Urbaniana University Journal 73.3 (2020): 73-99. -/- A close reading of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion reveals that it is not what it appears. Rather than a work of natural theology, meant to show something about arguments concerning the existence and nature of God, the Dialogues turn out to embody a moral pedagogy exemplifying and attempting to instill a conception of piety and religion as virtues. This paper defends this interpretation by reviewing three alternative, but ultimately inadequate, interpretations of the (...) text, and then compares Hume’s moral pedagogy with that of Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae to highlight the ambition, and the limitation,of Hume’s attempt to characterize piety without metaphysics. (shrink)

To help frame the Festschrift for Gyula Klima (Metaphysics Through Semantics: The Philosophical Recovery of the Medieval Mind), this appreciation offers perspective on the scholar's person and project. Drawing on biographical details and reflecting on signal contributions, it seeks to honor a distinguished philosopher who deserves to be celebrated by friends and introduced to a new generation of readers. Download with frontmatter from: link[dot]springer[dot]com/content/pdf/bfm:978-3-031-15026-5/1?pdf=chapter%20toc.

Gyula Klima’s distinctive work recovering medieval philosophy has inspired a generation of scholars. Klima’s attention to the distinctive terms, problems, and assumptions that constitute alternative historical conceptual frameworks has informed work in philosophy of language and logic, cognition and philosophical psychology, and metaphysics and theology. This volume celebrates Klima’s project by collecting new essays by colleagues, collaborators, and former students. Covering a wide range of thinkers (Plotinus, Anselm, Aquinas, Buridan, Ockham, and others) and various specifc questions (e.g., about language, cognition, (...) the soul, and God), it is unifed by a common interest in applying historically sensitive, hermeneutically sophisticated, and logically rigorous philosophical interpretation to recover, and appreciate, lost perspectives. (shrink)

Systematizing Aquinas? : a paradigm in crisis -- Reconstructing Cajetan's question : the semantic intent of De nominum analogia -- Analogy, semantics, and the "concept vs. judgment" critique -- Some insufficient semantic rules for analogy -- Cajetan's semantic principles -- The semantics of analogy : inequality and attribution -- The semantics of proportionality: the proportional unity of concepts -- The semantics of proportionality : concept formation and judgment -- The semantics of proportionality : syllogism and dialectic.

This collection of essays reflects the wide range of David Pingree's expertise in the scientific texts of Ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, India, Persia, and the medieval Arabic, Hebrew and Latin traditions. Both theoretical aspects and the practical applications of the exact sciences-in time keeping, prediction of the future, and the operation of magic-are dealt with. The book includes several critical editions and translations of hitherto unknown or understudied texts, and a particular emphasis is on the diffusion of scientific learning from one (...) culture to another, and through time. Above all, the essays show the variety and sophistication of the exact sciences in non-Western societies in pre-modern times. (shrink)

I like punk rock. I like girls with weird eyes. I like drugs but my body and mind won’t allow me to take them. I like passion. I like things that are built well. I like innocence. I like and am grateful for the blue collar worker whos existence allows Artists to not have to work at menial jobs. I like killing gluttony. I like playing my cards wrong. I like various styles of music. I like making fun of musicians (...) who I feel pladgerise or offend music as art by exploiting their embarrassingly, pathetic versions of their work. I like to write poetry. I like to ignore others poetry. I like vinyl. I like nature and animals. I like to swim. I like to be with my friends. I like to be by myself. I like to feel guilty for.. (shrink)

Cajetan’s analogy theory is usually evaluated in terms of its fidelity to the teachings of Aquinas. But what if Cajetan was trying to answer questions Aquinas himself did not raise, and so could not help to answer? Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia can be interpreted as intending to solve a particular semantic problem: to characterize the unity of the analogical concept, so as to defend the possibility of a non-univocal term’s mediating syllogistic reasoning. Aquinas offers various semantic characterizations of analogy, saying (...) it involves, for instance: signification per prius et posterius; or a ratio propria which is only found in one analogate; or diverse modi significandi with a common res significata. Examined in turn, it is clear that none of Aquinas’s rules for analogy solve the semantic problem described. Cajetan thus cannot be reasonably expected to have intended his analogy treatise primarily as an interpretation or systematization of Aquinas’s teaching on analogy. (shrink)

One of John Paul II’s remarkable innovations was his embrace of the question of “the meaning of life.” The question of “the meaning of life” was never asked before the 19th century, and it was slow to be integrated into Catholic discourse. When the question of life’s meaning emerged, it effectively replaced a prior question, about the purpose or te-los of life, with a very different set of theoretical assumptions. From the traditional per-spective, the question of life’s meaning is highly (...) suspicious, and even Pope John Paul II’s unparalleled embrace of the question confirms that he framed his personalism in terms of the older question of life’s purpose or telos. (shrink)

The influence of Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia is due largely to its first three chapters, which introduce Cajetan’s three modes of analogy: analogy of inequality, analogy of attribution, and analogy of proportionality. Interpreters typically ignore the final eight chapters, which describe further features of analogy of proportionality. This article explains this neglect as a symptom of a failure to appreciate Cajetan’s particular semantic concerns, taken independently from the question of systematizing the thought of Aquinas. After an exegesis of the neglected (...) chapters, which describe the semantics of analogy through the three levels of cognition (simple apprehension, composition and division, and discursive reasoning), the article concludes with observations about the relationship between Cajetan and Aquinas and the philosophical and historical signifi cance of Cajetan’s approach to the semantics of analogy. (shrink)

Arrian's account of Alexander's brief time at Ephesus (Anab. 1.17.10–12) is shot through with political and factional violence, but he nevertheless concludes that Alexander received acclaim for what he did in the city. But what did Alexander actually do at Ephesus? Arrian offers a list of events that historians have traditionally interpreted as connected to Macedonian intervention in Asia Minor before indicating that Alexander put an end to the violence. This article offers a new reading of this passage by situating (...) these events in the context of fourth-century Ephesus to show how Alexander's actions responded to the local conditions that he encountered. (shrink)

Ockham is usually considered the first to hold a proper theory of mental language, but Aquinas is willing to call the concept, or the act of intellect by which something is understood, a verbum mentis or “mental word.” This essay explores the sense in which Aquinas regarded concepts as language-like. It argues that Aquinas's understanding of concepts and their objects meant that his application of syntactic and semantic analysis to them did not and could not lead in the direction of (...) theories of mental language as it was conceived by nominalist philosophers. -/- (Version for download here is uncorrected proofs. Please cite from published final version.). (shrink)

Thomists typically emphasize and defend Aquinas’s “realist” approach to knowledge as an alternative to modern skepticism, but Aquinas is attuned to the common experience of uncertainty, and gives principled reasons for the limits of knowledge across various domains, including especially in the realm of human action. Virtue in general, and Thomistic practical wisdom specifically, can be understood as a habit for responsibly managing choice in the face of imperfect knowledge, unpredictable circumstances, and risk. Several modern specialized disciplines – especially economics, (...) psychology, and various applied social sciences – have highlighted interesting questions about uncertainty and its practical significance, especially in evaluating risk. Emphasizing the role of uncertainty in life is thus not only an invitation for Thomists to notice neglected aspects of Aquinas’s thought, but an opportunity to bring Aquinas’s writings into conversations in other disciplines. Catholic social teaching presents a particularly promising area to engage and learn from those other disciplines in the ongoing elaboration of Thomistic thought. (shrink)

Cajetan's treatment of analogy in De Nominum Analogia is well known as the most influential and sophisticated theory of a central issue in Thomistic philosophy. The late twentieth century saw that theory subject to a family of criticisms. If the critics are correct, Cajetan's analogy theory is also significant historically for exposing weaknesses latent in medieval semantic assumptions. According to the critics, the Aristotelian assumptions that words signify by means of discrete “concepts,” and that the meaning of propositions depends on (...) the significations of its component terms, cannot do justice to the complexity, variety, and flexibility of actual human discourse; in De Nominum Analogia they see the elegant structure of classical semantics collapsing under the pressure of analogical language. In this article, I examine these criticisms of Cajetan's analogy theory, and argue that, in light of both Cajetan's semantic principles and his hermeneutic practice, they fall short. The conclusion not only implies a defense of Cajetan's project, but clarifies the general philosophical alternatives available within the traditional Aristotelian semantic framework. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 219-220 [Access article in PDF] Jack Zupko. John Buridan: Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Arts Master. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Pp. xix + 446. Cloth, $70.00. Paper, $40.00. What does the name "John Buridan" call to mind? For many, including medievalists, not much at all—at best, perhaps, a set of apparently unrelated ideas: nominalism; an impetus theory of (...) projectile motion; and a peculiar account of the will (although "Buridan's ass," the indecisive donkey caught between two equally appetizing bales of hay, is not found in Buridan's writing). In correcting this ignorance—an injustice to arguably the most famous and influential philosopher of the early-to-mid-fourteenth century—the temptation might have been to articulate Buridan's "positions" on "the big questions," allowing readers to fit Buridan into received categories. Thankfully, the present work, the first book-length study of Buridan in any language, resists this temptation. The John Buridan that emerges from Jack Zupko's skillful "exercise in philosophical portraiture" doesn't serve to simply fill gaps in our awareness of the historical record, but to enlighten and challenge our understanding of the practice of philosophy and the study of its history.Zupko emphasizes throughout that Buridan was a teacher, a master of arts in Paris. Buridan's pedagogical concerns help make sense of his central work in logic. As the basis for his arts lectures, Buridan chose Peter of Spain's Summulae Logicales, but in commenting on Peter, Buridan moves beyond creative exegisis to comprehensive renovation. Buridan (c. 1300-c. 1361) naturally wanted to accommodate terminist or via moderna supposition theory; but more importantly, he wanted a logic text that would set out a general plan of philosophical inquiry, "a compendium of methods, a 'how-to' book for the philosopher" (135). Buridan thus designed his own Summulae de Dialectica as a new authoritative logic text, and Zupko persuasively argues that its "nominalism" should be understood as less a set of doctrines in theoretical logic, than a program of logical practice, an education in logic as the ars artium, the universal intellectual tool.Zupko's portrait of "Buridan's vision of the philosophical enterprise" is thus appropriately divided into two parts. The first summarizes Buridan's method as described in the individual treatises of his Summulae. The second displays the method in practice, rehearsing and evaluating some of Buridan's arguments on various subjects. Many scholars will gravitate first to the latter part, where Zupko offers important interpretations and clarifications of Buridan's views. In these chapters, Zupko helps us to appreciate, among other things: how the problem of universals served to help Buridan define the scope of philosophy (ch. 10); the philosophical modesty of Buridan's account of the intellectual soul's presence in the body (ch. 11); the relationship between Buridan's epistemology and the skepticism of his Parisian contemporary Nicholas of Autrecourt (ch. 12); the sense in which Buridan is an "empiricist," viz an epistemic naturalist and reliabilist (ch. 13); how Buridan regarded moral psychology as applied physics, treating virtue as a kind of impetus (ch. 14); how Buridan's account of freedom can be regarded as a "perfection" of Thomistic intellectualism (ch. 15).Throughout these discussions, Zupko always keeps in sight his larger purpose of illustrating Buridan's conception of philosophical inquiry. Zupko makes much of the fact that [End Page 219] Buridan never wrote as a theologian, remaining his entire career in the arts faculty, where he wanted logic to organize secular inquiry. As Zupko notes, in this way Buridan's scholastic project seems to prefigure the "modern." But Buridan seems modern in another way as well. As Zupko points out in his "Introduction," though a cleric, Buridan never joined a religious order, so that his ideas developed independently of the Franciscan and Dominican traditions. He was, then, a teacher without a tradition—at least without deliberate allegiance to tradition, although he was in many ways the product of traditional scholastic intellectual discipline.Perhaps this... (shrink)

: Because an influenza pandemic would create the most serious hardships for those who already face most serious hardships, countries should take special measures to mitigate the effect of a pandemic on existing social inequalities. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that anybody is thinking about that.

In a 1993 autobiographical essay, John Rist wrote: "Christianity is above all others the religion that speaks of God's presence in history, not only in the past, as in creation and in the incarnation, but continuously into the present and … through the Church into the future. Of course that does not mean that all religious and ethical advances will be made by Christians, let alone by theologians or bishops; God needs no such limitations. What it means is that Christians (...) must claim that the Church will, at least eventually, be able to accept all that is best among such advances, whatever their origin." The present volume explores the promise of these three sentences, and the result is a capstone work, at once Rist's most ambitious, and his most personal.The main chapters explore particular philosophical and theological themes, roughly moving from anthropology through aesthetics to politics. Chapter 1 considers the significance of sexual difference, attending especially to Christian attempts to account for the dignity of women. Chapter 2 considers the problem of original sin, human freedom, and divine providence. Chapter 3 traces the development of Christian aesthetics as a coming to terms with the power of beauty. Chapter 4 considers the problem of authority within the Church. (shrink)

Conceived as a solution to clinical dilemmas, and now required by organizations for hospital accreditation, ethics committees have been subject only to small-scale studies. The wide use of ethics committees and the diverse roles they play compel study. In 1999 the University of Pennsylvania Ethics Committee Research Group (ECRG) completed the first national survey of the presence, composition, and activities of U.S. healthcare ethics committees (HECs). Ethics committees are relatively young, on average seven years in operation. Eighty-six percent of ethics (...) committees report that they play a role in ongoing clinical decision making through clinical ethics consultation. All are engaged in developing institutional clinical policy. Although 4.5% of HECs write policy on managed care, 50% of HEC chairs feel inadequately prepared to address managed care. The power and activity of ethics committees parallels the composition of those committees and the relationship of members to their institutions. The role of ethics committees across the nation in making policies about clinical care is greater than was known, and ethics committees will likely continue to play an important role in the debate and resolution of clinical cases and clinical policies. (shrink)

In 1992, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) passed a mandate that all its approved hospitals put in place a means for addressing ethical concerns.Although the particular process the hospital uses to address such concernsmay vary, the hospital or healthcare ethics committee (HEC) is used most often. In a companion study to that reported here, we found that in 1998 over 90% of U.S. hospitals had ethics committees, compared to just 1% in 1983, and that many (...) have some and a few have sweeping clinical powers in hospitals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Synopsis of the Eighth Annual Building Bridges:East and West Graduate Student Philosophy Conference at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, November 4 and 5, 2005Joshua P. KimberThe Eighth Annual Building Bridges: East and West Graduate Student Philosophy Conference at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) was held on November 4 and 5, 2005. Nine students representing nine different universities presented papers over the two days of the conference. Since its inception in (...) 1998, the Building Bridges conference has provided an annual opportunity for graduate students to present their research on several different comparative themes in philosophy. The context of comparison for the 2005 conference, as indicated in its title, was East and West.Professor Philip J. Ivanhoe was the keynote speaker, and his presentation, titled "The Values of Spontaneity," was a highlight of the first day of the conference. Professor Ivanhoe began by making a distinction between two senses of spontaneity generally present in Western writings, which he referred to as "untutored" and "cultivated" spontaneity. He aligned these two senses of the term with Daoism and Confucianism, respectively, and sought to demonstrate the ethical value of spontaneity within these traditions. "Untutored" spontaneity, which characterizes the notions of wuwei and ziran in Daoism is not something that is acquired. It is rooted in one's inherent nature and is more effectively enhanced by the removal of impediments to its realization than by learning. "Cultured" spontaneity, on the other hand, presupposes a disposition that is acquired through appropriate enculturation. It is exemplified in the rituals and rites of Confucianism. In both cases, spontaneous activity consists of participation within a greater scheme, whether nature or culture, and it is in such spontaneous participation that one may experience greater significance in one's actions, "metaphysical comfort," and joy.Through his comparative approach, Professor Ivanhoe contributed to an enriched understanding of the value of spontaneity while illuminating significant aspects of Daoism and Confucianism. The student presentations that spanned the two days of the conference were characterized by a similar use of comparison. A variety of topics were addressed from property ownership to the locus of moral responsibility, and in each case the topic of investigation was developed by way of an appeal to Eastern and Western philosophical perspectives. Facets of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Russian thought were brought into dialogue with philosophers of the West from Aristotle to Sartre. [End Page 707]One theme that became evident in the different presentations and discussions that followed was the role and importance of composure. Each of the presentations exposed valuable, yet distinct ways of understanding how one may relate to history, others, the world, or, more generally, one's greater context. There was a common interest in clarifying what kind of composure is called for in these different approaches to relationality. In the separate papers and in the ensuing questions, there was an attempt to understand better how these diverse perspectives can inform one's actions and contribute to the realization of greater benefit, value, and significance in one's life. These considerations contributed not only to the building of several comparative philosophy "bridges" but also to an appreciation of the value that traversing such bridges may offer.On a more aesthetic note, Carbondale and the surrounding area offered a spectacular sense of the season marked by beautiful fall foliage and large, calm lakes. The SIUC campus was blanketed with colorful leaves and swept with cool breezes. This autumn environment contributed a sense of seasonal charm and aesthetic character that further enhanced the overall experience of the conference.Even more inviting than the environment were the many people who made the conference a success. The 2005 conference coordinator, Travis Smith, and the other SIUC graduate students who shared their homes, culinary skills, and conversation effectively conveyed a genuine sense of hospitality that made the many people who traveled to Illinois from around the country feel welcome and comfortable.Several of the practices that contributed to the success of the Building Bridges Conference have since contributed to the structure of the CrossCurrents Graduate Student Conference that will be held at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa on March 16 and 17, 2006. The CrossCurrents theme for... (shrink)

Vietnam is home to a prospering technology community and numerous enterprises that range from small start-ups to development giants. Virtually all public services are offered online. In fact, the country even has a system for e-residency and “data embassies.” This achievement derives in part from the nation’s transparent and enduring political preferences, but more importantly from Vietnamese law and its regulatory system regarding information, the digital general public, and intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. In this examination of the most pertinent (...) aspects of Vietnam’s digital economy legislation, this study explores the nation’s regulatory structure regarding copyright and patents within the context of digital transformation. The study discusses the relationship between foreign and national regulations in terms of IPR protection and the advancement of digitalization. Research on Vietnamese regulations and the practical application of major patent and copyright regulations has revealed that in many respects, the nation is highly reliant on the effective operation of a broader foreign institutional and legal framework. Thus, in the near future, technological advancement will necessitate the establishment of additional transnational regulatory systems. (shrink)

This study investigates: the changes in three major health-related factors—physical activity, non-physical-activity health behavior, and depressive symptoms, and how changes in physical activity were associated with changes in one’s depressive symptoms among young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults while controlling non-physical-activity health behavior and sociodemographic characteristics among young, middle-aged, and older adults before and after the COVID-19 outbreak lockdown in the United States. A total of 695 participants completed an online questionnaire via MTurk, and participants were asked to recall (...) their physical activity, depressive symptoms, and non-physical-activity health behavior status in January and May of 2020. The IPAQ-SF was used to evaluate individuals’ physical activity, while the CES-D-10 was used to assess depressive symptoms. Covariates included non-physical-activity health behavior and sociodemographic factors. A Bayesian significance testing of changes was used to examine significant changes in physical activity, non-physical-activity behavior, and depressive symptoms in each age group while Bayesian regression analysis was employed to examine how the changes in physical activity were associated with respondents’ depressive symptoms while controlling for individual NHB and sociodemographic characteristics. The results showed that the participants tended to maintain their physical activity levels after the lockdown despite significant increases in sitting time among young and older adults. Decreases in moderate physical activity frequency were associated with a higher level of depressive symptoms. Although young and middle-aged cohorts experienced fewer differences in depressive symptoms compared to their counterparts in the older group, we found no significant heterogeneity effects in the relationships of interest across all age groups. Considering different influences of physical activity on depressive symptoms depending on different levels of activity and ages, more randomized clinical trials with program-based intervention studies should be conducted with different physical activity programs for different age populations. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Introduction Financial conflicts of interest (fCOI) present well documented risks to the integrity of biomedical research. However, few studies differentiate among fCOI types in their analyses, and those that do tend to use preexisting taxonomies for fCOI identification. Research on fCOI would benefit from an empirically-derived taxonomy of self-reported fCOI and data on fCOI type and payor prevalence.Methods We conducted a content analysis of 6,165 individual self-reported relationships from COI statements distributed across 378 articles indexed with PubMed. Two coders used (...) an iterative coding process to identify and classify individual fCOI types and payors. Inter-rater reliability was κ = 0.935 for fCOI type and κ = 0.884 for payor identification.Results Our analysis identified 21 fCOI types, 9 of which occurred at prevalences greater than 1%. These included research funding (24.8%), speaking fees (20.8%), consulting fees (18.8%), advisory relationships (11%), industry employment (7.6%), unspecified fees (4.8%), travel fees (3.2%), stock holdings (3.1%), and patent ownership (1%). Reported fCOI were held with 1,077 unique payors, 22 of which were present in more than 1% of financial relationships. The ten most common payors included Pfizer (4%), Novartis (3.9%), MSD (3.8%), Bristol Myers Squibb (3.2%), AstraZeneca (3.1%), GSK (3%), Boehringer Ingelheim (2.9%), Roche (2.8%), Eli LIlly (2.5%), and AbbVie (2.4%).Conclusions These results provide novel multi-domain prevalence data on self-reported fCOI and payors in biomedical research. As such, they have the potential to catalyze future research that can assess the differential effects of various types of fCOI. Specifically, the data suggest that comparative analyses of the effects of different fCOI types are needed and that special attention should be paid to the diversity of payor types for research relationships. (shrink)

Human behavior is frequently described both in abstract, general terms and in concrete, specific terms. We asked whether these two ways of framing equivalent behaviors shift the inferences people make about the biological and psychological bases of those behaviors. In five experiments, we manipulated whether behaviors are presented concretely (i.e. with reference to a specific person, instantiated in the particular context of that person’s life) or abstractly (i.e. with reference to a category of people or behaviors across generalized contexts). People (...) judged concretely framed behaviors to be less biologically based and, on some dimensions, more psychologically based than the same behaviors framed in the abstract. These findings held true for both mental disorders (Experiments 1 and 2) and everyday behaviors (Experiments 4 and 5) and yielded downstream consequences for the perceived efficacy of disorder treatments (Experiment 3). Implications for science educators, students of science, and members of the lay public are discussed. (shrink)

The Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs of the American Medical Association examines physicians’ professional ethical responsibility in the event that the security of patients’ electronic records is breached.

A prefrontal control system that is less mature than the limbic reward system in adolescence is thought to impede self-regulatory abilities, which could contribute to poor dietary choices and obesity. We, therefore, aimed to examine whether structural morphology of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala are associated with dietary decisions and obesity in children and adolescents. Seventy-one individuals between the ages of 8–22 years participated in this study; each participant completed a computer-based food choice task and a T1- and T2-weighted (...) structural brain scans. Two indices of obesity were assessed, including age- and sex-specific body mass index and waist-to-height ratio. The behavioral task included rating 60 food stimuli for tastiness, healthiness, and liking. Based on each participant’s self-ratings, 100 binary food choices were then made utilizing a computer mouse. Dietary “self-control” was calculated as the proportion of trials where the individual chose the healthier food item over the total number of trials. Cortical thickness and amygdala subnuclei volumes were quantified using FreeSurfer 6.0 and CIT168 atlas, respectively. We found that WHtR was negatively associated with the thickness of bilateral superior frontal, left superior temporal, right insula, and right inferior temporal regions. We also found WHtR to be positively associated with the volume of the central nucleus region of the amygdala, after adjusting for the hemisphere, age, sex, and intracranial volumes. A similar data pattern was observed when BMIz was used. Moreover, we found that across all participants, thinner right superior frontal cortex and larger left CEN volumes predicted lower dietary self-control. These results suggest that differential development of the PFC and amygdala relate to obesity and dietary self-control. Further longitudinal studies are merited to determine causal relationships among altered PFC to amygdala neural circuitry, dietary self-control, and obesity. (shrink)

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Although this thought experiment was originally introduced to illuminate questions in the theory of reference, it has also played a crucial role in empirically informed debates within the philosophy of psychology about people’s ordinary natural kind concepts. Those debates have sought to accommodate (...) an apparent fact about ordinary people’s judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results from four experiments showing that people do not, in fact, have this intuition. Instead, people tend to have the intuition that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water. We explore the implications of this finding for debates about theories of natural kind concepts, arguing that it supports views positing two distinct criteria for membership in natural kind categories – one based on deeper causal properties, the other based on superficial, observable properties. (shrink)

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Debates about natural kind concepts have sought to accommodate an apparent fact about ordinary people's judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results showing that people do not have this intuition. Instead, people tend to judge that there is (...) a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water. (shrink)

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)

Business managers regularly employ metaphorical violent rhetoric as a means of motivating their employees to action. While it might be effective to this end, research on violent media suggests that violent rhetoric might have other, less desirable consequences. This study examines how the use of metaphorical violent rhetoric by business managers impacts the ethical decision making of employees. We develop and test a model that explains how the use of violent rhetoric impacts employees’ willingness to break ethical standards, depending on (...) the source of the rhetoric. The results of two experiments suggest that the use of violent rhetoric by a CEO at a competing company increases employees’ willingness to engage in ethical violations while the use of violent rhetoric by employees’ own CEO decreases their willingness to engage in unethical behavior. Furthermore, we find that participants who made less ethical decisions motivated by violent rhetoric used by a competitor’s CEO did not view their decisions as less ethical than the other participants in the experiments. The results of these studies highlight potentially harmful unintended consequences of the use of violent rhetoric, providing knowledge that should be useful to managers and academics who want to increase employee motivation without increasing a willingness to engage in unethical behavior. (shrink)

How do we thrive in our behaviors and experiences? Positive neuroscience research illuminates the brain mechanisms that enable human flourishing. Supported by the John Templeton Foundation's Positive Neuroscience Project, which Martin E. P. Seligman established in 2008, Positive Neuroscience provides an intersection between neuroscience and positive psychology.In this edited volume, leading researchers describe the neuroscience of social bonding, altruism, and the capacities for resilience and creativity. Part I describes the mechanisms that enable humans to connect with one another. Part II (...) focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying the human ability and willingness to confer costly benefits on others. Part III examines the mechanisms by which human brains overcome adversity, create, and discover. Specific topics include: a newly discovered nerve type that appears to be specialized for emotional communication; the effects of parenting on the male brain; how human altruism differs from that of other primates; the neural features of extraordinary altruists who have donated kidneys to strangers; and distinctive patterns of brain wiring that endow some people with exceptional musical abilities. Accessible to a broad academic audience, from advanced undergraduates to senior scholars, these subjects have generated a fascinating and highly convergent set of ideas and results, shaping our understanding of human nature. (shrink)

Background The use of lengthy, detailed, and complex informed consent forms is of paramount concern in biomedical research as it may not truly promote the rights and interests of research participants. The extent of information in ICFs has been the subject of debates for decades; however, no clear guidance is given. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the perspectives of research participants about the type and extent of information they need when they are invited to participate in (...) biomedical research. Methods This multi-center, cross-sectional, descriptive survey was conducted at 54 study sites in seven Asia-Pacific countries. A modified Likert-scale questionnaire was used to determine the importance of each element in the ICF among research participants of a biomedical study, with an anchored rating scale from 1 to 5. Results Of the 2484 questionnaires distributed, 2113 were returned. The majority of respondents considered most elements required in the ICF to be ‘moderately important’ to ‘very important’ for their decision making. Major foreseeable risk, direct benefit, and common adverse effects of the intervention were considered to be of most concerned elements in the ICF. Conclusions Research participants would like to be informed of the ICF elements required by ethical guidelines and regulations; however, the importance of each element varied, e.g., risk and benefit associated with research participants were considered to be more important than the general nature or technical details of research. Using a participant-oriented approach by providing more details of the participant-interested elements while avoiding unnecessarily lengthy details of other less important elements would enhance the quality of the ICF. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre described the late modern West as driven by two moral values: efficiency and effectiveness. Regardless of whether you accept MacIntyre's overarching story, it seems clear that efficiency and effectiveness have achieved a zenith in institutional health care structures, such that these two aspects of care become the final arbiters of what counts as “good” care. At the very least, they are dominant in many clinical contexts and act as the interpretative lens for the judgments of successful health care (...) managers. The drive of efficiency can also be seen in “lean” management methods (originally imported from the automotive manufacturing industry) increasingly deployed in the intensive care unit. This drive gives us pause. The high stress of the ICU is exacerbated by the enormous complexity of technological interventions designed to maintain physiological functioning as the body heals, as well as the ever‐present concerns related to cost, effectiveness, and efficiency. The ICU, therefore, provides an illustrative view of the challenges facing clinicians, as well as resource managers, in terms of delivering care. In short, the goal of technocratic efficiency often ends up at odds with humane purposes. To better understand these contemporary health care dynamics, we conducted a limited series of focus group discussions and interviews with residents experienced in the challenges of delivering care in the ICU environment. In what follows, we highlight some narrative observations drawn from these focus groups. We found a recurrent and disconcerting refrain among our informants that has not been adequately described or addressed in the literature: technocratic management techniques have crept into and bifurcated clinical care strategies in the ICU. Specifically, we highlight the influence of concerns around efficiency and effectiveness and the ways in which these foci have contributed to a bifurcation in care in the ICU along two trajectories: either compassionate care or curative care. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism explores a new mode of philosophizing through a comparative study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and philosophies of major Buddhist thinkers including Nagarjuna, Chinul, Dogen, Shinran, and Nishida Kitaro. The book offers an intercultural philosophy in which opposites intermingle in a chiasmic relationship, and which brings new understanding regarding the self and the self's relation with others in a globalized and multicultural world.

Thirty-two years ago W. V. Quine proposed a definition of 'logical truth' that has been widely repeated and reprinted. Quine himself seems to have recognized that this definition is wrong in detail; in section 1 we eliminate this fault. What has perhaps been less widely observed is that, in abandoning the model-theoretic account of logical truth in favor of a "substitutional" account, Quine's definition swells the ranks of the logical truths and makes the classification of a sentence as a logical (...) truth dependent both on the interpretation of its extralogical words and on the extralogical vocabulary available in the language. (shrink)

In cognitive science, there is a tacit norm that phenomena such as cultural variation or synaesthesia are worthy examples of cognitive diversity that contribute to a better understanding of cognition, but that other forms of cognitive diversity (e.g., autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder/ADHD, and dyslexia) are primarily interesting only as examples of deficit, dysfunction, or impairment. This status quo is dehumanizing and holds back much-needed research. In contrast, the neurodiversity paradigm argues that such experiences are not necessarily deficits but rather (...) are natural reflections of biodiversity. Here, we propose that neurodiversity is an important topic for future research in cognitive science. We discuss why cognitive science has thus far failed to engage with neurodiversity, why this gap presents both ethical and scientific challenges for the field, and, crucially, why cognitive science will produce better theories of human cognition if the field engages with neurodiversity in the same way that it values other forms of cognitive diversity. Doing so will not only empower marginalized researchers but will also present an opportunity for cognitive science to benefit from the unique contributions of neurodivergent researchers and communities. (shrink)

A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types of features that people typically consider when making such judgments, to date, existing work has not explored how these judgments may be shaped by normative considerations. The present studies demonstrate that normative beliefs do (...) appear to play an important role in people's beliefs about persistence. Specifically, people are more likely to judge that the identity of a given entity remains the same when its features improve than when its features deteriorate. Study 1 provides a basic demonstration of this effect. Study 2 shows that this effect is moderated by individual differences in normative beliefs. Study 3 examines the underlying mechanism, which is the belief that, in general, various entities are essentially good. Study 4 directly manipulates beliefs about essence to show that the positivity bias regarding essences is causally responsible for the effect. (shrink)

Past research has found a strong and positive association between the independent self-construal and life satisfaction, mediated through self-esteem, in both individualistic and collectivistic cultures. In Study 1, we collected data from four countries and replicated these findings in cultures which have received little attention in past research. In Study 2, we treated independence as a multifaceted construct and further examined its relationship with self-esteem and life satisfaction using samples from the United States and Romania. Different ways of being independent (...) are associated with self-esteem and life satisfaction in the two cultures, suggesting that it is not independence as a global concept that predicts self-esteem and life satisfaction, but rather, feeling independent in culturally appropriate ways is a signal that one’s way of being fits in and is valued in one’s context. (shrink)

Infant and young child electrophysiology studies have provided information regarding the maturation of face-encoding neural processes. A limitation of previous research is that very few studies have examined face-encoding processes in children 12–48 months of age, a developmental period characterized by rapid changes in the ability to encode facial information. The present study sought to fill this gap in the literature via a longitudinal study examining the maturation of a primary node in the face-encoding network—the left and right fusiform gyrus. (...) Whole-brain magnetoencephalography data were obtained from 25 infants with typical development at 4–12 months, and with follow-up MEG exams every ∼12 months until 3–4 years old. Children were presented with color images of Face stimuli and visual noise images that served as Non-Face stimuli. Using distributed source modeling, left and right face-sensitive FFG evoked waveforms were obtained from each child at each visit, with face-sensitive activity identified via examining the difference between the Non-Face and Face FFG timecourses. Before 24 months of age the face-sensitive FFG M290 response was the dominant response, observed in the left and right FFG ∼250–450 ms post-stimulus. By 3–4 years old, the left and right face-sensitive FFG response occurred at a latency consistent with a face-sensitive M170 response ∼100–250 ms post-stimulus. Face-sensitive left and right FFG peak latencies decreased as a function of age, and with an adult-like FFG latency observed at 3–4 years old. Study findings thus showed face-sensitive FFG maturational changes across the first 4 years of life. Whereas a face-sensitive M290 response was observed under 2 years of age, by 3–4 years old, an adult-like face-sensitive M170 response was observed bilaterally. Future studies evaluating the maturation of face-sensitive FFG activity in infants at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders are of interest, with the present findings suggesting age-specific face-sensitive neural markers of a priori interest. (shrink)