'Gaining control' tells the story of how human behavioral capacities evolved from those of other animal species. Exploring what is known about the psychological capacities of other groups of animals, the authors reconstruct a fascinating history of our own mental evolution. The result is a provocative and insightful book.

Sciences able to identify appropriate analytical units for their domain, their natural kinds, have tended to be more progressive. In the biological sciences, evolutionary natural kinds are adaptations that can be identified by their common history of selection for some function. Human brains are the product of an evolutionary history of selection for component systems which produced behaviours that gave adaptive advantage to their hosts. These structures, behaviour production systems, are the natural kinds that psychology seeks. We argue these can (...) be identified deductively by classing behaviour first according to its level of behavioural control. Early animals in our lineage used only reactive production, Vertebrates evolved motivation, and later Primates developed executive control. Behaviour can also be classified by the type of evolutionary benefit it bestows: it can deliver either immediate benefits (food, gametes), improvements in the individual’s position with respect to the world (resource access, social status), or improvements in the ability to secure future benefits (knowledge, skill). Combining history and function implies the existence of seven types of behaviour production systems in human brains responsible for reflexive, instinctual, exploratory, driven, emotional, playful and planned behaviour. Discovering scientifically valid categories of behaviour can provide a fundamental taxonomy and common language for understanding, predicting and changing behaviour, and a way of discovering the organs in the brain––its natural kinds––that are responsible for behaviour. (shrink)

This book has been written in the hopes of equipping teachers-in-training—that is, teacher candidates—with the skills needed for action research: a process that leads to focused, effective, and responsive strategies that help students succeed.

While the preponderance of recent literature on David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement has focused on his theory of bargaining,1 Joseph DeMarco calls into question the foundation of Gauthier's project.2 DeMarco argues that Gauthier's project depends on the incorporation of extra‐rational values, thereby undermining his attempt to derive morality from the non‐moral premises of rational choice. On DeMarco's account, there are at least three points where Gauthier depends on extra‐rational values. DeMarco finds the first two of these points problematic because he (...) misunderstands Gauthier's theory of rational choice. The third point is more serious; Gauthier does not offer an apparatus sufficient to respond to DeMarco's charge. To disarm DeMarco's third objection, I shall offer a justification of the rationality of autonomous preference formation. (shrink)

Several recent commentators have suggested that for fully rational agents who find themselves in iterated prisoner's dilemmas of indefinite length, co-operation is the rational strategy. Their argument is that these fully rational agents can be taught, through the co-operative actions of other agents, to bypass the dominant move of noncooperation and co-operate instead. The proponents of the “teaching strategy” seem to have ignored the compelling argument of Jordan Howard Sobel. While the teaching argument may work for agents who are less (...) than purely rational, Sobel has pointed out that hyperrational utility maximizers cannot be taught; they reason deductively, not inductively, as the “teaching argument” requires. (shrink)

Applied ontologies have been used more and more frequently to enhance systems engineering. In this paper, we argue that adopting principles of ontological realism can increase the benefits that ontologies have already been shown to provide to the systems engineering process. Moreover, adopting Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), an ISO standard for top-level ontologies from which more domain specific ontologies are constructed, can lead to benefits in four distinct areas of systems engineering: (1) interoperability, (2) standardization, (3) testing, and (4) data (...) exploitation. Reaping these benefits in a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) context requires utilizing an ontology’s vocabulary when modeling systems and entities within those systems. If the chosen ontology abides by the principles of ontological realism, a semantic standard capable of uniting distinct domains, using BFO as a hub, can be leveraged to promote greater interoperability among systems. As interoperability and standardization increase, so does the ability to collect data during the testing and implementation of systems. These data can then be reasoned over by computational reasoners using the logical axioms within the ontology. This, in turn, generates new data that would have been impossible or too inefficient to generate without the aid of computational reasoners. (shrink)

While the ethical use of deception has been discussed in literature, the ethics and acceptability of nursing deception has yet to be studied. The current study examined nurses’ and nursing students’ ratings of the ethics and acceptability of nursing deception. We predicted that nurses and nursing students would rate a truthful vignette as more ethical than a deceptive vignette. We also predicted that participants would rate nursing deception as unethical and unacceptable. A mixed design was used to examine ethics scores (...) as a within-subjects factor and order as a between-groups design factor. A total of 131 nurses and nursing students were recruited from university nursing programs and hospitals in Texas. Participants were provided with a truthful vignette and deceptive vignette and used the Multidimensional Ethics Scale-Revised 1 to rate each vignette. Participants also completed the Lies in Nursing Ethics Questionnaire. The truthful nursing vignette was rated as more ethical than the deceptive vignette. Results indicated that most participants rated nursing deception as unethical, unacceptable, and a violation of the ANA ethical code. Some participants deemed that nursing deception may be acceptable within some cases. Age and years of experience were not related to the perceived ethics and acceptability of nursing deception. Nurses and nursing students believe that using deception with patients is unethical and unacceptable. However, some participants believed that deception may be warranted within some cases. These findings may reflect nurses’ placing the patient at the core of their values and viewing honesty as important for the nurse-patient relationship. Further implications and directions are discussed. (shrink)

We propose a domain-level ontology of plays for the facilitation of play-based collaborative autonomy among unmanned and manned-unmanned aircraft teams in the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) mission domain. We define a play as a type of plan that prescribes some pattern of intentional acts that are intended to reliably result in some goal in some competitive context, and which specifies one or more roles that are realized by those prescribed intentional acts. The ontology is well suited to be extended (...) to other types of military and nonmilitary unmanned vehicle operations. (shrink)

Height preferences reflecting positive assortative mating for height—wherein an individual’s own height positively predicts the preferred height of their mate—have been observed in several distinct human populations and are thought to increase reproductive fitness. However, the extent to which assortative preferences for height differ strategically for short-term versus long-term relationship partners, as they do for numerous other indices of mate quality, remains unclear. We explore this possibility in a large representative sample of over 500 men and women aged 15–77 from (...) Canada, Cuba, Norway and the United States. Participants’ own heights were measured, and they indicated their height preferences for a long-term and short-term mate using graphic stimuli containing metric indices. Replicating the “male-taller norm,” participants on average preferred taller-than-average male mates, and shorter-than-average female mates. Positive assortative preferences for height were observed across sexes and samples, however the strength of these height preferences varied with relationship context for men, and not for women. Taller men preferred relatively shorter women for short-term relationships than for long-term relationships, indicating stronger assortative preferences for height in a long-term context. These results provide preliminary evidence that, in addition to mate preferences for other physical traits related to mate quality such as masculinity in the body, face, and voice, assortative preferences for height do vary as a function of expected relationship length, but this was surprisingly only observed in preferences for female height. (shrink)

In a recent paper we argued that a Moorean strategy can be employed to justify our continuing to believe the following proposition, even in the presence of philosophical views that entail it is false, without any philosophical argument against those views, and without any positive philosophical argument in its favour: -/- H>A: Humans have an equal moral status that is higher than the moral status of non-human animals. -/- The basic idea is that our confidence in the truth of this (...) proposition is greater than our confidence in the propositions that make up those philosophical views that entail it is false, and that this is sufficient to justify rejecting those views and to continue to believe H>A. -/- Roberts has recently responded to our argument by claiming: -/- (i) Although the Moorean strategy is valid, it is not powerful. (ii) A resort to the Moorean strategy reflects too great a pessimism about the accounts available that purport to justify H>A. -/- In this short rejoinder we explain why Roberts fails to establish his two claims. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Opera theologica quae latine edidit, 3 vols. (Roterodami, 1651-1660). His religious polemics with Amyrault and Grofius were famous. Paul Dibon, professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, is the most prominent contemporary historian of seventeenth-century Dutch philosophy and intellectual life; he is perfectly aware of the fact that genuine history can only be founded on solid erudition, and this inventory is a first-class contribution (...) to it. Only those who ignore the difficulties of this kind of research will underestimate the enormous effort it involves--an effort which is, much more than a pedantic and mechanical listing of data, a kind of venatio, requiring a continuous alertness, a surprising amount of imagination and intelligence, a painstaking precision, and an enormous background of knowledge. The letters are arranged in chronological order (with the exception of a few which are undated). Each entry lists the date, the names and locations of the sender and addressee, and the opening words of the letter. The status of the letter (original/ minute/copy/printed) is indicated, as is the library in which the letter is located (and the call number), and/or, if the letter was published, the printed source. Thirty-two libraries were explored. GIORGIO TONELLI State University o/ New York at Binghamton Introduction to Newton's Principia. By I. Bernard Cohen. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. Pp. xxx+380. $30.00) Over the past dozen years or so Newtonian scholarship has burgeoned as never before, and a first and fundamental result has been the publication of more and more of the wealth of manuscript material and letters that Newton left as a legacy of potential insight and confusion to future scholars. To date, the most imposing of the undertakings in publication have been The Correspondence (1959- ), begun under the editorship of H. W. Turnbull and continued more recently under that of J. F. Scott, and the Mathematical Papers (1967- ), started and continuing under the editorship of D. T. Whiteside. Selected documents of importance have been published by I. Bernard Cohen, assisted by Robert E. Schofield, in Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy... (1958), by A. R. Hall and Marie Boas Hall in Unpublished Scientific Papers o/ Isaac Newton (1962), and by J. W. Herivel in The Background of Newton's Principia (1965); additional documentary material has appeared in studies by Alexandre Koyr6, I. Bernard Cohen, Johannes A. Lohne, D. T. Whiteside, Richard S. Wesffall, J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, and still others--a full bibliography would run to considerable length. Nor, although the uncertainties in the interpretation of the documents are sometimes overwhelming, has this spate of publication merely served to replace one set of scholarly puzzles by another. The traditional, monolithic and impenetrable image of Newton "with his prism and silent face, / The marble index of a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone..." has lost something of its hypnotic hold, and we begin to discern some of the steps, not to say jogs and leaps, in Newton's actual journey of thought and discovery. The volume here under review introduces another major enterprise in Newtonian scholarship, a "variorum" edition of the Principia. The edition itself, which has yet to appear, will consist primarily of a facsimile reproduction of the third edition (1726)-the last edition that Newton himself supervised----collated line by line with the variant readings in the two prior editions and in a manuscript of the first edition, and with the BOOK REVIEWS 121 corrections, improvements, and additions that Newton entered into copies of the first and second editions. This textual part of the edition was delivered to the press in 1966; additional parts are in various stages of preparation. There is to be a Commentary dealing with the prefaces, definitions, laws of motion, and the first three sections of Book I and most of Book III, along with English versions and modern analytical paraphrases of the sections dealt with, a glossary, and a number of short essays on such topics as the astronomical and physical data used by Newton, the mathematical background to the understanding of the Principia, and the analysis of... (shrink)

Philosophers, scientists, and artists alike are prone to explore important questions concerning ecology as it relates to the impact of human actions for the future of nature and human civilizations. The main focus in this essay is to consider ecological implications of art understood as a form of leisure. Art is of course more than leisure for the artists and other arts professionals, but its personal and societal roles also serve as leisure activities. Both the production of art and its (...) consumption have important ecological implications. Select philosophical (Hegel) and scientific (Escobar) concerning art and nature provide a context for exploring art’s role in ecology. Complementing the philosophical and scientific understanding of ecological concerns are the efforts of artists and arts institutions to address ecological concerns both in their creative works and in assessing ecological implications of their respective practices. Ecology concerns environmental relationships taking place among the elements of nature (weather, land and water for example) that relate to evolutionary change and the effects on life in the built environments that comprise human civilizations. [i] Leisure, as I shall understand it here functions as a creative force in the life of human persons. [i]Robert A. Stebbins, “Leisure, Happiness, and Positive Lifestyle” and John Haworth, “Leisure, Life, Enjoyment,” in editors, Sam Elkingtonand Sean J. Gammon, Contemporary Perspectives in Leisure (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 28-64. (shrink)

This study of American intellectual histories sketches their development from colonial chronicles to today's professional scholarship. It concentrates upon the writings of a dozen or more major historians between the late 1800's and the middle 1900's who have contributed to the study of the history of ideas in America, including Moses Coit Tyler, Edward Eggleston, Charles Beard, Carl Becker, Vernon Farrington, Merle Curti, Perry Miller, and Ralph Gabriel. The various histories are analyzed partly from the perspective of a developing scholarly (...) discipline and partly from the perspective of the "climate of opinion" in which the histories were written. The methods employed by the historians in studying ideas, as well as the substantive interpretations expressed in the histories, are analyzed in relation to the "world-views" or "ideological positions" of the historians themselves. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Utilitarianism, the great reforming philosophy of the nineteenth century, has today acquired the reputation for being a crassly calculating, impersonal philosophy unfit to serve as a guide to moral conduct. Yet what may disqualify utilitarianism as a personal philosophy makes it an eminently suitable guide for public officials in the pursuit of their professional responsibilities. Robert E. Goodin, a philosopher with many books on political theory, public policy and applied ethics to his credit, defends utilitarianism against its critics and (...) shows how it can be applied most effectively over a wide range of public policies. In discussions of such issues as paternalism, social welfare policy, international ethics, nuclear armaments, and international responses to the environment crisis, he demonstrates what a flexible tool his brand of utilitarianism can be in confronting the dilemmas of public policy in the real world. (shrink)

The United States Army’s Future Combat Systems Project, which aims to manufacture a “robot army” to be ready for deployment by 2012, is only the latest and most dramatic example of military interest in the use of artificially intelligent systems in modern warfare. This paper considers the ethics of a decision to send artificially intelligent robots into war, by asking who we should hold responsible when an autonomous weapon system is involved in an atrocity of the sort that would normally (...) be described as a war crime. A number of possible loci of responsibility for robot war crimes are canvassed; the persons who designed or programmed the system, the commanding officer who ordered its use, the machine itself. I argue that in fact none of these are ultimately satisfactory. Yet it is a necessary condition for fighting a just war, under the principle of jus in bellum, that someone can be justly held responsible for deaths that occur in the course of the war. As this condition cannot be met in relation to deaths caused by an autonomous weapon system it would therefore be unethical to deploy such systems in warfare. (shrink)

Robert Alexy develops his influential theory of legal reasoning exploring the nature of legal argumentation and its relation to practical reasoning. In doing so he sheds light on fundamental questions of law and rationality, which are as crucial to practising lawyers and law students as they are to scholars of legal theory.

Nozick argues, in “Anarchy, State, and Utopia”, correctly I think, that we can go from an equal distribution of wealth to an unequal one through just means. Nozick then asks: If people voluntarily move from a just distribution of wealth, D1, to a different distribution, D2, “isn’t D2 also just?” While Nozick thinks the new distribution of wealth, D2, is just, I think that it is at least possible to go from a just state of affairs to an un-just state (...) of affairs by just means. I then argue that any unequal distribution of wealth can not maximize the good derived from wealth. Therefore, on the basis of plausible utilitarian ideas, any distribution of wealth that isn’t at least roughly equal is un-just, even it was arrived at by just means from aa equal and just distribution of wealth. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This volume considers challenges to forgiveness in the most difficult circumstances, such as in criminal justice contexts, when the victim is dead or when bystanders disagree, and when anger and resentment seem preferable and important. Contributing philosophers include Myisha Cherry, Jonathan Jacobs, Barrett Emerick, Alice MacLachlan, David McNaughton and Eve Garrard. Contributing psychologists include Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Robert D. Enright and Mary Jacqueline Song, C. Ward Struthers, Joshua Guilfoyle, Careen Khoury, Elizabeth van Monsjou, Joni Sasaki, Curtis Phills, Rebecca Young, (...) and Zdravko Marjanovic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Preface: Virtual Entities in ScienceRobert Harlander, Jean-Philippe Martinez, Friedrich Steinle, and Adrian WüthrichIt is not only since the sudden increase of online communication due to the COVID-19 situation that the concept of the “virtual” has made its way into everyday language. In this context, it mostly denotes a digital substitute for a real object or process. Virtual reality is perhaps the best-known term in this respect. With these digital (...) connotations, “virtuality” has also been used in science and research: Chemists use virtual laboratories, biologists do virtual scanning of molecular structures, and geologists engage in virtual field trips. But the concept of the virtual has a much longer tradition, dating back to long before the dawn of the digital age. Virtual images and virtual displacements were introduced in classical physics already in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. They represent auxiliary objects or processes without instantiation, with the purpose of efficiently describing specific physical systems. In today’s physics, the term “virtual” is mostly associated with the quantum world, first and foremost with the “virtual particle” of quantum field theory. It has become such an integral part of modern high energy physics that its ontological character may be considered to go beyond the purely auxiliary, which is typically associated with the virtual. [End Page 263]In other disciplines, however, use of the term virtual without a digital connotation is much rarer. While concepts like “virtual adrenaline” show up in physiological research around 1940s, and Charles Darwin, in a private note in January 1840,1 spoke of “virtual change” in the context of embryology, these examples seem to be singular occurrences of entities that were explicitly called “virtual.” The basic idea behind the terminology of the virtual, however, might be much more common, even outside of physics. The “invisible hand” in economics, or the “vital force” in biology, for instance, may carry aspects of a virtual entity, even if they have not been referred to that way.These different observations raise several questions about the status of virtual entities in science. What has led scientists to call one entity “virtual” and not another? Do all virtual entities in science have the same roots and meet the same characteristics? Are they more than auxiliary objects or processes? Why does physics seem to occupy a specific position with respect to the use of the notion of virtuality? These are some points that led us to discuss virtual entities in science during a workshop, out of which grew the present collection. We invited contributions that addressed the historical formation and philosophical interpretation of concepts of virtual entities in physics and other disciplines—in whatever terms they may come. The main goal of the workshop was to bring to the fore similarities and differences in the meanings and functions of these concepts, so as to be able to precisely characterize why certain entities are considered virtual in specific contexts, why a different terminology was often used in each individual case, and in what sense the virtual entities relate to the real world.The organization of the workshop was part of our project “The formation and development of the concept of virtual particles,” a subproject of the Research Unit “The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider,” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Der Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF). The workshop took place online on four consecutive Fridays in March 2021. It brought together contributors who discussed the role of the concept of the virtual in theoretical as well as experimental activities, and investigated into the origins of the terminology of the virtual as it was applied to the various disciplines of natural science. Dealing with historical, philosophical, but also methodological questions, the presentations covered a wide time range, from the Middle Ages to the present day. While physics naturally emerged as the dominant field, natural philosophy, computer science and biology were also addressed. The papers in this volume were contributed by participants in this workshop and approach the subject from different angles. [End Page 264]First, Friedrich Steinle provides us with an introductory piece that reflects on the specific meaning of the use of the term ‘virtual’ in science. He highlights and... (shrink)

The Theory of Planned Behavior predicts that a combination of attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived behavioral control predict intentions, and that intentions ultimately predict behavior. Previous studies have found that the TPB can predict students’ engagement in plagiarism. Furthermore, the General Theory of Crime suggests that self-control is particularly important in predicting engagement in unethical behavior such as plagiarism. In Study 1, we incorporated self-control in a TPB model and tested whether norms, attitudes, and self-control predicted intention to plagiarize and (...) plagiarism behavior. The best statistical fit for the path-analytic model was achieved when a direct path from self-control to plagiarism engagement was specified. In Study 2, we added a measure of perceived behavioral control and split the measurement of norms into descriptive and injunctive components. This study found that both self-control and perceived-behavioral control additively contributed to the prediction of plagiarism and the path-analytic model achieved its best fit when direct paths from perceived norms to plagiarism behavior were specified. These studies suggest that setting strong anti-plagiarism norms, such as by the use of honor codes, and seeking to enhance students’ self-control may reduce engagement in plagiarism. (shrink)

This article advertises a new account of computational implementation. According to the resemblance account, implementation is a matter of resembling a computational architecture. The resemblance account departs from previous theories by denying that computational architectures are exhausted by their formal, mathematical features. Instead, they are taken to be permeated with causality, spatiotemporality, and other nonmathematical features. I argue that this approach comports well with computer scientific practice and offers a novel response to so-called triviality arguments.

Liberal democracy needs a clear-eyed, robust defense to deal with the increasingly complex challenges it faces in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately much of contemporary liberal theory has rejected this endeavor for fear of appearing culturally hegemonic. Instead, liberal theorists have sought to gut liberalism of its ethical substance in order to render it more tolerant of non-liberal ways of life. This theoretical effort is misguided, however, because successful liberal democracy is an ethically demanding political regime that requires its citizenry to (...) display certain virtues and habits of mind. Against the grain of contemporary theory, philosopher Richard Rorty blends American pragmatism and romanticism to produce a comprehensive vision of liberal modernity that features a virtue-based conception of liberal democracy. In doing so, Rorty defends his pragmatic liberalism against a host of notable interlocutors, including Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Hilary Putnam, Richard J. Bernstein, and Jean Bethke Elshtain. (shrink)