There is general acknowledgement that both the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex are implicated in reinforcement-guided decision making, and emotion and social behaviour. Despite the interest that these areas generate in both the cognitive neuroscience laboratory and the psychiatric clinic, ideas about the distinctive contributions made by each have only recently begun to emerge. This reflects an increasing understanding of the component processes that underlie reinforcement- guided decision making, such as the representation of reinforcement expectations, the exploration, updating and representation (...) of action values, and the appreciation that choices are guided not just by the prospect of reward but also by the costs that action entails. Evidence is emerging to suggest that the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex make distinct contributions to each of these aspects of decision making. (shrink)

This article is detective work, not philosophy. J. S. Mill's Autobiography records that at the age of seven he read, in Greek, ‘the first six dialogues of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theaetetus inclusive’. Which were the other dialogues? On the arrangement common today, it would be Crito, Apology, Phaedo, Cratylus. On the arrangement common then, Theages and Erastai replace Cratylus, which makes seven dialogues. I show that this must be the answer by the evidence of James Mill's commonplace (...) books and his writings on Plato. These reveal which collected edition of Plato he owned and which he would want to own. Conditions for studying Plato in the original were much harder than we are used to. The inquiry highlights both the ideological purity of the education James Mill designed for his son, and the difficulties he faced in realizing his plan. (shrink)

Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct internal models of the world. Alternatives include ecological, embedded, embodied, and enactivist approaches, all of which emphasize the centrality of action in understanding perception. Problem: Despite sharing many theoretical commitments that lead to a rejection of the classical approach, the alternatives are characterized by important contrasts and points of divergence. Here we (...) focus on the enactive and ecological approaches, in particular, on how they construe the status of the environment and the content of perception. Method: We begin with a review of James Gibson’s ecological psychology, highlighting it as a psychology for all organisms not just humans. Against this backdrop, we consider enactivist arguments against direct perception - a central assertion of the ecological approach - and in favor of interpreting the activity of perceptual agents as a kind of construction of a perceptually meaningful world. Results: We assess the merits of this interpretation and we conclude that it cannot be grounded on fundamental principles such as thermodynamics and organism-environment mutuality. Implications: As a consequence, enactivism remains close to representationalism and entails a form of dualism. Constructivist content: We advance a criticism of the constructivist foundations of the enactive approach to perception. Perception-action mutuality at the heart of enactivism does not require mental construction; indeed, perception-action mutuality obviates construction. (shrink)

This is a close scrutiny of "De Anima II 5", led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming (...) like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, (ii) that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim (ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from "Physics" III 1-3 and "De Generatione et Corruptione" I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a seldom-recognized connection between the ontology of abstract objects and a current issue in the philosophy of chemistry. Specifically, I argue that realism with regard to universals implies a view of chemical elements similar to F.A. Paneth’s thesis about the dual nature of the concept of element.

It is a standing temptation for philosophers to find anticipations of their own views in the great thinkers of the past, but few have been so bold in the search for precursors, and so utterly mistaken, as Berkeley when he claimed Plato and Aristotle as allies to his immaterialist idealism. InSiris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water, which Berkeley published in his old age in 1744, he reviews the leading philosophies of antiquity and finds (...) them on the whole a good deal more sympathetic to his own ideas than the ‘modern atheism’, as he calls it, of Hobbes and Spinoza or the objectionable principles of ‘the mechanic and geometrical philosophers’ such as Newton. But his strongest and, I think, his most interesting claim is that neither Plato nor Aristotle admitted ‘an absolute actual existence of sensible or corporeal things’. (shrink)

The ability to differentiate between what is just and what is unjust may be considered as the precondition to demand one's own rights. Starting from this point, this research was carried out to describe the level of awareness of patients concerning their rights. The main hypothesis was: the higher the socioeconomic and cultural level of patients, the higher is their awareness of their rights. This research was conducted in one of the state hospitals in Turkey in 1998. It is a (...) descriptive study carried out on 128 inpatients in medical and surgical wards. The data were collected by a questionnaire, which included questions on the rights of patients and gave sample cases. The sample cases were designed by referring to the World Health Organization Declaration on the Promotion of Patients' Rights in Europe. Only 23% of the participants were able to recognize patient rights, while 32% could not; the majority (45%) were undecided in recognizing patient rights. The awareness scores were statistically significantly different for educational level categories (F = 5.84; p<0.001). A continuously declining trend was observed for patient rights awareness scores from the highest educational level to the lowest. This partly proves the hypothesis of the research. However, the awareness scores were not significantly different for the other background variables (p>0.05). Most strikingly, 38% of the patients had no idea about their diagnosis and 63% of those who had undergone surgery did not know why they had had the operation. (shrink)

The question contrasts two ways of expressing the role of the sense organ in perception. In one the expression referring to the sense organ is put into the dative case ; the other is a construction with the preposition δiá governing the genitive case of the word for the sense organ.

Scientific and technological improvements are accomplished only because of much research. The increase in the number of research studies causes a rise in ethical problems. Nursing research is no exception to this. The aim of this study is to identify and analyse ethical problems in nursing studies. This research is descriptive and partly analytical. It is retrospective in the sense that 169 Master of Science and 66 doctoral theses written between 1972 and 1998 in the Department of Nursing, Institute of (...) Health Sciences, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, were examined. The following ethical rules were used as criteria: that no harm should be caused to the subject; the subject was informed about the research topic; permission was obtained from the subject; and the privacy of the subject was maintained. The evaluation was carried out by distributing the theses among background variables and by employing nonparametric tests. The research associated with the theses was not harmful to the participants in 93.2%, while 6.8% were considered to have caused harm. In 72.7% of the theses the subjects were not informed of the research; in 73.6%, the researchers did not obtain permission from the subjects; and in 8.5% their privacy was not kept. An ethical score was assigned to each thesis, which varyed between 0 and 15. The mean score was 5.02. (shrink)

M. F. Burnyeat; XII—Belief in Speech, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 227–248, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

Objectives: Efficient procedures for obtaining informed (proxy) consent may contribute to high influenza vaccination rates in nursing homes. Yet are such procedures justified? This study’s objective was to gain insight in informed consent policies in Dutch nursing homes; to assess how these may affect influenza vaccination rates and to answer the question whether deviating from standard informed consent procedures could be morally justified. Design: A survey among nursing home physicians. Setting & Participants: We sent a questionnaire to all (356) nursing (...) homes in the Netherlands, to be completed by one of the physicians. Results: We received 245 completed questionnaires. As 21 institutions appeared to be closed or merged into other institutions, the response was 73.1% (245/335). Of all respondents 81.9% reported a vaccination rate above 80%. Almost 50% reported a vaccination rate above 90%. Most respondents considered herd immunity to be an important consideration for institutional policy. Freedom of choice for residents was considered important by almost all. Nevertheless, 106 out of 245 respondents follow a tacit consent procedure, according to which vaccination will be administered unless the resident or her proxy refuses. These institutions show significantly higher vaccination rates (p < 0.03). Conclusions: In our discussion we focus on the question whether tacit consent procedures can be morally justifiable. Such procedures assume that vaccination is good for residents either as individuals or as a group. Even though this assumption may be true for most residents, there are good reasons for preferring express consent procedures. (shrink)