William Uttal is concerned that in an effort to prove itself a hard science, psychology may have thrown away one of its most important methodological tools—a critical analysis of the fundamental assumptions that underlie day-to-day empirical research. In this book Uttal addresses the question of localization: whether psychological processes can be defined and isolated in a way that permits them to be associated with particular brain regions. New, noninvasive imaging technologies allow us to observe the brain while it is (...) actively engaged in mental activities. Uttal cautions, however, that the excitement of these new research tools can lead to a neuroreductionist wild goose chase. With more and more cognitive neuroscientific data forthcoming, it becomes critical to question their limitations as well as their potential. Uttal reviews the history of localization theory, presents the difficulties of defining cognitive processes, and examines the conceptual and technical difficulties that should make us cautious about falling victim to what may be a "neo-phrenological" fad. (shrink)

During the past few decades a growing interest in what is often called the ‘Kyoto School’ of philosophy has evidenced itself here and there in the West, especially in discussions of comparative religious thought and in the pages of journals which are sensitive, in the post-colonial world, to the value of giving attention to contemporary thought that originates outside the Anglo-American and continental contexts. What has made the so-called Kyoto School especially interesting is the fact that those thinkers identified with (...) it obviously possess a wide acquaintance with Western thought but also have a programme of clarifying points at which they, as Japanese philosophers, find Western philosophy either in sum or in its parts inadequate or objectionable. Moreover, inasmuch as the philosophers of the Kyoto School have deliberately reached back into the Mahayana Buddhist component in Japanese civilization in order to find terms, perspectives, and even foundations for their own analyses and constructions, Western students of comparative religion and comparative thought have in the study of this school a unique aperture for observing how a group of thinkers, while sharing modernity and its problems with us, reates both of these to a religious tradition which is in many ways strikingly different from that of the West. (shrink)

Despite the fact that psychedelics were proscribed from medical research half a century ago, recent, early-phase trials on psychedelics have suggested that they bring novel benefits to patients in the treatment of several mental and substance use disorders. When beneficial, the psychedelic experience is characterized by features unlike those of other psychiatric and medical treatments. These include senses of losing self-importance, ineffable knowledge, feelings of unity and connection with others and encountering ‘deep’ reality or God. In addition to symptom relief, (...) psychedelic experiences often lead to significant changes in a patient’s personality and worldview. Focusing on the case of psilocybin, we argue that the peculiar features of psychedelics pose certain novel risks, which warrant an enhanced informed consent process–one that is more comprehensive than what may be typical for other psychiatric medications. We highlight key issues that should be focused on during the consent process and suggest discussion prompts for enhanced consent in psychedelic psychiatry. Finally, we respond to potential objections before concluding with a discussion of ethical considerations that will arise as psychedelics proceed from highly controlled research environments into mainstream clinical psychiatry. (shrink)

The famous 1893 Chicago World’s Fair celebrated the dawn of corporate capitalism and a new Machine Age with an exhibit of the world’s largest engine. Yet the noise was so great, visitors ran out of the Machinery Hall to retreat to the peace and quiet of the Japanese pavilion’s Buddhist temples and lotus ponds. Thus began over a century of the West’s turn toward an Asian aesthetic as an antidote to modern technology. From the turn-of-the-century Columbian Exhibition to the latest (...) Zen-inspired designs of Apple, Inc., R. John Williams charts the history of our embrace of Eastern ideals of beauty to counter our fear of the rise of modern technological systems. In a dazzling work of synthesis, Williams examines Asian influences on book design and department store marketing, the commercial fiction of Jack London, the poetic technique of Ezra Pound, the popularity of Charlie Chan movies, the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the design of the latest high-tech gadgets. Williams demonstrates how, rather than retreating from modernity, writers, artists, and inventors turned to traditional Eastern technê as a therapeutic means of living with—but never abandoning—Western technology. (shrink)

This paper discusses using the Chernobyl Incident as a case study in engineering ethics instruction. Groups of students are asked to take on the role of a faction involved in the Chernobyl disaster and to defend their decisions in a mock debate. The results of student surveys and the Engineering and Science Issues Test indicate that the approach is very popular with students and has a positive impact on moral reasoning. The approach incorporates technical, communication and teamwork skills and has (...) many of the features suggested by recent literature. (shrink)

The field of cognitive imaging is explodingboth in terms of the amount of our scientificresources dedicated to it and the associatedpublication rate. However, all of this effortis based on a critical question – Do cognitivemodules exist? Both of the reviewers of my book(Uttal, 2001) and I agree that this questionhas not yet been satisfactorily answered and,depending on the ultimate answer, the cognitiveimaging approach as well as some other parts ofthe quest for mechanistic models of mind mightnot be successful. Our views (...) of how our scienceshould respond to this serious problem,however, are quite different. Both ProfessorBechtel and Lloyd argue for an optimisticattack on the problem of the localization ofcognitive processes in the brain based on thehistory of other sciences. I argue that arealistic appreciation of the limits of thisapproach should temper the enthusiasm for whatultimately will go the way of other attempts tounravel the mind-brain problem. (shrink)

Directed to scholars and senior-level graduate students, this book is an iconoclastic survey of the history of dualism and its impact on contemporary cognitive psychology. It argues that much of modern cognitive or mentalist psychology is built upon a cryptodualism--the idea that the mind and brain can be thought of as independent entities. This dualism pervades so much of society that it covertly influences many aspects of modern science, particularly psychology. To support the argument, the history of dualism is extended (...) over 100,000 years--from the Paleolithic times until modern philosophical and psychological thinking. The questions regarding this topic that are answered in the book are: 1) Does dualism influence the scientific theories of psychology? 2) If so, should dualism be put aside in the search for a more objective analysis of human mentation? (shrink)

The list of Italian forces1 with which Virgil concluded Aeneid 7 was a piece of the ‘machinery’ of epic, that is to say an expected part of the content of an epic poem, established by Homer and expected of his successors; cf. Apollonius 1. 20–228, Silius 3. 222 f., Statius, Th. 4. 32 f., Milton, P.L. 1. 376 f. The straightforward enumeration of Homer was naturally appropriate in the Iliad both because oral technique sought this kind of directness and because (...) of the immediate relationship of the subject-matter to a heroic community. But Virgil was well aware that the Homeric manner would not fit satisfactorily into the sophisticated and elaborate structure of literary and contemplative epic. Two essential requirements had to be met in the transplanting of such ‘machinery’ into a new milieu. The first was one of function: the piece should blend with the whole intricate pattern of theme and tone which a poem like the Aeneid possesses. The second was one of structure: it must possess within itself artistic symmetries and designs of a carefully organized kind. (shrink)

Of the unusual grammatical constructions which Statius employs for the sake of variety and novel effect, among the most remarkable is his use of the ablative case. There are striking instances at Th. 8. 157, Th. 10. 309, Ach. 1. 219, Ach. 2. 129; and W. C. Summers was led to say: ‘We see some traces in Valerius of the lax use of this case which became almost a disease with Statius, who employs it for almost any kind of idea.’ (...) There are three passages in Statius which have been misinterpreted or emended through the failure to recognize a use of the ablative to which he was especially prone—the local ablative where the poetic dative of ‘motion towards’ would seem more normal. I shall first list examples of this use in Statius where there is little or no doubt about interpretation or reading, and in the light of this accumulated evidence consider the three passages which are disputed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Shakespeare’s Troilus and CressidaW. R. EltonIn Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida there occurs a particular pattern of parallels with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics regarding ethical-legal questions surrounding an action: issues of the role of the voluntary or the involuntary, of volition and choice, of choice and virtue, and of virtue and habitual action. 1Aristotle’s EN was familiar to Elizabethan higher education and was reprinted in translation in (...) numerous editions, with commentaries, in the sixteenth century. 2 Twice Shakespeare alludes to Aristotle by name: first, recalling his ethics, in Taming of the Shrew (I.i.32)—cf. I.i.18–20 on [End Page 331]Virtue and that part of philosophy... that treats of happiness By virtue specially to be achiev’d,and second, in Troilus (II.ii.166–67) on Aristotle and “moral philosophy.” 3Opening EN, III, Aristotle distinguishes those actions that are “voluntary” from those that are “involuntary,” remarking the necessity to determine their limits. Such a course, he adds, is “useful also for legislators with a view to the assigning both of honours and of punishments” (1109 b 32–34). What Aristotle examines, in effect, is the procedure of determining culpability for an act. 4Under what circumstances and to what extent is one responsible for his action? In addition to the voluntary and the involuntary, there are such act-related dualisms as volition and choice, choice and virtue, and virtue and habitual practice. Such ethical-legal issues are appropriate to a play whose war-plot turns on an abductor’s culpability for an action and the subsequent issue of prescriptive possession—the Grecian claim to Helen against her Trojan possessors. 5The VoluntaryIn Troilus Aristotle’s voluntary-involuntary distinctions seem exemplified. 6 A passage (I.iii.354–56), previously glossed by the present writer, suggests a [End Page 332] parallel EN instance of the voluntary. 7 Aristotle defines the voluntary as “that of which the moving principle is in the agent himself “ (1111 a 23–24). In Troilus Nestor, recalling the agent’s responsibility for acts, explains:Limbes are in his instruments, In no lesse working, then are Swords and Bowes Directiue by the Limbes(I.iii.368–70).These lines occur in Troilus, Folio (1623), and are omitted, along with other relatively specialized lines, from Quarto (1609): 8 according to Aristotle, “the movement of the limbs instrumental to the action originates in the agent himself, and when this is so it is in a man’s own power to act or not to act.” 9 Where EN has “limbs... are the instruments,” F Troilus has “Limbes are in his instruments” (cf. Walker ed., I.iii.354).Limbs are instruments of the agent’s responsibility, as are the swords and bows employed by those limbs. Such a passage in Troilus on the responsibility and voluntariness of acts could have been recognizable to an academic (especially legal) audience and, as rehearsed by the ancient Nestor, might have drawn reminiscent response.The InvoluntaryIf Nestor (I.iii.354–56) had been voice of the voluntary, the combat-withdrawn Achilles is arbitrator of the involuntary. Responding to Thersites’ “I serve here voluntary,” Achilles adjudicates, “Your last service was sufferance, ‘twas not voluntary. No man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as under an impress” (II.i.94–97). Mocking Thersites’s “service,” including being beaten, Achilles argues this could not be “voluntary.” His “no man is beaten voluntary” echoes Aristotle’s own familiar terms, denying that a man can be wronged or injured voluntarily. In his commentary on EN John Case [End Page 333] gives the assurance that “No one voluntarily suffers injury..., no one voluntarily and maliciously harms himself: therefore no one willingly suffers injury.” 10In such instances as those above, Troilus (II.i.94–97) recalls basic legal procedure, including determination of the degree of responsibility for an action. What is the minimum requirement of the law before a man can be held accountable? “Those things... are thought involuntary,” says Aristotle, “which take place under compulsion... and that is compulsory of which the moving principle is outside, being a principle... (shrink)

Sections include: experiments and generalised causal inference; statistical conclusion validity and internal validity; construct validity and external validity; quasi-experimental designs that either lack a control group or lack pretest observations on the outcome; quasi-experimental designs that use both control groups and pretests; quasi-experiments: interrupted time-series designs; regresssion discontinuity designs; randomised experiments: rationale, designs, and conditions conducive to doing them; practical problems 1: ethics, participation recruitment and random assignment; practical problems 2: treatment implementation and attrition; generalised causal inference: a grounded theory; (...) generalised causal inference: methods for single studies; generalised causal inference: methods for multiple studies; a critical assessment of our assumptions. (shrink)

William R. Caspary makes the case for Dewey as a more discerning and challenging political theorist than this.

Skepticism about ethical expertise has grown common, raising concerns that bioethicists’ roles are inappropriate or depend on something other than expertise in ethics. While these roles may depend on skills other than those of expertise, overlooking the role of expertise in ethics distorts our conception of moral advising. This paper argues that motivations to reject ethical expertise often stem from concerns about elitism: either an intellectualist elitism, where some privileged elite have supposedly special access in virtue of expertise in moral (...) theory; or an authoritarian elitism, where our reliance on experts in ethics risks violation of autonomy and democracy. The paper sketches an anti-elitist conception of ethics expertise in bioethics as continuous with an anti-elitist conception of ethics expertise in common moral practice, undercutting the intellectualism, and then uses this anti-elitist conception to reject arguments that ethical expertise violates autonomy or democracy. An anti-elitist picture of ethical expertise both renders it consistent with our general moral practice and allows us to resist skeptical concerns. (shrink)

Debates about the ethics of health care and medical research in contemporary pluralistic democracies often arise partly from competing religious and secular values. Such disagreements raise challenges of balancing claims of religious liberty with claims to equal treatment in health care. This paper proposes several mid-level principles to help in framing sound policies for resolving such disputes. We develop and illustrate these principles, exploring their application to conscientious objection by religious providers and religious institutions, accommodation of religious priorities in biomedical (...) research, and treatment of patients’ religious views in doctor–patient encounters. Given that no sound set of guiding principles yields precise solutions for every policy dispute, we explore how morally sound democracies might deliberatively resolve such policy issues, following our proposed principles. Taken together and carefully interpreted, these principles may help in guiding difficult decision making in the indefinitely large realm where government, medical providers, and patients encounter problems concerning religion and medicine. (shrink)

Uttal has written 9 LEA titles over the past 25 yrs. The audience will be the same people who bought Uttal's past work, as well as people teaching courses in THEORY & METHODS of PSYCH.,those w/interests in THEORETICAL PSYCH & the HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF.

Several prominent writers including Norman Daniels, James Sabin, Amy Gutmann, Dennis Thompson and Leonard Fleck advance a view of legitimacy according to which, roughly, policies are legitimate if and only if they result from democratic deliberation, which employs only public reasons that are publicised to stakeholders. Yet, the process described by this view contrasts with the actual processes involved in creating the Affordable Care Act and in attempting to pass the Health Securities Act. Since the ACA seems to be legitimate, (...) as the HSA would have been had it passed, there seem to be counterexamples to this view. In this essay, I clarify the concept of legitimacy as employed in bioethics discourse. I then use that clarification to develop these examples into a criticism of the orthodox view–that it implies that legitimacy requires counterintuitively large sacrifices of justice in cases where important advancement of healthcare rights depends on violations of publicity. Finally, I reply to three responses to this challenge: that some revision to the orthodox view salvages its core commitments, that its views of publicity and substantive considerations do not have the implications that I claim and that arguments for it are strong enough to support even counterintuitive results. My arguments suggest a greater role for substantive considerations than the orthodox view allows. (shrink)

Gabriele Badano offers three criticisms of my challenge to the orthodox family of theories of legitimacy in bioethics. First, I assumed an ‘oversimplified version of the orthodoxy’. Second, I failed to appreciate its domain of application. Third, I only addressed the ways in which orthodox theorists incorporate substance as an ‘afterthought’—and, even then, only by rehashing Gopal Sreenivasan’s argument. Here, I respond to each, taking up the first and third before ending with reflections on the second. The first underestimates the (...) insight that criticism of the simplified version provides to that of the more complex relatives. The third misunderstands the relationship between my view and Sreenivasan’s and neglects an entire argument of my paper. The second fails in light of these two, but raises interesting questions about how the method I suggest might be extended to other domains. (shrink)

Shortly after his arrival at Carthage, while he is waiting for Dido to meet him, Aeneas finds that the walls of her temple are adorned with pictures of the Trojan War. Sunt hie etiam sua praemia laudi, he cries to Achates, sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. The description of the pictures which follows is a remarkable example of Virgil's ability to use a traditional device in such a way as to strengthen and illuminate the main themes of his (...) poem. It is my object here first to reinterpret one of the scenes which has been misunderstood, and then to discuss how Virgil has chosen and arranged his episodes so that the description of a picture gallery becomes a part of an epic poem. (shrink)

In his note on Hesiod, WD 705 M. L. West tentatively suggests adeo for deo, saying rightly that ‘Charon is not a god in the literary tradition generally or in Virgil's scheme’ . Palaeographically nothing could be more attractive than this emendation. But for all Virgil's fondness for adeo he does not use it in this intensifying sense with adjectives other than those indicating number , nor does he ever use it later than the second foot . The difficulty which (...) West is combating is a very real one, but it is not solved by the removal of deo. Virgil's dilemma was that the old ferryman must be as timeless as all the other members of Pluto's establishment, and to achieve this object of portraying an unchanging picture of the machinery of the underworld he has elevated Charon to the rank of dues. In Olympus the gods are frozen at the point suitable for the anthropomorphic vision of them: Cupid is always a boy, Apollo young and handsome, Neptune older and more austere. Similarly Charon is frozen just as he has reached vigorous old age. He may not be, indeed is not, a real god, but he is a necessary part of the world of the gods and so must share their agelessness. (shrink)

Ca. 40 published papers from a summer institute in the German Democratic Republic in 1988.

William R. Stirton; III*—The Logical Status of ‘Exists’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 37–50, https://doi.org/.

A survey of Descartes' scientific career from his student days at the Jesuit College of La Flèche to his departure for Sweden in 1649.

William R. Stirton; III*—The Logical Status of ‘Exists’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 37–50, https://doi.org/.

The social psychology of science is a compelling new area of study whose shape is still emerging. This erudite and innovative book outlines a theoretical and methodological agenda for this new field, and bridges the gap between the individually focused aspects of psychology and the sociological elements of science studies. Presenting a side of social psychology that, until now, has received almost no attention in the social sciences literature, this volume offers the first detailed and comprehensive study of the social (...) psychology of science, complete with a large number of empirical and theoretical examples. The volume's introductory section provides a detailed analysis of how modern social psychology might apply to the study of science. Chapters show how to analyze science in terms of social cognition, attribution theory, attitudes and attitude change, social motivation, social influence and social conformity, and intergroup relations, weaving extensive illustrations from the science studies literature into the theoretical analysis. The nature and role of experimentation are discussed, as are metaanalytic methods for summarizing the results of multiple studies. Ways to facilitate the generalization of causal inferences from experimental work are also examined. The book focuses on such topics as interactions among small groups of scientists, and the impact of social motivation, influence, and conformity on scientific work. Also covered are scientists' responses to ethical issues in research, differences in cognitive style distribution, creativity in research and development, and the sociologists's view of the social psychology of science and technology. In addition, the book provides two annotated bibliographies, one on the philosophy of science and the other on social psychology, to guide readers in both disciplines to salient recent works. Valuable to the entire science studies community, this text will be of special interest to philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and historians of science interested in the nature of knowledge development in science. Because of its novel application of social psychological theories and methods, this book will be useful as a primary text or a secondary text in courses on science studies in psychology, sociology, or philosophy departments. (shrink)

Why would a country strongly influenced by Buddhism's reverence for life allow legalized, widely used abortion? Equally puzzling to many Westerners is the Japanese practice of mizuko rites, in which the parents of aborted fetuses pray for the well-being of these rejected "lives." In this provocative investigation, William LaFleur examines abortion as a window on the culture and ethics of Japan. At the same time he contributes to the Western debate on abortion, exploring how the Japanese resolve their conflicting (...) emotions privately and avoid the pro-life/pro-choice politics that sharply divide Americans on the issue. (shrink)