In this paper, we will consider the neuro-cognitive systems involved in mediating morality. Five main claims will be made. First, that there are multiple, partially separable neuro-cognitive architectures that mediate specific aspects of morality: social convention, care-based morality, disgust-based morality and fairness/justice. Second, that all aspects of morality, including social convention, involve affect. Third, that the neural system particularly important for social convention, given its role in mediating anger and responding to angry expressions, is ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Fourth, that the (...) neural systems particularly important for care-based morality are the amygdala and medial orbital frontal cortex. Fifth, that while Theory of Mind is not a prerequisite for the development of affect-based 'automatic moral attitudes', it is critically involved in many aspects of moral reasoning. (shrink)

This study investigated the performance of boys with psychopathic tendencies and comparison boys, aged 9 to 17 years, on two tasks believed to be sensitive to amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex func- tioning. Fifty-one boys were divided into two groups according to the Psychopathy Screening Device (PSD, P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, in press) and presented with two tasks. The tasks were the gambling task (A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994) and the Intradimensional/ (...) Extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task (R. Dias, T. W. Robbins, & A. C. Roberts, 1996). The boys with psychopathic tendencies showed impaired performance on the gambling task. However, there were no group differences on the ID/ED task either for response reversal or extradimensional set shifting. The implications of these results for models of psychopathy are discussed. (shrink)

This timely book examines the complex and varied relations between educational institutions and societies at war. Drawn from the pages of the _Harvard Educational Review_, the essays provide multiple perspectives on how educational institutions support and oppose wartime efforts. As the editors of the volume note, the book reveals how people swept up in wars “reconsider and reshape education to reflect or resist the commitments, ideals, structures, and effects of wartime. Constituents use educational institutions to disseminate and reproduce dominant ideologies (...) or to empower and inspire those marginalized.” A wide-ranging volume that addresses issues of vital importance within the United States and throughout the world, _Education and War_ fills a crucial void in our understanding of education and its critical role in society. (shrink)

Grapheme-color synesthetes experience color, not physically present, when viewing symbols. Synesthetes cannot remember learning these associations. Must synesthetic percepts be formed during a sensitive period? Can they form later and be consistent? What determines their nature? We tested grapheme-color synesthete, MC2, before, during and after she studied Hindi abroad. We investigated whether novel graphemes elicited synesthetic percepts, changed with familiarity, and/or benefited from phonemic information. MC2 reported color percepts to novel Devanagari and Hebrew graphemes. MC2 monitored these percepts over 6 (...) months in a Hindi-speaking environment. MC2 and synesthete DN, reported synesthetic percepts for Armenian graphemes, or Cyrillic graphemes + phonemes over time. Synesthetes, not controls, reported color percepts for novel graphemes that gained consistency over time. Phonemic information did not enhance consistency. Thus, synesthetes can form and consolidate percepts to novel graphemes as adults. These percepts may depend on pre-existing grapheme-color relationships but they can flexibly shift with familiarity. (shrink)

An underlying assumption of default-interventionist dual-process theory (DI-DPT) of reasoning is that humans tend to act as cognitive misers. Although miserly cognitive processing occurs when indiv...

This paper argues for the importance of the distinction between internal and external negation over expressions for belief. The common fallacy is to confuse statement like (1) and (2): (1) John believes that the school is not closed on Tuesday; (2) John does not believe that the school is closed on Tuesday. The fallacy has ramifications in teaching, reasoning, and argumentation. Analysis of the fallacy and suggestions for teaching are offered.

This study investigates the performance of psychopathic individuals on tasks believed to be sensitive to dorsolateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) functioning. Psychopathic and non-psychopathic individuals, as defined by the Hare psychopathy checklist revised (PCL-R) [Hare, The Hare psychopathy checklist revised, Toronto, Ontario: Multi-Health Systems, 1991] completed a gambling task [Cognition 50 (1994) 7] and the intradimensional/extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task [Nature 380 (1996) 69]. On the gambling task, psychopathic participants showed a global tendency to choose disadvantageously. Specifically, they showed an (...) impaired ability to show learning over the course of the task. On the ID/ED task, the performance of psychopathic individuals was not significantly different from incarcerated controls on attentional set-shifting, but significant impairments were found on response reversal. These results are interpreted with reference to an OFC and amygdala dysfunction explanation of psychopathy. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is increasing need for peer reviewers as the scientific literature grows. Formal education in biostatistics and research methodology during residency training is lacking. In this pilot study, we addressed these issues by evaluating a novel method of teaching residents about biostatistics and research methodology using peer review of standardized manuscripts. We hypothesized that mentored peer review would improve resident knowledge and perception of these concepts more than non-mentored peer review, while improving review quality.MethodsA partially blinded, randomized, controlled multi-center study (...) was performed. Seventy-eight neurology residents from nine US neurology programs were randomized to receive mentoring from a local faculty member or not. Within a year, residents reviewed a baseline manuscript and four subsequent manuscripts, all with introduced errors designed to teach fundamental review concepts. In the mentored group, mentors discussed completed reviews with residents. Primary outcome measure was change in knowledge score between pre- and post-tests, measuring epidemiology and biostatistics knowledge. Secondary outcome measures included level of confidence in the use and interpretation of statistical concepts before and after intervention, and RQI score for baseline and final manuscripts.ResultsSixty-four residents (82%) completed initial review with gradual decline in completion on subsequent reviews. Change in primary outcome, the difference between pre- and post-test knowledge scores, did not differ between mentored (−8.5%) and non-mentored (−13.9%) residents (p = 0.48). Significant differences in secondary outcomes (using 5-point Likert scale, 5 = strongly agree) included mentored residents reporting enhanced understanding of research methodology (3.69 vs 2.61; p = 0.001), understanding of manuscripts (3.73 vs 2.87; p = 0.006), and application of study results to clinical practice (3.65 vs 2.78; p = 0.005) compared to non-mentored residents. There was no difference between groups in level of interest in peer review (3.00 vs 3.09; p = 0.72) or the quality of manuscript review assessed by the Review Quality Instrument (RQI) (3.25 vs 3.06; p = 0.50).ConclusionsWe used mentored peer review of standardized manuscripts to teach biostatistics and research methodology and introduce the peer review process to residents. Though knowledge level did not change, mentored residents had enhanced perception in their abilities to understand research methodology and manuscripts and apply study results to clinical practice. (shrink)

Regular polysemes are sets of ambiguous words that all share the same relationship between their meanings, such as CHICKEN and LOBSTER both referring to an animal or its meat. To probe how a distributional semantic model, here exemplified by bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), represents regular polysemy, we analyzed whether its embeddings support answering sense analogy questions similar to “is the mapping between CHICKEN (as an animal) and CHICKEN (as a meat) similar to that which maps between LOBSTER (as (...) an animal) to LOBSTER (as a meat)?” We did so using the LRcos model, which combines a logistic regression classifier of different categories (e.g., animal vs. meat) with a measure of cosine similarity. We found that (a) the model was sensitive to the shared structure within a given regular relationship; (b) the shared structure varies across different regular relationships (e.g., animal/meat vs. location/organization), potentially reflective of a “regularity continuum;” (c) some high-order latent structure is shared across different regular relationships, suggestive of a similar latent structure across different types of relationships; and (d) there is a lack of evidence for the aforementioned effects being explained by meaning overlap. Lastly, we found that both components of the LRcos model made important contributions to accurate responding and that a variation of this method could yield an accuracy boost of 10% in answering sense analogy questions. These findings enrich previous theoretical work on regular polysemy with a computationally explicit theory and methods, and provide evidence for an important organizational principle for the mental lexicon and the broader conceptual knowledge system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Emotional Responding Is to Blame It Might Not Be to ResponsibilityR. J. R. Blair (bio)Keywordsblame, responsibility, emotional responses, psychopathyIn this interesting paper, Levy argues that by failing the moral/conventional distinction task (Blair 1995), individuals with psychopathy show a fundamental inability to categorize moral harms and as such their moral responsibility for their actions is reduced. He argues that, although we might still wish to incarcerate such (...) individuals to prevent them inflicting further harm on others, we should be less enthusiastic to blame them for their actions.In many respects, I agree with much of Levy's treatise. I certainly do not regard ascriptions of blame as useful in my own work with this population. I believe that our goal should be to fully understand the nature of their emotional deficit to be able to treat it similarly to other researchers who work to treat other emotional disorders. To me, Levy's argument appears sound.However, I offer three considerations and raise questions within these considerations that might further the debate. First, not all rules involve care-based emotional responses to victims. As Levy notes, this is the origin of the moral/conventional distinction. The problem here is that we do consider someone responsible if they break a conventional transgression. The student talking in class is generally considered blameworthy for this action as long as they knew that the rule of not talking during the lesson applied to that classroom. Yet, there is no victim and no care-based emotional response. Here, the only thing necessary to ascribe blame and responsibility is that the individual knew that a rule exists. Given this holds for conventional transgressions, why must we necessarily make a special case, with respect to responsibility, for moral transgressions?I believe that Levy is fully aware of this concern. He specifically makes reference to moral responsibility and writes that:the kind and degree of wrongness, and therefore blame, which attaches to infringements of the rules [against double parking or line-jumping] is very different, and usually much less significant, than the kind and degree attaching to moral wrongs. For psychopaths, all offences are merely conventional, and therefore—from their point of view—none of them are all that serious.(2007, p. 132)But the danger here is that issues of blame and responsibility may become highly relativistic and hinge on the strength of the emotional reaction. This is a problem because, although we might judge someone as more blameworthy if he intentionally [End Page 149] runs over five people rather than one, do we really consider that there is a distinction in moral responsibility between these two cases? If not, might not responsibility relate to factual knowledge of the existence of the rule against the transgression rather than the emotional response to the transgression?Second, there is considerable debate regarding whether psychopathy represents a taxon or a continuum (e.g., Vasey et al. 2005; Edens et al. 2006). Assuming it does represent a continuum, then we have an additional concern. How little of an emotional response to the transgression reduces one's moral responsibility and blame? Is it only the very reduced (although usually not absent) levels of emotional response that are shown by individuals with psychopathy? Or should we consider moral responsibility and blame proportional to the level of the emotional response? If this latter option is adopted, then what should we do about individuals who show heightened emotional responses, for example, patients with specific anxiety disorders (Rauch, Shin, and Wright 2003)? There are already some data that inhibited children (a developmental precursor to some anxiety disorders; Kagan and Snidman 1999) show heightened conscience development (Asendorpf and Nunner-Winkler 1992). If such children commit moral transgressions, should we regard them as more morally responsible and more blameworthy than regular folks?Third, the issue of intention received little attention in this paper. I have been considered to show a similar lack of attention to intention in the past (Nichols 2002) and, moreover, in some respects the issue was of limited concern given Levy's main goals. However, I mention it because so much of whether we consider someone responsible for their actions and... (shrink)

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)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 94 Heft: 2 Seiten: 609-611.

O presente texto procura entender as razões que levaram o filósofo e crítico escocês Hugh Blair a tomar Voltaire como um modelo para o historiador moderno. Inicia-se o estudo com uma breve exposição de alguns elementos da concepção de história no pensamento voltairiano e então se passa à consideração que o autor britânico faz deles.The present text aims to understand the reasons that took the Scottish philosopher and critic Hugh Blair to take Voltaire as a model to the (...) modern historian. This study begins with a brief description of some elements of history conception according to Voltaire´s thinking and then the consideration that the British author makes of it. (shrink)

IntroductionIf we were to identify the beginning of the study of visual argumentation, we would have to choose 1996 as the starting point. This was the year that Leo Groarke published “Logic, art and argument” in Informal logic, and it was the year that he and David Birdsell co-edited a special double issue of Argumentation and Advocacy on visual argumentation . Among other papers, the issue included Anthony Blair’s “The possibility and actuality of visual arguments”. It was also the (...) year that Gail J. Chryslee, Sonja K. Foss and Arthur L. Ranney published their short text on “The construction of claims in visual argumentation” , stating that even though theorists may know a great deal about the process of argumentation, “virtually none of this knowledge is applicable to visual argumentation […] because of the properties that distinguish visual imagery from discursive symbols” .Texts on visual rhetoric have been written as far back as the early 1980s, .. (shrink)

Political argument and institutions in the UnitedKingdom have frequently been represented as the products of ablend of nationalistic conservatism, liberal individualism andsocialism, in which consensus has been prized over ideology. This situation changed, as the standard story has it, with therise of Thatcherism in the late 1970s, and again with the arrivalof Tony Blair's ``New Labour'' pragmatism in the late 1990s. Solidarity as an element of political discourse makes itsappearance in the UK late in the day. It has been (...) most stronglylinked to the Third Way debate, as framed most influentially inthe work of Prof. Anthony Giddens.In this paper we review the history and pre-history of the debateon solidarity in the UK, focussing mostly on its implications forwelfare state reform. In particular we discuss the proposals forthe long-term care of the Elderly issued by the Royal Commissionon long-term care in 1999. In this context we critically examinethe idea that solidarity is a new concept in British politicalculture, and that it is a concept which has real political ``bite''in the project of welfare reform. We examine this through aconsideration of Giddens's attempted synthesis of politicalargument and social theory. (shrink)

Political argument and institutions in the UnitedKingdom have frequently been represented as the products of ablend of nationalistic conservatism, liberal individualism andsocialism, in which consensus has been prized over ideology. This situation changed, as the standard story has it, with therise of Thatcherism in the late 1970s, and again with the arrivalof Tony Blair's ``New Labour'' pragmatism in the late 1990s. Solidarity as an element of political discourse makes itsappearance in the UK late in the day. It has been (...) most stronglylinked to the Third Way debate, as framed most influentially inthe work of Prof. Anthony Giddens.In this paper we review the history and pre-history of the debateon solidarity in the UK, focussing mostly on its implications forwelfare state reform. In particular we discuss the proposals forthe long-term care of the Elderly issued by the Royal Commissionon long-term care in 1999. In this context we critically examinethe idea that solidarity is a new concept in British politicalculture, and that it is a concept which has real political ``bite''in the project of welfare reform. We examine this through aconsideration of Giddens's attempted synthesis of politicalargument and social theory. (shrink)

The dissociation of fluid cognitive functions from g is implicit in the Cattell-Horn-Carroll gF-gC theory. Nevertheless, Blair is right that fluid functions are extremely important. I suggest that the key mental operation assessed by measures of gF is the ability to sustain mental simulation while keeping the relevant representations decoupled from the actual world – an ability that underlies all hypothetical thinking. (Published Online April 5 2006).

Hugh Blair gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Autoren der schottischen Aufklärung. Seine Predigten wurden mehrfach gedruckt und aufgelegt. F.D.E. Schleiermacher übernahm um die Jahrhundertwende 1800 die erste Übersetzung der Bücher 4 und 5 von Blairs Predigten ins Deutsch. Diese liegen hier in einer gewohnt hochwertigen, kritischen Edition vor.

Twenty years ago, historians complained that the art of excerpting was still a marginal topic. Ten years later, Ann Blair stated that “the history of note-taking has only begun to be written”.1 How...

This is a book on rhetorics as a public communication method, which refers to the ideas of the main theoretician of rhetorics, i.e. Aristotle, Marcus Tillius Cicero, Hugh Blair, Frances Yates, and Gilbert Austin.

ABSTRACT:The articles in the special issue ofBusiness Ethics Quarterly, “Normative Business Ethics in a Global Economy: New Directions on Donaldsonian Themes,” were written by a set of outstanding scholars: Margaret M. Blair, Joseph P. Gaspar, Nien-hê Hsieh, Peter L. Jennings, Marietta Peytcheva, Andreas Georg Scherer, Amy J. Sepinwall, Andrew Stark, Danielle E. Warren, and Manuel Velasquez. In this commentary I reply to my colleagues, arranging my reply around the following themes: 1) the corporate moral agent; 2) the idea of (...) a social contract for business; 3) managing ethics within corporations; and 4) values in business. I discuss each in turn. However, I reflect first on my idiosyncratic approach to business ethics. (shrink)

We propose a new approach for tracing value change. Value change may lead to a mismatch between current value priorities in society and the values for which technologies were designed in the past, such as energy technologies based on fossil fuels, which were developed when sustainability was not considered a very important value. Better anticipating value change is essential to avoid a lack of social acceptance and moral acceptability of technologies. While value change can be studied historically and qualitatively, we (...) propose a more quantitative approach that uses large text corpora. It uses probabilistic topic models, which allow us to trace values that are latent. We demonstrate the approach for five types of value change in technology. Our approach is useful for testing hypotheses about value change, such as verifying whether value change has occurred and identifying patterns of value change. The approach can be used to trace value change for various technologies and text corpora, including scientific articles, newspaper articles, and policy documents. (shrink)

El estudio y análisis de las argumentaciones cotidianas entendidas como interacciones discursivas e intencionales encaminadas a dar cuenta de algo con el fin de lograr que aquello que se sostiene sea aceptado, sería inconcebible sin la aparición de la teoría de los actos de habla de Austin (1962), la propuesta de Searle (1969), el trabajo de Grice sobre la teoría de la conversación (1975) y el importante estudio sistemático de Hamblin sobre el argumento falaz (1970). Como una reelaboración de dichas (...) obras cabe entender la teoría pragmadialéctica de la argumentación propuesta inicialmente por Frans H. van Eemeren y Rob Grootendorst (1984). Algunos autores (Blair, 2006: 11; Woods, 1992) creen ver en ella, más que una teoría, una amalgama de varias teorías y una particular versión de la teoría pragmadialéctica de la argumentación, entendiendo ésta bajo una acepción más general. Otros consideran que ni es útil ni tampoco especulativamente productivo sostener que de toda argumentación pueda buscarse un modelo según el cual ésta buscaría resolver una diferencia de opinión (Goodwin, 1999). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 261-263 [Access article in PDF] The Philosophy of Evil Dan J. Stein Keywords philosophy, evil, self-deception, psychopathy, narcissism, sadism Kubarych (2005) first draws on Peck (1983) to suggest a distinction between psychopaths who have no conscience and therefore no need for self-deception, and evil narcissists who use self-deception to keep the emotional consequences of their crimes out of awareness. He then draws on (...) Davidson (1985) to emphasize a parallel between self-deception (or weakness of the warrant) where an irrational belief conflicts with the evidence, and akrasia (or weakness of the will) where an irrational intention is in conflict with one's values.Although self-deception has long been de-scribed and debated (Fingarette 2000; McLaughlin and Rorty 1988; Mele 2001), a cognitive-affective neuroscience of self-deception has become possible only recently. Such an approach includes several strands. First, contemporary information processing constructs (e.g., schemas) have been used to reframe the early insights of writers like Freud and James, and to emphasize how inattention to painful truths provide a shield against anxiety (Goleman 1997). Second, the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology has been used to emphasize the adaptive advantages of self-deception (Lockard and Delroy 1988). Third, functional brain imaging studies have noted increased activity in executive regions (e.g., prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices) during attempted deception but not during truthful responding, suggesting that the former requires active effort (Spence et al. 2004). The functional imaging of memory suppression suggests similar processes (Anderson et al. 2004). To date, however, there has been little functional imaging work on self-deception.Similarly, although evil has always been a key concern of philosophical thought, a cognitive-affective neuroscience of evil has emerged only in recent years (Stein 2000). Evil actions are not homogenous, and this area of research again comprises a number of different strands. First, there are actions where the primary aim is not necessarily to hurt, but where harm is in fact inflicted. (A contested, but perhaps useful example, is the battery-raising of animals for human consumption [Singer 2001]). Second, there are actions where the aim is to hurt, and where harm to the other may even be enjoyed. (During normal altruistic punishment, for example, reward circuitry is activated [de Quervain et al. 2004]). Third, there are actions characterized by impulsive aggression, and a relative absence of executive control. (There may be psychobiological distinctions between reactive aggression in response to frustration or threat, and instrumental aggression that is more goal directed [Blair 2004]).What are the implications of these two sets of cognitive-affective neuroscience literature for a philosophical consideration of evil and of narcissism? [End Page 261] It may be useful to differentiate healthy processes (e.g., having sufficient frontal cortical activity to be able to deceive others) from psychopathologic processes (e.g., not having the necessary frontal-amygdala circuitry required for empathic processing of emotions in social interaction). Similarly, it may be useful to differentiate between normal healthy narcissism (Taylor and Brown 1988) and pathologic malignant narcissism (Kernberg 1985), and between normal altruistic punishment (Hamilton 1963) and pathologic sadistic personality (Kaminer and Stein 2001). In addition, it is perhaps the case that some cognitive-affective processes that do not seem to involve psychopathology may nevertheless be seen as evil (e.g., arguably, the processes that allow a human to eat a battery-raised chicken), whereas some cognitive-affective processes that are clearly psychopathologic may not be viewed as evil (e.g., impulsive aggression in the context of a frontal lobe tumor may be viewed as excusable, as "mad" rather than "bad").Taken together with recent work on the cognitive-affective neuroscience of psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism, these considerations may lead to somewhat different approaches from those taken by Peck and Davidson. In his work on psychopathy, for example, Blair emphasizes a dysfunction in cognitive-affective processing resulting in abnormalities in the weighing up of social emotions (Blair 2004). This account is not inconsistent with a view that in psychopathy there is a disturbance in moral processing that is evil (contra Peck). Furthermore, this... (shrink)

A prominent view of psychopathic moral reasoning suggests that psychopathic individuals cannot properly distinguish between moral wrongs and other types of wrongs. The present study evaluated this view by examining the extent to which 109 incarcerated offenders with varying degrees of psychopathy could distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions relative to each other and to nonincarcerated healthy controls. Using a modified version of the classic Moral/Conventional Transgressions task that uses a forced-choice format to minimize strategic responding, the present study found (...) that total psychopathy score did not predict performance on the task. Task performance was explained by some individual subfacets of psychopathy and by other variables unrelated to psychopathy, such as IQ. The authors conclude that, contrary to earlier claims, insufficient data exist to infer that psychopathic individuals cannot know what is morally wrong. (shrink)

Edited by leading experts in contemporary environmental philosophy, this anthology features the best available selections that cover the full range of positions within this rapidly developing field. Divided into four sections that delve into the vast issues of contemporary Eco-philosophy, the Fourth Edition now includes a section on Continental Environmental Philosophy that explores current topics such as the social construction of nature, and eco-phenomenology. Each section is introduced and edited by a leading philosopher in the field. For professionals with a (...) career within the environmental field including law, politics, conservation, geography, and biology. (shrink)

There is no specific trans perspective on romantic love. Trans people love and do not love, fall in love and fall out of love, just like everyone else. Trans people inhabit different sexual identities, different relationship types, and different kinds of loving. When it comes to falling in love as or with a trans person, however, things can get more complicated, as questions of gender and sexual identity emerge. In a study by Blair & Hoskin from 2018, 87.5% of (...) the interviewed participants said they would not consider dating a trans person (Blair & Hoskin, 2018). Among those who were open to dating trans people, a pattern emerged: the subjects were disproportionately willing to date trans men but not trans women, even if this preference did not match their own sexual identity; for example, a woman who identifies as a lesbian may be open to dating a trans man but not a trans woman. This seems like a clash of sexual and gender identities: why are women who identify as lesbians willing to date men? This chapter aims to analyze this phenomenon: love between clashing sexual and gender identities – e.g., the love between a man, who identifies as being romantically interested in men, and a trans woman, – and thereby evaluates the limits of romantic love for trans people. Limits of love, in this chapter, are conceived of as normative restrictions on whom and how we love. By exploring cases of clashing sexual and gender identities in romantic love, this chapter analyzes how trans people’s opportunities for love are often limited. (shrink)

The story of the end of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in 1783, is linked with that of the founding of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh , both of which were given Royal Charters sealed on 6 May 1783. It is a story which has been admirably told by Steven Shapin. He persuasively argued that the P.S.E. was a casualty of bitter quarrels rooted in local Edinburgh politics, in personal animosities and in disputes (...) about the control of cultural property and intellectual leadership. In all this he was surely correct just as he was in finding the principal actors in this controversy to be: David Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan; the Reverend Dr John Walker, Professor of Natural History in Edinburgh University; Dr William Cullen, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice-President of the P.S.E.; Mr William Smellie, Printer to the Society of Antiquaries; Henry Home, Lord Kames, S.C.J. and President of the P.S.E.; Sir George Clerk-Maxwell, Vice-President of the P.S.E.; John Robison, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Secretary to the P.S.E.; Edinburgh University's Principal, William Robertson; the Curators of the Advocates Library: Ilay Campbell, Robert Blair, Alexander Abercromby, Alexander Fraser Tytler, Professor of Public Law; Henry Dundas, Lord Advocate and M.P. for Midlothian. In a peripheral way, the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons were probably also involved; so too were Lord Buchan's brothers, Henry and Thomas Erskine, Foxite Whigs who opposed Dundas politically. Henry Erskine displaced Dundas as Lord Advocate in August 1783. After the change of ministry on 18 December 1783 he was ousted, but became Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1785. National as well as burgh politics touched these disputes and gave the parties of the Erskines and Dundas and his friends some leverage in London. (shrink)

The Anglican Thirty Nine Articles join catholic Christendom in affirming that: There is but one living and true God…and in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.