This groundbreaking handbook of character strengths and virtues is the first progress report from a prestigious group of researchers who have undertaken the systematic classification and measurement of widely valued positive traits. Character Strengths and Virtues classifies twenty-four specific strengths under six broad virtues that consistently emerge across history and culture. This book demands the attention of anyone interested in psychology and what it can teach about the good life.

This article provides an ethical analysis of the U.S. practice guideline update on disorders of consciousness. Our analysis focuses on the guideline’s recommendations regarding the use of investigational neuroimaging methods to assess brain‐injured patients. Complex and multifaceted ethical issues have emerged because these methods alter the clinical understanding of consciousness. We address issues of false hope, patient suffering, and cost. We argue that, in spite of these concerns, there is significant benefit to using neuroimaging to assess brain‐injured patients in most (...) cases. (shrink)

An essential all-in-one introduction, Ethics for Engineers provides in-depth coverage of major ethical theories, professional codes of ethics, and case studies in a single volume. Incorporating numerous practical examples and about 100 review questions, it helps students better understand and address ethical issues that they may face in their future careers. Topics covered include whistle-blowing, the problem of many hands, gifts, bribes, conflicts of interest, engineering and environmental ethics, privacy and computer ethics, ethical technology assessment, and the ethics of cost-benefit (...) analysis and risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that two objects of value can be ‘roughly equal’, or ‘on a par’, or belong to the same ‘clump’ of value in a sense that is fundamentally different from that in which some objects are ‘better than’, ‘worse than’, or ‘equally as good as’ others. This article shows that if two objects are on a par, or belong to the same clump, then an agent accepting a few plausible premises can be exploited in a money-pump. The central (...) premise of the argument is that value is choice-guiding. If one object is more valuable than another, then it is not permitted to choose the less valuable object; and if two objects are equally valuable it is permitted to choose either of them; and if two objects are on a par or belong to the same clump it is also permitted to choose either of them. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel puzzle about desire consisting of three independently plausible but jointly inconsistent propositions: all desires are dispositional states, we have privileged access to some of our desires, and we do not have privileged access to any dispositional state. Proponents of the view that all desires are dispositional states might think the most promising way out of this puzzle is to deny. I argue, however, that such attempts fail because the most plausible accounts of self-knowledge of desires (...) do not explain how we possess privileged access to dispositional desires. I conclude by offering what I take to be a more promising solution to the puzzle, one that involves the rejection of on the grounds that some desires possess phenomenology. (shrink)

Hare proposes a view he calls prospectism for making choices in situations in which preferences have a common, but problematic structure. I show that prospectism permits the decision-maker to make a series of choices she knows in advance will lead to a sure loss. I also argue that a theory that permits the decision-maker to make choices she knows in advance will lead to a sure loss should be rejected.

:In this paper, the author argues that Joseph Fins’ mosaic decisionmaking model for brain-injured patients is untenable. He supports this claim by identifying three problems with mosaic decisionmaking. First, that it is unclear whether a mosaic is a conceptually adequate metaphor for a decisionmaking process that is intended to promote patient autonomy. Second, that the proposed legal framework for mosaic decisionmaking is inappropriate. Third, that it is unclear how we ought to select patients for participation in mosaic decisionmaking.

Discourse between pupils represents a core element of citizenship education in England. However, as it is currently presented within the curriculum, discourse adopts the form of the rather broad terms of 'discussion' and 'debate'. These terms are diffuse, and in themselves offer little pedagogical guidance for teachers implementing the curriculum in schools. Moreover, there has been little academic reflection in England as to how theoretical ideas on civic dialogue may usefully inform approaches to pupil discourse. For this reason, how pupils (...) experience discursive learning activities is likely to depend on how individual schools and teachers understand the terms 'discussion' and 'debate' and the way in which this understanding is translated into pupil learning activities. This article explores how recourse to deliberative democratic theory, and in particular to the principle of contestatory deliberative democracy found within recent republican writing, may be useful in helping educators to consider critically the capacities needed for effective civic discourse as a well as the outcomes of pupils' dialogical engagement. (shrink)

This paper sets out to give sufficient detail to the notion of mental simulation to allow an appraisal of its contribution to ‘mindreading’ in the context of the ‘false-belief tasks’ used in developmental psychology. We first describe the reasoning strategy of ‘modified derivation’, which supports counterfactual reasoning. We then give an analysis of the logical structure of the standard false-belief tasks. We then show how modified derivation can be used in a hybrid strategy for mindreading in these tasks. We then (...) formulate the hypothesis that children become able (around the age of 4 years) to pass these tasks when they acquire the counterfactual reasoning ability required in this strategy. We find this to be consistent with various empirical findings. We then discuss the implications for the theory/simulation debate, meta-representation and pretence. (shrink)

Is it really necessary to add something like the Health Impact Fund to the existing global patent system? We can divide this question into two parts. First, is there something seriously wrong with the status quo and, if so, what exactly is it? Second, how do we best go about solving the problem; that is, how does the design of the reform proposal address the flaws in the status quo? Jorn Sonderholm, in his critique of the Health Impact Fund, or (...) HIF, raises both of these issues. These criticisms afford us the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to ameliorating glaring problems with the current system for incentivizing R&D for essential medicines, and to clarify why we believe the HIF is exactly what the world needs. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to consider the ways in which civic republican theory can provide a meaningful and useful account of social justice, one that is which holds resonance for educational debates. Recognising the need for educationalists interested in civic republicanism to pay greater attention to ideas of justice—and in particular social justice as it concerns relationships between citizens —it is argued that a form of civic republicanism committed to freedom as non-domination is capable of providing a substantive (...) model for analysing social justice within educational arenas. After positioning the contribution offered here within existing educational literature on civic republicanism, salient elements of social justice as freedom as non-domination are identified. On this basis, debates concerning the existence and potential expansion of state grammar schools in England are considered in relation to the account of republican social justice as non-domination. It is argued that from this republican position grammar schools represent an arbitrary domination of the interests of those less well off by those with greater material and cultural capital and in doing so lead to advantages for some at the expense of others. Though the focus of the paper is on grammar schools in England, it is suggested that republican justice may be a useful frame for considering similar educational cases in England and elsewhere. (shrink)

In psychology, measurement instruments are constructed from scales, which are obtained on the grounds of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Looking at the literature, one can find various recommendations regarding how these techniques should be used during the scale construction process. Some authors suggest to use exploratory factor analysis on the entire data set while others advice to perform an internal cross-validation by randomly splitting the data set in two and then either perform exploratory factor analysis on both parts or (...) exploratory factor analysis on the first part and confirmatory factor analysis on the other. In spite of all these divergent recommendations, there is no consensus on which method yields the best result. In this paper, we analyze this issue in light of the prediction versus accommodation debate and argue that the answer to this question depends on one’s conception of the criteria that should be used to achieve the goals of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

A computational modeling approach was used to test one possible explanation for the limited capacity of the subitizing phenomenon. Most existing models of this phenomenon associate the subitizing span with an assumed structural limitation of the human information processing system. In contrast, we show how this limit might emerge as the combinatorics of the space of enumeration problems interacts with the human cognitive architecture in the context of an enumeration task. Subitizing‐like behavior was generated in two different models of enumeration, (...) one based on the ACT‐R cognitive architecture and the other based on the principles of parallel distributed processing (PDP). Our results provide good qualitative fits to results obtained in a variety of empirical studies. (shrink)

In the Enneads Plotinus articulates an account of ‘creation’ following in the tradition, albeit critically, of Plato’s Timaeus. This article compares Hart’s account of creation, as expressed in The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth , and other secondary literature, with that of Plotinus’s. Some significant differences and interesting parallels are highlighted.

As mariculture—the cultivation of aquatic organisms in marine environment—intensifies to meet the demands of sustainable blue growth and national policies, novel ethical challenges will arise. In the context of ethics, primary concerns over aquaculture and mariculture tend to stay within differing value-based perspectives focused on benefits to human and non-human subjects, specifically animal welfare and animal rights. Nonetheless, the burgeoning field of feminist blue humanities provides ethical considerations that extend beyond animal subjects (including humans), often because of its concerns with (...) new materialist, posthumanist, and other relations-based theories. This article examines feminist blue humanities and the contributions it may bring to understanding contemporary and future ethical challenges posed by mariculture and its intensification, especially the cultivation of low-trophic organisms. By offering an overview of feminist blue humanities, this article explores some of its particularities by drawing out three major ethical concerns facing contemporary mariculture, specifically material reconfigurations, radical alteration of the lives of low-trophic species through industrialization and increases in maricultural waste products. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume seek to answer this question by exploring how analytic and holistic processes contribute to our perception of faces, objects, ...

In 2004, the first ever multi‐sited clinical trials studied the prospect of HIV biomedical prevention (referred to as pre‐exposure prophylaxis—‘PrEP’). The trials were implemented at several international sites, but many officially closed down before they completed. At most sites, both scientists and community AIDS advocates raised concerns over the ethics and scientific rationales of the trial. Focusing on the Nigerian trial site, we detail the controversy that emerged among mostly Nigerian research scientists who scrutinized the research design and protocol. While (...) some of the disputes, especially those pertaining to community engagement mechanisms, were ultimately resolved in international fora and implemented in later PrEP trials, concerns over science rationales and assumptions were never addressed. We argue that scientific rationales should be treated as ethical concerns and suggest that such concerns should be deliberated at host sites before the trial protocol is finalized. (shrink)

Hegel’s discussion of sense certainty in the Phenomenology of Spirit contains the following, humorous, observation.

It is widely believed that consequentialists are committed to the claim that persons are mere containers for well-being. In this article I challenge this view by proposing a new version of consequentialism, according to which the identities of persons matter. The new theory, two-dimensional prioritarianism, is a natural extension of traditional prioritarianism. Two-dimensional prioritarianism holds that wellbeing matters more for persons who are at a low absolute level than for persons who are at a higher level and that it is (...) worse to be deprived of a given number of units than it is good to gain the same number of units, even if the new distribution is a permutation of the original one. If a fixed amount of well-being is transferred from one person to another and then transferred back again, two-dimensional prioritarianism implies that it would have been better to preserve the status quo. (shrink)

Exploratory factor analysis is a statistical method widely used in quantitative psychology for the construction of scales and measurement instruments. It aims to reduce the complexity of a data set and explain the common and unique variance using latent variables. In introductory textbooks, exploratory factor analysis is generally presented in contrast to confirmatory factor analysis as a theory- or a hypothesis-generating process that does not require prior background, theory or hypothesis to be performed. The aim of the present paper is (...) to analyze this claim and clarify in which sense exploratory factor analysis is theory-laden. We provide a careful examination of the concepts it involves and thereby establish a clear limitation of the epistemic scope of exploratory factor analysis. (shrink)

Pragmatic arguments seek to demonstrate that you can be placed in a situation in which you will face a sure and foreseeable loss if you do not behave in accordance with some principle P. In this article I show that for every P entailed by the principle of maximizing expected utility you will not be better off from a pragmatic point of view if you accept P than if you don’t, because even if you obey the axioms of expected utility (...) theory it is possible to place you in a situation in which you will face a certain and foreseeable loss. This shows that for a large class of Ps, there is no pragmatic difference between people who accept P and those who don’t. (shrink)

The advent of pharmacogenomics—the study of how the human genome influences drug response within a person or population—has begun to drive the development of pharmaceuticals in Western medicine today. Although pharmacogenomics promises dramatic improvement in drug safety and efficacy, the field also raises a host of ethical questions. The need to protect informed consent and confidentiality and to promote justice and equity—both nationally and globally—requires that one approach pharmacogenomics with an enthusiastic, yet critical, eye. Drawing on the normative values of (...) respect for persons (as both autonomous and relational), human well-being, socioeconomic justice, and human solidarity and the common good, this article offers several concrete suggestions for public policy to help ensure that pharmacogenomics develops in a way that promotes the good of both individuals and the broader society. (shrink)

This inquiry analyzed the extent to which television commercials used mature models, relative to younger models. It also analyzed the extent to which commercials portrayed the elderly in a favorable or an unfavorable manner. The study used content analysis to test twelve hypotheses. The authors arrived at conclusions relating to the depiction of mature individuals in television commercials and set forth various recommendations to advertisers, based on the analysis.

I would try to reduce the anxiety to realizing that seemingly the same proposition is really different when it is false by pointing out that the contents of two of our beliefs can be different when we think they are the same as well as being the same when we think they are different. That is, belief contents are not infallibly known or knowable in conscious reflective awareness of beliefs. Trying or wanting to accurately perceive what you are thinking does (...) not guarantee success. We can be wrong even about what we believe our beliefs are we don't and maybe can't realize that two beliefs are contradictory). (shrink)

Cognitive science is a new paradigm that informs and involves several disciplines, including artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, cognitive ethology, and the philosophy of mind. Cognitive science studies the mind as an information processor, with the computer often operating as a metaphor for the operations of the mind. Developments in the cognitive sciences stand to affect tremendously how we think of the mind and, consequently, how we think of theological and religious claims that concern the human subject. The unity of (...) self, claims of human uniqueness, the relation of mind and body, human nature, and the personal agency of God are all areas of religious import in which the cognitive sciences need to be taken into account. (shrink)