This study presents the first neuroimaging investigation of female psychopathy in an incarcerated population. Prior studies have found that male psychopathy is associated with reduced limbic and paralimbic activation when processing emotional stimuli and making moral judgments. The goal of this study was to investigate whether these findings extend to female psychopathy. During fMRI scanning, 157 incarcerated and 46 non-incarcerated female participants viewed unpleasant pictures, half which depicted moral transgressions, and neutral pictures. Participants rated each picture on moral transgression severity. (...) Psychopathy was assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) in all incarcerated participants. Non-incarcerated participants were included as a control group to derive brain regions of interest associated with viewing unpleasant vs. neutral pictures (emotion contrast), and unpleasant pictures depicting moral transgressions vs. unpleasant pictures without moral transgressions (moral contrast). Regression analyses in the incarcerated group examined the association between PCL-R scores and brain activation in the emotion and moral contrasts. Results of the emotion contrast revealed a negative correlation between PCL-R scores and activation in the right amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate. Results of the moral contrast revealed a negative correlation between PCL-R scores and activation in the right temporo-parietal junction. These results indicate that female psychopathy, like male psychopathy, is characterized by reduced limbic activation during emotion processing. In contrast, reduced temporo-parietal activation to moral transgressions has been less observed in male psychopathy. These results extend prior findings in male psychopathy to female psychopathy, and reveal aberrant neural responses to morally-salient stimuli that may be unique to female psychopathy. (shrink)

Affective variables have been shown to impact working memory and cognitive control. Theoretical arguments suggest that the functional impact of emotion on cognition might be mediated through shifting action dispositions related to changes in motivational orientation. The current study examined the effects of positive and negative affect on performance via direct manipulation of motivational state in tasks with high demands on cognitive control. Experiment 1 examined the effects of monetary reward on task-switching performance, while Experiment 2 examined the effects of (...) both rewards and punishments on working memory, using primary (liquid) reinforcers. In both experiments, dissociable trial-by-trial and contextual (block-related) enhancements of cognitive control during task performance were observed in relationship to motivational incentive value. Performance enhancements were equivalent in the reward and punishment conditions, but were differentially impacted by individual difference measures of trait reward and punishment sensitivity. Together, the results suggest both common and specific mechanisms by which approach and avoidance motivational states influence cognitive control, via activation of reward and punishment processing systems. (shrink)

The first part of this paper discusses five sets of forces that have had a major influence on world agriculture in the post-World War II period. These include (1) high rates of population growth in the developing countries; (2) a steady increase in economic integration world-wide, driven by technological breakthroughs in the communication and transportation sectors; (3) major realignments in the values of national currencies; (4) growing distortions in economic policies in both the industrialized and developing countries; and (5) growing (...) diffusion of new production technology from the industrialized to the developing countries.The second part reviews the changing role of international development assistance in support of agriculture in light of these historical forces. Such assistance successively stressed the development of extension services, food aid, institutional development of higher level education institutions, the development of research capacity, and rural development.A look to the future is the subject of the third part of the paper. This includes a discussion of the difficulties in sustaining U.S. foreign assistance, especially when that nation is letting its own economic house fall into such disarray. (shrink)

By any measure, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., led a full and remarkable life. He was tall and exceptionally attractive, especially as he aged, with piercing eyes, a shock of white hair, and prominent moustache. He was the son of a famous father, a thrice-wounded veteran of the Civil War, a Harvard-educated member of Brahmin Boston, the acquaintance of Longfellow, Lowell, and Emerson, and for a time a close friend of William James. He wrote one of the classic works of American (...) legal scholarship, The Common Law, and he served with distinction on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was actively involved in the Court's work into his nineties. In Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, G. Edward White, the acclaimed biographer of Earl Warren and one of America's most esteemed legal scholars, provides a rounded portrait of this remarkable jurist. We see Holmes's early life in Boston and at Harvard, his ambivalent relationship with his father, and his harrowing service during the Civil War. White examines Holmes's curious, childless marriage and he includes new information on Holmes's relationship with Clare Castletown. White not only provides a vivid portrait of Holmes's life, but examines in depth the inner life and thought of this preeminent legal figure. There is a full chapter devoted to The Common Law, for instance, and throughout the book, there is astute commentary on Holmes's legal writings. Indeed, White reveals that some of the themes that have dominated 20th-century American jurisprudence--including protection for free speech and the belief that "judges make the law"--originated in Holmes's work. Perhaps most important, White suggests that understanding Holmes's life is crucial to understanding his work, and he continually stresses the connections between Holmes's legal career and his personal life. For instance, his desire to distinguish himself from his father and from the "soft" literary culture of his father's generation drove him to legal scholarship of a particularly demanding kind. White's biography of Earl Warren was hailed by Anthony Lewis on the cover of The New York Times Book Review as "serious and fascinating," and The Los Angeles Times noted that "White has gone beyond the labels and given us the man." In Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, White has produced an equally serious and fascinating biography, one that again goes beyond the labels and gives us the man himself. (shrink)

Do cultural models facilitate particular ways of perceiving interactions in nature? We explore variability in folkecological principles of reasoning about interspecies interactions. In two studies, Indigenous Panamanian Ngöbe and U.S. participants interpreted an illustrated, wordless nonfiction book about the hunting relationship between a coyote and badger. Across both studies, the majority of Ngöbe interpreted the hunting relationship as cooperative and the majority of U.S. participants as competitive. Study 2 showed that this pattern may reflect different beliefs about, and perhaps different (...) awareness of, plausible interspecies interactions. Further probes suggest that these models of ecological interaction correlate with recognition of social agency in nonhuman animals. We interpret our results in terms of cultural models of nature and nonhuman agency. (shrink)

What Science Offers the Humanities examines some of the deep problems facing the study of culture. It focuses on the excesses of postmodernism, but also acknowledges serious problems with postmodernism's harshest critics. In short, Edward Slingerland argues that in order for the humanities to progress, its scholars need to take seriously contributions from the natural sciences - and particular research on human cognition - which demonstrate that any separation of the mind and the body is entirely untenable. The author provides (...) suggestions for how humanists might begin to utilize these scientific discoveries without conceding that science has the last word on morality, religion, art, and literature. Calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the 'blank slate' theory of nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason, What Science Offers the Humanities replaces the human-sciences divide with a more integrated approach to the study of culture. (shrink)

Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as a radical "holistic" other, which saw no qualitative difference between mind and body. Drawing on knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Edward Slingerland demonstrates that seeing a difference between mind and body is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. This book has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.

Reflectivity and Cultivating Student Learning includes theory, research, and practice appropriate for teacher educators, teacher candidates, classroom teachers, school administrators, and educational researchers.

This book provides practical and research-based chapters that offer greater clarity about the particular kinds of teacher reflection that matter and avoids talking about teacher reflection generically, which implies that all kinds of reflection are of equal value.

In this study, we propose and test a model of the effects of organizational ethical culture and organizational architecture on the perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers. This study also examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture and moral acceptability judgment, hypothesizing that moral acceptability judgment is an important stage in the ethical decision-making process. Based on a field study in one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, we found that organizational ethical culture was significantly related to the (...) perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers and to the moral acceptability judgment of this type of unethical behavior. No support was found for the claim that features of organizational architecture are associated with the perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers. This is the first study to document the differential effects of organizational architecture and organizational ethical culture on perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers, in wholesale banking. Implications for managers and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Clarke and Beck suggest that the ratio processing system may be a component of the approximate number system, which they suggest represents rational numbers. We argue that available evidence is inconsistent with their account and advocate for a two-systems view. This implies that there may be many access points for numerical cognition – and that privileging the ANS may be a mistake.

Aesthetics, fledgling of the philosophic brood, is the most suspect of that family. It is suspected of all the philosophical sins: vagueness, disorder, dogmatism, emotionalism, reductionism, compartmentalization. Sometimes its youth is thought to be a sufficient excuse for these divagations. Sometimes the very nature of its content, involving the waywardness of genius, the remoteness of feeling from intellect, the surd of inspiration in even the mildest appreciation, are believed to condemn aes thetics irrevocably to the underside of the civilized man's (...) domain. Some philosophers have gloried in this apparently mystical and a-rational quality and have seen in it the very nature of the beautiful; others have come to regard it, rather, as evidence of the unskillfulness of our minds and have turned away from aesthetic problems to the task of sharpening the aesthetician's language and logic. The laughter of the gods is not difficult to discern through the poetry of the more mystical aesthetician or through the prose of the analysts. Meanwhile the manifold complexities and problems of aesthetic experience invite our understanding. For aesthetic experience is a present fact of human life and may, perhaps, be understood by men. Such, at least, will be the present assumption. This is the reason why the title of this book mentions art together with analysis; for if art is intelligible, the work of art and the experience of it may be analyzed into its functional parts. (shrink)

There can be no question but that Lachelier exercised great influence over French philosophy. Gabriel Séailles notes it as do others. Boutroux remarked "il fut un excitateur singulièrement puissant des intelligences," and Benrubi places him with Ravaisson in initiating the tradition of spiritualistic positivism in France. Bergson also recognized and acknowledged his debt to Lachelier, although the tradition which Lachelier helped to father was opposed to Bergsonianism in many important respects. The two traditions can, I suggest, be recognized as dialectical (...) opposites of one another. (shrink)

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: A NEW UNIVERSITY AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE NEW SCIENCE Despite the recent and continuing controversy concerning the proper role of ...

Although fertility is fundamental to spiritual health, it is often taken for granted. When a desired pregnancy fails to occur, stress and grief frequently follow. Visual expression of feelings through “art therapy” has proved a powerful healing tool for women brave enough to give it a try at the McMaster University Fertility Clinic. The objective and subjective findings of this ongoing project suggest that through simple visual self-expression, stress, anxiety and hopelessness may be reduced. This form of art therapy also (...) provides a joyful social experience of sharing with other women, who are dealing with these issues. (shrink)

It was certainly Kant’s purpose in the Critique of Pure Reason to find a middle ground between Cartesian rationalism and empirical idealism. One of the difficulties in reading the Critique is trying to follow how Kant can maintain his dual argument—that of transcendental idealism and that of empirical realism—at every point. Perhaps there is no better example of this than the crucial argument refuting idealism. The second edition Refutation is drastically reduced from the first edition and as densely packed as (...) any Kantian argument. Our purpose here is to unpack the argument, trying to show Kant’s grounds and his difficulties in attempting a deduction of the empirically real. (shrink)

This early essay by Albert Camus presents an eloquent picture of his understanding of what it means to know. But in order for us to assimilate it, we must recognize that Camus is not celebrating a hedonic naturalism, nor engaging in an existential anti-intellectualism. Rather, his articulation of lucidity and the exemplification of it in the artistry of the essay itself presents us with a challenging concept of knowledge. I attempt to explicate this concept with the help of two images, (...) one from the musical Hair and one from the movie The Pawnbroker, thus seeking to reinforce Camus' reliance upon image as the equivalent of idea. (shrink)

The question of whether literature can be read as philosophy depends perhaps more upon our conception of philosophy than upon our conception of literature. The more logical, argumentative and systematic we take philosophy to be, the less likely we will take literature as serious philosophy. The more intuitive, evidentiary, fluid and visionary we take philosophy to be, the more likely we will take literature as serious philosophy. I think it unlikely that we will get wide agreement about the validity of (...) literature as philosophy through the use of transcendental deductions or through the place of such a claim in a grand metaphysical scheme. Those who believe that literature has important philosophical relevance are better off trying to cite specific examples of how this relevance can be cashed in with the hope that enough examples will win others to this belief. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the understanding of philosophy as entirely made up of argument. It gives some characterization of argument as a rhetorical form and conversation as a motivating attitude. It explicates the understanding of this distinction in Book 1 of Plato’s Republic, and emphasizes the contemporary relevance of the distinction by appeal to the work of Richard Rorty. While respectful of Rorty’s insights, it sides more with the Platonic understanding of philosophical conersation, which does not abandon the pursuit of truth.