We all have a mind, but how much do we know about what it is, and how it works? How do philosophers, physiologists, pyschologists and psychiatrists differ in their understanding of its processes? This second edition of the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to the Mind attempts to answer these questions, and raises more, as it explores this most-intriguing of subjects. Includes Roger Penrose and Steven Rose on consciousness; Beryl Bainbridge on construction of fiction; Raj Persaud on depression; Richard Gregory (...) on facial expression, illusions of vision and consciousness; Ted Honderich on free will; and Noam Chomsky on language. New to this edition Three new mini symposia – on consciousness, brain imaging and artificial intelligence – with contributions from a range of specialists, representing the variety of approaches to these major subjects in a balanced but lively and personal way New entries include artificial life, attachment theory, caffeine, conjuring, cruelty, drama, extra-terrestrial intelligence, face-to-face communication, genetics of mental illness, imagination, lying, puzzles and twins. (shrink)

Fabi and Goldberg investigate how funding availability influences the landscape of bioethics as a field, and perpetuates forms of social and epistemic injustice while limitin...

The use of human brain tissue in neuroscience research is increasing. Recent developments include transplanting neural tissue, growing or maintaining neural tissue in laboratories and using surgically removed tissue for experimentation. Also, it is likely that in the future there will be attempts at partial or complete brain transplants. A discussion of the ethical issues of using human brain tissue for research and brain transplantation has been organized around nine broadly defined topic areas. Criteria for human brain tissue transplantation and (...) laboratory use of brain tissue are proposed. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Rawls does not establish the priority of the right over the good, and that his notion of the original position creates more problems than it solves. I further argue that Rawls, even in his recent proposal for an overlapping consensus, misdiagnoses the problems of modern society and our capacity for justice. I suggest that what we need is not so much theories of justice or methods to abstract from conceptions of the good as discriminating (...) patterns to judge whether, and to what extent, our institutions are sustaining or corroding our social practices that might serve justice and/or make us more just people. (shrink)

Philippians serves as a rhetorical reconfiguration of suffering and joy. Woven together, suffering and joy create not just a theme but also a tapestry that serves as a backdrop for the entire letter.

Forgiveness is much more than isolated acts and words of individuals. The capacity to discover what it means to forgive and be forgiven depends, in part, on the richness of one's communal practices and disciplines.

Out of the ashes of the post-modern critique of metaphysics comes a series of important essays which re-think the place of metaphysics in theological and philosophical inquiry. This book ranges across a variety of philosophical and theological traditions, charting new directions for theological reflection.

Jones (theology, Loyola College) argues that the most coherent account of moral judgement is one grounded in, and lived in the presence of, the mystery of the Triune God. Particular attention is given to the importance of friendship and the ways in which people learn to acquire and exercise the virtues in making moral judgments. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

In his 1967 paper 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Alvin Goldman sketched an account of empirical knowledge in terms of appropriate causal connections between the fact known and the knower's belief in that fact. This early causal account has been much criticized, even by Goldman himself in later years. We argue that the theory is much more defensible than either he or its other critics have recognized, that there are plausible internal and external resources available to it which save it (...) from many objections in the literature (in particular, objections raised by Harman, Pappas and Swain, Klein, Dretske, Goldman, Shope, Ackermann, Morawetz, and Collier). (shrink)

In his 1967 paper 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Alvin Goldman sketched an account of empirical knowledge in terms of appropriate causal connections between the fact known and the knower's belief in that fact. This early causal account has been much criticized, even by Goldman himself in later years. We argue that the theory is much more defensible than either he or its other critics have recognized, that there are plausible internal and external resources available to it which save it (...) from many objections in the literature (in particular, objections raised by Harman, Pappas and Swain, Klein, Dretske, Goldman, Shope, Ackermann, Morawetz, and Collier). (shrink)

Death is the destiny we all share, and this will not change. Yet the way we die, which had remained the same for many generations, has changed drastically in a relatively short time for those in developed countries with access to healthcare. For generations, if people were lucky enough to reach old age, not having died in infancy or childhood, in childbirth, in war, or by accident, they would take to bed, surrounded by loved ones who cared for them, and (...) fade into death. Most likely, they would have seen their parents and grandparents die the same way, and so this manner of dying would be familiar: it was part of the natural cycle of life. Now less than 25 per cent of Americans die at home, having reached much older ages than people would have dreamed of in past generations, often after surviving many illnesses and even diseases that would have been terminal for their grandparents. We are fortunate to live (and die) today, supported by myriad scientific, medical, and technological advancements, however we also face new problems as a result of the new way in which we die. We can no longer anticipate a peaceful waning at home with family. We know our lives will likely end in hospitals likely after we have endured grueling treatments to prolong life. We have to decide what decisions we want our loved ones, or care-givers, to make when we cannot choose for ourselves. We have to think about whether in any circumstances we would seek physician-assisted death. We know we face other questions as well, but we may not even know where to start. In the face of these decisions, we can feel daunted and afraid. The best remedy is information and planning. In this book, Gregory Eastwood - a physician who has cared for dying patients, served as an ethics consultant, and taught end of life issues to medical and other health profession students - draws from his substantial experience with patients and families to provide the information that will help us think clearly about the choices and issues we will face at the end of our own lives, and when faced with the deaths of our loved ones. With sensitivity and profound insight, Eastwood guides us through all the important questions about death and dying in straightforward, clear language, enhanced by real-life stories. Throughout, he shows us how we can take ownership of the way we want to die, when we must die, and feel more in control as death approaches. (shrink)

Contains 1,001 entries that explore issues of philosophy, psychology, and the physiology of the brain, touching on topics such as sleep, bilingualism, criminology, language, and the workings of the nervous system, and includes biographies of major authorities on the workings of the mind.

Five experiments investigated how people use categories to make inductions about objects whose categorisation is uncertain. Normatively, they should consider all the categories the object might be in and use a weighted combination of information from all the categories: bet-hedging. The experiments presented people with simple, artificial categories and asked them to make an induction about a new object that was most likely in one category but possibly in another. The results showed that the majority of people focused on the (...) most likely category in making inductions, although there was a group of consistently normative responders who used information from both categories (about 25% of our college population). Across experiments the overall pattern of results suggests that performance in the task is improved not by understanding the underlying principles of bet-hedging but by increasing the likelihood that multiple categories are in working memory at the time of the induction. We discuss implications for improving everyday inductions. (shrink)

Six experiments investigated variables predicted to influence subjects’ tendency to classify items by a single property instead of overall similarity, following the paradigm of Norenzayan et al., who found that European Americans tended to give more “logical” rule-based responses. However, in five experiments with Mechanical Turk subjects and undergraduates at an American university, we found a consistent preference for similarity-based responding. A sixth experiment with Korean undergraduates revealed an effect of instructions, also reported by Norenzayan et al., in which classification (...) instructions led to majority rule-based responding but similarity instructions led to overall similarity grouping. Our American subjects showed no such difference and used similarity more overall. We conclude that Americans do not have a preference for rule responding in classification and discuss the differences between tasks that reliably show strong rule or unidimensional preferences in contrast to this classification paradigm. (shrink)

Whether you play basketball, coach it, or just love to watch it, this book will forever enrich your understanding and appreciation of the game.

When a structure or class of structures admits an unbounded induction, we can do arithmetic on the stages of that induction: if only bounded inductions are admitted, then clearly each inductively definable relation can be defined using a finite explicit expression. Is the converse true? We examine evidence that the converse is true, in positive elementary induction . We present a stronger conjecture involving the language L consisting of all L∞ω formulas with a finite number of variables, and examine a (...) combinatorial property equivalent to “all L-definable relations are elementary”. (shrink)

This paper explores the scriptural and theological reasons given by Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) to refuse blood transfusions. Julian Savulescu and Richard W Momeyer argue that informed consent should be based on rational beliefs and that the refusal of blood transfusions by JWs is irrational, but after examining the reasons given by JWs, I challenge the claim that JW beliefs are irrational. I also question whether we should give up the traditional notion of informed consent.

It is known that for two given countable sets of unary relations A and B on ω there exists an infinite set H ⫅ ω on which A and B are the same. This result can be used to generate counterexamples in expressibility theory. We examine the sharpness of this result.

We prove that any positive elementary (least fixed point) induction expressing the negation of transitive closure on finite nondirected graphs requires at least two recursion variables.