The federal regulations that govern biomedical research, most notably those enshrined in the Common Rule, express a protectionist ethos aimed at safeguarding subjects of human experimentation from the potential harms of research participation. In at least one critical way, however, the regulations have always fallen short of this promise: if a subject suffers a research-related injury, then neither the investigator nor the sponsor has any legal obligation under the regulations to care for or compensate the subject. Because very few subjects (...) with research-related injuries can meet the financial or evidentiary requirements associated with a successful legal claim to recover the costs associated with their injuries, most injured subjects must shoulder the burden of those expenses alone. For 40 years, national advisory panels have concluded that this result is out of step with the Common Rule's otherwise protectionist promise. When the Department of Health and Human Services released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) in 2011, suggesting potential changes to the Common Rule, the time seemed ripe to address research-related injuries. The ANPRM, however, makes no mention of compensation for research-related injuries, and the federal government once again seems poised to stop short of addressing what has arguably become the most longstanding, frequent, and consistent plea for regulatory reform of research: protections for injured subjects. This article asks why, despite decades of federal-level panels recommending no-fault compensation for research-related injuries, the United States has so strongly resisted change. I suggest that a central reason for our current impasse is that, despite consensus among federal advisory committees that there is an obligation to compensate injured subjects, the committees have not coalesced around a moral justification for that duty. Although multiple justifications can support and even strengthen a single ethical obligation, the reverse has occurred in this context. I demonstrate that the committees' articulation of multiple ethical principles – including humanitarianism, professional beneficence, and compensatory justice – results in incongruent obligations that favor different kinds of compensation systems. This outcome, which I call “moral gridlock,” makes it extremely difficult to determine what kind of compensation scheme to implement. Recognizing that each moral argument for compensation creates a slightly different trajectory is, however, an important first step in moving toward a more systematic approach to compensating injured research subjects. (shrink)

The federal regulations that govern biomedical research, most notably those enshrined in the Common Rule, are a product of their time. Born in the aftermath of wartime atrocities committed by Nazi doctors, and influenced by domestic research scandals like the Willowbrook and Tuskegee studies, the regulations express a protectionist ethos aimed at safeguarding subjects of human experimentation from the potential harms of research participation. Requirements for informed consent, risk minimization, equitable subject selection, and peer review of proposed research rest on (...) the presumption that the research enterprise owes subjects a duty of protection. (shrink)

Although the concept of dignity is commonly invoked in clinical care, there is not widespread agreement—in either the academic literature or in everyday clinical conversations—about what dignity means. Without a framework for understanding dignity, it is difficult to determine what threatens patients’ dignity and, conversely, how to honor commitments to protect and promote it. This article aims to change that by offering the first conceptual model of dignity for patients in the intensive care unit. The conceptual model we present is (...) based on the notion that there are three sources of patients’ dignity—their shared humanity, personal narratives, and autonomy—each of which independently warrants respect. The article describes each source of dignity and draws on examples to illustrate how clinician attitudes, actions, and behaviors can either contribute to, or detract from, expressions of respect for patient dignity. (shrink)

The U.S. regulations for the protection of humans in biomedical and behavioral research were "born in scandal and reared in protectionism." This paper discusses the evolution of these regulations and the gaps that still persist in the ongoing effort to strike a balance between protecting vulnerable populations from research risks and providing all individuals and groups with an equal opportunity to benefit from research. In particular, this paper focuses on racial, social, and economic inequities in the selection of research participants; (...) the exclusion and underrepresentation of the elderly in research, and controversies about U.S. clinical trials conducted in developing countries. (shrink)

U.S. researchers and scholars often point to two legal factors as significant obstacles to the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical research: the Department of Health and Human Services’ regulatory limitations specific to pregnant women's research participation and the fear of liability for potential harm to children born following a pregnant woman's research participation. This article offers a more nuanced view of the potential legal complexities that can impede research with pregnant women than has previously been reflected in the literature. (...) It reveals new insights into the role of legal professionals throughout the research pathway, from product conception to market, and it highlights a variety of legal factors influencing decision-making that may slow or halt research involving pregnant women. Our conclusion is that closing the evidence gap created by the underrepresentation and exclusion of pregnant women in research will require targeted attention to the role of legal professionals and the legal factors that influence their decisions. (shrink)

The primary aim of the current study was to examine whether depleted cognitive resources might have ramifications for the formation of neutral and negative spontaneous false memories. To examine this, participants received neutral and negative Deese/Roediger–McDermott false memory wordlists. Also, for half of the participants, cognitive resources were depleted by use of an ego depletion manipulation . Our chief finding was that depleted cognitive resources made participants more vulnerable for the production of false memories. Our results shed light on how (...) depleted cognitive resources affect neutral and negative correct and errant memories. (shrink)

Intended both for undergraduate students and for general readers, this introduction to the philosophy of science uses case studies, anecdotes and personal comment to portray many heroes and villains from the field of science through the ages.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Wittgensteinian Approach to Discerning the Meaning of Works of Art in the Practice of Critical and Contextual Studies in Secondary Art EducationLeslie Cunliffe (bio)In order to get clear about aesthetic words you have to describe ways of living.Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief1Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from (...) another side and no longer know your way about.Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations2IntroductionThis article explores a Wittgensteinian approach for dealing with the meaning of works of art in the practice of critical and contextual studies in art education. The article is aimed at developing a methodology for eleven to nineteen year olds, known in the UK as the secondary phase of education, but the approach could be generalized to other educational phases.Henry Finch3 interprets four references to meaning found in Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of language as a quadrant that combines the horizontal axis of meaning as physiognomies (the experiential and visual) and meaning as constructions (concepts, uses, science, and mathematics), with a vertical axis of meaning as imperatives (rule following, obligations, and law) and meaning as custom (ceremonies, myths, and ritual).4 The quadrant represents Finch's understanding of Wittgenstein's views about how language serves a different but complementary role in the way human beings engage [End Page 65] with meaning in the world and their place in it.5 Such meanings are embedded in social practices, including first-person responses to a physiognomy, although these start off as biologically primed reactions.Michael Luntley argues that Wittgenstein's philosophy of language and the related remarks on perception should be understood as setting conditions for the possibilities of judgment in "seeing the world aright, in taking the right attitude to the world"6 rather than simply mapping the possibilities of meaning, as the former underscores the role of will7 in the way meaning is actively witnessed and ethically processed by an agent. Having the right view is still only a view, but for Wittgenstein this amounted to an immense ethical and philosophical project to see things accurately and in correct relationship to each other. Such perspectival stances result from an agent's capacity to selectively engage with meaning, with a more unitary understanding resulting from criss-crossing the same territory from different points of view. Wittgenstein's four references to meaning can be thought of as forming four different points on a compass that direct the "self-as-will engaged with that which is independent of will "8 in a quest to see things aright. By extension, such an approach could be used in art education to enable students to develop the dispositions to see works of art aright.Marcia Eaton describes the tension between epistemic and interpretative approaches to the meaning of works of art in this way: "In which direction should one go? In other words, how can judgments which seem so personal (relative, subjective, etc.) also play a role in interpersonal (absolute, objective, etc.) language games?"9 Michael Podro gives a similar description of the apparent tension between a context-bound analysis of works of art and their irreducible and autonomous qualities as like "constantly treading a tightrope."10 Ralph Smith highlights the difference "between having knowledge about art and personally experiencing its presence and power."11Ben Tilghman12 advocates a Wittgensteinian way of going beyond these twofold approaches for understanding and interpreting art by focusing on the role that ponderable and imponderable evidence play in achieving the right stance when attempting to condense the meaning of works of art. Following Wittgenstein, Tilghman argues that a judgment based on imponderable evidence can often be supported by ponderable evidence, a process that is always linked to the relative experience, knowledge, and wisdom of the person making the judgment. Wittgenstein's four references to meaning could be thought of as points on a compass for directing the will in fittingness when endeavoring to understand the role and relationship of ponderable and imponderable evidence in any attempt to see works of art aright. But before these ideas can be... (shrink)

Gerald Birney Smith is an all too neglected figure among the luminaries of the early Chicago School. No less than the others—Shailer Mathews, George Burman Foster, Shirley Jackson Case, Edward Scribner Ames, et al.—he is worthy of attention. For one thing, Smith is a unique figure in bridging the historical concerns of his Chicago contemporaries and the more philosophical concerns of the next generation of Chicago theologians, especially Bernard E. Meland and Henry Nelson Wieman. Indeed, Meland saw his early (...) “mystical naturalism” as a continuation of a project that Smith, his mentor, called by that term in his later works. Quite apart from being a bridge figure, Smith deserves attention in his own.. (shrink)

In this biography of William James, Robert D. Richardson claims that he seeks ". . . to understand his life through his work, not the other way around" (xiii). This he does not do. Rather, where Richardson does excel is in biographical narrative or in his own words, in the aim "to present James' life [rather] than to analyze or explain it" (xiii).Richardson covers fascinating biographical territory familiar to readers of this journal. He provides an excellent narrative description of James's (...) relation to his father Henry James, Sr. He helpfully accounts for the latter's influence on William as well as their intellectual differences. Richardson's descriptions of the warm relationship between William and his brother .. (shrink)

SummaryHistorians have explored the continuities between science and the arts in the Industrial Revolution, with much recent historiography emphasizing the hybrid nature of the activities of men of science around 1800. Chemistry in particular displayed this sort of hybridity between the philosophical and practical because the materials under investigation were important across the research spectrum. Inflammable gases were an example of such hybrid objects: pneumatic chemists through the eighteenth century investigated them, and in the process created knowledge, processes and instruments (...) essential for the creation of a new gaslight industry from 1800. Once this industry began to expand and mature, the interests and experiments of the gas industry stimulated new research work which in turn had relevance for theoretical debates.This paper explores how the emergence of the gas industry from 1800 provided an impetus for new work in theoretical chemistry. Boulton & Watt, important pioneers of the gas industry, explored the compositions of inflammable gases for practical purposes: the composition of these gases had an important effect on the luminosity of gaslights, and hence the economics of the new technology compared to older forms of lighting. As they explored these questions in their engineering work, they stimulated their friend William Henry to explore the nature of these gases further, and he carried out a series of experiments to determine their composition more exactly than Boulton & Watt had done. Henry published a series of paper between 1805 and 1820 where he made arguments about the compositions of inflammable airs, and further related these to contemporary debates about the laws of multiple and definite proportions, as well as John Dalton's atomism. Henry's research was also a hybrid of the theoretical and practical in that he tried to develop results useful for the fledgling gas industry. Specifically, he suggested the best kind of coal to use, and showed how gas quality varied with distillation time and temperature. (shrink)

This provocative, interdisciplinary, and transnational collection delves deeply into the educational and public intellectual hallmarks of Stuart M. Hall, a core figure in the development of the post-War British New Left, of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and later, of the Open University. It opens new vistas on both critical educational studies and cultural studies through interviews with, and essays by, leading writers, shedding light on the under-appreciated public pedagogical and cultural politics of the New Left, (...) of Thatcherism, and of Rightist, neo-colonial, diasporic, and neo-liberal formations in Jamaica, the UK, Australia, North America, and Brazil. Intimate and moving, the contributors describe Hall’s diasporic formation as a courageous ‘artist’ and educator of cultural politics and social movements, showing both the reach and the relevance of his public pedagogies in the construction of alternatives to essentialist racial politics and the despairing cynicism of neo-liberalism. With contributors and interviewees including Leslie G. Roman, Michael W. Apple, Avtar Brah, John Clarke, Annette Henry, Lawrence Grossberg, Luis Gandin, and Fazal Rizvi, _Hallmarks: The Cultural Politics and Public Pedagogies of Stuart Hall_ reveals that neither cultural politics nor public pedagogies are stable or self-evident constructs. Each legitimates and requires the other as part of a longer radical democratic project for social justice. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. _. (shrink)

In the winter of 1859, the Boston poet Julia Ward Howe sailed for Cuba; and in the winter of 1860, Ticknor and Fields published an account of her travel. A Trip to Cuba appeared only months after the same firm had published Richard Henry Dana's story of his ???vacation voyage,??? To Cuba and Back . These two narratives responded to a burgeoning American interest in the Caribbean island that promised recuperation to American invalids and adventure for military ???filibusters.??? Howe's (...) narrative demonstrated a self-conscious familiarity with antebellum travel writing more broadly, however, as she playfully resisted yet ultimately upheld various conventions of a genre that had become a staple of the American literary marketplace. ???I do not know why all celebrated people who write books of travel begin by describing their days of seasickness,??? she noted, before discussing her own shipboard illness. She followed similar cues as she blended elements of autobiography, the social sketch, nature writing, and political and social commentary. Across 250 ???sprightly??? pages, readers were offered a familiar melange of humorous portraits, detailed descriptions of ???foreign??? institutions, and extensive commentary on local customs and social mores. (shrink)

The term 'agnostic' was probably coined by T. H. Huxley during a speech to the Metaphysical Society in 1869. From the Greek 'agnostos', 'unknown', it was derived from St Paul's mention of an Athenian altar inscribed 'to the unknown god'. With these overtones of ancient philosophy, agnosticism became the tag of an emergent school of thought which posited that the existence of anything beyond the material and measurable should be considered unknowable. In this collection of seven essays, first published as (...) one volume in 1893, Leslie Stephen makes a study of the 'unknown'. Across the essays, he presents arguments for the intrinsic agnosticism of many of the basic tenets of deism, explores the way in which humans construct dreams and realities, and examines the relationship between physics and philosophy. This readable and entertaining book will be of interest to students of both theology and philosophy. (shrink)

The second edition of this exceptional anthology provides an introduction to a wide variety of views on human nature. Drawing from diverse cultures over three millennia, Leslie Stevenson has chosen selections ranging from ancient religious texts to contemporary theories based on evolutionary science. An ideal companion to the editor's recent book, Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e (OUP, 1998), this interdisciplinary reader can also be used independently. The Study of Human Nature, 2/e offers substantial selections illustrating the ten perspectives (...) discussed in Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e--The Bible, Hinduism, Confucianism, Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Sartre, B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, and Konrad Lorenz's ethological diagnosis of human aggression. The Islamic tradition is represented by a selection from the 20th-century Iranian philosopher Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari. The 17th- and 18th-century philosophers Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant are also represented. Selections from Rousseau, J.S. Mill, and Nancy Holmstrom discuss alleged differences between women and men, and a paper by Henry Bracken deals with racial issues. Examples from E.O. Wilson's sociobiology and his critics are also included, together with material from Chomsky and from recent evolutionary psychology. This new edition includes more substantial selections from the Hindu, Confucian, and Christian traditions and provides more accessible extracts from Marx, Sartre, and Lorenz. An excellent reader for introductory courses in philosophy, religious studies, human nature, and intellectual history, The Study of Human Nature, 2/e, is also an essential resource for anyone interested in ancient, modern, and contemporary perspectives on human nature. (shrink)

The cultural revolution of the seventeenth century.--The poetry of Henry Vaughan, Silurist.

There is more to science than Aristotle’s natural desire to know. The major achievement of this book lies in presenting this idea through the study of the lives of various scientists.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 569-570 [Access article in PDF] Ross Harrison, editor. Henry Sidgwick. New York: Published for The British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. v + 122. Cloth, $24.95. Henry Sidgwick consists of papers by Stefan Collini, John Skorupski, and Ross Harrison, with replies by Jonathan Rée, Onora O'Neill, and Roger Crisp.Collini's rich and witty paper considers two pictures of (...) Victorian intellectuals—the "public moralist," such as John Stuart Mill, and the academic specialist. Sidgwick in the 1880s and 1890s does not fit comfortably into either camp. He champions the academic philosopher over Leslie Stephen or Mathew Arnold; he contributes to Mind rather than writing to newspapers or standing for parliament; he refuses to take a public stand on the Boer war despite opposing it. He would not have been a teledon. But he also exerts influence on university policies (founding Newnham College for women, opposing the Latin and Greek requirement for admission), through Royal Commissions, and through his personal connections to those in power. (He had as brothers-in-law the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury.) He represents one solution to the new problem of combining academic specialization with practical concerns. [End Page 569]One quibble: Collini argues that Sidgwick wields his analytic method in order to end public debate; disagreements rest on conceptual confusions. But Sidgwick's late essays do not close with "a thin, dry question to which... the answer is more or less obvious," but with controversial proposals (44): to prevent war, individual cultivation of impartiality is more important than external arbitration; there are no significant differences between moral requirements on states and individuals; the unequal distribution of luxuries is morally defensible if and only if necessary for "aesthetic progress"; sociology is suspect and must be kept distinct from ethics. A second paper on clerical veracity is needed given controversy about the first.Harrison's slightly diffuse paper places Sidgwick in the utilitarian tradition of discussing sanctions for morality. (Crisp argues neatly that Bentham and Mill are closer to Sidgwick than Harrison allows.) Harrison closes by arguing that Sidgwick should not have been bothered by the dualism of practical reason—the view that utilitarianism and egoism conflict and that there are no decisive arguments for choosing between them. He should have ended the Methods with utilitarianism. The conflict between egoism and utilitarianism "should not matter" because "these are truths of practical rather than speculative reason." Conflict shows only that "we are not in the best of all possible worlds" (114). This helps if, with Harrison, Sidgwick's worry is the "theoretical" one that rival properties claim to be right-making (110). But Sidgwick sees the problem as practical: when egoism and utilitarianism conflict, I must decide which to follow.Skorupski also rejects the dualism. There are many true underived claims about reasons for action. Each can be seen as an instance of the "Feeling/Disposition Principle" (F): "If there's a reason to feel f there's reason to do what feeling f characteristically disposes one to do" (74). For example, if there is a reason to feel gratitude, there is a reason to express this gratitude. Egoistic reasons are the products of F when desire is the feeling. Any impartial theory, because it goes beyond the feelings of a particular individual in a particular situation, cannot be a case of F and so counts as a principle of practical reason. True claims about reasons for action are either many or, if restricted to practical reason, one. (Skorupski adds that an impartial theory, since indefeasible, trumps egoism. For example, my reason to express gratitude is defeated by noting that general good is not served by expressing gratitude, but need not be defeated by noting that my own good is not served. This, however, seems mere assertion. I suspect it, and F, are best pursued in Skorupski's Ethical Explorations [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999].)Showing that an impartial theory is not a case of F does not, by itself, show that it is a principle of practical reason... (shrink)

The publication of John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet in 1558 had engendered a radical debate about the public role of women and the nature of female authority and obedience. Howard was not the only author who attempted to refute Knox's tract. The Marian exile and future Bishop of London, John Aylmer, the Catholic Bishop of Ross, John Leslie, and the Catholic, Scottish lawyer, David Chambers, all published books disproving Knox's allegations about women's unfitness for rule. Richard Bertie, (...) husband of Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk, also prepared a manuscript refutation which was never published. The published works are moderately well known, and have been discussed elsewhere. This article concentrates on Howard's unpublished contribution to the Knox debate. The tract is important because of its length and detail, its conclusions regarding the potential role of aristocratic women, and because of Howard's personal reputation and aristocratic connections. The �Defense� was both eloquent and persuasive, analysing women's legal, historical and theological status within early modern society. Howard presented alternative interpretations of female stereotypes found in sermons and polemical writings. His commentaries on Genesis, Athalia, Jezebel and Deborah show how traditional biblical stories could be interpreted in radically differing ways, with profound implications for contemporary women. Because of the length of Howard's tract, this article can present only a summary of his main conclusions. His interpretation of the first three chapters of Genesis will be presented in rather more detail as an indication of the complexity of the early modern debate about women, and the dangers of trying to attach simplistic labels to individual attitudes. (shrink)

International codes of ethics play an important role in guiding professional practice in developing countries. In the occupational health setting, codes developing by international agencies have substantial import on protecting working populations from harm. This is particularly so under globalisation which has transformed processes of production in fundamental ways across the globe. As part of the process of revising the Ethical Code of the International Commission on Occupational Health, an African Working Group addressed key challenges for the relevance and cogency (...) of an ethical code in occupational health for an African context through an iterative consultative process. (shrink)

Objects of representation: Kant's Copernican revolution re-interpreted -- Synthetic unities of experience -- Three ways in which space and time might be said to be transcendentally ideal -- The given, the unconditioned, the transcendental object, and the reality of the past -- A theory of everything?: Kant speaks to Stephen Hawking -- Opinion, belief or faith, and knowledge -- Freedom of judgment in Descartes, Spinoza, Hume and Kant -- Six levels of mentality -- A Kantian defense of freewill.

Drawing on philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, biology, and theology, Stevenson introduces readers to the endlessly fascinating subject of human nature. He outlines background theories of the universe, basic approaches to human nature, diagnoses of what is wrong with humankind and prescriptions for putting it right while offering clear, critical analyses of the ideas of Plato, Christianity, Karl Marx, Freud, Sartre, Skinner, and Lorenz. Including completely revised and updated bibliographies, the second edition also provides a new interdisciplinary final chapter suggesting areas (...) of further inquiry. (shrink)

So much for the Aesthetic. We can now proceed to the Analytic, the philosophical importance of which is much greater. Kant's main contentions in this part of his work can be summed up in; two propositions: human understanding contains certain a priori concepts, and on these are based certain non-empirical principles; these concepts are only general concepts of a phenomenal object, and therefore the principles in question are only prescriptive to sense-experience. As has already been said, interest in the first (...) proposition has distracted attention from the fact that the important thing Kant has to say is contained in the second. (shrink)

This research addresses the question of whether men and women in sales differ in their ethical attitudes and decision making. The study asked 209 subjects to respond to 20 ethical scenarios, half of which were "relational" and half "non-relational." The study concludes (1) that there are significant ethical differences between the sexes in situations that involve relational issues, but not in non-relational situations, and (2) that gender-based ethical differences change with age and years of experience. The implications of these finding (...) for sales organizations are discussed. (shrink)

The present article uncovers a pervasive strand of Victorian critique of John Henry Newman’s religious apologetic. The exponents of this critique maintained that Newman defended a credulous adherence to Catholic doctrine on the basis of a sceptical approach to knowledge. The origins of this critical tradition are to be located in Tractarian Oxford, most notably in the disputes on religious epistemology between Newman and the Oriel Noetics, and the controversy over Newman’s Essay on Development. Later Victorian intellectuals continued this (...) critical interpretation of Newman’s apologetic. The present paper discusses its development among its most prominent religiously liberal and agnostic exponents, namely, James Anthony Froude, Charles Kingsley, James Fitzjames Stephen, his brother Leslie Stephen, and Thomas Henry Huxley. All of these critics were committed to epistemological standards that ultimately derived from John Locke and which they charged Newman with subverting. Accordingly, they regarded Newman’s apologetic as fundamentally dishonest. In addition, they argued that Newman’s sceptical rhetorical strategy was a major cause of the Victorian crisis of faith rather than a persuasive to belief. (shrink)

This article provides an ecological theory of face perception that elucidates the basis of the various perceptions. It then reviews research on first impressions elicited by facial qualities that are associated with fitness, emotion, race, age, and sex, in each case making links to ecological theory. It aims to identify facial qualities that inform social perceptions and reflect the zeitgeist at the time in social psychology. The emphasis is on understanding the cognitive mechanisms engaged in social perception, and this is (...) typically accomplished by providing information about social qualities in lists of trait words. The article demonstrates face perception research pertinent to the detection of socially relevant qualities in faces—attractiveness, emotions, race, age, and sex—as well as associated behavioral affordances, which have typically been assessed by trait ratings. (shrink)

This book marks a total departure from previous studies of the Boxer War. It evaluates the way the war was perceived and portrayed at the time by the mass media. As such the book offers insights to a wider audience than that of sinologists or Chinese historians. The important distinction made by the author is between image makers and eyewitnesses. Whole categories of powerful image makers, both Chinese and foreign, never saw anything of the Boxer War but were responsible for (...) disseminating images of that war to millions of people in China and throughout the world. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that the processing of an unexpected word is costly when the initial, disconfirmed prediction was strong. This penalty was suggested to stem from commitment to the strongly predicted word, requiring its inhibition when disconfirmed. Additional studies show that comprehenders rationally adapt their predictions in different situations. In the current study, we hypothesized that since the disconfirmation of strong predictions incurs costs, it would also trigger adaptation mechanisms influencing the processing of subsequent strong predictions. In two experiments, participants (...) made speeded congruency judgments on two-word phrases in which the first word was either highly constraining or not. We manipulated the proportion of disconfirmed predictions in highly constraining contexts between participants. The results provide additional evidence of the costs associated with the disconfirmation of strong predictions. Moreover, they show a reduction in these costs when participants experience a high proportion of disconfirmed strong predictions throughout the experiment, indicating that participants adjust the strength of their predictions when strong prediction is discouraged. We formulate a Bayesian adaptation model whereby prediction failure cost is weighted by the participant’s belief about the likelihood of encountering the expected word, and show that it accounts for the trial-by-trial data. (shrink)

Leslie Stephen was an English biographer, and a writer on philosophy, ethics and literature. He was educated at Eton, King's College, London, and then Trinity College in Cambridge, where he remained as a fellow and a tutor for his entire career. He was also a keen mountaineer, taking part in first ascents of nine peaks in the Alps. He served as the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and in 1871 he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine. (...) During his eleven-year tenure he wrote two successful books on ethics, of which this work, published in 1882, was one. It was widely adopted as a standard textbook on moral philosophy, and became one of the most influential publications on the ideas of evolutionary ethics that had been inspired by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

The modern state claims supreme authority over the lives of all its citizens. Drawing together political philosophy, jurisprudence, and public choice theory, this book forces the reader to reconsider some basic assumptions about the authority of the state. Various popular and influential theories - conventionalism, contractarianism, and communitarianism - are assessed by the author and found to fail. Leslie Green argues that only the consent of the governed can justify the state's claims to authority. While he denies that there (...) is a general obligation to obey the law, he nonetheless rejects philosophical anarchism and defends civility - the willingness to tolerate some imperfection in institutions - as a political virtue. (shrink)