Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Plato's Choice Platonic Dialogues: A Multipurpose Genre The Republic as Theoretical Model Plato Politikos.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Seventh Letter on Writing The Seventh Letter on Ways of Life.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Salvaging Shadows The Meaning of Pragmatic Efficacy The Sources of Pragmatic Efficacy The Noble Lie Why Plato Wrote.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Against Writing The Hole in the Argument Spotting the Defense of Philosophical Writing A Sociology of Symbols The Psychological Power of Symbols.

The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Wiley Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Politics of the 330s Who Was Fighting Whom? What Were Lycurgus and Demosthenes Fighting About? Why Fight over Plato? The End of the Culture War Conclusion.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Politics of the 350s and 340s The Emergence of the Culture War, or the Man with the Good Memory.

This chapter contains sections titled: Philosophy in Politics The Case for Influence A Culture War.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Discovering a Defensible Kind of Philosophical Writing Imitators vs. Constitution‐Painters The Necessary and Sufficient Criterion of Philosophical Writing.

This is an exploration of the political thought of the American transcendentalists focusing on Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller. They were writing at a time when the American state was thought of as sacred, the two cities of Augustine, the City of God and the City of Man, combined as one. Indeed the Augustinian metaphor was a powerful one, frequently invoked in this period. American republican democracy in the City of Man enabled citizens through their participation in the state to achieve (...) something close to the spiritual status of the City of God. The transcendentalists, with their emphasis on the importance of individual freedom, did not accept this analysis, according to Daniel Malachuk. They looked at American democracy and saw much that did not support individual pursuit of goodness nor a society that approached the status of the City of God. For example, the continued existence of slavery hardly fit with a godly place. Malachuk argues that the separation between the City of God and the City of Man remains important to transcendentalists who thought that individuals needed to be given space by the state to pursue their individual development. (shrink)

Theologians are split into two groups: those who embrace prosperity theology and those who oppose it; both sides on scriptural grounds. Those criticising it embrace cessationism in its diversity, while its supporters are mainly found among Pentecostals and Charismatics, who are continuationists. Continuationists believe and teach that all gifts of the Spirit are still available to the church today, therefore should be practised by the church just as they were operative during the apostolic era. Therefore, it is clear that prosperity (...) preachers are continuationists. They believe and practice healing and miracle gifts today. A review of the literature, biblical texts, historical teachings, and Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal (also referred to as charismatic and neo-charismatic) form the basis of this article. It addresses the positive features of prosperity teachers’ beliefs and methods as well as how they exploit the dreams, fears, and aspirations of people living in poverty. The theology of sharing, as articulated by Nicholas B.H. Bhengu, is proposed as a solution to creating parity between the rich and the poor.Contribution: This article seeks to balance opposing theological approaches with the prosperity gospel. It does this by introducing a theology of sharing as taught by Nicholas Bhengu based on the philosophy of Ubuntu, a way of life among African people. The challenge for theologians on both sides of the argument is finding a way to accommodate the other side’s contributions. (shrink)

Healing the Reason-Emotion Split draws on research from experimental psychology and neuroscience to dispel the myth that reason should be heralded above emotion. Arguing that reason and emotion mutually benefit our decision-making abilities, the book explores the idea that understanding this relationship could have long-term advantages for our management of society's biggest problems. Levine reviews how reason and emotion operated in historical movements such as the Enlightenment, Romanticism and 1960s' counterculture, to conclude that a successful society would restore human connection (...) and foster compassion in economics and politics by equally utilizing reason and emotion. Integrating discussion on classic and contemporary neurological studies and using allegory, the book lays out the potential for societal change through compassion, and would be of interest to psychologists concerned with social implications of their fields, philosophy students, social activists, and religious leaders. (shrink)

In what particular manner human beings are free moral agents and to what extent they can reasonably expect to attain a good life are two intertwined questions that rose to prominence in antiquity and have remained so to the present day. This book analyzes and compares the approaches of two significant authors from different schools at the turn of the third century CE, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Clement of Alexandria. These contemporaries utilize their respective Peripatetic and Christian commitments in their (...) employment of the shared Greek classics toward these shared ethical questions. (shrink)

_Why Plato Wrote_ argues that Plato was not only the world’s first systematic political philosopher, but also the western world’s first think-tank activist and message man. Shows that Plato wrote to change Athenian society and thereby transform Athenian politics Offers accessible discussions of Plato’s philosophy of language and political theory Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011.

For the first time, this book compiles original documents from Science for the People, the most important radical science movement in U.S. history. Between 1969 and 1989, Science for the People mobilized American scientists, teachers, and students to practice a socially and economically just science, rather than one that served militarism and corporate profits. Through research, writing, protest, and organizing, members sought to demystify scientific knowledge and embolden "the people" to take science and technology into their own hands. The movement's (...) numerous publications were crucial to the formation of science and technology studies, challenging mainstream understandings of science as "neutral" and instead showing it as inherently political. Its members, some at prominent universities, became models for politically engaged science and scholarship by using their knowledge to challenge, rather than uphold, the social, political, and economic status quo. Highlighting Science for the People's activism and intellectual interventions in a range of areas -- including militarism, race, gender, medicine, agriculture, energy, and global affairs -- this volume offers vital contributions to today's debates on science, justice, democracy, sustainability, and political power. (shrink)

_Why Plato Wrote_ argues that Plato was not only the world’s first systematic political philosopher, but also the western world’s first think-tank activist and message man. Shows that Plato wrote to change Athenian society and thereby transform Athenian politics Offers accessible discussions of Plato’s philosophy of language and political theory Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011.

Poor ethical decision–making costs industry billions of dollars a year and damages the images of corporations. Thus, by answering the question ‘Why do individuals behave as they do when confronted with ethical issues?’ ethical theory can provide businesses with a means to create a more ethical climate and a more successful operation. This study tested the Ethical Decision–Making Model with accountability (Beu & Buckley 2001), which uses theory that suggests that ethical behavior is influenced by the individual, the issue, social (...) relationships (accountability), and the organization in which the employee is embedded (Brass, Butterfield & Skaggs 1988; Frink & Klimoski 1998). The results showed that individuals’ thought processes (cognitive moral development), personalities (locus of control, hostility and aggression, Machiavellianism), and gender influence how they respond to ethical dilemmas, as well as the salience of the moral issue (moral intensity) and the environmental context (work/school). (shrink)

Poor ethical decision–making costs industry billions of dollars a year and damages the images of corporations. Thus, by answering the question ‘Why do individuals behave as they do when confronted with ethical issues?’ ethical theory can provide businesses with a means to create a more ethical climate and a more successful operation. This study tested the Ethical Decision–Making Model with accountability (Beu & Buckley 2001), which uses theory that suggests that ethical behavior is influenced by the individual, the issue, social (...) relationships (accountability), and the organization in which the employee is embedded (Brass, Butterfield & Skaggs 1988; Frink & Klimoski 1998). The results showed that individuals’ thought processes (cognitive moral development), personalities (locus of control, hostility and aggression, Machiavellianism), and gender influence how they respond to ethical dilemmas, as well as the salience of the moral issue (moral intensity) and the environmental context (work/school). (shrink)

Trust is central to the therapeutic relationship, but the epistemic asymmetries between the expert healthcare provider and the patient make the patient, the trustor, vulnerable to the provider, the trustee. The narratives of pain sufferers provide helpful insights into the experience of pain at the juncture of trust, expert knowledge, and the therapeutic relationship. While stories of pain sufferers having their testimonies dismissed are well documented, pain sufferers continue to experience their testimonies as being epistemically downgraded. This kind of epistemic (...) injustice has received limited treatment in bioethics. In this paper, we examine how a climate of distrust in pain management may facilitate what Fricker calls epistemic injustice. We critically interrogate the processes through which pain sufferers are vulnerable to specific kinds of epistemic injustice, such as testimonial injustice. We also examine how healthcare institutions and practices privilege some kinds of evidence and ways of knowing while excluding certain patient testimonies from epistemic consideration. We argue that providers ought to avoid epistemic injustice in pain management by striving toward epistemic humility. Epistemic humility, as a form of epistemic justice, may be the kind disposition required to correct the harmful prejudices that may arise through testimonial exchange in chronic pain management. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, researchers have made great advances in the area of computational methods for extracting meaning from text. This research has to a large extent been spurred by the development of latent semantic analysis (LSA), a method for extracting and representing the meaning of words using statistical computations applied to large corpora of text. Since the advent of LSA, researchers have developed and tested alternative statistical methods designed to detect and analyze meaning in text corpora. This research (...) exemplifies how statistical models of semantics play an important role in our understanding of cognition and contribute to the field of cognitive science. Importantly, these models afford large-scale representations of human knowledge and allow researchers to explore various questions regarding knowledge, discourse processing, text comprehension, and language. This topic includes the latest progress by the leading researchers in the endeavor to go beyond LSA. (shrink)

Despite its pervasiveness, the concept of ‘levels of organization’ has received relatively little attention in its own right. I propose here an emerging approach that posits ‘levels’ as a fragmentary concept situated within an interest-relative matrix of operational usage within scientific practice. To this end I propose one important component of meaning, namely the epistemic goal motivating the term’s usage, which recovers a remarkably conserved and sufficiently unifying significance attributable to ‘levels’ across different instances of usage. This epistemic goal, to (...) provide structure to scientific problems, delegates tasks whose execution generates the term’s expressed content in a given instance. This treatment of levels does not diminish the concept’s general importance to science, but rather allows for its use in, and usefulness for, scientific practice to be better contextualized to particular tasks encompassing varying breadths of activity. (shrink)

Lycurgus' "Against Leocrates" has long been seen as an anomaly in the oratorical corpus by scholars of ancient rhetoric. Its extensive use of quotations from the poets and of personification are two features regularly picked out as especially odd and inexplicable by critics. This paper argues that these and other features of the speech are central to Lycurgus' attempt to persuade his jury to accept his radically un-Athenian political views. In fact, Lycurgus has rejected Athenian approaches to punishment, prosecution, and (...) politics in favor of Platonic views, which bear the taint of the elite philosophical schools. The quotation and the personification are two techniques that Lycurgus uses to craft a "new prosecutorial voice" that will overcome his audience's objections to his elitist and even Platonic political positions. I contend that the whole speech may be read as a study in how to craft a "voice" or form of oratorical self-presentation that will persuade an audience to accept heterodox political views. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues frequently criticize traditional Greek myth, yet Plato also integrates myth with his writing. Daniel S. Werner confronts this paradox through an in-depth analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato's most mythical dialogue. Werner argues that the myths of the Phaedrus serve several complex functions: they bring nonphilosophers into the philosophical life; they offer a starting point for philosophical inquiry; they unify the dialogue as a literary and dramatic whole; they draw attention to the limits of language and the limits (...) of knowledge; and they allow Plato to co-opt cultural authority as a way of defining and legitimating the practice of philosophy. Platonic myth, as a species of traditional tale, is thus both distinct from philosophical dialectic and similar to it. Ultimately, the most powerful effect of Platonic myth is the way in which it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in a process of self-examination. (shrink)

Despite the ubiquity of “levels of organization” in the scientific literature, a nascent “levels skepticism” now claims that the concept of levels is an inherently flawed, misleading, or otherwise inadequate notion for understanding how life scientists produce knowledge about the natural world. However, levels skeptics rely on the maligned “layer-cake” account of levels stemming from Oppenheim and Putnam’s defense of the unity of science for their critical commentary. Recourse to layer-cake levels is understandable, as it is arguably the default conception (...) of levels in philosophy. However, relying on this conception of levels undermines the initial plausibility of general dismissals of the concept, because the problems skeptics identify within the “basic idea” of the concept “levels” are merely ones already widely acknowledged in this conception. I illustrate this “guilt by association” by looking at the embedded role of “levels” in articulating intertheoretical reductionism during the latter part of the 20th century. I conclude by suggesting a methodological framework focusing on local usage patterns as a promising means for future analysis of the levels concept. (shrink)

This article explores the role of text cohesion in the comprehension and production of text. While most discourse models have considered the roles of the text features and the reader, the crucial role of writers’ epistemic stance has not been widely considered. The thesis explored here is that levels of cohesion emerge in text based on the epistemic stance of the author relative to the reader. Evidence is provided indicating that text genres show compensatory relationships between different features related to (...) text difficulty. For example, while science texts have more challenging words than do narratives, they tend to have higher cohesion and simpler syntax. These text profiles indicate that skilled writers have an awareness of readers’ needs. By contrast, less skilled writers seem to have less sensitivity to the interplay between textual dimensions and less audience awareness. For example, evidence is reviewed showing that more proficient essays are characterized by lower cohesion than less proficient essays: less skilled writers tend to use more cohesive cues than do more skilled writers. To the extent that an author understands the readers’ needs, the author has a more successful epistemic stance toward the reader. This stance is partially evidenced by the crucial role of cohesion in text comprehension and writing. (shrink)

Brandon L. Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, 367 pp. For those of us who study wrongful convictions, one questi...

The concept of 'levels of organization' has come under fire recently as being useless for scientific and philosophical purposes. In this paper, we show that 'levels' is actually a remarkably resilient and constructive conceptual tool that can be, and in fact is, used for a variety of purposes. To this effect, we articulate an account of the importance of the levels concept seen in light of its status as a major organizing concept of biology. We argue that the usefulness of (...) ‘levels’ is best seen in the heuristic contributions the concept makes to treating and structuring scientific problems. We illustrate this with two examples from biological research. (shrink)

High temporal resolution event-related brain potential and electroencephalographic coherence studies of the neural substrate of short-term storage in working memory indicate that the sustained coactivation of both prefrontal cortex and the posterior cortical systems that participate in the initial perception and comprehension of the retained information are involved in its storage. These studies further show that short-term storage mechanisms involve an increase in neural synchrony between prefrontal cortex and posterior cortex and the enhanced activation of long-term memory representations of material (...) held in short-term memory. This activation begins during the encoding/comprehension phase and evidently is prolonged into the retention phase by attentional drive from prefrontal cortex control systems. A parsimonious interpretation of these findings is that the long-term memory systems associated with the posterior cortical processors provide the necessary representational basis for working memory, with the property of short-term memory decay being primarily due to the posterior system. In this view, there is no reason to posit specialized neural systems whose functions are limited to those of short-term storage buffers. Prefrontal cortex provides the attentional pointer system for maintaining activation in the appropriate posterior processing systems. Short-term memory capacity and phenomena such as displacement of information in short-term memory are determined by limitations on the number of pointers that can be sustained by the prefrontal control systems. Key Words: coherence; event-related potentials; imaging; long-term memory; memory; short-term memory; working memory. (shrink)

This article examines two interrelated aspects of Mexican regional music response to the coronavirus crisis in the música huasteca community: the growth of interactive huapango livestreams as a preexisting but newly significant space for informal community gathering and cultural participation at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and the composition of original verses by son huasteco performers addressing the pandemic. Both the livestreams and the newly created coronavirus disease verses reflect critical improvisatory approaches to the pandemic in música huasteca. The (...) interactive livestreams signaled an ad hoc community infrastructure facilitated by social media and an emerging community space fostered by Do-It-Yourself activists. Improvised COVID-related verses presented resonant local and regional themes as a community response to a global crisis. Digital ethnography conducted since March 2020 revealed a regional burst of musical creativity coupled with DIY intentionality, a leveling of access to virtual community spaces, and enhanced digital intimacies established across a wide cultural diaspora in Mexico and the USA. These responses were musically, poetically, and organizationally improvisational, as was the overall outpouring of the son huasteco music inspired by the coronavirus outbreak. Son huasteco is a folk music tradition from the Huasteca, a geo-cultural region spanning the intersection of six states in central Mexico. This study examines a selection of musical responses by discussing improvisational examples in both Spanish and the indigenous language Nahuatl, and in the virtual musical communities of the Huasteca migrant diaspora in digital events such as “Encuentro Virtual de Tríos Huastecos,” the “Huapangos Sin Fronteras” festival and competition, and in the nightly gatherings on social media platforms developed during the pandemic to sustain the Huastecan cultural expression. These phenomena have served as vibrant points of transnational connection and identity in a time where physical gatherings were untenable. (shrink)

This article argues that positioning disclosure as a primary remedy in addressing the ethical problems posed by conflicts of interest in medicine and health is an error. Instead, bioethical resources should be devoted to the problems associated with sequestration, defined as the elimination of relationships between commercial industries and health professionals in all cases where it is remotely feasible. The argument begins by arguing that adopting Andrew Stark’s conceptual framework for COIs leads to advantages in understanding COIs and in ordering (...) priorities for intervention. The article then draws on prior work establishing that COIs are, under ordinary epidemiologic standards, properly regarded as population health hazards. This justifies attention to possible remedies, of which disclosure generates by far the most analysis. Such primacy is unwarranted given the extensive evidence suggesting that disclosure as a remedy for COIs is at best ineffective. ‘At best’ is justified because the evidence also shows that disclosure may have a perverse effect, intensifying biased behaviors. Expending significant attention on an ineffective or even deleterious intervention is unjustified and also crowds out devotion of resources to the real problems that attend sequestration. Therefore, disclosure ought to be regarded as a lower priority among possible COI interventions. (shrink)

Abstract.There is ample evidence that humans (and other primates) possess a knowledge instinct—a biologically driven impulse to make coherent sense of the world at the highest level possible. Yet behavioral decision‐making data suggest a contrary biological drive to minimize cognitive effort by solving problems using simplifying heuristics. Individuals differ, and the same person varies over time, in the strength of the knowledge instinct. Neuroimaging studies suggest which brain regions might mediate the balance between knowledge expansion and heuristic simplification. One region (...) implicated in primary emotional experience is more activated in individuals who use primitive heuristics, whereas two areas of the cortex are more activated in individuals with a strong knowledge drive: one region implicated in detecting risk or conflict and another implicated in generating creative ideas. Knowledge maximization and effort minimization are both evolutionary adaptations, and both are valuable in different contexts. Effort minimization helps us make minor and routine decisions efficiently, whereas knowledge maximization connects us to the beautiful, to the sublime, and to our highest aspirations. We relate the opposition between the knowledge instinct and heuristics to the biblical story of the fall, and argue that the causal scientific worldview is mathematically equivalent to teleological arguments from final causes. Elements of a scientific program are formulated to address unresolved issues. (shrink)

Following its initial development in the 1920’s and 1930’s, by mid-century the concept of “levels of organization” began to disperse throughout the life science textbook literature. Among other early textbooks that first applied the levels concept, Eugene P. Odum’s usage of the notion in his textbook series Fundamentals of Ecology (and his later series Ecology) stands out due to the marked emphasis placed on the concept as a foundational, erotetically-oriented organizing principle. In this paper, I examine Odum’s efforts toward advocating (...) the levels concept in ecology in light of the concept’s wider uptake in biology around that time. (shrink)