The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a natural experiment involving academic cheating by university students. We explore the relationship of moral judgment to actual behavior, as well as the relationship between the honesty of students self-reports and the extent of cheating. We were able to determine the extent to which students actually cheated on the take-home portion of an accounting exam. The take-home problem was not assigned with the intent of inducing cheating among students. However, (...) the high rate of observed cheating prompted the instructor to return to class and ask the students to provide information on their motivation. The students' responses are the data analyzed in this natural experiment. We found that in a simple regression the relationship between moral judgment scores and cheating behavior was insignificant. However, when we tested whether including Utilizer scores affected the relationship of cheating and moral judgment we found that Utilizer affected the relationship significantly. Finally, we found that moral judgment and honesty were not related, but higher levels of cheating behavior related to less honesty. (shrink)

Recreative Minds develops a philosophical theory of imagination that draws upon the latest work in psychology. This theory illuminates the use of imagination in coming to terms with art, its role in enabling us to live as social beings, and the psychological consequences of disordered imagination. The authors offer a lucid exploration of a fascinating subject.

Objective—To determine the objectivity, consistency and professional unanimity in the initiation, continuation and withdrawal of life-prolonging procedures in intensive care–to determine methods, time-scale for withdrawal and communication with both staff and relatives–to explore any professional unease about legality, morality or professional defensibility.Design—A structured questionnaire directed at clinical nurse managers for intensive care.Setting—All intensive care units in the Yorkshire region.Results—The survey reported a lack of consistency and objectivity in decision making in this area, with accompanying unease amongst staff.Conclusions—There is a need (...) to work towards more consistent care, both before and during admission, for the protection of the individual patient and to allow rational assessment of intensive care need. Comprehensive audit should lead to objective defensible decisions and facilitate informed choice. More open debate and better communication should minimise this issue as a source of stress amongst staff in intensive care. (shrink)

In The Veiled God, Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft offers a detailed portrait of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s early life, ethics, and theology in its historical and social context, and critically reflects on the enduring relevance of his work for the study of religion.

Motor imagery typically involves an experience as of moving a body part. Recent studies reveal close parallels between the constraints on motor imagery and those on actual motor performance. How are these parallels to be explained? We advance a simulative theory of motor imagery, modeled on the idea that we predict and explain the decisions of others by simulating their decision-making processes. By proposing that motor imagery is essentially off-line motor action, we explain the tendency of motor imagery to mimic (...) motor performance. We close by arguing that a simulative theory of motor imagery gives (modest) support to and illumination of the simulative theory of decision-prediction. (shrink)

For many people "animal rights" suggests campaigns against factory farms, vivisection or other aspects of our woeful treatment of animals. Zoopolis moves beyond this familiar terrain, focusing not on what we must stop doing to animals, but on how we can establish positive and just relationships with different types of animals.

Many philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that our everyday or "folk" understanding of mental states constitutes a theory of mind. That theory is widely called "folk psychology" (sometimes "commonsense" psychology). The terms in which folk psychology is couched are the familiar ones of "belief" and "desire", "hunger", "pain" and so forth. According to many theorists, folk psychology plays a central role in our capacity to predict and explain the behavior of ourselves and others. However, the nature and status of folk (...) psychology remains controversial. (shrink)

India has a long, rich, and diverse tradition of philosophical thought, spanning some two and a half millenia and encompassing several major religious traditions. Now, in this intriguing introduction to Indian philosophy, the diversity of Indian thought is emphasized. It is structured around six schools of thought that have received classic status. Sue Hamilton explores how the traditions have attempted to understand the nature of reality in terms of inner or spiritual quest and introduces distinctively Indian concepts, such as karma (...) and rebirth. She also explains how Indian thinkers have understood issues of reality and knowledge-issues that re also an important part of the Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

This article argues that rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming is elaborative encoding for episodic memories. Elaborative encoding in REM can, at least partially, be understood through ancient art of memory (AAOM) principles: visualization, bizarre association, organization, narration, embodiment, and location. These principles render recent memories more distinctive through novel and meaningful association with emotionally salient, remote memories. The AAOM optimizes memory performance, suggesting that its principles may predict aspects of how episodic memory is configured in the brain. Integration and segregation (...) are fundamental organizing principles in the cerebral cortex. Episodic memory networks interconnect profusely within the cortex, creating omnidirectional “landmark” junctions. Memories may be integrated at junctions but segregated along connecting network paths that meet at junctions. Episodic junctions may be instantiated during non–rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep after hippocampal associational function during REM dreams. Hippocampal association involves relating, binding, and integrating episodic memories into a mnemonic compositional whole. This often bizarre, composite image has not been present to the senses; it is not “real” because it hyperassociates several memories. During REM sleep, on the phenomenological level, this composite image is experienced as a dream scene. A dream scene may be instantiated as omnidirectional neocortical junction and retained by the hippocampus as an index. On episodic memory retrieval, an external stimulus (or an internal representation) is matched by the hippocampus against its indices. One or more indices then reference the relevant neocortical junctions from which episodic memories can be retrieved. Episodic junctions reach a processing (rather than conscious) level during normal wake to enable retrieval. If this hypothesis is correct, the stuff of dreams is the stuff of memory. (shrink)

Sue Campbell reinstates the personal as an important dimension in analytic philosophy of mind. She argues that the category of feelings has a unique role in psychological explanation: the expression of feelings is the attempt to communicate personal significance. To develop a model for affective meaning, the author moves attention away from the classic emotions to feelings that are more personal, inchoate, and idiosyncratic.

My intent is to bring a key group of critical terms associated with the emotions-bitterness, sentimentality, and emotionality-to greater feminist attention. These terms are used to characterize emoters on the basis of how we express ourselves, and they characterize us in ways that we need no longer be taken seriously. I analyze the ways in which these terms of emotional dismissal can be put to powerful political use.

This book offers a feminist philosophical analysis of contemporary public skepticism about women's memories of past harm. It concentrates primarily on writings associated with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, founded in 1992 as a lobby for parents whose adult children have accused them of some abuse after a period of having not remembered it.

This paper explores two models of empathy. One model places theory centre stage; the other emphasises our capacity to re‐enact fragments of another's mental life. I argue that considerations of parsimony strongly support the latter, simulative approach. My results have consequences for the current debate between the theory‐theory and simulation theory. That debate is standardly conceived as a debate about mental state attribution rather than about empathy. However, on the simulation model, empathy and mental state attribution involve a common mechanism. (...) Thus the strength of the simulative approach to empathy lends considerable credence to the simulation account of mental state attribution. Considerations of empathy are thus surprisingly important in the philosophy of mind.. (shrink)

If both waking and dreaming consciousness are functional, their de-differentiation would be doubly detrimental. Differentiation between waking and dreaming is achieved through neuromodulation. During dreaming, without external sensory data and with mesolimbic dopaminergic input, hyper-cholinergic input almost totally suppresses the aminergic system. During waking, with sensory gates open, aminergic modulation inhibits cholinergic and mesocortical dopaminergic suppresses mesolimbic. These neuromodulatory systems are reciprocally interactive and self-organizing. As a consequence of neuromodulatory reciprocity, phenomenologically, the self and the world that appear during dreaming (...) differ from those that emerge during waking. As a result of self-organizing, the self and the world in both states are integrated.Some loss of self-organization would precipitate a degree of de-differentiation between waking and dreaming, resulting in a hybrid state which would be expressed heterogeneously, both neurobiologically and phenomenologically. As a consequence of progressive de-differentiation, certain identifiable psychiatric disorders may emerge. Ultimately, schizophrenia, a disorganized-fragmented self, may result. (shrink)

Tracing the impact of the 'memory wars' on science and culture, Relational Remembering offers a vigorous philosophical challenge to the contemporary skepticism about memory that is their legacy. Campbell's work provides a close conceptual analysis of the strategies used to challenge women's memories, particularly those meant to provoke a general social alarm about suggestibility. Sue Campbell argues that we cannot come to an adequate understanding of the nature and value of memory through a distorted view of rememberers. The harmful stereotypes (...) of women's passivity and instability that have repopulated discussions of abuse have led many theorists to regard the social dimensions of remembering only negatively, as a threat or contaminant to memory integrity. Such models of memory cannot help us grasp the nature of harms linked to oppression, as these models imply that changed group understandings of the past are incompatible with the integrity of personal memory. Campbell uses the false memory debates to defend a feminist reconceptualization of personal memory as relational, social, and subject to politics. Memory is analyzed as a complex of cognitive abilities and social/narrative activities where one's success or failure as a rememberer is both affected by one's social location and has profound ramifications for one's cultural status as a moral agent. (shrink)

Feminist theory is a central strand of cultural studies. This book explores the history of feminist cultural studies from the early work of Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, through the 1970s Women's Liberation Movement. It also provides a comprehensive introduction to the contemporary key approaches, theories and debates of feminist theory within cultural studies, offering a major re-mapping of the field. It will be an essential text for students taking courses within both cultural studies and (...) women's studies departments. (shrink)

Eliminativism has been a major focus of discussion in the philosophy of mind for the last two decades. According to eliminativists, beliefs and other intentional states are the posits of a folk theory of mind standardly called "folk psychology". That theory, they claim, is radically false and hence beliefs and other intentional states do not exist. We argue that the expression "folk psychology" is ambiguous in an important way. On the one hand, "folk psychology" is used by many philosophers and (...) cognitive scientists to refer to an internally represented theory of human psychology exploited in the prediction of behavior. On the other hand, "folk psychology" is used to refer to the theory of mind implicit in our everyday talk about mental states. We then argue that sorting out the conceptual and terminological confusion surrounding "folk psychology" has major consequences for the eliminativism debate. In particular, if certain models of cognition turn out to be true, then on some readings of "folk psychology" the arguments for eliminativism collapse. (shrink)

Voices on the political right have long claimed that the welfare state ought to be kept small, and that charities can take over many of the tasks involved in helping those at the bottom of society. The arguments in favor of this claim are controversial, but even if they are accepted at face value the policy proposal remains problematic. For the proposal presupposes that charities would, in fact, be able to raise enough money to provide adequate help to those in (...) need, and therefore assumes that charities are able to very significantly increase the number and/or size of donations they receive. We argue that there are good reasons for doubting that charities will be able to do this. Our argument turns on the fact that the most powerful strategy for eliciting donations—namely, allowing donors to use their donation to signal their pro-sociality—has an inbuilt upper limit. If too much emphasis is placed on the signaling opportunities donating to charity provides, donating no longer functions as an effective signal and the motivation to donate declines. (shrink)

Essays by the late feminist philosopher Sue Campbell explore the entanglement of epistemic and ethical values in our attempts to be faithful to our pasts. Her relational conception of memory is used to confront the challenges of sharing memory and reconstituting selves even in contexts fractured by moral and political differences.

Designed specifically for students with no background knowledge in the subject, this accessible introduction covers all of the basic concepts and major theories in the philosophy of mind. Topics discussed include dualism, behaviorism, the identity theory, functionalism, the computational theory of mind, connectionism, physicalism, mental causation, and consciousness. The text is enhanced by chapter summaries, a glossary, suggestions for further reading, and self-assessment questions.

The reconstructive turn in memory theory challenges us to provide an account of successful remembering that is attentive to the ways in which we use memory, both individually and socially. I investigate conceptualizations of accuracy and integrity useful to memory theorists and argue that faithful recollection is often a complex epistemological/ethical achievement.

In an increasingly complex military operating environment, next generation wargaming platforms can reduce risk, decrease operating costs, and improve overall outcomes. Novel Artificial Intelligence enabled wargaming approaches, based on software platforms with multimodal interaction and visualization capacity, are essential to provide the decision-making flexibility and adaptability required to meet current and emerging realities of warfighting. We highlight three areas of development for future warfighter-machine interfaces: AI-directed decisional guidance, computationally informed decision-making, and realistic representations of decision spaces. Progress in these areas (...) will enable development of effective human-AI collaborative decision-making, to meet the increasing scale and complexity of today’s battlespace. (shrink)

This chapter draws an analogy between substance dualism (SD) and one kind of creationism. Some substance dualists appear to believe that SD is preferable to physicalism because only the former can account for the existence of morality. Some dualists are attracted to emergence, although it is unclear that it is a form of SD; indeed, it is not clear that it is a form of dualism at all, and if it is it would seem to be a form of property (...) dualism. The chapter discusses SD's relationship to three key elements of religious doctrine and the idea of emergence. It describes most serious arguments for physicalism and consequently against SD. According to SD, mind and brain are radically different substances, the former nonphysical, the latter physical. Advocates of occasionalist SD claim that God appropriately correlates mental and physical events occasion by occasion. (shrink)

It is commonly understood that over-arching transcendental values (TVs) play a major role in directly influencing individual and group behaviours, including those relating to the environment. This paper challenges this approach, by arguing that there is good evidence to indicate that personal contexts – rather than TVs – inform many decisions that individuals need to make. As such, the paper argues that individuals use their TVs as a guide to forming contextual values, in a way that TVs only influence daily (...) behaviours indirectly. In order to review the potential utility of these arguments, we offer a secondary analysis of the International Social Survey Programme. The results indicate that contexts can influence behaviours independently of the set of (transcendental) values that people may hold. (shrink)

While euthanasia and assisted suicide have been the subject of continuing public debate, few studies have examined the attitudes of relevant patient groups. This study systematically reviews the research literature on patients’ attitudes from 1989 to 2003, to i) identify the number of studies, ii) evaluate study methods and measures, and iii) examine prevalence of favourable attitudes. A systematic search was undertaken across five databases. Methods of the 21 studies identified varied considerably. General support for euthanasia and assisted suicide was (...) substantial across patient groups, with lower support for these as a personal option. The cancer / terminally ill / palliative care patient group had the lowest median general support for euthanasia (60% [IQ1=47, IQ3=65]) and assisted suicide (50% [IQ1=38, IQ3=71]), while the general/older/younger patient group had the lowest median personal preference for these (18% [IQ1=14, IQ3=27]). The effect of question context on level of support was unclear, due to the variety and number of contexts used across questions. There is still work that needs to be done in this controversial area before any robust conclusions can be made concerning the attitudes of patients to euthanasia and assisted suicide, and the adoption of a minimum set of standard questions would enhance this work. (shrink)

When we consider the issue of linguistic justice, we must define what we mean by language. Standardisation of languages is closely associated with the development of the nation state, and the de Saussurian conception of language as system is in concert with nationalism and its divisions. In the early twenty-first century, however, this view of the world as a mosaic of stable national monolingualisms is outdated. In a globalising world, much of the political, social and economic structure that is developing (...) is transnational and patterns of contact, both real and virtual, have become extraordinarily complex. In the resulting communities of communication of this superdiverse world, much language practice is more function driven than in the recent past. New practices mean that we cannot consider questions of linguistic justice in this new world order using the linguistic toolkit of the old. The flows, exchanges and networks of globalisation present us with a new paradigm and we need to recalibrate concepts. (shrink)

The current study is designed to propose and test a model about the ethical reputation of a target manager who must decide whether to engage in earnings management. We employ an experimental approach to examine the potential negative reputation effects within the internal labor market of a firm that occur as a consequence of earnings management. We examine participants’ responses to a hypothetical (target) manager when both the target’s behavior and the corporate incentives were manipulated. Participants assessed how ethical they (...) believed a target manager to be, based on the target’s decision regarding earnings management and the nature of the corporate incentives. Participants also assessed the target’s managerial ability. Participants’ judgments regarding the target’s morality were significantly affected by the target’s behavior, but were not affected by the incentive structure. Ability judgments were significantly and positively related with morality assessments. Further analysis indicates that morality assessments mediate the relationships between the target’s behavior and the participants’ willingness to extend work-related opportunities to the target. Implications of these results for management control systems design and for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Part 1: Metaphysics and Conceptual Analysis 1. Analysis, description and the a priori?, Simon Blackburn 2. Physicalism, conceptual analysis and acts of faith, Jennifer Hornsby 3. Serious metaphysics: Frank Jackson’s defense of conceptual analysis, William G. Lycan 4. Jackson’s classical model of meaning, Laura Schroeter & John Bigelow 5. The semantic foundations of metaphysics, Huw Price 6. The folk theory of colours and the causes of colour experience, Peter Menzies Part 2: The Knowledge Argument 7. Consciousness and the frustrations of (...) physicalism, Philip Pettit 8. Jackson’s change of mind: representationalism, a priorism and the knowledge argument, Robert Van Gulick Part 3: Ethics 9. Analytic moral functionalism meets moral twin earth, Terrence Horgan & Mark Timmons 10. Consequentialism and the nearest and dearest objection, Michael Smith 11. The ’actual’ in actualism, Julia Driver Part 4: Conditionals and the Purposes of Arguing 12. Conditionals, truth and assertion, Dorothy Edgington 13. Conditionals: A debate with Jackson, Graham Priest 14. Two purposes of arguing and two epistemic projects, Martin Davies Replies to my critics, Frank Jackson. (shrink)

Many theorists of the ‘political turn’ in animal rights theory emphasize the need for animals’ interests to be considered in political decision-making processes, but deny that this requires self-representation and participation by animals themselves. I argue that participation by domesticated animals in co-authoring our shared world is indeed required, and explore two ways to proceed: 1) by enabling animal voice within the existing geography of human-animal roles and relationships; and 2) by freeing animals into a revitalized public commons where citizens (...) encounter one another in spontaneous, unpredictable encounters in spaces that they can re-shape together. (shrink)

A biography of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

I argued that rapid eye movement dreaming is elaborative emotional encoding for episodic memories, sharing many features with the ancient art of memory. In this framework, during non–rapid eye movement, dream scenes enable junctions between episodic networks in the cortex and are retained by the hippocampus as indices for retrieval. The commentaries, which varied in tone from patent enthusiasm to edgy scepticism, fall into seven natural groups: debate over the contribution of the illustrative dream and disputes over the nature of (...) dreaming ; how the framework extends to creativity, psychopathology, and sleep disturbances ; the compatibility of the REM dream encoding function with emotional de-potentiation ; scepticism over similarities between REM dreaming and the AAOM ; the function of NREM dreams in the sleep cycle ; the fit of the junction hypothesis with current knowledge of cortical networks ; and whether the hypothesis is falsifiable. Although the groups in sections R1–R6 appear quite disparate, I argue they all follow from the associative nature of dreaming. (shrink)