Top-down feedback does not benefit speech recognition; on the contrary, it can hinder it. No experimental data imply that feedback loops are required for speech recognition. Feedback is accordingly unnecessary and spoken word recognition is modular. To defend this thesis, we analyse lexical involvement in phonemic decision making. TRACE (McClelland & Elman 1986), a model with feedback from the lexicon to prelexical processes, is unable to account for all the available data on phonemic decision making. The modular Race model (Cutler (...) & Norris 1979) is likewise challenged by some recent results, however. We therefore present a new modular model of phonemic decision making, the Merge model. In Merge, information flows from prelexical processes to the lexicon without feedback. Because phonemic decisions are based on the merging of prelexical and lexical information, Merge correctly predicts lexical involvement in phonemic decisions in both words and nonwords. Computer simulations show how Merge is able to account for the data through a process of competition between lexical hypotheses. We discuss the issue of feedback in other areas of language processing and conclude that modular models are particularly well suited to the problems and constraints of speech recognition. Key Words: computational modeling; feedback; lexical processing; modularity; phonemic decisions; reading; speech recognition; word recognition. (shrink)

I argue that fitting resentment tracks unacceptable ‘ecological’ imbalances in relative social strength between victims and perpetrators that arise from violations of legitimate moral expectations. It does not respond purely, or even primarily, to offenders’ attitudes, and its proper targets need not be fully developed moral agents. It characteristically involves a wish for the restoration of social equilibrium rather than a demand for moral recognition or good will. To illuminate these contentions, I focus on cases that I believe demonstrate a (...) corollary thesis, namely, that strength, broadly construed, is a necessary condition of resentment-worthiness. I argue that weakness can make resentment unfitting in two ways. First, weakness may prevent a wrongdoer from shifting the balance of social power. Second, a weak wrongdoer may do social damage but be so lowly that resentment, which would represent him as excessively strong, would be inapt. Finally, I consider how accepting the ecological view might affect our theorizing about moral responsibility and the ethics of blame. (shrink)

Classic studies of explanation, such as those of Hempel and Bromberger, took it for granted that an explanation-seeking question of the form "Why P?" should be understood as asking about the proposition P. This view has been recently challenged by Bas van Fraassen and Alan Garfinkel. They acknowledge that some questions have the surface form "Why P?", but they hold that a correct reading for why-questions should take the form "Why P (rather than Q)?", where Q is a contrasting alternative. (...) This contrast theory is discussed here. It is argued that, properly understood, the contrast theory and the propositional approach can and should give equivalent readings to why-questions. (shrink)

This book brings together the relevant interdisciplinary and method elements needed to form a conceptual framework that is both pragmatic and rigorous. By using the best, and often the latest, work in thanatology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, physics, philosophy and ethics, it develops a framework for understanding both what death is - which requires a great deal of time spent developing definitions of the various types of identity-in-the-moment and identity-over-time - and the values involved in death. This pragmatic framework answers questions (...) about why death is a form of loss; why we experience the emotional reactions, feelings and desires that we do; which of these reactions, feelings and desires are justified and which are not; if we can survive death and how; whether our deaths can harm us; and why and how we should prepare for death. Thanks to the pragmatic framework employed, the answers to the various questions are more likely to be accurate and acceptable than those with less rigorous scholarly underpinnings or which deal with utopian worlds.. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of moral responsibility are in widespread agreement that we can only be blamed for actions that express, reflect, or disclose something about us or the quality of our wills. In this paper I reject that thesis and argue that self disclosure is not a necessary condition on moral responsibility and blameworthiness: reactive responses ranging from aretaic appraisals all the way to outbursts of anger and resentment can be morally justified even when the blamed agent’s action expresses or discloses (...) nothing significant about his or her “deep self,” judgments and cares, or the quality of his or her will. I argue that the self-disclosure requirement on responsibility overestimates the extent to which our blaming practices and responsibility judgments are responsive to agents as opposed to actions, and that this mistake has the potential to distort both our reactive responses and our understanding of blamed agents’ characters. (shrink)

Hospital ethics, familiar enough in practice but surprisingly neglected in the literature, deals with the ethical problems that arise distinctively or typically in hospitals. More precisely, it consists of the ethical principles that shouldgovern 1) the conduct of healthcare professionals and other staff in their capacities as members of the hospital as an institution, and 2) the conduct of the hospital itself as an institution. It is a species of institutional ethics, which focuses on the ethical problems created or significantly (...) shaped by the institutional setting in which they occur. (shrink)

In The Elm and the Expert, Jerry Fodor tries to reconcile three philosophical positions he is presently committed to: a computational theory of mind, intentional realism and a denotational theory of meaning. One problem he faces is this: a denotational semantics, according to which the meaning of a singular term like a name is exhausted by its referent, seems to rule out there being true intentional generalizations, or generalizations which advert to the contents of a subject's mental states. That there (...) are such true generalizations is a major element in Fodor's intentional realism. Accordingly, Fodor is forced to find a way of dissolving this apparent incompatibility. This paper looks at his attempts to do so and concludes that they fail. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the principle of respect for autonomy can serve as the basis for laws that significantly limit conduct, including orders mandating isolation and quarantine. This thesis is fundamentally at odds with an overwhelming consensus in contemporary bioethics that the principle of respect for autonomy, while important in everyday clinical encounters, must be 'curtailed', 'constrained', or 'overridden' by other principles in times of crisis. I contend that bioethicists have embraced an indefensibly 'thin' notion of autonomy that (...) uproots the concept from its foundations in Kantian ethics. According to this thin conception, respect for autonomy, if unconditioned by competing principles (beneficence, justice, non-maleficence) would give competent adults the right to do anything they desired to do so long as they satisfied certain baseline psychological conditions. I argue that the dominant 'principlist' model of bioethical reasoning depends on this thin view of autonomy and show how it deprives us of powerful analytical tools that would help us to think seriously about the foundations of human rights, justice, and law. Then, I offer a brief sketch of a 'thick', historically grounded notion of autonomy and show what we could gain by taking it seriously. (shrink)

Abstract:This study explores a phenomenon that has been shown to adversely affect managers’ decisions—competitive irrationality. Managers are irrationally competitive in their decisions when they focus on damaging the profits of competitors, rather than improving their own profit performance. Studies by Armstrong and Collopy (1996) and Griffith and Rust (1997) suggest that the phenomenon is common but not universal. We examine the question of why some individuals exhibit competitive irrationality when making decisions, while others do not by focusing on four aspects (...) of moral philosophy—deontological orientation, cognitive moral development, idealism, and relativism. Results suggest that individuals high in deontological orientation, high in cognitive moral development, high in idealism, and low in relativism will be less competitively irrational than those who are not. (shrink)

Most philosophers do not read Kant’s philosophy of religion as providing a foundation for Christianity, or even as in line with it. Recently, however, a number of so-called “affirmative Kantians” have argued that Kant’s philosophy of religion explicitly aims at recovering the spirit of Christianity. In this article I scrutinize this claim with regard to Kant’s conceptualization of “grace” as a supplement to his moral theory. Contrary to these “affirmative Kantians,” I argue that Kant’s account of grace stems from Kant’s (...) moral pessimism, not from any sense of the shortcomings of human beings in fulfilling their duties or the religious need for supernatural cooperation. Kant’s concept of grace tries to moderate this pessimism by providing what is needed for the possibility of moral progress. But simply by the way in which Kant regards grace as a rational concept needed for his moral theory, it seems to me that his philosophy of religion runs counter to certain central convictions of Christianity. (shrink)

This study proposes a conceptual model to explain persistent, accepted-as-normal corporate wrongdoing (hereafter banality of wrongdoing), particularly for high performance organizations. The model describes five explanatory variables: the culture of competition, ends-biased leadership, missionary zeal, legitimizing myth, and the corporate cocoon. Our thesis is that the nature of competition drives both legitimate and illegitimate goal-seeking to adopt an iconoclastic (rule-breaking) orientation. High performance organizations are favorable hosts for wrongdoing because high performance requires aggressive behavior at the ethical margins of what (...) is acceptable. The way leadership reacts to competition sets the stage for ethical or unethical cultures to develop. Ends-biased leadership will project strong vision, using ideology and legitimizing myth as tools to inspire and motivate. The resulting missionary zeal justifies using questionable means because of the perceived value of the end. One critical method for building strong culture is creating a sense of being separate and apart from the ordinary. This cocoon effect may create a self-referential value system that is significantly at odds with mainstream culture and in which wrongdoing is banal. We intend an empirical study of the variables described in this model. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In its attempt to prove that voters, politicians, and bureaucrats are motivated by the public interest, Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics overlooks a great deal of public-choice research, to which much has been added during the two decades since it was published. The importance of self-interest at both the micro and macro levels of politics becomes clear once one looks not simply at the ?inputs? of a democracy but at its ?outputs? as well. The prevalence of interest (...) groups, the dysfunction of the United States tax code, the lobbying by unions for their members? self-interest, the earmarks in the Patriot Act, the numerous cases of corruption in Western democracies, and the dissatisfaction of citizens with their governments? failings all point to the importance of self-interest in politics. (shrink)

Contemporary Kant-scholarship has a tendency to allign Kant’s understanding of depravity closer to Erasmus than Luther in their famous debate on the freedom of the will (1520–1527). While, at face value, some paragraphs do warrant such a claim, I will argue that Kant’s understanding of the radical evil will draws closer to Luther than Erasmus in a number of elements. These elements are (1) the intervention of the Wille for progress towards the good, (2) a positive choice for evil, (3) (...) the inscrutability of moral progress, (4) the rejection of prudence as a means for salvation and (5) the rejection of moral sentimentalism. I believe that Kant-scholarship mistakenly pegs Kant’s rational Enlightenment optimism for an existential optimism while Kant’s view of fallen nature draws closer to Lutheran than Erasmusian depravity. A tacit Lutheran influence pervades Kant’s moral philosophy which could explain the influence Kant’s has had on some more pessimistic 19th century philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

While scholars are slowly coming to realize that Kants reflections on religion in parts II and III of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason interpret religion specifically as one aspect of moral education, namely moral ascetics. After first clearly distinguishing between a cognitive and a conative aspect of moral education, I show how certain historical religious practices serve to provide the conative aspect of moral education. Kant defines this aspect of moral education as practices that render the human agent. (...) By this it is meant that certain practices can inspire moral interests either by justifying rational hope in living up to a certain standard of moral perfection or by endeavouring to unite human beings in a universal, invisible ethical community that inspires cooperation rather than adversity. (shrink)

There is a mental malaise creeping through the collective human mindset. Mass psychosis is becoming normalized. It is time to break free... One of the key problems facing human beings today is that we do not look after our minds. As a consequence, we are unaware of the malicious impacts that infiltrate and influence us on a daily basis. This lack of awareness leaves people open and vulnerable. Many of us have actually become alienated from our own minds, argues Kingsley (...) L. Dennis. This is how manipulations occur that result in phenomena such as crowd behaviour and susceptibility to political propaganda, consumerist advertising and social management. Mass psychosis is only possible because humanity has become alienated from its transcendental source. In this state, we are prisoners to the impulses that steer our unconscious. We may believe we have freedom, but we don’t. Healing the Wounded Mind discusses these external influences in terms of a collective mental disease – the wetiko virus (Forbes), ahrimanic forces (Steiner), the alien mind (Castaneda), and the collective unconscious shadow (Jung). The human mind has been targeted by corrupt forces that seek to exploit our thinking on a grand scale. This is the ‘magician’s trick’ that has kept us captive within the social systems that both distract and subdue us. In the first part of this transformative book, the author outlines how the Wounded Mind manifests in cultural conditioning, from childhood onwards. In the second part, he examines how ‘hypermodern’ cultures are being formed by this mental psychosis and shaping our brave new world. In an inspiring conclusion, we are shown the gnostic path to freedom through connecting with the transcendental source of life. (shrink)

This chapter argues that adequately facing and responding to medical error requires making space for blame. In vindicating blame as a response to medical error, this essay does not advocate a return to a “bad apple” blame culture in which unlucky practitioners are unfairly scapegoated. It does, however, defend the targeted feeling and expression of angry, and even resentful, blaming attitudes toward health-care providers who make at least certain kinds of mistakes. The chapter makes the case that the angry and (...) resentful feelings associated with blame reflect a conception of oneself as a person worthy of consideration, and that expressing these feelings allows victims and families to fight for their dignity and self-respect. Along the way, it distinguishes between shaming and blaming, explaining that blaming, unlike shaming, characteristically aims to draw offenders into a moral dialogue. As a result, a good blaming practice can provide a logic within which providers who make costly errors may seek forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. (shrink)

Amartya Sen has demonstrated a possible inconsistency between a (liberal) right and Pareto optimality. Neither Sen nor the subsequent literature have discussed the origin of the rights that lead to the liberal paradox. In this article I examine one possible origin of rights definitions-a constitutional contract agreed to by all members of the community. Constitutional rights are show to be vulnerable to a similar paradox as with liberal rights, but if the writers of the constitution were correct in their choice (...) of actions to protect, such paradoxes will be unlikely and involve small welfare losses when they do occur. The article demonstrates that both the origin of rights and their potential role in advancing the interests of citizens can be explained using a utilitarian/welfarist methodology. (shrink)

Is it possible that all of the social sciences could employ a common methodology? If so, what would it be? This article adresses these questions. It takes off from James Coleman’s recent book, The Foundations of Social Theory. Coleman’s social theory is built on the postulate that individuals are rational actors, the same postulate that most of modern economics is built upon. This article critiques the use of this postulate in economics, and thus questions whether it is a useful building (...) block for the methodological foundations of social science research. It proposes an adaptive view of human behavior as an alternative in which preferences are conditioned by past experience. The work of Joseph Schumpeter is discussed as an exemplar of the methodology advocated here. (shrink)

Luther counseled those preparing to die to ponder the three ‘glowing pictures’ of Christ –‘life, grace, and heaven’, as well as the affective ‘sign’ of the sacrament – to drive out the three counterpictures produced by the devil –‘death, sin, and hell’. The proper timing of contemplation before death and the proper orientation of clinging to Christ and his merciful acts on the cross will empower the sufferer to face death with confidence. Before the saving image of Christ, the trilogy (...) produced by evil vanishes of itself without opposition, a psychological phenomenon which incites faith in us and praise of God at this last hour. The annihilating knowledge of the negative images may be useful, therefore, if it drives us into the arms of Christ. (shrink)

The central thesis of our target article is that feedback is never necessary in spoken word recognition. In this response we begin by clarifying some terminological issues that have led to a number of misunderstandings. We provide some new arguments that the feedforward model Merge is indeed more parsimonious than the interactive alternatives, and that it provides a more convincing account of the data than alternative models. Finally, we extend the arguments to deal with new issues raised by the commentators (...) such as infant speech perception and neural architecture. (shrink)

We agree with Frost that the variety of orthographies in the world's languages complicates the task of Frost suggests that orthographic processing must therefore differ between orthographies. We suggest that the same basic orthographic processes are applied to all languages. Where languages differ is in what the reader must do with the results of orthographic processing.

Rather than worrying about Bayesian Fundamentalists, I suggest that our real concern should be with Mechanistic Fundamentalists; that is, those who believe that concrete, but frequently untestable mechanisms, should be at the heart of all cognitive theories.

“Balancing Ethics and Shareholder Returns: The Case of Google in China” provides a timely example of a well-known firm who, in their attempt to act in an ethical manner, generated tremendous financial harm to their shareholders. It provides an interesting counterpoint to the assertion in the literature that shareholder wealth maximization provides an ethical basis for all business decisions. Google is a firm that many students know and admire, and this should spark interest in the case. It can be assigned (...) in the early stages of a corporate finance class, where the topic of discussion is the goal of the firm, or in a business ethics class, where the goal of the firm is evaluated. The case provides an opportunity to evaluate the ethical basis for Google’s actions, as well as the resulting impact on shareholder returns. The case may also represent a real-life counterpoint to the oft-repeated maxim that “Good ethics is good business”. Information in the case was compiled from secondary sources. (shrink)