Our primary goal was to develop and validate a task that could provide evidence about how humans learn praxis gestures, such as those involving the use of tools. To that end, we created a video-based task in which subjects view a model performing novel, meaningless one-handed actions with kinematics similar to praxis gestures. Subjects then imitated the movements with their right hand. Trials were repeated 6 times to examine practice effects. EEG was recorded during the task. As a control, subjects (...) watched videos of a model performing a well-established (over learned) tool-use gesture. These gestures were also imitated 6 times. Demonstrating convergent validity, EEG measures of task-related cortical activation were similar in topography and frequency between the novel gesture task and the overlearned, praxis gesture task. As in studies assessing motor skill learning with simpler tasks, cortical activation during novel gesture learning decreased as the same gestures were repeated. In the control condition, repetition of overlearned tool-use gestures were also associated with reductions in activation, though to a lesser degree. Given that even overlearned, praxis gestures show constriction of EEG activity with repetition, it is possible that that attentional effects drive some of the repetition effects seen in EEG measures of activation during novel gesture repetition. (shrink)

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are thought to result in part from altered cortical excitatory-inhibitory balance; this pathophysiology may impact the generation of oscillations on EEG. We investigated premotor-parietal cortical physiology associated with praxis, which has strong theoretical and empirical associations with ASD symptomatology. 25 children with high-functioning ASD (HFA) and 33 controls performed a praxis task involving the pantomiming of tool use, while EEG was recorded. We assessed task-related modulation of signal power in alpha and beta frequency bands. Compared with (...) controls, subjects with HFA showed 27% less left central (motor/premotor) beta (18-22 Hz) event-related desynchronization (ERD) (p = 0.030), as well as 24% less left parietal alpha (7-13 Hz) ERD (p = 0.046). Within the HFA group, blunting of central ERD attenuation was associated with impairments in clinical measures of praxis imitation (r = -0.4; p = 0.04) and increased autism severity (r = 0.48; p = 0.016). The modulation of central beta activity is associated, among other things, with motor imagery, which may be necessary for imitation. Impaired imitation has been associated with core features of ASD. Altered modulation of oscillatory activity may be mechanistically involved in those aspects of motor network function that relate to the core symptoms of ASD. (shrink)

Ellen Fox and collaborators have produced the most detailed description of healthcare ethics practices in the United States available. Some findings are shocking for anyone committed to promoting q...

Scholars and professional organizations in bioethics describe various approaches to “quality assessment” in clinical ethics. Although much of this work represents significant contributions to the literature, it is not clear that there is a robust and shared understanding of what constitutes “quality” in clinical ethics, what activities should be measured when tracking clinical ethics work, and what metrics should be used when measuring those activities. Further, even the most robust quality assessment efforts to date are idiosyncratic, in that they represent (...) evaluation of single activities or domains of clinical ethics activities, or a range of activities at a single hospital or healthcare system. Countering this trend, in this article we propose a framework for moving beyond our current ways of understanding clinical ethics quality, toward comprehensive quality assessment. We first describe a way to conceptualize quality assessment as a process of measuring disparate, isolated work activities; then, we describe quality assessment in terms of tracking interconnected work activities holistically, across different levels of assessment. We conclude by inviting future efforts in quality improvement to adopt a comprehensive approach to quality assessment into their improvement practices, and offer recommendations for how the field might move in this direction. (shrink)

Many recent evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology studies have tested hypotheses by examining correlations between variables measured at a group level (e.g., state, country, continent). In such analyses, variables collected for each aggregation are often taken to be representative of the individuals present within them, and relationships between such variables are presumed to reflect individual-level processes. There are multiple reasons to exercise caution when doing so, including: (1) the ecological fallacy, whereby relationships observed at the aggregate level do not (...) accurately represent individual-level processes; (2) non-independence of data points, which violates assumptions of the inferential techniques used in null hypothesis testing; and (3) cross-cultural non-equivalence of measurement (differences in construct validity between groups). We provide examples of how each of these gives rise to problems in the context of testing evolutionary hypotheses about human behavior, and we offer some suggestions for future research. (shrink)

With the increasing professionalization of clinical ethics, some hospitals and health systems utilize both ethics committees and professional clinical ethicists to address their ethics needs. Drawing upon historical critiques of ethics committees and their own experiences, the authors argue that, in ethics programs with one or more professional clinical ethicists, ethics committees should be dissolved when they fail to meet minimum standards of effectiveness. The authors outline several criteria for assessing effectiveness, describe the benefits of a model that places primary (...) responsibility for ethics work with professional clinical ethicists—the PCE-primary model, and offer suggestions for alternative ethics program structures that empower healthcare professionals to contribute to ethics work in ways more tailored to their strengths and skills while minimizing the shortcomings of ethics committees. (shrink)

The cytoskeleton has a central role in eukaryotic biology, enabling cells to organize internally, polarize, and translocate. Studying cytoskeletal machinery across the tree of life can identify common elements, illuminate fundamental mechanisms, and provide insight into processes specific to less‐characterized organisms. Red algae represent an ancient lineage that is diverse, ecologically significant, and biomedically relevant. Recent genomic analysis shows that red algae have a surprising paucity of cytoskeletal elements, particularly molecular motors. Here, we review the genomic and cell biological evidence (...) and propose testable models of how red algal cells might perform processes including cell motility, cytokinesis, intracellular transport, and secretion, given their reduced cytoskeletons. In addition to enhancing understanding of red algae and lineages that evolved from red algal endosymbioses (e.g., apicomplexan parasites), these ideas may also provide insight into cytoskeletal processes in animal cells. (shrink)

Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy. Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studies – as represented in our sample (...) – successfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward. (shrink)

Generative AI programs can produce high-quality written and visual content that may be used for good or ill. We argue that a credit–blame asymmetry arises for assigning responsibility for these outputs and discuss urgent ethical and policy implications focused on large-scale language models.

Appendix 1 was incomplete in the initial online publication. The original article has been corrected.

In real-time, Twitter strongly imprints world events, popular culture, and the day-to-day; Twitter records an ever growing compendium of language use and change; and Twitter has been shown to enable certain kinds of prediction. Vitally, and absent from many standard corpora such as books and news archives, Twitter also encodes popularity and spreading through retweets. Here, we describe Storywrangler, an ongoing, day-scale curation of over 100 billion tweets containing around 1 trillion 1-grams from 2008 to 2020. For each day, we (...) break tweets into 1-, 2-, and 3-grams across 150+ languages, record usage frequencies, and generate Zipf distributions. We make the data set available through an interactive time series viewer, and as downloadable time series and daily distributions. We showcase a few examples of the many possible avenues of study we aim to enable including how social amplification can be visualized through ‘contagiograms’. (shrink)

This chapter discusses epistemic objections to non-naturalist moral realism. The goal of the chapter is to determine which objections are pressing and which objections can safely be dismissed. The chapter examines five families of objections: (i) one involving necessary conditions on knowledge, (ii) one involving the idea that the causal history of our moral beliefs reflects the significant impact of irrelevant influences, (iii) one relying on the idea that moral truths do not play a role in explaining our moral beliefs, (...) (iv) one involving the claim that if moral realism is true then our moral beliefs are unlikely to be reliable, and (v) one involving the claim that moral realism is incompatible with there being a plausible explanation of our reliability about morality. The overall conclusion of the chapter is that the final objection is by far the most pressing. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

Bas Van Fraassen is a nifty philosopher of science. He received his PhD in Pittsburgh in 1966, under the guidance of Adolf Grünbaum, he taught at Yale University, the university of Toronto, the University of Southern California, he has been McCosh Professor of Philosophy in Princeton, and eventually joined the department of philosophy at San Francisco State University, where he has the title of Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. He first gained attention with his book An Introduction to the Philosophy of (...) Time and Space where he tried to develop a formal theory of space and time based on the notion of causality. The book had an enormous legacy, with experts of the likes of John Earman and David Malament joining the debate. However, he achieved V.I.P. status with his classic The Scientific Image, where he defends a combination of empiricism and antirealism towards unobservable entities based on a re-definition of what the scientific enterprise is. His last achievement is the tome Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspectives, where he combines his scientific empiricism with the view that theories are best thought as models or structures, rather than sets of sentences. In this interview, we talk about his philosophical influences and the birth of The Scientific Image during a journey through North-Africa, Turkey and Eastern Europe, we talk about saving the phenomena and suspending judgement over the existence of unobservable entities, living in world full of mysteries and leaving unanswerable questions unanswered, rationality and irrationality, living in a simulation, the historical interplay between theorizing and experimenting, the meaning of particle detectors for an empiricist, the unity of science and physicalism, the condemnation of Galilei by the Church, and the distinction between Appearance and Reality…. (shrink)

This is a commentary on a paper by the social psychologist C. Daniel Batson. I too think virtue is rare, but not so rare as Batson seems to think, despite his ingenious experiments on "moral hypocrisy.".

I present a new argument for the thesis that there is a necessarily existing, causally powerful entity—a necessary being. The outline of the argument is this: (i) necessarily, every beginning of a certain sort S (which I'll specify) can have a cause; (ii) a beginning to the existence of all non-necessarily existing things would be of sort S; (iii) such a beginning can obtain; (iv) such a beginning cannot be caused unless there is a necessary being; therefore, (v) there is (...) a necessary being. The argument uses a causal principle that is more modest than causal principles previously used in arguments for a necessary being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Drinking Rules! Byron and BaudelaireJoshua Wilner (bio)This essay 1 takes up two nineteenth-century texts on the theme of intoxication in which the poetic word can no longer, if it ever could, stably figure itself as the metaphoric other of the drug, that is, as a legitimate means of imaginative transport, and in which the writer’s enthrallment by the transporting substance of words shows us its addictive and, one might (...) say, prosaic face.The first of these pieces is a pair of stanzas from Canto II of Byron’s Don Juan, the other, Baudelaire’s brief prose poem “Enivrez-vous,” pieces that Jean Pommier [341] and, following Pommier, Robert Kopp [314–15] have suggested may be connected, though neither reader enters into much more detail than to note that both bits of writing, in Kopp’s words, “chant[e] l’ivresse.” Now the praise of drunkenness is of course a poetic commonplace, and the mere fact of its appearance in these two bits of text argues about as intimate a bond of kinship as that involved in pointing out that you and I are both Noah’s children. But there are, I would argue, compelling reasons for looking at these pieces in relation to one another and to which I believe Pommier was responding.That Byron mattered to Baudelaire is attested to by a number of references scattered throughout the latter’s work and letters, references which, while faulting Byron for garrulousness, praise him for having the thing that makes poets: “une diabolique personnalité” [OC 2: 232]. Perhaps the most interesting of these references occurs in a well-known letter that Baudelaire wrote to his mother in July 1857, shortly after Les fleurs du mal had been published and while the storm of controversy that was to culminate in the prosecution and expurgation of the collection for obscenity was rapidly gathering:On me refuse tout, l’esprit d’invention et même la connaissance de la langue française. Je me moque de tous ces imbéciles, et je sais que ce volume, avec ses qualités et ses défauts, fera son chemin dans la mémoire du public lettré, à côté des meilleurs poésies de V. Hugo, de Th. Gautier et même de Byron.[CP 1: 411][They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even knowledge of the French language. I could care less about all these imbeciles, and I know that this volume, with its qualities and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the [End Page 34] lettered public, along with the best poetry of V. Hugo, of Th. Gautier, and even of Byron.]The pride of place Baudelaire reserves for Byron in this list was somewhat dated even in its time 2 and odd in other ways, especially given the more qualified expressions of admiration we meet elsewhere in his writings. But it becomes more understandable if one considers that for Baudelaire’s mother, who was of Byron’s generation and had early ties to England 3 (in fact, she apparently taught Charles English during his childhood [E. Crépet 30], making it, strangely enough, part of his “mother tongue”), Byron’s would have been the emblematic case of a writer for whom a reputation for depravity was overtaken by poetic honor, perhaps at the cost of his death in a noble cause.Apart from this evidence of a felt affinity, there are specific formal grounds for associating the two pieces. Since they are fairly brief, allow me first of all to cite them both. Here are the stanzas from Canto II of Don Juan: 179 Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication: Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk The hopes of all men, and of every nation; Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk Of life’s strange tree, so fruitful on occasion! But to return, - Get very drunk; and when You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then. 180 Ring for your valet - bid him quickly bring Some hock and soda-water, then you’ll know A pleasure worthy Xerxes the... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Y, E10+, G, Y7, eC, E, PG? The Causal Hypothesis: Baby See, Baby Do The Edification Hypothesis: I Learned Something Good from Watching Something Bad The Catharsis Hypothesis: I'm So Mad I Should Pretend To Kill You Conclusion: The Decision, Like Fatherhood, is Full of Ambiguities Notes.

Writing in 1999, legal ethics scholar Brad Wendel noted that “[v]ery little empirical work has been done on the moral decision making of lawyers.” Indeed, since the mid-1990s, few empirical studies have attempted to explore how attorneys deliberate about ethical dilemmas they encounter in their practice. Moreover, while past research has explored some of the ethical issues confronting lawyers practicing in certain specific areas of practice, no published data exists probing the moral mind of health care lawyers. As signaled by (...) the creation of a regular column “devoted to ethical issues arising in the practice of health law” in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, the time to address the empirical gap in the professional ethics literature is now. Accordingly, this article presents data collected from 120 health care lawyers. Presenting this population with a number of hypothetical scenarios relating to how they would respond when confronting an ethical dilemma without an obvious solution or when facing a situation in which their personal values were in tension with their professional obligations, this article represents a first step toward better understanding how lawyers who practice in health care settings understand and resolve the moral discomfort they encounter in their professional lives. (shrink)

A core value of Judaism is leading an ethical life. The Talmud, an authoritative source on Jewish law and tradition, has a number of discussions that deal with honesty in business and decision-making. One motive that can cause individuals to be unscrupulous is the presence of a conflict of interest. This paper will define, discuss, and review five Talmudic concepts relevant to conflict of interest. They are (1) Nogea B’Davar (being an interested party), (2) V’hiyitem N’keyim (behaving to ensure that (...) one is above suspicion) (3) Lifnei Iver (placing a stumbling block before the blind), (4) Shokhad (accepting a bribe), and (5) Geneivat Da’at (deception and undeserved goodwill). Case examples will be used to apply these Talmudic principles to contemporary business practice. This will include discussion of these Talmudic concepts as it applies to specific contemporary business examples relevant to the boardroom, accounting firms, investment banking, politics, and government. It may be impossible to eliminate all conflicts of interest. However, knowledge and awareness of these Talmudic principles can help individuals in business settings better address the ethical issues that they confront. (shrink)

Let ${\mathcal{P}_s}$ be the lattice of degrees of non-empty ${\Pi_1^0}$ subsets of 2 ω under Medvedev reducibility. Binns and Simpson proved that FD(ω), the free distributive lattice on countably many generators, is lattice-embeddable below any non-zero element in ${\mathcal{P}_s}$ . Cenzer and Hinman proved that ${\mathcal{P}_s}$ is dense, by adapting the Sacks Preservation and Sacks Coding Strategies used in the proof of the density of the c.e. Turing degrees. With a construction that is a modification of the one by Cenzer (...) and Hinman, we improve on the result of Binns and Simpson by showing that for any ${\mathcal{U} < _s \mathcal{V}}$ , we can lattice embed FD(ω) into ${\mathcal{P}_s}$ strictly between ${deg_s(\mathcal{U})}$ and ${deg_s({\mathcal V})}$ . We also note that, in contrast to the infinite injury in the proof of the Sacks Density Theorem, in our proof all injury is finite, and that this is also true for the proof of Cenzer and Hinman, if a straightforward simplification is made. (shrink)

It has been widely accepted since Stanley and Williamson (2001) that the only linguistically acceptable semantic treatments for sentences of the form ‘S knows how to V’ involve treating the wh-complement ‘how to V’ as an interrogative phrase, denoting a set of propositions. Recently a number of authors have suggested that the ‘how to V’ phrase denotes not a proposition, but an object. This view points toward a prima facie plausible non-propositional semantics for knowledge-how, which treats ‘how to V’ as (...) a free relative noun phrase. In this paper I argue that the free relative semantics is implausible. I show that linguistic phenomena which seem to support a free relative semantics can be explained by the supporter of an interrogative semantics, and demonstrate that standard linguistic tests strongly suggest that ‘how to V’ has an interrogative reading, and no free relative reading. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Secular Government, Religious People by Ira C. Lupu and Robert W. TuttleJoshua T. MauldinSecular Government, Religious People Ira C. Lupu and Robert W. Tuttle grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2014. 279 pp. $25.00.In Secular Government, Religious People, Ira C. Lupu and Robert W. Tuttle provide a structuralist account of the Establishment Clause and suggest that their conception of the secular character of government resonates with the dominant strand of (...) First Amendment jurisprudence. On their view, the religion clauses are not only about the religious rights of persons; the Establishment Clause is primarily about the character of government itself. That character is secular, meaning that the government is “constitutionally disabled” from settling “ecclesiastical questions.” These include not only obviously theological questions about the nature of God or true religion but also seemingly more mundane matters such as “Who is fit to be a minister?” or “Which faction of a fractured religious congregation is closer to the beliefs of the congregation’s charter members?”The problem with judicial attempts to engage such questions became increasingly evident in the development of legal doctrine throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and one of the primary values of this book is its clear account of this history. One example is the “iconic” Supreme Court decision in the 1971 case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, which included an important rule against “excessive entanglement” between the state and religious groups, based on the Establishment Clause. For Lupu and Tuttle, this ruling is paradigmatic of their structuralist argument for nonestablishment. If the Establishment Clause requires that government be secular, then the government may not claim divine authority or establish a covenant with God or engage in acts of worship. The government may, nevertheless, acknowledge the religious character of its people; the religious freedom of the people is protected by the secular character of government in that a sphere of society is reserved for religious practice and thereby protected from governmental intrusion. While religious persons might actually prefer that government “interfere” in the religious sphere for various reasons, and might even view the government’s failure to do so as an assault on religious freedom, it is precisely the noninterference of government in religious matters that protects religious freedom.The book involves both a descriptive analysis of the development of American law and a normative argument for a particular legal philosophy. Tuttle and Lupu argue that it is best when government is secular, and they suggest that this is a basic assumption of mainstream American law, both in its origins and later [End Page 213] trajectory. Some will question the sharp distinction drawn between “government” and “people.” In a democratic society, is there a clear line between the people and the government as representative of the people’s will? Furthermore, one wonders whether the kind of American “civil religion” that Robert Bellah famously analyzed in the 1960s, and against which Tuttle and Lupu inveigh, is simply here to stay. American presidents continue to invoke God in public speeches, and many citizens believe that the United States itself is in a covenant with God. Tuttle and Lupu worry that any appeal to such a covenant leads to the “totalitarian” identification of political and divine authority. But the covenant with God could just as easily lead to a critique of political authority as to a reinforcement of it. As Abraham Lincoln declared in a legendary piece of American political theology, “The Almighty has his own purposes.” For Tuttle and Lupu, this kind of civil religion is both unconstitutional and bad public policy. But one wonders whether we could ever really eradicate it, and even if we could, whether it would be wise to do so.Joshua T. MauldinCenter of Theological InquiryCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

An argument for generating a duty of beneficence using Kant's Formula of Universal Law.

According to Intellectualism knowing how to V is a matter of knowing a suitable proposition about a way of V-ing. In this paper, I consider the question of which ways of acting might figure in the propositions which Intellectualists claim constitute the object of knowledge-how. I argue that Intellectualists face a version of the Generality Problem – familiar from discussions of Reliabilism – since not all ways of V-ing are such that knowledge about them suffices for knowledge-how. I consider various (...) responses to this problem, and argue that none are satisfactory. (shrink)

Hilary Kornblith is one of the world’s leading epistemologists, a champion of an innovative philosophical research program that is at once traditional and revisionary. In viewing the study of knowledge as inseparable from the empirical study of the mind, Kornblith aligns himself closely with the approach of the traditional empiricists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet in taking contemporary empirical work seriously, Kornblith has developed views and arguments that shift the epistemological focus away from what is available first-personally _within_ (...) the mind towards what is revealed third-personally _of_ the mind instead. Indeed, anyone looking seriously at the history of 20th century epistemology can draw a straight line from W.V.O. Quine through Alvin Goldman to Hilary Kornblith – all three, in their ways, champions of a science-centered epistemology. On the innovative leading edge of that tradition, however, Kornblith has developed a systematic rejection of the traditional philosophical method of conceptual analysis (_pace_ Goldman) while establishing a thoroughly empirical and yet unambiguously philosophical approach to the study of knowledge (_pace_ Quine). As such, Kornblith’s work is required reading for anyone interested in the structure and nature of knowledge, the structure and grounds of justification, the sources of epistemic normativity, the history and the prospects for a naturalized epistemology, the legitimacy of intuition-dependent conceptual analysis as a philosophical method, and the significance and reliability of reflection and reasoning. This volume collects 16 original essays that advance the state of play by engaging critically and substantively with Kornblith’s views on these and other topics, along with an essay by Kornblith himself replying to his critics. (shrink)

Let \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal{P}_s}$$\end{document} be the lattice of degrees of non-empty \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Pi_1^0}$$\end{document} subsets of 2ω under Medvedev reducibility. Binns and Simpson proved that FD(ω), the free distributive lattice on countably many generators, is lattice-embeddable below any non-zero element in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal{P}_s}$$\end{document}. Cenzer and Hinman proved that \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal{P}_s}$$\end{document} is (...) dense, by adapting the Sacks Preservation and Sacks Coding Strategies used in the proof of the density of the c.e. Turing degrees. With a construction that is a modification of the one by Cenzer and Hinman, we improve on the result of Binns and Simpson by showing that for any \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal{U} < _s \mathcal{V}}$$\end{document}, we can lattice embed FD(ω) into \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathcal{P}_s}$$\end{document} strictly between \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${deg_s(\mathcal{U})}$$\end{document} and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${deg_s({\mathcal V})}$$\end{document}. We also note that, in contrast to the infinite injury in the proof of the Sacks Density Theorem, in our proof all injury is finite, and that this is also true for the proof of Cenzer and Hinman, if a straightforward simplification is made. (shrink)

In a historical moment when cross-cultural communication proves both necessary and difficult, the work of comparative philosophy is timely. Philosophical resources for building a shared future marked by vitality and collaborative meaning-making are in high demand. Taking note of the present global philosophical situation, this collection of essays critically engages the scholarship of Roger T. Ames, who for decades has had a central role in the evolution of comparative and nonwestern philosophy. With a reflective methodology that has produced creative translations (...) of key Chinese philosophical texts, Ames-in conjunction with notable collaborators such as D.C. Lau, David Hall, and Henry Rosemont Jr.-has brought China's philosophical traditions into constructive cross-cultural dialogue on numerous ethical and social issues that we face today. The volume opens with two parts that share overlapping concerns about interpretation and translation of nonwestern texts and traditions. Parts III and IV-"Process Cosmology" and "Epistemological Considerations"-mark the shift in comparative projects from the metaphilosophical and translational stage to the more traditionally philosophical stage. Parts V and VI-"Confucian Role Ethics" and "Classical Daoism"-might best be read as Chinese contributions to philosophical inquiry into living well or "ethics" broadly construed. Lastly, Part VII takes Amesian comparative philosophy in "Critical Social and Political Directions," explicitly drawing out the broader dimensions of social constitution and the ideal of harmony. The contributors-scholars working in philosophy, religious studies, and Asian studies-pursue lines of inquiry opened up by the work of Roger Ames, and their chapters both clarify his ideas and push them in new directions. They survey the field of Chinese philosophy as it is taking shape in the wake of Ames's contributions and as it carries forward a global conversation on the future of humanity. (shrink)

This volume brings together for the first time thirteen recent interviews with the brightest names in contemporary philosophy, including W.V.O. Quine, Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Hilary Putnam and John Rawls. The pieces are culled from the Harvard Review of Philosophy, which has operated at the core of Harvard's Philosophy Department since 1991. Covering wide range of topics from the philosophy of law to logic to metaphysics to literature, the interviews provide a fascinating introduction to some of the most influential thinkers (...) of the day. The book also includes a foreword by Thomas Scanlon. Interviews with Henry Alison, Stanley Cavell, Alan Dershowitz, Cora Diamond, Umberto Eco, Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Alexander Nehemas, Hilary Putnam, W.V. Quine, John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Michael Sandel, Cornel West. (shrink)

Discusses the differences between the spies sent by Moses and those sent by Joshua by exploring the spiritual significance of both events and their application today.

CONTENTS Carlo Ierna: The Beginnings of Husserl's Philosophy. Part 1: From ber den Begriff der Zahl to Philosophie der Arithmetik Robin Rollinger: Scientific Philosophy, Phenomenology, and Logic: The Standpoint of Paul Linke\ Nicholas deWarren:The Significance of Stern's "PrSsenzzeit" for Husserl's Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness Sen Overgaard: Being There: Heidegger's Formally Indicative Concept of "Dasein" Panos Theodorou: Perceptual and Scientific Thing: On Husserl's Analysis of 'Nature-Thing' in Ideas II Nam-In-Lee: Phenomenology of Feeling in Husserl and Levinas Wai-Shun Hung:Perception and Self-Awareness in (...) Merleau-Ponty:The Problem of the Tacit Cogito in the Phenomenology of Perception Ivan Chvatfk: Plato's Phaedo as an Aesopian Fable about the Immortal Soul Joshua Kates: Two Versions of Husserl's Late History: Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida and the Problem of Modernity L. William Stern: Mental Presence-Time Edmund Husserl: Lecture on the Concept of Number Martina Stieler: Memories of Edmund Husserl Sen Overgaard: Transcendental Phenomenology and the Question of Transcendence: A Discussion of Damian Byers's Intentionality and Transcendence Damian Byers: Method and Discovery in Phenomenology: A Reply to Sen Overgaard Sen Overgaard: Inside Phenomenology: A Reply to Damian Byers. (shrink)

CONTENTS Carlo Ierna: The Beginnings of Husserl's Philosophy. Part 1: From ber den Begriff der Zahl to Philosophie der Arithmetik Robin Rollinger: Scientific Philosophy, Phenomenology, and Logic: The Standpoint of Paul Linke\ Nicholas deWarren:The Significance of Stern's "PrSsenzzeit" for Husserl's Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness Sen Overgaard: Being There: Heidegger's Formally Indicative Concept of "Dasein" Panos Theodorou: Perceptual and Scientific Thing: On Husserl's Analysis of 'Nature-Thing' in Ideas II Nam-In-Lee: Phenomenology of Feeling in Husserl and Levinas Wai-Shun Hung:Perception and Self-Awareness in (...) Merleau-Ponty:The Problem of the Tacit Cogito in the Phenomenology of Perception Ivan Chvatfk: Plato's Phaedo as an Aesopian Fable about the Immortal Soul Joshua Kates: Two Versions of Husserl's Late History: Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida and the Problem of Modernity L. William Stern: Mental Presence-Time (English/German) Edmund Husserl: Lecture on the Concept of Number (WS 1889/90) (English/German) Martina Stieler: Memories of Edmund Husserl Sen Overgaard: Transcendental Phenomenology and the Question of Transcendence: A Discussion of Damian Byers's Intentionality and Transcendence Damian Byers: Method and Discovery in Phenomenology: A Reply to Sen Overgaard Sen Overgaard: Inside Phenomenology: A Reply to Damian Byers. (shrink)

t. 1. Dialog s V. V. Davydovym -- t. 2. Nereshennye problemy razvivai︠u︡shchego obrazovanii︠a︡.

An extensive body of research suggests that the distinction between doing and allowing plays a critical role in shaping moral appraisals. Here, we report evidence from a pair of experiments suggesting that the converse is also true: moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments. Specifically, morally bad behavior is more likely to be construed as actively ‘doing’ than as passively ‘allowing’. This finding adds to a growing list of folk concepts influenced by moral appraisal, including causation and intentional action. We therefore suggest (...) that the present finding favors the view that moral appraisal plays a pervasive role in shaping diverse cognitive representations across multiple domains. -/- . (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a new interdisciplinary field that uses methods normally associated with psychology to investigate questions normally associated with philosophy. The present review focuses on research in experimental philosophy on four central questions. First, why is it that people's moral judgments appear to influence their intuitions about seemingly nonmoral questions? Second, do people think that moral questions have objective answers, or do they see morality as fundamentally relative? Third, do people believe in free will, and do they see free (...) will as compatible with determinism? Fourth, how do people determine whether an entity is conscious? (shrink)

It has been standard philosophical practice in analytic philosophy to employ intuitions generated in response to thought-experiments as evidence in the evaluation of philosophical claims. In part as a response to this practice, an exciting new movement—experimental philosophy—has recently emerged. This movement is unified behind both a common methodology and a common aim: the application of methods of experimental psychology to the study of the nature of intuitions. In this paper, we will introduce two different views concerning the relationship that (...) holds between experimental philosophy and the future of standard philosophical practice (what we call, the proper foundation view and the restrictionist view), discuss some of the more interesting and important results obtained by proponents of both views, and examine the pressure these results put on analytic philosophers to reform standard philosophical practice. We will also defend experimental philosophy from some recent objections, suggest future directions for work in experimental philosophy, and suggest what future lines of epistemological response might be available to those wishing to defend analytic epistemology from the challenges posed by experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Four experiments examined people’s folk-psychological concept of intentional action. The chief question was whether or not _evaluative _considerations — considerations of good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame — played any role in that concept. The results indicated that the moral qualities of a behavior strongly influence people’s judgements as to whether or not that behavior should be considered ‘intentional.’ After eliminating a number of alternative explanations, the author concludes that this effect is best explained by the hypothesis (...) that evaluative considerations do play some role in people’s concept of intentional action.<b> </b>. (shrink)

This Element is a concise, high-level introduction to the philosophy of physical symmetry. It begins with the notion of `physical representation' (the kind of empirical representation of nature that we effect in doing physics), and then lays out the historically and conceptually central case of physical symmetry that frequently falls under the rubric of 'the Relativity Principle', or 'Galileo's Ship. This material is then used as a point of departure to explore the key hermeneutic challenge concerning physical symmetry in the (...) last century, namely understanding the physical significance of the notion of 'local' gauge symmetry. The approach taken stresses both the continuity with historically important themes such as the Relativity Principle, as well as novel insights earned by working with contemporary media such as the covariant phase space and derived critical locus formalisms. (shrink)

Claims about people's intuitions have long played an important role in philosophical debates. The new field of experimental philosophy seeks to subject such claims to rigorous tests using the traditional methods of cognitive science – systematic experimentation and statistical analysis. Work in experimental philosophy thus far has investigated people's intuitions in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics. Although it is now generally agreed that experimental philosophers have made surprising discoveries about people's intuitions in each of these areas, (...) considerable disagreement remains about the philosophical significance of the key findings. Some have argued that work in experimental philosophy should be assessed by asking whether it can contribute to the kind of inquiry that is normally pursued within analytic philosophy, while others suggest that work in experimental philosophy is best understood as a contribution to a more traditional sort of philosophical inquiry that long predates the birth of analytic philosophy. (shrink)