This comprehensive Gandhi reader provides an essential new reference for scholars and students of his life and thought. It is the only text available that presents Gandhi's own writings, including excerpts from three of his books—An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Satyagraha in South Africa, Hind Swaraj —a major pamphlet, Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place, and many journal articles and letters, along with a biographical sketch of his life in historical context and recent essays by highly (...) regarded scholars. (shrink)

For almost 30 years the ion channel that initiates the ON visual pathway in vertebrate vision has remained elusive. Recent findings now indicate that the pathway, which begins with unbinding of glutamate from the metabotropic glutamate receptor 6 (mGluR6), ends with the opening of the transient receptor potential (TRP)M1 cation channel. As a component of the mGluR6 signal transduction pathway, mutations in TRPM1 would be expected to cause congenital stationary night blindness (CSNB), and several such mutations have already been identified (...) in CSNB families. Furthermore, expression of TRPM1 in both the retina and skin raises the possibility that a genetic link exists between certain types of visual and skin disorders. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

Multiple Originals: New Approaches to Hebrew Bible Textual Criticism. By Gary D. Martin. SBL Text-Critical Studies, vol. 7. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010. Pp. xiv + 341. $42.95.

Focal brain metabolic effects detected by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) represent prospective indices of clinical status and guides to treatment design. Sampling bilateral pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC), anterior middle cingulate cortex (aMCC), and thalamus in 40 adult patients and 16 healthy controls, we examined relationships of the neurometabolites glutamate+glutamine (Glx), creatine+phosphocreatine (Cr), and choline-compounds (Cho) with OCD diagnosis and multiple symptom types. The latter included OC core symptoms (Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale - YBOCS), depressive (...) symptoms (Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale - MADRS), and general functioning (Global Assessment Scale - GAS). pACC Glx was 9.7% higher in patients than controls. Within patients, Cr and Cho correlated negatively with YBOCS and MADRS, while Cr correlated positively with the GAS. In aMCC, Cr and Cho correlated negatively with MADRS, while Cr in thalamus correlated positively with GAS. These findings present moderate support for glutamatergic and cingulocentric perspectives on OCD. Based on our prior metabolic model of OCD, we offer one possible interpretation of these group and correlational effects as consequences of a corticothalamic state of elevated glutamatergic receptor activity alongside below-normal glutamatergic transporter activity. (shrink)

A volume in Landscapes of Education. In From Socrates to Summerhill and Beyond: Towards a Philosophy of Education for Personal Responsibility, Ronald Swartz offers an evolving development of fallible, liberal democratic, self-governing educational philosophies. He suggests that educators can benefit from having dialogues about questions such as these: 1). Are there some authorities that can be consistently relied upon to tell school members what they should do and learn while they are in school? 2.) How should the imagination of (...) social theorists be both used and checked in the development and implementation of innovative educational reforms? 3.) How can teachers in personal responsibility schools help their students learn? These questions are representative of problems that Swartz raises in his book. Swartz identifies four educational programs as personal responsibility schools. These are Little Commonwealth (Homer Lane); Summerhill (A.S.Neill); Orphans Home (Janusz Korczak) and Sudbury Valley School (Daniel Greenberg). Swartz then suggests that these learning environments create social institutions that are liberal, democratic, and self-governing and therefore endorse the policy of personal responsibility. This policy states: All school members, students included, are fallible authorities who should be personally responsible for determining their own school activities and many policies that govern a school. Schools which incorporate this policy can interchangeably be referred to as personal responsibility, self-governing, or Summerhill style schools. In providing an historical and philosophical understanding of Summerhill style schools, Swartz suggests that these educational alternatives have intellectual roots in the ideas associated with Socrates as portrayed in Plato's Apology. Specifically, in personal responsibility schools teachers are not viewed as authorities who attempt to transmit wisdom to their students. Rather, self-governing schools follow the Socratic tradition which claims that teachers can be viewed as fallible authorities who attempt to engage students in dialogues about questions of interest to students. The interpretation of Plato's works used by Swartz can be found in Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. Swartz has also been significantly influenced by the educational writings of Bertrand Russell and Paul Goodman. Goodman's Compulsory Miseducation makes it clear that schools which follow in the tradition of Summerhill compete with the educational programs that are an outgrowth of John Dewey's writings. In summary, Swartz's book aims to engage educators in dialogues that will lead to improved educational theories and practices. (shrink)

_Reading Aristotle: Argument and Exposition_ demonstrates that Aristotle’s treatises rely crucially on expository principles—questions of proper sequence, pedagogical method, and distinctions between different sciences.

Aristotle's De Anima is the first systematic philosophical account of the soul, which serves to explain the functioning of all mortal living things. In his commentary, Ronald Polansky argues that the work is far more structured and systematic than previously supposed. He contends that Aristotle seeks a comprehensive understanding of the soul and its faculties. By closely tracing the unfolding of the many-layered argumentation and the way Aristotle fits his inquiry meticulously within his scheme of the sciences, Polansky answers (...) questions relating to the general definition of soul and the treatment of each of the soul's principal capacities: nutrition, sense perception, phantasia, intellect, and locomotion. The commentary sheds light on every section of the De Anima and the work as a unit. It offers a challenge to earlier and current interpretations of the relevance and meaning of Aristotle's highly influential treatise. (shrink)

A primary issue in the field of business and society over the past 25 years has been the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance. Recently, Griffin and Mahon (1997) presented a table categorizing studies that have investigated this relationship. Motivated by concerns with this table, as well as a desire to account for progress in research in this area, the authors reconstructed it. The authors present a portrait of this relationship that is (a) substantially different from that (...) shown in the Griffin and Mahon table and (b) more consistent with the latest research on the topic. (shrink)

The Theaetetus provides Plato's fullest discussion of human knowledge and is a rich vehicle for reflection upon its topic. Polansky's commentary demonstrates that the dialogue in fact holds the complete Platonic account of knowledge -- an account which is as sophisticated as any offered by contemporary philosophers.

In this study Professor Michalson attempts to clarify the complex tangle of issues connected with Kant's doctrines of radical evil and moral regeneration, and to set the problems resulting from these doctrines in an interpretive framework that tries to make sense of the instability of his overall position. In his late work Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant charts out these doctrines in a manner that represents a fresh development in his own thinking on moral and relgious matters, (...) apparently at variance with the mainstream Enlightenment outlook which Kant otherwise embodies. His position appears to amount to a retrieval of the supposedly outmoded Christian doctrine of original sin, and this ambivalence is seen to stem from his desire to do justice both to the Protestant Christian, and the Enlightenment rationalist, tradition, which weigh equally heavily upon him. In this study Professor Michalson attempts to clarify the complex tangle of issues connected with Kant's doctrines of radical evil and moral regeneration, and to set the problems resulting from these doctrines in an interpretive framework that tries to make sense of the instability of his overall position. (shrink)

Next SectionIn an online study conducted separately in the UK and the US, participants rated the acceptability and fairness of four interventions: two types of financial incentives and two types of medical interventions. These were stated to be equally effective in improving outcomes in five contexts: weight loss and smoking cessation programmes, and adherence in treatment programmes for drug addiction, serious mental illness and physiotherapy after surgery. Financial incentives were judged less acceptable and to be less fair than medical interventions (...) across all five contexts. Context moderated the relative preference between rewards and penalties: participants from both countries favoured rewards over penalties in weight loss and treatment for serious mental illness. Only among US participants was this relative preference moderated by perceived responsibility of the target group. Overall, participants supported funding more strongly for interventions when they judged members of the target group to be less responsible for their condition, and vice versa. These results reveal a striking similarity in negative attitudes towards the use of financial incentives, rewards as well as penalties, in improving outcomes across a range of contexts, in the UK and the USA. The basis for such negative attitudes awaits further study. (shrink)

The potential for dual use of research in the life sciences to be misused for harm raises a range of problems for the scientific community and policy makers. Various legal and ethical strategies are being implemented to reduce the threat of the misuse of research and knowledge in the life sciences by establishing a culture of responsible conduct.

The claim that " Everyone's doing it" is frequently offered as a reason for engaging in behavior that is widespread but less-than-ideal. This is particularly true in business, where competitors' conduct often forces hard choices on managers. When is the claim " Everyone's doing it" a morally valid reason for following others' lead? This discussion proposes and develops five prima facie conditions to identify when the existence of prevalent but otherwise undesirable behavior provides a moral justification for our engaging in (...) such behavior ourselves. The balance of the discussion focuses on testing these conditions by applying them to aseries of representative cases in business ethics. (shrink)

It has long been recognized that Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is a cryptogram. Encoded within a series of reflections and commentaries on Genesis 22 is a deeper message directed at a reader or readers presumably capable of deciphering the hidden meaning. That this is true is suggested by the book's epigraph: ‘What Tarquinius Superbus said in the garden by means of the poppies, the son understood but the messenger did not.’.

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is the first and arguably most important treatise on ethics in Western philosophy. It remains to this day a compelling reflection on the best sort of human life and continues to inspire contemporary thought and debate. This Cambridge Companion includes twenty essays by leading scholars of Aristotle and ancient philosophy that cover the major issues of this text. The essays in this volume shed light on Aristotle's rigorous and challenging thinking on questions such as: can there be (...) a practical science of ethics? What is happiness? Are we responsible for our character? How does moral virtue relate to good thinking? Can we act against our reasoned choice? What is friendship? Is the contemplative life the highest kind of life? Covering all sections of the Nicomachean Ethics and selected topics in Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics and Protrepticus, this volume offers the reader a solid foundation in Aristotle's ethical philosophy. (shrink)

This discussion is a critical assessment of the methods employed by some leading writers in the field of bioethics. The author agrees with those in the field who regard its primary or essential method as moral philosophy, but he nevertheless finds a prevalent tendency among bioethical writers merely to apply received moral principles to issues and to avoid penetrating theoretical analysis, even when such analysis is unavoidably required. He explains these deficiencies in terms of the exigencies of interdisciplinary work and (...) the affinity of much early bioethics with policy- or legislatively-oriented "public ethics". The discussion ends with a call for increased theoretical sophistication in this field. Keywords: bioethics, ethics, medical ethics, method CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Until recently, genetics counselors and medical geneticists considered themselves lucky if they could provide parents with predictive information about a small number of severe genetic disorders. Testing and counseling were indicated primarily for conditions of thithis s sort. Out of respect for the autonomy of parental reproductive decision making, the prevailing ethic of genetic counseling stressed nondirectiveness and value neutrality As summarized by Arthur Caplan, the hallmarks of this stance includea willingness to provide testing and counseling to all who voluntarily (...) seek it, the presentation of information concerning findings in a manner that is balanced and comprehensible to patients or clients, the fair and balanced presentation of all options for action if a problem is discovered, a willingness to answer all questions asked by those seeking services, and an obligation to protect privacy and confidentiality at all times regardless of societal needs or benefits. (shrink)

When does benefiting from others’ wrongdoing effectively make one a moral accomplice in their evil deeds? If stem cell research lives up to its therapeutic promise, this question (which has previously cropped up in debates over fetal tissue research or the use of Nazi research data) is likely to become a central one for opponents of embryo destruction. I argue that benefiting from wrongdoing is prima facie morally wrong under any of three conditions: (1) when the wrongdoer is one’s agent; (...) (2) when acceptance of benefit directly encourages the repetition of the wrongful deed (even though no agency relationship is involved); and (3) when acceptance of a benefit legitimates a wrongful practice. I conclude by showing that, because of the ways in which most embryonic stem cell lines come into being, people who oppose embryo destruction may use human embryonic stem cells without incurring moral blame. (shrink)

Until recently, genetics counselors and medical geneticists considered themselves lucky if they could provide parents with predictive information about a small number of severe genetic disorders. Testing and counseling were indicated primarily for conditions of thithis s sort. Out of respect for the autonomy of parental reproductive decision making, the prevailing ethic of genetic counseling stressed nondirectiveness and value neutrality As summarized by Arthur Caplan, the hallmarks of this stance includea willingness to provide testing and counseling to all who voluntarily (...) seek it, the presentation of information concerning findings in a manner that is balanced and comprehensible to patients or clients, the fair and balanced presentation of all options for action if a problem is discovered, a willingness to answer all questions asked by those seeking services, and an obligation to protect privacy and confidentiality at all times regardless of societal needs or benefits. (shrink)

For more than 30 years, beginning with the Reagan administration's refusal to support and provide oversight for embryo research, and continuing to the present in congressionally imposed limits on funding for such research, progress in infertility medicine and the development of stem cell therapies has been seriously delayed by a series of political interventions. In almost all cases, these interventions result from a view of the moral status of human embryo premised largely on religious assumptions. Although some believe that these (...) interventions are valid expressions of religious values in the public sector, it is argued here that they, in fact, contradict Rawls's conception of public reasoning. Both the prohibition of research involving the human embryo as well as bans on federal funding for embryo-related research place the particular religious views of some citizens above the pressing health needs of almost all, and thus violate the ideal of civility implicit in the Rawlsian standard. (shrink)

In the literature of philosophy and religious ethics, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling has, with few exceptions, been read as a work focused on ethical questions concerning the norms governing human conduct. However, ethical readings of this book not only miss important features of the text, they render its argument internally incoherent. These problems disappear when Fear and Trembling is understood primarily as a discussion of Christian soteriology that symbolically uses the Abraham story to develop the classical Pauline -Lutheran doctrine of (...) justification through faith alone. (shrink)

This paper contends that work in business ethics participates in two key aspects of the broad philosophical and aesthetic movement known as postmodernism. First, Iike postmodernists generally, business ethicists reject the “grand narratives” of historical and conceptual justification, especially the narratives embodied in Marxism and Mitton Friedman’s vision of unfettered capitalism. Second, both in the methods and content of their work, business ethicists share postmodernism’s “de-centering” of perspective and discovery of “otherness,” “difference” and marginality as valid modes of approach to (...) experience and moral decision. (shrink)

' a welcome guide for researchers to the merging fields of neuroscience, linguistics and psycholinguistics.' BRAIN'... an important and captivating book, one that has been long awaited by all researchers interested in language and the brain.' Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1999. The Neurocognition of Language brings together experts on human language and the brain to present the first critical overview of the cognitive neuroscience of language, one of the fastest-moving and most exciting areas today. In-depth discussion of the representations and (...) structures of language, as well as of the cognitive architectures which underlie speaking, listening, and reading, will provide a basis for future brain imaging research. In addition, the existing brain imaging literature on word and sentence processing is critically reviewed, as well as contributions from brain lesion data. Finally, the book discusses the prospects and problems of brain imaging techniques for the study of language, presents some of the most recent and promising analytic procedures for relating brain imaging data to the higher cognitive functions, and contains a review of the neuroanatomical structure of Broca's language area. Uniquely interdisciplinary, this book will provide researchers and students in cognitive neuroscience with state-of-the-art reviews of the major language functions, while being of equal interest to researchers in linguistics and language who want to learn about the neural bases of language. It will be an essential purchase for anyone requiring an overview of our current understanding of the relation between language and the brain. (shrink)

This editorial introduces the Journal of Consciousness Studies special issue on "Animal Consciousness". The 15 contributors and co-editors answer the question "How should we study animal consciousness scientifically?" in 500 words or fewer.

The purpose of the study was to assess medical journals’ conflicts of interest in the publication of book reviews. We examined book reviews published in 1999, 2000, and 2001 in five leading medical journals: Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine. The main outcome measure was journal publication of reviews of books that had been published by the journal’s own publisher, that had been edited or authored by (...) a lead editor of the journal, or that posed another conflict of interest. We also surveyed the editors-in-chief of the five journals about their policies on these conflicts of interests. During the study period, four of the five journals published 30 book reviews presenting a conflict of interest: nineteen by the BMJ, five by the Annals, four by JAMA, and two by the Lancet. These reviews represent 5.8%, 2.7%, 0.7%, and 0.7%, respectively, of all book reviews published by the journals. These four journals, respectively, published reviews of 11.9%, 25.0%, 0.9%, and 1.0% of all medical books published by the journals’ publishers. Only one of the 30 book reviews included a disclosure statement addressing the conflict of interest. None of the journals had a written policy pertaining to the conflicts of interest assessed in this study, although four reported having unwritten policies. We recommend that scientific journals and associations representing journal editors develop policies on conflicts of interest pertaining to book reviews. (shrink)

In this chapter, I review some of the background thinking concerning matters of moral status that I had developed in previous years and that I would now bring to the work of the Human Embryo Research Panel. Two ideas were at the forefront of my thinking. First, that biology usually offers not decisive "events" but only continuous processes of development. Second, in making status determinations we do not so much "identify" a point on a developmental continuum where moral respect should (...) be accorded as "choose" that point. These choices are "balancing decisions" in which the community of moral agents weighs its interests in protecting an entity against the burdens of doing so. After illustrating these two contentions, I consider some of the reasons why thinkers on the "right" and "left" of our bioethics debates have resisted or missed this basic insight. (shrink)

Although the first human embryonic stem cells were produced in 1998, the direction of U.S. policy on stem cell research was set nearly 20 years earlier when the recommendations of a congressionally established Ethics Advisory Board were ignored by the Reagan administration. Thus began an unprecedented and unparalleled 30-year-long history of political intrusions in an area of scientific and biomedical research that has measurable impacts on the health of Americans. Driving these intrusions were religiously informed public policy positions that have (...) usually escaped critical ethical analysis. Here I record my own encounters with this history of intrusions and the thinking behind them.My most abrupt encounter with the politics of stem cell research occurred on September 6, 2006, at a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Related Agencies, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter. Just a week before, scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, a small Massachusetts biotech company, had published a paper in the journal Nature in which they described a method for extracting stem cells from early human embryos while leaving the embryos intact and viable. As head of ACT’s Ethics Advisory Board, I had supported this research. (shrink)