Appropriate as a textbook for graduate courses, _The Evolution and Function of Cognition_ provides a systematic and progressively inclusive integration of the facts and principles of cognitive psychology. It includes contributions of information processing and reaction, and emphasizes historical continuity. In addition, the book shows how evolutionary psychology fits in with the mainstream of thought in psychological theory. _The Evolution and Function of Cognition_ will benefit scholars and researchers interested in the general topics of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science.

Intelligent Love provides a beautifully written and carefully reconstructed history of autism in the United States, focusing on the period between the 1950s and 1980s. The virtue and strength of Vi...

This study purports to demonstrate the possibility of applying logical analysis in the field of jurisprudence, and the usefulness of this method for exhibiting some essential features of the law.logical analysis applies to language systems. To carry out the logical analysis of a language, is to construct a simplified model language “in close connection with” the given language, and to study the conditions of validity of the sentences of this model language. The given language is subjected to a kind of (...) purifying chemical process. To deal with this simplified language seems to be a detour; it is, however, the most direct way to an ultimate insight into the logical structure of the given language. (shrink)

What are the characteristics to be included in a fruitful definition of democracy? More important still, which of the features commonly considered democratic had better be excluded from the dinning characteristics?

This collection of original essays on political and legal theory concentrates on themes dealt with in the work of Felix Oppenheim, including fundamental political and legal concepts and their implications for the scope of morality in politics and international relations. Among the issues addressed are the relationship between empirical and normative definitions of "freedom", "power", and "interests", whether governments are free to act against the national interest, and whether they can ever be morally obliged to do so.

1. Introduction. Now that operationalism has evolved from a battle cry of a militant minority to a widely accepted maxim of scientific method, and has in the process lost much of its initial intransigeance, it seems time to devote more attention to the application of operational analysis to the social sciences. This paper attempts to explicate some basic concepts in the behavioral sciences, both individual and social, namely, ‘control’ and ‘unfreedom,’ as well as the concepts by which they will be (...) defined, such as ‘persuasion,’ ‘constraint,’ ‘deprivation,’ and ‘punishment’. This analysis will enable us to ascertain with greater precision some of the rather intricate connections which exist between these relations. (shrink)

To determine the relevance of judgments of rationality and of morality in foreign policy decisions, it is necessary to provide a value‐neutral definition of “the national interest.” This makes it possible to ascertain, in principle, whether a given governmental foreign policy decision is rational with respect to this goal, in turn a necessary means to any government’s ultimate purposes. While it is pointless to judge the pursuit of the national interest itself morally right or wrong, moral judgments are relevant to (...) policies and goals compatible with the national interest. However, moral principles are often invoked to justify the pursuit of this intermediate goal. (shrink)

After criticizing some recent writings typical of the different forms of ethical objectivism, that is, intuitionism, naturalism (including the ideal observation theory and supervenience), and rationalism, I gave my reasons for siding with ethical subjectivism. I hope to demonstrate that this alternative meta‐ethical theory does not consider moral judgements meaningless nor arbitrary, and that it is compatible with empiricism in science and with serious moral commitment. Objectivists, on the other hand, tend to take a parochial view of ethics, identifying morality (...) with a particular moral point of view, nowadays liberalism and the common good, while ignoring rival moral principles which are politically important. (shrink)

What are the characteristics to be included in a fruitful definition of democracy? More important still, which of the features commonly considered democratic had better be excluded from the dinning characteristics?

This article examines cinematographic observational studies of infants conducted by a loosely connected group of female psychologists and physicians in the USA from the 1930s to the 1960s. Largely forgotten today, these practitioners realized detailed and carefully planned research projects about infant behavior in a variety of settings—from the laboratory to the well-baby clinic. Although their studies were in conversation with better-known works, such as John Bowlby's research on attachment and René Spitz's films on institutionalized infants, they differed in a (...) close examination of individual characteristics of babies and a critical attitude toward contemporary notions of ‘pathological mothering’. In closely following the work of several researchers, including but not limited to pediatrician Margaret Fries (1898–1987), the clinical psychologist Sibylle Escalona (1915–96) and her team members—child psychiatrist Mary Leitch (1914–?) and avant-garde photographer Ellen Auerbach (1906–2004)—and psychologist Anneliese Korner (1918–2010), I argue that their cinematographic works shed a more nuanced light on the landscape of infant research and child psychiatry in the mid 20th century, and open a way for alternative readings of gender, psychoanalysis, and scientific observation at that time. (shrink)

The Spirit and the Screen explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film and asks how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.

A prefrontal control system that is less mature than the limbic reward system in adolescence is thought to impede self-regulatory abilities, which could contribute to poor dietary choices and obesity. We, therefore, aimed to examine whether structural morphology of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala are associated with dietary decisions and obesity in children and adolescents. Seventy-one individuals between the ages of 8–22 years participated in this study; each participant completed a computer-based food choice task and a T1- and T2-weighted (...) structural brain scans. Two indices of obesity were assessed, including age- and sex-specific body mass index and waist-to-height ratio. The behavioral task included rating 60 food stimuli for tastiness, healthiness, and liking. Based on each participant’s self-ratings, 100 binary food choices were then made utilizing a computer mouse. Dietary “self-control” was calculated as the proportion of trials where the individual chose the healthier food item over the total number of trials. Cortical thickness and amygdala subnuclei volumes were quantified using FreeSurfer 6.0 and CIT168 atlas, respectively. We found that WHtR was negatively associated with the thickness of bilateral superior frontal, left superior temporal, right insula, and right inferior temporal regions. We also found WHtR to be positively associated with the volume of the central nucleus region of the amygdala, after adjusting for the hemisphere, age, sex, and intracranial volumes. A similar data pattern was observed when BMIz was used. Moreover, we found that across all participants, thinner right superior frontal cortex and larger left CEN volumes predicted lower dietary self-control. These results suggest that differential development of the PFC and amygdala relate to obesity and dietary self-control. Further longitudinal studies are merited to determine causal relationships among altered PFC to amygdala neural circuitry, dietary self-control, and obesity. (shrink)

Several climate ethicists have recently argued that having children is morally equivalent to over-consumption, and contributes greatly to parents’ personal carbon footprints. We show that these claims are mistaken, for two reasons. First, including procreation in parents’ carbon footprints double-counts children’s consumption emissions, once towards their own, and once towards their parents’ footprints. We show that such double-counting defeats the chief purpose of the concept of carbon footprint, namely to measure the sustainability and equitability of one’s activities and choices. Furthermore, (...) we show that proposals to avoid double-counting have other unacceptable implications. Second, we show that the key arguments for a supposed moral equivalence of procreation and consumption overgenerate and lead to unacceptable consequences in many cases, such as for the work of doctors who save lives or enable procreation. Finally, we propose that rather than counting children’s emissions towards their parents’ carbon footprints, we should consider these emissions as part of the parents’ carbon impact, i.e. the difference that their choices make to the overall global carbon emissions. It is from the perspective of impact that we should think about the ethics of procreation in an age of climate change. (shrink)

Este artigo discute a relação entre a questão das inferências nos contextos de justificação em ciência, nomeadamente o que ficou conhecido por “problema da indução” após Hume, em vista de esclarecer diferentes versões dos problemas de subdeterminação na filosofia da ciência.

ABSTRACT The current debate on scientific realism is an entire universe. A general thesis can be put like follows: scientific activity attains a world that is independent of science itself. This “reaching out” can be thought of in terms of theoretical practices, such as the formulation of true theories, and/or experimental practices, such as the construction of suficiently accurate methods to (re)formulate and test what is said by the theories. By this latter route, the debate about scientific realism in the (...) philosophy of science meets the discussions in the philosophy of measurement, an autonomous research area that investigates measurement practices, their concepts, applications and assumptions. As the “realism” in the philosophy of science in general, there are multiple postures that can be characterized as “realistic” through their theorizations about scientific measurements. Stating which are the criteria and reasons why these positions claim to be realistic and in what they are distinct is a complex task. This article is an attempt to do that, without exhausting the discussion or the field. (shrink)