This book is intended to be a standard reference work on the frontal lobes for researchers, clinicians, and students in the fields of neurology, neuroscience, ...

The process-dissociation procedure was used to estimate the influence of spatial and form-based processing in the Simon task. Subjects made manual responses to the direction of arrows . The results provide evidence that the form and spatial location of a single stimulus can have functionally independent effects on performance. They also indicate the existence of two kinds of automaticity—an associative component that reflects prior S-R mappings and a nonassociative component that reflects the correspondence between stimulus and response codes.

Cultural evolution, producing group‐level adaptations, is more problematic than the cultural evolution of individually confirmable skills, but it probably has occurred. The “conformist transmission,” described by Boyd and Richerson (1985), leads local social units to become homogeneous in anadaptive, as well as adaptive, beliefs. The resulting intragroup homogeneity and inter‐group heterogeneity makes possible a cultural selection of adaptive group ideologies.All archaic urban, division‐of‐labor social organizations had to overcome aspects of human nature produced by biological evolution, due to the predicament of (...) genetic competition among the cooperators. The universal norms found in archaic moral systems are seen as curbs to this human nature, reinforced by beliefs in invisible sanction systems and rewarding and punishing afterlives (as in heaven or reincarnation). Perhaps the ubiquity of lavishly wasteful royal funerals is to be explained as contributing to this function. (shrink)

Introductory Abstract Philosophers of science, in the course of making a sharp distinction between the tasks of the philosopher and those of the scientist, have pointed to the possibility of an empirical science of induction. A comparative psychology of knowledge processes is offered as one aspect of this potential enterprise. From fragments of such a psychology, methodological suggestions are drawn relevant to several chronic problems in the social sciences, including the publication of negative results from novel explorations, the operational diagnosis (...) of dispositions, the status of aggregates of persons as social entities, and the validation of psychological tests. (shrink)

Rejecting a morality based on religious sanctions and appeals to a spiritual order of being, David Hume advocated a wholehearted immersion in worldliness. Contemtus mundi is replaced with amor mundi, an orientation that Hume saw as fostering virtue and socially beneficial relationships.

If philosophers of science advise government on science policy, it will have to be from a descriptive theory of scientific validity taken as hypothetically normative, as in naturalized epistemology. While logical positivism denied any normative import for the practice of science, in the area of "operational definitions" it had an unfortunate influence in psychology and sociology, and one that persists in the accountability movement. Not all philosophy of science issues have implications for the justificatory practice of scientists. For example, both (...) anti-realists and realists condone scientific quarreling about unobserved particles. Many young philosophers of science are now contributing to a sociology of scientific validity which, taken in a hypothetically normative manner, will produce recommendations on science policy. (shrink)

One recent instance is David Fate Norton in David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), but despite the title, Norton is not concerned with the details of Hume's moral teaching.

SAMUEL JOHNSON IS SOMETIMES VIEWED AS A DOGMATIST WHOSE POLEMICAL SUCCESS OWED MORE TO THE THUNDER OF HIS VOICE THAN TO THE SUBTLETY OF HIS ARGUMENTATION. HOWEVER, IN THOSE PASSAGES OF BOSWELL WHICH RECORD JOHNSON’S REACTIONS TO HUME’S SKEPTICISM, JOHNSON DEMONSTRATES A FAMILIARITY WITH HUME’S REASONING AND A FAIRLY DEFT USE OF HUME’S OWN WEAPONS TO OPPOSE HIM. THOUGH BOSWELL SEEMS NOT TO HAVE RECOGNIZED WHAT HIS MENTOR WAS DOING, JOHNSON’S WIT TENDS TO IMPLY THAT WHEN HUME PROFESSED URBANE ALOOFNESS (...) TO THOSE FEARS AND WEAKNESSES WHICH BESET MOST MEN--AN ATTITUDE THAT DISTURBED BOSWELL PROFOUNDLY--HUME HIMSELF HAD BECOME A SELF-INTERESTED EXPLOITER OF THE MIRACULOUS. (shrink)