The book also introduces a host of new experimental techniques and major hypotheses to guide future research.

We start with a simple question: If you could reinvent higher education for the 21st century, what should it look like? We began by taking a hard look at problems in traditional higher education, and innovated in many ways to address these problems head-on: We have created a new curriculum, focusing on what we call "practical knowledge"; we have developed new pedagogy, based on the science of learning; we have used technology in novel ways, to deliver small seminars in real (...) time; and we have developed an international hybrid residential model, where students take classes on the computer but live together, rotating through seven different cities around the world. The Minerva Schools at the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) are the first university experience built for the twenty-first century. In setting up this program, we have had to confront the realities of all aspects of higher education--from admissions, through instruction, to career development, to establishing a reputation. The goal of this book is to provide an evidence-based model for a future of higher education. We have learned a lot about how to reshape all facets of higher education and this book summarizes what we have learned. We hope that our innovations can serve as models of "best practices"--and thereby have a major influence on higher education writ large. (shrink)

This volume presents the fruits of an extended dialogue among American and Chinese philosophers concerning the relations between virtue ethics and the Confucian tradition. Based on recent advances in English-language scholarship on and translation of Confucian philosophy, the book demonstrates that cross-tradition stimulus, challenge, and learning are now eminently possible. Anyone interested in the role of virtue in contemporary moral philosophy, in Chinese thought, or in the future possibilities for cross-tradition philosophizing will find much to engage with in the twenty (...) essays collected here. (shrink)

Funding broadly connotes the notion of an institution and/or institutions making money and other resources available to individual researchers and organizations to accomplish specific projects. Whi...

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social (...) sciences using a pre-post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

The power of the scientific enterprise presents multiple avenues for harnessing and increasingly controlling biological phenomena and instituting interventions in different areas of biomedicine (Af...

Ethical decision making measures are widely applied as the principal dependent variable used in studies of research integrity. However, evidence bearing on the internal and external validity of these measures is not available. In this study, ethical decision making measures were administered to 102 graduate students in the biological, health, and social sciences, along with measures examining exposure to ethical breaches and the severity of punishments recommended. The ethical decision making measure was found to be related to exposure to ethical (...) events and the severity of punishments awarded. The implications of these findings for the application of ethical decision making measures are discussed. (shrink)

Over the last fifteen years, an ambitious explanatory framework has been proposed to unify explanations across biology and cognitive science. Active inference, whose most famous tenet is the free energy principle, has inspired excitement and confusion in equal measure. Here, we lay the ground for proper critical analysis of active inference, in three ways. First, we give simplified versions of its core mathematical models. Second, we outline the historical development of active inference and its relationship to other theoretical approaches. Third, (...) we describe three different kinds of claim -- labelled mathematical, empirical and general -- routinely made by proponents of the framework, and suggest dialectical links between them. Overall, we aim to increase philosophical understanding of active inference so that it may be more readily evaluated. -/- This the final submitted version of the Introduction to the Topical Collection "The Free Energy Principle: From Biology to Cognition", forthcoming in Biology & Philosophy. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Atheism is a pioneering edited volume, exploring atheism--understood in the broad sense of 'an absence of belief in the existence of a God or gods'--in all the richness and diversity of its historical and contemporary expressions. Bringing together an international team of established and emerging scholars, it probes the varied manifestations and implications of unbelief from an array of disciplinary perspectives and in a range of global contexts. Both surveying and synthesizing previous work, and presenting the (...) major fruits of innovative recent research, the handbook is set to be a landmark text for the study of atheism. (shrink)

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited (...) competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed. (shrink)

When the benefits of surgery do not outweigh the harms or where they do not clearly do so, surgical interventions become morally contested. Cutting to the Core examines a number of such surgeries, including infant male circumcision and cutting the genitals of female children, the separation of conjoined twins, surgical sex assignment of intersex children and the surgical re-assignment of transsexuals, limb and face transplantation, cosmetic surgery, and placebo surgery.

Varieties of Ethical Reflection brings together new cultural and religious perspectives—drawn from non-Western, primarily Asian, philosophical sources—to globalize the contemporary discussion of theoretical and applied ethics.

We live in a world which is more connected than ever before. We can now send messages to a friend or colleague with a touch of a button, can learn about other’s interests before we even meet them, and now leave a digital trail behind us—whether we intend to or not. One question which, in proportion to its importance, has been asked quite infrequently since the dawn of the Internet era involves exactly how meaningful all of these connections are. To (...) what extent can we love another if we only communicate via social technology? What value does visiting a friend have which e-mailing him or texting him does not? “Social Media, Love, and the Look of the Other” attempts to answer these questions by applying the framework of social communication established by Jean-Paul Sartre to the realm of social media. Sartre writes that in all communications with the other, we face the look of the other—or our own perception of how the other judges us. The direction in which the look points determines, to a large degree, the character of any interaction with others. How does social media affect the nature of this look? Particularly, this inquiry seeks to discover the nature of the object to which this look points—and what implications, in cases where the look is not directed at ourselves, this has on our ability to develop and share concern for others. (shrink)

Editors' introduction to 3rd thematic issue on philosophy of medicine.