me of all of those who have died. And especially when I am no longer able to distinguish between the programs that speak for the (...) living and those that speak for the dead.These digital mummies are called necrobots. The archive of conversations of the deceased person serves as a training database for a neural network. Once it is deployed in the email and social network accounts of the... (shrink)

11 essays by leading Whitehead scholars re-examinae Whitehead's Barbour-Page lectures, published as the book Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect in 1927, to give you exciting insights into the contemporary implications of Whitehead's symbolism in an era of new scientific, cultural and technological developments.

A highly ordered universe is described in terms of neutrino and electrino alone as basic particles, and length and time alone as dimensional units. New theories are obtained of particles, nuclides, atomic spectra, general relativity, and gravitation.

This article gives a comparative analysis of the way in which Lacanian psychoanalysis and Alain Badiou's mathematical ontology understand the category of the real, respectively, as the foundation of individual subjectivity or the name of being-as-being. A number of shifts in focus arise from the fundamental difference in the location of the void: from the individual act to the collective event; from death drive to immortal truth; from subjective destitution and cathartic purification to transformative interventions and constitutive thought. These shifts (...) are exemplified, elaborated and analysed through a close reading of the thinkers' respective commentaries on Sophocles' Antigone. Foregrounding what is philosophically at stake in these differences, the article defends Badiou against Lacanian critics by examining the ethical and political force of his innovation. (shrink)

This article critically evaluates and contests the flagship benefit delivery system Universal Credit for lone mothers by focusing on some of the ethical challenges it poses, as well as some key implications it holds for social work with lone mothers and their children. Universal Credit was first introduced in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2008, and echoes conditionality-based welfare policies adopted by neoliberal governments internationally on the assumption that paid employment offers a route out of poverty for citizens. However, research (...) evidence suggests that the risks of conditionality polices for lone parents can often include increased poverty, a deterioration in mental health or even destitution posed by paternalistic sanctions or precarious low-paid employment, which can undermine parenting capacities and children’s well-being. The article also critically appraises and questions challenges posed by an increased reliance upon contractual ethics by governments, alongside the wider behaviour-modifying policies of the workfare-orientated state. This includes that working-class lone mothers can erroneously be stigmatised as representing a morally challenged dependent burden through activation policies and risk-averse social work practices. (shrink)

Here is the third of our three responses to Dawkins's The God Delusion.

Some aspects of the theory of Boolean algebras and distributive lattices–in particular, the Stone Representation Theorems and the properties of filters and ideals–are analyzed in a constructive setting.

It was Kronecker who sought to avoid the use in mathematics of all numbers other than the positive integers, and he outlined the means for carrying through this program. In the introductory sections of his memoir he briefly indicates the personal philosophy which made such a project appear desirable.

Some things are pervasive and yet elusive. If it can be agreed that the concept of my title and its instances are of this kind, then the observation may serve to justify the present enterprise. The elusiveness of authority is that so often pursued in philosophical enterprise, namely the repeated confident use of a general term by even the unsophisticated, accompanied by the Socratic puzzlement that sets in as soon as a rationale or account of this use is sought. Such (...) puzzlement in the case of the concept of authority is likely to provoke a Cephalitic reaction ). (shrink)

K.B. is a woman working for the United Kingdom National Health Service with a transsexual male partner. Her partner's male gender was not legally recognised in the United Kingdom and consequently they could not marry. Whilst the NHS pension scheme provides for the payment of a survivor's pension, this is only in respect of married partners. The European Court of Justice held that the combination of circumstances that prevented K.B.'s partner from receiving the survivor's pension amounted to sex discrimination in (...) pay contrary to Article 141 of the Treaty establishing the European Community. At first sight, this decision appears to represent a strengthening of the concept of gender equality in European Union law. Yet, the reasoning provided by the Court lacks clarity and coherence. Moreover, the reach of equality is compromised by the Court's determination to exclude any confrontation with the privileged status of heterosexual marriage. (shrink)

Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion by Henry Rosemont Jr. is an important challenge to the dominant individualistic ethos of our age. It is not merely a critique of the idea of the rights-claiming, free and autonomous individual: Rosemont also puts forward a strong defense of an alternative idea of the relational person as role-bearing, interrelated, and necessarily responsible to other persons. I am generally sympathetic to Rosemont's view, but I think he (...) goes too far in his defense of the role-bearing person.The book has three parts. Chapters... (shrink)