This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: -/- The main aim of this review will be to assess the effects of changing practitioner empathy or patient expectations for all conditions. The main objective is to conduct a systematic review of randomised trials where the intervention involves manipulating either (a) practitioner empathy or (b) patient expectations, or (c) both.

We understand the workings of the human body as a series of interdependent physiological relationships: muscle interacts with bone as the heart responds to hormones secreted by the brain, all the way down to the inner workings of every cell. To make an organism function, no one component can work alone. In light of this, why is it that the accepted understanding that the physical phenomenon of the mind is attributed only to the brain? In The Embodied Mind, internationally renowned (...) psychiatrist Dr. Thomas R. Verny sets out to redefine our concept of the mind and consciousness. He brilliantly compiles new research that points to the mind's ties to every part of the body. The Embodied Mind collects disparate findings in physiology, genetics, and quantum physics in order to illustrate the mounting evidence that somatic cells, not just neural cells, store memory, inform genetic coding, and adapt to environmental changes-all behaviors that contribute to the mind and consciousness. Cellular memory, Verny shows, is not just an abstraction, but a well-documented scientific fact that will shift our understanding of memory. Verny describes single-celled organisms with no brains demonstrating memory, and points to the remarkable case of a French man who, despite having a brain just a fraction of the typical size, leads a normal life with a family and a job. The Embodied Mind shows how intelligence and consciousness-traits traditionally attributed to the brain alone-also permeate our entire being. Bodily cells and tissues use the same molecular mechanisms for memory as our brain, making our mind more fluid and adaptable than we could have ever imaged. (shrink)

The dance metaphor for the communication between two organisms may be an appealing image because it appears to capture the intricate synchronization of their interaction; however, it is neither parsimonious nor easily tested. Instead, a multichannel information-processing model, even one that can process only serial events, provides all of the flexibility required to account for the complex temporal coordinated action observed.

It is assumed that self-control always has a higher value. What if it does not? Furthermore, although there are clearly intrinsic reinforcers, their measurement is problematic, especially for a behavioral analyst. Finally, is it more parsimonious to postulate that these behaviors are acquired rather than genetically based?

The authors' attempt to explore the ability of animals to monitor how certain they are of their choice behavior, necessarily fails both in their effort to include “higher” mammals (such as monkeys and dolphins) in the class of metacognitive organisms (humans) and in their conclusion that “lower” organisms are not capable of similar behavior.

Byrne & Russon propose that priming can account for the imitation of simple actions, but they fail to explain how the behavior of another can prime the observer's own behavior. They also propose that imitation of complex skills requires a sequence of acts tied together by a program, but they fail to rule out the role of trial-and-error learning and perceptual/motivational mechanisms in such task acquisition.

Social influence and social learning are important to the survival of many organisms, and certain forms of social learning also may have important implications for their underlying cognitive processes. The various forms of social influence and learning are discussed with special emphasis on the mechanisms that may be responsible for opaque imitation (the copying of a response that the observer cannot easily see when it produces the response). Three procedures are examined, the results of which may qualify as opaque imitation: (...) the bidirectional control procedure, the two- action procedure, and the do-as-I-do procedure. Variables that appear to affect the emergence of opaque imitation are identified and other complex forms of response copying are discussed. Keywords: bidirectional control procedure; contagion; emulation; imitation; local enhancement; object movement reenactment; observational conditioning; opaque imitation; social enhancement; social facilitation; social influence; social learning; stimulus enhancement; two action procedure. (shrink)

Heyes discounts findings of imitation and self recognition in nonhuman primates based on flimsy speculation and then indicates that even positive findings would not provide evidence of theory of mind. Her proposed experiment is unlikely to work, however, because, even if the animals have a theory of mind, a number of assumptions, not directly related to theory of mind, must be made about their reasoning ability.

In this important book, Thomas R. Flynn reinterprets and evaluates Sartre's social and political philosophy, arguing that the existential ethics of Sartre's ...

Codes of ethics exist in many, if not the majority, of all large U.S. companies today. But how the impact of these written codes affect managerial attitudes and behavior is still not clearly documented or explained. This study takes a step in that direction by proposing that attention should shift from the codes themselves as the sources of ethical behavior to the persons whose behavior is the focus of these codes. In particular, this study investigates the role of code familiarity (...) as a factor impacting the influence of an ethics code on manager behavior. Data collected from 286 executives from companies in the direct selling industry are used to test hypotheses (1) that the perceived usefulness of ethics codes is positively related to the degree of familiarity with the code, and (2) that ethical climate as assessed by managers is positively related to the code''s perceived usefulness. Both hypotheses are supported, and their implications and further research directions are discussed. (shrink)

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. A history, thought Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comparative charting of structural transformations and displacements. But for Sartre, authentic historical understanding demanded a much more personal and committed narrative, a kind of interpretive diary of moral (...) choices and risks compelled by critical necessity and an exacting reality. Sartre's history, a rational history of individual lives and their intrinsic social worlds, was in essence immersed in biography. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume work, Thomas R. Flynn conducts a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory, and provocatively anticipates the Foucauldian counterpoint to come in Volume Two. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Regarded as the father of existentialist philosophy, he was also a political critic, moralist, playwright, novelist, and author of biographies and short stories. Thomas R. Flynn provides the first book-length account of Sartre as a philosopher of the imaginary, mapping the intellectual development of his ideas throughout his life, and building a narrative that is not only philosophical but also attentive to the political and literary dimensions (...) of his work. Exploring Sartre's existentialism, politics, ethics, and ontology, this book illuminates the defining ideas of Sartre's oeuvre: the literary and the philosophical, the imaginary and the conceptual, his descriptive phenomenology and his phenomenological concept of intentionality, and his conjunction of ethics and politics with an 'egoless' consciousness. It will appeal to all who are interested in Sartre's philosophy and its relation to his life. (shrink)

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume study, Thomas R. Flynn conducted a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory. This long-awaited second volume offers a comprehensive and critical reading of the Foucauldian counterpoint. A history, theorized (...) Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comprehensive charting of structural transformations and displacements over time. Contrary to other Foucault scholars, Flynn proposes an "axial" rather than a developmental reading of Foucault's work. This allows aspects of Foucault's famous triad of knowledge, power, and the subject to emerge in each of his major works. Flynn maps existentialist categories across Foucault's "quadrilateral," the model that Foucault proposes as defining modernist conceptions of knowledge. At stake is the degree to which Sartre's thought is fully captured by this mapping, whether he was, as Foucault claimed, "a man of the nineteenth century trying to think in the twentieth.". (shrink)

Adam Smith is respected as the father of contemporary economics for his work on systemizing classical economics as an independent field of study in The Wealth of Nations. But he was also a significant moral philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, with its characteristic concern for integrating sentiments and rationality. This article considers Adam Smith as a key moral philosopher of commercial society whose critical reflection upon the particular ethical challenges posed by the new pressures and possibilities of commercial society remains (...) relevant today. The discussion has three parts. First I address the artificial separation between self-interest and morality often attributed to Smith, in which his work on economics is stripped of its ethical context. Second I outline Smith’s ethical approach to economics, focusing on his vigorous but qualified defence of commercial society for its contributions to prosperity, justice, and freedom. Third I outline Smith’s moral philosophy proper as combining a naturalistic account of moral psychology with a virtue ethics based on propriety in commercial society. (shrink)

University of Utrecht, Department of Philosophy, Heidelberglaan 6, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 30 253 28 74, Email: Thomas.Nys{at}phil.uu.nl ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//-->Measures in public health care seem vulnerable to charges of paternalism: their aim is to protect, restore, or promote people's health, but the public character of these measures seems to leave insufficient room for respect for individual autonomy. This paper wants to explore three challenges to these charges: Measures in (...) PHC are aimed to protect, restore or promote ‘deep autonomy’, Measures in PHC are directed at the public and, as such, they do show respect for autonomy, and Some measures in PHC can be justified on grounds of justice and need not be defended as cases of ‘justified paternalism’. Although charges of unjustified paternalism in PHC might still be relevant, we should at least face these different challenges. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This textbook brings the humanities to students in order to evoke the humanity of students. It helps to form individuals who take charge of their own minds, who are free from narrow and unreflective forms of thought, and who act compassionately in their public and professional worlds. Using concepts and methods of the humanities, the book addresses undergraduate and premed students, medical students, and students in other health professions, as well as physicians and other healthcare practitioners. It encourages them to (...) consider the ethical and existential issues related to the experience of disease, care of the dying, health policy, religion and health, and medical technology. Case studies, images, questions for discussion, and role-playing exercises help readers to engage in the practical, interpretive, and analytical aspects of the material, developing skills for critical thinking as well as compassionate care. (shrink)

The concept of an ecological niche (econiche) has been used in a variety of ways, some of which are incompatible with a relational or functional interpretation of the term. This essay seeks to standardize usage by limiting the concept to functional relations between organisms and their surroundings, and to revise the concept to include epistemic relations. For most organisms, epistemics are a vital aspect of their functional relationships to their surroundings and, hence, a major determinant of their econiche. Rejecting the (...) traditional dualism of organism and environment, an econiche is defined as the reciprocal (dual) of a functionally specified class of organisms (FSTU). From this perspective, an econiche necessarily implies a certain type of organism, and a class of functionally similar organisms implies a special econiche.The econiche concept is also discussed in relation to other ecological terms that reflect the distributional patterns of organisms, such as habitat, and the concept of an empty niche is criticized. (shrink)

Philosophy as a way of life -- Becoming an individual -- Humanism : for and against -- Authenticity -- A chastened individualism? Existentialism and social thought -- Existentialism in the twenty-first century.

Sartre and Foucault were two of the most prominent and at times mutually antagonistic philosophical figures of the twentieth century. And nowhere are the antithetical natures of their existentialist and poststructuralist philosophies more apparent than in their disparate approaches to historical understanding. A history, thought Foucault, should be a kind of map, a comparative charting of structural transformations and displacements. But for Sartre, authentic historical understanding demanded a much more personal and committed narrative, a kind of interpretive diary of moral (...) choices and risks compelled by critical necessity and an exacting reality. Sartre's history, a rational history of individual lives and their intrinsic social worlds, was in essence immersed in biography. In Volume One of this authoritative two-volume work, Thomas R. Flynn conducts a pivotal and comprehensive reconstruction of Sartrean historical theory, and provocatively anticipates the Foucauldian counterpoint to come in Volume Two. (shrink)

Abstract Advances in technology now make it possible to monitor the activity of the human brain in action, however crudely. As this emerging science continues to offer correlations between neural activity and mental functions, mind and brain may eventually prove to be one. If so, such a full comprehension of the electrochemical bases of mind may render current concepts of ethics, law, and even free will irrelevant. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11948-012-9351-1 Authors Thomas (...) R. Scott, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA Journal Science and Engineering Ethics Online ISSN 1471-5546 Print ISSN 1353-3452. (shrink)

This article examines some of the main tenets of competition theory in light of the theory of evolution and the concept of an ecological niche. The principle of competitive exclusion and the related assumption that communities exist at competitive equilibrium - fundamental parts of many competition theories and models - may be violated if non-equilibrium conditions exist in natural communities or are incorporated into competition models. Furthermore, these two basic tenets of competition theory are not compatible with the theory of (...) evolution. Variation in ecologically significant environmental factors and non-equilibrium in population numbers should occur in most natural communities, and such changes have important effects on community relations, niche overlap, and the evolution of ecosystems. Ecologists should view competition as a process occurring within a complexdynamic system, and should be wary of theoretical positions built upon simple laboratory experiments or simplistic mathematical models.In considering the relationship between niche overlap and competition, niche overlap should not be taken as a sufficient condition for competition; many factors may prevent or diminish competition between populations with similar resource utilization patterns. The typically opposing forces of intraspecific and interspecific competition need to be simultaneously considered, for it is the balance between them that in large part determines niche boundaries. (shrink)

Covering the entire trajectory of his religious life, this book identifies and analyzes the foundations of political and social order in the philosophy of Pope Benedict XVI. Thomas R. Rourke explains Benedict's belief in the value of the Christian tradition's contribution to a contemporary politics of reason.

After presenting the major objections raised against standard formulations of the H-D method of theory testing, I identify what seems to be an important element of truth underlying the method. I then draw upon this element in an effort to develop a plausible formulation of the H-D method which avoids the various objections.

Hühn and Dierksmeier argue that a better understanding of Adam Smith’s work would improve business ethics research and education. I worry that their approach encourages two scholarly sins. First, anachronistic historiography in which we distort Smith’s ideas by making him answer questions about contemporary debates in CSR theory. Second, treating him as a prophet by assuming that finding out what Smith would have thought about it is the right way to answer such questions.

AUTHORITY AND INEQUALITY UNDER CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM: USA, USSR, AND CHINA by Barrington Moore, Jr. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. 142 pp., $29.95.

A nineteenth-century aristocrat, Nishi Amane (1829-1897) was one of the first Japanese to assert the supremacy of Western culture. He was sent by his government to Leiden to study the European social sciences; on his return to Japan shortly before the climactic Meiji Restoration of 1868 he introduced and adapted European utilitarianism and positivism to his country's intellectual world. To modernize, Nishi held, Japan must cast off the bonds of the Confucian world-view in order to adopt new principles of empirical (...) scholarly investigation and new standards of self-improvement. Though a Confucian by upbringing, Nishi became thoroughly committed to Western intellectual values in his programs for the new Japanese society. In his roles of teacher, writer, and government administrator, he was influential at one of the most critical times in Japan's history. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Thomas R. Flynn - Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 179-180 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Thomas R. Flynn Emory University Robert C. Solomon. Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflection in Camus and Sartre. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. ii + 241. Cloth, $35.00. This study in existentialist thought is a collection of (...) essays, some previously published, in defense of the thesis that existentialist thought, at least in these works, is the articulation of our pre-reflective experience that yields an immediacy and a richness often sacrificed when one turns to abstract reflection—as Solomon believes Sartre does in Being and Nothingness in.. (shrink)

I defend three claims regarding Foucault’s historical a priori and the intelligibility of history that counter commonly received accounts of Husserl’s approach to the same. First, Foucault is not a transcendental thinker in the Kantian sense of the term. His use of the HP is contingent, postdictive, regional and hypothetical. Second, the three “axes” of the dyads knowledge/truth, power/government, and subjectivation/ethics along with Foucault’s “history of the present” enclose a space called “experience” Erfahrung as nonreflective and “freed from inner life.” (...) At this point, “experience” and “multiplicity” coalesce to confirm Foucault’s anti-phenomenological bias and nominalist commitment. Finally, the relations of transformation and displacement that define archaeological change support a “fittingness” between the epistemes in question. Neither necessitating nor aleatory, their relation could be called “aesthetic” in a broad sense. I conclude by listing ways Husserl’s approach to historical intelligibility is the inverse of Foucault’s. (shrink)

Covering the entire trajectory of his religious life, this book identifies and analyzes the foundations of political and social order in the philosophy of Pope Benedict XVI. Thomas R. Rourke explains Benedict's belief in the value of the Christian tradition's contribution to a contemporary politics of reason.

This article focuses on the philosophical aspects of the Capability Approach and its foundations in the work of Amartya Sen. It discusses the development and structure of Sen’s account, how it relates to other ethical approaches, and its main contributions and criticisms. It also outlines various capability theories developed within the Capability Approach, with particular attention to that of Martha Nussbaum.