Our ability to select relevant information from the environment is limited by the resolution of attention – i.e., the minimum size of the region that can be selected. Neural mechanisms that underlie this limit and its development are not yet understood. Functional MRI was performed during an object tracking task in 7- and 11-year-old children, and in young adults. Object tracking activated canonical fronto-parietal attention systems and motion-sensitive area MT in children as young as 7 years. Object tracking performance improved (...) with age, together with stronger recruitment of parietal attention areas and a shift from low-level to higher-level visual areas. Increasing the required resolution of spatial attention – which was implemented by varying the distance between target and distractors in the object tracking task – led to activation increases in fronto-insular cortex, medial frontal cortex including anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and supplementary motor area, superior colliculi, and thalamus. This core circuitry for attentional precision was recruited by all age groups, but ACC showed an age-related activation reduction. Our results suggest that age-related improvements in selective visual attention and in the resolution of attention are characterized by an increased use of more functionally specialized brain regions during the course of development. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jesus and Buddhism: A Christian ViewMarcus J. BorgLike several of the contributors to this collection of essays, I begin with my own vantage point. By profession a historian of Jesus and Christian origins, I am by confession a Christian of a nonliteralist and nonexclusivist kind (once Lutheran, now Episcopalian). As a Christian, I am interested in the theological implications of my work as a historian. As a student of (...) Buddhism, I am an amateur whose knowledge is limited to what I have learned from teaching world religions at the introductory undergraduate level.The essays illustrate a classic issue in interreligious dialogue: What shall we compare? Exoteric forms or esoteric core? If Buddhism (esoteric or exoteric) is compared with external forms of popular-level Christianity over the centuries, the gulf is great indeed. But if we compare the historical Jesus and the mystical stream of Christianity (its internal core) with Buddhism, then there are important points of contact.As a Jesus scholar and a Christian, I address two central subjects raised by the essays, the first more historical and the second more theological. I briefly compare the historical Jesus and the Buddha and then reflect about the exclusivist and absolutist claims made about Jesus by the most common forms of Christianity.The Historical Jesus and the BuddhaJesus was a Jewish mystic. This is radical shorthand for my fuller five-stroke sketch, as well as foundational for it. As a Jewish mystic (or Spirit person, by which I mean the same thing), Jesus became a healer, wisdom teacher, social prophet, and movement founder. 1 This sketch is the basis for comparing the historical Jesus and the Buddha.Of the contributors, José Cabezón says the most about recent historical Jesus scholarship. I agree with him about much. Both Jesus and the Buddha opened up the religious life to marginalized people, stressed the interior life, and inaugurated reformist movements. Both traditions take spirits and ‘magic’ seriously. 2 I agree that the major difference is Jesus’ much greater emphasis on social justice, which leads to a further difference: Jesus was killed, his life cut short because he was a social [End Page 93] prophet, whereas the Buddha died from food poisoning. Jesus’ public activity was thus very brief, perhaps as little as a year, compared to the forty or fifty years of the Buddha.To return to similarities, I cite two more. Both Jesus and the Buddha had transforming enlightenment experiences of a mystical kind at about age thirty. Both became teachers of a convention-subverting wisdom flowing out of their enlightenment experiences.Because Cabezón expresses uncertainty about the second claim, I summarize the reasons why I see Jesus as a teacher of an enlightenment way of wisdom similar to that taught by the Buddha. 3 ‘Seeing’ (enlightenment) is strongly emphasized not only in sayings of Jesus but also in the metaphorical ‘spin’ given to some of the stories reporting the healing of blindness. Moreover, inviting a new way of seeing is the primary rhetorical function of Jesus’ aphorisms and parables, his most common forms of teaching.Furthermore, imagery of ‘the way’ is central to Jesus and the gospels, pointing to a foundational similarity to the teaching of the Buddha. There is the broad way and there is the narrow way; those who humble (empty) themselves will be exalted; the path to a new way of being involves dying to an old way of being. This emphasis points to an internal spiritual-psychological process very similar to Buddhist ‘emptying’ and ‘letting go.’ ‘Dying’ and ‘letting go’ are metaphorical synonyms. 4Jesus’ way undermined convention and affirmed a radical recentering in that which is beyond the domestications generated by convention: the sacred. As a mystic, Jesus knew this from his own experience. 5 Like the Buddha, he taught differently because he had seen differently.Thus I have become persuaded of a foundational similarity between ‘the way’ taught by the Buddha and ‘the way’ taught by Jesus. 6 I tell my students that if Jesus and the Buddha were ever to meet, neither would try to convert the other—not because they would regard the task as hopeless, but because they would... (shrink)

Do activist trade and industrial policies offer developing countries a viable alternative to either neoliberal or mercantilist development regimes? We hope to answer the question by, first, distinguishing the “open economy industrial policies” in vogue today from either their “closed economy” predecessors—i.e., import-substituting industrialization—or more orthodox approaches to development policy making; second, tracing the growth of nontraditional exports from Latin America and the Caribbean to the diffusion of more active approaches in the 1990s; and, third, accounting for activism’s apparent success (...) in an otherwise inauspicious spatial and temporal context by identifying three distinct limits to rent-seeking in the open economy: infant exporter maturation; the costs of government support; and the reactions of foreign rivals. (shrink)

This manuscript departs strongly from conventional accounts that ascribe a central role to war and the threat of war in Third World state building. Similarly, it challenges the conventional wisdom that abundant exportable natural resource wealth is likely to provoke institutional atrophy. Instead, it argues that a set of logically prior conditions—the social relations that govern the principal economic sectors and the pattern or intraelite conflict or compromise—launch path-dependent processes that help determine when, and if, either strategic conflict or resource (...) wealth contribute to, or impede, institutional development. The argument is tested in the comparative analysis of the state-building process in two Andean neighbors, both of which are situated in similar strategic and natural resource environments but which produced qualitatively different outcomes in terms of state capacity or “strength.”. (shrink)

Precision cell signaling activities of reactive electrophilic species (RES) are arguably among the most poorly‐understood means to transmit biological messages. Latest research implicates native RES to be a chemically‐distinct subset of endogenous redox signals that influence cell decision making through non‐enzyme‐assisted modifications of specific proteins. Yet, fundamental questions remain regarding the role of RES as bona fide second messengers. Here, we lay out three sets of criteria we feel need to be met for RES to be considered as true cellular (...) signals that directly mediate information transfer by modifying “first‐responding” sensor proteins. We critically assess the available evidence and define the extent to which each criterion has been fulfilled. Finally, we offer some ideas on the future trajectories of the electrophile signaling field taking inspiration from work that has been done to understand canonical signaling mediators. (shrink)

This article argues that if panpsychism is true, then there are grounds for thinking that digitally-based artificial intelligence may be incapable of having coherent macrophenomenal conscious experiences. Section 1 briefly surveys research indicating that neural function and phenomenal consciousness may be both analog in nature. We show that physical and phenomenal magnitudes—such as rates of neural firing and the phenomenally experienced loudness of sounds—appear to covary monotonically with the physical stimuli they represent, forming the basis for an analog relationship between (...) the three. Section 2 then argues that if this is true and micropsychism—the panpsychist view that phenomenal consciousness or its precursors exist at a microphysical level of reality—is also true, then human brains must somehow manipulate fundamental microphysical-phenomenal magnitudes in an analog manner that renders them phenomenally coherent at a macro level. However, Sect. 3 argues that because digital computation abstracts away from microphysical-phenomenal magnitudes—representing cognitive functions non-monotonically in terms of digits—digital computation may be inherently incapable of realizing coherent macroconscious experience. Thus, if panpsychism is true, digital AI may be incapable of achieving phenomenal coherence. Finally, Sect. 4 briefly examines our argument’s implications for Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory theory of consciousness, which we contend may need to be supplanted by a theory of macroconsciousness as analog microphysical-phenomenal information integration. (shrink)

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, political theorist, philosopher, and Roman constitutionalist. He is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome. He introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary, distinguishing himself as a linguist, translator, and philosopher. An impressive orator and successful lawyer, he probably thought his political (...) career his most important achievement. Today, he is appreciated primarily for his humanism and philosophical and political writings. Although a great master of Latin rhetoric and composition, Cicero was not Roman in the traditional sense, and was quite self-conscious of this for his entire life. He was declared a "righteous pagan" by the early Catholic Church, and therefore many of his works were deemed worthy of preservation. Saint Augustine and others quoted liberally from his works On the Republic and On the Laws, and it is due to this that we are able to recreate much of the work from the surviving fragments. (shrink)

Excerpt from De Finibus Bonorum Et Malorum: Libri Quinque About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We (...) do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

One of the key learning objectives in any health professional course is to develop ethical and judicious practice. Therefore, it is important to address how medical and pharmacy students respond to, and deal with, ethical dilemmas in their clinical environments. In this paper, we examined how students communicated their resolution of ethical dilemmas and the alignment between these communications and the four principles developed by Beauchamp and Childress. Three hundred and fifty-seven pharmacy and medical students (overall response rate=63%) completed a (...) questionnaire containing four clinical case scenarios with an ethical dilemma. Data were analysed using multiple methods. The findings revealed that 73% of the qualitative responses could be exclusively coded to one of the ‘four principles’ determined by the Beauchamp and Childress' framework. Additionally, 14% of responses overlapped between the four principles (multiple codes) and 13% of responses could not be coded using the framework. The subsequent subgroup analysis revealed different response patterns depending on the case being reviewed. The findings showed that when students are faced with challenging ethical dilemmas their responses can be aligned with the Beauchamp and Childress framework, although more contentious dilemmas involving issues of law are less easily categorised. The differences between year and discipline groups show students are developing ethical frames of reference that may be linked with their teaching environments and their levels of understanding. Analysis of these response patterns provides insight into the way students will likely respond in ‘real’ settings and this information may help educators prepare students for these clinical ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Cicero's essay On Friendship (Laelius de amicitia) is of interest as much for the light it sheds on Roman society as for its embodiment of ancient philosophical views on the subjects of friendship. The Dream of Scipio was excerpted in late antiquity from Cicero's De Republica, a dialogue in six books which now only survives in fragmentary form. In the excerpt, which probably formed the conclusion to the dialogue, Cicero describes his vision of the cosmos and the rewards of immortality (...) that the good statesman can expect after death. This work is particularly important for its influence on later literature in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.Both dialogues are examples of the best Ciceronian prose. They are presented in this volume in the context of Cicero's philosophical writing. Their place in ancient thought and their literary characteristics are discussed fully in the introduction, while individual points of interpretation are dealt with in the commentary. The text of both works is new and will also be published in a forthcoming volume in the Oxford Classical Texts series. There is a separate appendix of notes on textual points. Text with translation and commentary. (Aris and Phillips 1991). (shrink)

The western-based leadership and ethics literatures were reviewed to identify the key characteristics that conceptually define what it means to be an ethical leader. Data from the Global Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness (GLOBE) project were then used to analyze the degree to which four aspects of ethical leadership – Character/Integrity, Altruism, Collective Motivation, and Encouragement – were endorsed as important for effective leadership across cultures. First, using multi-group confirmatory factor analyses measurement equivalence of the ethical leadership scales was found, which (...) provides indication that the four dimensions have similar meaning across cultures. Then, using analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests each of the four dimensions were found to be universally endorsed as important for effective leadership. However, cultures also varied significantly in the degree of endorsement for each dimension. In the increasingly global business environment, these findings have implications for organizations implementing ethics programs across cultures and preparing leaders for expatriate assignments. (shrink)

This paper presents students’ views about honest and dishonest actions within the pharmacy and medical learning environments. Students also offered their views on solutions to ameliorating dishonest action. Three research questions were posed in this paper: (1) what reasons would students articulate in reference to engaging in dishonest behaviours? (2) What reasons would students articulate in reference to maintaining high levels of integrity? (3) What strategies would students suggest to decrease engagement in dishonest behaviours and/or promote honest behaviours? The design (...) of the study incorporated an initial descriptive analysis to interpret students’ responses to an 18-item questionnaire about justifications for dishonest action. This was followed by a qualitative analysis of students’ commentaries in reference to why students would engage in either honest or dishonest action. Finally a qualitative analysis was conducted on students’ views regarding solutions to dishonest action. The quantitative results showed that students were more likely to use time management and seriousness justifications for dishonest actions. The qualitative findings found that students’ actions (honest or dishonest) were guided by family and friends, the need to do well, issues of morality and institutional guidelines. Students suggested that dishonest action could be ameliorated by external agencies and polarised views between punitive and rewards-based mechanisms were offered. These results suggest that these students engaged in dishonest action for various reasons and solutions addressing dishonest action need to consider diverse mechanisms that likely extend beyond the educational institution. (shrink)

This study examines how heightened expectations of board responsibility and accountability affect the socio-cognitive decision-making of boards and their collective task performance. Using data from the directors of 60 boards who served before and after the enactment of Sarbanes–Oxley, this study provides insight into the potential negative impact that this tightened accountability environment can have on a board’s task performance. Examining several socio-cognitive elements of board decision-making, board authority is found to have a positive main effect on board task performance, (...) while relative CEO power and affective conflict have curvilinear relationships with board task performance. Cohesiveness also moderates the relationship between a board’s perceived uncertainty and affective conflict with board task performance. In sum, the model shows how a new era of director accountability can affect the social cognitions of board decision-making that underlie board task performance. (shrink)

We discuss the typography of the notation used by Gottlob Frege in his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik.

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Despite the increasingly multinational nature of the workplace, there have been few studies of the convergence and divergence in beliefs about ethics-based leadership across cultures. This study examines the meaning of ethical and unethical leadership held by managers in six societies with the goal of identifying areas of convergence and divergence across cultures. More specifically, qualitative research methods were used to identify the attributes and behaviors that managers from the People’s Republic of China (the PRC), Hong Kong, the Republic of (...) China (Taiwan), the United States (the U.S.), Ireland, and Germany attribute to ethical and unethical leaders. Across societies, six ethical leadership themes and six unethical leadership themes emerged from a thematic analysis of the open-ended responses. Dominant themes for ethical and unethical leadership for each society are identified and examined within the context of the core cultural values and practices of that society. Implications for theory, research, and management practice are discussed. (shrink)

"Blending literary and photo-journalism, history, and storytelling, essays examine eighteen Texas dance halls in terms of their music, culture, and community. Also considers the predominantly Czech and German heritage from which these halls evolved, as we.

In Portraits of American Philosophy, eight of America's most prominent philosophers offer autobiographical narratives that remind us that the life of a scholar is both a tale of personal struggle and an adventure in ideas.

This paper examines the critical role that organizational leaders play in establishing a values based climate. We discuss seven mechanisms by which leaders convey the importance of ethical values to members, and establish the expectations regarding ethical conduct that become engrained in the organizations climate. We also suggest that leaders at different organizational levels rely on different mechanisms to transmit values and expectations. These mechanisms then influence members practices and expectations, further increase the salience of ethical values and result in (...) the shared perceptions that form the organizations climate. The paper is organized in three parts. Part onebegins with a brief discussion of climates regarding ethics and the critical role of values. Part two provides discussion on the mechanisms by which leaders and members transmit values and create climates related to ethics. Part three provides a discussion of these concepts with implications for theory, research, and practice. (shrink)

The sixteen essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the (...) home. (shrink)

Plagiarism and other transgressions of the norms of academic integrity appear to be a persistent problem among upper secondary students. Numerous surveys have revealed high levels of infringement of what appear to be clearly stated rules. Less attention has been given to students’ understanding of academic integrity, and to the potential misconceptions and false beliefs that may make it difficult for them to comply with existing rules and handle complex real-life situations.In this paper we report findings from a survey of (...) European upper secondary students’ views on issues relating to academic integrity. We relate these findings to the students’ training about academic integrity, self-reported level of questionable behavior and country of study.A total of 1654 students at 51 institutions located in 6 European countries participated in the study. The participants generally believed they had a good understanding of the rules applying to them and knew how to behave in compliance with norms of academic integrity. The results indicate, however, that often, in practice, this belief was mistaken. Many students had an inadequate understanding of core elements of academic integrity. They were uncertain about how to act, and they struggled in the handling of complex situations that require context-sensitive judgement. While some differences between countries were identified, they were modest and exhibited no clear pattern. Our results also suggest that reducing students’ level of uncertainty and, to a lesser degree, improving their level of knowledge could lead them to engage less in certain types of questionable behaviours. Surprisingly, the effect of academic training is modest and ambiguous. The study also confirms that perception of peer behaviour has the strongest association with student engagement in questionable behaviours. Thus, academic integrity at the upper secondary level cannot be explained simply in terms of individual ethics or knowledge. (shrink)

The theory of mind (ToM) deficit associated with autism has been a central topic in the debate about the modularity of the mind. Most involved in the debate about the explanation of the ToM deficit have failed to notice that autism’s status as a spectrum disorder has implications about which explanation is more plausible. In this paper, I argue that the shift from viewing autism as a unified syndrome to a spectrum disorder increases the plausibility of the explanation of the (...) ToM deficit that appeals to a domain-specific, higher-level ToM module. First, I discuss what it means to consider autism as a spectrum rather than as a unified disorder. Second, I argue for the plausibility of the modular explanation on the basis that autism is better considered as a spectrum disorder. Third, I respond to a potential challenge to my account from Philip Gerrans and Valerie Stone’s recent work (Gerrans, Biol Philos 17:305–321, 2002; Stone and Gerrans, Trends Cogn Sci 10:3–4, 2006a; Soc Neurosci 1:309–319, 2006b; Gerrans and Stone, Br J Philos Sci 59:121–141, 2008). (shrink)