There is considerable evidence that the hippocampal system contributes both to the temporary maintenance of memories and to the processing of a particular type of memory representation. The findings on amnesia suggest that these two distinguishing features of hippocampal memory processing are orthogonal. Together with anatomical and physiological data, the neuropsychological findings support a model of cortico-hippocampal interactions in which the temporal and representational properties of hippocampal memory processing are mediated separately. We propose that neocortical association areas maintain shortterm memories (...) for specific items and events prior to hippocampal processing as well as providing the final repositories of long-term memory. The parahippocampal region supports intermediate-term storage of individual items, and the hippocampal formation itself mediates an organization of memories according to relevant relationships among items. Hippocampal-cortical interactions produce strong and persistent memories for events, including their constituent elements and the relationships among them, and a capacity to express memories flexibly across a wide range of circumstances. (shrink)

This cutting-edge book offers a theoretical account of the evolution of multiple memory systems of the brain. The authors conceptualize these memory systems from both behavioral and neurobiological perspectives.

Ruchkin et al. ascribe a pivotal role to long-term memory representations and binding within working memory. Here we focus on the interaction of working memory and long-term memory in supporting on-line representations of experience available to guide on-going processing, and we distinguish the role of frontal-lobe systems from what the hippocampus contributes to relational long-term memory binding.

Although O'Regan & Noë (O&N) claim that the world may serve as the viewers' external visual memory, findings from the field of memory research have demonstrated the existence of internal visual representations. These representations are stored in the viewer's brain, contain information regarding visual objects and their relations, guide subsequent exploration of the visual world and promote change detection.

Gray's account is remarkable in its depth and scope but too little attention is paid to poor correspondences with the literature on hippocampal/subicular damage, the theta rhythm, and novelty detection. An alternative account, focusing on hippocampal involvement in organizing memories in a way that makes them accessible to conscious recollection but not in access to consciousness per se, avoids each of these limitations.

Continuing commentary raised several issues concerning our proposal that the hippocampus, parahippocampal region, and cortical association areas mediate different aspects of memory function. Recent relevant findings strengthen our argument that neocortical areas and the parahippocampal region maintain persistent encodings of specific single items and that the hippocampus mediates representations of the relations among these items. The reciprocally and closely interconnected structures that compose the hippocampal memory system work interactively to support flexible memory expression that is relevant to the natural behavior (...) of animals and to conscious recollection in humans. (shrink)

The question of whether Do Not Resuscitate orders should be sustained in the operating room was brought to our ethics committee by a pulmonologist and involved one of his patients for whom he serves as a primary care physician. His patient, a woman with chronic obstructive lung disease was electing, for comfort purposes, to have a hip pinning following a fracture. At the same time, she wished to have a DNR order covering her entire hospital stay. The anesthesiologist described her (...) direction as “improper” and refused to participate in surgical procedures if DNR orders extended to the operating room. The patient refused to rescind the order during surgery. As a result, the surgery was canceled to the great chagrin of the patient. (shrink)

The following description is based upon an actual case in which a patient initiated legal action after suffering a complication subsequent to an invasive diagnostic procedure performed by a senior fellow. Named as codefendants were the senior fellow, attending physician, and the hospital. Because any hospital with house staff is potentially vulnerable to similar litigation, Ethics Committees at Work is addressing the questions raised by this dilemma.

Research is ongoing concerning the medical risks and benefits of routine neonatal male circumcision. Interpretation of the data, however, is controversial. Circumcision presents a number of challenges in obtaining informed consent because of a variety of interesting issues. It is a nonemergent, elective procedure that allows for evaluation and discussion over time. In this respect, observation of the informed consent process for circumcision is relevant to other medical decisions, such as advance directives, discussed between primary care providers and patients. Obtaining (...) informed consent for circumcision has its constraints. The process generally occurs over a brief hospital stay. There have been recent changes in the official position regarding the procedure by professional medical societies, and it raises considerable psychologic issues for the provider and may Impact the way in which Information is provided. (shrink)

This paper explores what the metaphysics of time travel might teach us about moral responsibility. We take our cue from a recent paper by Yishai Cohen, who argues that if time travel is metaphysically possible, then one of the most influential theories of moral responsibility (i.e., Fischer and Ravizza’s) is false. We argue that Cohen’s argument is unsound but that Cohen’s argument can serve as a lens to bring reasons-responsive theories of moral responsibility into sharper focus, helping (...) us to better understand actual-sequence theories of moral responsibility more generally and showing how actual-sequence theorists should respond to a recent criticism. (shrink)

In this study, we test the interactive effect on ethical decision-making of (1) personal characteristics, and (2) personal expectanciesbased on perceptions of organizational rewards and punishments. Personal characteristics studied were cognitive moral developmentand belief in a just world. Using an in-basket simulation, we found that exposure to reward system information influenced managers’ outcome expectancies. Further, outcome expectancies and belief in a just world interacted with managers’ cognitive moral development to influence managers’ ethical decision-making. In particular, low-cognitive moral development managers who (...) expected that their organization condoned unethical behavior made less ethical decisions while high cognitive moral development managers became more ethical in this environment. Low cognitive moral development managers also behaved less ethically when their belief in a just world was high. (shrink)

In this study, we test the interactive effect on ethical decision-making of (1) personal characteristics, and (2) personal expectanciesbased on perceptions of organizational rewards and punishments. Personal characteristics studied were cognitive moral developmentand belief in a just world. Using an in-basket simulation, we found that exposure to reward system information influenced managers’ outcome expectancies. Further, outcome expectancies and belief in a just world interacted with managers’ cognitive moral development to influence managers’ ethical decision-making. In particular, low-cognitive moral development managers who (...) expected that their organization condoned unethical behavior made less ethical decisions while high cognitive moral development managers became more ethical in this environment. Low cognitive moral development managers also behaved less ethically when their belief in a just world was high. (shrink)

In Mindblindness, Simon Baron-Cohen presents a model of the evolution and development of "mindreading." He argues that we mindread all the time, effortlessly, automatically, and mostly unconsciously. It is the natural way in which we interpret, predict, and participate in social behavior and communication. We ascribe mental states to people: states such as thoughts, desires, knowledge, and intentions. Building on many years of research, Baron-Cohen concludes that children with autism, suffer from "mindblindness" as a result of a selective (...) impairment in mindreading. For these children, the world is essentially devoid of mental things. Baron-Cohen develops a theory that draws on data from comparative psychology, from developmental, and from neuropsychology. He argues that specific neurocognitive mechanisms have evolved that allow us to mindread, to make sense of actions, to interpret gazes as meaningful, and to decode "the language of the eyes." A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Despite a long period of neglect, research on emotion in organizational behavior has developed into a major field over the past 15 years, and is now seen to be part of an affective revolution in the organization sciences. In this article, we review current research on emotion in the organizational behavior field based on five levels of analysis: within person, between persons, dyadic interactions, leadership and teams, and organization-wide. Specific topics we cover include affective events theory, state and trait affect (...) and mood, emotional intelligence, emotional labor, emotional contagion, emotions and leadership, and building a healthy emotional climate. We conclude with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a survey of ethical attitudes, values, and propensities in public sector employees in Australia. It was expected that demographic variables, personal values, and contextual variables at the individual level, and group- and organisational-level values would predict use of formal codes of ethics and ethical tolerance (tolerance of unethical behaviour). Useable data were received from 500 respondents selected at random across public sector organisations in a single Australian state. Results supported the study hypotheses, but indicated (...) that different mechanisms underlie each of the criterion variables. Use of ethical codes was determined primarily on the basis of a perception that others use the code, while ethical tolerance was determined by personal values. At an applied level, the research highlights the need for orgasnizations to establish a critical mass of code users, so that this operates as a normative influence on others in the organization. (shrink)

Deliberation and democratic legitimacy -- Moral pluralism and political consensus -- Associations and democracy (with Joel Rogers) -- Freedom of expression -- Procedure and substance in deliberative democracy -- Directly-deliberative polyarchy (with Charles Sabel) -- Democracy and liberty -- Money, politics, political equality -- Privacy, pluralism, and democracy -- Reflections on deliberative democracy -- Truth and public reason.

Names, descriptions, and demonstratives raise well-known logical, ontological, and epistemological problems. Perhaps less well known, amongst philosophers at least, are the ways in which some of these problems not only recur with pronouns but also cross-cut further problems exposed by the study in generative linguistics of morpho-syntactic constraints on interpretation. These problems will be my primary concern here, but I want to address them within a general picture of interpretation that is required if wires are not to be crossed. That (...) picture will be sketched in sections 3 and 4; subsequent sections will focus on pronouns and binding, drawing heavily on what has preceded. (shrink)

According to pancomputationalism, all physical systems – atoms, rocks, hurricanes, and toasters – perform computations. Pancomputationalism seems to be increasingly popular among some philosophers and physicists. In this paper, we interpret pancomputationalism in terms of computational descriptions of varying strength—computational interpretations of physical microstates and dynamics that vary in their restrictiveness. We distinguish several types of pancomputationalism and identify essential features of the computational descriptions required to support them. By tying various pancomputationalist theses directly to notions of what counts as (...) computation in a physical system, we clarify the meaning, strength, and plausibility of pancomputationalist claims. We show that the force of these claims is diminished when weaknesses in their supporting computational descriptions are laid bare. Specifically, once computation is meaningfully distinguished from ordinary dynamics, the most sensational pancomputationalist claims are unwarranted, whereas the more modest claims offer little more than recognition of causal similarities between physical processes and the most primitive computing processes. (shrink)

We use a new model of metarepresentational development to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism. One of the manifestations of a basic metarepresentational capacity is a ‘ theory of mind ’. We have reason to believe that autistic children lack such a ‘ theory ’. If this were so, then they would be unable to impute beliefs to others and to predict their behaviour. This hypothesis was tested using Wimmer (...) and Perner’s puppet play paradigm. Normal children and those with Down’s syndrome were used as controls for a group of autistic children. Even though the mental age of the autistic children was higher than that of the controls, they alone failed to impute beliefs to others. Thus the dysfunction we have postulated and demonstrated is independent of mental retardation and specific to autism. (shrink)

An examination of the controversial "theory of mind" hypothesis, which states that children with autism are unable to comprehend other people's mental states. The theory relates to the most fundamental questions of normal development as well as to autism i.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to aid legal decision making has become prominent. This paper investigates the use of AI in a critical issue in employment law, the determination of a worker’s status—employee vs. independent contractor—in two common law countries (the U.S. and Canada). This legal question has been a contentious labor issue insofar as independent contractors are not eligible for the same benefits as employees. It has become an important societal issue due to the ubiquity of the gig (...) economy and the recent disruptions in employment arrangements. To address this problem, we collected, annotated, and structured the data for all Canadian and Californian court cases related to this legal question between 2002 and 2021, resulting in 538 Canadian cases and 217 U.S. cases. In contrast to legal literature focusing on complex and correlated characteristics of the employment relationship, our statistical analyses of the data show very strong correlations between the worker’s status and a small subset of quantifiable characteristics of the employment relationship. In fact, despite the variety of situations in the case law, we show that simple, off-the-shelf AI models classify the cases with an out-of-sample accuracy of more than 90%. Interestingly, the analysis of misclassified cases reveals consistent misclassification patterns by most algorithms. Legal analyses of these cases led us to identify how equity is ensured by judges in ambiguous situations. Finally, our findings have practical implications for access to legal advice and justice. We deployed our AI model via the open-access platform, https://MyOpenCourt.org/, to help users answer employment legal questions. This platform has already assisted many Canadian users, and we hope it will help democratize access to legal advice to large crowds. (shrink)

In 1999, Neale Donald Walsch wrote three little books, each focusing on different areas of life: Neale Donald Walsch on Relationships, Neale Donald Walsch on Holistic Living, and Neale Donald Walsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood. In 2010, these three books were published in a single volume as Neale Donald Walsch's Little Book of Life. Walsch describes this book as a thousand pages of dialogue in the Conversations with God series reduced down to a few salient points and a few (...) very direct observations about how to render them functional. Readers can think of this book as either Conversations with God in a Nutshell or the Essential Conversations with God. Here are the basic principles for: Satisfying personal relationships; Living a joyful, harmonious life; Discovering authentic prosperity. Walsch's words provide hope and help for readers living in particularly challenging times. This is indeed Walsch's essential life guide for twenty-first century readers."--Back cover. (shrink)

CRISPR keeps me up at night. I marvel at its potential to cure insidious genetic diseases and scourges like malaria. I shudder at the ways it might be misused to create biological weapons. What frightens me most, though, is what I can't predict: how will we use CRISPR? How will it change evolution? How will it redefine the very nature of our existence?CRISPR is an ingenious cut-and-paste system that homes in on a particular DNA gene sequence and then, using Cas9 (...) enzymes, snips it out. That sequence is then replaced with a new one that rewrites or repairs the original. Two different cells—somatic, from the body, and germline, from gametes—can be manipulated... (shrink)

Comprising eight revised essays and seven new pieces, this work provides a comprehensive resource for students, scientists, bioethicists, physicians, and laypeople to better understand and discuss the ethical issues underlying this technology that has the potential to forever change the world.

This book offers the first sustained reflection on the significance of futurity for the phenomenological method itself.

In 1999, Dan Zahavi’s Self Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation initiated a critique of the standard interpretation of the distinction between the second and third levels of Husserl’s analysis of time-constituting consciousness. At stake was the possibility of a coherent account of self-awareness (Zahavi’s concern), but also the possibility of prereflectively distinguishing the acts of consciousness (Brough and Sokolowski’s rebuttal of Zahavi’s critique). Using insights gained from Husserl’s Analyses Concerning Passive Synthesis rather than the work on time-consciousness, this paper (...) provides a new, more precise vocabulary in which to carry on the debate, in the hopes of bringing it to a mutually satisfactory resolution. After briefly laying out the terms of the Zahavi–Brough/Sokolowski debate (Sect. 2), I then elaborate a three-fold distinction in consciousness from the Analyses (Sect. 3) and relate that back to the issue of objectivity in the debate (Sect. 4). I end by suggesting how this three-fold model from the Analyses helps us preserve the essentially tripartite structure (as Brough and Sokolowski insist we do) while not making one of these levels the object of another (in keeping with Zahavi’s critique) (Sect. 5). (shrink)

This chapter explores the concept of judgmentalism: what it is and why it’s morally problematic. After criticizing an account offered by Gary Watson, the paper argues for a broader understanding of what it is to be judgmental, encompassing not just the overall beliefs that we form about someone else, but also the very pattern of our thoughts about those with whom we are involved in interpersonal relationships. The thesis is that to care about someone is to be oriented toward them, (...) or to see them through a particular mental lens, in a way that produces a particular pattern of salience and silence. That is: caring about someone (at least ideally) has the effect of making some features of that person particularly salient, and silencing or screening off other features from one’s consciousness. One is aptly described as judgmental when one’s thoughts do not display this sort of pattern, indicating a failure to fully adopt the orientation that constitutes properly caring about the person. (shrink)

The soda wars have taken a new turn. No longer is it a battle between Coke and Pepsi to see who wins in a blind taste test. Today's soda war is between the consumer and the gigantic multinational beverage companies whose sales are plummeting. Evidence is pointing to sodas as one of the major contributors to obesity, and taxes are being slapped on what many are now calling "liquid candy."Sugar-sweetened beverages and their purveyors have been around for over a century, (...) but not until recently have they come under attack by public health officials and nutritionists. One reason these companies have sailed by for years relatively unscathed is that they have done an astonishing job at telling their story to the public... (shrink)