This book addresses the most important questions asked about higher education: What should its content be? What should we educate for, and why? What constitutes a meaningful liberal education, as distinct from mere training for a vocation? These and many other questions are addressed by Reuben Abel, M.H. Abrams, Robert L. Bartley, Ronald Berman, Also S. Bernardo, Wm. Theodore deBary, Gray Dorsey, Joseph Dunner, Nathan Glazer, Feliks Gross, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Gerald Holton, Sidney Hook, Charles Issawi, Montimer R. Kadish, Paul Oscar (...) Krissteller, paul Kurtz, Herbert I. London, Ernest Nagel, Henry R. Novotny, Frederick A. Olafson, Michael Rabin, Howard B. Radest, Joseph J. Schwab, Robert F. Sexton, Thomas Sowell, John B. Stephenson, and Miro M. Todorovich. (shrink)

Empathy is a lay term that is becoming increasingly viewed as a unitary function within the field of cognitive neuroscience. In this paper, a selective review of the empathy literature is provided. It is argued from this literature that empathy is not a unitary system but rather a loose collection of partially dissociable neurocognitive systems. In particular, three main divisions can be made: cognitive empathy , motor empathy, and emotional empathy. The two main psychiatric disorders associated with empathic dysfunction are (...) considered: autism and psychopathy. It is argued that individuals with autism show difficulties with cognitive and motor empathy but less clear difficulties with respect to emotional empathy. In contrast, individuals with psychopathy show clear difficulties with a specific form of emotional empathy but no indications of impairment with cognitive and motor empathy. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

There has been a long tradition of characterizing man as the animal that talks. However, the remarkable ability of using pictures also only belongs to human beings, after all we know empirically so far. Are there conceptual reasons for that coincidence? Such a question belongs to the philosophy of language just as well as to philosophical visualistics. Comparing the two abilities to use words or pictures yields several similarities as well as distinctions. A well-known conceptual disparity between pictures and words (...) appears in their relation to perception: the difference can be further determined in an act-theoretic manner by four modes of use of the sign vehicles during the corresponding sign acts. Furthermore, the figure/ground dichotomy means something different for language uses and picture uses. In both cases, however, there is a close relation to the function of context building, by which humans are able to communicate not only with respect to the present situation of behavior but with respect to arbitrary contexts as well. Although the structural comparison does clarify the conceptual relations, it cannot explain that the conceptual structure ought to be like that. Therefore, the paper concludes with the programme of a "concept-genetic" consideration of the two abilities (i.e., to use propositional language or to use pictures) that is able to give us such a foundation. (shrink)

Conceptualizing cosmopolitanism : a reappraisal -- A historical sociology of cosmopolitanism -- Cosmopolitanism and social theory -- Cosmopolitanism : social and cultural research -- Cosmopolitanism : legal and political research -- Cosmopolitanism in Ireland.

This collection of papers were originally presented during conferences on ethics in science and technology that UNESCO’s Regional Unit for Social and Human Sciences (RUSHSAP) has been convening since 2005. Since intercultural communication and information-sharing are essential components of these deliberations, the books also provide theme-related discourse from the conferences.

It is shown how to define forcing semantics within metatheories not containing the power-set construction, in particular, how to construct exponents assuming only (a slightly strengthened form of) exponents in the metatheory. Some straightforward applications (consistency and independence results, and derived rules) are obtained for such systems.

A brain-computer interface is a rapidly evolving neurotechnology connecting the human brain with a computer. In its classic form, brain activity is recorded and used to control external devices like protheses or wheelchairs. Thus, BCI users act with the power of their thoughts. While the initial development has focused on medical uses of BCIs, non-medical applications have recently been gaining more attention, for example in automobiles, airplanes, and the entertainment context. However, the attitudes of the general public towards BCIs have (...) hardly been explored. Among the general population in Germany aged 18–65 years, a representative online survey with 20 items was conducted in summer 2018 and analysed by descriptive statistics. The survey assessed: affinity for technology; previous knowledge and experience concerning BCIs; the attitude towards ethical, social and legal implications of BCI use and demographic information. Our results indicate that BCIs are a unique and puzzling way of human–machine interaction. The findings reveal a positive view and high level of trust in BCIs on the one hand but on the other hand a wide range of ethical and anthropological concerns. Agency and responsibility were clearly attributed to the BCI user. The participants’ opinions were divided regarding the impact BCIs have on humankind. In summary, a high level of ambivalence regarding BCIs was found. We suggest better information of the public and the promotion of public deliberation about BCIs in order to ensure responsible development and application of this potentially disruptive technology. (shrink)

Vier opstellen over rechtssociologie en criminologie, vanuit fenomenologische invalshoek bezien.

The four short works in Untimely Meditations were published by Nietzsche between 1873 and 1876.They deal with such broad topics as the relationship between popular and genuine culture, strategies for cultural reform, the task of philosophy, the nature of education, and the relationship between art, science and life. They also include Nietzsche's earliest statement of his own understanding of human selfhood as a process of endlessly 'becoming who one is'. As Daniel Breazeale shows in his introduction to this new edition (...) of R. J. Hollingdale's translation of the essays, these four early texts are key documents for understanding the development of Nietzsche's thought and clearly anticipate many of the themes of his later writings. Nietzsche himself always cherished his Untimely Meditations and believed that they provide valuable evidence of his 'becoming and self-overcoming' and constitute a 'public pledge' concerning his own distinctive task as a philosopher. (shrink)

One method for investigating the neurobiology of consciousness is to experimentally manipulate consciousness as a variable and then visualize the resultant functional brain changes with advanced imaging techniques. To begin investigation into this area, healthy volunteers underwent positron emission tomography scanning while listening to randomized word lists in both conscious and unconscious conditions. Following anaesthesia, subjects had no explicit memories. Nonetheless, subjects demonstrated implicit memory on a forced-choice test . These subsequent memory scores were correlated with regional brain metabolism measured (...) during encoding. Conscious recall and unconscious recognition memory demonstrated considerable anatomic overlap in correlating significantly with relative glucose metabolism in auditory verbal memory areas. However, only conscious recall correlated with mediodorsal thalamic nucleus activity; unconscious recognition memory did not. These findings suggest that conscious versus unconscious memory distinctions may depend on the presence or absence of correlated thalamic activity, and directly implicate the thalamus in the neurobiology of consciousness. (shrink)

Background: Increasing interest in empirical ethics has enhanced understanding of healthcare professionals’ ethical problems and attendant decision-making. A four-stage decision-making model involving ethical attention, reasoning, intention and action offers further insights into how more than reasoning alone may contribute to decision-making.Aims: To explore how the four-stage model can increase understanding of decision-making in healthcare and describe the decision-making of an under-researched professional group.Methods: 23 purposively sampled UK community pharmacists were asked, in semi-structured interviews, to describe ethical problems in their work (...) and how they were resolved. Framework analysis of transcribed interviews utilised the four decision-making stages, together with constant comparative methods and deviant-case analysis.Results: Pharmacists were often inattentive and constructed problems in legal terms. Ethical reasoning was limited, but examples of appeals to consequences, the golden rule, religious faith and common-sense experience emerged. Ethical intention was compromised by frequent concern about legal prosecution. Ethical inaction was common, typified by pharmacists’ failure to report healthcare professionals’ bad practices, and ethical passivity emerged to describe these negative examples of the four decision-making stages. Pharmacists occasionally described more ethically active decision-making, but this often involved ethical uncertainty.Discussion: The four decision-making stages are a useful tool in considering how healthcare professionals try to resolve ethical problems in practice. They reveal processes often ignored in normative theories, and their recognition and the emergence of ethical passivity indicates the complexity of decision-making in practice. Ethical passivity may be deleterious to patients’ welfare, and concerns emerge about improving pharmacists’ ethical training and promoting ethical awareness and responsibility. (shrink)

Patients who are dying of cancer usually give up eating and then stop drinking. This raises ethical dilemmas about providing nutritional support and fluid replacement. The decision-making process should be based on a knowledge of the risks and benefits of giving or withholding treatments. There is no clear evidence that increased nutritional support or fluid therapy alters comfort, mental status or survival of patients who are dying. Rarely, subcutaneous fluid administration in the dying patient may be justified if the family (...) remain distressed despite due consideration of the lack of medical benefit versus the risks. Some cancer patients who are not imminently dying become dehydrated from reversible conditions such as hypercalcaemia. This may mimic the effects of advanced cancer. These conditions should be sought and fluid replacement therapy should be given along with the specific treatments for the condition. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that God’s causation of human free choices is best understood in light of Aquinas’s teaching on creation. Such a position is attractive because it provides a way of avoiding the compatibilism of classical interpretations of Aquinas. However, this position may be subject to other flaws. In fact, Francisco Suárez explicitly rejects the view that God’s creative causality can be understood either as the divine essence or as a predicamental relation of the created effect to God. (...) The purpose of this essay is to investigate, first, whether Suárez’s view of efficient causality rules out conceptualizing God’s motion of the will in terms of creation, and second, whether it provides a more plausible alternative. I argue on both points that it does not, and that an error common to both Suárez and his sixteenth-century opponents is one reason to conceptualize divine motion as a kind of creation. (shrink)