Most of us think of memory in terms of the brain's ability to store and retrieve events, facts, and skills. Philosophers and cognitive scientists seek to understand memory in terms of causation and justification. This article steps back from these considerations to reflect broadly on what memory is. Drawing on the paradigm shift underway in mind sciences, I explore the implications of the emerging understanding of cognition as embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted. This new paradigm undermines epistemological dualism and individualism (...) and makes it possible to view memory as an ecological process. (shrink)

La pregunta sobre la muerte sigue siendo una gran preocupación para el hombre de hoy. La concepción bantú-africana de la muerte y el más allá ofrece una original respuesta a este misterio. Presentar la coincidencia y diferencias de dicha original respuestas con otras respuestas posibles será el objetivo de esta reflexión.

A major aim of the books in this series is to promote psychology's appreciation of the neglected giants in its history. The chapters document the significance of these early contributions, many of them made more than a century ago. Most of the chapters are revisions of invited addresses delivered at psychological conventions. Several of the authors are students, colleagues, or offspring of their pioneers and all of them are intrigued by the life and work of the psychologists about whom they (...) have written. All of the portraits are informal; on occasion, even humorous. Some are "impersonations"--telling stories in what were or might have been the pioneer's own words. This book provides source materials for teachers of undergraduate courses in psychology--particularly the history of psychology--who want to add a personal view in their lectures and offer interesting readings for their students. Each of the five volumes in this series contains different profiles thereby bringing more than 100 of the pioneers in psychology more vividly to life. (shrink)

Georg Lukács (1885-1971) was one of the most original Marxist philosophers and literary critics of the twentieth century. His work was a major influence on what we now know as critical theory. Almost fifty years after his death, Lukács's legacy has come under attack by right-wing extremists in his native Hungary. Despite efforts to erase his memory, Lukács remains a philosophical gadfly. In Confronting Reification, an international team of fourteen scholars explicate, reassess, and apply one of Lukács's most significant philosophical (...) contributions, his theory of reification. Based on papers presented at the 2017 Legacy of Georg Lukács conference held in Budapest, the essays in this volume demonstrate the vitality of Lukács's thought and its relevance. Contributors include: Rüdiger Dannemann, Frank Engster, Andrew Feenberg, Joseph Grim Feinberg, Andraž Jež, Christian Lotz, Csaba Olay, Tom Rockmore, Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker, Mariana Teixeira, Michael J. Thompson, Tivadar Vervoort, Richard Westerman, and Sean Winkler. (shrink)

Discusses mental processes, the role of humans in nature, experience, and the connection between myth, religion, and science.

Strict moderate invariantism is the ho-hum, ‘obvious’ view about knowledge attributions. It says knowledge attributions are often true and that only traditional epistemic factors like belief, truth, and justification make them true. As commonsensical as strict moderate invariantism is, it is equally natural to withdraw a knowledge attribution when error possibilities are made salient. If strict moderate invariantism is true, these knowledge-denials are often false because the subject does in fact know the proposition. I argue that strict moderate invariantism needs (...) an explanation of this phenomenon, but it does not have one. That is significant, for if strict moderate invariantism does not square with ordinary intuition, then it cannot rely on ordinary intuition for support. Section 1 introduces the concept of epistemic relevance blindness, which says ordinary subjects are generally insensitive to whether or not error possibilities are relevant to knowledge attributions. Section 2 focuses on Patrick Rysiew’s influential strict moderate invariantist pragmatic explanation of knowledge-denials and argues that such pragmatic explanations of knowledge-denials depend on attributors being epistemic relevance blind. Section 3 targets psychological explanations of epistemic relevance blindness offered separately by Jennifer Nagel and Mikkel Gerken. I argue that strict moderate invariantists lack a plausible explanation of epistemic relevance blindness. (shrink)

That a philosophical thesis entails a vicious regress is commonly taken to be decisive evidence that the thesis is false. In this paper, I argue that the existence of a vicious regress is insufficient to reject a proposed analysis provided that certain constraints on the analysis are met. When a vicious regress is present, some further consequence of the thesis must be established that, together with the presence of the vicious regress, shows the thesis to be false. The argument is (...) provided largely through the examination of Michael Bergmann's vicious regress argument against strong awareness internalism and a partial defense of that thesis against Bergmann. (shrink)

Successful psychopaths, defined as individuals in the general population who nevertheless possess some degree of psychopathic traits, are receiving increasing amounts of empirical attention. To date, little is known about such individuals, specifically with regard to how they respond to ethical dilemmas in business contexts. This study investigated this relationship, proposing a mediated model in which the positive relationship between psychopathy and unethical decision-making is explained through the process of moral disengagement, defined as a cognitive orientation that facilitates unethical choice. (...) The results of the study supported this model, and implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Textbook Islam, nation building, and the question of violence / Gregory Starrett and Eleanor Abdella Doumato -- Egypt : promoting tolerance, defending against Islamism / James A. Toronto and Muhammad S. Eissa -- Iran : a Shi'ite curriculum to serve the Islamic state / Golnar Mehran -- Jordan : prescription for obedience and conformity / Betty Anderson -- Kuwait : striving to align Islam with Western values / Taghreed Alqudsi-Ghabra -- Oman : cultivating good citizens and religious virtue / (...) Mandana E. Limbert -- The Palestinian national authority : the politics of writing and interpreting curricula. Genesis of a new curriculum / Nathan Brown ; A conflict of historical narratives / Seif Da'Na -- Saudi Arabia : from "Wahhabi" roots to contemporary revisionism / Eleanor Abdella Doumato -- Syria : secularism, Arabism, and Sunni orthodoxy / Joshua Landis -- Turkey : sanctifying a secular state / Ozlem Altan -- Textbook meanings and the power of interpretation / Gregory Starrett -- Conclusion : tailor-made Islam / Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Gregory Starrett. (shrink)

This book surveys the leading modern theories of property - Lockean, libertarian, utilitarian/law-and-economics, personhood, Kantian and human flourishing - and then applies those theories to concrete contexts in which property issues have been especially controversial. These include redistribution, the right to exclude, regulatory takings, eminent domain and intellectual property. The book highlights the Aristotelian human flourishing theory of property, providing the most comprehensive and accessible introduction to that theory to date. The book's goal is neither to cover every conceivable theory (...) nor to discuss every possible facet of the theories covered. Instead, it aims to make the major property theories comprehensible to beginners, without sacrificing accuracy or sophistication. The book will be of particular interest to students seeking an accessible introduction to contemporary theories of property, but even specialists will benefit from the book's lucid descriptions of contemporary debates. (shrink)

In Newcomb’s paradox you can choose to receive either the contents of a particular closed box, or the contents of both that closed box and another one. Before you choose though, an antagonist uses a prediction algorithm to accurately deduce your choice, and uses that deduction to fill the two boxes. The way they do this guarantees that you made the wrong choice. Newcomb’s paradox is that game theory’s expected utility and dominance principles appear to provide conflicting recommendations for what (...) you should choose. Here we show that the conflicting recommendations assume different probabilistic structures relating your choice and the algorithm’s prediction. This resolves the paradox: the reason there appears to be two conflicting recommendations is that the probabilistic structure relating the problem’s random variables is open to two, conflicting interpretations. We then show that the accuracy of the prediction algorithm in Newcomb’s paradox, the focus of much previous work, is irrelevant. We end by showing that Newcomb’s paradox is time-reversal invariant; both the paradox and its resolution are unchanged if the algorithm makes its ‘prediction’ after you make your choice rather than before. (shrink)

This study investigated (1) whether potential future purchasing agents were predisposed to accept gratuities or whether the practice of gratuity acceptance is a manifestation of the job itself, (2) whether the existence of a code of ethics forbidding gratuity acceptance curtails the occurrence, and (3) whether disparities in ethics policies between the sales and purchasing functions affect gratuity acceptance. Hypotheses based upon the concepts of organizational concern and institutionalized ethics are developed and empirically tested. Results suggest that future purchasing agents (...) are predisposed to accept gratuities and that formal written ethics policies decrease the acceptance of gratuities. Disparities in ethics policies between the sales and purchasing functions concerning gratuities failed to affect gratuity acceptance significantly. (shrink)

To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Søren Kierkegaard, I review in this essay the relationship between Kierkegaard and the Catholic tradition. First, I look back to consider both Kierkegaard’s encounter with Catholicism and the influence of his work upon Catholics. Second, I look around to consider some of the recent work on Kierkegaard and Catholicism, especially Jack Mulder’s recent book, Kierkegaard and the Catholic Tradition, and the many articles that examine Kierkegaard’s relation to Catholicism in the multi-volume (...) Kierkegaard Research series edited by Jon Stewart. Finally, I look ahead to consider possible directions in which the conversation between Catholics and Kierkegaardians might continue. (shrink)

In Dependent Rational Animals, Alasdair MacIntyre attempts to ground the virtues in a biological account of humans. Drawing from this attempt, he also tries to answer the question of why we should care for the severely disabled. MacIntyre’s difficulty in answering this question begins with the fact that his communities of practices do not naturally include the severely disabled within their membership and care. In response to this difficulty, he provides four reasons for why we should care for the severely (...) disabled. I argue that three of these reasons are inadequate, and that the fourth is incomplete although it does point in a promising direction. I conclude that a more satisfactory answer requires a further extension of the central development from After Virtue to Dependent Rational Animals, and I draw from Wendell Berry, whose work MacIntyre admires, to provide an illuminating illustration of what such an answer might look like. (shrink)

Supporting Hamilton’s inclusive fitness theory, archival analyses of inheritance patterns in wills have revealed that people invest more of their estates in kin of closer genetic relatedness. Recent classroom experiments have shown that this genetic relatedness effect is stronger for relatives of direct lineage (children, grandchildren) than for relatives of collateral lineage (siblings, nieces, nephews). In the present research, multilevel modeling of more than 1,000 British Columbian wills revealed a positive effect of genetic relatedness on proportions of estates allocated to (...) relatives. This effect was qualified by an interaction with lineage, such that it was stronger for direct than for collateral relatives. Exploratory analyses of the moderating role of benefactors’ sex and estate values showed the genetic relatedness effect was stronger among female and wealthier benefactors. The importance of these moderators to understanding kin investment in modern humans is discussed. (shrink)

In this essay we advance the view that analytical epistemology and artificial intelligence are complementary disciplines. Both fields study epistemic relations, but whereas artificial intelligence approaches this subject from the perspective of understanding formal and computational properties of frameworks purporting to model some epistemic relation or other, traditional epistemology approaches the subject from the perspective of understanding the properties of epistemic relations in terms of their conceptual properties. We argue that these two practices should not be conducted in isolation. We (...) illustrate this point by discussing how to represent a class of inference forms found in standard inferential statistics. This class of inference forms is interesting because its members share two properties that are common to epistemic relations, namely defeasibility and paraconsistency. Our modeling of standard inferential statistical arguments exploits results from both logical artificial intelligence and analytical epistemology. We remark how our approach to this modeling problem may be generalized to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of epistemic relation. (shrink)

C.P. Snow observed that universities are largely made up of two broad types of people, literary intellectuals and scientists, yet a typical individual of each type is barely able, if able at all, to communicate with his counterpart. Snow's observation, popularized in his 1959 lecture Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (reissued by Cambridge 1993), goes some way to explaining the two distinct cultures one hears referred to as "the humanities" and "the sciences." Snow's lecture is a study of these (...) two cultures, their rules, hierarchies, and educational traditions, which raises the following question: to what degree are "the humanities" and "the sciences" a consequence of how we organize and fund modern universities? Rather than a happenstance of interests and temperament, perhaps "humanist" and "scientist" are largely bureaucratic categories. (shrink)

Syntactic complexity effects have been investigated extensively with respect to comprehension . According to one prominent class of accounts , certain structures cause comprehension difficulty due to their scarcity in the language. But why are some structures less frequent than others? In two elicited-production experiments we investigated syntactic complexity effects in relative clauses and wh-questions varying in whether or not they contained non-local dependencies. In both experiments, we found reliable durational differences between subject-extracted structures and object-extracted structures : Participants took (...) longer to begin and produce object-extractions. Furthermore, participants were more likely to be disfluent in the object-extracted constructions. These results suggest that there is a cost associated with planning and uttering the more syntactically complex, object-extracted structures, and that this cost manifests in the form of longer durations and disfluencies. Although the precise nature of this cost remains to be determined, these effects provide one plausible explanation for the relative rarity of object-extractions: They are more costly to produce. (shrink)