The potential to instrumentalize drug use based upon the detection of very many different drug states undoubtedly exists, and such states may play a role in psychiatric and many other drug uses. Nevertheless, nonaddictive drug use is potentially more parsimoniously explained in terms of sensation seeking/impulsivity and drug expectations. Cultural factors also play a major role in nonaddictive drug use.

The framework for addiction offered by the target article can perhaps be simplified into fewer, more basic, vulnerabilities. covers a number of vulnerabilities, not just enhanced delay discounting. Real-world drug-use decisions involve both delay and probability discounting. The motivational salience of, and attentional bias for, drug cues may be related to a number of vulnerabilities. Interactions among vulnerabilities are of significance and complicate the application of this framework.

"Equality of opportunity for all" is a fine piece of political rhetoric but the ideal that lies behind it is slippery to say the least. This book defends a particular account of the ideal and its place in a more radical version of what it is to level the playing field.

This article considers the role of conceptual analysis in jurisprudence. In responding to the earlier article of Brian Bix, Conceptual Questions and Jurisprudence , 1 Legal Theory 465 , it is agreed that the purpose of the theorist must be identified in order to evaluate the merits of the practice of conceptual analysis, but the approach taken here differs from that proposed by Bix. In particular, it is suggested that Bix is wrong to limit stipulation within conceptual analysis to a (...) default option, and Bix's suggestion that jurisprudential analysis lacks an empirical basis is challenged. The approach developed in this article relies on a clarification of the relationships among terms, concepts, and fields of enquiry. It explores the different relationships that can exist between concepts. Seven general principles of the practice of conceptual analysis are expounded, and the proper scope of an evaluative element within conceptual analysis is considered. A final section briefly examines some of the wider implications of the approach to conceptual analysis proposed in the article. (shrink)

This discussion provides a brief commentary on each of the papers presented in the symposium on the conceptual foundations of field theories in physics. In Section 2 I suggest an alternative to Paul Teller's (1999) reading of the gauge argument that may help to solve, or dissolve, its puzzling aspects. In Section 3 I contend that Sunny Auyang's (1999) arguments against substantivalism and for "objectivism" in the context of gauge field theories face serious worries. Finally, in Section 4 (...) I claim that Gordon Fleming's (1999) proposal for hyperplane-dependent Newton-Wigner fields differs importantly from his previous arguments about hyperplane-dependent properties in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This discussion provides a brief commentary on each of the papers presented in the symposium on the conceptual foundations of field theories in physics. In Section 2 I suggest an alternative to Paul Teller's reading of the gauge argument that may help to solve, or dissolve, its puzzling aspects. In Section 3 I contend that Sunny Auyang's arguments against substantivalism and for “objectivism” in the context of gauge field theories face serious worries. Finally, in Section 4 I claim (...) that Gordon Fleming's proposal for hyperplane-dependent Newton-Wigner fields differs importantly from his previous arguments about hyperplane-dependent properties in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Andrew Samuels is one of the best known figures internationally in the fields of psychotherapy, Jungian analysis, relational psychoanalysis and counselling and in academic studies in those areas. His work is a blend of the provocative and original together with the reliable and scholarly. His many books and papers figure prominently on reading lists on clinical and academic teaching contexts. This self-selected collection, Passions, Persons, Psychotherapy and Politics, brings together some of his major writings at the interface of politics (...) and therapy thinking. In this volume, he includes chapters on the market economy, prospects for eco-psychology and environmentalism; the role of the political Trickster, particularly the female Trickster; chapters on the father; on relations between women and men and his celebrated and radical critique of the Jungian idea of 'the feminine principle'. Clinical material consists of his work on parents and on the therapy relationship. The book concludes with his seminal and transparent work on Jung and anti-semitism and an intriguing account of the current trajectory of the Jungian field.Samuels has written a highly personal and confessional introduction to the book. Each chapter also has its own topical introduction, written in a clear and informal style. There is also much that will challenge long-held beliefs of many working in politics and in the social sciences. This unique collection of papers will be of interest to psychotherapists, Jungian analysts, psychoanalysts and counsellors--as well as those undertaking academic work in those areas. (shrink)

The understanding of the interrelationship between brain and mind remains far from clear. It is well established that the brain's capacity to integrate information from numerous sources forms the basis for cognitive abilities. However, the core unresolved question is how information about the "objective" physical entities of the external world can be integrated, and how unifiedand coherent mental states (or Gestalts) can be established in the internal entities of distributed neuronal systems. The present paper offers a unified methodological and conceptual (...) basis for a possible mechanism of how the transient synchronization of brain operations may construct the unified and relatively stable neural states, which underlie mental states. It was shown that the sequence of metastable spatial EEG mosaics does exist and probably reflects the rapid stabilization periods of the interrelation of large neuron systems. At the EEG level this is reflected in the stabilization of quasi-stationary segments on corresponding channels. Within the introduced framework, physical brain processes and psychological processes are considered as two basic aspects of a single whole informational brain state. The relations between operational process of the brain, mental states and consciousness are discussed. (shrink)

An internal critique of anthropology in recent decades has shifted the focus and scope of anthropological work on emotion. In this article I review the changes, explore the pros and cons of leading anthropological approaches and theories, and argue that—so far as anthropology is concerned—only detailed narrative accounts can do full justice to the complexity of emotions. A narrative approach captures both the particularity and the temporal dimension of emotion with greater fidelity than semantic, synchronic, and discourse-based approaches.

Field theories have been central to physics over the last 150 years, and there are several theories in contemporary physics in which physical fields play key causal and explanatory roles. This paper proposes a novel field trope-bundle (FTB) ontology on which fields are composed of bundles of particularized property instances, called tropes and goes on to describe some virtues of this ontology. It begins with a critical examination of the dominant view about the ontology of fields, that fields (...) are properties of a substantial substratum. (shrink)

Science as Practice and Culture explores one of the newest and most controversial developments within the rapidly changing field of science studies: the move toward studying scientific practice--the work of doing science--and the associated move toward studying scientific culture, understood as the field of resources that practice operates in and on. Andrew Pickering has invited leading historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists of science to prepare original essays for this volume. The essays range over the physical and biological (...) sciences and mathematics, and are divided into two parts. In part I, the contributors map out a coherent set of perspectives on scientific practice and culture, and relate their analyses to central topics in the philosophy of science such as realism, relativism, and incommensurability. The essays in part II seek to delineate the study of science as practice in arguments across its borders with the sociology of scientific knowledge, social epistemology, and reflexive ethnography. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to show that phenomenal consciousness is realized by a particular level of brain operational organization and that understanding human consciousness requires a description of the laws of the immediately underlying neural collective phenomena, the nested hierarchy of electromagnetic fields of brain activity – operational architectonics. We argue that the subjective mental reality and the objective neurobiological reality, although seemingly worlds apart, are intimately connected along a unified metastable continuum and are both guided by the universal (...) laws of the physical world such as criticality, self-organization and emergence. (shrink)

Ushenko's speculative vision opened on the problem of time and its relation to logic. Profoundly concerned about the theme of time--the theme that intrinsically defines romantic irrationalism--he yet endeavored to vindicate within the bounds of temporality the sovereignty of logic so essential to the continuance of classical philosophy. The dual preoccupation with time and logic urged him into the fields of symbolic logic and relativity physics. From the flux of unrepeatable events he disengaged the laws of logic and the propositions (...) of scientific discourse, while at the same time he sought to keep both orders of entity united without injury to either. He ventured into nature as disclosed by contemporary physics and selected the category of event to supplant substance. He undertook to expound a metaphysics of events, grappled with the problem of the unity not only of nature but of the singular events that make up nature, and fixed upon the overarching structure of the space-time of relativity physics to resolve the problem. But this did not suffice. The metaphysical vision at work in these early books glimpsed at moments a principle beyond time, beyond propositions, beyond events--the principle of power. Power and Events: An Essay on Dynamics in Philosophy focused on the principle of power, integrating the other themes in terms of it. As the mature work of a significant and original thinker, Power and Events posed the principle of power as the central idea for the future course of philosophical investigation. In pursuit of its implications Ushenko embarked upon the philosophy of art in his last book Dynamics of Art and in a consistent yet startling fashion advanced the thesis that the substance of art is in effect a dynamic equilibrium of powers. (shrink)

The Reeh-Schlieder theorem asserts the vacuum and certain other states to be spacelike superentangled relative to local quantum fields. This motivates an inquiry into the physical status of various concepts of localization. It is argued that a covariant generalization of Newton-Wigner localization is a physically illuminating concept. When analyzed in terms of nonlocally covariant quantum fields, creating and annihilating quanta in Newton-Wigner localized states, the vacuum is seen to not possess the spacelike superentanglement that the Reeh-Schlieder theorem displays relative to (...) local fields, and to be locally empty as well as globally empty. Newton-Wigner localization is then shown to be physically interpretable in terms of a covariant generalization of the center of energy, the two localizations being identical if the system has no internal angular momentum. Finally, some of the counterintuitive features of Newton-Wigner localization are shown to have close analogues in classical special relativity. (shrink)

We introduce a two-part collection of articles (Part 2 to appear in the September 2010 issue) exploring a possible new research program in the field of science and religion. At the center of the program lies an attempt to develop a new theology of nature drawing on the philosophy of C. S. Peirce. Our overall idea is that the fundamental structure of the world is exactly that required for the emergence of meaning and truth-bearing representation. We understand the emergence (...) of a capacity to interpret an environment to be important to the emergence of life, and we see the subsequent history of biological evolution as a story of increasing capacities for meaning making and meaning seeking. Theologically, we understand God to be the ground of all such meaning making and the ultimate goal of the universe's emerging capacity for interpreting signs. Here we explain our reasons for seeking a new metaphysical framework in which science and theology may each find a home. We survey the contributions to the two-part collection, and we suggest that the interdisciplinary collaboration from which these have arisen may serve as a methodological model for the field of science and religion. (shrink)

“Participatory research” is an umbrella term for a wide variety of scientific research projects that include participation of members of the lay public beyond simply using humans as “subjects” of research. In this chapter, we begin by surveying the variety of participatory research approaches across fields. We examine the goals of participatory research projects, including social and scientific value. Next, we apply a theoretical framework to challenges that participatory research faces. We then survey three typologies of participatory research projects, each (...) of which can illuminate and guide decisions in project development. We end by looking at participatory research approaches in health contexts, applying the theoretical resources we introduced earlier in the chapter. (shrink)

Kalevi Kull and colleagues recently proposed eight theses as a conceptual basis for the field of biosemiotics. We use these theses as a framework for discussing important current areas of debate in biosemiotics with particular reference to the articles collected in this issue of Zygon.

BackgroundThere has been media coverage surrounding the dangers of heavy drinking and benefits of moderation, with TV and radio presenter, Adrian Chiles, documenting his experience of moderating alcohol consumption in an online article for the Guardian. By analysing the comments in response to Chiles’ article, this study aimed to explore posters’ attitudes or beliefs toward moderating alcohol and posters’ experiences of moderating or abstaining from alcohol.MethodA secondary qualitative analysis of online comments in response to an article about moderating alcohol consumption. (...) Main outcome measures: Comments in response to a United Kingdom online news article about moderating alcohol consumption were extracted and inductive thematic analysis was used.ResultsFor aim one, two themes were developed; “general attitudes toward drinking” and “general attitudes toward reducing consumption”. These themes reflect negative perceptions of alcohol and issues around changing attitudes. For aim two, three themes were developed: “moderation vs. abstention”, “reflection on past drinking behaviours”, and “current drinking behaviours”. These themes represent posters’ experiences and implications changing their drinking habits.ConclusionOur analysis provides a novel insight into perceptions and experiences of moderating or abstaining from alcohol. Alcohol is embedded within United Kingdom culture, creating difficulties for those who choose to moderate or abstain from alcohol. Our analysis highlights the need for public health to focus on shifting the current drinking culture, through clearer drinking guidelines and a wider availability of alcohol-free alternatives. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the empirical agenda of business ethics research from a methodological perspective. It is argued that the quality of empirical research in the field remains relatively poor and unconvincing. Drawing on the distinctions between the two main philosophical positions from which methodologies in the social sciences are derived – positivism and interpretism – it is argued that it is business ethics' tradition of positivist, and highly quantitative approaches which may be at the root of these (...) epistemological problems. Six distinct aspects of business ethics research are identified and assessed according to their methodological impact. Accordingly, it is argued that more interpretive approaches may offer substantial liberating potential in the development of a stronger and more theory-rich empirical base. The author concludes by arguing for greater plurality and diversity in empirical research methodologies in the business ethics field. (shrink)

Comparative psychology, the multidisciplinary study of animal behavior and psychology, confronts the challenge of how to study animals we find cute and easy to anthropomorphize, and animals we find odd and easy to objectify, without letting these biases negatively impact the science. In this Element, Kristin Andrews identifies and critically examines the principles of comparative psychology and shows how they can introduce other biases by objectifying animal subjects and encouraging scientists to remain detached. Andrews outlines the scientific benefits of treating (...) animals as sentient research participants who come from their own social contexts and with whom we will be in relationship. With discussions of science's quest for objectivity, worries about romantic and killjoy theories, and debates about chimpanzee cognition between primatologists who work in the field and those in the lab, Andrews shows how scientists can address the different biases through greater integration of the subdisciplines of comparative psychology. (shrink)

The study of animal cognition raises profound questions about the minds of animals and philosophy of mind itself. Aristotle argued that humans are the only animal to laugh, but in recent experiments rats have also been shown to laugh. In other experiments, dogs have been shown to respond appropriately to over two hundred words in human language. In this introduction to the philosophy of animal minds Kristin Andrews introduces and assesses the essential topics, problems and debates as they cut across (...) animal cognition and philosophy of mind. She addresses the following key topics: what is cognition, and what is it to have a mind? What questions should we ask to determine whether behaviour has a cognitive basis? the science of animal minds explained: ethology, behaviourist psychology, and cognitive ethology rationality in animals animal consciousness: what does research into pain and the emotions reveal? What can empirical evidence about animal behaviour tell us about philosophical theories of consciousness? does animal cognition involve belief and concepts; do animals have a ‘Language of Thought’? animal communication other minds: do animals attribute ‘mindedness’ to other creatures? moral reasoning and ethical behaviour in animals animal cognition and memory. Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include Cheney and Seyfarth’s ververt monkey research, Thorndike’s cat puzzle boxes, Jensen’s research into humans and chimpanzees and the ultimatum game, Pankseep and Burgdorf’s research on rat laughter, and Clayton and Emery’s research on memory in scrub-jays. Additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of mind, animal cognition. It will also be an excellent resource for those in fields such as ethology, biology and psychology. (shrink)

Nick Huggett and Robert Weingard (1994) have recently proposed a novel approach to interpreting field theories in physics, one which makes central use of the fact that a field generally has an infinite number of degrees of freedom in any finite region of space it occupies. Their characterization, they argue, (i) reproduces our intuitive categorizations of fields in the classical domain and thereby (ii) provides a basis for arguing that the quantum field is a field. Furthermore, (...) (iii) it accomplishes these tasks better than does a well-known rival approach due to Paul Teller (1990, 1995). This paper contends that all three of these claims are mistaken, and suggests that Huggett and Weingard have not shown how counting degrees of freedom provides any insight into the interpretation or the formal properties of field theories in physics. (shrink)

This paper presents two interpretations of the fiber bundle fonnalism that is applicable to all gauge field theories. The constructionist interpretation yields a substantival spacetime. The analytic interpretation yields a structural spacetime, a third option besides the familiar substantivalism and relationalism. That the same mathematical fonnalism can be derived in two different ways leading to two different ontological interpretations reveals the inadequacy of pure fonnal arguments.

Intelligent neurotechnology is an emerging field that combines neurotechnologies like brain-computer interface (BCI) with artificial intelligence. This paper introduces a capability framework to assess the responsible use of intelligent BCI systems and provide practical ethical guidance. It proposes two tests, the threshold and flourishing tests, that BCI applications must meet, and illustrates them in a series of cases. After a brief introduction (Section 1), Section 2 sets forth the capability view and the two tests. It illustrates the threshold test (...) using examples from clinical medicine of BCI applications that enable patients with profound disabilities to function at a threshold level through computer mediation. Section 3 illustrates the flourishing test by exploring possible future applications of BCI involving neuroenhancements for healthy people, using examples adapted from research currently underway in the US military. Section 3 applies a capability lens to a complex case involving dual effects, both therapeutic and non-therapeutic, showing how the threshold and flourishing tests resolve the case. Section 4 replies to three objections: neurorights are the best tool for assessing BCI; the two tests are moving targets; and the analysis utilizes a capability view to do work it is not designed for. The paper concludes that a capability view offers unique advantages and gives practical guidance for evaluating the responsible use of present and future BCI applications. Extrapolating from our analysis may help guide other emerging technologies, such as germline gene editing, expected to impact central human capabilities. (shrink)

The notions of purpose, goal, end and function are used in descriptions of a very wide range of human, animal and machine behaviour. Andrew Woodfield provides here a unified account of such teleological descriptions and explanations, their varieties, their logical structure and their proper uses. He concentrates his argument on the concepts of 'goal-directed behaviour' and 'natural function', and combines original philosophical criticism with a meticulous, detailed survey of the main competing theories in this diffuse and difficult field.

Thoroughly revised, this new edition of Critical Theory of Technology rethinks the relationships between technology, rationality, and democracy, arguing that the degradation of labor--as well as of many environmental, educational, and political systems--is rooted in the social values that preside over technological development. It contains materials on political theory, but the emphasis has shifted to reflect a growing interest in the fields of technology and cultural studies.

This book presents a collection of contemporary discourses that reconsider the relationship of democracy as a political ideology and American ideal and education as the foundation of preparing democratic citizens in America.

The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics: A Handbook is the first book in a new series by Andrew Caplin and Andrew Schotter. There is currently no guide available on the rapidly changing methodological frontiers of the field of economics. Economists have been introducing new theories and new sources of data at a remarkable rate in recent years, and there are widely divergent views both on how productive these expansions have been in the past, and how best (...) to make progress in the future. The speed of these changes has left economists ill at ease, and has created a backlash against new methods. The series will debate these critical issues, allowing proponents of a particular research method to present proposals in a safe yet critical context, with alternatives being clarified. This first volume, written by some of the most prominent researchers in the discipline, reflects the challenges that are opened by new research opportunities. The goal of the current volume and the series it presages, is to formally open a dialog on methodology. The editors' conviction is that such a debate will rebound to the benefit of social science in general, and economics in particular. The issues under discussion strike to the very heart of the social scientific enterprise. This work is of tremendous importance to all who are interested in the contributions that academic research can make not only to our scientific understanding, but also to matters of policy. (shrink)

This Special Issue commemorates the 60th anniversary of Business & Society with nine rigorous literature reviews that address important societal problems and provide opportunities for theory development in the business and society field; in this introduction we present an overview of the Special Issue. With the theme “Building on Its Past,” the nine articles address a host of contemporary issues, including climate change, wicked problems, business and human rights, human health, certifications standards, the governance of artificial intelligence, stakeholder engagement, (...) stakeholder theory, and corporate political activity. Together, these reviews offer a wealth of suggested themes, theories and approaches that can drive our research forward for the next decades in business and society research and practice. Using the lens of a miner-prospector continuum to categorize the diversity of articles within this special issue, a common theme emerges across the portfolio of reviews: they all call for a more systemic and integrative perspective toward studying the complex interactions that link business and society actors and issues. Building on these findings, we encourage future scholars to fill long-standing researched gaps through a more open systems approach, which supports both contextually sensitive and multi-level and multi-disciplinary approaches to address grand societal challenges. We conclude with specific suggestions as to how business and society scholars might use an open systems approach, including embracing methodologies to address complex causal pathways, theorizing with a view towards spanning external and internal elements of an organization, and reflecting on the temporal and spatial dynamics of complex systems. (shrink)

This paper examines what is involved in using comparative methods within political theory and whether there should be such a sub-field as "comparative political theory." It argues that "political theory" consists of multiple kinds of activities which are either primarily "scholarly" or "engaged." It is easy to imagine how scholarly forms of political theory can, and have been, comparative. The paper critiques, however, existing calls for the creation of "comparative political theory" (CPT) sub-field focused on the study of (...) "non-Western" texts. CPT needs to explain why it is not merely "expanding the canon" to include non-Western texts and why a certain non-Western text is "alien," thus justifying the moniker "comparative." I argue, systematically though 10 discrete theses, that the strongest warrant for an "engaged" comparative political theory is the first-order evaluation of the implication of the contestations of norms, values and principles between distinct and coherent doctrines of thought. (shrink)

Within the burgeoning corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication literature, the question of the relationship between CSR practices and CSR communication (or between “walk” and “talk”) has been a central concern. Recently, we observe a growing interest in formative views on the relation between CSR communication and practices, that is, works which ascribe to communication a constitutive role in creating, maintaining, and transforming CSR practices. This article provides an overview of the heterogeneous landscape of formative views on CSR communication scholarship. More (...) specifically, we distinguish between three variants of such formative views: walking-to-talk, talking-to-walk, and t(w)alking. These three orientations differ primarily regarding the temporal dynamics that they ascribe to the relation between CSR communication and practices and regarding the object that is formed through communication. This new typology helps systematize the emerging field of research on CSR communication, and we use it as a compass to provide directions for future research in this area. (shrink)

An examination, by a diverse field of experts, of Pickering's mangle theory and its applicability (or lack thereof) beyond the limited cases he presented in the ...

The advanced sensory, psychological and social abilities of chimpanzees confer upon them a profound ability to suffer when born into unnatural captive environments, or captured from the wild – as many older research chimpanzees once were – and when subsequently subjected to confinement, social disruption, and involuntary participation in potentially harmful biomedical research. Justifications for such research depend primarily on the important contributions advocates claim it has made toward medical advancements. However, a recent large-scale systematic review indicates that invasive chimpanzee (...) experiments rarely provide benefits in excess of their profound animal welfare, bioethical and financial costs. The approval of large numbers of these experiments – particularly within the US – therefore indicates a failure of the ethics committee system. By 2008, legislative or policy bans or restrictions on invasive great ape experimentation existed in seven European countries, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In continuing to conduct such experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes, the US was almost completely isolated internationally. In 2007, however, the US National Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources implemented a permanent funding moratorium on chimpanzee breeding, which is expected to result in a major decline in laboratory chimpanzee numbers over the next 30 years, as most are retired or die. Additionally, in 2008, The Great Ape Protection Act was introduced to Congress. The bill proposed to end invasive research and testing on an estimated 1,200 chimpanzees confined within US laboratories, and, for approximately 600 federally-owned, to ensure their permanent retirement to sanctuaries. These events have created an unprecedented opportunity for US legislators, researchers, and others, to consider a global ban on invasive chimpanzee research. Such a ban would not only uphold the best interests of chimpanzees, and other research fields presently deprived of funding, but would also increase the compliance of US animal researchers with internationally-accepted animal welfare and bioethical standards. It could even result in the first global moratorium on invasive research, for any non-human species, unless conducted in the best interests of the individual or species. (shrink)

The world of factories and industry is a crucial yet oft-forgotten fact that undergirds the bustling prosperity of contemporary American life. Photographer Andrew Borowiec has spent his career exploring the industrial fields of middle America, and he now turns his camera's eye southward in Industrial Perspective, exploring the panoramic landscapes along and near the Gulf of Mexico where oil and gas industry workers live and work. Borowiec gained permission from oil corporations to enter their high-security sites and was thus (...) able to photograph the delicate balance of land, life, and industry along the Gulf. The region's immense concentration of oil, chemical, and paper plants has created one of America's most unique and misunderstood contemporary landscapes, and Borowiec unravels its complexity in his evocative images. The visual sequence of Industrial Perspective reveals a continually evolving area that was transformed after World War II from a plantation system into an intricate and vast industrial complex built to accommodate the demands of a surging American economy. As Borowiec reveals through his striking images, this world of iron, oil, and heat enabled the American dream to come to fruition, yet its unyielding and stark character is virtually alien to those who do not live near the region. Industrial Perspective is a compelling and vibrant collection of images that offers a unique and powerful view of the industrial realities of American abundance. (shrink)

The birth of a new science is long, drawn out, and often fairly messy. Comparative psychology has its roots in Darwin’s Descent of Man, was fertilized in academic psychology departments, and has branched across the universities into departments of biology, anthropology, primatology, zoology, and philosophy. Both the insights and the failings of comparative psychology are making their way into contemporary discussions of artificial intelligence and machine learning (Chollett 2019; Lapuschkin et al. 2019; Watson 2019). It is the right time to (...) turn a philosophical lens onto the methodologies of comparative psychology. That is the aim of this Element. -/- Comparative psychology is the umbrella covering the different ways scientists study animal mind and behavior. Comparative psychologists study animal behavior and mentality, including the mechanisms and inner states that allow crows to form hooks, vervet monkeys to give warnings, crabs to make trade-off decisions, and humans to use language. While focus is on the similarities and differences between different species, capacities are often studied in terms of their evolutionary history, development, and current ecological or cultural context. What this entails is that comparative psychologists have a range of different kinds of training, different areas of expertise, and different research questions. One comparative cognition researcher compares children and dogs on causal reasoning abilities (Daphna Buchsbaum), another looks at memory in corvids (Nicola Clayton). An animal behaviorist examines raccoon territories in a city (Suzanne MacDonald). One anthropologist looks at war in wild chimpanzees (John Mitani), another looks at how innovations are adopted in capu- chin monkeys (Susan Perry). One ethologist looks at play in wolves (Marc Bekoff), and another looks at deception in birds (Carolyn Ristau). One biologist looks at male alliances in dolphins (Richard Connor), and another examines economic game performance in apes and monkeys (Sarah Brosnan). An animal welfare scientist studies the effect of enrichment on mink (Georgia Mason). A learning theorist looks at gambling in pigeons (Thomas Zentall). A zoologist studies social learning in bees (Lars Chittka). It is not easy to guess in which department you’ll find a comparative psychologist. -/- This Element aims to examine the methods of comparative psychology, which remains especially concerned about how to study animal minds and behavior without falling prey to fuzzy thinking. Animals can be cute, so humans are often intrinsically drawn to them; and this love of animals is sometimes taken to be at odds with being a careful scientist. The methods of comparative psychology reflect this worry with their special emphases on avoiding bias and on avoiding developing warm relationships with animal subjects. The first two sections analyze three textbooks to examine what young scientists are taught. Section 1 investigates three methodological principles students are taught to follow: Anti-anthropomorphism, Morgan’s Canon, and Anti-anthropocentrism. I argue that the first two principles should be discarded, and that developing relationships with animals should no longer be discouraged, as relationships promote understanding. Building on this critique, in Section 2 I challenge the common prohibition against including animal consciousness in comparative psychology by arguing that it does not harm the science, but promotes it. Setting aside the special prohibitions for comparative psychology, in Section 3 I examine how the quest for objectivity in comparative psychology introduces its own bias and argue that the different disciplines of comparative psychology will introduce different biases; the best scientists can do is identify the sources of bias. The quest to eliminate all bias is a misguided one. Section 4 applies these issues to recent debates in ape cognition research between scientists who work in the field and those who work in the lab, and suggests best practices for integrating knowledge from both sources. -/- I have had the opportunity to work with a number of comparative psychologists in a variety of contexts, including a stint at Lou Herman’s dolphin communication lab in the 1990s, collaborative studies with Peter Verbeek on the child’s theory of mind at the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Child Development, conducting research on orangutan pantomime communication with Anne Russon at her field sites in Borneo, research on rat social learning with Noam Miller at Wilfrid Laurier University, and co-teaching a field course in dolphin communication with Kathleen Dudzinski. As a philosopher of science who has been in the field and in the lab, I have a perspective from which to compare the comparative psychologists. This Element is my attempt to synthesize almost thirty years of experience and thinking about how to study animal minds. (shrink)

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)

In Plato's Sun, Andrew Lawless takes on the challenge of creating an introductory text for philosophy, arguing that such a work has to take into account of the strangeness of the field and divulge it, rather than suppress it beneath traditional certainties and authoritative pronouncements.

In this paper I will help provide some suggestions for a “postmodern” business ethic. I will do this by criticizing some recent work done in the field, and then put forth some basic themes in postmodern thinking that might be applied to business ethics. I will here criticize both Green’s and Walton’s articles on the possibility of postmodern business ethics. I will criticize Green on the grounds that his characterization of the definitive elements of postmodern thought are not definitive (...) of postmodern thought. I will criticize Walton onthe grounds that his portrayal of postmodern philosophy as inherently nihilistic and relativistic is mistaken. Finally, I will try to provide afew minimal principles (or tendencies) of a postmodern business ethic. Ultimately, what postmodernism has to offer business is notrules, but questions that raise issues of responsibility. (shrink)

Instead of using low-level neurophysiology mimicking and exploratory programming methods commonly used in the machine consciousness field, the hierarchical Operational Architectonics (OA) framework of brain and mind functioning proposes an alternative conceptual-theoretical framework as a new direction in the area of model-driven machine (robot) consciousness engineering. The unified brain-mind theoretical OA model explicitly captures (though in an informal way) the basic essence of brain functional architecture, which indeed constitutes a theory of consciousness. The OA describes the neurophysiological basis of (...) the phenomenal level of brain organization. In this context the problem of producing man-made “machine” consciousness and “artificial” thought is a matter of duplicating all levels of the operational architectonics hierarchy (with its inherent rules and mechanisms) found in the brain electromagnetic field. We hope that the conceptual-theoretical framework described in this paper will stimulate the interest of mathematicians and/or computer scientists to abstract and formalize principles of hierarchy of brain operations which are the building blocks for phenomenal consciousness and thought. (shrink)

Whether or not Merleau-Ponty’s version of phenomenology should be considered a form of ‘transcendental’ philosophy is open to debate. Although the Phenomenology of Perception presents his position as a transcendental one, many of its features—such as its exploitation of empirical science—might lead to doubt that it can be. This paper considers whether Merleau-Ponty meets what I call the ‘transcendentalist challenge’ of defining and grounding claims of a distinctive transcendental kind. It begins by highlighting three features—the absolute ego, the pure phenomenal (...) field, and the reduction—that Husserl had used to justify claims of a specifically transcendental kind within a phenomenological framework. It then examines how Merleau-Ponty modifies each of these features to focus on the lived body and a factically conditioned phenomenal field, while remaining ambivalent about the reduction. Finally, it assesses whether Merleau-Ponty’s modified position can still legitimately be considered transcendental. I argue that—despite his own rhetoric—this modified position shapes the modality of Merleau-Ponty’s claims in such a way that his phenomenology cannot meet the transcendentalist challenge and therefore should not be considered ‘transcendental.’. (shrink)

We provide a mathematical description of quantum measurements with a finite exactness. The exactness of a quantum measurement is used as a new metric on the space of quantum states. This metric differs very much from the standard Euclidean metric. This is the so-called ultrametric. We show that a finite exactness of a quantum measurement cannot he described by real numbers. Therefore, we must change the basic number field. There exist nonequivalent ultrametric Hilbert space representations already in the finite-dimensional (...) case (compare with ideas of L. de Broglie). Different preparation procedures could generate nonequivalent representations. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a consequence of properties of a preparation procedure. The uncertainty principle “time-energy” is a consequence of the Schrödinger dynamics. (shrink)