Hurley’s is a difficult book to work through—partly because of its length and the complexity of its arguments, but also because each of the ten essays of which it is composed has a rather different starting point and focus, and because few of her arguments achieve real closure. Essay 2 discusses competing interpretations of Kant, essay 4 articulates nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness, essay 5 offers fresh interpretations of commissurotomy patients’ behavior, essay 6 develops an objection to Wittgenstein on rule following, (...) essay 8 attacks an alleged assumption of externalism, and chapter 10 explores the possibility of combining a “motor theory” and a “control theory” of perception. This is a very rich brew, and at least half the challenge this book presents consists in discerning its central argument and conclusion with enough precision to bring criticism to bear. (shrink)

The last thirty years have seen a resurgence of interest in virtue among philosophers, psychologists, and educators. This co-authored book brings an interdisciplinary response to the study of virtue: it not only provides a framework for quantifying virtues, but also explores how we can understand virtue in a philosophically-informed way that is compatible with the best current thinking in personality psychology. The volume presents a major contribution to theemerging science of virtue and character measurement.

How should rational believers pursue the aim of truth? Epistemic utility theorists have argued that by combining the tools of decision theory with an epistemic form of value—gradational accuracy, proximity to the truth—we can justify various epistemological norms. I argue that deriving these results requires using decision rules that are different in important respects from those used in standard (practical) decision theory. If we use the more familiar decision rules, we can’t justify the epistemic coherence norms that epistemic utility theory (...) had hoped to justify. In short, those of us who are attracted to the project of epistemic utility theory face a dilemma. If we choose “consequentialist” rules, then we can vindicate the idea that rational belief has the aim of accuracy—but at the cost of giving up attractive epistemic norms. (shrink)

Philosophers of language have tended to focus on examples that are not politically significant in any way. We spend a lot of time analyzing natural kind terms: We think hard about “water” and “pain” and “arthritis.” But we don’t think much about the far more politically significant kind terms (natural or social—it's a matter for dispute) like “race,” “sex,” “gender,” “woman,” “man,” “gay,” and “straight.” In this essay, I will try to show, using the example of “woman,” that it's worth (...) thinking about terms like these, for at least three reasons: (1) There are some interesting puzzles. (2) Politically significant terms matter to people's lives— and it's worth spending at least some of our energy thinking about things that matter in this way. (3) Most importantly, interesting methodological issues emerge at the intersection of philosophy of language and politics. (shrink)

Does rationality require imprecise credences? Many hold that it does: imprecise evidence requires correspondingly imprecise credences. I argue that this is false. The imprecise view faces the same arbitrariness worries that were meant to motivate it in the first place. It faces these worries because it incorporates a certain idealization. But doing away with this idealization effectively collapses the imprecise view into a particular kind of precise view. On this alternative, our attitudes should reflect a kind of normative uncertainty: uncertainty (...) about what to believe. This view refutes the claim that precise credences are inappropriately informative or committal. Some argue that indeterminate evidential support requires imprecise credences; but I argue that indeterminate evidential support instead places indeterminate requirements on credences, and is compatible with the claim that rational credences may always be precise. (shrink)

Until recently, the accepted wisdom in the US was that overt racism would doom a national political campaign. This led to the use of covert messaging strategies like dogwhistles. Recent political events have called this wisdom into question. In this paper, I explore what has happened in recent years to our norms against racist speech, and to the ways that they are applied. I describe several mechanisms that seem to have contributed to the changes that I outline.

Skepticism about the epistemic value of intuition in theoretical and philosophical inquiry has recently been bolstered by empirical research suggesting that people’s concrete-case intuitions are vulnerable to irrational biases (e.g., the order effect). What is more, skeptics argue that we have no way to ‘‘calibrate” our intuitions against these biases and no way of anticipating intuitional instability. This paper challenges the skeptical position, introducing data from two studies that suggest not only that people’s concrete-case intuitions are often stable, but also (...) that people have introspective awareness of this stability, providing a promising means by which to assess the epistemic value of our intuitions. (shrink)

As the phenomenon of implicit bias has become increasingly widely known and accepted, a variety of criticisms have similarly gained in prominence. This paper focuses on one particular set of criticisms, generally made from the political left, of what Sally Haslanger calls “implicit bias stories”—a broad term encompassing a wide range of discourses from media discussions to academic papers to implicit bias training. According to this line of thought, implicit bias stories are counterproductive because they serve to distract from the (...) structural and institutional factors that underlie oppression of social groups. This paper argues on the contrary that implicit bias stories, properly told, can help direct attention and concern to structural and institutional factors, and indeed may be especially helpful in motiving action. The key, however, is to tell these stories properly. When implicit bias sto- ries are told in the wrong way, they are indeed counterproductive. This paper looks in detail at several examples of good and bad implicit bias stories, examining what makes some of them counterproductive and others highly effective in motivating action to combat social injustice. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView. Despite the acknowledgement of the moral significance of consent there is still much work to be done in determining which specific sexual encounters count as unproblematically consensual. This paper focuses on the impact of deception. It takes up the specific case of deception about one's self. It may seem obvious that one ought not to lie to a sexual partner about who one is, but determining which features of oneself are most relevant, as well as (...) the lies which it follows would be impermissible to tell, is complicated. It is argued here that deception about one's morally valenced character traits, those we think of as virtues and vices, are particularly problematic. This is true regardless of whether knowing the truth about those traits would have made a difference to one's partner's consent. Attention is then drawn to a range of types of lies that one ought not to tell. (shrink)

Epistemology should take seriously the possibility of rationally evaluable changes in conceptual resources. Epistemic decision theory compares belief states in terms of epistemic value. But it's standardly restricted to belief states that don't differ in their conceptual resources. I argue that epistemic decision theory should be generalized to make belief states with differing concepts comparable. I characterize some possible constraints on epistemic utility functions. Traditionally, the epistemic utility of a total belief state has been understood as a function of the (...) epistemic utility of individual (partial) beliefs. The most natural ways of generalizing this account generate a kind of repugnant conclusion. I characterize some possible alternatives, reflecting different epistemic norms. (shrink)

Recent scholarship (Goodwin & Darley, 2008) on the meta-ethical debate between objectivism and relativism has found people to be mixed: they are objectivists about some issues, but relativists about others. The studies discussed here sought to explore this further. Study 1 explored whether giving people the ability to identify moral issues for themselves would reveal them to be more globally objectivist. Study 2 explored people's meta-ethical commitments more deeply, asking them to provide verbal explanations for their judgments. This revealed that (...) while people think they are relativists, this may not always be the case. The explanations people gave were sometimes rated by outside (blind) coders as being objective, even when given a relativist response. Nonetheless, people remained meta-ethical pluralists. Why this might be is discussed. (shrink)

The paper proposes a minimal definition of dreaming in terms of immersive spatiotemporal hallucination (ISTH) occurring in sleep or during sleep–wake transitions and under the assumption of reportability. I take these conditions to be both necessary and sufficient for dreaming to arise. While empirical research results may, in the future, allow for an extension of the concept of dreaming beyond sleep and possibly even independently of reportability, ISTH is part of any possible extension of this definition and thus is a (...) constitutive condition of dreaming. I also argue that the proposed ISTH model of dreaming, in conjunction with considerations on the epistemic relationship between dreaming and dream reports, raises important questions about the extent to which dreams typically involve a detailed body representation—an assumption that plays an important role in philosophical work on dreaming. As a commonly accepted definition of dreaming is lacking in current dream research, the ISTH model, which integrates conceptual analysis and epistemological considerations with results from empirical research, is an important contribution to this field. By linking dreaming to felt presence, full-body illusions, and autoscopic phenomena such as out-of-body experiences in wakefulness and in the hypnagogic state, the ISTH model of dreaming also helps integrate dream research, both theoretically and experimentally, with the study of other altered states of consciousness involving hallucinations. It makes straightforward and investigable predictions by claiming that all of these experiences have amodal spatiotemporal hallucinations as their common denominator. Finally, it is theoretically relevant for the philosophical discussion on minimal phenomenal selfhood. (shrink)

Moral abolitionists claim that morality ought to be abolished. According to one of their most prominent arguments, this is because making moral judgments renders people significantly less tolerant toward anyone who holds divergent views. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that morality’s tolerance-decreasing effect only occurs if people are realists about moral issues, i.e., they interpret these issues as objectively grounded. We found support for this hypothesis (Studies 1 and 2). Yet, it also turned out that the intolerance associated (...) with realism is mediated by moral conviction and perceived consensus. People tend to feel more strongly about those moral issues they ground objectively and, in doing so, are more prone to display the vice of moral smugness toward those who disagree with them. The remedy for this that has been recommended is humility which we found (Study 3) is indeed related to reduced intolerance, in part by predicting a reduction in realism, but also in part through a direct connection to intolerance. These results put pressure on abolitionists’ “argument from intolerance.”. (shrink)

This study examines the relation between firms’ corporate philanthropic giving and their performance in three other social domains – employee relations, environmental issues, and product safety. Based on a sample of 384 U.S. companies and using data pooled from 1998 through 2000, we find that worse performers in the other social areas are both more likely to make charitable contributions and that the extent of their giving is larger than for better performers. Analyses of each separate area of social performance, (...) however, indicate that the relation between giving and negative social performance (cited concerns) only holds for the environmental issues and product safety areas. We find no significant association between corporate philanthropy and employee relations concerns. In general, these findings suggest that corporate philanthropy may be more a tool of legitimization than a measure of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Abstract: Recent experimental research on the 'Knobe effect' suggests, somewhat surprisingly, that there is a bi-directional relation between attributions of intentional action and evaluative considerations. We defend a novel account of this phenomenon that exploits two factors: (i) an intuitive asymmetry in judgments of responsibility (e.g. praise/blame) and (ii) the fact that intentionality commonly connects the evaluative status of actions to the responsibility of actors. We present the results of several new studies that provide empirical evidence in support of this (...) account while disconfirming various currently prominent alternative accounts. We end by discussing some implications of this account for folk psychology. (shrink)

It’s been argued that there are no diachronic norms of epistemic rationality. These arguments come partly in response to certain kinds of counterexamples to Conditionalization, but are mainly motivated by a form of internalism that appears to be in tension with any sort of diachronic coherence requirements. I argue that there are, in fact, fundamentally diachronic norms of rationality. And this is to reject at least a strong version of internalism. But I suggest a replacement for Conditionalization that salvages internalist (...) intuitions, and carves a middle ground between conservatism and evidentialism. (shrink)

In this study we analyze the overlapping perspectives of legitimacy theory, institutional theory, resource dependence theory, and stakeholder theory. Our purpose is to explore how these theories can inform and be built upon by one another. Through our analysis we provide a broader theoretical understanding of these theories that may support and promote social and environmental accounting research. This article starts with a detailed analysis of legitimacy theory by bringing some recent critical discussions on legitimacy and corporations in the management (...) literature into accounting research. The notion forwarded by legitimacy theory then serves as an overarching concept to examine the relationship between and among theories. We conclude that two theoretical considerations are important for future social and environmental accounting research. First, it must be acknowledged that some business entities initiate social activities based on direct interactions with stakeholders, whereas others may also undertake similar activities to manage their societal level of legitimacy. Second, from analyzing the perspectives of legitimacy theory, institutional theory, resource dependence theory, and stakeholder theory, it is possible to reach compatible interpretations of business social phenomena, and the selection and application of these theories should depend upon the focus of study. (shrink)

Background Few studies have been conducted to assess the quality of orientation practices for ethics advisory committees that conduct ethics consultation. This survey study focused on several Harvard teaching hospitals, exploring orientation quality and committee members’ self-evaluation in the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities ethics consultation competencies. Methods We conducted a survey study that involved 116 members and 16 chairs of ethics advisory committees, respectively. Predictor variables included professional demographics, duration on committees and level of training. Outcome variables included (...) familiarity with and preparedness in the ASBH competencies and satisfaction with orientations. We hypothesised that responses would be associated with both the aforementioned predictors and whether or not participants had encountered the ASBH competencies in training. Results A majority of respondents found their orientation curricula to be helpful, although a significant portion of respondents did not receive any orientation or were unsatisfied with their orientation. Familiarity with ASBH competencies was a statistically significant predictor of respondents’ self-evaluation in particular categories. Standard educational materials were reported as offered during orientation, such as readings and case studies ; different medium resources were less evidenced such as videos on ethics consultation. Conclusions Institutions should re-evaluate orientation practices for ethics committee members that perform ethics consultation. Integrating ASBH competencies and useful methods into a resourceful pedagogy will help improve both member satisfaction with orientation and preparation in consultation. (shrink)

Inhibition, an executive function, is critical for achieving goals that require suppressing unwanted behaviours, thoughts, or distractions. One hypothesis of the emotion and goal compatibility theory is that emotions of sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control. Across Experiments 1–4, we tested this hypothesis by inducing a happy, sad, fearful, and neutral emotional state prior to completing an inhibition task that indexed a specific facet of inhibition (oculomotor, resisting interference, behavioural, and cognitive). In Experiment 4, we included an anger induction to (...) examine whether valence or motivational-orientation best-predicted performance. We found support that fear and sadness enhanced inhibition except when inhibition required resisting interference. We argue that sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control aiding the detection and analysis of problems (i.e. sadness) or threats (i.e. fear) within one’s environment. In sum, this work highlights the importance of identifying how negative emotions can be beneficial for and interact with specific executive functions influencing down-stream processing including attention, cognition, and memory. (shrink)

Few contemporary philosophers discuss the ways in which the emotion of shame may be gendered. This paper addresses this situation, examining Gabriele Taylor's account of genuine vs. false shame. 1 argue that, by attending to the social pressures placed on many women to conform to a certain vision of femininity, an analysis of the shame to which women may be prone shows that Taylor's account of shame remains incomplete.

Neurodiversity, the advocacy position that autism and related conditions are natural variants of human neurological outcomes that should be neither cured nor normalized, is based on the assertion that autistic people have unique neurological differences. Membership in this community as an autistic person largely results from clinical identification, or biocertification. However, there are many autistic individuals who diagnose themselves. This practice is contentious among autistic communities. Using data gathered from Wrong Planet, an online autism community forum, this article describes the (...) debate about self-diagnosis amongst autistic self-advocates and argues for the acceptance of the practice in light of the difficulties in verifying autism as a ‘natural kind.’ This practice can counteract discriminatory practices towards and within the autistic community and also work to verfiy autistic self-knowledge and self-expertise. This discussion also has important implications for other neurocommunities, neuroethical issues such as identity and privacy, and the emerging field of critical autism studies. (shrink)

'This book not only revises the interpretation of Dewey's ethics but also has relevance to recent discussions about the possibility of naturalistic, ...

Skepticism about the epistemic value of intuition in theoretical and philosophical inquiry fueled by the empirical discovery of irrational bias (e.g., the order effect) in people's judgments has recently been challenged by research suggesting that people can introspectively track intuitional instability. The two studies reported here build upon this, the first by demonstrating that people are able to introspectively track instability that was experimentally induced by introducing conflicting expert opinion about certain cases, and the second by demonstrating that it was (...) the presence of instability?not merely the presence of conflicting information?that resulted in changes in the relevant attitudinal states (i.e., confidence and belief strength). The paper closes with the suggestion that perhaps the best explanation for these (and other) findings may be that intuitional instability is not actually ?intuitional.? (shrink)

Eating behaviors evolve during the first years of life as biological and behavioral processes directed towards meeting requirements for health and growth. For the vast majority of human history, food scarcity has constituted a major threat to survival, and human eating behavior and child feeding practices have evolved in response to this threat. Because infants are born into a wide variety of cultures and cuisines, they come equipped as young omnivores with a set of behavioral predispositions that allow them to (...) learn to accept the foods made available to them. During historical conditions of scarcity, family life and resources were devoted to the procurement and preparation of foods, which are often low in energy, nutrients, and palatability. In sharp contrast, today in non-Third World countries children's eating habits develop under unprecedented conditions of dietary abundance, where palatable, inexpensive, ready-to-eat foods are readily available. (shrink)

Dugald Stewart claims that conjectural history is ‘the peculiar glory of the latter half of the eighteenth century’. Yet it is hard to see why, in his view, conjectural histories are not merely confabulated just-so stories. This paper examines Stewart's views about the epistemic and moral value of conjectural history.

In this paper, I seek to explore the increasing popular claim that the performance of philosophy and the performance of humor share similar features. I argue that the explanation lies in the function of humor—a function which can be a catalyst for philosophy. Following Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms and utilizing insights from various philosophical and scientific perspectives on the nature and origins of humor, I argue that the function of humor is to reveal faulty belief or error in (...) judgment. Once such errors are revealed the mind demands resolution, and this is the work of philosophy. But philosophy cannot solve a problem unless it recognizes that there is a problem to solve. That is, the move from ignorance to philosophy requires a mediating step. Humor can act as that step, and, as such, humor can serve as a catalyst for philosophy while being necessarily distinct from it. (shrink)

Public recognition of the fragility of the natural systems on which present and future generations depend has prompted calls for the practice of environmental stewardship —calls widely criticised in the environmental ethics literature. Some argue that stewardship 's historical associations entail that it is inherently sexist, speciesist and/or anthropocentric. Others argue that absent belief in a creator to appoint us as stewards and hold us accountable, talk of 'environmental stewardship ' is empty. I review the concept's recent evolution and provide (...) a tentative definition. I argue that so defined, it is not vulnerable to standard criticisms, but is instead a promising way of construing morally decent conduct towards the environment. (shrink)

College cheating is prevalent, with rates ranging widely from 9 to 95% (Whitley, 1998). Research has been exclusively conducted with enrolled college students. This study examined the prevalence of cheating in a sample of college alumni, who risk less in disclosing academic dishonesty than current students. A total of 273 alumni reported on their prevalence and perceived severity of 19 cheating behaviors. The vast majority of participants (81.7%) report having engaged in some form of cheating during their undergraduate career. The (...) most common forms of cheating were “copying from another student's assignment” and “allowing others to copy from your assignment.” More students reported cheating in classes for their major than other classes. Males and females cheated at the same rates in classes for their major, and males reported higher rates of cheating than females in nonmajor classes. Respondents reported that their top reasons for cheating were “lack of time” and “to help a friend.”. (shrink)

College cheating is prevalent, with rates ranging widely from 9 to 95%. Research has been exclusively conducted with enrolled college students. This study examined the prevalence of cheating in a sample of college alumni, who risk less in disclosing academic dishonesty than current students. A total of 273 alumni reported on their prevalence and perceived severity of 19 cheating behaviors. The vast majority of participants report having engaged in some form of cheating during their undergraduate career. The most common forms (...) of cheating were “copying from another student's assignment” and “allowing others to copy from your assignment.” More students reported cheating in classes for their major than other classes. Males and females cheated at the same rates in classes for their major, and males reported higher rates of cheating than females in nonmajor classes. Respondents reported that their top reasons for cheating were “lack of time” and “to help a friend.”. (shrink)

Kratzer semantics for modals and conditionals generates the prediction that sentences of the form if p, ought p are trivially true. As Frank and Zvolenszky show, for certain flavors of modality, like deontic modality, this prediction is false. I explain some conservative solutions to the problem, and then argue that they are inadequate to account for puzzle cases involving self-frustrating oughts. These cases illustrate a general problem: there are two forms of information-sensitivity in deontic modals. Even generalizations of Kratzer semantics (...) that predict these two roles for information, e.g. Kolodny and MacFarlane, predict that they vary together. I propose a generalization of Kratzer semantics that allows the two roles for information to vary independently of each other. (shrink)

The contemporary process of financialization has been a major driver of the remarkable changes witnessed in global food and agricultural markets over the past decade, contributing to the rise and subsequent volatility of food and agricultural commodity prices since 2006. In the wake of these developments it has become clear that the turmoil has intensified the relationship between agriculture and finance in ways that have profound and enduring implications for the sector, and the people whose lives and livelihoods depend upon (...) it. This symposium brings together four original research articles that contemplate the contemporary relationship between the agrifood and financial sectors. They examine a variety of overlapping themes, including the creation of financial assets from farmland and agricultural commodities, the activities of different types of investors in these assets in specific geographic contexts, and the challenges of governing this activity at the global scale. These articles show that the period of market volatility that began a decade ago re-invigorated investor interest in financial products linked to agriculture and farming, and inspired the packaging of new forms of financial assets in ways that have affected politics and practice on the ground, and are likely to leave a lasting legacy. (shrink)

Previous research reveals that when leaders enact environmentally specific transformational leadership, they positively affect corporate environmental responsibility. While this research provides important insights into how leaders create and shape corporate environmental responsibility, confidence in the validity of these findings is limited because the psychometric properties of the measurement of environmentally specific transformational leadership has not yet been assessed. The goal of the current research was to develop and validate a measure of environmentally specific transformational leadership. To this end, four studies (...) were conducted, which together produced a reliable and valid scale from which future research can stem. Theoretical and practical limitations are discussed. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that no account of propositional attitude reporting which does not include a significant degree of context-sensitivity can succeed in accommodating our intuitions about the truth conditions of such reports. Next, I argue that there are two general problems to be faced by any context-sensitive theory of attitude ascription, whether semantic or pragmatic. First, any theory which preserves our intuitions about which inference schemas are valid will violate our intuitions about truth conditions of particular attitude reports. (...) Second, all theories which depend upon speaker intentions and audience interests to supply the contextually-determined element will yield incorrect truth conditions for what attitude reports convey . I propose an alternative source for contextually-supplied elements: speaker dispositions. Speaker dispositions, I argue, succeed in securing the right truth conditions for the cases that speaker intentions could not handle. However, I suggest, they also point to a very different way of thinking about the way that communication takes place. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo describe reporting of informed consent in pragmatic trials, justifications for waivers of consent and reporting of alternative approaches to standard written consent. To identify factors associated with (1) not reporting and (2) not obtaining consent.MethodsSurvey of primary trial reports, published 2014–2019, identified using an electronic search filter for pragmatic trials implemented in MEDLINE, and registered in ClinicalTrials.gov.ResultsAmong 1988 trials, 132 (6.6%) did not include a statement about participant consent, 1691 (85.0%) reported consent had been obtained, 139 (7.0%) reported a (...) waiver and 26 (1.3%) reported consent for one aspect (eg, data collection) but a waiver for another (eg, intervention). Of the 165 trials reporting a waiver, 76 (46.1%) provided a justification. Few (53, 2.9%) explicitly reported use of alternative approaches to consent. In multivariable logistic regression analyses, lower journal impact factor (p=0.001) and cluster randomisation (p<0.0001) were significantly associated with not reporting on consent, while trial recency, cluster randomisation, higher-income country settings, health services research and explicit labelling as pragmatic were significantly associated with not obtaining consent (all p<0.0001).DiscussionNot obtaining consent seems to be increasing and is associated with the use of cluster randomisation and pragmatic aims, but neither cluster randomisation nor pragmatism are currently accepted justifications for waivers of consent. Rather than considering either standard written informed consent or waivers of consent, researchers and research ethics committees could consider alternative consent approaches that may facilitate the conduct of pragmatic trials while preserving patient autonomy and the public’s trust in research. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that moral rules and principles, such as ‘Keep your promises,’ ‘Respect autonomy,’ and ‘Distribute goods according to need ,’ should play an essential role in our moral deliberation. Particularists have challenged this view by arguing that principled guidance leads us to engage in worse decision making because principled guidance is too rigid and it leads individuals to neglect or distort relevant details. However, when we examine empirical literature on the use of rules and principles in other (...) domains, we find that people can learn to use rules discriminately and that rule-based models tend to outperform even expert judgment. I argue that this evidence poses a problem for the moral particularist. If the particularist claims that we should not rely on decision-making rules when making practical decisions and it turns out that these rules help us make better decisions, then the particularists’ prescriptive account is deficient. However, if the particularist claims that we should rely on practical decision-making rules but not on moral rules, she needs to explain how practical rules are different from moral rules and why we should rely on the former but not the latter. (shrink)

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a “young” disorder formally recognized in the early 1980s, although the symptoms have been noted for centuries particularly in relation to military conflicts. PTSD may develop after a serious traumatic experience that induces feelings of intense fear, helplessness or horror. It is currently characterized by three key classes of symptoms which must cause clinically significant distress or impairment of functioning: persistent and distressing re-experiencing of the trauma; persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing (...) of general responsiveness; and persistent symptoms of hyper-arousal. One of the possible symptoms within the second class is difficulty in remembering an important aspect of the traumatic event.PTSD is not an uncommon condition, with an estimated lifetime prevalence of about 7-9% based on studies conducted in the United States and Canada, with women at higher risk than men. While not everyone who experiences a significant trauma will go on to develop PTSD, about a third will do so. Sexual assault, along with other forms of assaultive violence, pose a comparatively high risk of PTSD. (shrink)

Abstract:This short article proposes a conceptual structure for “neurolaw,” modeled loosely on the bipartite division of the sister field of neuroethics by Adina Roskies into the “ethics of neuroscience” and the “neuroscience of ethics.” As normative fields addressing the implications of scientific discoveries and expanding technological capacities affecting the brain, “neurolaw” and neuroethics have followed parallel paths. Similar foundational questions arise for both about the validity and utility of recognizing them as distinct subfields of law and ethics, respectively. In both, (...) a useful distinction can be drawn between a self-reflexive inquiry (the neuroscience of ethics and law) and an inquiry into the development and use of brain science and technologies (the ethics and law of neuroscience). In both fields, these two forms of inquiry interact in interesting ways. In addition to a proposed conceptual structure for neurolaw, the article also addresses the neurolegal versions of the critiques made against neuroethics, including charges of reductionism, fact/value confusion, and biological essentialism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV.

We can assent to a proposition, build a theory around it, base our actions on it, and affirm its truth—without ever taking it to heart. This frequently happens, for example, to recipients of bad news who figure out what is entailed by the news, make appropriate plans, and pass the news on to others—all without really "taking it in." It happens to those who accept a scientific claim without abandoning their more private views of how things work, and it happens (...) to members of a jury who confidently arrive at a verdict of "guilty" yet remain, on some deeper level, unconvinced. Conversely, people may dismiss their prejudices as mere prejudices while continuing to hold onto them, and a friend may acknowledge a remark to be innocuous yet be offended. Such phenomena are widespread, diverse, and philosophically intriguing. They are not simply cases of weak versus strong belief, or belief that something has a low probability versus a high probability ; nor are they cases of accepting on authority what we only partially understand. Rather, in each case, there is certain lack of depth to one's beliefs. (shrink)