The current contents of visual working memory can be disrupted by previously formed memories. This phenomenon is known as proactive interference, and it can be used to index the availability of old memories. However, there is uncertainty about the robustness and lifetime of proactive interference, which raises important questions about the role of temporal factors in forgetting. The present study assessed different factors that were expected to influence the persistence of proactive interference over an inter-trial interval in the visual recent (...) probes task. In three experiments, participants encoded arrays of targets and then determined whether a single probe matched one of those targets. On some trials, the probe matched an item from the previous trial, whereas on other trials the probe matched a more distant item. Prior studies have found that recent negative probes can increase errors and slow response times in comparison to non-recent negative probes, and this offered a behavioral measure of proactive interference. In Experiment 1, factors of array size and inter-trial interval were manipulated in the recent probes task. There was a reduction in proactive interference when a longer delay separated trials on one measure, but only when participants encoded two targets. When working memory capacity was strained by increasing the array size to four targets, proactive interference became stronger after the long delay. In Experiment 2, the inter-trial interval length was again manipulated, along with stimulus novelty. Proactive interference was modestly stronger when a smaller number of stimuli were used throughout the experiment, but proactive interference was minimally affected by the inter-trial interval. These findings are problematic for temporal models of forgetting, but Experiment 3 showed that proactive interference also resisted disruption produced by a secondary task presented within the inter-trial interval. Proactive interference was constantly present and generally resilient to the different manipulations. The combined data suggest a relatively durable, passive representation that can disrupt current working memory under a variety of different circumstances. (shrink)

This book is the first detailed study of the plays of Sophocles through examination of a single ethical principle--the traditional Greek popular moral code of "helping friends and harming enemies." Five of the extant plays are discussed in detail from both a dramatic and an ethical standpoint, and the author concludes that ethical themes are not only integral to each drama, but are subjected to an implicit critique through the tragic consequences to which they give rise. Greek scholars and students (...) of Greek drama and Greek thought will welcome this book, which is presented in such a way as to be accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike. No knowledge of Greek is required. (shrink)

Call the norms of inquiry zetetic norms. How are zetetic norms related to epistemic norms? At first glance, they seem quite closely connected. Aren't epistemic norms norms that bind inquirers qua inquirers? And isn't epistemology the place to look for a normative theory of inquiry? While much of this thought seems right, this paper argues that the relationship between the epistemic and the zetetic is not as harmonious as one might have thought and liked. In particular, this paper argues that (...) some familiar contemporary epistemic norms are in tension with, and even in conflict with, central zetetic norms. (shrink)

In this paper I look at belief and degrees of belief through the lens of inquiry. I argue that belief and degrees of belief play different roles in inquiry. In particular I argue that belief is a “settling” attitude in a way that degrees of belief are not. Along the way I say more about what inquiring amounts to, argue for a central norm of inquiry connecting inquiry and belief and say more about just what it means to have an (...) inquiry or question settled. (shrink)

Ichikawa and Jarvis offer a new rationalist theory of mental content and defend a traditional epistemology of philosophy. They argue that philosophical inquiry is continuous with non-philosophical inquiry, and can be genuinely a priori, and that intuitions do not play an important role in mental content or the a priori.

Human uterus transplantation is currently under investigation as a treatment for uterine infertility. Without a uterus transplant, the options available to women with uterine infertility are adoption or surrogacy; only the latter has the potential for a genetically related child. UTx will offer recipients the chance of having their own pregnancy. This procedure occurs at the intersection of two ethically contentious areas: assisted reproductive technologies and organ transplantation. In relation to organ transplantation, UTx lies with composite tissue transplants such as (...) face and limb grafts, and shares some of the ethical concerns raised by these non-life saving procedures. In relation to ART, UTx represents one more avenue by which a woman may seek to meet her reproductive goals, and as with other ART procedures, raises questions about the limits of reproductive autonomy. This paper explores the ethical issues raised by UTx with a focus on the potential gap between women's desires and aspirations about pregnancy and the likely functional outcomes of successful UTx. (shrink)

The #1bestseller that presents a funny, honest, and engaging look at the craziness of modern life, explaining why we're all just a little bit out of our minds. In Sane New World, Ruby Wax - comedian, writer and mental health advocate - shows us just how our minds can send us mad as our internal critics play on a permanent loop tape. 'Don't do that.. why you... you didn't... should have... but you didn't...'. Ruby knows those voices well. (...) She has been on a tough but ultimately enlightening journey that has taken her from battling depression to achieving a Masters Degree from Oxford University in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. In Sane New World, Ruby helps us all understand why we sabotage our sanity, how our brains work and how we can rewire our thinking - often through simple mindfulness techniques - to find calm in a frenetic world. (shrink)

The Aesthetics of Design offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics, challenging the discipline to broaden its scope to include the quotidian objects and experiences of our everyday lives and concerns ...

Members of marginalized communities experience a lack of representation of their unique life experience in popular fictional media – and if they do see themselves represented, it is often as a stereotype, caricature, or minor character. Black Panther broke this mold by offering abundant, nuanced, and non‐stereotypical representation of Black experience. Black Panther offers a way of interpreting the real world through its fictional representations of Black people and Black society. Fictional works such as Black Panther offer viewers a unique (...) type of what Gaile Pohlhaus calls an epistemic resource : a resource that individuals draw upon in order to know. The hypothetical nation of Wakanda gives audience members of other racial groups a different or new perspective on Black identity, which can aid their interpretations of the real world. Quite the contrary, Black Panther is a film that can elucidate a multitude of Black peoples' experiences and perspectives. (shrink)

This timely intervention into the debate about the legacy of the Enlightenment highlights both the plurality and the continuing relevance of Enlightened cosmopolitanism to contemporary global concerns, linking cultural history with the history of ideas and politics, in a global perspective.

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 193-222, Spring 2022.

Scholars are beginning to use the concept medicalization of poverty to theorize how the United States spends large amounts of money on illnesses related to poverty but invests much less in preventing these illnesses and the conditions that create them. This study examines the connection between poverty, disease burden and health-related costs through the in-depth interviews of 86 Black mothers living in neighborhoods with high levels of violence on the South Side of Chicago. The rippling costs of poverty and violence (...) include 56 percent of the mothers reporting post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and 48 percent reporting mild to severe depressive symptoms. Mothers also report poor housing quality such as “toxic mold.” The physical costs include reports of back pains, stomach aches, hair falling out, panic attacks, hands shaking, insomnia, fainting from exhaustion and lack of sexual desire, and children with asthma and osteomyelitis reportedly from the exposure to mold. Transformative solutions are explored that build upon the cultural resources of Black mothers and engage policy levers. (shrink)

This book attempts to bridge the gulf that still exists between 'literary' and 'philosophical' interpreters of Plato by looking at his use of characterization. Characterization is intrinsic to dramatic form and a concern with human character in an ethical sense pervades the dialogues on the discursive level. Form and content are further reciprocally related through Plato's discursive preoccupation with literary characterization. Two opening chapters examine the methodological issues involved in reading Plato 'as drama' and a set of questions surrounding Greek (...) 'character' words, including ancient Greek views about the influence of dramatic character on an audience. The figure of Sokrates qua Platonic 'hero' also receives preliminary discussion. The remaining chapters offer close readings of select dialogues, chosen to show the wide range of ways in which Plato uses his characters, with special emphasis on the kaleidoscopic figure of Sokrates and on Plato's own relationship to his 'dramatic' hero. (shrink)

How do we know what's (metaphysically) possible and impossible? Arguments from Kripke and Putnam suggest that possibility is not merely a matter of (coherent) conceivability/imaginability. For example, we can coherently imagine that Hesperus and Phosphorus are distinct objects even though they are not possibly distinct. Despite this apparent problem, we suggest, nevertheless, that imagination plays an important role in an adequate modal epistemology. When we discover what is possible or what is impossible, we generally exploit important connections between what is (...) possible and what we can coherently imagine. We can often come to knowledge of metaphysical modality a priori. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

Consider the following 'principles':2(Norm of Belief Schema) Necessarily, a belief of is correct (relative to some scenario) if and only if p (at that scenario) — where 'p' has the aforementioned content .(Generalized Norm of Belief) Necessarily, for all propositions , a belief of is correct (relative to some scenario) if and only if is true (at that scenario).Both 'principles' appear to capture the aim(s) of belief. (NBS) particularizes the aims to beliefs of distinct content-types. (GNB) generalizes these aims of (...) beliefs as truth. Properly understood, the instances of (NBS) appear to be at least approximately true as does (GNB). Of course, one might harbor concerns about whether these are mere .. (shrink)

The world flipped its sign from open to closed. I'm 6,714 miles from home in a place that tastes familiar. At night, I dream about my mother. It goes like this: I, blindfolded, frantic. My mother, always out of reach.When the sun rises, I bake bread and find I have fallen in...

Postcolonialism offers challenging and provocative ways of thinking about colonial and neocolonial power, about self and other, and about the discourses that perpetuate postcolonial inequality and violence. Much of the seminal work in postcolonialism has been shaped by currents in philosophy, notably Marxism and ethics. "Understanding Postcolonialism" examines the philosophy of postcolonialism in order to reveal the often conflicting systems of thought which underpin it. In so doing, the book presents a reappraisal of the major postcolonial thinkers of the twentieth (...) century.Ranging beyond the narrow selection of theorists to which the field is often restricted, the book explores the work of Fanon and Sartre, Gandhi, Nandy, and the Subaltern Studies Group, Foucault and Said, Derrida and Bhabha, Khatibi and Glissant, and Spivak, Mbembe and Mudimbe. A clear and accessible introduction to the subject, "Understanding Postcolonialism" reveals how, almost half a century after decolonisation, the complex relation between politics and ethics continues to shape postcolonial thought. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Early Christian writers defined idolatry around the monotheistic distinction between proper worship of the creator and vain worship of the creature, which they had inherited from Hellenistic Judaism. Despite the remarkable consensus about the validity of this theological analysis, the medieval synthesis was under severe strain throughout the early modern period, mainly because of the concept's extended range of application in the new contexts of religious controversy. In all these cases, deciding what practices constituted idolatry was open to debate. By (...) the eighteenth century, libertine writers could retain the concept of superstition at the expense of that of idolatry, which Voltaire (himself an anti-Christian deist) denounced as meaningless. (shrink)

Using historical documents and evidence gathered in the field, Rubie Watson provides a social history of the 600-year-old Chinese lineage village of Ha Tsuen in the New Territories of Hong Kong, and demonstrates the crucial role that the lineage played in the evolution of the community from a few scattered households in the fourteenth century into a regional power from the 1700s onwards. Despite a patrilineal ideology that extols the virtues of brotherhood and equality, Dr Watson shows that the lineage (...) has in fact played a central role in the formation, development and maintenance of an élite class of landlords and merchants, who, even though their economic importance has now declined, continue to exert political control. Dr Watson examines the dynamics of interclass relations within a single lineage and shows how these relations have been transformed as a consequence of the growth of wage labour. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Philosophy Pitfalls, and What Is Needed to Avoid Them Institutional History at Cambridge Cambridge Philosophy Reference.

Ruby Meager; The Dangers of Aestheticism in Schooling, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–30, https://doi.org/10.1111.

Ruby Meager; The Dangers of Aestheticism in Schooling, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–30, https://doi.org/10.1111.

"It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. But we all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements. (...) To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation. This book is a study of various types and groups who are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct."--. (shrink)

This volume tracks the evolution of Mansbridge's key contributions to democratic theory in participatory, institutional and feminist contexts through articles that span her entire career to date.

La violencia contra las mujeres alcanza su expresión más siniestra en el flagelo de nuestro tiempo: el feminicidio. No obstante, la respuesta social e institucional ha sido insólita. Grandes sectores sociales permanecen impasibles ante el aumento de asesinatos cruentos de mujeres y niñas. Inadmisible desde una concepción de humanidad crítica y consciente de sus posibilidades de realización más alta, la misoginia que sostiene el orden social resulta alarmante. El objetivo del trabajo es comprender la estructura simbólica que alienta la violencia, (...) mediante una reflexión crítica sobre sus posibilidades de transformación. La conclusión a la que llega es que, aunque la estructura simbólica de la dominación sexual opera imperceptiblemente para justificar lo que debería ser condenado de forma generalizada, el desarrollo de la sensibilidad actual ofrece una posibilidad de identificar agravios que antes no se reconocían. Palabras clave: Orden simbólico, Violencia, Feminicidio, Hermenéutica, Misoginia. (shrink)

The AI world was rocked with controversy when Blake Lemoine, an AI researcher at Google claimed that their new LaMDA model was sentient. This Curmudgeon’s Corner article explores his claims critically by contrasting them to the original LaMDA paper released by the team of researchers at Google. The piece explores the human tendency for anthropomorphization via historical chatbots such as Eliza and potential reasons why we developed this propensity. It addresses the potential causes for the model’s choice of words. Subsequently, (...) using the scoring criteria of the language model, I provide an explanation for the model’s behavior in the conversation with Lemoine. Finally, I explore some of Lemoine’s assertions and break down the logical gaps they hold. I conclude on a potential reorientation of the debate in view of our unfortunate tendency. (shrink)