Heterogeneity within MDD has hampered identification of biological markers (e.g., intermediate phenotypes, IPs) that might increase risk for the disorder or reflect closer links to the genes underlying the disease process. The newer characterizations of dimensions of MDD within Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) domains may align well with the goal of defining IPs. We compare a sample of 25 individuals with MDD compared to 29 age and education matched controls in multimodal assessment. The multimodal RDoC assessment included the primary IP (...) biomarker, positron emission tomography (PET) with a selective radiotracer for 5-HT1A ([11C]WAY-100635), as well as event-related functional MRI with a Go/No-go task targeting the Cognitive Control network, neuropsychological assessment of affective perception, negative memory bias and Cognitive Control domains. There was also an exploratory genetic analysis with the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and monamine oxidase A (MAO-A) genes. In regression analyses, lower 5-HT1A binding potential (BP) in the MDD group was related to diminished engagement of the Cognitive Control network, slowed resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli, one element of Cognitive Control. In contrast, higher/normative levels of 5-HT1A BP in MDD (only) was related to a substantial memory bias toward negative information, but intact resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli and greater engagement of Cognitive Control circuitry. The serotonin transporter risk allele was associated with lower 1a BP and the corresponding imaging and cognitive IPs in MDD. Lowered 5HT 1a BP was present in half of the MDD group relative to the control group. Lowered 5HT 1a BP may represent a subtype including decreased engagement of Cognitive Control network and impaired resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli. Future investigations might link lowered 1a BP to neurobiological pathways and markers, as well as probing subtype-specific treatment targets. (shrink)

In his famous 1982 paper, Allen Newell [22, 23] introduced the notion of knowledge level to indicate a level of analysis, and prediction, of the rational behavior of a cognitive arti cial agent. This analysis concerns the investigation about the availability of the agent knowledge, in order to pursue its own goals, and is based on the so-called Rationality Principle (an assumption according to which "an agent will use the knowledge it has of its environment to achieve its goals" [22, (...) p. 17]. By using the Newell's own words: "To treat a system at the knowledge level is to treat it as having some knowledge, some goals, and believing it will do whatever is within its power to attain its goals, in so far as its knowledge indicates" [22, p. 13]. In the last decades, the importance of the knowledge level has been historically and system- atically downsized by the research area in cognitive architectures (CAs), whose interests have been mainly focused on the analysis and the development of mechanisms and the processes governing human and (arti cial) cognition. The knowledge level in CAs, however, represents a crucial level of analysis for the development of such arti cial general systems and therefore deserves greater research attention [17]. In the following, we will discuss areas of broad agree- ment and outline the main problematic aspects that should be faced within a Common Model of Cognition [12]. Such aspects, departing from an analysis at the knowledge level, also clearly impact both lower (e.g. representational) and higher (e.g. social) levels. (shrink)

"Among the foremost Catholic philosophers of his generation. He has utilized the fullness of the Catholic intellectual tradition to brilliantly take the measure of modern philosophical thought... This volume is an expression of Robert Wood's singular philosophical outlook." -Jude Dougherty, dean emeritus, school of philosophy, The Catholic University of America.

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, (...) Georgetown University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

The dead donor rule—that persons must be dead before their organs are taken—is a central part of the moral framework underlying organ procurement. Efforts to increase the pool of transplantable organs have been forced either to redefine death (e.g., anencephaly) or take advantage of ambiguities in the current definition of death (e.g., the Pittsburgh protocol). Society's growing acceptance of circumstances in which health care professionals can hasten a patient's death also may weaken the symbolic importance of the dead donor rule. (...) We consider the implications of these efforts to continually revise the line between life and death and ask whether it would be preferable to abandon the dead donor rule and rely entirely on informed consent as a safeguard against abuse. (shrink)

Philosophy textbooks typically treat bioethics as a form of "applied ethics"-i.e., an attempt to apply a moral theory, like utilitarianism, to controversial ethical issues in biology and medicine. Historians, however, can find virtually no cases in which applied philosophical moral theory influenced ethical practice in biology or medicine. In light of the absence of historical evidence, the authors of this paper advance an alternative model of the historical relationship between philosophical ethics and medical ethics, the appropriation model. They offer two (...) historical case studies to illustrate the ways in which physicians have "appropriated" concepts and theory fragments from philosophers, and demonstrate how appropriated moral philosophy profoundly influenced the way medical morality was conceived and practiced. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Incoherence of Determining Death by Neurological Criteria: A Commentary on Controversies in the Determination of Death, A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics*Franklin G. Miller** (bio) and Robert D. Truog (bio)Traditionally the cessation of breathing and heart beat has marked the passage from life to death. Shortly after death was determined, the body became a cold corpse, suitable for burial or cremation. Two technological changes (...) in the second half of the twentieth century prompted calls for a new, or at least expanded, definition of death: the development of intensive care medicine, especially the use of mechanical ventilators, and the advent of successful transplantation of vital organs. Patients with profound neurological damage, leaving them incapable of breathing on their own and in an irreversible coma, could be maintained for some period of time with the aid of mechanical ventilation. The situation of these patients posed two ethical questions. Is it appropriate to stop life-sustaining treatment? If so, is it acceptable to retrieve vital organs for transplantation to save the lives of others before stopping treatment?In 1968, the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death proposed that death could be determined on the basis of neurological criteria, thus providing a positive answer to these two questions (Ad Hoc Committee 1968). According to the position of this committee, patients diagnosed with the cessation of brain function are dead, despite the fact that they breathe and circulate blood with the aid of mechanical ventilation. [End Page 185] Because they are dead, it is appropriate, indeed imperative, to stop mechanical ventilation. And because they are dead, it becomes ethical to procure vital organs for transplantation before stopping what otherwise would be life-sustaining treatment. Remarkably, this innovative neurological determination of death became, with little debate or controversy, the established position in medical ethics and the law throughout the United States.The Harvard Committee articulated the diagnosis of “irreversible coma,” but merely asserted that this condition constituted death. No explanatory rationale was provided. It fell to the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research to provide an authoritative rationale in its 1981 report, Defining Death. The second paragraph of the report set the stage as follows: “The question addressed here is not inherently difficult or complicated. Simply, it is whether the law ought to recognize new means for establishing that the death of a human being has occurred” (President’s Commission 1981, p. 3). The Commission claimed that “death is a unitary phenomenon” (p. 7) and that the determination of death by neurological criteria, in terms of the absence of all brain function, is consistent with the traditional conception of death as the cessation of vital functioning of the organism as a whole. The key issue is the integrative functioning of the human organism, which ceases to exist, according to the Commission, when the whole brain, including higher cortical areas and the brain stem, fails to function. Although “brain-dead” patients do not appear to be dead—i.e., the reality of their death is “masked” by the activity of mechanical ventilation—the patient’s body has irreversibly lost all capacity for integrative functioning. In the words of the Commission: “When artificial means of support mask this loss of integration as measured by the old methods [cessation of respiration and heart beat], brain-oriented criteria and tests provide a new window on the same phenomenon” (p. 33). The President’s Commission was instrumental in developing and establishing “The Uniform Definition of Death Act”: “An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead” (p. 2).Although the question posed by the President’s Commission was easy to articulate, the answer, over time, has proved complicated and controversial. The coherence and cogency of determining death by neurological criteria has been challenged. Various experts have demonstrated that “brain-dead” patients maintained on mechanical ventilation display a range of vital, integrative, functioning, which conflicts with the judgment that they are dead (Truog and... (shrink)

Utilitarianism, the great reforming philosophy of the nineteenth century, has today acquired the reputation for being a crassly calculating, impersonal philosophy unfit to serve as a guide to moral conduct. Yet what may disqualify utilitarianism as a personal philosophy makes it an eminently suitable guide for public officials in the pursuit of their professional responsibilities. Robert E. Goodin, a philosopher with many books on political theory, public policy and applied ethics to his credit, defends utilitarianism against its critics and (...) shows how it can be applied most effectively over a wide range of public policies. In discussions of such issues as paternalism, social welfare policy, international ethics, nuclear armaments, and international responses to the environment crisis, he demonstrates what a flexible tool his brand of utilitarianism can be in confronting the dilemmas of public policy in the real world. (shrink)

This book examines the Condorcet Jury Theorem and how its assumptions can be applicable to the real world. It will use the theorem to assess various familiar political practices and alternative institutional arrangements, revealing how best to take advantage of the truth-tracking potential of majoritarian democracy.

In this strikingly original book, one of the leading scholars in the field focuses on the influential idea of deliberative democracy. Goodin examines the great challenge of how to implement the deliberative ideal among millions of people at once and comes up with a novel solution: 'democratic deliberation within'.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Incoherence of Determining Death by Neurological Criteria: A Commentary on Controversies in the Determination of Death, A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics*Franklin G. Miller** (bio) and Robert D. Truog (bio)Traditionally the cessation of breathing and heart beat has marked the passage from life to death. Shortly after death was determined, the body became a cold corpse, suitable for burial or cremation. Two technological changes (...) in the second half of the twentieth century prompted calls for a new, or at least expanded, definition of death: the development of intensive care medicine, especially the use of mechanical ventilators, and the advent of successful transplantation of vital organs. Patients with profound neurological damage, leaving them incapable of breathing on their own and in an irreversible coma, could be maintained for some period of time with the aid of mechanical ventilation. The situation of these patients posed two ethical questions. Is it appropriate to stop life-sustaining treatment? If so, is it acceptable to retrieve vital organs for transplantation to save the lives of others before stopping treatment?In 1968, the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death proposed that death could be determined on the basis of neurological criteria, thus providing a positive answer to these two questions (Ad Hoc Committee 1968). According to the position of this committee, patients diagnosed with the cessation of brain function are dead, despite the fact that they breathe and circulate blood with the aid of mechanical ventilation. [End Page 185] Because they are dead, it is appropriate, indeed imperative, to stop mechanical ventilation. And because they are dead, it becomes ethical to procure vital organs for transplantation before stopping what otherwise would be life-sustaining treatment. Remarkably, this innovative neurological determination of death became, with little debate or controversy, the established position in medical ethics and the law throughout the United States.The Harvard Committee articulated the diagnosis of “irreversible coma,” but merely asserted that this condition constituted death. No explanatory rationale was provided. It fell to the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research to provide an authoritative rationale in its 1981 report, Defining Death. The second paragraph of the report set the stage as follows: “The question addressed here is not inherently difficult or complicated. Simply, it is whether the law ought to recognize new means for establishing that the death of a human being has occurred” (President’s Commission 1981, p. 3). The Commission claimed that “death is a unitary phenomenon” (p. 7) and that the determination of death by neurological criteria, in terms of the absence of all brain function, is consistent with the traditional conception of death as the cessation of vital functioning of the organism as a whole. The key issue is the integrative functioning of the human organism, which ceases to exist, according to the Commission, when the whole brain, including higher cortical areas and the brain stem, fails to function. Although “brain-dead” patients do not appear to be dead—i.e., the reality of their death is “masked” by the activity of mechanical ventilation—the patient’s body has irreversibly lost all capacity for integrative functioning. In the words of the Commission: “When artificial means of support mask this loss of integration as measured by the old methods [cessation of respiration and heart beat], brain-oriented criteria and tests provide a new window on the same phenomenon” (p. 33). The President’s Commission was instrumental in developing and establishing “The Uniform Definition of Death Act”: “An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead” (p. 2).Although the question posed by the President’s Commission was easy to articulate, the answer, over time, has proved complicated and controversial. The coherence and cogency of determining death by neurological criteria has been challenged. Various experts have demonstrated that “brain-dead” patients maintained on mechanical ventilation display a range of vital, integrative, functioning, which conflicts with the judgment that they are dead (Truog and... (shrink)

Revisioning macro-democratic processes in light of the processes and promise of micro-deliberation, Innovating Democracy provides an integrated perspective on democratic theory and practice after the deliberative turn.

Bracket out the wrong of committing a wrong, or conspiring or colluding or conniving with others in their committing one. Suppose you have done none of those things, and you find yourself merely benefiting from a wrong committed wholly by someone else. What, if anything, is wrong with that? What, if any, duties follow from it? If straightforward restitution were possible — if you could just ‘give back’ what you received as a result of the wrongdoing to its rightful owner (...) — then matters are morally more straightforward. But in real-world cases that is often impossible, and questions of ‘how much, from whom and to whom?’ become far more vexing. The beneficiary disgorging all benefits of the wrong is part of the story, but where that is not possible or will not suffice to compensate the victim of wrongdoing we discuss various ways of allocating the cost of making the victim whole, including supplementation from public coffers. (shrink)

Democracy used to be seen as a relatively mechanical matter of merely adding up everyone's votes in free and fair elections. That mechanistic model has many virtues, among them allowing democracy to 'track the truth', where purely factual issues are all that is at stake. Political disputes invariably mix facts with values, however, and then it is essential to listen to what people are saying rather than merely note how they are voting. The great challenge is how to implement that (...) deliberative ideal among millions of people at once. In this strikingly original book, Goodin offers a solution: 'democratic deliberation within'. Building on models of ordinary conversational dynamics, he suggests that people simply imagine themselves in the position of various other people they have heard or read about and ask, 'What would they say about this proposal?' Informing the democratic imaginary then becomes the key to making deliberations more reflective - more empathetic, more considered, more expansive across time and distance. (shrink)

Discusses the justification for a minimal welfare state independent of political rhetoric from the right or the left.

Having an agreed-upon definition of character education would be useful for both researchers and practitioners in the field. However, even experts in character education disagree on how they would define it. We attempted to achieve greater conceptual clarity on this issue through a prototype analysis in which the features perceived as most central to character education were identified. In Study 1 (N = 77), we asked character education experts to enumerate features of character education. Based on these lists, we identified (...) 30 features. In Study 2 (N = 101), experts assessed which features were central to character education through a categorization task. In Study 3 (N = 166), we assessed the extent of centrality using scalar items. We conclude by offering practical advice for the development of future character education studies and programs rooted in what is deemed central to such programs. (shrink)

Robert Abrams argues that new concepts of space and landscape emerged in mid-nineteenth-century American writing, marking a linguistic and interpretative limit to American expansion. Abrams supports the radical elements of antebellum writing, where writers from Hawthorne to Rebecca Harding Davis disputed the naturalizing discourses of mid-nineteenth century society. Whereas previous critics find in antebellum writing a desire to convert chaos into an affirmative, liberal agenda, Abrams contends that authors of the 1840s and 50s deconstructed more than they constructed.

The VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtue has received substantial attention since its inception as a model of 24 dimensions of positive human functioning, but less so as a potential contributor to a psychological science on the nature of virtue. The current paper presents an overview of how this classification could serve to advance the science of virtue. Specifically, we summarize previous research on the dimensional versus categorical characterization of virtue, and on the identification of cardinal virtues. We give (...) particular attention to the three-dimensional model of cardinal virtues that includes moral, self-regulatory, and intellectual domains. We also discuss the possibility that these three clusters be treated as fundamental elements of a virtue model, meaning that they clearly and directly contribute to both individual and communal flourishing across various cultures. This discussion includes a summary of previous speculations about the evolution of adaptations underlying the human capacity for using behavioral repertoires associated with the three virtues, as well as discussing ways in which they simultaneously enhance community and individual, in the last case focusing particularly on evidence concerning mating potential. We then discuss the relationship between the evolutionary perspective on virtues and Aristotle’s concept of the reciprocity of the virtues. Finally, we provide speculations about the nature of practical wisdom. While accepting the potential value of future revisions to the VIA model, that model even under its current conditions has the potential to generate a number of intriguing and testable hypotheses about the nature of virtue. (shrink)

The Federalist, justifying the Electoral College to elect the president, claimed that a small group of more informed individuals would make a better decision than the general mass. But the Condorcet Jury Theorem tells us that the more independent, better-than-random voters there are, the more likely it will be that the majority among them will be correct. The question thus arises as to how much better, on average, members of the smaller group would have to be to compensate for the (...) epistemic costs of making decisions on the basis of that many fewer votes. This question is explored in the contexts of referendum democracy, delegate-style representative democracy, and trustee-style representative democracy. (shrink)

Robert Schofield explores the rational elements of British experimental natural philosophy in the 18th century by tracing the influence of two opposing concepts of the nature of matter and its action—mechanism and materialism. Both concepts rested on the Newtonian interpretation of their proponents, although each developed more or less independently. By integrating the developments in all the areas of experimental natural philosophy, describing their connections and the influences of Continental science, natural theology, and to a lesser degree social and (...) institutional changes, the author demonstrates that mechanistic concepts dominated interpretations from about 1687 to 1740, when they were replaced by materialistic concepts. A revival of the mechanistic approach early in the next century made England a fertile field for ideas on the dynamic interaction of forces. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Philosophers who complain about the ‹demandingness’ of morality forget that a morality can make too few demands as well as too many. What we ought be seeking is an appropriately demanding morality. This article recommends a ‹moral satisficing’ approach to determining when a morality is ‹demanding enough’, and an institutionalized solution to keeping the demands within acceptable limits.

The democratic egalitarian ideal requires that everyone should enjoy equal power over the world through voting. If it is improper to vote twice in the same election, why should it be permissible for dual citizens to vote in two different places? Several possible excuses are considered and rejected.

A healthy work-life balance has become increasingly important to people trying to cope with the pressures of contemporary society. This trend highlights the fallacy of assessing well-being in terms of finance alone; how much time we have matters just as much as how much money. The authors of this book have developed a novel way to measure 'discretionary time': time which is free to spend as one pleases. Exploring data from the US, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden and Finland, they show (...) that temporal autonomy varies substantially across different countries and under different living conditions. By calibrating how much control people have over their time, and how much they could have under alternative welfare, gender or household arrangements, this book offers a new perspective for comparative cross-national enquiries into the temporal aspects of human welfare. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Validity of Anselm's Ontological Argument The Truth of the Anselmian Premises On Whether Anselm's Ontological Argument Begs the Question On Parodies The Validity of the Ontological Argument of Descartes and Leibniz On the Truth of the Descartes–Leibniz Premises Critiques of the Descartes–Leibniz Ontological Argument Ontological Arguments of the Twentieth Century Gödel's Ontological Argument On Whether Gödel's Argument is Sound The Modal Perfection Argument The Temporal‐Contingency Argument Conclusion References Appendix 1. Logic Matters Appendix 2. Formal (...) Proofs of Some Modal Arguments. (shrink)

With their remarkable electoral successes, Green parties worldwide seized the political imagination of friends and foes alike. Mainstream politicians busily disparage them and imitate them in turn. This new book shows that 'greens' deserve to be taken more seriously than that. This is the first full-length philosophical discussion of the green political programme. Goodin shows that green public policy proposals are unified by a single, coherent moral vision - a 'green theory of value' - that is largely independent of the (...) `green theory of agency' dictating green political mechanisms, strategies and tactics on the one hand, and personal lifestyle recommendations on the other. The upshot is that we demand that politicians implement green public policies, and implement them completely, without committing ourselves to the other often more eccentric aspects of green doctrine that threaten to alienate so many potential supporters. (shrink)