The aim of this review is to show the fruitfulness of using images of facial expressions as experimental stimuli in order to study how neural systems support biologically relevant learning as it relates to social interactions. Here we consider facial expressions as naturally conditioned stimuli which, when presented in experimental paradigms, evoke activation in amygdala–prefrontal neural circuits that serve to decipher the predictive meaning of the expressions. Facial expressions offer a relatively innocuous strategy with which to investigate these normal variations (...) in affective information processing, as well as the promise of elucidating what role the aberrance of such processing might play in emotional disorders. (shrink)

The early Epicurean revival in Florence and Italy -- Medicean Florence : Ficino and Bartolomeo Scala -- Republican Florence : the university lectures of Marcello Adriani -- Niccol Machiavelli and the influence of Lucretius -- Lucretian networks in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries -- Appendix : notes on Machiavelli's transcription of MS Vat. Rossi 884.

The British Government has recently agreed proposals for a National Numeracy Strategy which claims to be based on evidence concerning 'what works'. This article reviews the literature in each key area in which recommendations are made, and makes a judgement of whether the claim is justified. In some areas (e.g. calculators) the recommendations run counter to the evidence.

An implicit goal of many interventions intended to enhance integrity is to minimize peoples' exposure to unethical events. The intent of the present effort was to examine if exposure to unethical practices in the course of one's work is related to ethical decision making. Accordingly, 248 doctoral students in the biological, health, and social sciences were asked to complete a field appropriate measure of ethical decision making. In addition, they were asked to complete measures examining the perceived acceptability of unethical (...) events and a measure examining perceptions of ethical climate. When these criterion measures were correlated with a measure examining the frequency with which they had been exposed to unethical events in their day-to-day work, it was found that event exposure was strongly related to ethical decision making but less strongly related to climate perceptions and perceptions of event acceptability. However, these relationships were moderated by level of experience. The implications of these findings for practices intended to improve ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This book describes and examines the fear of exposure one faces when creating for cultural consumption.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. A burgeoning human rights movement followed, yielding many treaties and new international institutions and shaping the constitutions and laws of many states. Yet human rights continue to be contested politically and legally and there is substantial philosophical and theoretical debate over their foundations and implications. In this volume distinguished philosophers, political scientists, international lawyers, environmentalists and anthropologists discuss some of the most difficult questions of human rights (...) theory and practice: What do human rights require of the global economy? Does it make sense to secure them by force? What do they require in jus post bello contexts of transitional justice? Is global climate change a human rights issue? Is there a human right to democracy? Does the human rights movement constitute moral progress? For students of political philosophy, human rights, peace studies, and international relations. (shrink)

Explores the connection between epistemological and moral "lying," interspersing a phenomenology of deceit with a continuing dialogue between the phenomenologist and one of her students.

Scholars have proposed a number of courses and programs intended to improve the ethical behavior of scientists in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the scientific enterprise. In the present study, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on 26 previous ethics program evaluation efforts, and the results showed that the overall effectiveness of ethics instruction was modest. The effects of ethics instruction, however, were related to a number of instructional program factors, such as course content and delivery methods, in (...) addition to factors of the evaluation study itself, such as the field of investigator and criterion measure utilized. An examination of the characteristics contributing to the relative effectiveness of instructional programs revealed that more successful programs were conducted as seminars separate from the standard curricula rather than being embedded in existing courses. Furthermore, more successful programs were case based and interactive, and they allowed participants to learn and practice the application of real-world ethical decision-making skills. The implications of these findings for future course development and evaluation are discussed. (shrink)

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social (...) sciences using a pre-post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

Ethical decision making measures are widely applied as the principal dependent variable used in studies of research integrity. However, evidence bearing on the internal and external validity of these measures is not available. In this study, ethical decision making measures were administered to 102 graduate students in the biological, health, and social sciences, along with measures examining exposure to ethical breaches and the severity of punishments recommended. The ethical decision making measure was found to be related to exposure to ethical (...) events and the severity of punishments awarded. The implications of these findings for the application of ethical decision making measures are discussed. (shrink)

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited (...) competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed. (shrink)

Differences across fields and experience levels are frequently considered in discussions of ethical decision making and ethical behavior. In the present study, doctoral students in the health, biological, and social sciences completed measures of ethical decision making. The effects of field and level of experience with respect to ethical decision making, metacognitive reasoning strategies, social-behavioral responses, and exposure to unethical events were examined. Social and biological scientists performed better than health scientists with respect to ethical decision making. Furthermore, the ethical (...) decision making of health science students decreased as experience increased. Moreover, these effects appeared to be linked to the specific strategies underlying participants' ethical decision making. The implications of these findings for ethical decision making are discussed. (shrink)

Infantologies is a collective writing project designed to express and summarise important ideas, approaches and forms of advocacy in a short and condensed method, in order to present a network of d...

A recent report on the UK's higher education system by Lord John Browne exemplifies the dominant trend in education policy initiatives toward a focus on education primarily for employment and for the acquisition of skills. In this essay, Alison Assiter argues that such an entrepreneurial approach neglects essential aspects of the processes of teaching and learning. She draws on the work of Hannah Arendt, who saw the proper role of education as imparting the love of a subject, to critique (...) the view expressed in Browne's report. Assiter then uses Søren Kierkegaard's reflections on education to further develop Arendt's perspective. While Kierkegaard certainly would have agreed with Arendt that teaching is a process of inspiring in students the love of a subject, he went beyond this to suggest that teaching also must encourage students to believe they can make a difference in the world and must instill in both teachers and students a commitment to engaging in a mutual process of development. (shrink)

Until recently, there has been relatively little self-conscious reflection - from either environmental or continental philosophers - on the specific contributions which continental philosophy, insofar as it is a distinctive tradition, might make to environmental thought. This situation has begun to change with several recent publications, such as Charles S. Brown and Ted Toadvine's edited collection Ecophenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself, and Bruce V. Foltz and Robert Frodeman's collection Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy. This special issue aims (...) to continue the discussion of how the continental tradition might advance or transform environmental thinking, both by reconsidering authors such as Kant, Schelling, Nietzsche and Heidegger, and by considering how themes and concepts from continental philosophy and social theory - including Merleau-Ponty's concept of flesh, Foucault's notion of discipline, and Bourdieu's social critique of taste - bear on environmental practice and theory. (shrink)

Meeting of the Minds records the proceedings of the S.I.E.P.M. conference held in Boston from June 14-16, 1996. The conference participants centred their attention on the relationships between medieval and classical modern philosophy. These relationships have been painted in dramatically different ways by those who have presented overviews of the two eras. Hans Blumenberg, in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age and his subsequent works, discovers the seeds of modernity in the medieval authors themselves. Leo Strauss and his followers see (...) a radical difference between the classical world views of the ancients and medievals and the successive layers of modern thought. These general portraits demand specifics, and the strength of the conference, whose results are contained in this volume, was that it provided many specific examinations of concrete relations between the philosophical positions of celebrated medieval and modern thinkers. Our hope is that this collection of papers will suggest the direction for further cooperative efforts on the interplay of the philosophical views represented by these two eras, and that the issues commonly debated by the medieval and early modern thinkers represented in this volume will give renewed consideration to important philosophical points that have been ignored in more recent debates. The volume contains contributions from E. Jennifer Ashworth (Waterloo, Ontario), Allan Back (Kutztown, Pennsylvania), Jos Decorte (Leuven), Thomas Dewender (Bochum), Idit Dobbs-Weinstein (Nashville), John P.Doyle (St.Louis), Jeremiah Hackett (Columbia, South Carolina), Simo Knuuttila (Helsinki), James McEvoy (Maynooth), A.Stephen McGrade (Storrs), Edward P.Mahoney (Durham, North Carolina), James D.Maliszewski (Toronto), Emily Michael (New York), Woosuk Park (Taejon, Korea), Horacio Santiago-Otero(+) (Madrid), Alison Simmons (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Jean-Luc Solere (Paris), Jose MariSoto Rabanos (Madrid), and Eileen C. Swe. (shrink)

This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social (...) groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory. (shrink)

Recently, the theory theory has led to much interesting research. However, this is the first book to look at the theory in extensive detail and to systematically contrast it with other theories.

Kierkegaard is no doubt a philosopher whose focus is inwardness and irreducible individuality. On the surface, he therefore seems to have little to teach us about the sphere of the political: not only was this dimension never explicitly addressed in the writings of the Danish philosopher, but also the positions he took with regard to such a domain where always marked by a strong critical attitude. Moreover, he appeared to be a conservative with regard to any movement towards democratization and (...) equality, opposing liberal democracy as well as socialism, while not refraining from taking up explicitly misogynous positions. With this in mind, one could easily dismiss Kierkegaardian philosophy as exclusively relevant to the private domain of individual existence and irremediably unable to speak to wider concerns such as those encountered in the public dimension. However, in spite of his emphasis on singularity, or perhaps precisely because of it, over the years Kierkegaard's philosophy has given rise to interpretations that recognise its relevance for the political. For instance, the crucial importance of such ideas as self-choice, earnestness and subjective passion are easily imported from the individual sphere into the realm of the political, coming to have a bearing on notions such as responsibility and commitment. In addition, Kierkegaard's accent on the irreducibility of the individual to the universal resonates interestingly in those forms of thinking that, from the margins, call into question the domination of an exclusionary model of reason. Furthermore, his ethical writings on love are directly relevant to the political sphere. This book seeks to draw out, from a range of perspectives, some of the ways in which Kierkegaard's ideas are not only relevant, but highly significant for political thought. (shrink)

The Beloved Self is about the holy grail of moral philosophy, an argument against egoism that proves that we all have reasons to be moral. Part One introduces three different versions of egoism. Part Two looks at attempts to prove that egoism is false, and shows that even the more modest arguments that do not try to answer the egoist in her own terms seem to fail. But in part Three, Hills defends morality and develops a new problem for egoism, (...) an epistemological problem. She shows that it is not epistemically rational to believe the most plausible versions of egoism. The first part of the book will be most relevant to those interested in moral theory, as it contains detailed discussions of recent interpretations of virtue ethics and especially of Kant's moral theory. The second and third part of the book turn to epistemology, particularly moral epistemology, and include an account of the relationship between knowledge and action, a new theory of moral understanding, and a discussion of the epistemically rational response to various kinds of disagreement. Hills also defends a new account of virtue and of morally worthy action. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

This paper problematises the ways women’s leadership has been understood in relation to male leadership rather than on its own terms. Focusing specifically on ethical leadership, we challenge and politicise the symbolic status of women in leadership by considering the practice of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. In so doing, we demonstrate how leadership ethics based on feminised ideals such as care and empathy are problematic in their typecasting of women as being simply the other to men. We apply (...) different strategies of mimesis for developing feminist leadership ethics that does not derive from the masculine. This offers a radical vision for leadership that liberates the feminine and women’s subjectivities from the masculine order. It also offers a practical project for changing women’s working lives through relationality, intercorporeality, collective agency and ethical openness with the desire for fundamental political transformation in the ways in which women can lead. (shrink)

Obesity is one of several targets of public health efforts related to availability of and access to healthy foods. The tension between individual food decisions and social contexts of food production, preparation, and consumption makes targeting individuals deeply problematic and yet tempting. Such individualization of responsibility for obesity and nutrition is unethical and impractical. This article warns public health campaigns against giving into the temptation to individualize responsibility, and presents an argument for why they should proceed with all due caution, (...) advising providers and public health organizations to keep in mind structural factors rather than aiming at individuals. (shrink)

You want to see the concert, but don’t want to take a long drive (even though the concert is far away). Such *strongly conflicting desire ascriptions* are, I show, wrongly predicted incompatible by standard semantics. I then object to possible solutions, and give my own, based on *some-things-considered desire*. Considering the fun of the concert, but ignoring the drive, you want to see the concert; considering the boredom of the drive, but ignoring the concert, you don’t want to take the (...) drive. (shrink)

Algorithms wield increasing control over our lives—over which jobs we get, whether we're granted loans, what information we're exposed to online, and so on. Algorithms can, and often do, wield their power in a biased way, and much work has been devoted to algorithmic bias. In contrast, algorithmic neutrality has gone largely neglected. I investigate three questions about algorithmic neutrality: What is it? Is it possible? And when we have it in mind, what can we learn about algorithmic bias?

Abstract: If anger is the emotion of injustice, and if most injustices have prominent epistemic dimensions, then where is the anger in epistemic injustice? Despite the question my task is not to account for the lack of attention to anger in epistemic injustice discussions. Instead, I argue that a particular texture of transformative anger – a knowing resistant anger – offers marginalized knowers a powerful resource for countering epistemic injustice. I begin by making visible the anger that saturates the silences (...) that epistemic injustices repeatedly manufacture and explain the obvious: silencing practices produce angry experiences. I focus on tone policing and tone vigilance to illustrate the relationship between silencing and angry knowledge management. Next, I use María Lugones’s pluralist account of anger to bring out the epistemic dimensions of knowing resistant anger in a way that also calls attention to their histories and felt textures. The final section draws on feminist scholarship about the transformative power of angry knowledge to suggest how it might serve as a resource for resisting epistemic injustice. (shrink)

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip (...) alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world. (shrink)