Mulder and colleagues [Mulder, T., Hochstenbach, J., Dijkstra, P. U., Geertzen, J. H. B. . Born to adapt, but not in your dreams. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 1266–1271.] report that a majority of amputees continue to experience a normally-limbed body during their night dreams. They interprete this observation as a failure of the body schema to adapt to the new body shape. The present note does not question this interpretation, but points to the already existing literature on the phenomenology of (...) the phantom limb in dreams. A summary of published investigations is complemented by a note on phantom phenomena in the dreams of paraplegic patients and persons born without a limb. Integration of the available data allows the recommendation for prospective studies to consider dream content in more detail. For instance, “adaptation” to the loss of a limb can also manifest itself by seeing oneself surrounded by amputees. Such projective types of anosognosia in nocturnal dreams should also be experimentally induced in normally-limbed individuals, and some relevant techniques are mentioned. (shrink)

Heintz & Scott-Phillips propose that the partner choice ecology of our ancestors required Gricean cognitive pragmatics for reputation management, which caused a tendency toward showing and expecting prosociality that subsequently scaffolded language evolution. Here, we suggest a cognitively leaner explanation that is more consistent with comparative data and posits that prosociality and eventually language evolved along with cooperative breeding.

The series was founded in 1896. It is dedicated to important Greek and Latin texts together with translations and commentaries, as well as detailed introductions, thus rendering them more accessible to a broader readership. Since 2000 the series has concentrated on "Homer's Iliad. A full commentary", presenting the text of the Iliad (by M. L. West), a translation (by J. Latacz) and a commentary in German.

Angesichts der Globalisierung und der von ihr aufgeworfenen Probleme für das nationale und das internationale Recht gewinnt die Rechtsphilosophie immer stärker an Bedeutung. Zugleich verbinden sich rechtstheoretische Fragen wieder zunehmend mit philosophischen Überlegungen. Der vorliegende Band versammelt 20 Beiträge namhafter Rechtstheoretiker und Philosophen, die die eigenständige Begriffsbildung und die Entwicklung neuer Theorieansätze auf dem Gebiet der Rechtsphilosophie zum Ziel haben. Das Spektrum reicht dabei von grundbegrifflichen Klärungen bis hin zu konkreten Problemstellungen des globalisierten Rechts und bietet einen umfassenden Überblick über (...) die aktuelle deutsche und internationale Debatte. Mit Beiträgen u. a. von Robert Alexy, Klaus Günther, Gunther Teubner, Otfried Höffe und Jürgen Habermas. (shrink)

Catholic health care institutions presently face the question of whether it would be morally legitimate for them to participate in sex reassignment surgery for patients suffering from gender dysphoria. This essay replies to two articles published on this question in the Winter 2016 issue of the Catholic health care journal Health Care Ethics USA. It argues that both articles fail to attend to factors necessary for an adequate moral assessment of the question, and thus provide inadequate solutions. It goes on (...) to argue that it would be intrinsically wrong for Catholic hospitals to counsel or perform sex reassignment surgery if in so doing they affirmed certain widely held erroneous assumptions about the nature of sex and gender. The essay ends by asking whether, if those erroneous assumptions were clearly and publically rejected, it could ever be licit to per­form surgical amputations or plastic surgical reconstructions to assist persons suffering from severe and intractable cases of gender dysphoria. (shrink)

Tailoring climate change messages to a particular spatial scale (e.g. a specific country or region) is often seen as an effective way to frame communication about climate change. Yet the empirical evidence for the effectiveness of this strategy is scarce, and little is known about how recipients react to spatially-framed climate change messages. To learn more about the effects and usefulness of different spatial frames as a communication and engagement tool, we conducted a study in which we presented members of (...) the general public with either a national or a global framing of climate change. In contrast to previous spatial-framing studies, the present research used semi-structured interviews - rather than survey questions - to obtain rich, in-depth information about participants' views of climate change. Irrespective of the framing, participants revealed associations that were located at various spatial scales. Moreover, when participants talked about climate change, they repeatedly switched between different spatial scales, revealing patterns that were consistent with seeking to preserve existing beliefs and preferences. These findings improve our understanding of how the public represents climate change, and provide a novel explanation as to why simple spatial framing often fails to achieve the anticipated effects. (shrink)

According to the biological definition of death, a human body that has not lost the capacity to holistically organize itself is the body of a living human individual. Reasonable doubt against the conclusion that it has lost the capacity exists when the body appears to express it and no evidence to the contrary is sufficient to rule out reasonable doubt against the conclusion that the apparent expression is a true expression. This essay argues that the evidence and arguments against the (...) conclusion that the signs of complex bodily integration exhibited in ventilated brain dead bodies are true expressions of somatic integration are unpersuasive; that is, they are not adequate to exclude reasonable doubt against the conclusion that BD bodies are dead. Since we should not treat as corpses what for all we know might be living human beings, it follows that we have an obligation to treat BD individuals as if they were living human beings. (shrink)

Goal-setting theory states that challenging, specific, and concrete goals (i.e., subordinate goals) are powerful motivators and boost performance in goal pursuit more than vague or abstract goals (i.e., superordinate goals). Goal-setting theory predominantly focuses on single, short-term goals and less on broad, long-term challenges. This review article extends goal-setting theory and argues that superordinate goals also fulfill a crucial role in motivating behavior, particularly when addressing broad, long-term challenges. The purpose of this article is to show theoretically that people pursue (...) long-term goals more successfully when they focus on subordinate and superordinate goals simultaneously than when they focus on either subordinate or superordinate goals alone. (shrink)

Studies on how one behavior affects subsequent behaviors find evidence for two opposite trends: Sometimes a first behavior increases the likelihood of engaging in additional behaviors that contribute to the same goal (positive behavioral spillover), and at other times a first behavior decreases this likelihood (negative spillover). A factor that may explain both patterns is attitude strength. A stronger (more favorable) attitude toward an issue may make the connections between related behaviors more salient and increase the motivation to work toward (...) the underlying goal. We predicted that people with a stronger (more favorable) attitude are more likely to engage in subsequent behaviors that address an issue they care about. Two experiments tested the prediction in the contexts of pro-environmental and health behavior. Study 1 (N = 378) provided some support for the predicted moderating role of attitude toward the environment when participants recalled either an environmentally friendly or unfriendly action: A strong attitude increased the likelihood, whereas a weak attitude decreased the likelihood of carrying out successive goal-conducive behaviors. When compared to a neutral control condition in Study 2 (N = 929), participants with a weak environmental attitude supported pro-environmental petitions less strongly after an environmentally harmful action. Support for such petitions did not waver, however, among participants with a strong environmental attitude: They consistently acted environmentally friendly. Contrary to the hypothesis, in neither study did strength of attitude toward personal health moderate the effect of an initial behavior in the expected direction. In sum, the two studies provided only limited evidence for behavioral spillover: Participants mostly acted in accordance with their attitude but were hardly affected by recalling previous actions. When behavioral spillover did occur, however, a strong environmental attitude tended to increase the likelihood of acting in an environmentally friendly way, whereas the behavior of those with a weak attitude was less predictable. This research contributes to a more nuanced theoretical understanding of the role of attitude in spillover, but provides only limited evidence for its role as a moderator. (shrink)

The December 2008 White Paper (WP) on “Brain Death” published by the President’s Council on Bioethics (PCBE) reaffirmed its support for the traditional neurological criteria for human death. It spends considerable time explaining and critiquing what it takes to be the most challenging recent argument opposing the neurological criteria formulated by D. Alan Shewmon, a leading critic of the “whole brain death” standard. The purpose of this essay is to evaluate and critique the PCBE’s argument. The essay begins with a (...) brief background on the history of the neurological criteria in the United States and on the preparation of the 2008 WP. After introducing the WP’s contents, the essay sets forth Shewmon’s challenge to the traditional neurological criteria and the PCBE’s reply to Shewmon. The essay concludes by critiquing the WP’s novel justification for reaffirming the traditional conclusion, a justification the essay finds wanting. (shrink)

This article reviews and brings together two literatures: classical political economists’ views on the skilling or deskilling nature of technological change in England, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when they wrote, are compared with the empirical evidence about the skill effects of technological change that emerges from studies of economic historians. In both literatures, we look at both the skill impacts of technological change and at the “inducement mechanisms” that are envisaged for the introduction of new technologies. Adam Smith (...) and Karl Marx both regarded the deskilling of the labour force as the predominant form of biased technical change, but other authors such as Charles Babbage also took account of capital-skill complementarities and skill-enhancing effects of technological change. For Smith, the deskilling bias was an unintended by-product of the increasing division of labour, which in his view “naturally” led to ever more simplification of workers’ tasks. As opposed to Smith, Marx considered unskilled-biased technical change as a bourgeois weapon in the class struggle for impairing the workers’ bargaining position. Studies of economic historians lend support to Marx’s hypothesis about the inducement mechanisms for the introduction of unskilled-biased innovations, but have produced no clear-cut empirical evidence for a deskilling tendency of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century technological change as a whole. Industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rather led to labour polarization, by simultaneously deskilling a large part of the workforce and raising the demand for some high-skilled workers. (shrink)

This essay concerns what people should do in conflict situations when a doubt of fact bears on settling whether an alternative under consideration is legitimate or not. Its principal audience are those who believe that abortion can be legitimate when not having an abortion gives rise to serious harms that can be avoided by having one, but who are concerned that fetuses might feel pain when being aborted, and who believe that causing unnecessary pain should be avoided when doing so (...) would not pose an undue burden. The essay remains neutral on the substantive questions of the moral status of the unborn and the morality of abortion. The question of fetal pain has taken center stage in the last few years in the .. (shrink)

Now in a third edition, Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings is a highly acclaimed, topically organized collection that covers five major areas of philosophy--theory of knowledge, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, freedom and determinism, and moral philosophy. Editor Louis P. Pojman enhances the text's topical organization by arranging the selections into a pro/con format to help students better understand opposing arguments. He also includes accessible introductions to each chapter, subsection, and individual reading, a unique feature for an (...) anthology of this depth. While the book focuses on a compelling sampling of classical material--including selections from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant--it also incorporates some of philosophy's best twentieth-century and contemporary work, featuring articles by Bertrand Russell, Richard Taylor, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, and others. This third edition contains an expanded glossary, more extensive section introductions, and twelve new selections: Karl Popper: "Epistemology without a Knowing Subject" Richard Rorty: "Dismantling Truth: Solidarity Versus Objectivity" Daniel Dennett: "Postmodernism and Truth" Bruce Russell: "The Problem of Evil: Too Much Suffering" David Chalmers: "Against Materialism: Can Consciousness Be Reductively Explained?" Baron Paul Henri d'Holbach: "A Defense of Determinism" Michael Levin: "A Compatibilist Defense of Moral Responsibility" Plato: Socratic Morality: "Crito" Herodotus: "Custom Is King" J. L. Mackie: "The Subjectivity of Values" Louis P. Pojman: "A Critique of Mackie's Theory of Moral Subjectivism" Thomas Nagel: "Moral Luck". (shrink)

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under the prefecture of Joseph Ratzinger, published its instruction Donum vitae in 1987 to provide moral guidance on bioethical issues. Since 1987, many new ethical issues have arisen, especially in the areas of regenerative medicine (which includes stem cellresearch) and assisted reproduction. To address these the CDF, under the prefecture of William Levada, published the bioethical instruction Dignitas personae inDecember 2008. The present symposium includes reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the (...) new document by six moral theologians noted for theirwork in bioethics: Christian Brugger, John Finnis, Luke Gormally, Christopher Kaczor, William E. May, and Peter F. Ryan, S.J. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9.3 (Autumn 2009): 461–483. (shrink)

Critics sometimes claim that Catholic moral principles unreasonably oblige patients to adopt life-preserving medical treatments “at all costs,” even when the treatments are excessively burdensome or futile and when their adoption may badly disadvantage patients’ family members or caregivers. The author argues that this is a mischaracterization. Because of obligations arising from our relationships, not only is it sometimes licit to refuse lifesustaining medical care, but we sometimes have a duty to refuse it. This is the case when the treatments (...) are morally extraordinary and when adopting them would unfairly disadvantage someone for whom we have responsibility. The author argues that this conclusion is not inconsistent with the duty we have to properly care for our own lives or with moral principles prohibiting self-killing. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.4 (Winter 2012): 621–630. (shrink)

This essay has two purposes. The first is to argue that our moral duties towards human embryos should be assessed in light of the Golden Rule by asking the normative question, “how would I want to be treated if I were an embryo?” Some reject the proposition “I was an embryo” on the basis that embryos should not be recognized as persons. This essay replies to five common arguments denying the personhood of human embryos: (1) that early human embryos lack (...) ontological individuation; (2) that they are members of the species Homo sapiens but not yet human persons; (3) that the argument for personhood commits the “heap argument” fallacy; (4) that since human procreation in nature is inefficient, human embryos cannot be persons; and (5) the “burning building” scenario proves that all arguments for personhood are irrational or inconsistent. The second purpose is to set forth and criticize in light of the normative judgement defended in part one the present legal situation of cryo-preserved embryos in the U.S. The essay ends by proposing legislative reforms to protect ex utero human embryos. (shrink)