Book reviewed in this article: Animal Consciousness. By Daisie Radner and Michael Radner The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Science. By Bernard E. Rollin.

Book reviewed in this article: Animal Consciousness. By Daisie Radner and Michael Radner The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Science. By Bernard E. Rollin.

This study described the relationships between academic class and student moral sensitivity and reasoning and between curriculum design components for ethics education and student moral sensitivity and reasoning. The data were collected from freshman (n = 506) and senior students (n = 440) in eight baccalaureate nursing programs in South Korea by survey; the survey consisted of the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire and the Korean Defining Issues Test. The results showed that moral sensitivity scores in patient-oriented care and conflict were (...) higher in senior students than in freshman students. Furthermore, more hours of ethics content were associated with higher principled thinking scores of senior students. Nursing education in South Korea may have an impact on developing student moral sensitivity. Planned ethics content in nursing curricula is necessary to improve moral sensitivity and moral reasoning of students. (shrink)

Ibn al-ʻArabī, 1165-1240; views on freedom; Sufism; Islamic philosophy.

Descartes uses the term "conscientia" (conscience) to apply both to consciousness of thinking and to the act of thinking itself. These are two different sorts of consciousness, And they stand in different relations to their objects. Consciousness as a way of thinking (c1) is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of its object. Consciousness of thinking (c2) is both necessary and sufficient for the existence of its object. The distinction between c1 and c2 provides descartes with a way out (...) of hobbes's infinite regress and frees descartes from problematic theses concerning the evidence and incorrigibility of mental states. (shrink)

In order to explain the possibility of causal interaction between the mind and the body, Descartes claims that they are substantially united. It is argued that descartes is unsuccessful in reconciling this union with the radical dualism which is fundamental to his philosophy. Recent claims that the union of mind and body poses no problem for descartes are shown to be untenable.

Analyses of Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology was first published in 1970. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.This is Volume IV of the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, a series published in cooperation with the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota and edited by Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell. Dr. Feigl was the (...) director of the Center.In a preface to the first volume in the series, Professors Feigl and Michael Scriven noted the extensive concern of the Center with "the meaning of theoretical concepts as defined by their locus in the 'nomological net' and the related rejection of the reductionist forms of operationism and positivism." In this volume, several contributors are again concerned with philosophical, logical, and methodological problems of psychology. As before, some papers deal with broad philosophical issues, others with more specific problems of method or interpretation. However, a deep concern for logical and methodological problems of special relevance to the physical sciences is reflected in a number of essays.The contents are arranged in two sections, the first part being based on the papers and discussion from a conference held at the Center on the problems of correspondence rules. Contributors are Herbert Feigl, Paul K. Feyerabend, N.R. Hanson, Carl G. Hempel, Mary Hesse, Grover Maxwell, and William Rozeboom. The second group of essays, by various members of the staff of the Center and some of its visitors, reflects current issues and controversies of great interest. The contributors are William Demopoulos, Keith Gunderson, Paul E. Meehl (three essays), and Michael Radner. (shrink)

Human action theory, with its emphasis on intentions and reasons, does little to enhance our understanding of the actions of nonhuman animals. Many animal (and human) actions are directed to objects in the world, including other animals. The notion of directedness can be analysed without attributing intentions or reasons to the agent. An action is directed to object X if and only if: (1) the agent singles out X, either by orientation or by selective performance of the action in the (...) presence of X; (2) the agent recognizes X as a suitable object; and (3) the goal of the action is that X should be in a certain relation to the agent or to some other object. The goal of an action is not necessarily attributable to the agent as the agent's goal in acting. Moreover, an agent can have a goal in acting without understanding how the action achieves the goal. The usefulness of the concept of directed action in the study of animal communication is illustrated with examples from the recent ethological literature. (shrink)

Functional hypotheses about animal signalling often refer to mental states of the sender or the receiver. Mental states are functional categorizations of neurophysiological states. Functional questions about animal signals are intertwined with causal questions. This interrelationship is illustrated in regard to avian distraction displays. In purposive signalling, the sender has a goal of influencing the behavior of the receiver. Purposive signalling is innovative if the sender's goal is unrelated to the biological function of the signal. This may be the case (...) in some instances of false alarm calling. Biological functionalism differs from philosophical functionalism in its concept of identity and in the specification of relevant inputs and outputs. (shrink)

Unlocking the Second Antinomy: Kant and Wolff MICHAEL RADNER But how in this business can metaphysics be reconciled with geometry, when it seems easier to mate griffins with horses than to unite transcendental philosophy with geometry?' Kant, x756 THE SECOND ANTINOMY, treating the proof and refutation of bodies as composed of simple substances, is one of the more puzzling sections of the Critique of Pure Reason. The thesis argument especially baffles commentators. Edward Caird in t 889 said: "Kant's statement (...) of this argument is very obscure."Among commen- tators of our era, T. E. Wilkerson complains: "This argument is very muddy." Jonathan Bennett remarks: "The text, however, is not clear enough for us to be sure exactly what Kant is relying on in his argument for the Thesis. "~ Nor have commentators spared the antithesis argument. No one, to my knowledge, has interpreted the text so that the thesis and antithesis arguments come out valid and constitute a genuine antinomy. Yet Kant stated on more than one occasion that all the antinomy arguments are valid. The proofs "are not deceptions, but are well-founded, under the supposition that appearances or a sensible world which comprehends them all are things in themselves" .3 In the Prolego- "Physical Monadology," in Kant's Latin Writings: Translations, Commentaries, and Notes, trans. and ed. Lewis White Beck, Mary J. Gregor, Roll Meerbote and John A. Reuscher , ll6; Ak.. (shrink)

Contrary to Vaesen's argument that humans are unique with respect to nine cognitive capacities essential for tool use, we suggest that although such cognitive processes contribute to variation in tool use, it does not follow that these capacities arenecessaryfor tool use, nor that tool use shaped cognition per se, given the available data in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral biology.

Abstract Daniel Dennett advocates the use of the intentional stance in adaptationist biology and in cognitive ethology. He sees intentional system theory as closely related to decision theory and game theory. In biological decision and game theory models, nature ?chooses? the strategy by which the animal chooses a course of action. The design of the animal imposes constraints on the model. For Dennett, by contrast, the description of nature's rationale imposes constraints on the design of the animal. Dennett's oversimplified conception (...) of nature's rationale undermines the usefulness of the intentional stance as a tool in cognitive ethology. Intentional system theory can be made more useful in investigating animal cognition by modifying its application to questions of biological function. (shrink)

Human action theory, with its emphasis on intentions and reasons, does little to enhance our understanding of the actions of nonhuman animals. Many animal (and human) actions are directed to objects in the world, including other animals. The notion of directedness can be analysed without attributing intentions or reasons to the agent. An action is directed to object X if and only if: (1) the agent singles out X, either by orientation or by selective performance of the action in the (...) presence of X; (2) the agent recognizes X as a suitable object; and (3) the goal of the action is that X should be in a certain relation to the agent or to some other object. The goal of an action is not necessarily attributable to the agent as the agent's goal in acting. Moreover, an agent can have a goal in acting without understanding how the action achieves the goal. The usefulness of the concept of directed action in the study of animal communication is illustrated with examples from the recent ethological literature. (shrink)

In 1979 Harvard biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard C. Lewontin published an essay entitled “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.” The target of their critique is a style of thinking rooted in “the near omnipotence of natural selection in forging organic design and fashioning the best among possible worlds.” According to Gould and Lewontin, adaptationists assume that all traits of an organism are products of natural selection, and that the traits (...) were favored by natural selection because they were optimal solutions to problems posed by the environment. Gould and Lewontin called the adaptationist program the Panglossian paradigm because they saw strong parallels between the arguments of Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide and the arguments of adaptationists and optimality theorists in biology. (shrink)

. Fugit Hora: Fashion and the ethics of style. Cultural Values: Vol. 2, No. 2-3, pp. 340-354.