In liberal democracies that were British colonies, law constructs the linkages and distinctions between individual and political bodies. Legality re-iterates the form of an ancient construct called the King’s Two Bodies. The legal construction of these bodies ensures that their borders are continuously and perpetually contested and transgressed, and different modalities of power have arisen to take advantage of them. Additionally, in times of mass insecurity or crisis, we might believe that we need to fix our (personal or political) borders (...) and construct them in more solid ways. However, because other modalities of power take advantage of these borders, even if legal reconstruction can momentarily assuage concerns, it is argued here that legal processes construct borders around individual and political bodies to ensure the (re)production of those contests and crises. (shrink)

This study provides a comparative analysis of students' self-reported beliefs and behaviors related to six analogous pairs of conventional and digital forms of academic cheating. Results from an online survey of undergraduates at two universities (N = 1,305) suggest that students use conventional means more often than digital means to copy homework, collaborate when it is not permitted, and copy from others during an exam. However, engagement in digital plagiarism (cutting and pasting from the Internet) has surpassed conventional plagiarism. Students (...) also reported using digital "cheat sheets" (i.e., notes stored in a digital device) to cheat on tests more often than conventional "cheat sheets." Overall, 32% of students reported no cheating of any kind, 18.2% reported using only conventional methods, 4.2% reported using only digital methods, and 45.6% reported using both conventional and digital methods to cheat. "Digital only" cheaters were less likely than "conventional only" cheaters to report assignment cheating, but the former was more likely than the latter to report engagement in plagiarism. Students who cheated both conventionally and digitally were significantly different from the other three groups in terms of their self-reported engagement in all three types of cheating behavior. Students in this "both" group also had the lowest sense of moral responsibility to refrain from cheating and the greatest tendency to neutralize that responsibility. The scientific and educational implications of these findings are discussed in this study. (shrink)

Human behavior depends on the ability to effectively introspect about our performance. For simple perceptual decisions, this introspective or metacognitive ability varies substantially across individuals and is correlated with the structure of focal areas in prefrontal cortex. This raises the possibility that the ability to introspect about different perceptual decisions might be mediated by a common cognitive process. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether inter-individual differences in metacognitive ability were correlated across two different perceptual tasks where individuals made judgments (...) about different and unrelated visual stimulus properties. We found that inter-individual differences were strongly correlated between the two tasks for metacognitive ability but not objective performance. Such stability of an individual’s metacognitive ability across different perceptual tasks indicates a general mechanism supporting metacognition independent of the specific task. (shrink)

Nativists inspired by Chomsky are apt to provide arguments with the following general form: languages exhibit interesting generalizations that are not suggested by casual (or even intensive) examination of what people actually say; correspondingly, adults (i.e., just about anyone above the age of four) know much more about language than they could plausibly have learned on the basis of their experience; so absent an alternative account of the relevant generalizations and speakers' (tacit) knowledge of them, one should conclude that there (...) are substantive "universal" principles of human grammar and, as a result of human biology, children can only acquire languages that conform to these principles. According to Pullum and Scholz, linguists need not suppose that children are innately endowed with "specific contingent facts about natural languages." But Pullum and Scholz don't consider the kinds of facts that really impress nativists. Nor do they offer any plausible acquisition scenarios that would culminate in the acquisition of languages that exhibit the kinds of rich and interrelated generalizations that are exhibited by natural languages. As we stress, good poverty-of-stimulus arguments are based on specific principles - - confirmed by drawing on (negative and crosslinguistic) data unavailable to children -- that help explain a range of independently established linguistic phenomena. If subsequent psycholinguistic experiments show that very young children already know such principles, that strengthens the case for nativism; and if further investigation shows that children sometimes "try out" constructions that are unattested in the local language, but only if such constructions are attested in other human languages, then the case for nativism is made stronger still. We illustrate these points by considering an apparently disparate -- but upon closer inspection, interestingly related -- cluster of phenomena involving: negative polarity items, the interpretation of 'or', binding theory, and displays of Romance and Germanic constructions in child- English.. (shrink)

The practice of psychotherapy, or any form of counseling, inevitably requires an anthropological foundation from which to work. Defining the nature of personhood is a task which necessitates an explanation of the various aspects of the self, and the relationships between those aspects. In particular, it is crucial to delineate how the person is both an individual being and a relational being, for we intuitively experience life in both dimensions. These are two characteristics which have often been presented in opposition (...) to each other, however. What is needed is a theory which balances the individual character of personhood with the social character of personhood. The task at hand is to develop such a balance which can serve as a foundation for a Christian psychology. ;C. Stephen Evans, a philosopher and post-empirical critic of modern psychology, has emphasized the individual aspects of personhood. Soren Kierkegaard has influenced Evans' view of the self. Thus, Evans conceives of the person as fundamentally an agent, who chooses freely, acts purposefully and reasonably, and is responsible for the consequences of those choices and actions. ;Ray S. Anderson has developed a theological anthropology and on that basis has articulated a theoretical view of Christian counseling. His theory of the nature of personhood, influenced by the theologies of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is a thoroughly social perspective. The person is essentially relational, such that one is social before one is psychological. ;The present work constructs an integrative theory which balances the individual and social insights from Evans' and Anderson's views, respectively. It is accomplished through an analysis of the self across two ontological statuses and three orientations . A biblical paradigm is developed to illustrate the grounding of that theory in a Christian framework. Implications for therapeutic interventions are provided. (shrink)

An anxious resident paged ethics at 2:00 a.m. His patient, Mr. M, a twenty‐nine‐year‐old man with a history of multiple substance abuse, was in the hospital after cardiac arrest and lack of cerebral perfusion. Sadly, the young man probably met the criteria for brain death, but the final apnea test to confirm the diagnosis could not be done for another forty‐eight to seventy‐two hours because the Klonopin in his system might confound the results. The resident's concern, however, addressed a (...) request made by the patient's mother for a sperm harvest. The patient's mother maintained that her son had said he wanted to give her grandchildren. She wished to harvest sperm from him for a future use with an as‐yet‐to‐be‐determined surrogate mother. (shrink)

This long-awaited work by prominent Harvard psychologist Stephen Kosslyn integrates a twenty-year research program on the nature of high-level vision and mental ...

Climate change is a global problem that is predominantly an intergenerational conflict, and which takes place in a setting where our ethical impulses are weak. This "perfect moral storm" poses a profound challenge to humanity. This book explains how the "perfect storm" metaphor makes sense of our current malaise, and why a better ethics can help see our way out.

I critically examine the semantic view of theories to reveal the following results. First, models in science are not the same as models in mathematics, as holders of the semantic view claim. Second, when several examples of the semantic approach are examined in detail no common thread is found between them, except their close attention to the details of model building in each particular science. These results lead me to propose a deflationary semantic view, which is simply that model construction (...) is an important component of theorizing in science. This deflationary view is consistent with a naturalized approach to the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Fisher’s 1918 paper accomplished two distinct goals: unifying discrete Mendelian genetics with continuous biometric phenotypes and quantifying the variance components of variation in complex human characteristics. The former contributed to the foundation of modern quantitative genetics; the latter was adopted by social scientists interested in the pursuit of Galtonian nature-nurture questions about the biological and social origins of human behavior, especially human intelligence. This historical divergence has produced competing notions of the estimation of variance ratios referred to as heritability. Jay (...) Lush showed that they could be applied to selective breeding on the farm, while the early twin geneticists used them as a descriptive statistic to describe the degree of genetic determination in complex human traits. Here we trace the early history of the heritability coefficient now used by social scientists. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that disability is typically a bad thing for those who are disabled. Our purpose in this essay is to critique this view and defend a more nuanced picture of the relationship between disability and well-being. We first examine four interpretations of the above view and argue that it is false on each interpretation. We then ask whether disability is thereby a neutral trait. Our view is that most disabilities are neutral in one sense, though we cannot (...) make simple generalizations about disability's relationship to well-being in other important senses. After defending this view, we discuss its practical implications for selective abortion for disability, nondisabled people's interactions with disabled people, and the use of QALYs in health policy. (shrink)

Lucas Matthews and I substantially revised my SEP entry on Heritability. This version includes discussion of the missing heritability problem and other issues that arise from the use of Genome Wide Association Studies by Behavioral Geneticists.

This collection gathers a set of central papers from the emerging area of ethics and climate change.

I argue that Evolutionary Psychologists’ notion of adaptationism is closest to what Peter Godfrey-Smith (2001) calls explanatory adaptationism and as a result, is not a good organizing principle for research in the biology of human behavior. I also argue that adopting an alternate notion of adaptationism presents much more explanatory resources to the biology of human behavior. I proceed by introducing Evolutionary Psychology and giving some examples of alternative approaches to the biological explanation of human behavior. Next I characterize adaptation (...) and explain the range of biological phenomena that can count as adaptations. I go onto introduce the range of adaptationist views that have been distinguished by philosophers of biology and lay out explanatory adaptationism in detail. (shrink)

This paper describes an operational computer simulation of visual mental imagery in humans. The structure of the simulation was motivated by results of experiments on how people represent information in, and access information from, visual images. The simulation includes a “surface representation,” which is spatial and quasi‐pictorial, and an underlying “deep representation,” which contains “perceptual” information encoding appearance plus “propositional” information describing facts about an object. The simulation embodies a theory of how surface images are generated from deep representations, and (...) how surface images are processed when one accesses information embedded in them. The simulation also offers an account of various sorts of imagery transformations. (shrink)

This is an updated version of my Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Evolutionary Psychology. The 2018 version contains a new section on Human Nature as well as some new material on recent developments in Evolutionary Psychology.

Variability of aggression: human aggressive behavior varies on a number of dimensions. We argue that this variability is best understood through an interdisciplinary evolutionary approach.

The concept of representation has become almost inextricably bound to the concept of symbol systems. the concepts is nowhere more prevalent than in descriptions of "internal representations." These representations are thought to occur in an internal symbol system that allows the brain to store and use information. In this paper we explore a different approach to understanding psychological processes, one that retains a commitment to representations and computations but that is not based on the idea that information must be stored (...) and manipulated in symbol systems. In particular, we suggest that the notion of a symbol system as currently understood construes psychological processes in terms of a specific type of computational system, in which a control function "reads," "interprets," and manipulates discrete entities called "symbols." We argue that other types of computational systems may provide a more appropriate characterization of psychological processes. One implication of our argument is the need to consider the constraints placed on computational theories in psychology by the nature of the computing device itself, the human brain. Perhaps surprisingly, this implication leads us to the conclusion that a "functionalist" conception of psychological processes (discussed below) does not entail that physiology is irrelevant to psychology, as has been maintained by prominent adherents of the symbol-systems approach. (shrink)

A critical study of two recent books in climate ethics by Dale Jamieson (Reason in a Dark Time, Oxford 2014), and Darrel Moellendorf (The Moral and Political Challenges of Climate Change, Cambridge 2014).

What might a theory of mental imagery look like, and how might one begin formulating such a theory? These are the central questions addressed in the present paper. The first section outlines the general research direction taken here and provides an overview of the empirical foundations of our theory of image representation and processing. Four issues are considered in succession, and the relevant results of experiments are presented and discussed. The second section begins with a discussion of the proper form (...) for a cognitive theory, and the distinction between a theory and a model is developed. Following this, the present theory and computer simulation model are introduced. This theory specifies the nature of the internal representations (data structures) and the processes that operate on them when one generates, inspects, or transforms mental images. In the third, concluding, section we consider three very different kinds of objections to the present research program, one hinging on the possibility of experimental artifacts in the data, and the others turning on metatheoretical commitments about the form of a cognitive theory. Finally, we discuss how one ought best to evaluate theories and models of the sort developed here. (shrink)

Disability and enhancement are often treated as opposing concepts. To become disabled in some respect is to move away from those who are enhanced in that same respect; to become enhanced is to move away from the corresponding state of disability. This chapter examines how best to understand the concepts of disability and enhancement in this symmetrical way. After considering various candidates, two types of accounts are identified as the most promising: welfarist accounts and typical-functioning accounts. The authors ultimately defend (...) a complex typical-functioning account as the best way to achieve a symmetrical understanding of disability and enhancement. (shrink)

This paper discussses various concepts of biological information with particular attention being paid to genetic information.

Very few moral philosophers have written on climate change.1 This is puzzling, for several reasons. First, many politicians and policy makers claim that climate change is not only the most serious environmental problem currently facing the world, but also one of the most important international problems per se.2 Second, many of those working in other disciplines describe climate change as fundamentally an ethical issue.3.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel ReconsideredStephen N. DunningJon Stewart. Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xix + 695. Cloth, $55.00.It is rare to find a scholarly book that treats its topic exhaustively. But Jon Stewart's 658-page Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, despite its author's disclaimers, comes close. It is an impressive attempt to demolish what Stewart calls "the standard view," using a three-part (...) argument: that Hegel exerted a substantial positive influence on the young Kierkegaard; [End Page 500] that Kierkegaard was never the radical critic of Hegel claimed by the "standard view"; and that most Kierkegaard scholars (especially Niels Thulstrup in Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980]) have been led astray on these matters by their ignorance of Kierkegaard's philosophical milieu and their ideological bias.Hegel's positive influence on Kierkegaard is presented in chapters devoted respectively to The Concept of Irony, Either/Or, and Sickness Unto Death. Stewart employs a contextual method, limiting himself to passages in Kierkegaard's texts that have clearly been influenced by passages in or characteristics of Hegel's works. He easily shows Hegelian influence on the dialectical structure of the argument in The Concept of Irony, on the contrast between the ancient and "modern" Antigones in Part One of Either/Or, on the concepts of mediation and romantic love presented in Part Two, and on the dialectical structure of the section on "The Forms of This Sickness (Despair)" in The Sickness Unto Death.The claim that Kierkegaard was never a strong critic of Hegel turns on Stewart's careful contextual analysis of the major Danish Hegelians and anti-Hegelians contemporary with Kierkegaard. Thanks to Bruce Kirmmse's Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990), many scholars will be familiar with Heiberg and Martensen, and also the anti-Hegelian Bishop Mynster, but few will have examined the Hegelianism of Adler and the criticisms of Sibbern and Møller. Stewart argues that the texts of Kierkegaard's "middle period," which appear to attack Hegel directly, are really an attack on the Danish Hegelians—especially Heiberg, Martensen and Adler. He claims that "Hegel" often served as a code name for one of these Hegelians, and that such secret codes were commonly used, just like pseudonyms, to avoid giving offence in the small town of Copenhagen.Stewart's criticism of other scholars is based upon both his analyses of the selected passages in Kierkegaard's works and his discussion of the Danish Hegelians. It is true that many scholars have portrayed Kierkegaard as one-dimensionally anti-Hegelian, and some may have done it for the ideological reasons imputed to them by Stewart. But it is not clear that Thulstrup, for example, deserves to be dismissed as a scholar. He clearly admitted that Kierkegaard had read sections of Hegel's major works "intensively," and he also observed that Kierkegaard was provoked to his anti-Hegelianism by the influence of Hegel on Martensen (whom Thulstrup mentions often, as also Heiberg and Mynster). Stewart implies that Thulstrup had little understanding of Hegel and no interest in the Danish Hegelians, but his discussion of Thulstrup's work is too selective to be persuasive.Stewart also seems to have been a bit hasty in concluding that recent scholarship on the Hegel-Kierkegaard relation blindly follows Thulstrup and the "standard view." In different ways, Robert Perkins, Merold Westphal and I have all written on aspects of Kierkegaard's thought that show Hegelian influences. Stewart lists us in his Bibliography and even cites my book as one of several that investigates Hegelian influences on The Sickness Unto Death, but he never discusses the arguments we present, even though they clearly strengthen his claim about Hegel's positive influence on Kierkegaard. Indeed, the only American book on "Hegel and Kierkegaard" he takes seriously is Mark C. Taylor's Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel & Kierkegaard (Berkeley, 1980), which is a creative philosophical project that does not attempt to be a study of their historical relationship. Stewart writes that much scholarship suffers from using a "text-immanent" (628) method of analysis that ignores the relevant historical... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel ReconsideredStephen N. DunningJon Stewart. Kierkegaard’s Relations to Hegel Reconsidered. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xix + 695. Cloth, $55.00.It is rare to find a scholarly book that treats its topic exhaustively. But Jon Stewart's 658-page Kierkegaard's Relations to Hegel Reconsidered, despite its author's disclaimers, comes close. It is an impressive attempt to demolish what Stewart calls "the standard view," using a three-part (...) argument: that Hegel exerted a substantial positive influence on the young Kierkegaard; [End Page 500] that Kierkegaard was never the radical critic of Hegel claimed by the "standard view"; and that most Kierkegaard scholars (especially Niels Thulstrup in Kierkegaard's Relation to Hegel [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980]) have been led astray on these matters by their ignorance of Kierkegaard's philosophical milieu and their ideological bias.Hegel's positive influence on Kierkegaard is presented in chapters devoted respectively to The Concept of Irony, Either/Or, and Sickness Unto Death. Stewart employs a contextual method, limiting himself to passages in Kierkegaard's texts that have clearly been influenced by passages in or characteristics of Hegel's works. He easily shows Hegelian influence on the dialectical structure of the argument in The Concept of Irony, on the contrast between the ancient and "modern" Antigones in Part One of Either/Or, on the concepts of mediation and romantic love presented in Part Two, and on the dialectical structure of the section on "The Forms of This Sickness (Despair)" in The Sickness Unto Death.The claim that Kierkegaard was never a strong critic of Hegel turns on Stewart's careful contextual analysis of the major Danish Hegelians and anti-Hegelians contemporary with Kierkegaard. Thanks to Bruce Kirmmse's Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990), many scholars will be familiar with Heiberg and Martensen, and also the anti-Hegelian Bishop Mynster, but few will have examined the Hegelianism of Adler and the criticisms of Sibbern and Møller. Stewart argues that the texts of Kierkegaard's "middle period," which appear to attack Hegel directly, are really an attack on the Danish Hegelians—especially Heiberg, Martensen and Adler. He claims that "Hegel" often served as a code name for one of these Hegelians, and that such secret codes were commonly used, just like pseudonyms, to avoid giving offence in the small town of Copenhagen.Stewart's criticism of other scholars is based upon both his analyses of the selected passages in Kierkegaard's works and his discussion of the Danish Hegelians. It is true that many scholars have portrayed Kierkegaard as one-dimensionally anti-Hegelian, and some may have done it for the ideological reasons imputed to them by Stewart. But it is not clear that Thulstrup, for example, deserves to be dismissed as a scholar. He clearly admitted that Kierkegaard had read sections of Hegel's major works "intensively," and he also observed that Kierkegaard was provoked to his anti-Hegelianism by the influence of Hegel on Martensen (whom Thulstrup mentions often, as also Heiberg and Mynster). Stewart implies that Thulstrup had little understanding of Hegel and no interest in the Danish Hegelians, but his discussion of Thulstrup's work is too selective to be persuasive.Stewart also seems to have been a bit hasty in concluding that recent scholarship on the Hegel-Kierkegaard relation blindly follows Thulstrup and the "standard view." In different ways, Robert Perkins, Merold Westphal and I have all written on aspects of Kierkegaard's thought that show Hegelian influences. Stewart lists us in his Bibliography and even cites my book as one of several that investigates Hegelian influences on The Sickness Unto Death, but he never discusses the arguments we present, even though they clearly strengthen his claim about Hegel's positive influence on Kierkegaard. Indeed, the only American book on "Hegel and Kierkegaard" he takes seriously is Mark C. Taylor's Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel & Kierkegaard (Berkeley, 1980), which is a creative philosophical project that does not attempt to be a study of their historical relationship. Stewart writes that much scholarship suffers from using a "text-immanent" (628) method of analysis that ignores the relevant historical... (shrink)

In this article, the author focuses on Philip Kitcher's and Alvin Goldman's economic models of the social character of scientific knowledge production. After introducing some relevant methodological issues in the social sciences and characterizing Kitcher's and Goldman's models, the author goes on to show that special problems arise directly from the concept of an agent invoked in the models. The author argues that the two distinct concepts of agents, borrowed from economics and cognitive psychology, are inconsistent. Finally, the author discusses (...) some of the normative implications that arise from adopting economic concepts of agents in the study of science. (shrink)

The peculiar features of the climate change problem pose substantial obstacles to our ability to make the hard choices necessary to address it. Climate change involves the convergence of a set of global, intergenerational and theoretical problems. This convergence justifies calling it a 'perfect moral storm'. One consequence of this storm is that, even if the other difficult ethical questions surrounding climate change could be answered, we might still find it difficult to act. For the storm makes us extremely vulnerable (...) to moral corruption. (shrink)

Climate change and other global environmental problems constitute a significant challenge to contemporary political philosophy, especially with respect to complacency. This paper assesses Rawls? theory, and argues for three conclusions. First, Rawls does not already solve such problems, and simple extensions of his theory are unlikely to do so. This is so despite the rich structure of Rawls? philosophy, and the appeal of some of its parts. Second, the most promising areas for extension ? the circumstances of justice, the duty (...) to maintain and promote just institutions, and his vision of social development ? are those that have not yet been explored. Third, unfortunately, Rawls? views on these topics are both seriously underdeveloped, and largely stipulative. Hence, in trying to meet climate change, Rawlsians are more likely to add new theories to Rawls, and perhaps even to transform his original account, than to generate an approach ?from the inside out? (shrink)

The Royal Society's landmark report on geoengineering is predicated on a particular account of the context and rationale for intentional manipulation of the climate system, and this ethical framework probably explains many of the Society's conclusions. Critical reflection on the report's values is useful for understanding disagreements within and about geoengineering policy, and also for identifying questions for early ethical analysis. Topics discussed include the moral hazard argument, governance, the ethical status of geoengineering under different rationales, the implications of understanding (...) geoengineering as a consequence of wider moral failure, and ethical resistance to invasive interventions in environmental systems. (shrink)