Essays discuss cognition, perception, art, science, truth, metaphor, education, philosophy, and cognitive psychology.

In his new foreword to this edition, Hilary Putnam forcefully rejects these nativist claims.

How Classification Works attempts to bridge the gap between philosophy and the social sciences using as a focus some of the work of Nelson Goodman. Throughout his long career Goodman has addressed the question: are some ways of conceptualizing more natural than others? This book looks at the rightness of categories, assessing Goodman's role in modern philosophy and explaining some of his ideas on the relation between aesthetics and cognitive theory. Two papers by Nelson Goodman are included in (...) the collection and there are analyses of his work by seven leading academics in anthropology, philosophy, sociology and musicology. (shrink)

Miller (1956) summarized evidence that people can remember about seven chunks in short-term memory (STM) tasks. However, that number was meant more as a rough estimate and a rhetorical device than as a real capacity limit. Others have since suggested that there is a more precise capacity limit, but that it is only three to five chunks. The present target article brings together a wide variety of data on capacity limits suggesting that the smaller capacity limit is real. Capacity limits (...) will be useful in analyses of information processing only if the boundary conditions for observing them can be carefully described. Four basic conditions in which chunks can be identified and capacity limits can accordingly be observed are: (1) when information overload limits chunks to individual stimulus items, (2) when other steps are taken specifically to block the recoding of stimulus items into larger chunks, (3) in performance discontinuities caused by the capacity limit, and (4) in various indirect effects of the capacity limit. Under these conditions, rehearsal and long-term memory cannot be used to combine stimulus items into chunks of an unknown size; nor can storage mechanisms that are not capacity-limited, such as sensory memory, allow the capacity-limited storage mechanism to be refilled during recall. A single, central capacity limit averaging about four chunks is implicated along with other, noncapacity-limited sources. The pure STM capacity limit expressed in chunks is distinguished from compound STM limits obtained when the number of separately held chunks is unclear. Reasons why pure capacity estimates fall within a narrow range are discussed and a capacity limit for the focus of attention is proposed. Key Words: attention; enumeration; information chunks; memory capacity; processing capacity; processing channels; serial recall; short-term memory; storage capacity; verbal recall; working memory capacity. (shrink)

Diese Schriften kennzeichnen den Weg, auf dem Nelson - Kant folgend - sein Ziel einer "kritischen Philosophie" angestrebt hat. Es geht ihm darum, durch Kritik der Vernunft unmittelbare Erkenntnisse aus reiner Vernunft aufzusuchen, ihnen die Maßstäbe für wissenschaftliches Philosophieren zu entnehmen und so, im Selbstvertrauen der Vernunft, Ausblicke auf pädagogische Aufgaben und Weltanschauungsfragen zu gewinnen.

. . . Unlike Dewey, he has provided detailed incisive argumentation, and has shown just where the dogmas and dualisms break down." -- Richard Rorty, The Yale Review.

Required reading at more than 100 colleges and universities throughout North America.

The Patient in the Family diagnoses the ways in which the worlds of home and hospital misunderstand each other. The authors explore how medicine, through its new reproductive technologies, is altering the stucture of families, how families can participate more fully in medical decision-making, and how to understand the impact on families of medical advances to extend life but not vitality.

This book is a philosophical exploration of the theoretical causes behind the collapse of classical cybernetics. Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson advances the idea that the cybernetic understanding of the nature of a machine entails ontological and epistemological consequences that create both material and theoretical conundrums. He proposes that, given our current state of materials, research, and practices, there might be a way for cybernetics to flourish. The book starts with a historical treatment of cybernetics, and proceeds with a philosophical explanation of (...) its collapse-emphasizing the work of Turing, Ashby and von Neumann-and connects it with the emerging technologies carrying its signature. The transhumanist metaphysics of both cybernetics and NBIC is then unveiled. Finally, avenues of research that may allow these technologies to circumvent the cybernetic fate are indicated. It is advanced that emerging technologies ultimately entail an affirmation of humanity. (shrink)

With this third edition of Nelson Goodman's The Structure of Appear ance, we are pleased to make available once more one of the most in fluential and important works in the philosophy of our times. Professor Geoffrey Hellman's introduction gives a sustained analysis and appreciation of the major themes and the thrust of the book, as well as an account of the ways in which many of Goodman's problems and projects have been picked up and developed by others. Hellman (...) also suggests how The Structure of Appearance introduces issues which Goodman later continues in his essays and in the Languages of Art. There remains the task of understanding Good man's project as a whole; to see the deep continuities of his thought, as it ranges from logic to epistemology, to science and art; to see it therefore as a complex yet coherent theory of human cognition and practice. What we can only hope to suggest, in this note, is the b. road Significance of Goodman's apparently technical work for philosophers, scientists and humanists. One may say of Nelson Goodman that his bite is worse than his bark. Behind what appears as a cool and methodical analysis of the conditions of the construction of systems, there lurks a radical and disturbing thesis: that the world is, in itself, no more one way than another, nor are we. It depends on the ways in which we take it, and on what we do. (shrink)

summary, crtiques, strengths and limitation of the article.

Commentators expressed a wide variety of views on whether there is a basic capacity limit of 3 to 5 chunks and, among those who believe in it, about why it occurs. In this response, I conclude that the capacity limit is real and that the concept is strengthened by additional evidence offered by a number of commentators. I consider various arguments why the limit occurs and try to organize these arguments into a conceptual framework or “metatheory” of storage capacity limits (...) meant to be useful in future research to settle the issue. I suggest that principles of memory representation determine what parts of the representation will be most prominent but that limits of attention (or of a memory store that includes only items that have been most recently attended) determine the 3- to 5-chunk capacity limit. (shrink)

BackgroundThe return of genetics and genomics research results has been a subject of ongoing global debate. Such feedback is ethically desirable to update participants on research findings particularly those deemed clinically significant. Although there is limited literature, debate continues in African on what constitutes appropriate practice regarding the return of results for genetics and genomics research. This study explored perspectives and ethical considerations of Ugandan genomics researchers regarding the return of genetics and genomics research results.MethodsThis was a qualitative study that (...) employed in-depth interviews. Thirty participants were purposively selected based on their expertise as genomics researchers in Uganda. Data were analysed through content analysis along the main themes of the study using a comprehensive thematic matrix, to identify common patterns arising from the narratives. NVivo software 12 was used to support data analysis.ResultsThe return of genetics and genomics research results was generally acceptable to researchers, and some indicated that they had previously returned individual or aggregate results to participants and communities. The main reasons cited for sharing research results with participants included their clinical utility, actionability and overall benefit to society. Ethical considerations for appropriate return of results included a need for effective community engagement, genetic counselling prior to disclosure of the results, adequate informed consent, and proper assessment of the implications of, or consequences of returning of results. However, the approaches to return of results were perceived as unstandardized due to the lack of appropriate regulatory frameworks.ConclusionsThe return of genetic and genomic research results is generally acceptable to researchers despite the lack of appropriate regulatory frameworks. Ethical considerations for return of genetics and genomics research results are highly divergent, hence the need for national ethical guidelines to appropriately regulate the practice. (shrink)

This paper examines the increasing trend by nursing scholars such as Patricia Benner to conceptualize ethics as a contextual and embodied ‘way of knowing’, embedded in nursing expertise. The intellectual origins of this development and its debt to neo‐Aristotelian thinkers such as philosopher Charles Taylor are discussed. It will be argued that rather than revealing a truth about ethical expertise, the emergence of the ‘expert’ nurse as a moral and ethical category is the result of the elaboration of neo‐Thomist discourses (...) in the educational and professional shaping of nurses. These discourses act on and are enacted by the individual nurse through his or her participation in specific ethical exercises that result in the constitution of the desired subjectivity – or ‘expertise’. Central to this shaping are particular notions of ‘the good’ and its relationship to knowledge, skill and practice. Critiques of these neo‐Aristotelian perspectives are discussed and applied to the notion of moral expertise in nursing, and the claims made by its proponents concerning the ‘ethical’ distinction between experienced and expert nurses. Finally, a call is made for a more pluralistic approach to ethics. (shrink)

In this highly original and accessible book, one of our leading philosophers of religion seeks to answer this question by analyzing the several states of mystic union as they are described and explained in the classical primary literature ...

The unique context of the rural setting provides special challenges to furnishing ethical healthcare to its approximately 62 million inhabitants. Although rural communities are widely diverse, most have the following common features: limited economic resources, shared values, reduced health status, limited availability of and accessibility to healthcare services, overlapping professional–patient relationships and care giver stress. These rural features shape common healthcare ethical issues, including threats to confidentiality, boundary issues, professional–patient relationship and allocation of resources. To date, there exists a limited (...) focus on rural healthcare ethics shown by the scarcity of rural healthcare ethics literature, rural ethics committees, rural focused ethics training and research on rural ethics issues. An interdisciplinary group of rural healthcare ethicists with backgrounds in medicine, nursing and philosophy was convened to explore the need for a rural healthcare ethics agenda. At the meeting, the Coalition for Rural Health Care Ethics agreed to a definition of rural healthcare ethics and a broad-ranging rural ethics agenda with the ultimate goal of enhancing the quality of patient care in rural America. The proposed agenda calls for increasing awareness and understanding of rural healthcare ethics through the development of evidence—informed, rural-attuned research, scholarship and education in collaboration with rural healthcare professionals, healthcare institutions and the diverse rural population. (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer ranked the several arts in a hierarchy, with literary and dramatic arts at the top, music soaring in a separate even higher heaven, and architecture sinking to the ground under the weight of beams and bricks and mortar.1 The governing principle seems to be some measure of spirituality, with architecture ranking lowest by vice of being grossly material.Nowadays such rankings are taken less seriously. Traditional ideologies and mythologies of the arts are undergoing deconstruction and disvaluation, making way for (...) a neutral comparative study that can reveal a good deal not only about relations among the several arts2 but also about the kinships and contrasts between the arts, the sciences, and other ways that symbols of various kinds participate in the advancement of the understanding.In comparing architecture with the other arts, what may first strike us, despite Schopenhauer, is a close affinity with music: architectural and musical works, unlike paintings or plays or novels, are seldom descriptive or representational. With some interesting exceptions, architectural works do not denote—that is, do not describe, recount, depict, or portray. They mean, if at all, in other ways.On the other hand, and architectural work contrasts with other works of art in scale. A building or park or city3 is not only bigger spatially and temporally than a musical performance or painting—it is bigger even than we are. We cannot take it all in from a single point of view; we must move around and within it to grasp the whole. Moreover, the architectural work is normally fixed in place. Unlike a painting that may be reframed and rehung or a concerto that may be heard in different halls, the architectural work is firmly set in physical and cultural environment that alters slowly. 1. See Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer , pp. 176-78. Nelson Goodman, emeritus professor of philosophy at Harvard University, is the author of, among other works, The Structure of Appearance, Languages of Art, Ways of Worldmaking, and Of Mind and Other Matters. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Status of Style” , “Metaphor as Moonlighting” , “Twisted Tales; or, Story, Study, and Symphony” , “The Telling and the Told” , and “Routes of Reference) Autumn 1981). (shrink)

Since the time of Hume, many philosophers have thought it impossible to deduce an ‘Ought’ from an ‘Is,’ or in general to deduce ‘ethical sentences’ from purely ‘factual sentences.’ This is the thesis of the logical autonomy of ethics. I consider a more recent argument by Toomas Karmo in support of the autonomism, but show its limitations in the context of justification skepticism about ethics.

Knowing and Making 1. Obstacles to Knowing The theory of knowledge to be sketched here rejects both absolutism and nihilism, both unique truth and the ...