A growing body of literature has identified potential problems that can compromise the quality, fairness, and integrity of journal peer review, including inadequate review, inconsistent reviewer reports, reviewer biases, and ethical transgressions by reviewers. We examine the evidence concerning these problems and discuss proposed reforms, including double-blind and open review. Regardless of the outcome of additional research or attempts at reforming the system, it is clear that editors are the linchpin of peer review, since they make decisions that have a (...) significant impact on the process and its outcome. We consider some of the steps editors should take to promote quality, fairness and integrity in different stages of the peer review process and make some recommendations for editorial conduct and decision-making. (shrink)

A defendant’s failure to show remorse is one of the most powerful factors in criminal sentencing, including capital sentencing. Yet there is currently no evidence that remorse can be accurately evaluated in a courtroom. Conversely there is evidence that race and other impermissible factors create hurdles to evaluating remorse. There is thus an urgent need for studies about whether and how remorse can be accurately evaluated. Moreover, there is little evidence that remorse is correlated with future law-abiding behavior or other (...) legitimate penal purposes, and, in fact, there is evidence that remorse is often conflated with shame, which is correlated with increased future criminality. More accurate information on the nature and evaluation of remorse can be used to reform the criminal justice system. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is an intuitive folk belief positing that certain categories have a non-obvious inner “essence” that gives rise to observable features. Although this belief most commonly characterizes natural kind categories, I argue that psychological essentialism can also be extended in important ways to artifact concepts. Specifically, concepts of individual artifacts include the non-obvious feature of object history, which is evident when making judgments regarding authenticity and ownership. Classic examples include famous works of art (e.g., the Mona Lisa is authentic (...) because of its provenance), but ordinary artifacts likewise receive value from their history (e.g., a worn and tattered blanket may have special value if it was one’s childhood possession). Moreover, in some cases, object history may be thought to have causal effects on individual artifacts, much as an animal essence has causal effects. I review empirical support for these claims and consider the implications for both artifact concepts and essentialism. This perspective suggests that artifact concepts cannot be contained in a theoretical framework that focuses exclusively on similarity or even function. Furthermore, although there are significant differences between essentialism of natural kinds and essentialism of artifact individuals, the commonalities suggest that psychological essentialism may not derive from folk biology but instead may reflect more domain-general perspectives on the world. (shrink)

Generic noun phrases (e.g. 'bats live in caves') provide a window onto human concepts. They refer to categories as 'kinds rather than as sets of individuals. Although kind concepts are often assumed to be universal, generic expression varies considerably across languages. For example, marking of generics is less obligatory and overt in Mandarin than in English. How do universal conceptual biases interact with language-specific differences in how generics are conveyed? In three studies, we examined adults' generics in English and Mandarin (...) Chinese. The data include child-directed speech from caregivers interacting with their 19-23-month-old children. Examples of generics include: 'baby birds eat worms' (English) and da4 lao3shu3 yao3 bu4 yao3 ren2 ('do big rats bite people or not?') (Mandarin). Generic noun phrases were reliably identified in both languages, although they occurred more than twice as frequently in English as in Mandarin. In both languages, generic usage was domain-specific, with generic noun phrases used most frequently to refer to animals. This domain effect was specific to generics, as non-generic noun phrases were used most frequently for artifacts in both languages. In sum, we argue for universal properties of 'kind' concepts that are expressed with linguistically different constructions. However, the frequency of expression may be influenced by the manner in which generics are expressed in the language. (shrink)

Susan A. Salladay; Should Christians Use Therapeutic Touch?, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 8, Issue 1, 1 January 2002.

Museums are conventionally viewed as institutions dedicated to the conservation of valued objects and the education of the public. Recently, controversies have arisen regarding the representation of history in museums. National museums in America and Germany considered here, such as the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the German Historical Museum, have become sites of contention where national histories and personal memories are often at odds. Contemporary art installations in museums which take historical consciousness as their (...) theme similarly raise contentious issues about public knowledge of and personal interest in the past. When members of publics find that their memories of the past or their expectations for museum experiences are not being met, a kind of "distortion" occurs. The "distortion" related to memory and history in the museum is not so much of facts or interpretations, but rather a distortion from the lack of congruity between personal experience and expectation, on the one hand, and the institutional representation of the past on the other. This essay explores the possibilities for a redefined relationship between personal memory and history that is experienced in contemporary museums. (shrink)

We propose that there is a powerful human disposition to track the actions and possessions of agents. In two experiments, 3-year-olds and adults viewed sets of objects, learned a new fact about one of the objects in each set , and were queried about either the taught fact or an unrelated dimension immediately after a spatiotemporal transformation, and after a delay. Adults uniformly tracked object identity under all conditions, whereas children tracked identity more when taught ownership versus labeling information, and (...) only regarding the taught fact . These findings suggest that the special attention that children and adults pay to agents readily extends to include inanimate objects. That young children track an object's history, despite their reliance on surface features on many cognitive tasks, suggests that unobservable historical features are foundational in human cognition. (shrink)

Every action, touch, utterance, and look, every listening, taste, smell, and feel is a living question; but it is no ordinary propositional one-by-one question, rather it is a plenisentient sensing and probing non-propositional enquiry about how our world is, in its present continuous sense, and in relation to how we anticipate its becoming. I will take this assumption as my first premise and, by using the notion of enkinaesthesia, I will explore the ways in which an agent’s affectively-saturated co-engagement with (...) its world establishes patterns of co-articulation of meaning within the anticipatory affective dynamics and the experiential entanglement necessary for expedient action and adaptation. In advancing this thesis I will reject the minimalist notions of embodiment by amplifying and extending the claims made by the most radical of the embodied mind theories. Crucially, I will offer a new wave of embodiment theory which has at its core the radical extension of sensorimotor affect into the life and being of other agents where their experience is for us both direct and immediate. This I will present as an immanent intercorporeality. (shrink)

Feminist researchers have urged more study of how feminist practice is actually accomplished in mixed-gender organizations. Social movement scholars have called for more attention to dynamics of gender and race in social movement organizations, especially to the challenges of maintaining internal solidarity. Based on field observations in a pro-feminist, progressive, mixed-gender, mixed-race social movement organization, this article examines organizational decision-making processes and interpersonal and group dynamics. Gendered and racialized patterns of subordination are both very much in evidence and—at the same (...) time—actively challenged in this organization. The author argues that profeminist and progressive organizational practices and efforts to create solidarity across gender and race can exist through competing and contradictory dynamics and ongoing struggles. Complex and inconsistent dynamics around these social barriers are likely to occur in organizations more generally and need to be a subject for more research. (shrink)

This illuminating Research Handbook analyses the role that emotions play and ought to play in legal reasoning and practice, rejecting the simplistic distinction between reason and emotion. International expert contributors take multidisciplinary approaches, drawing on neuroscience, philosophy, literary theory, psychology, history, and sociology to examine the role of a wide range of emotions across a variety of legal contexts. Chapters consider how the rich tapestry of human emotion impacts legal actors, influences legal doctrine, and shapes the dynamics of legal institutions. (...) Moving beyond legal contexts traditionally considered rife with emotion such as the criminal law and jury trials, the Handbook explores how emotion relates to contracts, property, bankruptcy, international law, and truth and reconciliation commissions. It also reflects on the importance of research methodologies, theories, and techniques for assessing the role of emotion in the legal arena. Surveying the depth and complexity of law and emotion across a panoply of legal actions, institutional contexts, and legal doctrines, this Research Handbook will be critical reading for academics and students of legal theory and legal philosophy. Its detailed examination of emotions in the practice of private, public, international, and criminal law will also be beneficial for lawyers, judges, and policymakers. (shrink)

In this short paper I will introduce an idea which, I will argue, presents a fundamental additional challenge to the machine consciousness community. The idea takes the questions surrounding phenomenology, qualia and phenomenality one step further into the realm of intersubjectivity but with a twist, and the twist is this: that an agent’s intersubjective experience is deeply felt and necessarily co-affective; it is enkinaesthetic, and only through enkinaesthetic awareness can we establish the affective enfolding which enables first the perturbation, and (...) then the balance and counter-balance, the attunement and co-ordination of whole-body interaction through reciprocal adaptation. (shrink)

The past is what happened. History is what we remember and write about that past, the narratives we craft to make sense and meaning out of our memories and their sources. But what does it mean to look at the past and see Nothing? This book redefines Nothing as a historical object and reorients historical consciousness in terms of an awareness of what has and has not been considered worth remembering. "Nothing" has been a catch-all term for everything that is (...) supposedly uninteresting, not happening, all that we have skipped over or is just not there. It will take some (possibly considerable) mental adjustment before we can see Nothing in the way this author has come to think of it, with a capital N. But if we are to transform Nothing into a legitimate historical object, something that exists in the present and has existed in the past, we must see it that way. For Nothing has actually been there all along, in plain sight. When nothing has changed but we think that it should have, we might call that injustice; when nothing happened over a long, slow period of time, we might call that boring. Justice and boredom have histories. So too does being disappointed when nothing happens-for instance, when a forecast end of the world does not occur, and millennial movements have to regroup and recalibrate their predictions. By paying attention to how we understand Nothing to be happening in the present, what it means to "know Nothing" or to "do Nothing," we can begin to ask how those experiences will be remembered. Visually driven, this book explores the ways that modern photographers, artists and writers have depicted ruins, emptiness, and a lack of action. It shows us how the perception that "nothing is the way it was" has produced images and art about memories. The book also analyzes such phenomena as fake historical markers that joke about how "On This Site Nothing Happened" to reflect on our everyday awareness that important events and places from the past be remembered. Most of all, it uncovers the mistake of taking Nothing for granted--because Nothing is happening all the time. (shrink)

The primary aim of this essay is to present a case for a heavily revised notion of heterophenomenology. l will refer to the revised notion as ‘enkinaesthesia’ because of its dependence on the experiential entanglement of our own and the other’s felt action as the sensory background within which all other experience is possible. Enkinaesthesia2 emphasizes two things: (i) the neuromuscular dynamics of the agent, including the givenness and ownership of its experience, and (ii) the entwined, blended and situated co-affective (...) feeling of the presence of the other(s), agential (for example, human, horse, cat, beetle) and non-agential (for example, cup, bed, apple, paper) and, where appropriate, the anticipated arc of the other’s action or movement, including, again where appropriate, the other’s intentionality. When the ‘other’ is also a sensing and experiencing agent it is their - in this case, the pair’s - affective intentional reciprocity, their folding, enfolding, and unfolding, which co-constitutes the conscious relation and the experientially recursive temporal dynamics that lead to the formation and maintenance of the deep integral enkinaesthetic structures and melodies which bind us together, even when they pull us apart. Such deeply felt enkinaesthetic melodies emphasise the dialogical nature of the backgrounded feeling of being. (shrink)

Machine consciousness exists already in organic systems and it is only a matter of time -- and some agreement -- before it will be realised in reverse-engineered organic systems and forward- engineered inorganic systems. The agreement must be over the preconditions that must first be met if the enterprise is to be successful, and it is these preconditions, for instance, being a socially-embedded, structurally-coupled and dynamic, goal-directed entity that organises its perceptual input and enacts its world through the application of (...) both a cognitive and kinaesthetic imagination, that I shall concentrate on presenting in this paper. It will become clear that these preconditions will present engineers with a tall order, but not, I will argue, an impossible one. After all, we might agree with Freeman and Núñez's claim that the machine metaphor has restricted the expectations of the cognitive sciences (Freeman & Núñez, 1999); but it is a double-edged sword, since our limited expectations about machines also narrow the potential of our cognitive science. (shrink)

We contest two claims: that language, understood as the processing of abstract symbolic forms, is an instrument of cognition and rational thought, and that conventional notions of turn-taking, exchange structure, and move analysis, are satisfactory as a basis for theorizing communication between living, feeling agents. We offer an enkinaesthetic theory describing the reciprocal affective neuro-muscular dynamical flows and tensions of co- agential dialogical sense-making relations. This “enkinaesthetic dialogue” is characterised by a preconceptual experientially recursive temporal dynamics forming the deep extended (...) melodies of relationships in time. An understanding of how those relationships work, when we understand and are ourselves understood, when communication falters and conflict arises, will depend on a grasp of our enkinaesthetic intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Bullot & Reber (B&R) provide compelling evidence that sensitivity to context, history, and design stance are crucial to theories of art appreciation. We ask how these ideas relate to broader aspects of human cognition. Further open questions concern how psychological essentialism contributes to art appreciation and how essentialism regarding created artifacts (such as art) differs from essentialism in other domains.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

In this paper we aim to shed light on the dynamics of regional identity construction and deconstruction. We will argue that four forms of identity can be identified that are linked through various processes of change. To that end, we will theoretically conceptualise 'identity' by discussing historical and current scholarly debates on identity in a variety of scientific disciplines. Then, we will argue that the mutual contradiction of the current theories is a paradox if seen from the angle of regional (...) identity construction and deconstruction. Building upon elements from the various theoretical approaches, we propose a heuristic model describing the dynamics of identity construction and deconstruction, which will be explored by means of the example of the Green Heart region, a spatial planning concept in western Holland. (shrink)

The grammatical manipulation and production of language is a great deceiver. We have become habituated to accept the use of well-constructed language to indicate intelligence, understanding and, consequently, intention, whether conscious or unconscious. But we are not always right to do so, and certainly not in the case of large language models (LLMs) like ChapGPT, GPT-4, LLaMA, and Google Bard. This is a perennial problem, but when one understands why it occurs, it ceases to be surprising that it so stubbornly (...) persists. This paper will have three main sections. In the Introduction I will say a little about language, its aetiology, and useful sub-divisions into natural and cultural. In the second section I will explain the current situation with regard to large language models and fill in the background debates which set the problem up as one of increased complexity rather than one of a qualitatively different kind from narrow or specific AI. In the third section I will present the case for the missing phenomenological background and why it is necessary for the co-creation of shared meaning in both natural and cultural language, and I will conclude this section by presenting a rationale for why this situation arises and will continue to arise. Before we do any of this, I need to clarify one point: I do not wish to challenge the ascription of artificial general intelligence (AGI) to LLMs, indeed I think agnosticism is best in this respect, but I do challenge the more serious, and erroneous, ascription of understanding, intention, reason, and consciousness to them. And so, I am making two points: an epistemological one about why we fall into error in our ascription of a mental life to LLMs, and an ontological one about the impossibility of LLMs being or becoming conscious. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to go some way towards showing that the maintenance of hard and fast dichotomies, like those between mind and body, and the real and the virtual, is untenable, and that technological advance cannot occur with being cognisant of its reciprocal ethical implications. In their place I will present a softer enactivist ontology through which I examine the nature of our engagement with technology in general and with virtual realities in particular. This softer ontology is (...) one to which I will commit Kant, and from which, I will show, certain critical moral and emotional consequences arise. It is my contention that Kant’s logical subject is necessarily embedded in the world and that Kant, himself, would be content with this view as an expression of his inspired response to the ‘‘scandal to philosophy... that the existence of things outside us... must be accepted merely on faith’’ [Bxl]. In keeping with his arguments for the a priori framing of intuition, the a priori structuring of experience through the spontaneous application of the categories, the synthesis of the experiential manifold, and the necessity of a unity of apperception, I will present an enactivist account of agency in the world, and argue that it is our embodied and embedded kinaesthetic engagement in our world which makes possible the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction and recognition, and which, in turn, make possible the activity of the reproductive or creative imagination. (shrink)

Philanthropy is typically hierarchically constructed with an imbalance of power between funders and grantees. While this seems inherent in philanthropic relationships where funders inevitably control resources that grantees need, some women’s funds have sought to construct less hierarchical and thus more feminist relationships with the organizations they support. Based on many years of insider access to a local women’s fund, this article describes and explains the organization’s efforts to develop interactive dialogues with its grantees, which led to a change in (...) grants guidelines that were more inclusive of women’s methods of community organizing. A small survey of women’s community groups, done as background to this research, provides data on challenges and obstacles these groups face when seeking monies to support their work. Some attention is given to implications for general theories of organizations, for funder-grantee dialogues leading to increased accountability in philanthropy, and for support of women’s community organizations. (shrink)

Sustaining the Writing Spirit: Holistic Tools for School and Home, second edition is aimed at all educators, at school or home, seeking non-traditional ways to enliven the growth potential of the whole learner. Schiller urges educators to accept a holistic orientation for learning -- one that combines the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual, with the intellect, rather than primarily basing learning on the intellect. Included are details on background, historical development, and philosophical explanations of holistic education, including a timeline of (...) key people and ideas. This new edition also addresses sustainability and spirituality as the core of holistic learning, and the teaching activities provide context and processes for writing that encourage activating multiple intelligences. It also has a cross-disciplinary quality and could be used in a number of educational settings. (shrink)

This essay examines the particular contributions of three communities of women religious for the ways in which they incorporated concerns for the moral formation of their students together with a focus on beauty. These communities not only provided a basic “Catholic moral education” but also aimed to develop persons who saw their responsibility as building a better world that was not only good but also beautiful. Given recent attention to the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, this essay shows how the (...) work of women religious makes a significant contribution to this field. (shrink)

IN THIS ESSAY I CONSIDER POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS OF FEMINIST THEOLogy to theological aesthetics and ethics by comparing the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the predominant figure in theological aesthetics, with that of Elizabeth Johnson and Sallie McFague. Balthasar's emphasis on contemplation and obedience in response to the unexpected revelation of God's glory contrasts with the practicality, mutuality, and creativity of feminist theological ethics. On the other hand, feminist theology's emphasis on appropriate language and images for God suggests an implicit (...) aesthetics. The artistic work of contemporary African women in crisis situations sheds further light on both Balthasar and feminist theology and brings into relief the relationship of beauty and justice. Although Balthasar's emphasis on the transcendent glory of God may leave him with an undeveloped ethics, feminist theology's agent-oriented approach could benefit from greater attention to contemplation and a transformed understanding of obedience. These conclusions urge greater appreciation and development of the aesthetic and imaginative dimensions of feminist theological ethics. (shrink)

It is now generally accepted that human beings are naturally, possibly even essentially, intersubjective. This chapter offers a robust defence of an enhanced and extended intersubjectivity, criticising the paucity of individuating notions of agency and emphasising the community and reciprocity of our affective co-existence with other living organisms and things. I refer to this modified intersubjectivity, which most closely expresses the implicit intricacy of our pre-reflective neuro-muscular experiential entanglement, as ‘enkinaesthesia’. The community and reciprocity of this entanglement is characterised as (...) dialogical, and in this dialogue, as part of our anticipatory preparedness, we have a capacity for intentional transgression, feeling our way with our world but, more particularly, co-feeling our way with the mind and intentions of the other. Thus we are, not so much ‘mind’-reading, as ‘mind’-feeling, and it is through this enkinaesthetic ‘mind’-feeling dialogue that values-realising activity originates and we uncover the deep roots of morality. (shrink)

This book is an invitation to academic administrators, at every level, to engage in reflection on the ethical dimensions of their working lives.

This chapter examines associationist models of cognitive development, focusing on the development of naming in young children — the process by which young children learn of construct the meanings of words and concepts. It presents two early-emerging insights that children possess about the nature of naming. These insights are: essentialism: certain words map onto nonobvious, underlying causal features, and genericity: certain expressions map onto generic kinds as opposed to particular instances. The chapter discusses empirical studies with preschool children to support (...) the contention that essentialism and genericity emerge early in development and that neither insight is directly taught. It also explores the question of whether these insights can be derived wholly from a direct reading of cues that are ‘out there’in the world, and concludes that they cannot. The implications of these findings for innateness are then considered. It is argued that both essentialism and genericity provide cues regarding plausible candidates for innate conceptual knowledge in children. (shrink)