What role, if any, should the government perform in a society? Two very different answers to this question have been provided by John Rawls and Robert Nozick. For Rawls, the government plays an important role in ensuring that the principles of justice are realized in the workings of society. For Nozick, the role of government is limited to that of providing protection. The debate over these two views has led to the questioning of the entire liberal doctrine, a questioning that (...) has taken place not only within intellectual circles, but also within the society at large. (shrink)

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child development, (...) public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

In this paper, a case study is presented of constitutional debates about abortion. An analysis is given of arguments from the Roe v. Wade case for definitions concerning the key notions of `person' and `human life'. The paper illustrates how the Court has gradually taken a more pragmatic or rhetorical position on definitional matters crucial to the purpose of regulating abortion.

This work is an initial step toward developing a cognitive theory of cyber deception. While widely studied, the psychology of deception has largely focused on physical cues of deception. Given that present‐day communication among humans is largely electronic, we focus on the cyber domain where physical cues are unavailable and for which there is less psychological research. To improve cyber defense, researchers have used signaling theory to extended algorithms developed for the optimal allocation of limited defense resources by using deceptive (...) signals to trick the human mind. However, the algorithms are designed to protect against adversaries that make perfectly rational decisions. In behavioral experiments using an abstract cybersecurity game (i.e., Insider Attack Game), we examined human decision‐making when paired against the defense algorithm. We developed an instance‐based learning (IBL) model of an attacker using the Adaptive Control of Thought‐Rational (ACT‐R) cognitive architecture to investigate how humans make decisions under deception in cyber‐attack scenarios. Our results show that the defense algorithm is more effective at reducing the probability of attack and protecting assets when using deceptive signaling, compared to no signaling, but is less effective than predicted against a perfectly rational adversary. Also, the IBL model replicates human attack decisions accurately. The IBL model shows how human decisions arise from experience, and how memory retrieval dynamics can give rise to cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias. The implications of these findings are discussed in the perspective of informing theories of deception and designing more effective signaling schemes that consider human bounded rationality. (shrink)

The eureka moment is a myth. It is an altogether naïve and fanciful account of human progress. Innovations emerge from a much less mysterious combination of historical, circumstantial, and accidental influences. This book explores the origin and evolution of several important behavioral innovations including the high five, the Heimlich maneuver, the butterfly stroke, the moonwalk, and the Iowa caucus. Such creations' striking suitability to the situation and the moment appear ingeniously designed with foresight. However, more often than not, they actually (...) arise 'as if by design.' Based on investigations into the histories of a wide range of innovations, Edward A. Wasserman reveals the nature of behavioral creativity. What surfaces is a fascinating web of causation involving three main factors: context, consequence, and coincidence. Focusing on the process rather than the product of innovation elevates behavior to the very center of the creative human endeavor. (shrink)

Mele's jointly sufficient conditions for self-deception preclude definitive ascriptions of self-deception in practice. Consequently, actual ascriptions of self-deception require large inferences and may frequently be in error. It is recommended that attention be directed toward actual practices of ascription to understand how children learn and adults dispense what is ultimately a moral judgment.

The history of comparative psychology is replete with proclamations of human uniqueness. Locke and Morgan denied animals relational thought; Darwin opened the door to that possibility. Penn et al. may be too quick to dismiss the cognitive competences of animals. The developmental precursors to relational thought in humans are not yet known; providing animals those prerequisite experiences may promote more advanced relational thought.

The copious literature on the work of artist Robert Smithson has made very little of the many parallels between the inventor of earthworks and the nineteenth-century author of pataphysics, despite the established fact that the artist read and made notes from Alfred Jarry’s Dr. Faustroll (1898) while working on the Spiral Jetty in 1970, which undoubtedly influenced the subsequent Broken Circle &/ Spiral Hill (1971, Emmen). Given the insightful literature reassessing Jarry’s influence on twentieth-century artists including Marcel Duchamp, John Cage (...) and Rodney Graham, a consideration of Smithson’s spiral earthworks in connection with Jarry is long overdue. In contrast to prevailing art research practices today, Smithson’s work is much more aligned with the pataphysical pursuit of ‘imaginary solutions’ that examine ‘the laws governing exceptions’ and describe ‘a universe which can be – and perhaps should be – envisaged in place of the traditional one’. Art historian Jack Burnham’s interprets Smithson’s earthworks as a ‘time-bound web of man-nature interactions … didactic exercises … [that] show a desperate need for environmental sensibility’. In this respect, the work of both Jarry and Smithson can provide a useful corrective to an overly rationalistic approach to art research, offering the field – and contemporary art in general – potentially valuable tools for forms of practice that challenge rather than adopt conventional academic models and epistemological constructs. (shrink)

How do we prevent the next pandemic? Will governments successfully tackle climate change? Will they find ways to close the gap between the haves and have-nots and to eliminate poverty? Which solution - democratic or authoritarian - will determine the global governance of a flawed nation-state system? This unique contribution to global studies advances a multidisciplinary theory that the governments of all human societies are the tenuous outcome of the competing solutions to the Imperatives of Order, Welfare, and Legitimacy (OWL). (...) The OWL paradigm provides a common framework to evaluate the contrasting responses of the liberal democratic, Chinese, and Russian solutions to global governance. Underscored is the volume's contention that global governance is the overriding issue confronting nation-states and the diverse and divided peoples of what is now a global society for the first time in the evolution of the species. The volume addresses a wide spectrum of audiences, united in their shared resolve that the democracies prevail in a projected century-long struggle between democratic and authoritarian regimes to determine global governance. Scholars, teachers, students, elected officials, policy analysts, media professionals, and engaged citizens who make self-government work will profit from this visionary and provocative study. (shrink)

Liberation theology is in retreat. Once orthodox Catholics, starting with Pope John Paul II, recognized liberation theology's cultural challenge, they effectively countered it. They insisted on a traditional Catholic hierarchy of values. They undercut liberation theology's appeal by taking back key words and precepts that liberationists tried to appropriate. The Magisterium's sensus fidei included practical steps to demonstrate the weakness of liberation theology's hold, especially on poor people. Orthodox Catholics thus used the theological and practical weapons that the Church always (...) had at her disposal. The response of many liberation theologians has been to change some of liberation theology's precepts. (shrink)

CHAPTER Our Field of Inquiry The history and the philosophy of music are obviously dependent upon music for their existence, but they are not for that ...