l Carroll has recently replied to criticisms of his views about moderate moralism and aesthetic experience. This paper responds to the replies directed at me. Regarding moderate moralism, I suggest that far from being a critic, my proposals should be seen as friendly clarifications of that view. Regarding aesthetic experience, there are sharp differences between us. Here I defuse new criticisms Carroll directs at my conception of such experience, and attempt to demonstrate the implausibility of Carroll's concept-oriented (...) conception. (shrink)

Throughout the Old Testament, the stories, laws, and songs not only teach a way of life that requires individuals to be moral, but they demonstrate how. In biblical studies, character ethics has been one of the fastest-growing areas of interest. Whereas ethics usually studies rules of behavior, character ethics focuses on how people are formed to be moral agents in the world. This book presents the most up-to-date academic work in Old Testament character ethics, covering topics throughout the Torah, the (...) Prophets, and the Writings, in addition to the use of the Bible in the modern world. In addition to Carroll and Lapsley, contributors are Denise M. Ackermann, Cheryl B. Anderson, Samuel E. Balentine, William P. Brown, Walter Brueggemann, Thomas B. Dozeman, Bob Ekblad, Jose Rafael Escobar R., Theodore Hiebert, Kathleen O'Connor, Dennis T. Olson, J. David Pleins, Luis R. Rivera Rodriguez, J. J. M. Roberts, and Daniel L. Smith-Christopher. (shrink)

Experiencing a stimulus in one sensory modality is often associated with an experience in another sensory modality. For instance, seeing a lemon might produce a sensation of sourness. This might indicate some kind of cross-modal correspondence between vision and gustation. The aim of the current study was to provide explore whether such cross-modal correspondences influence cross-modal integration during perceptual learning. To that end, we conducted 2 experiments. Using a speeded classification task, Experiment 1 established a cross-modal correspondence between visual lightness (...) and the frequency of an auditory tone. Using a short-term priming procedure, Experiment 2 showed that manipulation of such cross-modal correspondences led to the creation of a crossmodal unit regardless of the nature of the correspondence (i.e., congruent, Experiment 2a or incongruent, Experiment 2b). However, a comparison of priming-effects sizes suggested that cross-modal correspondences modulate cross-modal integration during learning and thus leading to new learned units that have different stability over time. We discuss the implications of our results for the relation between cross-modal correspondence and perceptual learning in the context of a Bayesian explanation of cross-modal correspondences. (shrink)

Through qualitative surveys, a team of law students, law professors, physicians, and residents explored the perceptions of neurology residents towards referral to appropriate legal resources in an academic training program. Respondents reported feeling uncomfortable screening their patients for health-harming legal needs, which many attributed to a lack of training in this area. These findings indicate that neurology residents would benefit from training on screening for social factors that may be impacting their patients’ health.

How, and how well, do people switch between exploration and exploitation to search for and accumulate resources? We study the decision processes underlying such exploration/exploitation trade‐offs using a novel card selection task that captures the common situation of searching among multiple resources (e.g., jobs) that can be exploited without depleting. With experience, participants learn to switch appropriately between exploration and exploitation and approach optimal performance. We model participants' behavior on this task with random, threshold, and sampling strategies, and find that (...) a linear decreasing threshold rule best fits participants' results. Further evidence that participants use decreasing threshold‐based strategies comes from reaction time differences between exploration and exploitation; however, participants themselves report non‐decreasing thresholds. Decreasing threshold strategies that “front‐load” exploration and switch quickly to exploitation are particularly effective in resource accumulation tasks, in contrast to optimal stopping problems like the Secretary Problem requiring longer exploration. (shrink)

A standard objection to act utilitarian theories is that they are not helpful in deciding what it is morally permissible for us to do when we actually have to make a choice between alternatives. That is, such theories are worthless as decision procedures. A standard reply to this objection is that act utilitarian theories can be evaluated solely as theories about right-making characteristics and, when so evaluated, their inadequacy as decision procedures is irrelevant. Even if somewhat unappealing, this is an (...) effective reply to the standard objection. (shrink)

The visual system is known to extract summary representations of visually similar objects which bias the perception of individual objects toward the ensemble average. Although vision plays a large role in guiding action, less is known about whether ensemble representation is informative for action. Motor behavior is tuned to the veridical dimensions of objects and generally considered resistant to perceptual biases. However, when the relevant grasp dimension is not available or is unconstrained, ensemble perception may be informative to behavior by (...) providing gist information about surrounding objects. In the present study, we examined if summary representations of a surrounding ensemble display influenced grip aperture and orientation when participants reached-to-grasp a central circular target which had an explicit size but importantly no explicit orientation that the visuomotor system could selectively attend to. Maximum grip aperture and grip orientation were not biased by ensemble statistics during grasping, although participants were able to perceive and provide manual estimations of the average size and orientation of the ensemble display. Support vector machine classification of ensemble statistics achieved above-chance classification accuracy when trained on kinematic and electromyography data of the perceptual but not grasping conditions, supporting our univariate findings. These results suggest that even along unconstrained grasping dimensions, visually-guided behaviors toward real-world objects are not biased by ensemble processing. (shrink)

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

A survey was conducted in the United Statesin 1998 and 1999 to determine what members of theNational Association of State Universities and LandGrant Colleges (NASULGC) and of the AmericanAssociation of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU)offered agricultural ethics as an undergraduatecourse. Of the 59 responses, the survey found 15 USuniversities that have a course on agricultural ethicsor one that includes the topic. This paper willdiscuss the survey's findings and offer six reasonsthat explain why so few universities includeagricultural ethics in their curriculum. (...) The sixreasons are: 1) lack of education in ethics andphilosophy on the part of agricultural scientists; 2)lack of institutional or disciplinary incentives foragricultural scientists to reflect on their work andits effects; 3) lack of administrative leadership incolleges of agriculture due to their failure tounderstand the benefits of agricultural ethics; 4)continuance of the prevailing assumption thatagriculture is inherently ethically correct; 5) thefelt necessity by agricultural scientists to defendthemselves against what are perceived to be unjust andinaccurate criticisms of agriculture; and 6) areluctance to engage in ethical reflection because itmay raise more problems than it solves. The paper'scentral question is why ethics is not taught in morecolleges of agriculture. Those who teach know thattheir students are tomorrow's farmers, businesspeople, professors, and policy makers. If we who nowteach and administer fail to include true ethicalstudy in our student's education, our students willstill be defensive when confronted with an ethicalissue and unable to respond except with assertionsbased on the production paradigm, the correctness ofwhich, although unexamined, we taught them. If theagricultural faculty does not recognize theopportunity and the obligation to participate in theshaping of values, then the values of agriculture willbe shaped elsewhere in the institution and insociety. (shrink)

Both theoretical and empirical work in a variety of disciplines has resulted in a recent turn away from Cartesian and Meadian anthropocentrism in the direction of a radical reconsideration of nonhuman animal mind and agency. Central to sociology’s role in envisioning a repopulated social world is the analysis of nonhuman-human social interaction. Because all social action is predicated on certain assumptions regarding the minds of others, a theory of intersubjectivity must be at the core of any such project. It is (...) argued here that the key elements employed in Alfred Schutz’s conceptualization of intersubjectivity among humans are also demonstrated in the routine communicative projects of humans and their companion animals. After presenting a Schutzian theory of intersubjectivity, this article analyzes, from an ethnographic perspective, elements of the everyday lifeworld Rocky—a deaf, paraplegic cat—cohabits with the author and other family members. Through that analysis, the paper demonstrates that the dynamics of everyday interactions through which Rocky actively participates in the creation of meaning and the achievement of understanding is highly consistent with Schutz’s theory of human intersubjectivity. (shrink)

An examination of the role ofUniversity weed scientists in herbicide efficacyresearch and long-term weed management studies raisesseveral important questions: who should do what kindof research and what kind of research should be done,and, because the university is a research institutionfunded by the public, there is also the importantquestion of who should pay for the research. Indeveloping a response to these questions, severaldimensions of the relationships within which weedscience works must be considered. The author‘sexperience has demonstrated that production, thedominant value in (...) agriculture, provides a sufficientanswer to the questions for many in weed science.However, when weed scientists claim credit forexcellence in production they must also acceptsociety‘s right to hold them responsible for problemsthey now treat as externalities. (shrink)

Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their ...

Written with the general reader in mind, this collection will prove useful by both scholar and student, and will lead the general reader to encounter one of the ...

Addressing both collegiate and professional sports, the updated edition of Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport explores the ethical presuppositions of competitive athletics and their connection both to ethical theory and to concrete moral dilemmas that arise in actual athletic competition. This fourth edition has been updated with new examples, including a discussion of Spygate by the New England Patriots and recent discoveries on the use of performance enhancing drugs by top athletes. Two additional authors, Cesar R. Torres and Peter (...) F. Hager, bring to this edition a discussion of the moral issues involved in youth sports and the ethics of being a fan, as well as a fresh perspective on the theories of broad internalism and the quest for excellence. Furthermore, major criticisms of broad internalism by philosophers William J. Morgan and Scott Kretchmar add a new dimension to the discussion on the moral foundations of winning. (shrink)

Many segments of society have systems of values arising from collective beliefs and motivations. For agriculture, and our food system, increasing production to feed the growing human population clearly is a core value. However, a survey we conducted, together with a previously reported survey, showed that the curricula of most U.S. colleges of agriculture do not offer ethics courses that examine the basis of this core value or include discussion of agriculture’s ethical dilemmas such as misuse of pesticides, not progressing (...) rapidly enough toward sustainability goals, relative lack of involvement in addressing diet-related health issues, and lack of commitment to reducing agriculture’s role as a contributor to global climate change. These surveys provide strong evidence that few students have an opportunity to learn ethical concepts and apply them to issues of importance to the agriculture/food system. We suggest that such issues are both growing societal concerns and serious ethical problems that demand attention if our agricultural/food system is not see its relationship with the public further imperiled. Further, we suggest that there is a need for, indeed an obligation of, the faculty of colleges of agriculture to embrace a thorough analysis and discussion of agriculture’s values and their ethical foundation. We offer our thoughts on why curricula of colleges of agriculture do not provide such opportunities and on the importance of agricultural faculties providing leadership in ethical analysis and discussion. (shrink)

Agriculture’s dominant focus is feeding the human population. From an ethical perspective, this is clearly very positive, but it does not absolve agriculture from critical, ethical examination of the totality of agriculture’s effects. To earn the public’s ongoing support, agriculture must be trusted to vigilantly examine its full range of effects and be sure they align with the highest ethical values. Agriculture’s record is enviable in the science and technology associated with its primary ethical concern, but we need to do (...) more to address the broader ethical issues that are the public’s increasing concern. The entire agricultural community needs to become engaged in the discussion. The classroom offers an effective starting place. Yet, curricular offerings are rarely available at public universities. Opportunity for ethics study should become a key component of agricultural education. (shrink)

The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of "respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not (...) just nuclear war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman Kahn. Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls "militarists." "Militarists," we realize after reading this book, include the majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks eventual human extinction. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The nature of measurement is a topic of central concern in the philosophy of science and, indeed, measurement is the essential link between science and mathematics. Professor Ellis's book, originally published in 1966, is the first general exposition of the philosophical and logical principles involved in measurement since N. R. Campbell's Principles of Measurement and Calculation, and P. W. Bridgman's Dimensional Analysis. Professor Ellis writes from an empiricist standpoint. His object is to distinguish and define the basic concepts in measurement, (...) for example: scale, quantity, unit. dimension, number and probability. He discusses the problem of classifying scales of measurement and the special logical problems associated with each kind of scale. A translation of mach's Critique on the Concept of Temperature, which gives his views on the nature of measurement more fully than in any of his other works, is given as an appendix. (shrink)

Novice designers produced a sequence of sketches while inventing a logo for a novel brand of soft drink. The sketches were scored for the presence of specific objects, their local features and global composition. Self‐assessment scores for each sketch and art critics' scores for the end products were collected. It was investigated whether the design evolves in an essentially random fashion or according to an overall heuristic. The results indicated a macrostructure in the evolution of the design, characterized by two (...) stages. For the majority of participants, the first stage is marked by the introduction and modification of novel objects and their local and global aspects; the second stage is characterized by changes in their global composition. The minority that showed the better designs has a different strategy, in which most global changes were made in the beginning. Although participants did not consciously apply these strategies, their self‐assessment scores reflect the stages of the process. (shrink)

This article offers a critique of research practices typical of experimental philosophy. To that end, it presents a review of methodological issues that have proved crucial to the quality of research in the biobehavioral sciences. It discusses various shortcomings in the experimental philosophy literature related to (1) the credibility of self-report questionnaires, (2) the validity and reliability of measurement, (3) the adherence to appropriate procedures for sampling, random assignment, and handling of participants, and (4) the meticulousness of study reporting. It (...) argues that the future standing of experimental philosophy will hinge upon improvements in research methods. (shrink)

The threat of atomic destruction has heightened the criminal irresponsibility of aggression, the employment of war as an instrument of national or bloc policy. Correspondingly, the moral obligation to discourage such a crime or, if it occurs, to deny it victory, has been underscored. The consequences of a successful defense are fearful to contemplate, but the consequences of a successful aggression, with tyrannical monopoly of the weapons of mass destruction, are calculated to be worse. While the avoidance of excessive and (...) indiscriminate violence, and of such destruction as would undermine the basis for future peace, remain moral imperatives in a just war, it does not seem possible to draw a line in advance, beyond which it would be better to yield than to resist. Reinhold Neibuhr. … the person who deeply desires peace rejects any kind of pacifism which is cowardice or the simple preservation of tranquility. In fact, those who are tempted to impose their domination will always encounter the resistance of intelligent and courageous men and women, prepared to defend freedom in order to promote justice. Pope John Paul II For two generations the United States has maintained with its principal adversary, the Soviet Union, a security relationship based upon the deterrence of war by the possession of means deemed adequate to inflict unacceptable levels of damage in response to a Soviet attack upon the United States or its allies. Against the Soviet Union, the world's largest land power, in possession of superior conventional forces that could be launched against Western Europe and other peripheral regions of the continents of Europe and Asia, the United States has held nuclear capabilities as the ultimate weapon to be invoked in support of those interests deemed to be most vital to American security. (shrink)