Despite countless anecdotes and the historical significance of insight as a problem solving mechanism, its nature has long remained elusive. The conscious experience of insight is notoriously difficult to trace in non-verbal animals. Although studying insight has presented a significant challenge even to neurobiology and psychology, human neuroimaging studies have cleared the theoretical landscape, as they have begun to reveal the underlying mechanisms. The study of insight in non-human animals has, in contrast, remained limited to innovative adjustments to experimental designs (...) within the classical approach of judging cognitive processes in animals, based on task performance. This leaves no apparent possibility of ending debates from different interpretations emerging from conflicting schools of thought. We believe that comparative cognition has thus much to gain by embracing advances from neuroscience and human cognitive psychology. We will review literature on insight and discuss the consequences of these findings to comparative cognition. (shrink)

In this paper we don’t intend to show, against the sceptic, that most of our everyday beliefs about the external world are cases of knowledge. What we do try to show is that it is more rational to hold that most of such beliefs are actually cases of knowledge than to deny them this status, as the external world sceptic does. In some sense, our point of view is the opposite of Hume’s, who held that reason clearly favours scepticism about (...) the independent existence of an external world rather than common sense belief in such an independent existence. In arguing for the superior rationality of this common sense, Moorean view, we also take a fallibilist conception of knowledge to be rationally preferable to an infallibilist view of it. (shrink)

El Principio de Posibilidades Alternativas supone un problema para las posiciones compatibilistas respecto de la responsabilidad moral. Desde que Harry Frankfurt diseñara uno, los contraejemplos al PPA se conocen como casos Frankfurt. Una de las mejores líneas de defensa de este principio frente a los nuevos casos Frankfurt es la que se ofrece en Moya. En este artículo me propongo mostrar que su estrategia no es satisfactoria y, al mismo tiempo, argumentar que para la atribución de responsabilidad moral por una (...) acción es suficiente con que existan alternativas epistémicas. (shrink)

Over the last decade, empirical research on compassion has burgeoned in the biomedical, clinical, translational, and foundational sciences. Increasingly sophisticated understandings and measures of compassion continue to emerge from the abundance of multi- and cross-disciplinary studies. Naturally, the diversity of research methods and theoretical frameworks employed presents a significant challenge to consensus and synthesis of this knowledge. To bring the empirical findings of separate and sometimes siloed disciplines into conversation with one another requires an examination of their disparate assumptions about (...) what compassion is and how it can be known. Here, we present an integrated theoretical review of methodologies used in the empirical study of compassion. Our goal is to highlight the distinguishing features of each of these ways of knowing compassion, as well as the strengths and limitations of applying them to specific research questions. We hope this will provide useful tools for selecting methods that are tailored to explicit objectives (methods matching), taking advantage of methodological complementarity across disciplines (methods-mixing), and incorporating the empirical study of compassion into fields in which it may be missing. (shrink)

This book describes the application of Artificial Life simulation to evolutionary scenarios of wide ethical interest, including the evolution of altruism, rape and abortion, providing a new meaning to “experimental philosophy”. The authors also apply evolutionary ALife techniques to explore contentious issues within evolutionary theory itself, such as the evolution of aging. They justify these uses of simulation in science and philosophy, both in general and in their specific applications here.Evolving Ethics will be of interest to researchers, enthusiasts, students and (...) interested lay readers in the fields of Artificial Life, philosophy of science, ethics, agent- and individual-based modeling in ecology and the social sciences, computer simulation, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and the social sciences.Dr Steven Mascaro is a researcher in computer simulation and Artificial Life.Dr Kevin Korb is a Reader in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University.Dr Ann Nicholson is an Associate Professor in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University.Owen Woodberry is a researcher in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University. (shrink)

Comparative thanatologists study the responses to the dead and the dying in nonhuman animals. Despite the wide variety of thanatological behaviours that have been documented in several different species, comparative thanatologists assume that the concept of death is very difficult to acquire and will be a rare cognitive feat once we move past the human species. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is based on two forms of anthropocentrism: an intellectual anthropocentrism, which leads to an over-intellectualisation of the (...) CoD, and an emotional anthropocentrism, which yields an excessive focus on grief as a reaction to death. Contrary to what these two forms of anthropocentrism suggest, we argue that the CoD requires relatively little cognitive complexity and that it can emerge independently from mourning behaviour. Moreover, if we turn towards the natural world, we can see that the minimal cognitive requirements for a CoD are in fact met by many nonhuman species and there are multiple learning pathways and opportunities for animals in the wild to develop a CoD. This allows us to conclude that the CoD will be relatively easy to acquire and, so, we can expect it to be fairly common in nature. (shrink)

In their target article, Mikhalevich & Powell (M&P) argue that we should extend moral protection to arthropods. In this commentary, we show that there are some unforeseen obstacles to applying the sort of individualistic welfare-based ethics that M&P have in mind to certain arthropods, namely, insects. These obstacles have to do with the fact that there are often many more individuals involved in our dealings with insects than our ethical theories anticipate, and also with the fact that, in some sense, (...) some insects count as more than an individual and, in another sense, they sometimes count as less than an individual. (shrink)

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

Over the last decade, numerous interventions and techniques that aim to engender, strengthen, and expand compassion have been created, proliferating an evidence base for the benefits of compassion meditation training. However, to date, little research has been conducted to examine individual variation in the learning, beliefs, practices, and subjective experiences of compassion meditation. This mixed-method study examines changes in novice meditators’ knowledge and contemplative experiences before, during, and after taking an intensive course in CBCT®, a contemplative intervention that is increasingly (...) used for both inter- and intrapersonal flourishing. The participants in this study were Christian healthcare chaplains completing a 1-year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education who learned CBCT as part of their professional chaplaincy training curriculum. Prior to and upon completion of training, we surveyed participants to assess their beliefs about the malleability of compassion, types of engagement in compassion meditation, and perceptions of the impact of taking CBCT. We also conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of participants to gain a qualitative understanding of their subjective experiences of learning and practicing compassion meditation, a key component of CBCT. We found that participants reported increases in the extent to which they believed compassion to be malleable after studying CBCT. We also found high levels of variability of individual ways of practicing and considered the implications of this for the study of contemplative learning processes. This multi-methodological approach yielded novel insights into how compassion practice and compassion-related outcomes interrelate, insights that can inform the basic scientific understanding of the experience of learning and enacting compassion meditation as a means of strengthening compassion itself. (shrink)

A relação entre o vital e o social no pensamento de Georges Canguilhem envolve uma específica reestruturação filosófica, por ele empreendida em O normal e patológico, realizando um deslocamento teórico em face das análises quantitativas da saúde quanto, ao mesmo tempo, construindo uma problemática própria a respeito da normação, fazendo com que o vital seja pensado, inexoravelmente, como a imbricação do biológico com o social, acarretando, ainda, um reposicionamento político, crítico, no que tange à consideração sobre saúde e doença.

Esta exposición posee un doble propósito: 1) se intentará sugerir una interpretación del carácter tradicional de la ciencia como una modalidad social de la habitualidad del ego, surgida de la sedimentación de adquisiciones exitosas. 2) se procurará examinar los riesgos y beneficios que derivan del carácter tradicional y habitual de la ciencia. Como beneficios, destacaremos la posibilidad de transmisibilidad de los saberes y la no-necesidad de una reconstrucción permanente de los actos fundadores de sentido. En cuanto a los riesgos, estudiaremos (...) el progresivo olvido de la fundación originaria, y consiguiente peligro de despeñamiento de una ciencia en la irracionalidad, así como también la perniciosa reificación de las formas ideales, y su tendencia a autoproclamarse como el fundamento del suelo vital, desencadenando un menosprecio del mundo de la vida, en el fenómeno llamado Substruktion. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer an argument in favor of the modular character of mind, based on a more detailed proof of the modular character of the linguistic capacity: in comparing the properties of different components of grammar in a specific area we will draw general consequences about the properties of the cognitive system. More specifically, we analyze and compare the properties, in logical form (LF)and in phonology, of “empty eIements” - eIements that are “visible” or “full” at some level (...) of representation, but not at another level.Our analysis shows that empty eIements are governed at LF by principIes on variables. binding conditions, and thematic principles, that relate eIements at a distance. In phonology, on the other hand, empty elements, i.e., empty segments and empty properties, can be obtaines by deletion and are governed by very different principles (underspecification, principles relating to recoverability of deletion effects), andthese principles relates eIements under strict adjacency. In addition, when a principle seems to be operating in a similar fashion in both components, as in the case of the Projection Principle, it involves lexical properties, which are properties affecting all components. We conclude, hence, that grammar is a modular system, with different components following different principles but related of course, among other things, by the properties of lexical structure.It follows from this analysis that a theory that views language as part of a homogeneous cognitive capacity cannot be mantained: cognition cannot be nonmodular in a strict sense, since a subpart of it, the linguistic capacity is modular itself. We conclude also that the linguistic capacity being modular, we ean only expect that, when studied in more detail, other cognitive capacities will be shown to differ intheir structure still more from the language system. (shrink)

В книге изложены понятия, структуры, функции, основные типы юридического сознания, культуры и антикультуры в обществе. Особое внимание уделено психологическому механизму деятельности, мерам юридической ответственности и правовой защиты людей, их коллективов и организаций. Для юристов (ученых и практиков, аспирантов и адъюнктов), студентов магистратуры и бакалавриата юридических вузов и факультетов. Монография выполнена при финансовой поддержке РФФИ в рамках научного проекта № 18-011-01095.

Russkai︠a︡ t︠erkovʹ i drugie statʹi -- V temnykh religioznykh luchakh.

Este trabajo se propone mostrar que la noción de mundo circundante técnico [Werkwelt] elaborada por M. Heidegger no logra dar cuenta de la complejidad de la realidad técnica actual puesto que se basa en un modelo artesanal y cuasi-privado de producción. Sugerimos que, de ser consecuentes con las propuestas del mismo Heidegger, y descubrir en el medio técnico a la naturaleza y al mundo público, el Werkwelt debería expandirse hasta coincidir con un entramado pluri-sistémico en una soldadura de zonas funcionales (...) de muy diversa índole, es decir, un conjunto técnico, noción elaborada por G. Simondon. (shrink)