Alterations to cognitive function are often reported with depression and anxiety symptoms, yet few studies have examined the same associations with mental well-being. This study examined the association between mental well-being, depression and anxiety symptoms and cognitive function in 1502 healthy adult monozygotic and dizygotic twins, and the shared/unique contribution of genetic and environmental variance. Using linear mixed models, mental well-being was positively associated with sustained attention, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, motor coordination and working memory, whereas depression and anxiety symptoms were (...) associated with poorer sustained attention, inhibition, cognitive flexibility and executive function. Bivariate twin modelling showed well-being shared a small environmental correlation with motor coordination and a small genetic correlation with working memory. Trivariate twin modelling showed well-being shared a small genetic correlation with inhibition, whereas depression and anxiety symptoms shared a small environmental correlation with inhibition. The remaining variance was mostly driven by unique G and/or E variance. Overall, well-being and depression and anxiety symptoms show both independent and shared relationships with cognitive functions but this is largely attributable to unique G or E variance and small shared G/E variance between pairs of variables. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Sir Richard Phillips was a London-born author and publisher of educational textbooks who used a vast array of pseudonyms, including that of Reverend C. C. Clarke. Phillips' marketing techniques - the systematic borrowing of famous authors' names for his textbooks, along with the multiplication of easy to produce related educational products - were key to his success. No doubt meant as an accessible encyclopaedia, this 40th edition of 1834 - attributed to Phillips himself - is a surprisingly vast and (...) heterogeneous survey, which compiles natural and man-made curiosities across the world. The Himalayas and Mont Blanc share a chapter with the Peak of Derbyshire; famous rivers lead to mysterious subterranean forests; and Stonehenge is closely followed by St Paul's cathedral. Halfway between reference book and textbook, this richly illustrated volume is a fascinating catalogue of the world's wonders as perceived in the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

In this chapter, I attempt to show that evil exists only if what I call Agent Causal Theism (ACT) is true. According to ACT, human beings are immaterial, conscious agents endued (by God) with a power of self-motion: the power to think, decide, and act for ends in light of reasons, but without being externally caused to do so (even by God himself). By contrast, I argue that there is no space for evil in the worldviews of naturalistic Darwinism or (...) theistic Calvinism. (shrink)

Some analytic philosophers like to make “twin earth” thought-experiments, in which a second earth is imagined that is like this one in every respect but one. Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick (henceforth C&D), in their long-awaited recent book on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (BGE1)—punningly entitled The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil2—(henceforth ‘Soul’), in effect present us with such an experiment. On each earth there was a Nietzsche, who wrote exactly the same things as the other one (...) did. The single relevant difference between the two earths is that on one of them the Nietzsche—call him ‘exo-Nietzsche’ (as in ‘exoteric’)—actually meant the things he said in what he wrote and published, at least .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Joseph Priestley's Criticisms of David Hume's Philosophy RICHARD H. POPKIN ONE OF HUME'S MOST FAMOUS CRITICS, the great scientist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), is scarcely mentioned or studied in the Hume literature.' Perhaps because of the course philosophy followed after Hume, the Scottish Common Sense critics and the German ones connected with Kant are given almost all of the attention. In this paper 1 shall try to correct this (...) oversight, and examine the background of Priestley's critique of Hume, both in terms of Priestley's scientific and religious views and in terms of Hume's influence at the time. I shall then evaluate the merits of Priestley's critique and attempt to determine whether it deserves further study or should be returned to the obscurity it has been in for almost two centuries. 2 Joseph Priestley was a nonconforming minister whose progressively radical views caused him to lose various posts. Eventually he became a millenarian, convinced that crucial signs of the end of the world were at hand: the events of the French Revolution; the purported discovery of the Lost Tribes in Afghanistan by Sir William Jones; plans or hopes for the Jews to return to Palestine and join forces with the Christians. After years of religious wanderings Priestley ended up a millenarian Unitarian, much in the tradition of Sir Isaac Newton, whose religious writing he used extensively, and of Newton's successor, William Whiston? Priestley taught science in various schools and was immensely influenced by David Hartley's Observations on Man. He found in Hartley's theory of association of ideas a naturalistic way of explaining human mental life. And in Hartley's millenarian views he located the sort of theology he was seeking. Priestly later reedited Hartley, including introductory essays about some of the more difficult aspects of his mechanistic psychology.' (Coleridge, who was deeply impressed by ' T. E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of the Scottish Philosophy from l-)'ancis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (New York, 1966), lists the titles of Priestley's works relevant to Hume. However, there appear to be no discussions of Priestley on Hume listed in this work or in Roland Hill, A Bibliography of David Hume from 1930 (York, 1971). E. C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Edinburgh, 1954), mentions Priestley's criticisms of Hume, but only as these were made in connection with criticisms of Beattie. Joseph Priestley, Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley to the Year 1795, written by Himself, with a Continuation to the time of his decease by his son, Joseph Priestley, ed. T. Cooper (London, 1806). It is also of some interest that Priestley attacked Reid, Beattie, and Oswald a few years before challenging Hume. He seemed to think that he had disposed of the Scottish Philosophy for all time. Thus Priestley was certainly no part of the mainstream of Hume's opponents in Britain. See Memoirs, pp. 78-79n, and n. 16 below. ' On Priestley's career, see his Memoirs. Modern biographies deal principally with his scientific achievements and ignore or play down his theological concerns. For an extended discussion of Priestley's millenarian views, see Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly (Baltimore, 1975), pp. 126-143. " Priestley, Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas... (London, 1775). [437] 438 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Hartley, probably read Priestley's edition of his works.) For the most part, Priestley wrote long and controversial works on theology. His scientific achievements stem from his friendship with Benjamin Franklin and Richard Price, who encouraged him to write a history of discoveries in electricity. Franklin provided the resources for making the equipment. On the basis of the new material in his work, Priestley was nominated to the Royal Society by Franklin and Price. s Priestley's most famous scientific works came thereafter--his discovery of oxygen and his work on how the human body used oxygen. Later still, he became entangled in a controversy with Lavoisier over the phlogiston theory, Priestley upholding it, the French chemist opposing it. 6 Priestley was also active in politics, supporting radical causes. He supported John Wilkes, of whom Hume thoroughly disapproved, and was an early... (shrink)

Clark and Fischer (C&F) discuss how people interact with social robots in the context of a general analysis of interaction with characters. I suggest that a consideration of aesthetic illusion would add nuance to this analysis. In addition, I illustrate how people's experiences with other depictions of characters require adjustments to C&F's claims.

This paper examines relationships between accountants’ personal values and their moral reasoning. In particular, we hypothesize that there is an inverse relationship between accountants’ “Conformity” values and principled moral reasoning. This investigation is important because the literature suggests that conformity with rule-based standards may be one reason for professional accountants’ relatively lower scores on measures of moral reasoning (Abdolmohammadi et al. J Bus Ethics 16 (1997) 1717). We administered the Rokeach Values Survey (RVS) (Rokeach: 1973, The Nature of Human Values (...) (The Free Press, New York)) and the Defining Issues Test (DIT) (Rest: 1979, Development in Judgment Moral Issues (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)) to164 graduating accounting students enrolled in capstone courses at two universities in the Northeastern United States. As potential entrants into the accounting profession, these subjects bring their values and moral reasoning to bear on attitudes and behaviors in the workplace. We find a highly significant inverse relationship between “Conformity” values and principled moral reasoning (i.e., those who prefer Conformity values have lower levels of moral reasoning). However, we also find that accounting students as a group do not prefer Conformity values above other values such as Self-actualization and Idealism, and we find positive relationships between Self-actualization and Idealism values and moral reasoning. Implications for values and ethics research are discussed. (shrink)

A plea for a clinical year in the course of theological study -- Ethics and the medical profession -- Ethics and business -- Ethics and education -- Ethics and social work.

How shall we distinguish religious delusion from sane religious belief? Making this determination is not usually found to be difficult in clinical practice – but what shall be our theoretical rationale? Attempts to answer this question often try to provide differentiating principles by which the religious “sheep” may be separated from the delusional “goats.” As we shall see, none of these attempts work. We may, however, ask whether the assumption underlying the search for a differentiating principle – that religious beliefs (...) and religious delusions can usefully be considered species of a common genus – is a good one. In this paper, we outline an alternative, “disjunctive,” understanding of religious belief and religious delusion. By reminding ourselves both of what is central to any delusion and of what distinguishes bona fide religious claims from their pretenders, we show how to resolve our reflective puzzlement about religious delusion without recourse to differentiating principles. (shrink)

In recent years, Bayesian probability theory has emerged not only as a powerful tool for building computational theories of vision, but also as a general paradigm for studying human visual perception. This book provides an introduction to and critical analysis of the Bayesian paradigm. Leading researchers in computer vision and experimental vision science describe general theoretical frameworks for modeling vision, detailed applications to specific problems and implications for experimental studies of human perception. The book provides a dialogue between different perspectives (...) both within chapters, which draw on insights from experimental and computational work, and between chapters, through commentaries written by the contributors on each other's work. Students and researchers in cognitive and visual science will find much to interest them in this thought-provoking collection. (shrink)

The facial expression of pain is the end product of a complex process that is, in part, emotional. The evolutionary study of facial expression must account for the social nature of human consciousness and should address the questions of why empathy exists, the adaptive importance of empathy, and whether facial expression is a mechanism of empathy and second-person consciousness.

Pain is an important focus for consciousness research because it is an avenue for exploring somatic awareness, emotion, and the genesis of subjectivity. In principle, pain is awareness of tissue trauma, but pain can occur in the absence of identifiable injury, and sometimes substantive tissue injury produces no pain. The purpose of this paper is to help bridge pain research and consciousness studies. It reviews the basic sensory neurophysiology associated with tissue injury, including transduction, transmission, modulation, and central representation. In (...) addition, it highlights the central mechanisms for the emotional aspects of pain, demonstrating the physiological link between tissue trauma and mechanisms of emotional arousal. Finally, we discuss several current issues in the field of pain research that bear on central issues in consciousness studies, such as sickness and sense of self. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 106-123 [Access article in PDF] The (Mis)Uses of Cannibalism in Contemporary Cultural Critique C. Richard King At least since 1979, when W. Arens demystified what he termed "the man-eating myth," cannibalism, once a fundamental feature of the anthropological imagination and a primary trope for interpreting cultural difference, has become subject to serious debate and lingering doubt [see Osborne]. Even as some anthropologists have sought to (...) recuperate anthropophagy as a tangible symbolic, ideological, and ritual complex [Brown and Tuzin; Conklin, "'Thus are our Bodies'"; Forsyth; Harris, Good to Eat 199-234; Sanday], a constellation of scholarly projects and popular works has complicated cannibalism by relocating it in the West. Perhaps most visibly, Hollywood cinema has reclaimed cannibalism. Although a handful of films have revived well-worn clichés of dark-skinned savages preparing to consume Westerners, as in King Solomon's Mines and Crocodile Dundee, others have cast the Western subject as cannibal to grapple with the horrors of reluctant cannibalism, as in Alive! [see Fiddes 121-31], to work through the transgressive and terrifying desires associated with psychopathic cannibalism, as in The Silence of the Lambs [Fuss; Halberstam], and importantly to parody the normative beliefs and behaviors of white, middle-class, heterosexual EuroAmericans, as in Eating Raoul and Parents. At the same time, an array of scholars, artists, and activists have invoked cannibalism to fashion critical perspectives on Western cultural practices. In his film Cannibal Tours (1987), Dennis O'Rourke encourages his audiences to think critically about tourists who travel to the Sepik River Valley to encounter reformed cannibals, asking implicitly who the cannibals are, the Melanesians who formerly (were thought to/claim to have) practiced anthropophagy or the tourists who travel to New Guinea to consume them [see Bruner]. Others have pushed the metaphor. Michael Ames, borrowing explicitly from O'Rourke, uses the cannibal to reframe ethnographic museums and their practices. Similarly, Jane Tompkins asserts that "Museums are a form of cannibalism made safe for polite society" [533]. More generally, Crystal Bartolovich playfully glosses consumerism as the cultural logic of the late cannibalism; bell hooks speaks of the EuroAmerican desires for and incorporation of things ethnic as "eating the other"; and Rosalind Morris suggests that cannibalism is the essential metaphor for late capitalism. More telling, however, are a set of overlapping critical projects that offer detailed theorizations [End Page 106] [Begin Page 108] of contemporary anthropophagy. Here, I will examine three that have had an important impact on discussions of tourism, museums, cultural appropriation, and consumption. Dean MacCannell, in an exciting exploratory review of the documentary Cannibal Tours, makes explicit what O'Rourke left unsaid: we are cannibals, and contemporary capitalism is neocannibalism. Perhaps more radically, Jack Forbes argues that Western civilization fosters cannibalism as an embodied, psychosocial condition or psychosis rooted in exploitation and consumption. Inspired at least in part by Forbes, Deborah Root rethinks Western civilization as cannibal culture.Although I am terribly sympathetic with these perspectives, particularly their political commitments and theoretical creativity, I am disturbed by the practices and effects that animate them. Indeed, as powerful as this critical field promises to be, it is at the same time troubling and dangerous. Although it defamiliarizes practices of cultural production and consumption, it does not enhance understanding of the contexts in which individuals and institutions deploy them and does less to effectively challenge or undermine them. In reframing beliefs and behaviors to accentuate productivity and power, it reinstates and reaffirms binaries and, worse, often turns on the same forms of appropriation.* * *Arguably, flesh eating has always promoted the elaborations of differences. Works central to the Western canon mobilize cannibalism to make (sense of) the world. Herodotus offers an early anthropophagic distinction:These Scythian husbandmen then occupy the country eastward for three days' journey.... Beyond this region the country is desert for a great distance; and beyond the desert Androphagi dwell.... The Androphagi have the most savage customs of all men; they pay no regard to justice, nor make use of any established law. They are nomads and wear a dress like a Scythian; they... (shrink)

Trust in leadership is at all all-time low and the impact on organizational behavior and performance cannot be ignored or denied. As leaders, there is a way for you to reverse this trend. You can decide to establish and sustain trust in the workplace—by getting naked—not in the physical sense, but from the perspective of being authentic and transparent. Earning the trust and loyalty of those you are privileged to lead lays the groundwork for a high performing, motivated, and, engaged (...) culture . . . a definitive competitive advantage. Needless to say, culture is always a reflection of our leadership values and behavior. Through our words, decisions, and behavior, the culture is “sculpted.” In every case, culture is created either by intentional design or by default. If you aspire to make a profound, positive, and sustaining impact on your organization, the hearts and minds of those you lead must be earned. In a world and time where corruption, deceit, and ethical lapses are commonplace, we’ve never had a greater need for trusted, ethical leaders. If you choose to be a trusted leader, you have the opportunity to differentiate yourself and your organization and enjoy a sustainable competitive advantage while making the world a better place. (shrink)

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

The measurement of pain depends upon subjective reports, but we know very little about how research subjects or pain patients produce self-reported judgments. Representationalist assumptions dominate the field of pain research and lead to the critical conjecture that the person in pain examines the contents of consciousness before making a report about the sensory or affective magnitude of pain experience as well as about its nature. Most studies to date have investigated what Fechner termed “outer psychophysics”: the relationship between characteristics (...) of an external stimulus and the magnitude and nature of pain experience. In contrast, Fechner originally envisioned that “inner psychophysics” should investigate the relationship between physiological states and subjective experience. Despite the lack of established research tradition, inner psychophysics has a potential utility in elucidating underlying mechanisms for the production of phenomenal self-report. We illustrate this, using causal modeling analyses of the accuracy of self-reported pain ratings from our laboratory. We submit that the results are inconsistent with representationalist assumptions. Converging trends from several domains of consciousness studies seem to suggest that we need to abandon the unquestioned doctrine of representationalism and search for a more viable framework for understanding the generation of subjective self-report. (shrink)