Neuroscientists are searching for the engram within the conceptual framework established by John Locke's theory of mind. This framework was elaborated before the development of information theory, before the development of information processing machines and the science of computation, before the discovery that molecules carry hereditary information, before the discovery of the codon code and the molecular machinery for editing the messages written in this code and translating it into transcription factors that mark abstract features of organic structure such as (...) anterior and distal. The search for the engram needs to abandon Locke's conceptual framework and work within a framework informed by these developments. The engram is the medium by which information extracted from past experience is transmitted to the computations that inform future behavior. The information-conveying symbols in the engram are rapidly generated in the course of computations, which implies that they are molecules. (shrink)

The title may be understood in three ways. Firstly, the truth under study is the truth about freedom. We speak of the truth of something, in as much as we presume that there are many misconceptions about that something, and it stands in need of clarification. Thus, the many misconceptions about freedom will have to be divested, if freedom is to be rightly grasped. Secondly, in the sense that there is a truth in the core of freedom, indeed, truth is (...) the essence of freedom. If truth is to be rightly grasped, its core has to be penetrated. Thirdly, there is a deeper relation between truth and freedom. Freedom cannot be understood, much less rightly practised, if we do not comprehend the necessary relation that freedom bears to truth. This essay purports to study all three senses, not quite generally, but with special reference to Ratzinger, the German theologian-cum-phenomenologist of religion, who also happens to be the current pope Benedict XVI of the Catholic Christianity. The study proceeds in three stages. First of all, I will give the statement of the problem. Secondly, I will briefly dwell on the modern Western history of freedom. Thirdly, I will study the interface between freedom and truth, highlighting the nature of human freedom, the relation between freedom and responsibility, and the relation between freedom and the truth of human existence itself. The essay is more interpretive than evaluative, with an eye to be as close to the insightful thoughts of Ratzinger as possible. (shrink)

Crespi & Badcock (C&B) provide a novel hypothesis outlining a role for imprinted genes in mediating brain functions underlying social behaviours. The basic premise is that maternally expressed genes are predicted to promote hypermentalistic behaviours, and paternally expressed genes hypomentalistic behaviours. The authors provide a detailed overview of data supporting their ideas, but as we discuss, caution should be applied in interpreting these data.

Today's college students have more knowledge available to them than can be absorbed; mastery of a subject area creates siloes where nearly every course is tailored to comprehending subject matter that may be outdated before they graduate. But learning is more than subject-matter expertise. Our fast-paced environment requires instantaneous reactions to complex questions. Our instant-messaging age champions quick response over reflection or thought--even the president governs by Twitter. Yet the ethical dilemmas are no less complex than the subject matter; cyber (...) security, prison reform, labor rights, abortion, artificial intelligence, or gun laws are common table topics over lunch. Struggling through that complexity is central to understanding its implications for our culture. This book brings together some of the leading ethicists in the country to consider the rightful place of ethics in the university today. The authors make the case that higher education has a special duty to empower students to cultivate their character, ethically assess situations, and prepare them for an increasingly complex world. -- back cover. (shrink)

Recent reports published by the United Nations and the World Health Organization suggest that the brain drain of healthcare professionals from the developing to the developed world is decimating the provision of healthcare in poor countries. The migration of these key workers is driven by a combination of economic inequalities and the recruitment policies of governments in the rich world. This article assesses the impact of the healthcare brain drain and argues that wealthy countries have a moral obligation to reduce (...) the flow of healthcare workers from the developing to the developed world. (shrink)

A comparison is made between the Bohm trajectory and Feynman path approaches to the long-standing problem of determining the average lime taken for a particle described by the Schrödinger wave function ψ to tunnel through a potential barrier. The former approach follows simply and uniquely from the basic postulates of Bohm's causal interpretation of quantum mechanics; the latter is intimately related to the most frequently cited approaches based on conventional interpretations. Emphasis is given to the fact that fundamentally different transmission (...) (T)-reflection (R) decompositions, particlelike and wavelike respectively, are central to the two methods: ¦ψ¦2=[¦ψ¦2]T+[¦ψ¦2]R (Bohm trajectory approach); ψ=ψT+ψR (Feynman path approach). (shrink)

Statisticians in medicine can disagree on appropriate methodology applicable to the design and analysis of clinical trials. So called Bayesians and frequentists both claim ethical superiority. This paper, by defining and then linking together various dichotomies, argues there is a place for both statistical camps. The choice between them depends on the phase of clinical trial, disease prevalence and severity, but supremely on the ethics underlying the particular trial. There is always a tension present between physicians primarily obligated to their (...) own patients (the weight of 'individual ethics') and ethical committees responsible for the scientific merit of the trial and its long-term implications ('collective ethics'). Individual ethics, it is proposed, favour the Bayesian approach; collective ethics, the frequentist. Though in some situations the choice appears clear-cut, there remain other where both methodologies can be appropriate. (shrink)

Recent research on the relations of personality to well-being shows that the people who are most healthy, happy and fulfilled are those who are high in all three of the character traits of self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence as measured by the Temperament and Character Inventory. In the past, the healthy personality has often been considered to require only high self-directedness and high cooperativeness. However, now the self-centred behaviour of people who are low in self-transcendence is degrading the conditions needed for (...) sustainable life by all human beings. Consequently, human beings need to and can develop their capacity for self-transcendence in order to maintain their individual and collective well-being. (shrink)

Ancillary care is care that research participants need that is not essential to make the research safe or scientifically valid and is not needed to remedy injuries that eventuate as a result of the research project itself. Ancillary care duties have recently been defended on the grounds of beneficence, entrustment, utility and consent. Justice has also been mentioned as a possible basis of ancillary care duties, but little attention has been paid to this approach. In this paper, the author seeks (...) to rectify this omission by arguing that ancillary care duties can be based on a principle of justice as rectification. (shrink)

Pain is an important focus for consciousness research because it is an avenue for exploring somatic awareness, emotion, and the genesis of subjectivity. In principle, pain is awareness of tissue trauma, but pain can occur in the absence of identifiable injury, and sometimes substantive tissue injury produces no pain. The purpose of this paper is to help bridge pain research and consciousness studies. It reviews the basic sensory neurophysiology associated with tissue injury, including transduction, transmission, modulation, and central representation. In (...) addition, it highlights the central mechanisms for the emotional aspects of pain, demonstrating the physiological link between tissue trauma and mechanisms of emotional arousal. Finally, we discuss several current issues in the field of pain research that bear on central issues in consciousness studies, such as sickness and sense of self. (shrink)

This book charts new ground, specifically, in its negotiation of a definition of animal welfare, in its systematic discussion of the organizations actually ...