Playtime in urban cities has become an indoor activity for children due to limited access to natural outdoor environments. This product of urbanization makes the case for the introduction of biophilic design. However, playrooms are often neglected as a possibility in designing a natural space indoors. Interior designers and other specialists lack a reliable tool to identify and incorporate biophilic features into the design of these indoor environments in urban settings. The Biophilic Interior Design Matrix (BID-M) developed by McGee and (...) Marshall-Baker quantifies 52 of Kellert’s biophilic design attributes to assess their presence and absence within interior spaces. We expanded its use by testing the matrix in a new type of space, urban playrooms, and coded images of 45 children’s playrooms within Manhattan residential buildings in New York City, including assessing a larger sample and reliability rate compared to McGee and Marshall-Baker’s research. Inter-rater reliability of the overall design matrix and individual matrix items was measured with percent agreement and free-marginal multirater kappa. Reliability testing showed overall good reliability of the overall design matrix. Several matrix items had low reliability between raters. Our findings show that the BID-M needs to be modified to better assess urban interior spaces for children. (shrink)

A Hard-Hitting Critique... Brings Together Fine Essays That Speak Directly To The Underlying Assumptions Of Postmodernism And Offer A Stunning Critique Of Its Usefulness In Both Understanding And Critiquing The Current Historical Epoch. Contemporary Sociology.

Ellen Meiksins Wood is a leading contemporary political theorist who has elaborated an innovative approach to the history of political thought, the social history of political theory .

In this groundbreaking work, Ellen Meiksins Wood rewrites the history of political theory, from Plato to Rousseau. Treating canonical thinkers as passionately engaged human beings, Wood examines their ideas not simply in the context of political languages but as creative responses to the social relations and conflicts of their time and place. She identifies a distinctive relation between property and state in Western history and shows how the canon, while largely the work of members or clients of dominant classes, (...) was shaped by complex interactions among proprietors, labourers and states. Western political theory, Wood argues, owes much of its vigour, and also many ambiguities, to these complex and often contradictory relations. In this new edition, incorporating both volumes, the book takes us from classical antiquity to the age of enlightenement. In the first volume, Wood traces the development of the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Middle Ages in the perspective of social history--a significant departure not only from the standard abstract history of ideas but also from other contextual methods. In the second volume, Wood moves on to explore the formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. In her focus on canonical thinkers through the ages, Wood illuminates a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Fundamental Principle of Fichte's Philosophy The purpose of this monograph is to make a careful study of Fichte's conception of the ultimate principle. In his various writings the principle appears under many different names. 'The Ego, ' 'the Idea of the Ego, ' 'the moral world-order, ' 'God, ' 'the Absolute, ' 'Being, ' 'the Light, ' are some of the phrases by which it is most commonly designated. It is not the main purpose of this study (...) to examine tile much discussed question of the relation between the two periods of Fichte's philosophy. But the question is so intimately connected with the problem which I have undertaken that some discussion of it is inevitable. I have tried, however, to keep well within the limits of my theme, and instead of considering the relation between the two periods in all its aspects, have sought merely to determine how far the conception of the fundamental principle which we find in Fichte's later writings differs from that which appears in the earlier ones. The references to Fichte's writings are to the Sammtliche Werke (Berlin, 1845-1846, 8 vols.) and to the Nachgelassene Werke (Bonn, 1834-1835, 3 vols.). References to the Sammtliche Werke are indicated by the letters S. W.; to the Nachgelassene Werke, by the letters N. W. References to the Kritik der remen Vernunft arc indicated by the letters A (for the First Edition) and B (for the Second). All other references to Kant's writings are made to Hartenstein's second edition of the Sammtliche Werke (Leipzig, 1867-1868, 8 vols.) and are indicated by the letter H. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

Abstract The role accorded to the public by scientists and philosophers of science has undergone an essential historical change in the last three centuries. Public participation in (witnessing of) scientific experiments was considered an important requirement for 17th century experimenters (e.g. for Boyle or Pascal). The cognitive role played by lay persons was later substantially downgraded; witnessing went out of fashion, while science became more and more esoteric and a matter for experts only. Part of this process was that all (...) scientific disciplines became intensively compartmentalized and in consequence a rather puzzling or even paradoxical situation appeared: that the scientists themselves were and are being reduced epistemically to the status of lay persons, outside of their proper field of expertise (as was pointed out by J. Hardwig). The paper deals with some cognitive aspects of this historical process. (shrink)

It is shown that in a linearly ordered MV-algebra A , the implication is unique if and only if the identity function is the unique De Morgan automorphism on A . Modulo categorical equivalence, our uniqueness criterion recalls Ohkuma's rigidness condition for totally ordered abelian groups. We also show that, if A is an Archimedean totally ordered MV-algebra, then each non-trivial De Morgan automorphism of the underlying involutive lattice of A yields a new implication on A , which is not (...) isomorphic to the original implication. (shrink)

This volume represents a contribution to the investigation of these issues of perennial interest and import, featuring essays whose authors hope to extend, deepen, and, in some cases, move in new directions, the current state of discussion.

In this paper, I submit that it is the controlled part of skilled action, that is, that part of an action that accounts for the exact, nuanced ways in which a skilled performer modifies, adjusts and guides her performance for which an adequate, philosophical theory of skill must account. I will argue that neither Jason Stanley nor Hubert Dreyfus have an adequate account of control. Further, and perhaps surprisingly, I will argue that both Stanley and Dreyfus relinquish an account of (...) control for precisely the same reason: each reduce control to a passive, mechanistic, automatic process, which then prevents them from producing a substantive account of how controlled processes can be characterized by seemingly intelligent features and integrated with personal-level states. I will end by introducing three different kinds of control, which are constitutive of skilled action: strategic control, selective, top–down, automatic attention, and motor control. It will become clear that Dreyfus cannot account for any of these three kinds of control while Stanley has difficulty tackling the two latter kinds. (shrink)

It is not rare in philosophy and psychology to see theorists fall into dichotomous thinking about mental phenomena. On one side of the dichotomy there are processes that I will label “unintelligent.” These processes are thought to be unconscious, implicit, automatic, unintentional, involuntary, procedural, and non-cognitive. On the other side, there are “intelligent” processes that are conscious, explicit, controlled, intentional, voluntary, declarative, and cognitive. Often, if a process or behavior is characterized by one of the features from either of the (...) above lists, the process or behavior is classified as falling under the category to which the feature belongs. For example, if a process is implicit this is usually considered sufficient for classifying it as “unintelligent” and for assuming that the remaining features that fall under the “unintelligent” grouping will apply to it as well. Accordingly, if a process or behavior is automatic, philosophers often consider it to be unintelligent. It is my goal in this paper to challenge the conceptual slip from “automatic” to “unintelligent”. I will argue that there are a whole range of properties highlighted by the existing psychological literature that make automaticity a much more complex phenomenon than is usually appreciated. I will then go on to discuss two further important relationships between automatic processes and controlled processes that arise when we think about automatic processes in the context of skilled behavior. These interactions should add to our resistance to classifying automaticity as unintelligent or mindless. In Sect. 1, I present a few representative cases of philosophers classifying automatic processes and behaviors as mindless or unintelligent. In Sect. 2, I review trends in the psychology of automaticity in order highlight a complex set of features that are characteristic, though not definitive, of automatic processes and behaviors. In Sect. 3, I argue that at least some automatic processes are likely cognitively penetrable. In Sect. 4, I argue that the structure of skilled automatic processes is shaped diachronically by practice, training and learning. Taken together, these considerations should dislodge the temptation to equate “automatic” with “unintelligent”. (shrink)

When reflecting on the nature of skilled action, it is easy to fall into familiar dichotomies such that one construes the flexibility and intelligence of skill at the level of intentional states while characterizing the automatic motor processes that constitute motor skill execution as learned but fixed, invariant, bottom-up, brute-causal responses. In this essay, I will argue that this picture of skilled, automatic, motor processes is overly simplistic. Specifically, I will argue that an adequate account of the learned motor routines (...) that constitute embodied skills cannot be given in a purely bottom-up, brute-causal fashion. Rather, motor control is intelligent all the way down. To establish this, I will first review two recent accounts of skill, Stanley and Krakauer and Papineau, which characterize the automatic motor control responsible for the fine-grained movements constitutive of motor skill as brute, low-level phenomena. I will then isolate five key features that should apply to skilled motor control, if these accounts are correct. Together, the accounts posit that motor control is: ballistic, invariant, independent of general action trajectories, Insensitive to semantic content, and independent of personal-level intentions. In the final section of this paper, I will appeal to optimal control theory for empirical evidence to challenge the commitment to skilled action as qualified by the above features. (shrink)

When reflecting on the nature of skilled action, it is easy to fall into familiar dichotomies such that one construes the flexibility and intelligence of skill at the level of intentional states while characterizing the automatic motor processes that constitute motor skill execution as learned but fixed, invariant, bottom-up, brute-causal responses. In this essay, I will argue that this picture of skilled, automatic, motor processes is overly simplistic. Specifically, I will argue that an adequate account of the learned motor routines (...) that constitute embodied skills cannot be given in a purely bottom-up, brute-causal fashion. Rather, motor control is intelligent all the way down. To establish this, I will first review two recent accounts of skill, Stanley and Krakauer (Front Hum Neurosci, 2013. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.0050) and Papineau (R Inst Philos Suppl 73:175–196, 2013), which characterize the automatic motor control responsible for the fine-grained movements constitutive of motor skill as brute, low-level phenomena. I will then isolate five key features that should apply to skilled motor control, if these accounts are correct. Together, the accounts posit that motor control is: (1) ballistic, (2) invariant, (3) independent of general action trajectories, (4) Insensitive to semantic content, and (5) independent of personal-level intentions. In the final section of this paper, I will appeal to optimal control theory for empirical evidence to challenge the commitment to skilled action as qualified by the above features. (shrink)

Schoolgirls writing short stories have surrendered themselves to some rules of a game, which, according to Ricoeur and Gadamer, delimits a field where everything ’is played’, and thereby, ’shatters the seriousness’ of ’the self-presence of a subject’. This article proposes that this field has a serious side of its own that reveals something true about the everyday reality of being a girl. The proposed worlds in the girls’ short stories are places from which research on women’s lives should begin is (...) a central argument, along with the contention that for the researcher to be able to take the seriousness of this playful writing into account, she also has to assume the position of a playful figure. The article suggests that the empirical data of schoolgirl writing invited the researcher to think Ricoeur and feminist epistemology together. Further, a suggestion is that the roles of reading given by the texts have consequences for a ’new’ process-oriented writing pedagogy and the teacher of writing as well. (shrink)

Some health care organizations allow physicians to withhold cardiopulmonary resuscitation from a patient, despite patient or surrogate requests that it be provided, when they believe it will be more harmful than beneficial. Such cases usually involve patients with terminal diagnoses whose medical teams argue that aggressive treatments are medically inappropriate or likely to be harmful. Although there is state-to-state variability and a considerable judicial gray area about the conditions and mechanisms for refusals to perform CPR, medical teams typically follow a (...) set of clearly defined procedures for these decisions. The procedures are based on the principle of nonmaleficence and typically include consultation with hospital ethics committees, reflecting the guidelines of relevant professional associations. Ethical debates about when CPR can and should be limited tend to rely more on discussions of theory, principles, and case studies than systematic empirical study of the situations in which such limitations are applied. Sociologists of bioethics call for empirical study, arguing that what ethicists and health professionals believe they are doing when they draft policies or invoke principles does not always mirror what is happening on the ground. In this article, we begin the task of modeling the empirical analyses sociologists call for, focusing on a cohort at Massachusetts General Hospital. We inductively analyzed ethics committee notes and medical records of nineteen patients whose surrogates did not accept the decision to withhold CPR. (shrink)

There is strong theoretical support for a relationship between various characteristics of religiousness and attitudes towards business ethics. This paper examines three frequently- studied dimensions of religiousness (fundamentalism, conservatism, and intrinsic religiousness) and their ability to predict students' willingness to behave unethically. Because prior research indicated a possible relationship between the religious affiliation of an institution and its members' ethical orientation, we studied students at universities with three different types of religious affiliation: evangelical, Catholic, and none.Results of the study lend (...) support to a negative relationship between the above-mentioned dimensions of religiousness and willingness to behave unethically. In addition, students at the Evangelical university were far less willing to engage in unethical behavior than were students at either the Catholic or the unaffiliated institutions. (shrink)

Although affective facial pictures are widely used in emotion research, standardised affective stimuli sets are rather scarce, and the existing sets have several limitations. We therefore conducted a validation study of 490 pictures of human facial expressions from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database (KDEF). Pictures were evaluated on emotional content and were rated on an intensity and arousal scale. Results indicate that the database contains a valid set of affective facial pictures. Hit rates, intensity, and arousal of the 20 (...) best KDEF pictures for each basic emotion are provided in an appendix. (shrink)

A 1999–2000 national study of U.S. hospitals raised concerns about ethics consultation (EC) practices and catalyzed improvement efforts. To assess how practices have changed since 2000, we administered a 105-item survey to “best informants” in a stratified random sample of 600 U.S. general hospitals. This primary article details the methods for the entire study, then focuses on the 16 items from the prior study. Compared with 2000, the estimated number of case consultations performed annually rose by 94% to 68,000. The (...) median number of consults per hospital was unchanged at 3, but more than doubled for hospitals with 400+ beds. The level of education of EC practitioners was unchanged, while the percentage of hospitals formally evaluating their ECS decreased from 28.0% to 19.1%. The gap between large, teaching hospitals and small, nonteaching hospitals widened since the prior study. We suggest targeting future improvement efforts to hospitals where needs are not being met by current approaches to EC. (shrink)

In recent years, a debate concerning the nature of knowing-how has emerged between intellectualists who claim that knowledge-how is reducible to knowledge-that and anti-intellectualists who claim that knowledge-how comprises a unique and irreducible knowledge category. The arguments between these two camps have clustered largely around two issues: intellectualists object to Gilbert Ryle's assertion that knowing-how is a kind of ability, and anti-intellectualists take issue with Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson's positive, intellectualist account of knowing-how. Like most anti-intellectualists, in this paper (...) I will raise objections to Stanley and Williamson's account of knowing-how and also defend the claim that ability is necessary for knowing-how attributions. Unlike most discussions of knowing-how, however, I will return to more Rylean considerations in order to illustrate that any intellectualist account of knowing-how, not simply Stanley and Williamson's preferred variety, will fail because it will be unable to account for fundamental differences in the knowledge required to instantiate an ability and the knowledge involved in propositional thought. (shrink)

One antidote to moral distress is stronger moral agency—that is, an enhanced ability to act to bring about change. The Clinical Ethics Residency for Nurses, an educational program developed and run in two large northeastern academic medical centers with funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, intended to strengthen nurses’ moral agency. Drawing on Improving Competencies in Clinical Ethics Consultation: An Education Guide, by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and on the goals of the nursing profession, CERN (...) sought to change attitudes, increase knowledge, and develop skills to act on one's knowledge. One of the key insights the faculty members brought to the design of this program is that knowledge of clinical ethics is not enough to develop moral agency. In addition to lecture‐style classes, CERN employed a variety of methods based in adult learning theory, such as active application of ethics knowledge to patient scenarios in classroom discussion, simulation, and the clinical practicum. Overwhelmingly, the feedback from the participants (sixty‐seven over three years of the program) indicated that CERN achieved transformative learning. (shrink)

In his most recent book, Stanley (2011b) defends his Intellectualist account of knowledge how. In Know How, Stanley produces the details of a propositionalist theory of intelligent action and also responds to several objections that have been forwarded to this account in the last decade. In this paper, I will focus specifically on one claim that Stanley makes in chapter one of his book: I will focus on Stanley’s claim that automatic mechanisms can be used by the intellectualist in order (...) to terminate Ryle’s regress. I will argue that this proposed solution to the regress, regardless of how propositions are individuated, cannot provide an adequate intellectualist account of skillful action. I should note that the solution to Ryle’s regress is central to the intellectualist agenda. If Stanley fails to stop the regress or stops the regress by appealing to nonpropositional knowledge, then his intellectualist project fails. (shrink)

Context: Although ethics consultation is commonplace in United States (U.S.) hospitals, descriptive data about this health service are lacking. Objective: To describe the prevalence, practitioners, and processes of ethics consultation in U.S. hospitals. Design: A 56-item phone or questionnaire survey of the "best informant" within each hospital. Participants: Random sample of 600 U.S. general hospitals, stratified by bed size. Results: The response rate was 87.4%. Ethics consultation services (ECSs) were found in 81% of all general hospitals in the U.S., and (...) in 100% of hospitals with more than 400 beds. The median number of consults performed by ECSs in the year prior to survey was 3. Most individuals performing ethics consultation were physicians (34%), nurses (31%), social workers (11%), or chaplains (10%). Only 41% had formal supervised training in ethics consultation. Consultation practices varied widely both within and between ECSs. For example, 65% of ECSs always made recommendations, whereas 6% never did. These findings highlight a need to clarify standards for ethics consultation practices. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow does practice change our behaviors such that they go from being awkward, unskilled actions to elegant, skilled performances? This is the question that I wish to explore in this paper. In the first section of the paper, I will defend the tight connection between practice and skill and then go on to make precise how we ought to construe the concept of practice. In the second section, I will suggest that practice contributes to skill by structuring and automatizing the (...) motor routines constitutive of skilled actions. I will cite how this fact about skilled action has misled many philosophers to conclude that skills are mindless or bodily. In the third section of the paper, I will challenge this common misconception about automaticity by appealing to empirical evidence of motor chunking. This evidence reveals that there are two opposing processes involved in the automaticity of skilled action: one process that is largely associative, which I will call “concatenation,” and a second which is a contro... (shrink)

Biological theory demands a clear organism concept, but at present biologists cannot agree on one. They know that counting particular units, and not counting others, allows them to generate explanatory and predictive descriptions of evolutionary processes. Yet they lack a unified theory telling them which units to count. In this paper, I offer a novel account of biological individuality, which reconciles conflicting definitions of ‘organism’ by interpreting them as describing alternative realisers of a common functional role, and then defines individual (...) organisms as essentially possessing some mechanisms that play this role. (shrink)

Darwin’s classic ‘Origin of Species’ (Darwin 1859) described forces of selection acting upon individuals, but there remains a great deal of controversy about what exactly the status and definition of a biological individual is. Recently some authors have argued that the individual is dispensable – that an inability to pin it down is not problematic because little rests on it anyway. The aim of this paper is to show that there is a real problem of biological individuality, and an urgent (...) need to arbitrate over the current plethora of solutions to it. (shrink)

To design effective strategies to improve ethics consultation (EC) practices, it is important to understand the views of ethics practitioners. Previous U.S. studies of ethics practitioners have overrepresented the views of academic bioethicists. To help inform EC improvement efforts, we surveyed a random stratified sample of U.S. hospitals, examining ethics practitioners’ opinions on EC in general, on their own EC service, on strategies to improve EC, and on ASBH practice standards. Respondents across all categories of hospitals had very positive perceptions (...) of their own ethics consultation service (ECS) and few concerns about quality. Our findings suggest that the ethics-related needs of small, rural, non-teaching hospitals may be very different from those of academic medical centers, and therefore, different approaches to addressing ethical issues might be warranted. (shrink)

BackgroundWhile previous research has examined various aspects of ethics consultation (EC) in U.S. hospitals, certain EC practices have never been systematically studied.MethodsTo address this gap, we surveyed a random stratified sample of 600 hospitals about aspects of EC that had not been previously explored.ResultsNew findings include: in 26.0% of hospitals, the EC service performs EC for more than one hospital; 72.4% of hospitals performed at least one non-case consultation; in 56% of hospitals, ECs are never requested by patients or families; (...) 59.0% of case consultations involve conflict; the usual practice is to visit the patient in all formal EC cases in 32.5% of hospitals; 56.6% of hospitals do not include a formal meeting in most EC cases; 61.1% of hospitals do not routinely assess ethics consultants’ competencies; and 31.6% of hospitals belong to a bioethics network. We estimate the total number of non-case consultations performed in U.S. hospitals to be approximately one half the number of case consultations; we estimate the total number of ECs performed in U.S. hospitals, including both case and non-case consultations, to be just over 100,000 per year.ConclusionsThese findings expand our current understanding of EC in U.S. hospitals, and raise several concerns that suggest a need for further research. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractThe finding that viruses with RNA and DNA genomes can recombine to produce chimeric entities provides valuable insights into the origin and evolution of viruses. It also substantiates the hypothesis that certain groups of DNA viruses could have emerged from plasmids via acquisition of capsid protein-coding genes from RNA viruses.

I identify and characterize the kind of personal-level control-structure that is most relevant for skilled action control, namely, what I call, “practical intention”. I differentiate between practical intentions and general intentions not in terms of their function or timing but in terms of their content. I also highlight a distinction between practical intentions and other control mechanisms that are required to explain skilled action. I’ll maintain that all intentions, general and practical, have the function specifying, sustaining, and structuring action but (...) that several functions that have been attributed to proximal intentions are actually implemented by other control mechanisms that are not themselves best identified as intentions. Specifically, I will claim that practical intentions do not initiate, monitor, specify or guide the fine-grained, online, kinematic aspects of action. Finally, I suggest that the way in which practical and general intentions should be differentiated is in terms of their content, where general intentions specify the overall goal, outcome, or end of an action as it is conceived of by the agent at a time, and practical intentions determine the means to that end. I conclude by providing empirical evidence to support this way of characterizing the intentions that “interface” with the mechanisms of motor control. Though this discussion has repercussions for action in general, I will limit my discussion to cases of skill. (shrink)

Confronting crucial and difficult issues, the ten authors whose essays appear in this volume offer fresh perspectives on the nature and value of altruism. This collection of essays on moral philosophy deal with the balance to be struck between egoism and altruism - that is, between pursuing one's own interests and serving the interest of others - and with related issues. Contributions examine the relationship between altruism and rationality; consider cases in which one's personal needs and goals may legitimately be (...) given priority over the needs of others; question whether, and under what conditions, we may properly be forced to serve others' interests; and examine the role government should play in regulating our interactions. (shrink)

The essays in this volume, first published in 2000, explore questions about democracy that are relevant to political philosophy and political theory. Some essays discuss the appropriate ends of government or examine the difficulties involved in determining and carrying out the will of the people. Some address questions relating to the kinds of influence citizens can or should have over their representatives, asking, for example, whether individuals have a duty to vote, or whether inequalities in political influence among citizens can (...) be morally justified. Other essays analyze democratic institutions, discussing what role deliberation should play in the democratic process, and asking whether it is legitimate to use laws and public policies to express approval or disapproval of various kinds of conduct. Still others examine the relationship between democracy and value pluralism, or consider the suitability of democracy as a form of government in non-Western societies. (shrink)

Freedom of association is a cherished liberal value, both for classical liberals who are generally antagonistic toward government interference in the choices made by individuals, and for contemporary liberals who are more sanguine about the role of government. However, there are fundamental differences between the two viewpoints in the status that they afford to associational freedom. While classical liberals ground their support for freedom of association on the core notion of individual liberty, contemporary liberals usually conceive of freedom of association (...) as one among many values that are necessary for a liberal democracy to flourish. Which position provides a better grounding for freedom of association? The twelve essays in this volume explore the history and development of the right of free association, and discuss the limits that may legitimately be placed on this right. (shrink)

What are the core values of liberalism and how can they best be promoted? Liberals in the classical tradition championed individual freedom, limited government and a capitalist economic system with strong rights to private property. Contemporary liberals, in contrast, embrace more egalitarian values and allow for a far more prominent role for government intervention in the market to reduce inequality, redistribute wealth and regulate economic activity. What accounts for these very disparate liberal views of property rights and economic freedom? How (...) should we understand the transition from the classical view of liberalism to its more egalitarian modern version? And what, ideally, should the relationship be between the central values of liberalism and the economic institutions of capitalism? The eleven essays in this volume address these questions and examine related issues. (shrink)