An often-overlooked characteristic of the human mind is its propensity to wander. Despite growing interest in the science of mind-wandering, most studies operationalize mind-wandering by its task-unrelated contents. But these contents may be orthogonal to the processes that determine how thoughts unfold over time, remaining stable or wandering from one topic to another. In this chapter, we emphasize the importance of incorporating such processes into current definitions of mind-wandering, and propose that mind-wandering and other forms of spontaneous thought (such as (...) dreaming and creativity) are mental states that arise and transition relatively freely due to an absence of constraints on cognition. We review existing psychological, philosophical and neuroscientific research on spontaneous thought through the lens of this framework, and call for additional research into the dynamic properties of the mind and brain. (shrink)

Despite increasing scientific interest in self-generated thought-mental content largely independent of the immediate environment-there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self-generated thought-normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in sleep. In synthesizing existing literature on this topic, we reveal consistent findings pertaining to the prevalence, valence, and variability of emotion in (...) self-generated thought, and highlight how these factors might interact with self-generated thought to influence general well-being. We integrate these psychological findings with recent neuroimaging research, bringing attention to the neural correlates of affect in self-generated thought. We show that affect in self-generated thought is prevalent, positively biased, highly variable (both within and across individuals), and consistently recruits many brain areas implicated in emotional processing, including the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal cortex. Many factors modulate these typical psychological and neural patterns, however; the emerging affective neuroscience of self-generated thought must endeavor to link brain function and subjective experience in both everyday self-generated thought as well as its dysfunctions in mental illness. (shrink)

Backchannel choices affect conversational development. Some backchannels invite interlocutors to continue to the next part of what they are saying and others invite them to elaborate on what they have just said. We tested how communicative modality (audiovisual, audio, text), environmental setting (wholly in-lab, partially in the wild), and conversational goals (on-task, off-task) influenced backchannel usage by participants. We found that backchannel production depends on modality, setting, and goals. For example, we found that specific backchannels played a more prominent role (...) in self-motivated dialogue. Knowledge of how backchannels are used has both theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Background: Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system activation is adaptive in response to stress, and HPA dysregulation occurs in stress-related psychopathology. It is important to understand the mechanisms that modulate HPA output, yet few studies have addressed the neural circuitry associated with HPA regulation in primates and humans. Using high-resolution F-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) in rhesus monkeys, we assessed the relation between individual differences in brain activity and HPA function across multiple contexts that varied in stressfulness.

Early theorists speculated that extremely shy children, or those with anxious temperament, were likely to have anxiety problems as adults. More recent studies demonstrate that these children have heightened responses to potentially threatening situations reacting with intense defensive responses that are characterized by behavioral inhibition and physiological arousal. Confirming the earlier impressions, data now demonstrate that children with this disposition are at increased risk to develop anxiety, depression, and comorbid substance abuse. Additional key features of anxious temperament are that it (...) appears at a young age, it is a stable characteristic of individuals, and even in non-threatening environments it is associated with increased psychic anxiety and somatic tension. To understand the neural underpinnings of anxious temperament, we performed imaging studies with 18- fluoro-deoxyglucose high-resolution Positron Emission Tomography in young rhesus monkeys. Rhesus monkeys were used because they provide a well validated model of anxious temperament for studies that cannot be performed in human children. Imaging the same animal in stressful and secure contexts, we examined the relation between regional metabolic brain activity and a trait-like measure of anxious temperament that encompasses measures of BI and pituitaryadrenal reactivity. Regardless of context, results demonstrated a trait-like pattern of brain activity that is predictive of individual phenotypic differences. Importantly, individuals with extreme anxious temperament also displayed increased activity of this circuit when assessed in the security of their home environment. These findings suggest that increased activity of this circuit early in life mediates the childhood temperamental risk to develop anxiety and depression. (shrink)

The management and mismanagement of Roman groves was a serious matter, and intentional and unintentional violations of these spaces could be severely punished. In spite of this, groves remained loosely defined by Romans and their boundaries were commonly misunderstood, a confusion that has continued into modern scholarship, where groves are understood as either a clearing in a wood or a dark space lit by artificial lighting. This article takes up this discussion, and explores the nature of an ancient grove as (...) a well-attested space under forest management that influences later conversations on the nature of wooded spaces in more recent periods. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Strangers to Nature brings together many of the leading scholars who are working to redefine and expand the discourse on animal ethics. This volume will engage both scholars and lay-people by revealing the breadth of theorizing about the human/non-human animal relationship that is currently taking place.

Most research on mind-wandering has characterized it as a mental state with contents that are task unrelated or stimulus independent. However, the dynamics of mind-wandering—how mental states change over time—have remained largely neglected. Here, we introduce a dynamic framework for understanding mind-wandering and its relationship to the recruitment of large-scale brain networks. We propose that mind-wandering is best understood as a member of a family of spontaneous-thought phenomena that also includes creative thought and dreaming. This dynamic framework can shed new (...) light on mental disorders that are marked by alterations in spontaneous thought, including depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (shrink)

The proposal by Clarke and Beck offers a new explanation for the association between the approximate number system and math. Previous explanations have largely relied on developmental arguments, an underspecified notion of the ANS as an “error detection mechanism,” or affective factors. The proposal that the ANS represents rational numbers suggests that it may directly support a broader range of math skills.

T. C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth (2001), tells the story of Tyrone Tierwater, a one time monkeywrencher and environmental avenger for “E. F.!” (Earth Forever!) who we first meet in 2025 in his mid-seventies. Tierwater is now working for a character based on Michael Jackson, who in his semi-retirement has employed the elder eco-warrior to help save some of the last remnants of a few dying species – warthogs, peccaries, hyenas, jackals, lions and what is likely the last (...) Patagoninan fox. The not too distant environmental future painted by Boyle is a disaster. Global warming has finally caught up to us with a vengeance and even the secure shores of the U.S. are wracked by unmitigated cycles of flooding and drought seriously degrading most semblances of life as we know it. To be sure, though, people, and some versions of progress, go on. While most affordable food and drink is limited to some combination of catfish and sake (very little else having survived decades of disastrous weather and a series of crop blights), and there are constant threats of new strains of life-threatening and highly contagious diseases, suburban development continues and new humans come into existence with the promise, at least in the developed world, of longer life spans. But Boyle does not give us anything like the overly optimistic views expressed by some conservative columnists who dismiss the need for global climate treaties; this is not an environmental future that is only felt with difficulty in the underdeveloped south requiring simpler economic readjustments for Americans without a substantial shift in lifestyle. The world.. (shrink)

Is philosophy of film without theory an oxymoron or a family of non-, anti-, and a-theoretical approaches with which to engage in film-involving philosophical scholarship and understanding? The goal of this collection is to argue for the latter and to do so by example. By demonstrating a mere handful of the many ways in which philosophy of film without theory might be pursued, in tandem with the insights born of these methods, the volume’s contributors both implicitly and explicitly challenge the (...) academic assumption that engaging philosophically with film must be a theoretical activity. Indeed, they indicate the potential for championing without theory scholarship across the humanities for anyone whose projects and practices seek and celebrate humanistic understanding. -/- Contributors include Lucy Bolton, Carla Carmona, James Conant, Katheryn Doran. Maximilian De Gaynesford, Rob van Gerwen, John Gibson, Eran Guter & Inbal Guter, Colin Heber-Percy, Iris Vidmar Jovanović, Andrew Klevan, David Macarthur, Rupert Read, William Rothman, Constantine Sandis, and Sebastian Sunday. Films and television programmed discussed include Gravity, Le notti di Cabiria, Dunkirk, The Handmaid's Tale, Three Colours: Red and many more. -/- In addition there is an interview with Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey. (shrink)

Fracking or the extraction of shale gas through hydraulic fracturing of rock has become a contested topic, especially in the United States, where it has been deployed on a large scale, and in Europe where it is still largely speculative. Research is beginning to investigate the environmental and economic costs and benefits as well as public perceptions of this new energy technology. However, so far the social and psychological impact of fracking on those involved in it, such as gas workers, (...) or those living in the vicinity of fracking sites, has escaped the attention of the social science research community. In this article we begin to fill this gap through a small-scale thematic analysis of representations of fracking in fifty YouTube videos, where the trailer of a controversial film, Gasland (Fox, 2010), has had a marked impact. Results show that the videos discuss not only environmental and economic costs and benefits of fracking but also social and psychological impacts on individuals and communities. These videos reveal a human face of fracking that remains all too often hidden from view. (shrink)

We compare William Henry Fox Talbot’s 1835 photographic negative 'Latticed Window (with the Camera Obscura) August 1835' with Richard Beaudoin’s 2009 solo piano work 'Étude d’un Prélude VII -- Latticed Window'. We claim that the score of Beaudoin’s work is a musical photograph of a performance of another musical work, and support the claim by describing their respective photographic and compositional processes, emphasizing the uniqueness of this score in being mechanically counterfactually dependent on its target (a recording of a Chopin (...) prelude performed by Martha Argerich). We then compare Beaudoin’s score with other possible musical photographs, including musical recordings, sonic spectrographs, ordinary musical transcriptions, and typical musical scores. Finally, we consider an argument based on the transparency of photographs. (shrink)

“Doğal din” terimi, bazen doğanın kendisinin ilahi olduğu bir panteistik doktrine atıfta bulunur. “Doğal teoloji” terimi ise aksine, başlangıçta gözlemlenen doğal gerçekler temelinde (ve bazen) Tanrı’nın varlığını savunmaya yönelik projeye atıfta bulunur. Bununla birlikte çağdaş felsefede, hem “doğal din” hem de “doğal teoloji” genel olarak, dinî veya teolojik konuları araştırmak için insana, “doğal” olan bilişsel yetilerini – akıl, algı, içgözlem- kullanma projesini ifade eder. Doğal din veya teoloji, mevcut anlayış üzerine, doğayla ilgili ampirik araştırmalarla sınırlı olmamakla birlikte ayrıca panteistik bir (...) sonuçla da bağlantılı değildir. Bununla birlikte o, özel doğal olmayan yetilere (ESP, telepati, mistik deneyim) veya doğaüstü bilgi kaynaklarına (kutsal metinler, vahiy teolojisi, inanç otoriteleri, doğrudan doğaüstü iletişim) hitap etmekten kaçınır. Genel olarak, doğal din veya teoloji (bundan böyle “doğal teoloji” olarak anılacaktır), diğer felsefi ve bilimsel girişimlerle aynı rasyonel inceleme standartlarına uymayı amaçlamaktadır ve aynı değerlendirme ve eleştiri yöntemlerine tabidir. (shrink)

In this extraordinary introduction to the study of the philosophy of technology, Andrew Feenberg argues that techonological design is central to the social and political structure of modern societies. Environmentalism, information technology, and medical advances testify to technology's crucial importance. In his lucid and engaging style, Feenberg shows that technology is the medium of daily life. Every major technical changes reverberates at countless levels: economic, political, and cultural. If we continue to see the social and technical domains as being (...) seperate, then we are essentially denying an integral part of our existence, and our place in a democratic society. Questioning Tecchnology convinces us that it is vital that we learn more about technology the better to live with it and to manage it. (shrink)

This chapter explores two kinds of testimonial trust, what we call ‘evidential trust’ and ‘non-evidential trust’ with the aim of asking how testimonial trust could provide epistemic reasons for belief. We argue that neither evidential nor non-evidential trust can play a distinctive role in providing evidential reasons for belief, but we tentatively propose that non-evidential trust can in some circumstances provide a novel kind of epistemic reason for belief, a reason of epistemic facilitation. The chapter begins with an extensive discussion (...) of standard accounts of both kinds of trust and criticises especially the standard accounts of non-evidential trust. A new account of non-evidential trust is offered that avoids a number of difficulties that plague the standard accounts by rejecting what we call ‘attitude-liability assumptions’. (shrink)

A 1999–2000 national study of U.S. hospitals raised concerns about ethics consultation (EC) practices and catalyzed improvement efforts. To assess how practices have changed since 2000, we administered a 105-item survey to “best informants” in a stratified random sample of 600 U.S. general hospitals. This primary article details the methods for the entire study, then focuses on the 16 items from the prior study. Compared with 2000, the estimated number of case consultations performed annually rose by 94% to 68,000. The (...) median number of consults per hospital was unchanged at 3, but more than doubled for hospitals with 400+ beds. The level of education of EC practitioners was unchanged, while the percentage of hospitals formally evaluating their ECS decreased from 28.0% to 19.1%. The gap between large, teaching hospitals and small, nonteaching hospitals widened since the prior study. We suggest targeting future improvement efforts to hospitals where needs are not being met by current approaches to EC. (shrink)

The technologies, markets, and administrations of today's knowledge society are in crisis. We face recurring disasters in every domain: climate change, energy shortages, economic meltdown. The system is broken, despite everything the technocrats claim to know about science, technology, and economics. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that today powerful technologies have unforeseen effects that disrupt everyday life; the new masters of technology are not restrained by the lessons of experience, and accelerate change to the point where society is (...) in constant turmoil. In Between Reason and Experience, leading philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg makes a case for the interdependence of reason--scientific knowledge, technical rationality--and experience. Feenberg examines different aspects of the tangled relationship between technology and society from the perspective of critical theory of technology, an approach he has pioneered over the past twenty years. Feenberg points to two examples of democratic interventions into technology: the Internet and the environmental movement. He examines methodological applications of critical theory of technology to the case of the French Minitel computing network and to the relationship between national culture and technology in Japan. Finally, Feenberg considers the philosophies of technology of Heidegger, Habermas, Latour, and Marcuse. The gradual extension of democracy into the technical sphere, Feenberg argues, is one of the great political transformations of our time. (shrink)

To design effective strategies to improve ethics consultation (EC) practices, it is important to understand the views of ethics practitioners. Previous U.S. studies of ethics practitioners have overrepresented the views of academic bioethicists. To help inform EC improvement efforts, we surveyed a random stratified sample of U.S. hospitals, examining ethics practitioners’ opinions on EC in general, on their own EC service, on strategies to improve EC, and on ASBH practice standards. Respondents across all categories of hospitals had very positive perceptions (...) of their own ethics consultation service (ECS) and few concerns about quality. Our findings suggest that the ethics-related needs of small, rural, non-teaching hospitals may be very different from those of academic medical centers, and therefore, different approaches to addressing ethical issues might be warranted. (shrink)

BackgroundWhile previous research has examined various aspects of ethics consultation (EC) in U.S. hospitals, certain EC practices have never been systematically studied.MethodsTo address this gap, we surveyed a random stratified sample of 600 hospitals about aspects of EC that had not been previously explored.ResultsNew findings include: in 26.0% of hospitals, the EC service performs EC for more than one hospital; 72.4% of hospitals performed at least one non-case consultation; in 56% of hospitals, ECs are never requested by patients or families; (...) 59.0% of case consultations involve conflict; the usual practice is to visit the patient in all formal EC cases in 32.5% of hospitals; 56.6% of hospitals do not include a formal meeting in most EC cases; 61.1% of hospitals do not routinely assess ethics consultants’ competencies; and 31.6% of hospitals belong to a bioethics network. We estimate the total number of non-case consultations performed in U.S. hospitals to be approximately one half the number of case consultations; we estimate the total number of ECs performed in U.S. hospitals, including both case and non-case consultations, to be just over 100,000 per year.ConclusionsThese findings expand our current understanding of EC in U.S. hospitals, and raise several concerns that suggest a need for further research. (shrink)

In this new collection of essays, Andrew Feenberg argues that conflicts over the design and organization of the technical systems that structure our society shape deep choices for the future. A pioneer in the philosophy of technology, Feenberg demonstrates the continuing vitality of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. He calls into question the anti-technological stance commonly associated with its theoretical legacy and argues that technology contains potentialities that could be developed as the basis for an alternative form (...) of modern society. Feenberg's critical reflections on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-François Lyotard, and Kitaro Nishida shed new light on the philosophical study of technology and modernity. He contests the prevalent conception of technology as an unstoppable force responsive only to its own internal dynamic and politicizes the discussion of its social and cultural construction. This argument is substantiated in a series of compelling and well-grounded case studies. Through his exploration of science fiction and film, AIDS research, the French experience with the "information superhighway," and the Japanese reception of Western values, he demonstrates how technology, when subjected to public pressure and debate, can incorporate ethical and aesthetic values. (shrink)

The annual volume of ethics consultations (ECs) has been a topic of interest in the bioethics literature, in part because of its presumed relationship to quality. To better understand factors associated with EC volume, we used multiple linear regression to model the number of case consultations performed in the last year based on a national survey. We found that hospital bed size, academic affiliation, and urban/rural location were all associated with EC volume, but were not the primary drivers. Instead, these (...) variables affected EC volume through three other variables, all of which relate to ethics staffing: the percentage of case consultations performed by a single individual; whether the survey respondent’s main role at the hospital contained the word “ethics”; and especially, the number of full-time ethics program staff. We conclude that EC is an example of supply-sensitive care, and further research is needed to determine the optimal level of EC activity. (shrink)

Building on previous works which argued that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, this paper proposes a constraint on exhaustification which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed. We show that this economy condition allows us to derive a number of generalizations, such as, in particular, the ‘Implicature Focus Generalization’: scalar implicatures can be embedded under a downward-entailing operator only if the scalar term bears pitch accent. Our economy condition also derives specific predictions regarding (...) the licensing of so-called Hurford disjunctions. (shrink)

In Being and Worth Andrew Collier argues that beings both in the natural and human worlds have worth in themselves, whether we recognize it or not. He builds on recent work in critical realism to provide a reassessment of Spinoza's philosophy of mind and ethics. Conclusions are developed with particular reference to environmental ethics.

Two decades of critique have sensitized historians and philosophers of science to the inadequacies of conventional dichotomies between theory and practice, thereby prompting the search for new ways of writing about science that are less beholden than the old ways to the epistemological mores of theoretical physics, and more faithful to the actual practices not only of physics but of all the natural sciences. The need for alternative descriptions seems particularly urgent if one is to understand the place of theory (...) (and, in parallel, the role of modeling) in contemporary molecular biology, a science where, until now, no division between theory and experiment has obtained, and where distinctions between representing and intervening, and more generally, between basic and applied science, are daily becoming more blurred. Indeed, the very division between theory and experiment threatens to slight the extensive and sophisticated theoretical analyses (and even modeling) on which experimental work in contemporary molecular biology so often depends. My aim in this paper is to find a way of talking about theoretical practices in biology that is directly rooted in the mix of conceptual and material work that biologists do. As an example of such theoretical practices, I choose for the focus of my analysis the development of a model for gene regulation out of the experimental work of Eric Davidson and his colleagues at Cal Tech. (shrink)

An argument that the deepest disagreement can on occasion be resolved albeit over time.

In his 1979 lectures, Foucault took particular interest in the reconfiguration of quotidian practices under neo-liberal human capital theory, re-describing all persons as entrepreneurs of the self. By the early 1980s, Foucault had begun to articulate a theory of ethical conduct driven not by the logic of investment, but of artistic development and self-care. This article uses Foucault’s account of human capital as a basis to explore the meaning and limits of Foucault’s final published works and argues for two interrelated (...) genealogical projects focused on the ethics of economic activity. (shrink)

While philosophical questions about health and disease have attracted much attention in recent decades, and while opinions are divided on most issues, influential accounts seem to embrace negativism about health, according to which health is the absence of disease. Some subscribe to unrestricted negativism, which claims that negativism applies not only to the concepts of health and disease as used by healthcare professionals but also to the lay concept that underpins everyday thinking. Whether people conceptualize health in this manner has (...) implications for medical care and public health, and so we set out to examine this claim in two studies. Participants were asked to assess and compare the health states of two people presented in two vignettes. We found that both lay people and medical students conceptualize health as something more than the absence of disease. We argue that our findings highlight a need to rethink unrestricted negativism and indicate a need to rethink the way the debate has traditionally focused on disease. (shrink)