Previous studies support the link of parental acculturation to their children’s academic achievement, identity, and family relations. Prior research also suggests that parental language proficiency is associated with children’s vocabulary knowledge. However, few studies have examined the links of parental acculturation to young children’s oral language abilities. As preschool oral language skills have been shown to predict future academic achievement, it is critical to understand the relations between parental acculturation and bilingual abilities with young immigrant children. Furthermore, few studies have (...) examined the links between parental acculturation and children’s bilingual ability among different immigrant groups who live in the same areas to understand possible similarities and differences. To address these gaps, this study examines these relations in two of the largest and fastest-growing immigrant populations in the United States, Chinese American and Mexican American families. A total of 119 dual language learners enrolled in Head Start programs in Northern California were recruited. DLLs were assessed on oral language measures in both their heritage language and English. Parental interviews were conducted to obtain parental acculturation and language proficiency. Results showed no significant group differences between Chinese American and Mexican American parents on the majority of their acculturation dimensions. Furthermore, there were no significant group differences in the bilingual abilities between Chinese American and Mexican American DLLs. Cluster analysis identified four groups of DLLs based on their bilingual ability: high language ability in both English and HL, low language ability in both, English-dominant, and HL-dominant. Results suggest that parental acculturation levels are more similar than different among the four groups. On average, parents in all four groups had stronger ties to their heritage culture and HL than to the American culture. Results also showed links between parental cultural identities and children’s language dominance. Parents of English-dominant children had significantly higher levels of American identity than the parents of children with high ability in both languages. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists have often maintained that in order to attribute mental states to other people one must have a ‘theory of mind’. This theory facilitates our grasp of other people’s mental states. Debate has then focussed on the form this theory should take. Recently a new approach has been suggested, which I call the ‘Direct Perception approach to social cognition’. This approach maintains that we can directly perceive other people’s mental states. It opposes traditional views on two counts: by (...) claiming that mental states are observable and by claiming that we can attribute them to others without the need for a theory of mind. This paper argues that there are two readings of the direct perception claims: a strong and a weak one. The Theory-theory is compatible with the weak version but not the strong one. The paper argues that the strong version of direct perception is untenable, drawing on evidence from the mirror neuron literature and arguments from the philosophy of science and perception to support this claim. It suggests that one traditional ‘theory of mind’ view, the ‘Theory-theory’ view, is compatible with the claim that mental states are observable, and concludes that direct perception views do not offer a viable alternative to theory of mind approaches to social cognition. (shrink)

In “Obligations of the ‘Gift’: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Precision Medicine,” Lee rightly points out that disparities in health care access also lead to disparities in precision medi...

Innovative surgery raises four kinds of ethical challenges: potential harms to patients; compromised informed consent; unfair allocation of healthcare resources; and conflicts of interest. Lack of adequate data on innovations and lack of regulatory oversight contribute to these ethical challenges. In this paper these issues and the extent to which problems may be resolved by better evidence-gathering and more comprehensive regulation are explored. It is suggested that some ethical issues will be more resistant to resolution than others, owing to special (...) features of both surgery and innovation. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper argues that different epistemic styles exist in science, and that these make up an important unit of analysis for studying science. On occasion these different sets of commitments to ways of doing and knowing about the world may fall along national boundaries. The case presented here examines German and American embryology around 1900 and shows that differences in goals and approaches make up different epistemic styles.In particular, the Germans sought causal mechanical explanations of as many phenomena as (...) possible, guided by strong theories which achieved confirmation when they fit with as much of the available data as possible. The Americans, in contrast, sought definitive facts, as many as possible, which might be quite specific or narrowly based. These facts could lead to empirical generalizations which, in turn, could guide the generation of new knowledge in the form of new facts. Thus, the two epistemic styles emphasized different goals, processes of investigation, and standards of evidence. (shrink)

We spend a lot of time thinking about other people: their motivations, what they are thinking, why they want particular things. Sometimes we are aware of it, but it often occurs without conscious thought, and we can respond appropriately to other people's thoughts in a diverse range of situations. The Social Mind: A Philosophical Introduction examines the cognitive capacities that facilitate this amazing ability. It explains and critiques key philosophical theories about how we think about other people's minds, measuring them (...) against empirical findings from neuroscience, anthropology, developmental psychology and cognitive ethology. Some of the fascinating questions addressed include: How do we think about other people's minds? Do we put ourselves in another's shoes to work out what they think? When do we need to think about another person's thoughts? What kinds of thoughts do we attribute to others? Are they propositional attitudes like beliefs and desires as analytic philosophers have often assumed, or could they be something else? What sorts of neural mechanisms underlie our ability to think about other people's thoughts? How is the ability to think about other minds different for individuals on the autism Spectrum? Is a preoccupation with other people's thoughts a Western phenomenon or is it found in all cultures? How do children learn to think about other minds? Can non-human animals think about other minds? These questions are applied to case studies throughout the book, including mirror neurons, recent research on infant social cognition, false belief tasks, and cross-cultural studies. Covering complex interdisciplinary debates in an accessible and clear way, with chapter summaries, annotated further reading, and a glossary, The Social Mind: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal entry point into this fast-moving and exciting field. It is essential reading for students of philosophy of mind and psychology, and also of interest to those in related subjects such as cognitive science, social and developmental psychology, and anthropology. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Background Central Philosophical Issues in Works on the Passions The Weakness of Reason “Reason Directs and the Affections Execute”19 Hume's Connection to the Earlier Literature Central Philosophical Issues regarding the Passions: Hume's Alternative Analyses Conclusion Notes References and further reading.

The cognitive ability to think about other people's psychological states is known as `mindreading'. This Element critiques assumptions that have been formative in shaping philosophical theories of mindreading: that mindreading is ubiquitous, underpinning the vast majority of our social interactions; and that its primary goal is to provide predictions and explanations of other people's behaviour. It begins with an overview of key positions and empirical literature in the debate. It then introduces and motivates the pluralist turn in this literature, which (...) challenges the core assumptions of the traditional views. The second part of the Element uses case studies to further motivate the pluralist framework, and to advocate the pluralist approach as the best way to progress our understanding of social cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

There has been much attention devoted in recent years to the question of whether our moral principles can be related to our biological nature. This collection of new essays focuses on the connection between biology, in particular evolutionary biology, and foundational questions in ethics. The book asks such questions as whether humans are innately selfish, and whether there are particular facets of human nature that bear directly on social practices. The volume is organised historically beginning with Aristotle and covering such (...) major figures as Hume and Darwin down to the present and the work of Harvard sociobiologist, E. O. Wilson. This is the first book to offer this historical perspective on the relation of biology and ethics, and has been written by some of the leading figures in the history and philosophy of science, whose work stands very much at the cutting edge of these disciplines. (shrink)

Diagrams make it possible to present scientific facts in more abstract and generalized form. While some detail is lost, simplified and accessible knowledge is gained. E. B. Wilson's work in cytology provides a case study of changing uses of diagrams and accompanying abstraction. In his early work, Wilson presented his data in photographs, which he saw as coming closest to “fact.” As he gained confidence in his interpretations, and as he sought to provide a generalized textbook account of cell development, (...) he relied on increasingly abstract diagrams. In addition, he came to see that highly abstract and even schematic drawings could provide more than pictures directly from life. (shrink)

While it is widely acknowledged that psychology is in the throes of a replication ‘crisis’, relatively little attention has been paid to the role theory plays in our evaluation of replications as ‘failed’ or ‘successful’. This paper applies well-known arguments in philosophy of science about the interplay between theory and experiment to a contemporary case study of infants’ understanding of false belief (Onishi and Baillargeon [2005]), and attempts to replicate it. It argues that the lack of consensus about over-arching theories (...) informing both the concepts under study and the methodologies used to track them means that researchers disagree over which experiments constitute replications of the original. The second part of the paper places this specific debate within a broader discussion of the replication crisis as a crisis of ‘theory’, developing work by Muthukrishna and Henrich ([2018]) and Bird ([2018]). Bird argues that the lack of agreed over-arching theories in psychology means that a high rate of replication failure is to be expected; this paper agrees with his diagnosis but challenges his proposal that more replication will resolve the problem. (shrink)

Historians have emphasized the appearance of a productive research program in genetics after 1910, and philosophers and biologists have considered endorsement of genetics as a progressive move, indeed as a starting point for modern experimental biology. These efforts focus on what biology had changed to. This paper examines the condition from which biology moved, stressing the way in which Americans held heredity and development as a natural, intimately intertwined couple. Heredity accounts for likenesses, development for variation, and the two act (...) together throughout an individual's life. This discussion establishes the antecedent conditions necessary to explain the split of genetics and embryology and addresses the reasons for the split. (shrink)

We often explain by citing an absence or an omission. Apart from the problem of assigning a causal role to such apparently negative factors as absences and omissions, there is a puzzle as to why only some absences and omissions, out of indefinitely many, should figure in explanations. In this paper we solve this ’many absences problem’ by using the contrastive model of explanation. The contrastive model of explanation is developed by adapting Peter Lipton’s account. What initially appears to be (...) only a trivial amendment to Lipton’s Difference Condition enables us both to offer a much more satisfactory solution to the ’many absences problem’ than David Lewis did, and also to explain why explanation in terms of absences and omissions should be so common. (shrink)

The study reported in this paper explored the ethical requirements of social research participants, an area where there is still little empirical research, by interviewing people who had participated in one of five recent social research studies. The findings endorse the conceptualization of informed consent as a process rather than a one-off event. Four different dynamics of decision-making were followed by participants in terms of the timing of decisions to participate and the information on which they were based. Multiple information (...) events were important, as was verbal as well as written information. Study participants reacted unfavourably to the idea of written consent. Although prior information was relevant to participant experience of the interview, what emerged more strongly as relevant was the behaviour of interviewers and the interviewing strategy used. The authors suggest that naturalistic, authentic approaches to information-giving are necessary, and that in scrutinizing them research ethics committees need to look not only at written information but also at verbal information giving, and how interviewer information-giving is supported by training and supervision. They suggest that committees also need to concern themselves more broadly with who will carry out interviews and the training, mentoring and monitoring in place to shape their conduct of interviews. In considering research instruments, research ethics committees need to consider not only whether interviewers will capture accurate and appropriate data but also whether they are likely to lead to a satisfactory interaction for participants. Given the impossibility of anticipating each individual participants information needs and their reaction to the interviewing strategy, the authors suggest that interviewers and participants need to be encouraged to negotiate the conduct of interviews jointly, and discuss how such negotiating roles might be supported. (shrink)

Abstract“Development” suggests that there is something that is developing, or changing over time. We can ask about temporal boundaries of that developmental process, asking when development begins or ends and whether it has defined stages along the way, for example. We can ask about spatial boundaries as well: where does the developing object start and end? For this article, I ask about the boundary definition of the developing organism in particular. What is an individual organism, and what defines it as (...) the same organism as it changes over time? In particular, how has this been answered historically: how have researchers described and explained what an individual developing organism is? This article explores ideas and approaches especially starting in the late 19th century, and in particular looks at the role of “organization.”. (shrink)

Since 1994, health policy in the UK has focused explicitly on making the NHS ‘primary care-led’. However, the meaning of primary is contested by different health professions and by policy-makers. This paper charts the major points of debate since the 1960s and suggests that there are limitations as to what general practice can be expected to deliver in respect of primary care.

This paper discusses a new edition of Callimachus' Aitia by Annette Harder and a monograph, Callimachus in Context, by Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan Stephens. A focus is common to both works, the edition no less than the monograph, which tackles the poem on what Harder calls the micro-, macro- and meso-levels, in order, not only to establish readings, explicate Realien and clarify detail, but also to explore literary techniques, structure and the degree to which the poem reflects the society and (...) culture in which it was written. Recent interpretations have seen catalogue technique and organization as fundamental to the Aitia's poetics, and the review considers aspects of both the poem's structure and its contemporaneity – as well as the limitations of an excessively Alexandria-centric approach. (shrink)

By 1900 most biologists accepted experimentation as appropriate for at least parts of biology. Some claimed experimentation as the best or only proper approach to biology, while others regarded it as an acceptable addition to existing methodologies. Different researchers defined experimentation in different ways, and they held different aspirations for their experimental programs. This paper explores three sets of ideas, represented respectively by the French in the 1870s, the Germans in the 1880s, and the Americans in the 1890s. It examines (...) what an experiment was thought to be, what experimentation was, and what the goals of experimentation were for each group, revealing suggestive differences. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an analysis, reconstruction and defense of Locke's account of personal identity. I begin with a detailed analysis of Locke's use of the term 'conscious' in its historical context. This term, which plays a central role in Locke's theory, had senses in the seventeenth century which it does not have today. In the light of this analysis, an interpretation of continuity of consciousness as the ancestral of memory is given. It is argued that this interpretation of (...) Locke's theory of personal identity does not involve an ontological commitment to immaterial substances, and Locke is defended against the historically important criticisms of Butler and Reid. In the conclusion I suggest that the account of the individuation of persons implicit in Locke's discussion of personal identity is similar to the account of contextual individuation given by Hintikka. (shrink)

Talia Welsh (2006) argues that Shaun Gallagher and Andrew Meltzoff's (1996) application of neonatal imitation research is insufficient grounds for their claim that neonates are born with a primitive body image and thus an innate self-awareness. Drawing upon an understanding of the self that is founded upon a ?theory of mind,? Welsh challenges the notion that neonates have the capacity for self-awareness and charges the supposition with an essentialism which threatens to disrupt more social constructionist understandings of the self. In (...) this paper, I initially defend Gallagher and Meltzoff's (1996) application of infant imitation to understandings of neonatal self-awareness by explaining how body image schemas can be understood as non-representational embodied cognitive phenomena that challenge ?theory of mind? theory. I then further develop the claim that neonates are born self-aware with reference to my own work in fetal development. I conclude that Welsh's political concerns are unfounded by showing how the conclusion that a neonate is self-aware does not signal a return to an essentialist understanding of self-awareness, but rather introduces into philosophical and psychological discourse possible alternate understandings of an embodied sense of self that are embedded within intersubjective contexts. (shrink)

Terence Penelhum has written extensively about the role of the idea of the self in Hume's account of the emotional and moral life of persons. Penelhum fails to notice, however, a change that takes place in the way that the idea of the self functions in Hume's account of the passions as that account evolved after the Treatise. This paper charts part of that evolution, and reflects on its significance for Hume's moral psychology.