The poetry of Walt Whitman, whose Leaves of Grass was called ôthe secular Scripture of the United Statesö by literary critic Harold Bloom, is a sublime source of contemporary inspiration.

Who carries the burden of proof in analytic philosophical debates, and how can this burden be satisfied? As it turns out, the answer to this joint question yields a fundamental challenge to the very conduct of metaphysics in analytic philosophy. Empirical research presented in this book indicates that the vastly predominant goal pursued in analytic philosophical dialogues lies not in discovering truths or generating knowledge, but merely in prevailing over one’s opponents. Given this goal, the book examines how most effectively (...) to allocate and discharge the burden of proof. It focuses on premises that must prudently be avoided because a burden of proof on them could never be satisfied, and in particular discusses unsupportable bridge premises across inference barriers, like Hume’s barrier between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, or the barrier between the content of our talk or thought, and the world beyond such content. Employing this content/world barrier for a critical assessment of mainstream analytic philosophical methods, this book argues that we must prudently avoid invoking intuitions or other content of thought or talk in support of claims about the world beyond content, that is, metaphysically significant claims. Yet as content-located evidence is practically indispensable to metaphysical debates throughout analytic philosophy, from ethics to the philosophy of mathematics, this book reaches the startling conclusion that all such metaphysical debates must, prudently, be terminated. (shrink)

In this chapter I consider the narrow and wider benefits of permitting assisted dying in the specific context of organ donation and transplantation. In addition to the commonly used arguments, there are two other neglected reasons for permitting assisted suicide and/or euthanasia: assisted dying enables those who do not wish to remain alive to prolong the lives of those who do, and also allows many more people to fulfill their wish to donate organs after death. In the first part of (...) this chapter I explore the possibility of allowing those who die with assistance to donate their organs and the potential benefits of doing so in countries where some form of assisted dying is legal; in the second part I consider the added force that organ donation considerations bring to the argument in favour of legalizing assisted dying in countries where such practices remain forbidden. (shrink)

Matters of Certainty and Conviction. In the section on certainty, Shaw puts forth a proof of the external world, and considers topics such as change, difference, time, consciousness, substance and quality.

In this illustrated choose-your-own-ending book, Margo must choose between cleaning her room or putting it off to do something fun. Readers make choices for Margo and read what happens next, with each story path leading to different consequences. Includes four different endings and discussion questions.

The effects of psycholinguistic variables on reading development are critical to the evaluation of theories about the reading system. Although we know that the development of reading depends on both individual differences (endogenous) and item-level effects (exogenous), developmental research has focused mostly on average-level performance, ignoring individual differences. We investigated how the development of word recognition in Chinese children in both Chinese and English is affected by (a) item-level, exogenous effects (word frequency, radical consistency, and curricular grade level); (b) subject-level, (...) endogenous individual differences (orthographic awareness and phonological awareness); and (c) their interactive effect. We tested native Chinese (Putonghua)-speaking children (n = 763) in grades 1 to 6 with both Chinese character and English word identification (lexical) decision tasks. Our findings show that (a) there were effects of both word frequency and age of acquisition in both Chinese and English, but these item-level effects generally weakened with increasing age; (b) individual differences in phonological and orthographic awareness each contributed to successful performance; and (c) in Chinese, item-level effects were weaker for more proficient readers. We contend that our findings can be explained by theoretical models that incorporate cumulative learning as the basis for development of item-level effects in the reading system. (shrink)

Using information collected from a convenience sample of graduate and undergraduate students affiliated with a Midwestern university in the United States, this study determined the extent to which gender (defined as sex differences) is related to consumers' moral philosophies and ethical intentions. Multivariate and univariate results indicated that women were more inclined than men to utilize both consequence-based and rulebased moral philosophies in questionable consumption situations. In addition, women placed more importance on an overall moral philosophy than did men, and (...) women had higher intentions to behave ethically. The marketing and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and the limitations of the research are presented along with several suggestions for future inquiry, which could advance current understanding of consumer ethics. (shrink)

Using information collected from a convenience sample of graduate and undergraduate students affiliated with a Midwestern university in the United States, this study determined the extent to which gender is related to consumers’ moral philosophies and ethical intentions. Multivariate and univariate results indicated that women were more inclined than men to utilize both consequence-based and rule-based moral philosophies in questionable consumption situations. In addition, women placed more importance on an overall moral philosophy than did men, and women had higher intentions (...) to behave ethically. The marketing and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and the limitations of the research are presented along with several suggestions for future inquiry, which could advance current understanding of consumer ethics. (shrink)

I argue that on very weak assumptions about truth (in particular, that there are coherent norms governing the use of "true"), there is a proposition absolutely inexpressible with conventional language, or something very close. I argue for this claim "constructively": I use a variant of the Berry Paradox to reveal a particular thought for my readership to entertain that very strongly resists conventional expression. I gauge the severity of this expressive limitation within a taxonomy of expressive failures, and argue that (...) despite its strength there is nothing incoherent about admitting its existence. The argument forms part of a project of clarifying precisely what trade-offs are required to secure the kinds of expressive power truth theorists typically want, in the process showing that the admission of very strong expressive limitations may ultimately prove to be the lesser of two evils. (shrink)

We review three possible theoretical mechanisms for the placebo effect: conditioning, expectancy and endogenous opiates and consider the implications of the first two for clinical research and practice in the area of pain management. Methodological issues in the use of placebos as controls are discussed and include subtractive versus additive expectancy effects, no treatment controls, active placebo controls, the balanced placebo design, between- versus within-group designs, triple blind methodology and the double expectancy design. Therapeutically, the possibility of shaping negative placebo (...) responses through placebo sag, overservicing and the use of placebos on their own are explored. Suggestions for using conditioned placebos strategically in conjunction with nonplacebos are made and ways of maximizing the placebo component of nonplacebo treatments are examined. Finally, the importance of investigating the placebo effect in its own right is advocated in order to better understand the long-neglected psychological aspects of the therapeutic transaction. (shrink)

A multidisciplinary collection which brings together cutting edge research about the cultural politics of space.

On the traditional view, moral distress arises only in cases where an individual believes she knows the morally right thing to do but fails to perform that action due to various constraints. We seek to motivate a broader understanding of moral distress. We begin by presenting six types of distress that fall outside the bounds of the traditional definition and explaining why they should be recognized as forms of moral distress. We then propose and defend a new and more expansive (...) definition of moral distress and examine how it can enable the development of a taxonomy of moral distress. (shrink)

In a digital era that neglects handwriting, the current study is significant because it examines the mechanisms underlying this process. We recruited 9- to 10-year-old Chinese children, who were at an important period of handwriting development, and adult college students, for both behavioral and electroencephalogram experiments. We designed four learning conditions: handwriting Chinese, viewing Chinese, drawing shapes followed by Chinese recognition, and drawing shapes followed by English recognition. Both behavioral and EEG results showed that HC facilitated visual word recognition compared (...) to VC, and behavioral results showed that HC facilitated visual word recognition compared to drawing shapes. HC and VC resulted in a lateralization of the N170 in adults, but not in children. Taken together, the results of the study suggest benefits of handwriting on the neural processing and behavioral performance in response to Chinese characters. The study results argue for maintaining handwriting practices to promote the perception of visual word forms in the digital age. (shrink)

Signed utterances are densely packed with pointing signs, reaching a frequency of one in six signs in spontaneous conversations . These pointing signs attain a wide range of functions and are formally highly diversified. Based on corpus analysis of spontaneous pointing signs in Kata Kolok, a rural signing variety of Bali, this paper argues that the full meaning potentials of pointing signs come about through the integration of a varied set of linguistic and extralinguistic cues. Taking this hybrid nature of (...) pointing phenomena into account, it is argued that pointing signs may become an intrinsic aspect of sign language grammars through two mechanisms: morphemization and syntactic integration. Although not entailed in this research, this approach could implicate that some highly systematized pointing systems of speaking communities may to a degree be grammatical as well. (shrink)

Dialogical egalitarianism is the thesis that any proposition asserted in dialogue, if questioned, must be supported or else retracted. Dialogical foundationalism is the thesis that some propositions are privileged over this burden of proof, standing in no need of support unless and until support for their negation is provided. I first discuss existing arguments for either thesis, dismissing each one of them. Absent a successful principled argument, I then examine which thesis it is pragmatically more advantageous to adopt in analytic (...) philosophical dialogue. This requires identifying the goal of such dialogue, to the attainment of which the thesis would be so advantageous. To identify this goal, I draw on Douglas Walton’s typology of dialogues for an analysis of the types of dialogue of 110 representatively selected journal articles in current analytic philosophy. 95% of articles are found to instantiate persuasion dialogue. In light of the thus prevalent goal of persuading one’s opponent, I argue that the adoption of dialogical egalitarianism in analytic philosophical dialogue is pragmatically inescapable. (shrink)

We examined participants' reading and recall of informed consent documents presented via paper or computer. Within each presentation medium, we presented the document as a continuous or paginated document to simulate common computer and paper presentation formats. Participants took slightly longer to read paginated and computer informed consent documents and recalled slightly more information from the paginated documents. We concluded that obtaining informed consent online is not substantially different than obtaining it via paper presentation. We also provide suggestions for improving (...) informed consent-in both face-to-face and online experiments. (shrink)

There has been neglect of systematic conceptual development and empirical investigation within consumer ethics. Scenarios have been a long-standing tool yet their development has been haphazard with little theory guiding their development. This research answers four questions relative to this gap: Do different scenario decision frames encourage different moral reasoning styles? Does the way in which framing effects are measured make a difference in the measurement of the relationship between moral reasoning and judgment by gender? Are true framing effects likely (...) to vary with the situation? and Are true framing effects likely to vary by gender? The conclusions reached were that (1) different scenario frames encourage both types of reasoning, but rule based moral reasoning is dominant regardless of frame, (2) accounting for formal equivalency in the measurement of true framing effects is likely to enhance the interpretation of studies in moral reasoning and judgment, (3) True framing effects are more likely to occur in situations with low to moderate perceived ethicality, and (4) true framing effects are not likely to vary by gender. Explanations as to why these results occurred are discussed. (shrink)

Adaptive immunity provides the unique ability to respond to a nearly infinite range of antigenic determinants. Given the inherent plasticity of the adaptive immune system, a series of tolerance mechanisms exist to reduce reactivity toward self. While this reduces the probability of autoimmunity, it also creates an important gap in adaptive immunity: the ability to recognize microbes that look like self. As a variety of microbes decorate themselves in self‐like carbohydrate antigens and tolerance reduces the ability of adaptive immunity to (...) react with self‐like structures, protection against molecular mimicry likely resides within the innate arm of immunity. In this review, we will explore the potential consequences of microbial molecular mimicry, including factors within innate immunity that appear to specifically target microbes expressing self‐like antigens, and therefore provide protection against molecular mimicry. (shrink)

In this illustrated choose-your-own-ending picture book, Dahabo must decide whether to keep working on her science fair project or quit. Readers make choices for Dahabo and read what happens next, with each story path leading to different consequences. Includes four different endings and discussion questions.

BUSINESS ETHICS, 9th Edition is a comprehensive and practical guide that will help you with real life ethical issues that rise in the business world. It will assist you through the process of developing the critical thinking and analytical skills needed to successfully navigate the unique set of problems that emerge when ethics and commerce collide. This book focuses on key ethical concepts and emphasizes the real world importance of critical topics such as the nature of morality, major theories of (...) ethics and economic justice, and competing views of capitalism and corporate responsibility. It is thorough, flexible, and designed to bolster student involvement with the material for better comprehension and understanding. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

Poetry and informational text showcase the work of community animal shelters. Ten different fictional animals represent the millions of pets brought to shelters every day. Suggestions on animal adoption, including how to prepare and appropriate pet selection, are included, along with resources list.

This book explores three worlds shared by the humans in their collective experiences. It identifies and explores the world of commonsense, the world of religion, and the world of science as three essential dimensions of human experience. The book helps understand that humans can gain comfort and pleasure in commonsense, achieve meaning and purpose from religion, and attain truth and rationality through science. It actively applies theories to and develops theoretical explanations from different domains or situations of human existence. This (...) book is of interest to theorists, researchers, instructors, and students across major academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

One of the first philosophers to relate Indian philosophical thought to Western analytic philosophy, Jaysankar Lal Shaw has been reflecting on analytic themes from Indian philosophy for over 40 years. This collection of his most important writings, introduces his work and presents new ways of using Indian classical thought to approach and understand Western philosophy. By expanding, reinterpreting and reclassifying concepts and views of Indian philosophers, Shaw applies them to the main issues and theories discussed in contemporary philosophy (...) of language and epistemology. Carefully constructed, this volume of his collected writings, shows the parallels Shaw draws between core topics in both traditions, such as proper names, definite descriptions, meaning of a sentence, knowledge, doubt, inference and testimony. It captures how Shaw uses the techniques and concepts of Indian philosophers, especially the followers of the Navya-Nyaya, to address global problems like false belief, higher order knowledge and extraordinary perception. Exploring timeless ideas from Indian thought alongside major issues in contemporary philosophy, Shaw reveals how the two traditions can interact and throw light on each other, providing better solutions to philosophical problems. He has also reflected on modern issues such as freedom, morality and harmony from the classical Indian thought. Featuring a glossary and updates to his writings,The Collected Writings of Jaysankar Lal Shaw: Indian Analytic and Anglophone Philosophy also includes new work by Shaw on the relationship between Indian and analytic philosophy today. (shrink)

Accounts of deep disagreements can generally be categorized as optimistic or pessimistic. Pessimistic interpretations insist that the depth of deep disagreements precludes the possibility of rational resolution altogether, while optimistic variations maintain the contrary. Despite both approaches’ respective positions, they nevertheless often, either explicitly or implicitly, agree on the underlying assumption that argumentation offers the only possible rational resolution to deep disagreements. This paper challenges that idea by, first, diagnosing this argument-only model of arriving at rational resolutions, second, articulating a (...) competing but undertheorized Hegelian-informed approach, and third, attending briefly to some of the challenges of such an approach. (shrink)

Connie Wang ABSTRACT: Accounts of deep disagreements can generally be categorized as optimistic or pessimistic. Pessimistic interpretations insist that the depth of deep disagreements precludes the possibility of rational resolution altogether, while optimistic variations maintain the contrary. Despite both approaches’ respective positions, they nevertheless often, either explicitly or implicitly, agree on the underlying assumption that...

On Exceeding Determination and the Ideal of Reason: Immanuel Kant, William Desmond, and the Noumenological Principle examines the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as it bears on theological principles. Focusing on the foundational ideas (of self, world, and God) that constitute Kant's metaphysical system, Shaw argues that these ideal projections of the rational structures of the thinking subject only conceal and obfuscate the more robust sense of the real that exists behind all phenomenal appearances. This book aims to critically (...) assess the theological content presented in the philosophy of Kant whilst reconstructing and developing some of Kant's more obscure points on the epistemological limitations of pure reason and the borders of knowledge itself. Shaw draws into dialogue with the writings of the contemporary philosopher William Desmond to demonstrate some of the problems of Kantian thought when it comes to the deeper mysteries of being. Desmondian philosophy proves to be a powerful influence over much of this work, as Shaw advances upon the delicate nexus where philosophy and theology convene. As a bold addition to this work, Shaw lays the groundwork for a new discourse in theology and the philosophy of religion: "Noumenology". Noumenology, which is Shaw's response to the deficiencies in methods concerning many of the modern approaches to phenomenology, is a call for the recalibration of the starting point for eidetic inquiry through the proposal of a non-discursive approach to the sensible, emotional, and intellectual - or perhaps, the all together spiritual. To accomplish this, Shaw reaches back to Kant for a heterodox approach to the language and content surrounding the noumenonal to set forth his theological interpretation of the "Noumenological Principle". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life by Sylvia BerrymanElizabeth C. Shaw and Staff*BERRYMAN, Sylvia. Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. vii + 220 pp. Cloth, $70.00—Berryman’s goals in Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life are threefold: to establish that Aristotle practiced what contemporary philosophers call metaethics; to refute the idea that Aristotle justified those ethics by (...) recourse to human nature, understood as an “external point” for “establishing substantial ethical truths from a value-neutral perspective”; and to demonstrate that, for Aristotle, the source and justification for ethical demands is human practical reason.Locating the source of normativity in practical reason does not mean that there are no “standards of truth other than human beings as a species.” Positioning Aristotle against both “Archimedean” naturalisms as well as relativisms and subjectivisms, Berryman sees Aristotle’s appeals to nature as delimiting “the kinds of normative positions that could guide practical reason,” and practical reason as responsive to biological constraints. Still, nature is no fulcrum. It does not mandate the contents of the life we should live. All of this together makes Berryman’s Aristotle a “constitutive constructivist,” which is to say, a nonskeptical, cognitivist nonfoundationalist.Chapter 1’s “Introduction” sets the stage for the book’s metaethical project. Chapters 2 and 3 argue against two versions of the claim that “Aristotle was not reflective on the sources and justifications for his ethical views.” Chapter 2 places “Aristotle in the Ethics Wars” of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, challenging the historicist view that “the kind of metaethical reflection about the sources of normativity” that preoccupies modern philosophy in response to “‘disenchantment’ of the modern world picture” would not have been available to Aristotle. Chapter 3, “Nature and the Sources of Normativity,” positions itself against scholars who maintain that Aristotle was complacent about the values of his own society and/or “too philosophically naïve to even reflect on the sources and justifications of ethical claims.” Inhabiting Aristotle’s social and intellectual milieu, it shows how the epistemological questions, commitments to materialist-scientific worldviews, as well as challenges to divine authority posed by fifth-century sophists, Plato, and fourth-century [End Page 381] hedonists meant that “a philosopher in Aristotle’s position could hardly avoid being reflective on questions of the status of ethics.”After establishing in chapter 3 that Aristotle could have grounded ethical claims in his natural philosophy, chapters 4 through 6 make the case that he did not. Exploring the philosophical work done by Aristotle’s appeals to nature, chapter 4, “Is Aristotle an Archimedean Naturalist?”, focuses on the apparent directionality of human development as well as references to “natural justice” and “natural virtue” in Aristotle’s ethical writings, while chapter 5, “Naturalism in Aristotle’s Politics,” scrutinizes the “naturalness of the polis” and “natural slavery” in Politics 1. Finding “only very minimal appeal to human nature” in the ethical treatises, Berryman sees Aristotle’s recourse to nature in Politics 1 as “the main anomaly” for which her refutation of Archimedean naturalism must account. Based on internal evidence in the Politics and comparison with Aristotle’s biological writings, Berryman concludes that Aristotle wrote the Politics before he “developed his more detailed biological theories.” Rather than evidence of naturalism, Aristotle’s appeals to nature in Politics 1, Berryman argues, are an early reflection of the “nomos-phusis distinction found in sophistic controversies” and a “kind of rhetorical move” based on thorough “prejudice and not reasoned inference.” Concluding “The Case Against a Naturalist Reading,” chapter 6 sets the stage for Berryman’s resourcing of Aristotle’s metaethics away from nature by exploring the inadequacies of the instrumental and theoretical rule-guiding reasoning implicit in naturalist accounts of Aristotelian practical reason.Chapters 7 and 8 offer the book’s positive account. After elaborating Aristotle’s rejection of “metaphysical abstractions” as action-guiding, chapter 7, “Aristotle’s Metaethics,” recovers from the Eudemian Ethics human agency as the source of normativity in Aristotle. Action “carries with it an implicit commitment to the norms of practical reasoning,” and “Aristotle’s insight,” Berryman writes, “is the metaethical recognition that the practical... (shrink)

Strong reciprocity is not the only account that can explain costly punishment in the lab; it can also be explained by reputation-based accounts. We discuss these two accounts and suggest what kinds of evidence would support the two different alternatives. We conclude that the current evidence favors a reputation-based account of costly punishment.

In this paper I discuss the important yet overlooked role played by time in public health ethics, clinical ethics, and personal ethics, and present an exploratory analysis of temporal inequalities and temporal autonomy.

'Eye hEar The Visual in Music' employs the concept of the visual in proximate relation to music, producing a tension: 'is it not the case that there is a gulf between painting and music, between the visible and the audible? One is full of colour and light yet silent; one is invisible and marvellously noisy.' Such a belief, this book argues, betrays an ideological constraint on music, desiccating it to sound, and art to vision. The starting point of this study (...) is more hybrid (and hydrating): that music is never employed without numerous and complex intersections with the visual. By involving the concept of synaesthesia, the book evokes music's multi-sensory nature, stops it from sounding alone, and offers music as a subject for art historians. Music bleeds into art and visuality, in its graphic depiction in notation, in the theatre of performance, its sights and sites. This book looks at music in its absolute guise as a model for art; at notation and the conductor as the silent visual fulcra around which music circulates; at the music and image of Erik Satie; at the concert hall as white cube; at the symphonic film '2001: A Space Odyssey'; and at the liminality of John Cage and Andy Warhol. (shrink)

Adapter molecules in a variety of signal transduction systems link receptors to a limited number of commonly used downstream signaling pathways. During T‐cell development and mature T‐cell effector function, a multichain receptor (the pre‐T‐cell antigen receptor or the T‐cell antigen receptor) activates several protein tyrosine kinases. Receptor and kinase activation is linked to distal signaling pathways (PLC‐γ1 activation, Ca2+ influx, PKC activation and Ras/Erk activation) via the adapter protein LAT (Linker for Activation of T cells). Structure/function studies of LAT including (...) expression of selected LAT point mutations in vivo reveals that these multiple pathways are integrated at the level of the LAT adapter. These studies suggest that similar levels of control may be found in other systems where adapter molecules are known to have important functions. BioEssays 26:61–67, 2004. Published 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The goal of the current study is to investigate the effects of the distractive textual information on the activation of predictive inference online, and how the readers with high or low working memory capacity differ in their online activation and text memory. To test the two hypothesis of attentional competition and semantic integration, we conducted three experiments to investigate whether a local prediction and a global prediction, both of which could be derived from the description of a critical event, are (...) generated in the mind of the reader, and how this generation process is influenced by contextual and cognitive factors of the reader. The results of Experiment 1 and 2 suggest that the elaboration of the global aspects in the narrative reduces the local prediction, but makes the global prediction more salient to occur. The evidence from Experiment 3 confirms the hypothesis that even automatic processes are constrained by distant contextual factors, in combination with differences in working memory, and examines how referentially local and global predictions are intertwined in text comprehension. Overall, these data support the immediate integration hypothesis across sentence boundaries at different representation levels, as well as interaction assumptions of different processing levels within referentially local and referentially global processing contexts. (shrink)