This study in cross-cultural hermeneutics examines the role that modern, Western philosophy has played in the interpretation of Nagarjuna's Madhyamikakarika, a second-century Indian-Buddhist text. Tuck locates a structure of distinct phases or "styles" in modern, philosophical history. These phases, Tuck shows, exhibit discontinuous interpretive biases, as well as continuity of hermeneutic intention. Discovering in each philosophical era a chaacteristic attitude towards the text--whether privilege, objectivity, or neutrality--Tuck argues that the continual reinterpretation of earlier scholarly readings is in fact at the (...) core of fruitful hermeneutic pursuit. (shrink)

Reflective journals are characterized by their expressive freedom and their intent that students explicitly connect course material to their own life experiences, emotions, beliefs, and feelings. Drawing on research on the use of reflective journals and on the reflections of students in my philosophy courses, I demonstrate how philosophy professors can use reflective journals as a tool to help their students achieve important learning outcomes. By making philosophy personal for students, reflective journals allow students to practice philosophy as a way (...) of life, achieve important metacognitive outcomes, and (drawing on constructivism in learning theory) increase their knowledge and understanding of course content. (shrink)

Threshold- and signal-detection-based models have dominated theorizing about recognition memory. Building upon these theoretical frameworks, we have argued for a dual-process model in which conscious recollection and familiarity contribute to memory performance. In the current paper we assessed several memory models by examining the effects of levels of processing and the number of presentations on recognition memory receiver operating characteristics . In general, when the ROCs were plotted in probability space they exhibited an inverted U shape; however, when they were (...) plotted inzspace they exhibited a U shape. An examination of the ROCs showed that the dual-process model could account for the observed ROCs, but that models based solely on either threshold or signal-detection processes failed to provide a sufficient account of the data. Furthermore, an examination of subjects' introspective reports using the remember/know procedure showed that subjects were aware of recollection and familiarity and were able to consistently report on their occurrence. The remember/know data were used to accurately predict the shapes of the ROCs, and estimates of recollection and familiarity derived from the ROC data mirrored the subjective reports of these processes. (shrink)

A tempting solution to problems of semantic vagueness and to the Liar Paradox is an appeal to truth-value gaps. It is tempting to say, for example, that, where Harry is a borderline case of bald, the sentenceHarry is baldis neither true nor false: it is in the ‘gap’ between these two values, and perhaps deserves a third truth-value. Similarly with the Liar Paradox. Consider the following Liar sentence: is false.That is, sentence says of itself that it is false. If we (...) accept the Tarskian schema S is true iff pwhere ‘S’ is a name of a sentence ‘p,’ we are led into paradox. Both the assumption that is true, and the assumption that is false lead us, via, to is true if and only if is false.Given this result, a natural reaction is to place in a ‘gap’ between true and false. (shrink)

Recollection is sometimes automatic in that details of a prior encounter with an item come to mind although those details are irrelevant to a current task. For example, when asked about the size of the type in which an item was earlier presented, one might automatically recollect the location in which it was presented. We used the process dissociation procedure to show that such noncriterial recollection can function as familiarity—its effects were independent of intended recollection.

Although death statutes permitting physicians to declare brain death are relatively uniform throughout the United States, academic debate persists over the equivalency of human death and brain death. Alan Shewmon showed that the formerly accepted integration rationale was conceptually incomplete by showing that brain-dead patients demonstrated a degree of integration. We provide a more complete rationale for the equivalency of human death and brain death by defending a deeper understanding of the organism as a whole and by using a novel (...) strategy with shared objectives to justify death determination criteria. Our OaaW account describes different types of OaaW, defining human death as the loss of status as a human OaaW. We defend human death as similar to nonhuman death in terms of wakefulness, but also distinct in terms of the sui generis properties, particularly conscious awareness. We thereby defend the equivalency of brain death and human death using a resulting neurocentric rationale. (shrink)

This paper describes an interdisciplinary course on the philosophy of human nature that centers on the famous 1924 kidnapping-ransom-murder case involving Leopold and Loeb. After recounting the details of the “perfect crime” of Leopold and Loeb, the course is structured around five units: (i) free will/determinism, (ii) the debate between retributivists and therapeutic approaches to punishment, (iii) the morality of the death penalty, (iv) Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity and “slave moralities”, and (v) homosexuality. In addition to being truly interdisciplinary, the (...) course promotes the critical evaluation of a variety of non-philosophical (films, novels, plays, courtroom transcripts) works and shows how philosophy can play a role in making sense of the “real world”. (shrink)

Traditionally, students have no choice over which assignments they must submit to receive the grade they desire in a course. An alternative “menu approach” provides students with a list of possible assignments and lets them select which to submit. This approach is demonstrated to increase student engagement with course material, motivate students to engage in creative work, and allow students to choose assignments that allow them to best demonstrate their learning. Student reaction is mixed: some like the choice but others (...) are stressed and overwhelmed by it. This may result from the increased responsibility they must shoulder under the Menu Approach. Some questions remain about the link between increased engagement and student learning, questions that may form the basis for future research on the Menu Approach. (shrink)

Jonathan Quong Ethics, 119, 507–537 has recently argued that the permissibility of killing innocent threats turns on a distinction between eliminative and opportunistic agency. When we kill bystanders we view them under the guise of opportunism by using them as mere survival tools, but when we kill threats we simply eliminate them. According to Quong, the distinction between opportunistic and eliminative agency reveals that there are two different ways of killing someone as a means to save your own life. Call (...) this the Means Distinction. In this note, I argue that although the Means Distinction seems prima facie plausible it is not a sufficient explanation for the permissibility of killing threats. My argument against the Means Distinction is two-fold. Most non-consequentialists accept that the Means Distinction carries some moral significance, but I argue that this is a mistake: we do not have any reason to believe that opportunistic killings are, in general, worse than eliminative killings. Following this, I argue that even if we accept the Means Distinction, there are threat-type scenarios in which there is no intuitive difference between killing a threat opportunistically and killing a threat eliminatively. (shrink)

Sweeping denials of the story's capacity to accurately reflect the past are ever catalyzing equally misleading global affirmations. The impositionalists, such as theorist Hayden White, view historical narratives as imposing a falsifying narrative structure on the past, and conclude that narratives cannot be true. Plot-reifiers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, David Carr, and Frederick Olafson, posit that the past is already narratively structured; historical plots are reified in order for there to be something in the world to which narrative structures can (...) correspond in being true. The antireferentialists such as JeanFrançois Lyotard and Roland Barthes deny that narrative histories even claim truth. Escaping this trilemma of theoretical interpretation involves accepting the idea that construction of a history does not entail its falsification. Historical narrative need to be allowed to function both figurally, in the sense of generating new discursive figures, and at the same time literally, in the sense of asking to be understood literally. Narratives need to be understood on their own terms, and not treated as an approximation to some foreign ideal. (shrink)

First responders to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) events face decisions having significant human consequences. Some operational decisions are supported by standard operating procedures, yet these may not suffice for ethical decisions. Responders will be forced to weigh their options, factoring-in contextual peculiarities; they will require guidance on how they can approach novel (indeed unique) ethical problems: they need strategies for “on the spot” ethical decision making. The primary aim of this paper is to examine how first responders should (...) approach on the spot ethical decision-making amid the stress and uncertainty of a CBRN event. Drawing on the long-term professional CBRN experience of one of the authors, this paper sets out a series of practical ethical dilemmas potentially arising in the context of a large-scale chemical incident. We propose a broadly consequentialist approach to on the spot ethical decision-making, but one which incorporates ethical values and rights as “side-constraints”. (shrink)

Social scientists using one or another concept of process have paid little attention to underlying issues of methodology and explanation. Commonly, the concept used is a loose one. When it is not, there often are other problems, such as errors of reification and of assuming that events sometimes connected in a sequence are invariably thus connected. While it may be useful to retain the term " process" for some sequences of intelligibly connected actions and events, causal explanation must be sought (...) with respect to the events constituting processes rather than with respect to processes regarded as unitary entities. (shrink)

Introduction Non-consequentialists often attempt to capture a familiar, if slightly elusive, sense of moral wrongness. In particular, many non-consequentialists give a central role to the idea that there is a distinction to be made between acting wrongly and wronging someone. To explain, consider the difference between my duty not to trample sunflowers and my duty not to trample you. In the case of sunflowers, I might act wrongly in trampling them without good reason, but it does not seem that I (...) can wrong them by doing so. In juxtaposition, if I trample you it does not seem that I have merely acted wrongly, but that I have wronged you in particular because I owe it to you not to do so. Call this the Wronging Distinction.Arguably, the Wronging Distinction is important because it offers one possible way of explaining the intuitive authority of moral reasons. Deontic constraints, for example, seem to carry an unusual normative stringency insofar as they seem to be non-optional. Ted, for i .. (shrink)

One approach to validating simulation models is to formally compare model outputs with independent data. We consider such model validation from the point of view of Frequentist statistics. A range of estimates and tests of goodness of fit have been advanced. We review these approaches, and demonstrate that some of the tests suffer from difficulties in interpretation because they rely on the null hypothesisHypothesis that the model is similar to the observationsObservations. This reliance creates two unpleasant possibilities, namely, a model (...) could be spuriously validated when dataData are too few, or inappropriately rejected when data are too many. Finally, these tests do not allow a principled declaration of what a reasonable level of difference would be considering the purposes to which the model will be put. We consider equivalence tests, and demonstrate that they do not suffer from the previously identified shortcomings. We provide two case studies to illustrate the claims of the chapter. (shrink)

Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder, eds., Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior. Aldine de Gruyter, New York, 1992. Pp. xv, 470, tables, boxes, figures, bibliography, author index, subject index, $59.95 (cloth), $29.95 (paper).

I have admitted different kinds of power but the admission does not make it objectionable--in spite of Dr. Beardsley's point and Mr. Grünbaum's opening statement--to use the same word in order to indicate that all these kinds are under the same category--Mr. Williams' rejection of the category notwithstanding--of latent but directed tendencies or dispositions. Let my critics envisage power by analogy with, and including, the physical vector of force. i.e. as something which we represent by an arrow, to induce them (...) to reconsider Dr. Beardsley's point and to concede that the Gestalt forces of cohesion and personal dispositions belong to the category under consideration since both are directed agencies. The directedness of power--let me add with reference to Mr. Feigl's point and to one of Mr. Krikorian's questions --enables me to account for the so-called teleological situations without assuming a metaphysics of teleology. In particular, I can mention a "feed-back" mechanism in order to give an example of the transformation of directed into directing, or controlling, power. (shrink)

2. An explicit sense datum appears enframed within the present at a definite place. By contrast a tendency is to be described as an agency that bears upon something other than itself. It tends toward something. Accordingly, power is distinguished not only by its magnitude or intensity but also by directedness. And, since directedness takes the form of cross-references within the field of tension, power is a factor of integration.

Aggleton & Brown argue that a hippocampal-anterior thalamic system supports the “recollection” of contextual information about previous events, and that a separate perirhinal-medial dorsal thalamic system supports detection of stimulus “familiarity.” Although there is a growing body of human literature that is in agreement with these claims, when recollection and familiarity have been examined in amnesics using the process dissociation or the remember/know procedures, the results do not seem to provide consistent support. We reexamine these studies and describe the results (...) of an additional experiment using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) technique. The results of the reanalysis and the ROC experiment are consistent with Aggleton & Brown's proposal. Patients with damage to both regions exhibit severe deficits in recollection and smaller, but consistent, deficits in familiarity. (shrink)

Ian Barbour sees four ways to relate science and religion: (1) conflict, (2) disjunction or independence, (3) dialogue, and (4) synthesis or integration. David Burrell posits three ways to construe religious language, as (a) univocal, (b) equivocal, or (c) analogous. The paper contends that Barbour’s (1) and (4) presuppose Burrell’s (a), Barbour's (2) presupposes Burrell’s (b), and Barbour’s (3) presupposes Burrell’s (c), and it explores some of the implications for each alternative.

Husserl's proposed method for knowing the essences of universals, which he calls “free variation,” has been widely criticized for involving viciously circular reasoning. In this paper, I review existing attempts to resolve this problem, and I argue that they all fail. I then show that extant accounts are all guilty of a common mistake: they assume that circularity is inevitable as long as the exercise of free variation presupposes the ability to identify the universal whose essence is in question, that (...) is, the ability to recognize entities as instances of it. I reject this assumption: I argue on both Husserlian and independent philosophical grounds that knowledge of a universal's essence is not required for identifying it, but only for re‐identifying it at every possible world in which it is instantiated. I then defend a reading on which free variation's purpose is to move its practitioner from non‐essentialistic knowledge of a universal's identity (its actual instantiation‐pattern) to essentialistic knowledge of its transworld identity (its instantiation‐pattern in every possible world in which it is present). And I show that such a transformation is a non‐circular progression from non‐modal to modal knowledge. (shrink)

The paper finds at least nine material differences between acts in history and entities in nature. (1) Nature rules out intentional structures essential to human acts. (2) Material trajectories in nature are unique, but acts in history are open to multiple interpretations.(3) In terms of set theory, history is bigger than nature. (4) Historical acts cannot be demarcated from the rest of the world by interactions with the world at a boundary. What happens far off-stage can transform human acts in (...) focal view. (5) Human acts can be revised after the fact. Material trajectories in nature cannot be. (6) Meaning and interpretation are constitutive of human acts. (7) Human acts may involve physical motions; they do not always do so. (8) Human acts always involve final causes. (9) Efficient causes in nature determinetheir effects; efficient causes in history may not. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of ‘premature consent’. The term ‘premature consent’ denotes patient decisions that are: formulated prior to discussion with the appropriate healthcare professional ; based on information from unreliable sources ; and resolutely maintained despite the HCP having provided alternative reliable information. HCPs are not obliged to respect premature consent patients’ demands for unindicated treatments. But why? What is it that premature consent patients do or get wrong? Davis has argued that premature consent patients are incompetent and (...) misinformed. We argue that this view is not sustainable. A more plausible position asserts that premature consent threatens the integrity of the medical profession. We argue that this gives rise to a negative patient duty which premature consent patients fail to honour. We argue for a further positive duty of good faith engagement in shared decision-making. This implies willingness to potentially revise or justify one’s evaluative bases. Fundamentally, the problem with premature consent patients is that certain of their evaluative bases are not open to revision. They therefore fail in their duty to participate faithfully in the shared decision-making process. (shrink)

Biometric identification is thought to be less vulnerable to fraud and forgery than are traditional forms of identification. However biometric identification is not without vulnerabilities. In a ‘spoofing attack’ an artificial replica of an individual’s biometric trait is used to induce a system to falsely infer that individual’s presence. Techniques such as liveness-detection and multi-modality, as well as the development of new and emerging modalities, are intended to secure biometric identification systems against such threats. Unlike biometrics in general, the societal (...) and ethical issues raised by spoofing and anti-spoofing techniques have not received much attention. This paper examines these issues. (shrink)

Introduction: where do our rights come from? -- Jefferson's masterpiece: the Declaration of Independence -- Get off my land : the right to own property -- Names will never hurt me : the freedom of speech -- I left my rights in San Franscisco : the freedom of association -- You can leave any time you want: the freedom to travel -- You can leave me alone : the right to privacy -- That flesh is mine : you own your (...) body -- Sticks and stones will break my bones : the right to self-defense -- You'll hear from me : the right to petition the government for redress of grievances -- War . . .war . . .what is it good for? : the right to enjoy peace -- When the devil turns round on you : the right to fairness from the government -- A dime isn't worth a penny anymore : the right to sound money -- Theft by any other name : the right to spend your own money -- A ride on Dr. Feinberg's bus : the right to be governed by laws with moral limits -- Disobeying stupidity : the right to ignore the state -- Conclusion. (shrink)