This study investigates the ability of individuals with psychopathy to perform passive avoidance learning and whether this ability is modulated by level of reinforcement/punishment. Nineteen psychopathic and 21 comparison individuals, as defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare, 1991), were given a passive avoidance task with a graded reinforcement schedule. Response to each rewarding number gained a point reward specific to that number (i.e., 1, 700, 1400 or 2000 points). Response to each punishing number lost a point punishment specific (...) to that number (i.e., the loss of 1, 700, 1400 or 2000 points). In line with predictions, individuals with psychopathy made more passive avoidance errors than the comparison individuals. In addition, while the performance of both groups was modulated by level of reward, only the performance of the comparison population was modulated by level of punishment. The results are interpreted with reference to a computational account of the emotional learning impairment in individuals with psychopathy. (shrink)

Error is a neglected epistemological category in the history of science. This neglect has been driven by the commonsense idea that its elimination is a general good, which often renders it invisible or at least not worth noticing. At the end of the sixteenth century across Europe, medicine increasingly focused on “popular errors,” a genre where learned doctors addressed potential patients to disperse false belief about treatments. By the mid-seventeenth century, investigations into popular error informed the working methodology of natural (...) philosophers, rather than just physicians. In 1646, Thomas Browne published Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a large volume on popular error. Despite Browne’s formal training as a physician, this work examined only a few medical errors and instead aspired to be an encyclopedia of error. Pseudodoxia Epidemica was highly popular, running to six editions, and was known by the Fellows of the Royal Society. Influenced by Browne, alongside Bacon’s theory of the idols, natural philosophic practice in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century developed a focus on error that revised traditional attention to the discovery of knowledge. Fellows such as Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke proposed new ways to secure truth under the far-reaching influence of Bacon’s refutations of “natural human reason” distorted by false idols, of syllogistic logic, and of “theories,” his label for traditional philosophical systems that bias thought toward falsity. In three parts, this article traces the progression in early modern scientific approaches to handling error, and especially medical error – from physicians’ efforts to identify and eradicate it through collaborative effort, to the striking tension in Browne’s work between seeking to eliminate error while also showing a marked tolerance for it, to the Royal Society’s Baconian objective of instrumentalizing error to find truth. Error emerges as its own epistemic category that serves as a driving force toward knowledge production. (shrink)

'Journey Towards the Goddess' is a personal narrative tracing the writer's path from the space left by a Christian faith that has become irrelevant, through a series of earth-based, feminine-orientated experiences and brief spiritual encounters with non-human life forms and with the non-physical world, towards an openness to the divine feminine in its pre-Christian and post-Christian guises. Citing Quaker sources as well as Starhawk, the anthropologist Felicitas Goodman and feminist theologians such as Mary Condren and Beverly Wildung Harrison, she arrives (...) at a conviction that goddess theology is not only valid but may be an essential component of a morally responsible spiritual outlook in the twenty-first century. The author is a poet and fic tion writer, and has also written two books that offer the non-judgmental life narrative as a way of spiritual understanding. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Second-Order Cybernetics as a Fundamental Revolution in Science” by Stuart A. Umpleby. Upshot: This commentary looks at the parallel developments in contiguous fields that include and encourage multiple viewpoints and the validity of multiple positions. I contend that necessity will overcome the resistance to disturbing the status quo of power structures when the stakes become high enough.

Jusqu'à il y a peu, la morale était le parent pauvre de la philosophie contemporaine. Mais, depuis quelques années, nous assistons à un retour en force de la réflexion philosophique en matière éthique. C'est qu'en cette période de mutations profondes, l'homme est confronté à de multiples défis qui le contraignent à des options morales. Il faut certes se réjouir de ce regain d'intérêt pour les questions morales. Mais le problème crucial entre tous n'est-il pas celui des critères dont dispose l'homme (...) d'aujourd'hui face à ces enjeux? En l'absence de points de repères assurés, le risque est grand que la décision morale soit simplement le fruit d'une moyenne établie à partir de l'addition composite d'opinions divergentes. C'est donc ici que les moralistes ont le devoir de cherche à éclairer les consciences en proposant des critères d'appréciation morale et en les soumettant à une discussion rationnelle autant que faire se peut. C'est à quoi le présent ouvrage veut contribuer. On ne trouvera donc pas dans ce livre un examen détaillé des problèmes moraux de l'heure, mais plutôt une étude systématique des questions de fond. D'où le titre du livre : Le fondement de la morale. Et son sous-titre : Essai d'éthique philosophique générale. Construit sur le dynamisme de la liberté, âme de la vie morale, le présent traité montre comment, de l'intérieur d'elle-même, la liberté s'ouvre sur l'exigence morale bien comprise. (shrink)

La métaphysique est aujourd'hui contestée de toutes parts comme étant soit dénuée de sens soit inaccessible à l'esprit humain. Et pourtant, qu'il le veuille ou non, l'homme fait constamment de la métaphysique parce qu'il est un animal métaphysique. Après une introduction consacrée au sens et à l'enjeu de la métaphysique, le présent ouvrage tente, dans un premier temps, de poser la question de la métaphysique en revisitant, de manière à la fois bienveillante et critique, quatre grandes figures qui se sont (...) débattues avec la pensée métaphysique : Thomas d'Aquin, Kant, Hegel et Heidegger. De ce parcours se dégagent des pistes pour une approche contemporaine de l'interrogation métaphysique. Elles pointent en direction d'une pensée métaphysique de l'être dont le réalisme intègre la subjectivité transcendantale moderne sans que la totalité ainsi obtenue se dialectise dans un système de la négativité absolue ni que l'existence humaine y soit placée devant la positivité énigmatique d'un être hypostasié et indifférencié. La seconde partie est consacrée, à partir de cette perspective, au déploiement organique d'une pensée métaphysique de l'être. On y part de l'être comme fondement de la pensée et de son interrogation, comme fondement de l'esprit tant pratique que théorique, pour s'élever ensuite, par l'abstraction métaphysique correctement comprise, à la saisie de l'être en lui-même en sa positivité et sa plénitude originaires. Dans un ultime effort, la pensée se laisse entraîner, au fil de la triple différence entre le Je et le Tu, entre les étants et l'être, et enfin entre les étants, l'être et Dieu, jusqu'à la pensée métaphysique de Dieu et de la création. L'être apparaît ainsi comme similitude de la pensée divine, ce qui ouvre le champ d'une pensée positive de l'analogie et de l'exemplarité. L'ouvrage se termine par une méditation du rapport entre métaphysique de l'être et révélation chrétienne. Tout en cherchant à traiter les questions substantiellement, l'ouvrage cherche, sur le plan pédagogique, à ne pas être réservé aux spécialistes et se veut largement accessible aux esprits cultivés et aux étudiants en philosophie. (shrink)

Background To describe the preferences for disclosure of individual biomarker results among mothers participating in a longitudinal birth cohort. Methods We surveyed 343 mothers that participated in the Health Outcomes and Measures of the Environment Study about their biomarker disclosure preferences. Participants were told that the study was measuring pesticide metabolites in their biological specimens, and that the health effects of these low levels of exposure are unknown. Participants were asked whether they wanted to receive their results and their child's (...) results. In addition, they were asked about their preferred method (letter vs in person) and format (more complex vs less complex) for disclosure of results. Results Almost all of the study participants wanted to receive their individual results (340/343) as well as their child's results (342/343). However, preferences for receiving results differed by education level. Mothers with less than a college degree preferred in-person disclosure of results more often than mothers with some college education or a college degree (34.3% vs 17.4% vs 7.9%, p<0.001). Similarly, mothers with less than a college education preferred a less complex disclosure format than mothers with some college education or a college degree (59.7% vs 79.1% vs 86.3%, p<0.0001). Conclusion While almost all study participants preferred to receive results of their individual biomarker tests, level of education was a key factor in predicting preferences for disclosure of biomarker results. To ensure effective communication of this information, disclosure of biomarker results should be tailored to the education level of the study participants. (shrink)