Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Species evolve, very slowly, through selection of genes which give rise to phenotypes well adapted to their environments. The cultures, including the languages, of human communities evolve, much faster, maintaining at least a minimum level of adaptedness to the external, non- cultural environment. In the phylogenetic evolution of species, the transmission of information across generations is via copying of molecules, and innovation is by mutation and sexual recombination. In cultural evolution, the transmission of information across generations is by learning, and (...) innovation is by sporadic invention or borrowing from other cultures. This much is the foundational bedrock of evolutionary theory. But things get more complicated; there can be gene-culture co-evolution. Prior to the rise of culture, the physical environment is the only force shaping biological evolution from outside the organism, and cultures themselves are clearly constrained by the evolved biological characteristics of their members. But cultures become part of the external environment, and influence the course of biological evolution. For example, altruistic cultures with developed medical knowledge reduce the cost to the individual of carrying genes disposing to certain pathologies (such as diabetes); and such genes become more widespread in the populations maintaining such cultures. Assortative mating can affect biological evolution, and particular cultures may influence the factors which are sorted for in mating. (For a careful discussion of the effects of cultural evolution on natural selection, see Cavalli-Sforza and Bodmer, 1971:774- 804). This paper examines mechanisms involved in the co-evolution of a biological trait, the critical period for language acquisition, and a property of human cultures, the size of their languages. A gene/culture interaction will be shown that can be described as a kind of symbiosis, but perhaps more aptly as an `arms race'. In this introduction, we will sketch the basic mechanics of the interaction in very broad terms; the rest of the paper will explain and justify the details. The implications of our model for second language acquisition are given toward the end of the paper. (shrink)

Representation must be prior to communication in evolution. Wilkins & Wakefield's target article gives the impression that communicative pressures play a secondary role. We suggest that their evolutionary precursor is compatible with protolanguage rather than language itself. The difference between these two communicative systems should not be underestimated: only the former can be trivially reappropriated from a representational system.

"While it is true that Yves R. Simon did not intend this to be a history book, The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought is an important historical work well deserving of a close reading by students of twentieth-century European history and international relations. This book, which finds a worthy English translation after too many years, was Simon's first serious foray into the public square on the side of justice and the common good. Simon's analysis is wide-ranging, (...) incisive, and brimming with far-sighted political acumen." --Robert Ventresca, King's University College "The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 led to the memorable plea of Emperor Haile Selassie before the League of Nations as his country's freedom died. Easier to forget is that it also sparked a surprisingly familiar intellectual dispute over the legitimacy of the bombing and the relevance of international law, as depressingly many European intellectuals rallied behind Benito Mussolini's campaign as a defense of the West and the cause of 'civilization.' The unsparing critique leveled against these frequently religious apologists for imperialism by Yves Simon, French Catholic thinker and later American university professor, is an eye-opening reminder of the terms of debate, and the larger constellation of forces of the turbulent era. Anthony Simon and his colleagues deserve thanks for making this precious and moving document available, since its ethical kernel, like its model of Catholic intellectualism, remain highly relevant." --Samuel Moyn, Columbia University "The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought offers a very important discussion grounded in traditional metaphysics and in a sound sense of historical circumstances. This little book is a gem. --George Anastaplo, Loyola University of Chicago Yves Simon was one of the preeminent Thomistic philosophers and political theorists of the twentieth century. He saw it as a moral duty to understand human reality and to use philosophical analysis to examine contemporary politics when they embodied philosophical errors or vicious ideologies. In The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought, Simon extracts principles from the 1894 Dreyfus Affair in France and applies them to Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethopia. As Simon's analysis shows, the relatively obscure events leading up to the Italian invasion had larger implications for Europe and the world, perhaps even paving the way for Vichy France's collaboration with Hitler's German New Order. This book, available for the first time in English, offers an interesting case study of such ethical concerns as just war theory and pre-emptive war, and is of particular relevance in our modern political climate. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: There is a need for interdisciplinary research to better understand how pedagogical approaches in primary physical education (PE) can support the linked development of physical, cognitive and affective aspects of physical literacy and physical activity behaviours in young children. The Skill Acquisition Methods fostering Physical Literacy in Early-Physical Education (SAMPLE-PE) study aims to examine the efficacy of two different pedagogies for PE, underpinned by theories of motor learning, to foster physical literacy, especially for children living in disadvantaged areas. METHODS: (...) SAMPLE-PE will be evaluated through a cluster-randomised controlled trial targeting 5-6 year old children from schools located in areas of high deprivation in Merseyside, North-West England. Schools will be randomly allocated to one of three conditions: Linear Pedagogy, Nonlinear Pedagogy or Control. Nonlinear and Linear Pedagogy intervention primary schools will receive a PE curriculum delivered by trained coaches over 15 weeks, while control schools will follow their usual practice. Data will be collected at baseline (T0), immediately post-intervention (T1) and six months after the intervention has finished (T2). Children’s movement competence is the primary outcome in this trial. Secondary outcomes include physical activity, perceived competence, motivation, executive functions, and self-regulation. An extensive process evaluation will also examine implementation factors such as intervention context, reach, dose, fidelity and acceptability. DISCUSSION: The SAMPLE-PE project will enable better understanding surrounding how to operationalise physical literacy through enrichment of PE practices in early PE. The study will provide robust scientific evidence regarding the efficacy of underpinning PE pedagogy with theories of motor learning to promote the development of physical literacy. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

The central hypothesis of the collaboration between Language and Computing (L&C) and the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) is that the methodology and conceptual rigor of a philosophically inspired formal ontology greatly benefits application ontologies. To this end r®, L&C’s ontology, which is designed to integrate and reason across various external databases simultaneously, has been submitted to the conceptual demands of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). With this project we aim to move beyond the level of (...) controlled vocabularies to yield an ontology with the ability to support reasoning applications. Our general procedure has been the implementation of a meta-ontological definition space in which the definitions of all the concepts and relations in LinKBase® are standardized in a framework of first-order logic. In this paper we describe how this standardization has already led to an improvement in the LinKBase® structure that allows for a greater degree of internal coherence than ever before possible. We then show the use of this philosophical standardization for the purpose of mapping external databases to one another, using LinKBase® as translation hub, with a greater degree of success than possible hitherto. We demonstrate how this offers a genuine advance over other application ontologies that have not submitted themselves to the demands of philosophical scrutiny. LinKBase® is one of the world’s largest applications-oriented medical domain ontologies, and BFO is one of the world’s first philosophically driven reference ontologies. The collaboration of the two thus initiates a new phase in the quest to solve the so-called “Tower of Babel”. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

What happens when an entire group of human beings is excluded from the definition of humanity? How is the power of language used to distort reality? What happens when a comprehensive economic plan is based on theft, brainwashing, slave labor, and murder? These and other philosophical questions about the Holocaust are contemplated in Contemporary Portraits of Auschwitz. In 1988, a group of philosophers who had survived the Holocaust, or had known people at the Auschwitz death camp, decided to found an (...) organization that would examine the philosophical implications of Shoah: the Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the Holocaust. Noting that the history and the personal horror stories had been told and retold, SPSGH's founders Sander Lee, Berel Lang, and Alan Rosenberg argued that too little study had been so far devoted to the philosophy of Hitler's final solution and other genocides. Auschwitz problematized the Enlightenment concept of humanity, and other concepts. The perfection of state-sponsored and -administered mass death issued in new forms of language, moral indifference, and forgetting. Philosophy often even fails to mention the Holocaust in discussions of National Socialism. And the disaster of Auschwitz has been largely neutralized by the normalization of a "ruined" language. This volume includes essays in several areas: Witnesses and Testimonies; Morality and Ethics; Art and Poetry; History and Memory; and The Crisis of Representation. Contributors are Karyn Ball, Eve Bannet, Debra Bergoffen, James Bernauer, Klaus Dorner, Jennifer N. Fink, Roger Fjellstrom, Ruth Liberman, Burkhard Liebsch, Alan Milchman, Raj Sampath, Paul Sars, Hans Seigfried, Thomas W. Simon, Dan Stone, Peter Strasser, Frans van Peperstratten, Erik M. Vogt, Andrew Weinstein, and others. (shrink)

Biologists, historians, lawyers, art historians, and literary critics all voice arguments in the critical dialogue about what constitutes evidence in research and scholarship. They examine not only the constitution and "blurring" of disciplinary boundaries, but also the configuration of the fact-evidence distinctions made in different disciplines and historical moments the relative function of such concepts as "self-evidence," "experience," "test," "testimony," and "textuality" in varied academic discourses and the way "rules of evidence" are themselves products of historical developments. The essays and (...) rejoinders are by Terry Castle, Lorraine Daston, Carlo Ginzburg, Ian Hacking, Mark Kelman, R. C. Lewontin, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Mary Poovey, Donald Preziosi, Simon Schaffer, Joan W. Scott, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith. The critical responses are by Lauren Berlant, James Chandler, Jean Comaroff, Arnold I. Davidson, Harry D. harootunian, Elizabeth Helsinger, Thomas C. Holt, Francoise Meltzer, Robert J. Richards, Lawrence Rothfield, Joel Snyder, Cass R. Sunstein, and William Wimsatt. (shrink)

In the reported, experiment participants hit a ball to aim at the vertex of a Müller–Lyer configuration. This configuration either remained stable, changed its shaft length or the orientation of the tails during movement execution. A significant illusion bias was observed in all perturbation conditions, but not in the stationary condition. The illusion bias emerged for perturbations shortly after movement onset and for perturbations during execution, the latter of which allowed only a minimum of time for making adjustments . These (...) findings indicate that allocentric information is exploited for online control when people make rapid adjustments in response to a sudden change in the environment and not when people guide their limb movements to interact with a stable environment. (shrink)

Liberal neutrality requires that, given the diversity of conceptions of the good life held by people, the state should be in some sense neutral between these conceptions. Just what that sense is has been a matter of debate but it seems generally accepted that neutrality is a property of the justifications for government action and not of the consequences of such action. In other words, the state must be neutral by avoiding invoking any conception of the good in its justification (...) for laws and policies and by avoiding having any laws and policies that can be justified only by reference to some conception of the good. It need not, so it seems generally accepted, ensure that the consequences of its laws and policies do not favor some conceptions of the good over others. Against this commonly held view, in this chapter I argue that justificatory neutrality is inadequate as a full picture of what liberal neutrality means and that some conception of consequential neutrality is more plausible. (shrink)

In Beyond Neutrality, George Sher criticises the idea that state neutrality between competing conceptions of the good helps protect society from oppression. While he is correct that some governments are non-neutral without being oppressive, I argue that those governments may be neutral at the core of their foundations. The possibility of non-neutrality leading to oppression is further explored; some conceptions of the good would favour oppression while others would not. While it is possible that a non-neutral state may avoid oppression, (...) it is argued that the risks are so great that it is better to bet on government being neutral, thereby minimizing the possibility of oppression. (shrink)

A major argument for vegetarianism is that eating animals causes unjustified suffering. While this argument has been articulated by several people, it has received surprisingly little attention. Here I restate it in a way that I believe is most convincing, considering and rejecting the two main justifications for causing suffering in order to eat animals. I compare it to some other prominent arguments for vegetarianism, and discuss a major objection to the argument which focuses on whether the animals would not (...) exist if not bred to be eaten. (shrink)

This article argues that deciding when to die is a matter of individuality.

This essay addresses the role of trust in political philosophy. In particular, it examines the idea that trust is necessary for a particular type of government action — paternalistic action — to be justified. Liberal theory and liberal democratic practice are characterized by a large degree of anti-paternalism, understanding paternalism to be the restriction of individual liberty for a person’s good, instead of to protect or benefit others. It would be a mistake to think that liberal democracies have no paternalism; (...) seatbelt, motorcycle helmet, and drug prohibition laws, for example, are probably at least partly motivated by paternalistic reasons. But it is easy to imagine more pervasive paternalism. Society could, and does in some cultures, restrict people’s choices of occupation, marriage partners, and where to live, with the rationale that these restrictions are for people’s good. Many people believe that the liberal position is the correct one, that more pervasive paternalism would be unjustified, but what is the philosophical justification for anti-paternalism? (shrink)

What makes individual freedom valuable? People have always believed in freedom, have sought it, and have sometimes fought and died for it. The belief that it is something to be valued is widespread. But does this belief have a rational foundation? This book examines answers to these questions that are based on the welfare of the person whose freedom is at stake. There are various conceptions of a worthwhile life, a life that is valuable for the person whose life it (...) is. These conceptions will be examined to see whether they are plausible and what their connection, if any, is to freedom. Are they compelling foundations for freedom? Does freedom make a person’s life better or would his/her welfare be advanced by restricting freedom? (shrink)

When, if ever, is paternalism justified? I defend the principle that paternalism is justified only if it is neutral, that is, the motivation for it is compatible with all conceptions of the good life. Three other principles of paternalism are examined. The balancing view says that we must balance the values of liberty and well-being against each other and that paternalism is justified only if well-being outweighs liberty. The consent principle says that paternalism is justified only if consented to. The (...) voluntariness principle says that intervention is justified only when the conduct in question is substantially nonvoluntary. These three views are either implausible, plausible only if they are supplemented with the neutrality principle, or plausible only because they already presuppose that principle. (shrink)

The phenomenology of auditory verbal hallucinations occurring in hypnagogic and hypnopompic states has received little attention. In a sample of healthy participants, 108 participants reported H&H AVHs and answered subsequent questions on their phenomenology. AVHs in the H&H state were found to be more likely to only feature the occasional clear word than to be clear, to be more likely to be one-off voices than to be recurrent voices, to be more likely to be voices of people known to the (...) individual than unknown persons, to be more likely to talk directly to the person rather than not, and to only rarely give commands, ask questions, or to result in an interactive conversation. Their phenomenology was similar to normative AVHs in wakefulness in that the voice-hearer was usually the target of the voice, and the voice was more likely to be of a recognized person. However, H&H AVHs differed from AVHs in wakefulness in that commands and questions were rare, and there was typically no dialogical engagement with the voice. We conclude by proposing that two distinct types of H&H AVHs may exist, based on an analysis of the phenomenology of the experience, and suggest avenues for future research. (shrink)

We argue performance in the serial reaction time task is associated with gradations of awareness that provide examples of fringe consciousness [Mangan, B. . Taking phenomenology seriously: the “fringe” and its implications for cognitive research. Consciousness and Cognition, 2, 89–108, Mangan, B. . The conscious “fringe”: Bringing William James up to date. In B. J. Baars, W. P. Banks & J. B. Newman , Essential sources in the scientific study of consciousness . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.], and address (...) limitations of the traditional SRT procedure, including criticism of exclusion generation tasks. Two experiments are conducted with a modified SRT procedure where irrelevant stimulus attributes obscure the sequence rule. Our modified paradigm, which includes a novel exclusion task, makes it easier to demonstrate a previously controversial influence of response stimulus interval on awareness. It also allows identification of participants showing fringe consciousness rather than explicit sequence knowledge, as reflected by dissociations between different awareness measures. The NEO-PI-R variable Openness to Feelings influenced the diversity of subjective feelings reported during two awareness measures, but not the degree of learning and awareness as previously found with traditional SRT tasks [Norman, E., Price, M. C., & Duff, S. C. . Fringe consciousness in sequence learning: the influence of individual differences. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 723–760.]. This suggests possible distinctions between two components of fringe consciousness. (shrink)

This paper defends Kant against a neo‐Hegelian line of criticism, recently advanced by John McDowell, Robert Pippin, and Sebastian Rödl, targeting Kant's alleged claim that forms of sensibility other than space and time are possible. If correct, the criticism identifies a deep problem in Kant's position and points toward Hegel's position and method as its natural solution. I show that Kant has the philosophical resources to respond effectively to the criticism, notably including the set of claims about the limits of (...) meaningful thought that P. F. Strawson calls Kant's “principle of significance.” By Kant's lights, first, the concept “non‐spatio‐temporal form of sensibility” is meaningless, so he cannot meaningfully grant that such a form is possible; and second, there is no need to prove (e.g., from reflection on pure intellect) that non‐spatio‐temporal forms of sensibility are impossible, because insofar as the concept “knowing” means anything, that meaning is provided by our own always‐already‐spatio‐temporal case. An upshot of the argument is that Kant's two “stems” of knowledge or cognition, sensibility and understanding, are merely aspects of a single epistemic capacity rather than each a separate capacity in its own right. Many today are unwilling to take Kant's claims about the limits of meaningful thought at face value, notwithstanding their ubiquity and explicitness. This paper is therefore an indirect argument on behalf of that dimension of Kant's position: We have something significant to lose in not taking it seriously. (shrink)

Metaphysical readings of Kant’s theoretical philosophy in the Critical period are ascendant. But their possibility assumes the possibility of existence- and real-possibility-judgments about things in themselves. I argue that Kant denies the latter possibility, so metaphysical readings have dubious prospects. First, I show that Kant takes existence- and real-possibility-judgments, as necessarily synthetic, to require a relation to sensible intuition. Second, I show that the most promising metaphysical readings can ultimately neither satisfy nor explain away that requirement for existence- and real-possibility-judgments (...) about things in themselves. I conclude with pessimistic reflections on the prospects for the metaphysical interpretive project. (shrink)

This paper discusses the semiotic dimension of patent interpretation. Patent documents are at the same time disclosure of information and a granting of rights. The claim section expresses the granted rights. In this paper, we view the claims as signs that express the granted rights. The semantics to interpret the signs is given by the all-elements rule, as pragmatics. The description and drawings sections of the patent document provide metapragmatics in the form of lexicon and syntax to help the understanding (...) the claims as signs that express the granted rights. This semiotic approach for patent interpretation has important practical consequences to the correct structuring of a patent document. We highlight this contribution through an instance of a patent application in which a claim includes examples of use. Examples are not allowed in the claim text, as examples do not describe the invention, but consist of metapragmatics to better understand the invention. In this way, examples consist of metapragmatics and belong to the description section of the patent, which has the goal to facilitate the understanding of claims. In the patent application used to highlight our semiotics approach for patent interpretation, the examples initially presented in the claims were rephrased in the final granted patent, significantly reducing the scope of the claim. (shrink)

Concerns have been expressed about adult behaviour at children’s sporting events in New Zealand. As a consequence, covert observation was identified as the optimal research method to be used in studies designed to record the nature and prevalence of adult sideline behaviour at children’s team sporting events. This paper explores whether the concerns raised by the ethics committee about the use of this controversial method, particularly in relation to the lack of informed consent, the use of deception, and researcher safety, (...) were effectively managed. This is achieved by reflecting on the conduct and findings of the research and by drawing on the perspectives of research assistants who carried out the covert observation. The authors argue that in the context of these studies, the ends have justified the means and with careful attention to the design of the study the complex ethical tensions arising from the use of this method can be managed. (shrink)

The voices and visions experienced by Emanuel Swedenborg remain a topic of much debate. The present article offers a reconsideration of these experiences in relation to changes in psychiatric practice. First, the phenomenology of Swedenborg's experiences is reviewed through an examination of his writings. The varying conceptualizations of these experiences by Swedenborg and his contemporaries, and by psychiatrists of later generations, are examined. We show how attempts by 19th- and 20th-century psychiatrists to explain Swedenborg's condition as the result of either (...) schizophrenia or epilepsy are unable to account for his experiences. We then demonstrate that the re-emergence of the 19th-century concept of `hallucinations in the sane' offers an alternative way to understand Swedenborg's experiences outside typical discourses of mental illness. Finally we argue that Swedenborg's experiences should be understood as exemplifying phenomena which we term `hallucinations without mental disorder', and investigate how conceiving of Swedenborg in this way can inform future research into the experience and clinical significance of hallucinations. (shrink)

This book takes Hollywood's disaster movies and their codified versions of natural disaster, post-apocalyptic survival, and extra-terrestrial threat as the starting point for an analytical trajectory toward new understandings of how cinema shapes and informs our conceptions of disaster and catastrophe. This book examines a range of films from distinct regional and industrial contexts: Hollywood, indie movies, different kinds of documentaries, and auteurist-realist cinema. Moving across and beyond critical and industrial categories that inform thinking about cinema, it contends that different (...) approaches to film style can push us to imagine disaster in distinct ways, with distinct ethical connotations. (shrink)

Passivity experiences in schizophrenia are thought to be due to a failure in a neurocognitive action self-monitoring system . Drawing on the assumption that inner speech is a form of action, a recent model of auditory verbal hallucinations has proposed that AVHs can be explained by a failure in the NASS. In this article, we offer an alternative application of the NASS to AVHs, with separate mechanisms creating the emotion of self-as-agent and other-as-agent. We defend the assumption that inner speech (...) can be considered as a form of action, and show how a number of previous criticisms of applying the NASS to AVHs can be refuted. This is achieved in part through taking a Vygotskian developmental perspective on inner speech. It is suggested that more research into the nature and development of inner speech is needed to further our understanding of AVHs. (shrink)

Brains are information processing systems whose operational principles ultimately cannot be understood without resource to information theory. We suggest that understanding how external signals are represented in the brain is a necessary step towards employing further engineering tools to understand the information processing performed by brain circuits during behaviour.

The standard dogmatism ignores the fact that neural coding is extremely flexible, and the degree of “coarseness” versus “locality” of representation in real brains can be different under different task conditions. The real question that should be asked is: What is the operating point of neural coding under natural behavioural conditions? Several sources of evidence suggest that under natural conditions some degree of distribution of coding pervades the nervous system.

The aim of this book is to explore some of the relations between morality and politics. Areas in which these are explored include the role of ideals in foreign policy , committing evil for the sake of a greater good in wartime, and lying and deception in political affairs. Illustrative examples are used throughout and include the Iraq war and its political fallout , Allied and Axis actions during the Second World War, decisions made by former Australian Prime Minister John (...) Howard and thought-experiments such as whether to lie about the Jewish family hiding in the basement when the Nazis come knocking at the door.Chapters 1 and 2, making up the first half of the book, are the highlight of it. In them, Coady confronts the realist critique of morality in foreign …. (shrink)

The proposal that there is an illusion of conscious will has been supported by findings that priming of stimulus location in a task requiring judgements of action-authorship can enhance participants’ experience of agency. We attempted to replicate findings from the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ task [Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. . On the inference of personal authorship: enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness and Cognition, 14, 439–458]. We also examined participants’ performance on this task in relation (...) to self-reported passivity experiences and hallucination-proneness. We found a significant effect of priming, with primes being found to increase the experience of agency. An interaction between gender and priming was also found, with priming enhancing feelings of agency in women but not in men. There were no significant correlations between levels of self-reported passivity experiences or hallucination-proneness and participants’ susceptibility to the priming effect on ratings of agency. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to a prominent model of passivity experiences. (shrink)

In Schmidt's experiments, only properties of actually produced movements systems are measured; in Fitts' experiments, external task parameters are measured too (target size and distance). Thus, the laws contain variables of different natures and cannot be reduced to each other even formally. These difference especially reveals itself in modeling: a model of variability can be simpler if it deals with the performance variables only. On the other hand, modeling Fitts' law, one should take into account not only the human effector (...) system but features of the experimental apparatus as well. These differences have not been sufficiently reflected in Plamondon & Alimi's target article. (shrink)

Kinematic properties of reaching movements reflect constraints imposed on the joint angles. Contemporary models present solutions to the redundancy problem by a pseudoinverse procedure (Whitney 1969) or without any inversion (Berkenblit et al. 1986). Feldman & Levin suggest a procedure based on a regular inversion. These procedures are considered as an outcome of a more general approach.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 299-300 [Access article in PDF] D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin, editors. Religion and Hume's Legacy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xx + 282. Cloth, $65.00. Books on Hume's philosophy usually emphasize either close textual analysis or historical influences on Hume. The audience for such books consists of Hume specialists and historians of philosophy. Religion and Hume's Legacy defies (...) this categorization. Edited by D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin, the book is a collection of 18 essays, most of which connect Hume's philosophy of religion with broader and more contemporary philosophical interests. The authors urge us to take seriously Hume's skeptical challenges and they use Hume as a springboard to develop nontraditional views of the philosophy of religion. The essays were originally presented at the 1997 Claremont Conference on the Philosophy of Religion. Although a few of these are written by prominent Hume scholars, many of the authors are Wittgenstein scholars—as is Phillips himself—and Wittgensteinian perspectives figure prominently throughout the volume.The book is thematically divided into six parts, and at the close of five of these Phillips presents a fictitious dialog—much like a panel discussion—in which about 15 voices debate the topic under consideration. The book's first part is titled "Hume's Epistemological and Moral Critique." The first essay, by Simon Blackburn and titled "Playing Hume's Hand," criticizes Hume's "Bare Claim" about the existence and nature of God. In particular, Blackburn addresses the limitations of Hume's view from a Kantian, Jamesian, and Wittgensteinian stance. The second essay, "Morality and Religion: Towards Meeting Hume's Challenge," by William H. Brenner, draws on Chesterton, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein in critique of Hume's conception of an amoral God in the Dialogues.The book's second part is on "Hume's 'True Religion.'" The first of these essays, "Hume's 'Mitigated Scepticism': Some Implications for Religious Belief" by M. Jamie Ferreira, explains how Hume's Natural History of Religion exemplifies Hume's reflectively-tempered skepticism. The second, "Is There Anything Religious about Philo's 'True Religion'?" by Van A. Harvey, reacts against Gaskin's theory of Hume's attenuated theism. According to Harvey, Philo's minimalist religion reflects, on the one hand, the believer's assertion of true religious feelings, and, on the other hand, the believer's distrust of rational theology and organized religion. The third, "Is Hume's 'True Religion' a Religious Belief?" by D. Z. Phillips, criticizes Harvey's interpretation and defends Gaskin; however, Philips adds that Hume's minimalist theism is inconsistent by Hume's own standards and Hume should have rejected it. [End Page 299]The third part discusses "Hume on Miracles." The first essay is "Hume and the Miraculous" by R.W. Beardsmore, who has since passed away and to whom the book is dedicated. Beardsmore agrees with Hume that it is never rational to believe that a miracle has occurred—largely because of scientific advances today. However, Beardsmore believes that Hume's argument for this position is weak. In the next essay Stephen T. Davis responds to Beardsmore. The fourth part discusses "Hume on Superstition." The first essay, "Hume on Superstition" by Martin Bell, discusses Hume's view of superstitious religion in the context of Bayle's account of superstition. In the next essay Jane L. McIntyre responds to Bell, emphasizing the role of human passions in religious belief. The fifth part is on "Philosophy of Religion after Hume." Anthony Flew opens with "Can Religion be Rational?" explaining how Hume delineates the issue of religion in his various writings. Flew also clarifies his own view of religion and reason as appears in his essay "Theology and Falsification." Nancy Murphy responds to Flew in "Overcoming Hume on His Own Terms," and suggests that we find an answer to Hume's religious critique in Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of tradition-constituted reason. The third essay by B. R. Tilghman, "Religion after Hume: Tightrope Walking in an Age of Enlightenment," contends that Hume's legacy is the... (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 5, Page 952-963, September 2022.

This essay examines Karl Rahner’s theology of sin, specifically his unique rendering of original sin. Before advancing to this specific consideration of original sin, I shall seek to situate his overall theology of sin within his thinking on human freedom. Following this, Rahner’s Mariology will be described and shown to be more or less compatible with traditional Marian teachings. The crux of this essay will argue that Rahner’s rendering of original sin creates a tension with the Mariology that he and (...) the church espouse. Therefore, revision or addition to either Rahner’s Mariology or theology of original sin appears necessary for greater theological coherence. (shrink)