Joining the ongoing academic debates around medical students’ alternative career choices, this research examines the role of family in medical school attendees’ entrepreneurial intention. Specifically, this study decomposes the multidimensionality of family embeddedness and highlights the mediated nature of the family–EI relationship. The empirical analysis relied on data from graduation year medical students from diverse geographical locations and from different institution types in China. These data were collected from a total of 687 questionnaires covering the basic information of individual, parents, (...) and family composition, as well as the measuring scale of EI. Examining medical students’ EI and its antecedents provide a dual-missing-link in the extant knowledge, i.e., it adds the medical school piece to the overall picture of university students’ EI, and equally important, it de-trivializes entrepreneurship from the extant theorizations of medical students’ career choices. This study also bears implications for educators, practitioners, and policymakers interested in better understanding EI of medical school attendees and family embeddedness. (shrink)

The objective of this essay is to forge a more explicit link between the “visual turn” and the “practice turn” in entrepreneurship research. Specifically, we explore three key aspects of mobilizing visual methods for studying entrepreneurship-as-practice, i.e., data sources, collection strategies, and analytical perspectives, highlighting the important theoretical and empirical promises that visual methods hold for said research. This essay bears implications for researchers and educators working at the intersection of entrepreneurship research, the practice theory, and visual methods.

The sixth decade of this century may be considered a period of dynamic development of the Soviet ethics. In contrast with the post-revolutionary period, the ethics does not limit itself to a normative reflection, but starts also extensive studies in the theory of ethics. According to the authors of the present article, there are all reasons to believe that the marxist ethics will become a scientific discipline in a full sense of the word. The purpose of the article is (...) not to discuss all problems involved in the contemporary Soviet ethics, but above all to outline main problems and trends of its development. The authors distinguish following aspects of the ethical investigations: philosophical, sociological, social-psychological, axiological, pedagogical, historical, gnoseological, logical, and metaethical. Together with a critical evaluation of solutions of certain problems, they criticize some abstractive and ahistorical, in their opinion, approach to ethics which has been manifested above all in works of Y. A. Milner-Irinin and P. M. Egides. (shrink)

The question of whether a fetus can experience pain is an immense challenge. The issue demands consideration of the physical and psychological basis of being and the relation between the two. At the center of this debate is the question of how it is that we are conscious, a question that has inspired the writing of some of our most brilliant contemporary philosophers and scientists, with one commentary suggesting surrender. In my earlier review I attempted to draw together the various (...) strands of thinking that had attacked the question of fetal pain and relate them back to the bigger question of consciousness. In their vituperative response, Benatar and Benatar bite off my finger before looking to where I am pointing. I will examine each of their criticisms and attempt to redirect the readers' interest towards examining the subjectivity of pain and the mediating links between physiology and experience. (shrink)

I was prompted to write a book by re-reading Republic, Leviathan, and The Communist Manifesto for the first time in half a century and wondering how well they would stand up in the light of what present-day sociologists can fairly claim to know that Plato, Hobbes, and Marx did not. None of them were doing social science as that term is nowadays understood. But all three advance conclusions derived from evidence for how human beings do, or would, or might, behave (...) under different environmental and historical conditions. If these arguments are bad ones, this will presumably undermine the larger purposes which the three texts are intended to serve. Or will it? (shrink)

I was prompted to write a book by re-reading Republic, Leviathan, and The Communist Manifesto for the first time in half a century and wondering how well they would stand up in the light of what present-day sociologists can fairly claim to know that Plato, Hobbes, and Marx did not. None of them were doing social science as that term is nowadays understood. But all three advance conclusions derived from evidence for how human beings do, or would, or might, behave (...) under different environmental and historical conditions. If these arguments are bad ones, this will presumably undermine the larger purposes which the three texts are intended to serve. Or will it? (shrink)

“The object of the moral faculty,” wrote Butler in a classic passage of theDissertation on Virtue, “is actions, comprehending under that name active or practical principles: those principles from which men would act if occasions or circumstances gave them power, and which, when fixed and habitual in any person, we call his character. It does not appear that brutes have the least reflex” “sense of actions, as distinguished from events; or that will and design, which constitute the very nature (...) of action as such, are at all an object to their perception. But to ours they are: and they are the object, and the only one, of the approving and disapproving faculty. (shrink)

“The object of the moral faculty,” wrote Butler in a classic passage of theDissertation on Virtue, “is actions, comprehending under that name active or practical principles: those principles from which men would act if occasions or circumstances gave them power, and which, when fixed and habitual in any person, we call his character. It does not appear that brutes have the least reflex” “sense of actions, as distinguished from events; or that will and design, which constitute the very nature (...) of action as such, are at all an object to their perception. But to ours they are: and they are the object, and the only one, of the approving and disapproving faculty. (shrink)

We were led, at the close of the last paper, to the conclusion that the moral judgment lays claim to a knowledge of what is unknowable. It is not merely that our volition is imperfect, that the act of necessity falls short of what we know to be right. This seems bad enough; but the plight in which we actually find ourselves is even worse. The paradox is that we never know, and never can know, in any particular situation, what (...) it is really right to do. We know indeed that it is always right, really and absolutely right, to do what we believe to be right. For a man to act “against his conscience,” after all possible thought has been taken for its enlightenment, we know to be morally wrong. But this knowledge is purely formal and gives no clue to the matter of moral obligation. It tells us what is common alike to any and every case of moral duty; it does not tell us what we ought to do. For the right that we will cannot be merely the rightness of willing it. What I ought to do cannot be merely that I ought to do it. Now our beliefs and judgments as to material rightness, i.e. as to what it is right to do in a concrete situation, are notoriously liable to error. So we seek for a criterion by which to test our variable and fallible judgments, a criterion of what is really right. But the search is doomed to failure; we can only test beliefs by beliefs, our former beliefs by our later, the beliefs of one man or society or age by those of others. (shrink)

To state the central argument of this book would be to miss a great deal of the author's achievement. Munz is concerned with tracing the metaphysical foundations of ethics and furthermore the nature and roots of these, and all, metaphysical conceptions. He does all of this in a resolutely original and tough-minded way, exploring alternatives in the fullest possible manner, arguing with great resourcefulness and force. His originality can be seen in his serious and thorough oppositions to classical and contemporary (...) positions. He never scores off straw men, but takes the trouble to develop opposing positions fully so that his argument will strike at the most fundamental and stringent point. Thus, his thesis, that the basic ethical stances of absolute commitment to others and absolute detachment from others, are dialectically interdependent, is honestly and articulately supported. He is to be credited with developing concepts, arguments, and positions which derive their considerable force on their own merits, while encountering a full range of opposition. He has produced a book with which one can disagree, which may puzzle and even seem peculiar, but which must nonetheless be sincerely admired.—W. G. E. (shrink)

In its original form this was Bonhoeffer's first work, presented as a theological dissertation when the author was only twenty-one. It has been very influential on proponents of "religionless Christianity" among the Continental theologians. The argument is compressed and often elliptical, exceedingly difficult to grasp. Bonhoeffer follows Tonnies' distinction between society and community, holding that the religious community is a community of will which admits no end outside itself, but whose telos, God, is its boundary. It is a structure (...) of meaning rather than a structure of purpose, uniting persons in an I-Thou relationship in which they assume the relative independence of a Leibnitzian monad. The book is magnificent; the translation unobtrusive and long overdue.—W. G. E. (shrink)

In the ninth century, Arabic philosophy was in ferment, and an inquisition of heretics was in process. Al-Kindi, a court scholar, physician, and philosopher functioning at Baghdad, courageously produced, in that context, a treatise, Fi al-Falsafah al-Ula, in which he attempted to unify the philosophical tradition, starting from Aristotle, with basic Islamic concepts. Part One of the treatise is here published for the first time in a non-Arabic language. Al-Kindi, in this treatise, tries to show, by philosophical reasoning, that the (...) world could not have come spontaneously into being ex nihilo, that there must be a unique, eternal being, and that the ad hoc unity and plurality of individual things rest on a prior, creative, self-subsisting, and eternal unity, which is the Ultimate Cause. This volume contains a résumé of al-Kindi studies, a description and analysis of the text, On First Philosophy, a "reevaluation" of al-Kindi’s relation to the Mu'Tazilah sect of Moslem theologians, a translation of On First Philosophy, and a learned passage-by-passage commentary on it, with perspicuous discussions of nuances in Arabic terminology. This is primarily a book for medieval specialists, but students of ontology and theology will find some of al-Kindi’s argumentation relevant to their concerns.—W.G. (shrink)

This article challenges the current scholarly consensus that Suetonius wrote the Divus Iulius regardless of Plutarch. Closer examination of the Caesar-biographies shows which influence Plutarch has exerted by his biographic works on Suetonius and reveals that the dominant position in the classical studies is obsolete. This paper scrutinises not only clearly defined knowledge of the Quellenforschung, but illuminates also the role model of Plutarch. Before it is possible to assess the dependence of the Divus Iulius from the Καισαρ, I (...) class='Hi'>will reopen the case of the composition dates, examine the literary circles as a space of interaction and look on Plutarch’s reception in Rome. (shrink)

Of the seven essays presented here, four deal with specific moral concepts. They concern freedom of the will, universalizability as a token of validity of a moral precept, the interrelationships between pain and evil, and the interrelationships between harm and wrongness. The other three essays cover broader topics: the partial agreement and partial disagreement of Hare, as a prescriptivist of one kind, with the view of P. T. Geach, another kind of prescriptivist, on the nature of good and evil; (...) the defects of descriptivism as a general theory of ethics; and the variety of viewpoints in ethics as an area of inquiry. All of the essays except the one on harm and wrongness were previously published. Typical of the illuminating distinctions which Hare makes in this highly useful book is the one made as follows in the essay on freedom of the will: "It is said that as prediction and causal explanation of human actions become easier and more widespread, moral language becomes in more and more cases unnecessary and pointless. But... it does not follow from the fact that persuasion is found in a certain type of case to be pointless, that we have no further use for the word ‘ought’ in that type of case."—W. G. (shrink)

The first of twelve fascicles to be published quarterly and as a single volume at the end of the series. This fascicle presents Weiss's philosophic journal from June 24th to September 21st, 1955. The main problem worried with in these pages is that of the togetherness of the basic modes of being, a central issue for a systematic pluralist such as Weiss. We see him approaching the problem from different angles, pushing ideas as far as they will go, testing (...) them against other parts of his system, revising, rejecting and refining. At times Weiss sketches out the logical permutations and combinations of his leading themes and then seeks out applications in more concrete subject matter. At other times a seemingly unrelated analysis of something as concrete as the relations between men and women is used to illumine highly abstract problems. The fascicle as a whole is a study in the logic of opposition and togetherness, though many other points are touched along the way, such as the problem of simple location. Weiss's analysis is more mathematical and logical than linguistic. It is remarkably thorough and radical, free and original. But precisely because of this, it is also difficult to follow, at times even frustratingly opaque. But the fascicles do provide two things: a valuable dialectical key to Modes of Being, and a clear insight into the working methods and style of thought of one of the most creative of contemporary philosophers.--W. G. E. (shrink)

After a preliminary chapter devoted to a psychological study of the effects of Kierkegaard's religious and familial background, Dupré follows a methodology based on the key theological themes which dominate the Kierkegaardian corpus. The attempt throughout is to be absolutely true to Kierkegaard. If one is to raise an objection to Dupré's approach it would be that he remains too self-effacing an expositor not allowing himself the negative move of the independent dialectician. An excellent wide-ranging interpretation which will be (...) helpful to both those beginning a study of Kierkegaard and those familiar with his writings.--W. G. E. (shrink)

The best that has been thought and said in the analytical tradition since 1950 is here enshrined in a monumental testament to an idea. The naked sense of the idea is that the deepest problems encountered by man in understanding himself and his world will yield more readily to rapier-sharp conceptual analysis than to bold, creative, oracular, synoptic Anschauungen [[sic]] which are hard to get a handle on empirically. Although this beguiling idea, this analytical imperative, is itself only heuristic (...) and not substantive, its application has led to the accumulation of a staggeringly rich and brilliant treasury of philosophical illumination. Sixty-eight selections by giants of contemporary thought, from Ayer to Ziff, are deployed here under eight captions: reference and descriptions; analyticity and necessity; truth and meaning; problems of knowledge; the mental and physical; induction, laws, and causation; logic and ontology; and free will. Included are five selections each by Chisholm and Quine; four by Carnap; three each by Feigl, Pap, Sellars, and Strawson; two each by Austin, Bergmann, Cornman, Firth, and Rescher; and one each by 32 others. Some of the most famous philosophical papers of our century are represented here, such as Strawson’s "On Referring," Quine’s "On What There Is," Carnap’s "Meaning and Necessity," and Austin’s "Ifs and Cans." An index of 209 names and a knowledgeably prepared subject index bring this truly regal work to a close. It is a more-than-worthy successor to the uncommonly valuable Readings in Philosophical Analysis, edited by Feigl and Sellars and published in 1949.—W. G. (shrink)

The editors are concerned in this book to avoid both Scylla and Charybdis. In their preface, they state: "Some introductory philosophy texts are introductory in name only.... No wonder students struggling to understand such books become convinced... that philosophy is a subject wholly unintelligible except to a few compulsive adepts and completely irrelevant to life outside of the classroom. On the other hand,... other introductory philosophy texts are philosophical in name only because they contain no technical philosophy. Not surprisingly students (...) reading such books... find them hollow and conclude philosophy is not worth serious study." Striving to bridge the gap, the editors include in the readings some lucid philosophical classics, such as Descartes’ Meditations I and II, passages from deeply probing literature such as Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, and choice recent philosophical discussions such as the section on free will in Stace’s Religion and the Modern Mind. Lively but significant readings are included on six areas: freedom or determinism, God and religion, morality and society, mind and body, knowledge and science, and art and society. The final readings on each area present "Contemporary Issues." For example, the readings on art and society end with the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court on Fanny Hill, E. M. Forster’s essay on art for art’s sake, and a discussion by Barrows Dunham of art for man’s sake.—W. G. (shrink)

Some stalwarts are included in any and every collection of readings for students on political and social thought. Among these reliable standbys are Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse-tung. They are all here, marshaled and arrayed in judicious selections, well introduced. But something new has been added in this anthology. You will find in it selections from William F. Buckley, Jr., and Eldridge Cleaver, from Michael Harrington and Frantz Fanon, from (...) Herbert Marcuse and Martin Luther King, Jr., from H. L. A. Hart and Gregory Vlastos, and from others who were or are alive in the latter half of our century. The quality of the material presented is excellent. The final selection, for example, is a first-rate analysis of the notion of a "just war" by Donald A. Wells. The editors, in their general introduction, discuss such questions as what the foundation of political obligation is, how social and political institutions are or may be evaluated, how the ideals of a society are systematized, and what the nature and justification of social change are. A bibliography, a topical syllabus, and an index are usefully provided. This book of readings can confidently be recommended for use as the basic text of a historical or analytical course in political and social philosophy.—W. G. (shrink)

Pearson points to the radical questioning of the traditional Greek ethic, which is found in the classical dramatic literature of fifth century Athens, as an example of popular ethics. The philosophic discussion of the Socratic-Platonic tradition supplanted this popular ethics in the fourth century. Many of the problems discussed in the philosophic literature were taken over as developed and articulated by the classical dramatists. Thus, three ethical traditions are described and related in this book: the "traditional" ethics coming from Homer, (...) Hesiod, and Solon, the "popular" ethics of the classical dramatists, and the technical "philosophic" ethics of Plato. The main effort of the book is to discuss the popular ethics as related to both the traditional and philosophic ethics The student of the Platonic dialogues will find the book of great value in identifying the various positions represented by the dramatis personae of the dialogues.--W. G. E. (shrink)

"Contemporary" is the controlling word in the title of this book of provocative readings, but foundational ideas of a timeless stamp are also brought to bear after the reader’s attention has been captured. In the section on ethics and society, for example, some selections deal with sex, marriage, abortion, eugenics, and women’s rights, but others are archly included on free will, the good life, duty, and the nature of ethical disagreement. The nineteen philosophers whose works are excerpted for this (...) section range from Kant and Bentham in an earlier era through Bertrand Russell and A. H. Maslow of the recent past to today’s Simone de Beauvoir, A. C. Ewing, and Charles L. Stevenson, as well as younger thinkers such as Arthur C. Danto and Nicholas Rescher. The remaining sections of the book cover political problems, language and art, experience and nature, and existential, religious, and other views of the meaning of life. An article by Huston Smith on the religious import of drugs concludes the volume. The editors’ introduction describes in fresh ways what a philosophical approach to an issue is and provides a useful setting for the relevant readings which follow. In the introductions to the five sections of the book, they take a closer look at the particular areas of interest and again try to illuminate the readings, in a different way by setting before the reader the truly challenging questions with which the readings will grapple.—W. G. (shrink)

To state the central argument of this book would be to miss a great deal of the author's achievement. Munz is concerned with tracing the metaphysical foundations of ethics and furthermore the nature and roots of these, and all, metaphysical conceptions. He does all of this in a resolutely original and tough-minded way, exploring alternatives in the fullest possible manner, arguing with great resourcefulness and force. His originality can be seen in his serious and thorough oppositions to classical and contemporary (...) positions. He never scores off straw men, but takes the trouble to develop opposing positions fully so that his argument will strike at the most fundamental and stringent point. Thus, his thesis, that the basic ethical stances of absolute commitment to others and absolute detachment from others, are dialectically interdependent, is honestly and articulately supported. He is to be credited with developing concepts, arguments, and positions which derive their considerable force on their own merits, while encountering a full range of opposition. He has produced a book with which one can disagree, which may puzzle and even seem peculiar, but which must nonetheless be sincerely admired.—W. G. E. (shrink)

In its original form this was Bonhoeffer's first work, presented as a theological dissertation when the author was only twenty-one. It has been very influential on proponents of "religionless Christianity" among the Continental theologians. The argument is compressed and often elliptical, exceedingly difficult to grasp. Bonhoeffer follows Tonnies' distinction between society and community, holding that the religious community is a community of will which admits no end outside itself, but whose telos, God, is its boundary. It is a structure (...) of meaning rather than a structure of purpose, uniting persons in an I-Thou relationship in which they assume the relative independence of a Leibnitzian monad. The book is magnificent; the translation unobtrusive and long overdue.—W. G. E. (shrink)

The crisis of our day is epitomized by Paul Kurtz in two propositions: -"Theistic religions... are in retreat." "Most traditional moral and philosophical guideposts seem to be crumbling." On the basis of these findings, Kurtz asks incisively what new directions need to be taken in order that we may sight more promising guideposts. He develops, in the final pages of his book, a series of proposed answers to that question. In the section in which he depicts the crumbling of traditional (...) guideposts, he elaborates on, first, "the death of theism," marshaling what he considers the most persuasive objections to the standard arguments for theism; secondly, the "perversion of Marxism" as seen in "man’s spiritual death and a new kind of suffering" in Marxist countries; and, thirdly, excesses of the New Left, the mindlessness of certain viewpoints of the counter-culture, and continuing hypocrisy in the political establishment. Among the upbeat principles which Kurtz offers at the end as more humane guideposts are promotion of the idea that life can be meaningful, worthwhile, and full; application of rationality and the ideal of moderation to problems of sexual and other forms of libertarianism; recognition of tolerance as a major value; respect for equality of opportunity for individuals; strengthening of "the democratic ethic;" and redirecting of "the promise of technology." On the prospects for widespread adoption of these guideposts, Kurtz declares: "Whether we will be able to realize these potentialities cannot be determined beforehand. Our future is contingent and precarious..." Our future can be one of "human greatness," he concludes, "if we will but give full vent to the highest within us-our intelligence, our capacity for compassion, our audacious spirit."—W.G. (shrink)

This book has been subtitled a "philosophical memoir." It is that only in a very loose sense of the term. There are many passages in which Gilson relates his experiences as a young philosopher at the Sorbonne under Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, Mauss and others. Other passages reveal the intellectual climate in the France of Bergson and the neo-scholastic revival. The autobiographical material in both cases will be appreciated by the many who know and admire Gilson as a scholar, teacher and (...) great Frenchman. But there is more to the book than that. The long middle passages on Bergson and his neo-scholastic critics provide the most extensive and subtle, though indirect, explication of Gilson's notion of Christian philosophy. Finally, there is Gilson's apologia as a Thomist, and his own interpretation of what it is to be one.--W. G. E. (shrink)

Among the main themes of this book are the positions that "Evil is an inherent element in the universe" ; that the Devil is real in the sense that an evil impulse is part of man’s composition, and it will persist as long as man continues to be man; that man without the Devil would be a brute without responsibility, without temptation, without the possibility of greatness; that evil is a positive entity, a "deliberate outrage on the Good," and (...) not merely the absence of good ; that the counterpart of bad is good, while the counterpart of evil is saintliness; that some good resides even in evil; that man can transmute tragedy into spiritual and moral transcendence; that suffering is a part of man’s dignity; and that acceptance of death can allow man to triumph in self-esteem. The author also contends that, despite the validity of determinism and predestination, freedom of choice exists, but she does not explain how. Photographs are included of 16 pertinent works of art, such as Bosch’s "The Temptation of Saint Anthony," Blake’s "Satan Exulting Over Sin," and Picasso’s "The Charnel House." Chapters on "The Devil in Myth and Legend" and "The Devil and Sex" probe especially evocative and imaginative aspects of the domain being studied.—W. G. (shrink)

Ferrater Mora's paper is devoted to the thesis that man makes his own life--a person constituting himself historically. Harris's lecture is a two-pronged attack on contemporary analytic philosophy. One part of the argument attempts to show that the enterprise is self-refuting, based on an epistemology of naive positivistic empiricism which most of its present proponents have themselves rejected. The other part of the argument is ad hominem, showing the urgent necessity for a synthetic and constructive philosophy which will be (...) able to develop a way of life and system of values capable of stemming the drift toward nuclear self-annihilation. Prior, starting with the MacTaggart-Broad time puzzle and digressing backward through St. Augustine, offers an adverbial analysis of time and tenses, based on the theory that there are only things, not events, and that things are present tense, when they are.--W. G. E. (shrink)

While reflecting recently on what the historian means by greatness, I was led to examine Croce's theory of economic action. It seemed to promise an answer to the troublesome problem of the relationship between greatness and moral goodness. How those hopes were disappointed will be explained presently, but Croce's theory must first be considered on its merits. I shall confine the discussion as far as possible to Croce's philosophy of the practical, avoiding any detailed reference, e.g., to the somewhat (...) artificial parallelism within the dialectic of the spirit between the forms of theoretical and those of practical activity. Since, however, Croce teaches—and his practice is in accordance with his teaching—that any severance of part from whole does violence to philosophy, it will be necessary to touch on certain larger questions before we close. (shrink)

While reflecting recently on what the historian means by greatness, I was led to examine Croce's theory of economic action. It seemed to promise an answer to the troublesome problem of the relationship between greatness and moral goodness. How those hopes were disappointed will be explained presently, but Croce's theory must first be considered on its merits. I shall confine the discussion as far as possible to Croce's philosophy of the practical, avoiding any detailed reference, e.g. , to the (...) somewhat artificial parallelism within the dialectic of the spirit between the forms of theoretical and those of practical activity. Since, however, Croce teaches—and his practice is in accordance with his teaching—that any severance of part from whole does violence to philosophy, it will be necessary to touch on certain larger questions before we close. (shrink)

“The object of the moral faculty,” wrote Butler in a classic passage of the Dissertation on Virtue , “is actions, comprehending under that name active or practical principles: those principles from which men would act if occasions or circumstances gave them power, and which, when fixed and habitual in any person, we call his character. It does not appear that brutes have the least reflex” “sense of actions, as distinguished from events; or that will and design, which constitute the (...) very nature of action as such, are at all an object to their perception. But to ours they are: and they are the object, and the only one, of the approving and disapproving faculty. (shrink)

We were led, at the close of the last paper, to the conclusion that the moral judgment lays claim to a knowledge of what is unknowable. It is not merely that our volition is imperfect, that the act of necessity falls short of what we know to be right. This seems bad enough; but the plight in which we actually find ourselves is even worse. The paradox is that we never know, and never can know, in any particular situation, what (...) it is really right to do. We know indeed that it is always right, really and absolutely right, to do what we believe to be right. For a man to act “against his conscience,” after all possible thought has been taken for its enlightenment, we know to be morally wrong. But this knowledge is purely formal and gives no clue to the matter of moral obligation. It tells us what is common alike to any and every case of moral duty; it does not tell us what we ought to do. For the right that we will cannot be merely the rightness of willing it. What I ought to do cannot be merely that I ought to do it. Now our beliefs and judgments as to material rightness, i.e. as to what it is right to do in a concrete situation, are notoriously liable to error. So we seek for a criterion by which to test our variable and fallible judgments, a criterion of what is really right. But the search is doomed to failure; we can only test beliefs by beliefs, our former beliefs by our later, the beliefs of one man or society or age by those of others. (shrink)

The fact that genes and environment contribute differentially to variation in human behaviors, traits and attitudes is central to the field of behavior genetics. Perceptions about these differential contributions may affect ideas about human agency. We surveyed two independent samples (N = 301 and N = 740) to assess beliefs about free will, determinism, political orientation, and the relative contribution of genes and environment to 21 human traits. We find that lay estimates of genetic influence on these traits cluster (...) into four distinct groups, which differentially predict beliefs about human agency, political orientation, and religiosity. Despite apparent ideological associations with these beliefs, the correspondence between mean lay estimates and published heritability estimates for the surveyed traits is large (r = .77). Belief in genetic determinism emerges as a modest predictor of accuracy in these lay estimates. Additionally, educated mothers with multiple children emerge as particularly accurate in their estimates of the genetic contribution to these traits. (shrink)

Recognising and responding appropriately to emotions is critical to adaptive psychological functioning. Psychopathic traits (e.g. callous, manipulative, impulsive, antisocial) are related to differences in recognition and response when emotion is conveyed through facial expressions and language. Use of emotional music stimuli represents a promising approach to improve our understanding of the specific emotion processing difficulties underlying psychopathic traits because it decouples recognition of emotion from cues directly conveyed by other people (e.g. facial signals). In Experiment 1, participants listened to clips (...) of emotional music and identified the emotional content (Sample 1, N = 196) or reported on their feelings elicited by the music (Sample 2, N = 197). Participants accurately recognised (t(195) = 32.78, p <.001, d = 4.69) and reported feelings consistent with (t(196) = 7.84, p <.001, d = 1.12) the emotion conveyed in the music. However, psychopathic traits were associated with reduced emotion recognition accuracy (F(1, 191) = 19.39, p <.001) and reduced likelihood of feeling the emotion (F(1, 193) = 35.45, p <.001), particularly for fearful music. In Experiment 2, we replicated findings for broad difficulties with emotion recognition (Sample 3, N = 179) and emotional resonance (Sample 4, N = 199) associated with psychopathic traits. Results offer new insight into emotion recognition and response difficulties that are associated with psychopathic traits. (shrink)

Saul Kripke is one of the most original and creative philosophers writing today. His work has had a tremendous impact on the direction that philosophy has taken in the last thirty years and continues to dominate some of its most fundamental aspects. Given Kripke's importance it is perhaps surprising that there is no introduction to his philosophy available to the general student. This book fills that gap. As much of Kripke's work is highly technical, the book's central aim is to (...) provide clear exposition of Kripke's ideas in a form that is understandable to a beginning readership as well as a commentary on them that more advanced students will find useful. The book begins with a discussion of Kripke's early work on modal logic, which provides the foundation for many of his later philosophical contributions, before examining in detail Kripke's central ideas and arguments contained in Naming and Necessity. In further chapters, Kripke's work on semantic paradoxes and his theory of truth are outlined as well as his controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein's famous private language argument. Kripke's ideas are situated alongside those of his precursors and some of the most important and interesting responses to them are explored. The reader is thus able to appreciate the path-breaking nature of Kripke's contributions, how they have challenged fundamentally traditional interpretations, and how they have sparked some of the most important philosophical debates of recent years. (shrink)

Saul Kripke is one of the most original and creative philosophers writing today. His work has had a tremendous impact on the direction that philosophy has taken in the last thirty years and continues to dominate some of its most fundamental aspects. Given Kripke's importance it is perhaps surprising that there is no introduction to his philosophy available to the general student. This book fills that gap. As much of Kripke's work is highly technical, the book's central aim is to (...) provide clear exposition of Kripke's ideas in a form that is understandable to a beginning readership as well as a commentary on them that more advanced students will find useful. The book begins with a discussion of Kripke's early work on modal logic, which provides the foundation for many of his later philosophical contributions, before examining in detail Kripke's central ideas and arguments contained in Naming and Necessity. In further chapters, Kripke's work on semantic paradoxes and his theory of truth are outlined as well as his controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein's famous private language argument. Kripke's ideas are situated alongside those of his precursors and some of the most important and interesting responses to them are explored. The reader is thus able to appreciate the path-breaking nature of Kripke's contributions, how they have challenged fundamentally traditional interpretations, and how they have sparked some of the most important philosophical debates of recent years. (shrink)

In this book G. W. Leibniz presents not only his reflections on predestination and election but also a more detailed account of the problem of evil than is found in any of his other works apart from the _Theodicy_. Surprisingly, his _Dissertation on Predestination and Grace_ has never before been published in any form. Michael J. Murray's project of translating, editing, and providing commentary for the volume will therefore attract great interest among scholars and students of Leibniz's philosophy and (...) theology. Leibniz addresses such topics as free will, moral responsibility, divine causation, justice, punishment, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom, revealing crucial aspects of the genesis of his mature metaphysics and the theological motivations behind it. (shrink)

In debates about genetic testing of children, as well as about disclosing unsolicited findings (UFs) of pediatric exome sequencing, respect for future autonomy should be regarded as a prima facie consideration for not taking steps that would entail denying the future adult the opportunity to decide for herself about what to know about her own genome. While the argument can be overridden when other, morally more weighty considerations are at stake, whether this is the case can only be determined in (...) concrete cases. Importantly, when children grow into adolescents, respect for future autonomy will have to give way to respecting their emerging autonomy. When pediatric exome sequencing is done for complex conditions not involving developmental delay, respect for the child’s future or emerging autonomy should be a primary consideration for those charged with deciding on behalf of the child. Building on what Emanuel and Emanuel have termed the ‘deliberative model’ of shared decision making, we argue that if parents fail to give these considerations their due, professionals should actively invite them to do so. Taking a directive stance may be needed in order to make sure that the future or emerging autonomy of the child are duly considered in the decision-making process, but also to help the parents and themselves to shape their respective roles as responsible care-givers. (shrink)

This paper investigates connectionism's potential to solve the frame problem. The frame problem arises in the context of modelling the human ability to see the relevant consequences of events in a situation. It has been claimed to be unsolvable for classical cognitive science, but easily manageable for connectionism. We will focus on a representational approach to the frame problem which advocates the use of intrinsic representations. We argue that although connectionism's distributed representations may look promising from this perspective, doubts (...) can be raised about the potential of distributed representations to allow large amounts of complexly structured information to be adequately encoded and processed. It is questionable whether connectionist models that are claimed to effectively represent structured information can be scaled up to a realistic extent. We conclude that the frame problem provides a difficulty to connectionism that is no less serious than the obstacle it constitutes for classical cognitive science. (shrink)