We argue that a closer look at the practices and tools that humans use to support willpower, and the cultural contexts in which they are employed, can broaden the applicability of Ainslie's theory and facilitate the development of more effective self-control techniques. To support our argument, we examine Alcoholics Anonymous's method of temptation resistance known as “playing the tape through”.

Reviews/interviews/contributors Tributes to Professor Andrzej Kopcewicz - Agnieszka Salska New Media Effects on Traditional News Sources: A Review of the State of American Newspapers - Richard Profozich Review of The Body, ed. by Ilona Dobosiewicz and Jacek Gutorow - Grzegorz Kość “Taste good iny?”: Images of and from Australian Indigenous Literature - Jared Thomas Speaks with Teresa Podemska-Abt Engaging the “Forbidden Texts” of Philosophy - Pamela Sue Anderson Talks to Alison Jasper.

This collection of essays is dedicated to the prolific career of Paul Ricoeur. Honoring his work, this anthology addresses questions and concerns that defined Ricoeur’s.

Almost 160 years after the American Civil War, where the Union defeated the Confederacy and ended slavery in the United States, approximately 1,910 tributes remain to Confederate military leaders located on public property in the 11 original Confederate states, particularly in cities with an exceptionally high density of Black residents. To Blacks, this iconography delivers a clear message of White supremacy. Six states have enacted laws to protect and preserve these memorials, making it almost impossible to use the court system (...) to move them to private property. This paper explores connections between support for a myth called the Lost Cause, which is a revisionist history intended to spread misinformation about the true cause of the American Civil War, and attitudes toward placement of Confederate symbols on public land. We show that there is significant belief in the Lost-Cause myth among many White U.S. Southerners. Furthermore, we find those who believe most in the myth are the least likely to want to move the monuments or end taxpayer support for their maintenance. (shrink)

It is unclear whether the regulatory distinction between non-identifiable and identifiable information—information used to determine informed consent practices for the use of clinically derived samples for genetic research—is meaningful to patients. The objective of this study was to examine patients' attitudes and preferences regarding use of anonymous and identifiable clinical samples for genetic research. Telephone interviews were conducted with 1,193 patients recruited from general medicine, thoracic surgery, or medical oncology clinics at five United States academic medical centers. Wanting to know (...) about research being done was important to 72% of patients when samples would be anonymous and to 81% of patients when samples would be identifiable. Only 17% wanted to know about the identifiable scenario but not the anonymous scenario. Curiosity-based reasons were the most common among patients who wanted to know about anonymous samples. Of patients wanting to know about either scenario, approximately 57% would require researchers to seek permission, whereas 43% would be satisfied with notification only. Patients were more likely to support permission in the anonymous scenario if they had more education, were Black, less religious, in better health, more private, and less trusting of researchers. The sample, although not representative of the general population, does represent patients at academic medical centers whose clinical samples may be used for genetic research. Few patients expressed preferences consistent with the regulatory distinction between non-identifiable and identifiable information. Data from this study should cause policy-makers to question whether this distinction is useful in relation to research with previously collected clinically derived samples. (shrink)

Tributes to Professor Andrzej Kopcewicz - Agnieszka Salska New Media Effects on Traditional News Sources: A Review of the State of American Newspapers - Richard Profozich Review of The Body, ed. by Ilona Dobosiewicz and Jacek Gutorow - Grzegorz Kość “Taste good iny?”: Images of and from Australian Indigenous Literature - Jared Thomas Speaks with Teresa Podemska-Abt Engaging the “Forbidden Texts” of Philosophy - Pamela Sue Anderson Talks to Alison Jasper.

The avocado (Persea americana) is a major crop commodity worldwide. Moreover, avocado, a paleopolyploid, is an evolutionary “outpost” among flowering plants, representing a basal lineage (the magnoliid clade) near the origin of the flowering plants themselves. Following centuries of selective breeding, avocado germplasm has been characterized at the level of microsatellite and RFLP markers. Nonetheless, little is known beyond these general diversity estimates, and much work remains to be done to develop avocado as a major subtropical‐zone crop. Among the goals (...) of avocado improvement are to develop varieties with fruit that will “store” better on the tree, show uniform ripening and have better post‐harvest storage. Avocado transcriptome sequencing, genome mapping and partial genomic sequencing will represent a major step toward the goal of sequencing the entire avocado genome, which is expected to aid in improving avocado varieties and production, as well as understanding the evolution of flowers from non‐flowering seed plants (gymnosperms). Additionally, continued evolutionary and other comparative studies of flower and fruit development in different avocado strains can be accomplished at the gene expression level, including in comparison with avocado relatives, and these should provide important insights into the genetic regulation of fruit development in basal angiosperms. BioEssays 30:386–396, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

_341_ _Objectives: _In patients with multivessel disease both the detection of the culprit lesion and the exact allocation are important preconditions for sufficient treatment and improved outcome. In a vessel based approach the combination of quantitative coronary angiography and fractional flow reserve measured by a pressure wire should be advantageous compared to myocardial SPECT, as morphological and functional information is delivered simultaneously. Therefore our aim was to evaluate MS in the detection and allocation of hemodynamically significant stenoses obtained by the (...) combined gold standard QCA plus FFR in patients with multivessel disease. _Methods: _FFR and QCA of 95 vessels in 80 patients have been evaluated. Hemodynamically significant target lesions were defined as intermediate stenoses between 50 and 75% with an FFR. (shrink)

L’article étudie la notion de scénographie vis-à-vis des nouvelles tendances expographiques qui remettent aujourd’hui en question l’acte d’exposer. Des expositions historiques et contemporaines, telles que An Exhibit (ICA, Londres, 1957) de Richard Hamilton, ou Contemporanea (Villa Borghèse, Rome, 1973), organisée par Achille Bonito Oliva, montrent comment, au véritable travail scénographique, se substitue un lieu qui, avec sa spécificité et sa caractérisation architectonique et historique, joue le rôle de scénographie de l’exposition.

Richard Rorty claims that philosophy can either be seen as a practice whose primary goal is to show the interrelationship between the different practices in our society or as a discipline whose main aim is to discover the essence of the objects we posit as well as the normative concepts we employ in different discourses. Michel Foucault’s works have usually been associated with the initial characterization of philosophy mentioned above. However, in what follows, I demonstrate how Foucault’s general theme, what (...) he dubs “the discourse of true and false,” intersects with the view that philosophy is the search for the nature of the normative notions we employ in different discourses. In a similar manner, I demonstrate how Foucault’s conception of truth conforms to minimalism’s schema for truth. Though his theme’s intersection with the characterization of philosophy as the search for universal categories and essences is in line with his criticism of how discourses dictate the ways of constituting, seeing and compartmentalizing an object, the manner in which his conception of truth conforms to minimalism’s schema for truth leads to a paradoxical situation for his conception of truth may also be seen as a byproduct of a discourse about truth itself. Keywords - Rorty, Foucault, truth, minimalism, deflationism, discourse of true and false. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hypermediated Art CriticismPamela G. Taylor (bio) and B. Stephen Carpenter II (bio)Technological media catapults our perception into what Marshall McLuhan called "new transforming vision and awareness."1 As our lives become more and more immersed in such technologies as television, film, and interactive computers, we find ourselves inundated with a heightened sense of mindfulness—an aesthetic experience made possible through such computer technological characteristics as hyperlinks, hypermedia, and hyperreality. In these (...) terms, the prefix "hyper" represents various linking devices inherent to computer technology that allure and transport us between, above, below, and toward vast areas of information, places, and peoples. Hypermediacy, according to Bob Cotton and Richard Oliver, is "an entirely new kind of media experience born from the marriage of TV and computer technologies. Its raw ingredients can be brought together in any combination. It is a medium that offers random access; it has no physical beginning, middle, or end."2 In other words, there is no set or static structure inherent in technological media. It is not so much an "anything goes" apparatus as it is an "anything is possible" system. The seemingly vast possibilities inherent to technological media offer us many and alternate views of the world.Just as technological media encourage multiple means of viewing the world, no single approach to art criticism can be considered dominant, as several methods, methodologies, and approaches exist for responding to [End Page 1] works of art. We conceive of art criticism as a complex means of making meanings about works of art and communicating those meanings to other people. Following the lead of art educator Terry Barrett,3 art criticism hinges on the four activities of describing, interpreting, judging, and theorizing about art. Barrett suggests that, although all four overlap, interpretation is the most important and most likely the most complex aspect of art criticism. Although interwoven with description, analysis, and judgment, interpretation of the meanings of individual works of art is of foremost concern in contemporary art criticism. Similarly, we situate hypermediated art criticism as a synthesis of our descriptions, interpretations, judgments, and theories—both verbal and visual—with the various ways in which computer technology facilitates the simultaneous existence, representation, storage, and presentation of these and other forms of meaning making about works of art.Hypermediated art criticism is built upon our own technological abilities to both create and follow divergent paths, ideas, and beliefs according to our choices. Hypermediated art criticism is inclusive of the ways that our choices change daily depending upon our situation, role, and purpose, or simply as a result of what we witness or experience in a moment. In the hypermediated criticism process, our ways of seeing and knowing change from a linear to multilinear perspective, from single to multilayered, and from static to mutable perception. Indeed, the disparate ways of seeing and knowing made possible through technological media and hypermedia provide us with an expansive and personally reflective approach to art criticism.Personal Reflection and Art CriticismMichael Joyce, known for his poetic approach to computer hypertext theory and fictional writing, says, "We are who we are. Layered and overlaid, we make a world within our bodies."4 Possibly now more than ever that world within our bodies can be represented, re-presented, and re-invented right before our eyes through technological media. Digital ethnographer Ricki Goldman-Segall refers to this technological world as a learning constellation in which "we are each composed of many selves, all of which interact with each other as we learn.... With the use of new computer technologies, we extend not only our technological abilities, but also our various personae—the societies of our minds—in the form of new objects for others to think with."5 In the classroom, hypermediated art criticism generated through computer technology functions just this way—as new objects that we, and our students, use to help us extend the ways in which we think about works of art.Contrary to the antihumanist approach so often associated with computer technology theory,6 our discussion of hypermediated art criticism—the symbiotic relationship of art criticism and technology—begins with the [End Page 2] basic assumption that a primary purpose of... (shrink)

Richard Kennington, a professor for many years at Pennsylvania State University and the Catholic University of America, was renowned for his insight in reading and teaching early modern philosophy. Although he published articles and spoke widely, never before have his writings been collected in a book. On Modern Origins deftly shows how modern thinkers assessed the errors of the classical tradition and established in its place a philosophy that fuses a new meaning of nature and of theory with humanitarian goals. (...) This volume is an essential source for scholars seeking to understand the contemporary significance of the dawning of the modern era. (shrink)

This is an English translation of Descartes' seminal discourse, with an original essay by Richard Kennington. This text is designed to provide the student with a close translation, notes, and a glossary of key terms, facilitating access to ideas as they originally were presented and helping to make the translator's work transparent. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of (...) the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Decartes' immediate audience. The Focus Philosophical Library publishes clear, faithful editions enabling access for modern students to the essential ideas and wisdom of the world’s greatest thinkers. (shrink)

It has become almost _de rigueur_ in contemporary psychoanalysis to cite Freud's positivism-especially his commitment to an objective reality that can be accessed through memory and interpretation-as a continuing source of weakness in bringing the field into the postmodern era. But is it so simple to move beyond Freud and objectivism in general? Or is it the case that even the most astute recent theorizing aimed at this move-and guided by therapeutic sensitivity and a concern with epistemic rigor-still betrays a (...) lingering commitment to objective reality? This is the intellectually exciting and exacting question that Richard Moore poses to his reader-and to the texts of four of the most influential psychoanalytic theorists on the scene today: Donald Spence, Roy Schafer, Robert Stolorow, and Irwin Z. Hoffman. Written with concentration and grace, _The Creation of Reality in Psychoanalysis_ begins with the ambiguities in Freud's founding commitment to a recoverable, objectively verifiable reality before examining the ghost of objectivism that confounds, in surprising and unexpected ways, Spence's, Schafer's, Stolorow's, and Hoffman's recent attempts to move toward narrativist and constructivist views of the analytic encounter. Following his penetrating survey of the contributions of these four major architects of contemporary psychoanalysis, Moore provides a glimpse of what an internally consistent postmodern metapsychology would actually look like. He approaches this task by exploring how our understanding of basic analytic concepts may ultimately be reconciled with the view that the creation of reality is an intrinsic aspect of any therapeutic encounter. Elegantly conceived and beautifully argued, this book guides the reader through the labyrinth of contemporary theory while holding fast to a critical stance toward its overarching goal: the elaboration of a truly thoroughgoing constructivism that is both therapeutically consequential and intellectually defensible. (shrink)

In Spence v. Washington, the Supreme Court devised a two-part test for determining whether a nonverbal action is expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. According to the Spence test, a nonverbal action is expressive if and only if: (1) it is intended to communicate a particularized message; and (2) in the circumstances in which the action is performed, the likelihood is great that the message will be understood by observers. -/- In subsequent cases, however, the Court has (...) made clear that the category of "expressive conduct" embraces a much wider variety of nonverbal behaviors than a literal reading of the Spence test would suggest. It includes, for example, such behaviors as composing instrumental music, creating nonrepresentational visual artworks, penning nonsense verse, and dancing in the nude for the entertainment of others. -/- Drawing on the work of Paul Grice, one of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers of language, this Comment develops a two-part expressive conduct test that captures the expressive character of this wider variety of behaviors. It shows that the Gricean test displays striking consistency with the Supreme Court's particularized judgments about which sorts of nonverbal conduct are expressive and which sorts are not. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Justice Not GreedRichard A. HoehnJustice Not Greed Edited by Pamela Brubaker and Rogate Mshana Geneva: WCC Publications, 2010. 224 pp. $14.00The World Council of Churches (WCC) Advisory Group on Economic Matters (AGEM) advises the WCC and congregations on global economic issues. AGEM members from diverse backgrounds produced the papers in this volume. The introduction is by Rogate Mshana, WCC director for Peace, Justice, and Creation. Samuel Kobia, (...) general secretary of the WCC from 2004–9, introduces the rationale and role of AGEM in the global financial crisis. The book ends with a statement on just finance and the economy of life, adopted by the WCC Central Committee in September 2009. Justice Not Greed will be most useful in settings where there is interest in the intersection of ethics, the economic crisis, and Christianity in relation to the global economy, as well as among those who wish to follow the WCC. As expected [End Page 208] of conference papers, there is not a systematic development of an argument but overlapping ethical and economic analyses. All, however, are opposed to the status quo because of its manifest injustice, especially the impact on poor people.If one were to impose a thematic development, it might go something like this, allowing for individual differences among the authors. Decolonization has resulted in a lopsided, Western, capitalist economic system predicated on greed (Jan Pronk), described by other authors as a beast or a cancer (vivid but unhelpful metaphors since the crisis was caused by humans, not nature). The world lacks appropriate international structures. We need new global institutions, a new global financial architecture that is predicated on, or at least takes into account, justice. Congregations, the ecumenical movement, and the WCC could play a significant role in helping the United Nations move toward such a system.Several authors hope that the global crisis will provide a moment when such a change might become possible (e.g., Alexander Cobham’s “Blood-Stained Silver Lining”). Pamela K. Brubaker, Kim Yong-Bock, Roel Aalbersberg, Rienzie Perera, and Geevarghese Mor Coorilos examine questions related to the Bible, ethics, theology, a culture of “enough for all” (Musa Panti Filibus), the church as moral community, the ecumenical movement, and principles for an alternative economic system. Mariana Issa Zureikat argues for “econo-morals,” applying moral values to economic analyses. Thomas H. Kang advocates the capabilities approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Marcos Arruda suggests an economy of world solidarity with the “gross happiness index” as a standard for measuring progress. While most chapters include economic analysis, John Dillon wades into some nitty-gritty causes of the current financial crisis, with a positive nod toward the (never adopted) Keynes plan for the Bretton Woods system of monetary management. Marie-Aimee Tourres lays out impacts on the developing world, as does Xiao Lian from a Chinese perspective. Most of these authors argue for such global solutions as a global reserve system and a global tax system.Justice Not Greed presents thoughtful, sometimes passionate papers that could form a basis for lively discussion. Yet real-world solutions often come down to the practice of democracy and political will. Unfortunately, it is not clear that the ecumenical movement possesses the will or the means to effect change because local organizing for political change is not a high priority at any level. [End Page 209]Richard A. HoehnChrist the Servant Lutheran ChurchCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In late September 1838, Darwin read Malthus's Essay on Population, which left him with “a theory by which to work.”115 Yet he waited some twenty years to publish his discovery in the Origin of Species. Those interested in the fine grain of Darwin's development have been curious about this delay. One recent explanation has his hand stayed by fear of reaction to the materialist implications of linking man with animals. “Darwin sensed,” according to Howard Gruber, “that some would object to (...) seeing rudiments of human mentality in animals, while others would recoil at the idea of remnants of animality in man.”116 With this link closed, Darwin hung the materialist chain around his own neck, where it rested most uncomfortably. Stephen Gould, supporting Gruber's argument, finds evidence for this reconstruction in Darwin's M and N notebooks, whichinclude many statements showing that he espoused but feared to expose something he perceived as far more heretical than evolution itself: philosophical materialism-the postulate that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. No notion could be more upsetting to the deepest traditions of Western thought than the statement that mind-however complex and powerful-is simply a product of brain.117The proferred hypothesis suggests, then, that Darwin was acutely sensible of the social consequences of equating men with animals and therefore mind with brian, and that he thus shied from publically revealing his views until the intellectual climate became more tolerant.The history I have examined makes this hypothesis implausible. Even if Darwin warily explored the implications of his emerging theory in his notebooks, his subsequent study of Fleming, Wells, Brougham, and Kirby should have quieted any trepidation. If these natural theologians did not flinch at seeing human reason prefigured in the mind of a worm, should Darwin have? Moreover, he recognized in his M notebook that the thesis of evolutionary continuity between men and animals did not require an explicit avowal of his conviction that brain was the agent of thought.118 And in any case, his materialism was of a rather benign sort; at least he so expressed it in an annotation in Abercrombie's Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers (1838): “By materialism I mean, merely the intimate connection of thought with form of brain — like kind of attraction with nature of element.”119 This belief would have held little terror for British intellectuals, who were quite familiar — some even comfortable-with Locke's anti-Cartesian argument that there was nothing contradictory in supposing God could make matter to think.120 Finally, even if the intellectual atmosphere of early nineteenth-century Britain were inhospitable to Darwin's brand of materialism, there is little reason to believe he breathed a different air at mid-century while preparing his manuscript.That Darwin should not have feared suspicions of materialism, of course, does not mean that he did not. But I think there were other, more persistent sources of anxiety that kept him from rushing to publish: namely, the several conceptual obstacles he had to overcome if his theory of evolution by natural selection were to be made scientifically acceptable. Prominent among these were the problems surrounding his changing notions of instinct.The inertia of his older ideas about instinct at first made it hard for Darwin to gauge how far the theory of natural selection might be applied to behavior. By the early 1840s he finally felt ready to meet the challenge of the natural theologians by providing a naturalistic explanation for the wonderful instincts of animals. In his “Essays” of 1842 and 1844 one sort of instinct is, however, not considered-that of neuter insects. Yet Darwin seems to have appreciated the difficulties such instincts entailed at least by 1843, when he read Kirby and Spence. He simply required time to work out a solution to a problem he initially perceived as “fatal to my whole theory.” Even while writing the “Species Book” in the summer of 1857, he was still juggling several possible solutions compatible with natural selection. It was only a short time before he actually turned to work on the Origin of Species that he appears to have settled on a single explanation for the difficulties posed by the instincts of worker bees and ants. The force of his theory of community selection snapped the last critical support of the creationist hypothesis and, conveniently enough, also fractured the generalized Lamarckian account of the evolution of behavior. These results were worth waiting for. (shrink)

A remarkable collection of interviews and dialogues that discuss culture, ideology, history, Marxism, modernity, post-modernity, post-colonialism, globalization, and the role of the university and the intellectual in today's society.

Background and aims: Recent investigations have highlighted the value of neuropsychological testing for the assessment and screening of Alcohol-Related Brain Damage. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the suitability of the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination and the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status for this purpose. Methods: Comparing 28 participants with ARBD and 30 alcohol-dependent participants without ARBD we calculated Area Under the Curve statistics, sensitivity and specificity values, base-rate adjusted predictive values, and likelihood ratios for (...) both tests. Results: High levels of screening accuracy were found for the total scores of both the ACE-III and RBANS at multiple cut-off points. Removing participants with a history of polysubstance from the samples improved the diagnostic capabilities of the RBANS substantially, while only minor improvements to the ACE-III’s accuracy were observed. Conclusions: Overall, both the ACE-III and RBANS are suitable tools for ARBD screening within an alcohol-dependent population, though the RBANS is the superior of the two. Clinicians using these tools for ARBD screening should be cautious of false-positive outcomes and should therefore combine them with other assessment methods and more detailed neuropsychological testing before reaching diagnostic decisions. (shrink)

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

In the classical Turing test, participants are challenged to tell whether they are interacting with another human being or with a machine. The way the interaction takes place is not direct, but a distant conversation through computer screen messages. Basic forms of interaction are face-to-face and embodied, context-dependent and based on the detection of reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Our idea is that interaction detection requires the integration of proprioceptive and interoceptive patterns with sensorimotor patterns, within quite short time lapses, so that (...) they appear as mutually contingent, as reciprocal. In other words, the experience of interaction takes place when sensorimotor patterns are contingent upon one’s own movements, and vice versa. I react to your movement, you react to mine. When I notice both components, I come to experience an interaction. Therefore, we designed a “minimal” Turing test to investigate how much information is required to detect these reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Using a new version of the perceptual crossing paradigm, we tested whether participants resorted to interaction detection to tell apart human from machine agents in repeated encounters with these agents. In two studies, we presented participants with movements of a human agent, either online or offline, and movements of a computerized oscillatory agent in three different blocks. In each block, either auditory or audiovisual feedback was provided along each trial. Analysis of participants’ explicit responses and of the implicit information subsumed in the dynamics of their series will reveal evidence that participants use the reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies within short time windows. For a machine to pass this minimal Turing test, it should be able to generate this sort of reciprocal contingencies. (shrink)