In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophocles’s Enemy Sisters: Antigone and IsmeneWm. Blake Tyrrell (bio) and Larry J. BennettAt the core of the Oedipus myth, as Sophocles presents it, is the proposition that all masculine relationships are based on reciprocal acts of violence. Laius, taking his cue from the oracle, violently rejects Oedipus out of fear that his son will seize his throne and invade his conjugal bed. Oedipus, taking his cue from the oracle, (...) does away with Laius, violently rebuffs the sphinx, then takes their places—as king and “scourge of the city,” respectively. Again, Oedipus, taking his cue from the oracle, plots the death of that unknown figure who may be seeking to usurp his own position. Oedipus, Creon, and Tiresias, each taking his cue from the oracle, seek one another’s downfall.All these acts of violence gradually wear away the differences that exist not only in the same family but throughout the community.—René Girard, Violence and the SacredRené Girard does not include feminine relationships in his assessment of the Oedipus myth, yet the same redundancy that characterizes the males marks the females.1 Jocasta conjoins in one person multiple and redundant social roles: she is the mother and wife of the same person, for which she [End Page 1] hangs herself, leaving for Oedipus “many pains that a mother’s furies fulfilled” (Homer Odyssey 11.279–80). Her daughters, their father’s sisters, manifest kinship redundancy in two persons. Incest produces circularly, reverting to a sibling of the parent rather than moving forward with a descendant. The absence of linear progression from one generation to the next creates a sameness and equilibrium that thwart separation and individuality. Oedipus’s brothers/sons fail in their adult roles, because neither can overcome the other’s right to the throne of Thebes and the mastery of its royal household. They are enemy brothers locked in reciprocal violence.2 Antigone and Ismene have escaped notice not only as enemy sisters but even as products of the same incest. Audiences for Sophocles’s Antigone have viewed them as “normal” women and cooperated with his characters in emphasizing the differences between them. They have assumed from Antigone’s betrothal to Haemon and resistance to Creon that she is the elder, more mature sister.3 They tend to accept without question that Antigone engages in burial rituals with Polyneices’s corpse (241–58) and returns to it (442–35).4 Bernard M. W. Knox’s critically powerful concept of the “Sophoclean hero” has bolstered this view of Antigone while reducing Ismene to a foil, and abetted the tendency of modern producers of the play to cast an older or more famous actress in the role of Antigone.5 Naturalistic readings like that of C. M. Bowra—“seeing that Ismene is her only close relative in the world, Antigone is remarkably cold to her”6—have masked the source and hence the vehemence of Antigone’s fury.That the reciprocity of the violence between Ismene and Antigone has gone unnoticed is understandable in view of the familiarity of the conflict between their brothers. Males in Greek society pursued difference by striving to excel as aristoi (best) in competition for prestige, wealth, and power.7 Whenever Eteocles and Polyneices came together, each asserted a right to Oedipus’s household and throne that was equally matched, and violence ensued from the equilibrium. On the other hand, Greek women were not supposed to compete with one another for distinction. They wove wool for clothes, maintained the household, and cared for the children, the sick, and the dead, activities that required cooperation away from public view.8 Proximity to other women was the norm and desideratum. Moreover, lawgivers like Solon based their funeral legislation on the premise that every woman wanted to participate in mourning.9 For the sake of public tranquillity, legislators tried to limit the numbers of women participants by imposing restrictions according to degrees of kinship, for instance, to children of fifth cousins. In this context, women were interchangeable, and the places they held during birth, coming of age in wedding ceremonies, and death, [End Page 2] were open to more than one woman. Closeness and... (shrink)

The changing world of health care finance has led to a paradigm shift in health care with health care being viewed more and more as a commodity. Many have argued that such a paradigm shift is incompatible with the very nature of medicine and health care. But such arguments raise more questions than they answer. There are important assumptions about basic concepts of health care and markets that frame such arguments.

In 1994, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops revised the "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services." A goal of the Directives is to maintain the moral integrity of Catholic health care institutions and to address controversies in bioethics and health care. The Directives represent a shift to an exclusively principle-based approach to moral reason. This shift threatens to undermine the very tradition that the bishops seek to protect.

In the last 25 years, Roman Catholic moral theology has debated issues ranging from the sources of moral theology to the role of ecclesiastical authority in moral theology. In 1993, Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor, which addresses issues in fundamental moral theology. The encyclical must be understood against the background of ongoing debates since Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on birth control (Humanae Vitae). It is not clear what the impact of Veritatis Splendor will be. (...) However, it seems safe to say that it will be deployed in debates about issues such as birth control, artificial reproduction, sterilization, and abortion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Death: A Persistent Controversial StateKevin Wm. Wildes S.J. (bio)Along with the moral questions surrounding research and experimentation, the moral questions of death and dying have ranked among the most central and formative sets of issues for the field of bioethics. While the questions of death and dying have a long history (Wildes 1996), the attempt to address them as secular questions is an element of what established bioethics as (...) a field of inquiry.The controversies of death and dying are not only formative of bioethics, but also are among the most persistent bioethical controversies. Today, almost 30 years after the Harvard Ad Hoc Committee’s definition of death and 20 years after the Quinlan decision, the questions of death and dying are still with us. Recently, the question of physician-assisted suicide once again gained national [End Page 378] attention with the trials of Dr. Kevorkian and the decisions of the Ninth and Second Circuit Courts on the constitutionality of the Washington and New York state laws prohibiting physician-assisted suicide. At the same time, questions and controversies about the appropriate extent of treatment and the determination of death in relationship to treatment continue to be problematic in health care.As I reviewed the literature in the area of death and dying, one central question emerged: Why, after so much reflection, energy, and discussion, do the problems around death and dying continue to persist? There is a recurring character to these questions that is indeed a wonder. In reviewing these moral controversies, one might ask what these controversies and their persistent character tell us about bioethics that can help us to understand the issues and the field.Some might blame the development of medical technology for the persistence of these issues of death and dying. The development and use of technological resources certainly is an important element of these continuing controversies. The use of medical technologies at the end of life allows us the possibility to sustain lives that would have been lost just a few decades ago. However, while medical technology certainly opens new horizons and possibilities, the development and deployment of technology does not sufficiently explain why these issues are so difficult and persistent. The question underlying the use of medical technology at the end of life is the question about which criteria are to be used to make judgments about the appropriate use of such technology. If the use of medical technology depends on the moral views one holds about death, suffering, and the appropriate use of resources, then such issues will be morally controversial in a society that is morally pluralistic.To address these questions, it is important to remember what is all too obvious and yet often forgotten. Death is not only a medical event. In this century, particularly in the last 40 years, we have reduced death to a medical event, yet, the medical meanings do not exhaust the event (see Engelhardt 1996, pp. 189–238). Death is also a social, cultural, and often religious event and the medical realities of death must be interpreted within these different contexts. As such, death will be the locus of different meanings and interpretations. By keeping these different structures of interpretation in mind, we are better able to understand why controversies around death and dying persist. Just as the meaning of death will vary from culture to culture, so too will the criteria of death vary. Different moral communities have different criteria for death—e.g., pulmonary or cognitive function. Put another way, different communities and cultures will have different views of what constitutes a good life, and those views influence the way death is understood. How one understands the obligations to support life also varies according to one’s moral commitments and values.One’s view of what counts as death, or what counts as a good death, is influenced [End Page 379] by the moral commitments that one holds. The persistent controversies over death and dying are a symptom of deep, widespread moral and cultural pluralism. These views are controversial because, in many ways, our deaths are no longer private. That is, the way we die often is tied to a health... (shrink)

Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.; Living out the Tradition, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 9, Issue 2-3, 1 January 2003, Pages 29.

Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.; Religion in Bioethics: A Rebirth, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 January 2002, Pa.

Readers generally know only one of the two famous James brothers. Literary types know Henry James; psychologists, philosophers, and religion scholars know William James. In reality, the brothers’ minds were inseparable, as the more than eight hundred letters they wrote to each other reveal. In this book, J. C. Hallman mines the letters for mutual affection and influence, painting a moving portrait of a relationship between two extraordinary men. Deeply intimate, sometimes antagonistic, rife with wit, and on the cutting edge (...) of art and science, the letters portray the brothers’ relationship and measure the manner in which their dialogue helped shape, through the influence of their literary and intellectual output, the philosophy, science, and literature of the century that followed. William and Henry James served as each other’s muse and critic. For instance, the event of the death of Mrs. Sands illustrates what H’ry never stated: even if the “matter” of his fiction was light, the minds behind it lived and died as though it was very heavy indeed. He seemed to best understand this himself only after Wm fully fleshed out his system. “I can’t now explain save by the very fact of the spell itself . . . that [Pragmatism] cast upon me,” H’ry wrote in 1907. “All my life I have . . . unconsciously pragmatised.” Wm was never able to be quite so gracious in return. In 1868, he lashed out at the “every day” elements of two of H’ry’s early stories, and then explained: “I have uttered this long rigmarole in a dogmatic manner, as one speaks, to himself, but of course you will use it merely as a mass to react against in your own way, so that it may serve you some good purpose.” He believed he was doing H’ry a service as he criticized a growing tendency toward “over-refinement” or “curliness” of style. “I think it ought to be of use to you,” he wrote in 1872, “to have any detailed criticism fm even a wrong judge, and you don’t get much fm. any one else.” For the most part, H’ry agreed. “I hope you will continue to give me, when you can, your free impression of my performance. It is a great thing to have some one write to one of one’s things as if one were a 3d person & you are the only individual who will do this.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBoth auditory and visual emotional memories can be made less emotional by loading working memory during memory recall. Taxing WM during recall can be modality specific (giving an audit...

ABSTRACTDespite interest in exercise as a treatment for anxiety disorders the mechanism behind the anxiolytic effects of exercise is unclear. Two observations motivate the present work. First, engagement of attention control during increased working memory load can decrease anxiety. Second, exercise can improve attention control. Therefore, exercise could boost the anxiolytic effects of increased WM load via its strengthening of attention control. Anxiety was induced by threat of shock and was quantified with anxiety-potentiated startle. Thirty-five healthy volunteers participated in two (...) types of activity, exercise and control-activity. After each activity, participants completed a WM task at low- and high-load during safe and threat. Results were not consistent with the hypothesis: exercise vs. control-activity increased APS in high-load. However, this incre... (shrink)

Although it is well accepted that working memory is intimately related to consciousness, little research has illuminated the liaison between the two phenomena. To investigate this under-explored nexus, we used an imagery monitoring task to investigate the subjective aspects of WM performance. Specifically, in two experiments, we examined the effects on consciousness of holding in mind information having a low versus high memory load, and holding memoranda in mind during the presentation of distractors . Higher rates of rehearsal occurred in (...) the high load and distractor conditions than in comparable control conditions. Examination of the temporal properties of the rehearsal-based imagery revealed that, across subjects, imagery events occurred evenly throughout the delay. We hope that future variants of this new imagery monitoring task will reveal additional insights about WM, consciousness, and action control. (shrink)

Blair equates the constructs of working memory (WM), executive function, and general fluid intelligence (gF). We argue that there is good reason not to equate these constructs. We view WM and gF as separable but highly related, and suggest that the mechanism behind the relationship is controlled attention – an ability that is dependent on normal functioning of the prefrontal cortex. (Published Online April 5 2006).

The importance of working memory in reading and mathematics performance has been widely studied, with recent research examining the components of WM and their roles in these educational outcomes. However, the differing relationships between these abilities and the foundational skills involved in the development of reading and mathematics have received less attention. Additionally, the separation of verbal, visual and spatial storage and processing and subsequent links with foundational skills and downstream reading and mathematics has not been widely examined. The current (...) study investigated the separate contributions of processing and storage from verbal, visual and spatial tasks to reading and mathematics, whilst considering influences on the underlying skills of verbal comprehension and counting, respectively. Ninety-two children aged 7- to 8-years were assessed. It was found that verbal comprehension was predicted by verbal storage and reading was predicted by verbal and spatial storage. Counting was predicted by visual processing and storage, whilst mathematics was related to verbal and spatial storage. We argue that resources for tasks relying on external representations of stimuli related mainly to storage, and were largely verbal and spatial in nature. When a task required internal representation, there was a draw on visual processing and storage abilities. Findings suggest a possible meaningful separability of types of processing. Further investigation of this could lead to the development of an enhanced WM model, which might better inform interventions and reasonable adjustments for children who struggle with reading and mathematics due to WM deficits. (shrink)

Working memory is the system responsible for maintaining and manipulating information, in the face of ongoing distraction. In turn, WM span is perceived to be an individual-differences construct reflecting the limited capacity of this system. Recently, however, there has been some evidence to suggest that WM capacity can increase through training, raising the possibility that training can functionally alter the neural structures supporting WM. To address the hypothesis that the neural substrates underlying WM are targeted by training, we conducted a (...) meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of WM training using Activation Likelihood Estimation. Our results demonstrate that WM training is associated exclusively with decreases in blood oxygenation level-dependent responses in clusters within the fronto-parietal system that underlie WM, including the bilateral inferior parietal lobule, middle and superior frontal gyri, and medial frontal gyrus bordering on the cingulate gyrus. We discuss the various psychological and physiological mechanisms that could be responsible for the observed reductions in the BOLD signal in relation to WM training, and consider their implications for the construct of WM span as a limited resource. (shrink)

A high percent of oxidative energy metabolism is needed to support brain growth during infancy. Unhealthy diets and limited nutrition, as well as other environmental insults, can compromise these essential developmental processes. In particular, iron deficiency anemia has been found to undermine both normal brain growth and neurobehavioral development. Even moderate ID may affect neural maturation because when iron is limited, it is prioritized first to red blood cells over the brain. A primate model was used to investigate the neural (...) effects of a transient ID and if deficits would persist after iron treatment. The large size and postnatal growth of the monkey brain makes the findings relevant to the metabolic and iron needs of human infants, and initiating treatment upon diagnosis of anemia reflects clinical practice. Specifically, this analysis determined whether brain maturation would still be compromised at 1 year of age if an anemic infant was treated promptly once diagnosed. The hematology and iron status of 41 infant rhesus monkeys was screened at 2-month intervals. Fifteen became ID; 12 met clinical criteria for anemia and were administered iron dextran and B vitamins for 1–2 months. MRI scans were acquired at 1 year. The volumetric and diffusion tensor imaging measures from the ID infants were compared with monkeys who remained continuously iron sufficient. A prior history of ID was associated with smaller total brain volumes, driven primarily by significantly less total gray matter and smaller GM volumes in several cortical regions. At the macrostructual level, the effect on white matter volumes was not as overt. However, DTI analyses of WM microstructure indicated two later-maturating anterior tracts were negatively affected. The findings reaffirm the importance of iron for normal brain development. Given that brain differences were still evident even after iron treatment and following recovery of iron-dependent hematological indices, the results highlight the importance of early detection and preemptive supplementation to limit the neural consequences of ID. (shrink)

John L. Austin believed that in the illocution he had discovered a fundamental element of our speech, the understanding of which would disclose the significance of all kinds of linguistic action: not only proposing marriage and finding guilt, but also stating, reporting, conjecturing, and all the rest of the things men can do linguistically. 2 We claim that the illocution, the full-fledged speech-act, is central to religious utterances as well, and that it provides a perspicuity in understanding them not elsewhere (...) provided in the work of recent philosophy of religion. In particular we hold that understanding religious talk through the illocution shows the way in which the representative and affective elements are connected to one another and to the utterance as a whole. There may, further, be features in such an analysis which can be extended to other forms of discourse than religious. (shrink)