A child’s death is a profound loss for mothers and affects hundreds of thousands of women. Mothers report inconsolable and progressive grief that is distinct from depression and impacts daily emotions and functions. The brain mechanisms responsible for this relatively common and profound mental health problem are unclear, hampering its clinical recognition and care. In an initial exploration of this condition, we used resting state functional MRI (fMRI) scans to examine functional connectivity in key circuits, and task-based fMRI to examine (...) brain network activity in grieving mothers in response to pictures of their deceased child and as well as recognizable deceased celebrities and unfamiliar individuals. We compared nine mothers who had lost an adult child and aged-matched control mothers with a living child of a similar age. Additionally, we collected diffusion imaging scans to probe structural connectivity and complemented the imaging studies with neuropsychological assessments. Increased functional activation in Ventral Attention/Salience Networks accompanied by a reduced activation in the medial prefrontal cortex in response to the deceased child’s picture robustly distinguished the grieving mothers from controls. Heightened resting-state functional connectivity between the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) and the amygdala distinguished the grieving mothers from the controls and correlated with subjective grief severity. Structurally, maternal grief and its severity were associated with alterations in corticolimbic white matter tracts. Finally, grieving mothers performed worse than controls on neuropsychological tests of learning, memory, and executive function, linked with grief severity. Reduced activation in cortical regions inhibiting emotions and changes in the PVT circuitry—a region involved in long-term emotional memories and decision making under conflict—distinguish grieving mothers from controls. Notably, the magnitude of neurobiological changes correlates with the subjective severity of grief. Together, these new discoveries delineate a prevalent and under-recognized mental health syndrome and chart a path for its appreciation and care. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer's The Metaphysics of Free Will is devoted to two major projects. First, Fischer defends the thesis that determinism is incompatible with a person's control over alternatives to the actual future. Second, Fischer defends the striking thesis that such control is not necessary for moral responsibility. This review essay examines Fischer's arguments for each thesis. Fischer's defense of the incompatibilist thesis is the most innovative to date, and I argue that his formulation restructures the free will debate. To (...) defend his second thesis Fischer relies upon examples designed to show that an agent is responsible for an unavoidable action. I criticize Fischer's account of these examples, but I also maintain that my criticisms do not compromise his theory of responsibility. I raise several other difficulties for Fischer's theory of responsibility, and I close by offering some suggestions about how he might further defend it. (shrink)

This article explores the relationships between legal proof and fundamental epistemic concepts such as knowledge and justification. A survey of the legal literature reveals a confusing array of seemingly inconsistent proposals and presuppositions regarding these relationships. This article makes two contributions. First, it reconciles a number of apparent inconsistencies and tensions in accounts of the epistemology of legal proof. Second, it argues that there is a deeper connection between knowledge and legal proof than is typically argued for or presupposed in (...) the legal literature. This connection is illustrated through a discussion of the Gettier problem in epistemology. It is argued that the gap or disconnect between truth and justification that undermines knowledge in Gettier cases also potentially undermines the success of legal verdicts. (shrink)

Freud justified his extensive theorizing about dreams by the observation that they were “the royal road” to something much more general: namely, our unconscious mental life. The current preoccupation with the theory of excuse in criminal law scholarship (including my own) can be given a similar justification, for the excuses are the royal road to theories of responsibility generally. The thought is that if we understand why we excuse in certain situations but not others, we will have also gained a (...) much more general insight into the nature of responsibility itself. Nowhere has this thought been more evident than in the century-old focus of criminal law theoreticians on the excuse of insanity, a focus that could not be justified by the importance of the excuse itself.In this paper I wish to isolate two theories of excuse, each of which instantiates its own distinctive theory of responsibility. One is what I shall call the choice theory of excuse, according to which one is excused for the doing of a wrongful action because and only because at the moment of such action's performance, one did not have sufficient capacity or opportunity to make the choice to do otherwise. Such a choice theory of excuse instantiates a more general theory of responsibility, according to which we are responsible for wrongs we freely choose to do, and not responsible for wrongs we lacked the freedom (capacity and opportunity) to avoid doing. The second I shall call the character theory of excuse, according to which one is excused for the doing of a wrongful action because and only because such action is not determined by (or in some other way expressive of) those enduring attributes of ourselves we call our characters. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of technology has led to an explosion of speculative theories about what the future of humankind may look like. These "technological futurisms" have arisen from significant advances in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology and are drawing growing scrutiny from the philosophical and theological communities. This text seeks to contextualize the growing literature on the cultural, philosophical and religious implications of technological growth by considering technological futurisms such as transhumanism in the context of the long (...) historical tradition of technological dreaming. Michael Burdett traces the latent religious sources of our contemporary technological imagination by looking at visionary approaches to technology and the future in seminal technological utopias and science fiction and draws on past theological responses to the technological future with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul. Burdett's argument arrives at a contemporary Christian response to transhumanism based around the themes of possibility and promise by turning to the works of Richard Kearney, Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann. Throughout, the author highlights points of correspondence and divergence between technological futurisms and the Judeo-Christian understanding of the future. (shrink)

In this article I investigate the extent to which Bhikhu Parekh believes that a person's cultural/religious background must be preserved and whether, by implication, religious schooling is justified by his theory. My discussion will explore—by inference and implication—whether Parekh's carefully crafted multiculturalism, enriched and illuminated by numerous practical insights, is socially tenable. I will also consider whether, by extension, it is justifiable, on his line of reasoning, to cultivate cultural and religious understandings among one's own children. Finally, I will contend (...) that Parekh, notwithstanding his cautious, even‐handed approach, commits several important errors, including conflating the culture of the parents with that of the children and insisting that cultural and religious persons ought to be allowed to defend their views in the public square on religious grounds. (shrink)

This article aims to highlight why R. S. Peters' conceptual analysis of ‘education’ was such an important contribution to the normative field of philosophy of education. In the article, I do the following: 1) explicate Peters' conception of philosophy of education as a field of philosophy and explain his approach to the philosophical analysis of concepts; 2) emphasize several (normative) features of Peters' conception of education, while pointing to a couple of oversights; and 3) suggest how Peters' analysis might be (...) used to reinvigorate a conversation on one central educational aim—that of how we might educate citizens for the 21st century. (shrink)

The article explores the agreements and disagreements between the author and the authors of Responsible Brains on how neuroscience relates to moral responsibility. The agreements are fundamental: neuroscience is not the harbinger of revolutionary revision of our views of when persons are morally responsible for the harms that they cause. The disagreements are in the details of what is needed for neuroscience to be the helper of the moral sciences.

ABSTRACTThis article defends the importance of epistemic safety for legal evidence. Drawing on discussions of sensitivity and safety in epistemology, the article explores how similar considerations apply to legal proof. In the legal context, sensitivity concerns whether a factual finding would be made if it were false, and safety concerns how easily a factual finding could be false. The article critiques recent claims about the importance of sensitivity for the law of evidence. In particular, this critique argues that sensitivity does (...) not have much of an effect on the value of legal evidence and that it fails to explain legal doctrine. By contrast, safety affects the quality of legal evidence, and safety better explains central features of the law of evidence, including probative value, admissibility rules, and standards of proof. (shrink)

The elephant in the room -- Crabs and octopuses -- The central intelligence of a frog -- The cerebral cortex and consciousness -- Social consciousness -- Yoda and Darth: how can we find -- Consciousness in the brain? -- The hard problem and other perspectives on consciousness -- Conscious machines -- Uploading minds -- How to build visual consciousness.

The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the precise relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. This book clarifies that relationship through an analysis of the best accounts of causation in metaphysics, and a critique of the confusion in legal doctrine.

The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the precise relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. This book clarifies that relationship through an analysis of the best accounts of causation in metaphysics, and a critique of the confusion in legal doctrine. The result is a powerful argument in favour of reforming the moral and legal understanding of how and why we attribute responsibility to agents.

The third edition of a work that defines the field of cognitive neuroscience, with extensive new material including new chapters and new contributors.

A reconsideration of mill's theory of "higher pleasures," construed as a way of evaluating changes in preferences or character that result from changes in social environment. mill's account is criticized and partly reconstructed in light of modern preference theory, but viewed favorably as an illuminating attempt to address a fundamental problem in moral evaluation of social institutions. mill's advocacy of the higher pleasures is defended in particular against the charge that it is incompatible with his commitment to liberty.

At the University of Sheffield between 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume II: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics is comprised of three parts. “Moral Responsibility for Implicit (...) Bias” contains chapters examining the relationship of implicit biases to concepts that are central to moral responsibility, including control, awareness, reasons-responsiveness, and alienation. The chapters in the second part—“Structural Injustice”—explore the connections between the implicit biases held by individuals and the structural injustices of the societies in which they are situated. And finally, the third part—“The Ethics of Implicit Bias: Theory and Practice”—contains chapters examining strategies for implicit attitude change, the ramifications of research on implicit bias for philosophers working in ethics, and suggestions for combating implicit biases in the fields of philosophy and law. (shrink)

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- Preface -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility -- Chapter 2 Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 3 Blameworthiness and Frankfurt's Argument Against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 4 In Defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: Why I Don't Find Frankfurt's Argument Convincing -- Chapter 5 Responsibility, Indeterminism and Frankfurt-style Cases: A Reply to (...) Mele and Robb -- Chapter 6 Classical Compatibilism: Not Dead Yet -- Chapter 7 Bbs, Magnets and Seesaws: The Metaphysics of Frankfurt-style Cases -- Chapter 8 Moral Responsibility without Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 9 Freedom, Foreknowledge and Frankfurt -- Chapter 10 Source Incompatibilism and Alternative Possibilities -- Chapter 11 Robustness, Control, and the Demand for Morally Significant Alternatives: Frankfurt Examples with Oodles and Oodles of Alternatives -- Chapter 12 Alternate Possibilities and Reid's Theory of Agent-causation -- Chapter 13 Responsibility and Agent-causation -- Chapter 14 Soft Libertarianism and Flickers of Freedom -- Chapter 15 'Ought' Implies 'Can', Blameworthiness, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities -- Chapter 16 The Moral Significance of Alternate Possibilities -- Chapter 17 The Selling of Joseph - A Frankfurtian Interpretation -- Chapter 18 Some Thoughts Concerning PAP -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

In contrast to The Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick’s Practical Ethics counsels not trying to “get to the bottom of things” in our efforts to reach “some results of value for practical guidance and life.” For Sidgwick, both practical and theoretical ethics should start from the Morality of Common Sense. Although he retained his utilitarian outlook in Practical Ethics, this paper suggests that the Morality of Common Sense has the resources to hold its own against utilitarian revision.

The traditional desire view of painfulness maintains that pain sensations are painful because the subject desires that they not be occurring. A significant criticism of this view is that it apparently succumbs to a version of the Euthyphro Dilemma: the desire view, it is argued, is committed to an implausible answer to the question of why pain sensations are painful. In this paper, I explain and defend a new desire view, and one which can avoid the Euthyphro Dilemma. This new (...) view maintains that painfulness is a property, not of pain sensations, but of a pain experience, understood as a relational state constituted by a pain sensation and a desire that the sensation not be occurring. (shrink)

Emotions are important for virtue, both moral and intellectual. This chapter aims to explain the significance of emotion for intellectual virtue along two dimensions. The first claim is that epistemic emotions can motivate intellectual inquiry, and thereby constitute ways of 'being for' intellectual goods. As a result, such emotions can constitute the motivational components of intellectual virtue. The second claim is that other emotions, rather than motivating intellectual inquiry and questioning, instead play a vital role in the regulation and control (...) of intellectual activities. Emotions are usually characterized, in philosophy and psychology, as having a number of components or elements. Thus emotions are held to involve elements of perception, appraisal, feeling, attention, valence, facial expression, and motivation. (shrink)

Negligence is a problematic basis for being morally blamed and punished for having caused some harm, because in such cases there is no choice to cause or allow—or risk causing or allowing—such harm to occur. The standard theories as to why inadvertent risk creation can be blameworthy despite the lack of culpable choice are that in such cases there is blame for: (1) an unexercised capacity to have adverted to the risk; (2) a defect in character explaining why one did (...) not advert to the risk; (3) culpably acquiring or failing to rid oneself of these defects of character at some earlier time; (4) flawed use of those practical reasoning capacities that make one the person one is; or (5) chosen violation of per se rules about known precautions. Although each of these five theories can justify blame in some cases of negligence, none can justify blame in all cases intuitively thought to be cases of negligence, nor can any of these five theories show why inadvertent creation of an unreasonable risk, pure and simple, can be blameworthy. (shrink)

Ethics are of interest to business scholars because they influence decisions, behaviors, and outcomes. While scholars have increasingly shown interest in business ethics as a research topic, there are a mounting number of studies that examine ethical issues at the organizational level of analysis. This manuscript reports the results of a systematic review of empirical research on organizational ethics published in a broad sample of business journals over a 33-year period. A total of 184 articles are analyzed to reveal gaps (...) in the literature and, subsequently, lead to suggestions for future research; this is done in an effort to stimulate and perpetuate high quality research that more broadly impacts business scholars and practitioners. (shrink)

Mechanical Choices details the intimate connection that exists between morality and law: the morality we use to blame others for their misdeeds and the criminal law that punishes them for these misdeeds. This book shows how both law and morality presuppose the accuracy of common sense, a centuries-old psychology that defines people as rational agents who make honorable choices and act for just reasons. It then shows how neuroscience is commonly taken to challenge these fundamental psychological assumptions.

Like other aspiring geologists in the 1830s, Darwin focused heavily on the rising and falling of the earth's crust. I use his time in the Andes to underscore the importance he placed on larger questions of vertical movement, which mountains helped to solidify in his mind. His most impressive ramblings occurred in 1835 on two high passes in the Andes. Prior to his upland journey, he was well prepared to see the gradual movement of the earth's crust, but his time (...) in the mountains honed his vertical vision. His actual travels up and over enabled him to think more clearly about rise and fall, and how corresponding geographies could link the past to the present. Mountains were instructive backdrops to his theorizing, partly because he traveled through them, but also because his time there, linked with other geographies, became a means to foster his thinking both spatially and temporally. He did not think about mountains, but with them and through them. He is a good example of the broader vertical consciousness that directed many sciences at this time. (shrink)

Research Articles Michael S. Moore, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

The majority of the chapters in this edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences are new, and those from the first edition have been completely rewritten and updated ...

This article examines the variety of men's responses to feminism in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century United States through texts that addressed the claims raised by the turn-of-the-century women's movements. Antifeminist texts relied on traditional arguments, as well as Social Darwinist and natural law notions, to reassert the patriarchal family and to oppose women's suffrage and participation in the public sphere. Masculinist texts sought to combat the purported feminization of American manhood by proposing islands of masculinity, untainted by feminizing forces; proscribed (...) homosociality was also cast as an effective antidote to homosexuality. Profeminist texts openly embraced women's claims for changes in public participation and private and family life, both out of a sense of justice and the conviction that such changes would benefit men and challenge the emerging industrial capitalist order. Parallels to contemporary men's responses to the women's movement are suggested. (shrink)

Maistre’s Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg is modeled on Plato’s Laws. Plato and Maistre both demand the political control of natural inquiry, and implement these controls through theodictic conversation. Maistre, following the lead of Plato’s legislator, publishes an exemplary conversation about providence between a young man tempted by an atheistic Enlightenment and two older, wiser, and more learned men of affairs. Maistre defends providentialism from materialist interpretations of natural science even as Plato defended it from ancient materialism.

Work was conducted among traditional, subsistence whale hunters in Lamalera, Indonesia, in order to test if strict biological kinship or lineage membership is more important for explaining the organization of cooperative hunting parties ranging in size from 8 to 14 men. Crew identifications were collected for all 853 hunts that occurred between May 3 and August 5, 1999. Lineage identity and genetic relatedness were determined for a sample of 189 hunters. Results of matrix regression show that genetic kinship explains little (...) of the hunters’ affiliations independent of lineage identity. Crew members are much more closely related to each other than expected by chance, but this is due to the correlation between lineage membership and genetic kinship. Lineage members are much more likely to affiliate in crews, but kin with r<0.5 are just as likely not to affiliate. The results are discussed vis-à-vis the evolution of cooperation and group identity. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the positive epistemic value that individual and group emotion can have. It explains how group emotion can help to bring about the highest epistemic good, namely group understanding. It is argues that this group good would be difficult to achieve, in very many cases, in the absence of group emotion. Even if group emotion sometimes—indeed often—leads us astray, we would be worse off, from the standpoint of achieving the highest epistemic good, without it. The chapter illustrates (...) the connection between group emotion and group understanding by focusing on the phenomenon of public inquiries. (shrink)

My own mode of discussing Douglas Husak's excellent new book, Overcriminalization,1 is by comparing the theory that book defends—what Husak calls “minimalism”—with a theory with which I am already...

This article explores the extent to which the I‐You relation should be applied to domains other than the human and the divine focusing particularly on artifacts and technology. Drawing first on the work of Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, and Martin Heidegger, I contend that the I‐You tradition has maintained I‐You relations with objects are possible even when these same figures level strong critiques of the I‐It relation. I extend these discussions and argue that some kind of You‐speaking for artifacts is (...) needed to combat rampant consumption and reduction of the world to pure utility. But, I equally suggest that there are limitations to applying the I‐You relation to artifacts precisely when doing so keeps us from having genuine relationships with other people as outlined by psychologist Sherry Turkle. Finally, I outline how this proposal impacts the doctrine of creation. In sum, it expands our intuitions of what is included in that doctrine creation. (shrink)

In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all.

This work provides, for the first time, a unified account of the theory of action presupposed by both British and American criminal law and its underlying morality. It defends the view that human actions are volitionally caused body movements. This theory illuminates three major problems in drafting and implementing criminal law--what the voluntary act requirement does and should require, what complex descriptions of actions prohibited by criminal codes both do and should require, and when the two actions are the "same" (...) for purposes of assessing whether multiple prosecutions and multiple punishments are warranted. The book contributes to the development of a coherent theory of action in philosophy. It provides a grounding in three of the most basic elements of criminal liability for legislators, judges, and the lawyers who argue to them. (shrink)

In the 1950s, E.T. Gendlin developed a philosophical system, published as Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, to explain the role of bodily feelings in cognition, and he then evolved a psychotherapy known as Focusing, based on this system. Focusing works primarily with bodily feelings and how they relate to the thinking processes. Gendlin’s work has had an important impact on the field of Psychology. An aspect of the historicity of E.T. Gendlin’s work is that it has intriguing similarities with (...) how the Vipassana meditation teacher S.N. Goenka, teaches, in line with the Pali Nikayas, that a correct understanding of affective bodily feelings can lead to the dissolution of destructive emotional tendencies. This article uses these similarities to begin a process, from a Western academic perspective, of conceptualizing the efficacy of Vipassana meditation, as taught by S.N. Goenka, in dissolving harmful emotional habits. This will be done by comparing how S.N. Goenka and E.T. Gendlin understand the operative factors in personality change. (shrink)

This article aims to highlight why R. S. Peters' conceptual analysis of ‘education’ was such an important contribution to the normative field of philosophy of education. In the article, I do the following: 1) explicate Peters' conception of philosophy of education as a field of philosophy and explain his approach to the philosophical analysis of concepts; 2) emphasize several (normative) features of Peters' conception of education, while pointing to a couple of oversights; and 3) suggest how Peters' analysis might be (...) used to reinvigorate a conversation on one central educational aim—that of how we might educate citizens for the 21st century. (shrink)