In this paper, we offer an argument in favor of the modular character of mind, based on a more detailed proof of the modular character of the linguistic capacity: in comparing the properties of different components of grammar in a specific area we will draw general consequences about the properties of the cognitive system. More specifically, we analyze and compare the properties, in logical form (LF)and in phonology, of “empty eIements” - eIements that are “visible” or “full” at some level (...) of representation, but not at another level.Our analysis shows that empty eIements are governed at LF by principIes on variables. binding conditions, and thematic principles, that relate eIements at a distance. In phonology, on the other hand, empty elements, i.e., empty segments and empty properties, can be obtaines by deletion and are governed by very different principles (underspecification, principles relating to recoverability of deletion effects), andthese principles relates eIements under strict adjacency. In addition, when a principle seems to be operating in a similar fashion in both components, as in the case of the Projection Principle, it involves lexical properties, which are properties affecting all components. We conclude, hence, that grammar is a modular system, with different components following different principles but related of course, among other things, by the properties of lexical structure.It follows from this analysis that a theory that views language as part of a homogeneous cognitive capacity cannot be mantained: cognition cannot be nonmodular in a strict sense, since a subpart of it, the linguistic capacity is modular itself. We conclude also that the linguistic capacity being modular, we ean only expect that, when studied in more detail, other cognitive capacities will be shown to differ intheir structure still more from the language system. (shrink)

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

BackgroundThe impact of healthcare ethics educational interventions on participants’ ethical development is rarely reported on and assessed; even less attention is paid to educational interventions that focus on end-of-life ethical issues.AimTo evaluate the impact of the Ethical Framework for End-of-Life Care Study Sessions Programme ( EOLCSS) on the moral development of healthcare staff who are delivering end-of-life care.MethodsThe EOLCSS was delivered to 20 multi-disciplinary health care staff in Ireland in May 2013. Effect on moral reasoning was measured pre and post (...) education using the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT2). Inferential statistics were used to examine the relationships between change in DIT2 scores and demographic variables.ResultsParticipants experienced moral reasoning development following receipt of EOLCSS. Age and previous ethics education contributed to the observed changes in moral reasoning.ConclusionsReceipt of the EOLCSS may contribute to moral reasoning development in practicing healthcare professionals. (shrink)

RESUMEN:Este trabajo tiene por objeto analizar la articulación entre la afirmación del carácter racional de la fe, esto es, su dimensión latitudinaria, el escepticismo epistemológico, y su derivación práctica en un concepto de tolerancia restringido al interior del protestantismo. Se subrayará, en este sentido, el carácter estratégico de la articulación entre racionalidad de la fe y escepticismo, en cuanto permite apelar a la ignorancia con vistas a la tolerancia, sin por ello dejar de sostener la interpretación protestante del cristianismo, en (...) detrimento de la interpretación católica.PALABRAS CLAVE:LOCKE - LATITUDINARISMO - ESCEPTICISMO - TOLERANCIA - PROTESTANTISMOABSTRACT:This paper aims to analyze the articulation between faith rationality assertion, i.e. its latitudinarian aspect, its epistemological skepticism, and its practical implication in a restricted concept of tolerance within Protestantism. In this regard, we will emphasize the strategic feature of the link between faith rationality and skepticism, as it allows appealing to ignorance towards tolerance, without dropping the Protestant interpretation of Christianity, to the detriment of Catholic interpretation.KEYWORDS:LOCKE - LATITUDINARIANISM - SKEPTICISM - TOLERATION - PROTESTANTISM. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Ethics in Obstetrics and Gynecology. By Laurence B. McCullough and Frank A. Chervenak.

In order to consider the influence of tangible property on the exercise of political rights in the work of John Locke, we’ll analyze, first, the distribution and acreage measurement of the requirements for political participation and the exercise of public functions in The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina ; secondly, the considerations on land ownership, as a means of production, and the wage labor in Chapter V of Two Treatises of Government , II; finally, we’ll analyze the patrimonial restrictions for the (...) access to political rights, as well as the suggested participation for workers in Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 17, Issue 2, Page 31-48, June 2012.

The. Metamorphosis. of. Motherhood. Patricia. Smith. Motherhood, as traditionally understood, is obsolete. It is not yet as obsolete as, say, knighthood, but it is moving just as inevitably in the same direction. No one wants to admit that, but it is ...

Supporting the concept of DEI, yet, perturbed by the volatility that marks today’s societal and professional climate, the authors of this article examined three Eastern spiritual traditions in search of common guidelines addressing contemporary issues related to social unrest, imbued by inequity and injustice. The areas of review included Buddhist psychology, with some of its foundational concepts such as the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, the concept of ahimsa (non-harming), and the understanding of the impermanence of everything (...) as inclusive managerial practices; Daoist philosophy, with its observations of oneness and equality, and holistic self-alignment with virtue through practicing tranquility; and Hinduism, which focuses on the absence of distinction between ourselves and others around us, thus forming the foundation for morality and ethical behavior with its emphasis on unity in diversity. This collective investigative journey has led us to gather some powerful common behavioral and ethical guidelines, to steer away managers from hyperindividualism and self-centeredness to a greater and consistent respect for the unity among all beings. (shrink)

Classical theories of emotion have long debated the extent to which human emotion is a universal or culturally constructed experience. Recent advances in emotion research in cultural neuroscience highlight several aspects of emotional generation and experience that are both phylogenetically conserved as well as constructed within human cultural contexts. This review highlights theories and methods from cultural neuroscience that examine how cultural and biological processes shape emotional generation, experience, and regulation across multiple time scales. Recent advances in the neurobiological basis (...) of culture-bound syndromes, such as Hwa-Byung (fire illness), provide further novel insights into emotion and mental health across cultures. Implications for emotion research in cultural neuroscience for population health disparities in psychopathology and global mental health will be discussed. (shrink)

Este trabajo estudia críticamente seis posibles límites a la apropiación privada, individual, unilateral y desigual en el estado de naturaleza descripto por John Locke. I) la restricción expresada bajo la forma de dejar suficiente y tan bueno en común para otros; II) la prohibición del desperdicio de los frutos perecederos; III) asociada a esta segunda condición pero aplicada a la tierra, la prohibición de cercar tierra cuyos frutos se desperdicie; IV) la limitación propuesta por Macpherson, según la cual es una (...) condición de la apropiación mezclar el propio trabajo de modo personal con el objeto; V) el principio de caridad como derecho del necesitado a los medios de subsistencia; VI) la limitación que advierte Simmons, según la cual es posible derivar del principio de caridad un derecho al auto-gobierno, esto es, a no ser esclavizado a cambio de brindar, como es el deber del propietario al necesitado, los medios de subsistencia. (shrink)

Among the many applications of artificial intelligence (AI), virtual assistants are one of the tools most likely to grow in the future. The development of these systems may play an increasingly important role in many facets of our lives. Therefore, given their potential importance and present and future weight, it is worthwhile to analyze what kind of challenges they entail. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of the ethical aspects of artificial virtual assistants. First, we provide a conceptual (...) clarification of the term ‘virtual assistant’, including different types of interfaces and recommender systems. Second, we address three ethical issues related to the deployment of these systems: their effects on human agency and autonomy and the subsequent cognitive dependence they would generate; the human obsolescence that may cause a generalized extension of the dependence problem; and the invasions of privacy that virtual assistants may cause. Finally, we outline the debates about the use of virtual assistants to improve human moral decisions and some areas in which these systems can be applied. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation is an invasive device-based neuromodulation technique that allows the therapeutic direct stimulation of subcortical and deep cortical structures following the surgical placement of stimulating electrodes. DBS is approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration for the treatment of movement disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, while new indications, including Major Depressive Disorder, are in experimental development. We report the case of a patient with MDD who received DBS to the ventral internal capsule and ventral striatum bilaterally and presented with (...) 2 weeks of voltage-dependent Tourette-like symptoms including brief transient episodes of abrupt-onset and progressively louder coprolalia and stuttered speech; tic-like motor behavior in his right arm and leg; rushes of anxiety, angry prosody, angry affect; and moderate amnesia without confusion. We describe the results of the inpatient neuropsychiatric workup leading to the diagnosis of iatrogenic voltage-dependent activation of cortico-subcortical circuits and discuss insights into the pathophysiology of Tourette as well as safety considerations raised by the case. (shrink)

This article analyzes the conditions that facilitate or hinder office-worker activism. Participant observations in Baltimore Working Women, a local affiliate of 9 to 5, and interviews with 72 members and nonmembers revealed the dilemmas of organizing women office workers. Early joiners recruited themselves and then brought in friends for whom the costs of activism were greater. Job security, supportive bosses, and experience in protesting inequities eased the difficulties associated with activism, and commitment to working women's issues sustained activism. Those who (...) feared reprisals from unsupportive bosses and coworkers but joined for friendship tended not to be active. Nonmembers' loyalty to employer and family demands limited their potential as recruits. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to show that current legal criteria for paternalistic involuntary psychiatric confinement of the mentally ill are both too narrow and too broad. I do this by first developing a principle of justified paternalistic interference with adults, which I take to be acceptably protective of individual liberty, but which does not require unnecessary sacrifices of individual welfare. After offering an analysis of current legal criteria for involuntary confinement, 1 argue that an acceptable theory of paternalistic (...) interference reveals that those criteria (1) exclude some cases where confinement would be morally permissible, and (2) allow paternalistic confinement of many whose detention is not morally justifiable. Keywords: paternalism, incompetence, involuntary civil confinement, liberty, beneficence, harm CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The Silent Scream, a videotape which includes footage of a real time sonogram of an abortion in progress, has been receiving considerable attention in America as the anti-abortion movement’s latest argument. The tape has been enthusiastically endorsed by President Reagan and has been distributed to every member of Congress and to each of the Supreme Court justices. It is produced and narrated by Bernard N. Nathanson, a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist, and it includes a number of implicit and explicit claims (...) which are highly controversial. Chief among these are: (1) the claim that since we can draw no morally significant line during the stages of fetal development, the fetusmust be recognized as a person from conception onward, (2) the claim that the film is a high tech, state of the art proof that abortion is the brutal murder of an innocent human being, (3) the claim that in abortion the fetus experiences terror and pain, and (4) the claim that as long as abortion is legal, showing this film (or one relevantly similar) must be made part of the informed consent procedure for abortion. My purpose in this paper is to examine these claims to see if The Silent Scream adds anything to the moral case for making abortion illegal. I give particular attention to two claims which are seldom addressed in the abortion debate, viz., that the fetus experiences terror and pain during an abortion, and that women have not had the information they need (but which this film provides) to give an adequately informed consent to abortion. Since there is so much confusion in the abortion debate, and since this film trades on that confusion, my broader purpose is to add some clarificationto the public discussion of this issue, which is daily becoming a more divisive issue of public policy. (shrink)

The first-century ascetic Jewish philosophers known as the 'Therapeutae', described in Philo's treatise De Vita Contemplativa, have often been considered in comparison with early Christians, the Essenes, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. This study, which includes a new translation of De Vita Contemplativa, focuses particularly on issues of historical method, rhetoric, women, and gender, and comes to new conclusions about the nature of the group and its relationship with the allegorical school of exegesis in Alexandria. Joan E. Taylor argues (...) that the group represents the tip of an iceberg in terms of ascetic practices and allegorical exegesis, and that the women described point to the presence of other Jewish women philosophers in Alexandria in the first century CE. Members of the group were 'extreme allegorizers' in following a distinctive calendar, not maintaining usual Jewish praxis, and concentrating their focus on attaining a trance-like state in which a vision of God's light was experienced. Their special 'feast' was configured in terms of service at a Temple, in which both men and women were priestly attendants of God. (shrink)