The nature/nurture debate is not dead. Dichotomous views of development still underlie many fundamental debates in the biological and social sciences. Developmental systems theory offers a new conceptual framework with which to resolve such debates. DST views ontogeny as contingent cycles of interaction among a varied set of developmental resources, no one of which controls the process. These factors include DNA, cellular and organismic structure, and social and ecological interactions. DST has excited interest from a wide range of researchers, from (...) molecular biologists to anthropologists, because of its ability to integrate evolutionary theory and other disciplines without falling into traditional oppositions. The book provides historical background to DST, recent theoretical findings on the mechanisms of heredity, applications of the DST framework to behavioral development, implications of DST for the philosophy of biology, and critical reactions to DST. (shrink)

Sweeping in scope, penetrating in analysis, and generously illustrated with examples from the history of science, this new and original approach to familiar questions about scientific evidence and method tackles vital questions about science and its place in society. Avoiding the twin pitfalls of scientism and cynicism, noted philosopher Susan Haack argues that, fallible and flawed as they are, the natural sciences have been among the most successful of human enterprises-valuable not only for the vast, interlocking body of knowledge (...) they have discovered, and not only for the technological advances that have improved our lives, but as a manifestation of the human talent for inquiry at its imperfect but sometimes remarkable best. This wide-ranging, trenchant, and illuminating book explores the complexities of scientific evidence, and the multifarious ways in which the sciences have refined and amplified the methods of everyday empirical inquiry; articulates the ways in which the social sciences are like the natural sciences, and the ways in which they are different; disentangles the confusions of radical rhetoricians and cynical sociologists of science; exposes the evasions of apologists for religious resistance to scientific advances; weighs the benefits and the dangers of technology; tracks the efforts of the legal system to make the best use of scientific testimony; and tackles predictions of the eventual culmination, or annihilation, of the scientific enterprise. Writing with verve and wry humor, in a witty, direct, and accessible style, Haack takes readers beyond the "Science Wars" to a balanced understanding of the value, and the limitations, of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

The phenomenon of multiple personality--Like the "split-Brain" phenomenon--Involves a disintegration of the normally unified self to the point where one must question whether there is one, Or more than one, Person associated with the body even at a single moment in time. Besides the traditional problem of determining identity over time, There is now a new problem of personal identity--Determining identity at a single moment in time. We need the conceptual apparatus to talk about this new problem and a test, (...) Like the one I propose, For determining the number of persons associated with a body at a single moment in time. (shrink)

_A surprising, sweeping, and deeply researched history of empathy—from late-nineteenth-century German aesthetics to mirror neurons_ _Empathy: A History_ tells the fascinating and largely unknown story of the first appearance of “empathy” in 1908 and tracks its shifting meanings over the following century. Despite empathy’s ubiquity today, few realize that it began as a translation of _Einfühlung _or “in-feeling” in German psychological aesthetics that described how spectators projected their own feelings and movements into objects of art and nature. Remarkably, this early (...) conception of empathy transformed into its opposite over the ensuing decades. Social scientists and clinical psychologists refashioned empathy to require the deliberate putting aside of one’s feelings to more accurately understand another’s. By the end of World War II, interpersonal empathy entered the mainstream, appearing in advice columns, popular radio and TV, and later in public forums on civil rights. Even as neuroscientists continue to map the brain correlates of empathy, its many dimensions still elude strict scientific description. This meticulously researched book uncovers empathy’s historical layers, offering a rich portrait of the tension between the reach of one’s own imagination and the realities of others’ experiences. (shrink)

Forthright and wryly humorous, philosopher Susan Haack deploys her penetrating analytic skills on some of the most highly charged cultural and social debates of recent years. Relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, affirmative action, pragmatisms old and new, science, literature, the future of the academy and of philosophy itself—all come under her keen scrutiny in _Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate_. "The virtue of Haack's book, and I mean _virtue_ in the ethical sense, is that it embodies the attitude that it exalts... Haack's (...) voice is urbane, sensible, passionate—the voice of philosophy that matters. How good to hear it again."—Jonathan Rauch, _Reason_ "A tough mind, confident of its power, making an art of logic... a cool mastery."—Paul R. Gross, _Wilson Quarterly_ "Few people are better able to defend the notion of truth, and in strong, clear prose, than Susan Haack... a philosopher of great distinction."—Hugh Lloyd-Jones, _National Review_ "If you relish acute observation and straight talk, this is a book to read."—_Key Reporter_ "Everywhere in this book there is the refreshing breeze of common sense, patiently but inexorably blowing."—Roger Kimball, _Times Literary Supplement_ "A refreshing alternative to the extremism that characterizes so much rhetoric today."—_Kirkus Reviews_. (shrink)

In this book, Sara Monoson challenges the longstanding and widely held view that Plato is a virulent opponent of all things democratic. She does not, however, offer in its place the equally mistaken idea that he is somehow a partisan of democracy. Instead, she argues that we should attend more closely to Plato's suggestion that democracy is horrifying and exciting, and she seeks to explain why he found it morally and politically intriguing.Monoson focuses on Plato's engagement with democracy as he (...) knew it: a cluster of cultural practices that reach into private and public life, as well as a set of governing institutions. She proposes that while Plato charts tensions between the claims of democratic legitimacy and philosophical truth, he also exhibits a striking attraction to four practices central to Athenian democratic politics: intense antityrantism, frank speaking, public funeral oratory, and theater-going. By juxtaposing detailed examination of these aspects of Athenian democracy with analysis of the figurative language, dramatic structure, and arguments of the dialogues, she shows that Plato systematically links democratic ideals and activities to philosophic labor. Monoson finds that Plato's political thought exposes intimate connections between Athenian democratic politics and the practice of philosophy.Situating Plato's political thought in the context of the Athenian democratic imaginary, Monoson develops a new, textured way of thinking of the relationship between Plato's thought and the politics of his city. (shrink)

The Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires health care product manufacturers to report to the federal government payments more than $10 to physicians. Bringing unprecedented transparency to medicine, PPSA holds great potential for enabling medical stakeholders to manage conflicts of interest and build patient trust—crucial responsibilities of medical professionalism. The authors conducted six focus groups with 42 physicians in Chicago, IL, San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC, to explore attitudes and experiences around PPSA. Participants valued the concept of transparency but were (...) wary of the law's design and consequences. They downplayed PPSA's potential and felt it undermined public trust. Showing broad unawareness of COI, they dismissed the notion of industry influence and welcomed company “perks.” Misapprehensions may leave physicians unprepared to advance the opportunities PPSA holds for professionalism. The authors offer recommendations for government and medicine to improve physicians' and other stakeholders' understandings and use of the data. (shrink)

While information technologies present organizations with opportunities to become more competitive, unsettled social norms and lagging legislation guiding the use of these technologies present organizations and individuals with ethical dilemmas. This paper presents two studies investigating the relationship between intellectual property and privacy attitudes, Machiavellianism and Ethical Ideology, and working in R&D and computer literacy in the form of programming experience. In Study 1, Machiavellians believed it was more acceptable to ignore the intellectual property and privacy rights of others. Programmers (...) and R&D workers considered violating intellectual property rights more acceptable. Programmers did not consider violating privacy rights more acceptable, but R&D workers did. Finally, there was an interaction between Machiavellianism, programming and R&D. Machiavellians who also had programming experience or worked in R&D found violations of intellectual property much more acceptable. The effect of Machiavellianism on attitudes toward violations of privacy was enhanced by working in R&D, but not by programming experience. In Study 2, idealists believed it was less acceptable to ignore the intellectual property and privacy rights of others. Relativists found it more acceptable to violate intellectual property rights, though they did not consider it more acceptable to violate privacy rights. Those with programming experience were more accepting of intellectual property rights violations, but not of privacy violations. Finally, programming experience moderated the relationship between idealism, relativism and attitudes toward these unethical information practices. Implications for diminishing unethical behavior among Machiavellians, Relativists, programmers and those in R&D are discussed. (shrink)

This paper argues that the various approaches to ethics that bioethicists rely on are not adequate to provide effective moral guidance in how to avoid a series of looming human catastrophes (associated with such threats as environmental degradation, war, extreme poverty, and pandemics). It proposes development of a new approach to ethics, dubbed public ethics, that simultaneously investigates moral responsibilities at multiple levels of human organization from the individual to international bodies. It argues that feminist relational theory can provide guidance (...) to development of this new type of ethics, and it warns against obstacles bioethicists face in its pursuit. (shrink)

This essay responds to recent philosophical interest in the Anthropocene by asking : Can and should educators adopt, form, transmit, teach ways of living to maintain, if not enhance Earth’s habitability, especially its habitability for diverse children? This inquiry therefore calls for conceptual study of learning to live through the Anthropocene—with, despite, after, before, amid, among, away from, and against its myriad harms, possible and actual, especially its harms to children. Examining cases of environmental racism in Checker’s Polluted Promises, and (...) other cases of environmental threats to children’s health, in Steingraber’s Raising Elijah, this study begins by proposing the ecological gap in philosophy of education consequential for children resides within another epistemological gap, variously designated gender gap, love gap, care gap. Ruddick’s maternal thinking provides a conceptual frame for theorizing three moral aims of learning to live in the Anthropocene that might inform public schooling. (shrink)

A Teacher's Manual for this book will be available online at www.temple.edu/tempress.

The rhetoric of reconciliation is common in situations where traditional judicial responses to past wrongdoing are unavailable because of corruption, large numbers of offenders, or anxiety about the political consequences. But what constitutes reconciliation?

Conversations on Consciousness is just that - a series of twenty lively and challenging conversations between Sue Blackmore and some of the world's leading philosophers and scientists. Written in a colloquial and engaging style the book records the conversations Sue had when she met these influential thinkers, whether at conferences in Arizona or Antwerp, or in their labs or homes in Oxford or San Diego. The conversations bring out their very different personalities and styles and reveal a wealth of fascinating (...) detail about their theories and beliefs. Why is consciousness such a special and difficult issue for twenty-first century science? Sue, herself a researcher into this controversial and difficult topic, begins by asking each of her colleagues this simple question and is immediately plunged into the depths of the debate: How do the subjective experiences we call consciousness arise from the physical brain? Is this even the right question to ask? Can zombies - people who behave outwardly just like others but have no inner mental life - exist? What can dreams tell us about consciousness? Should we all be learning to meditate? Do we have free will, and if not is it possible to live without it? With an introduction setting out the broad structure of the debate on consciousness, and an extensive glossary, this book provides an engaging and accessible account of the most challenging problem of all, through the words of some of the leading figures involved in seeking to solve it. (shrink)

This collection of thirteen new essays is the first to examine, from a range of disciplinary perspectives, how the new technologies and global reach of the Internet are changing the theory and practice of free speech.

Just as a stream of genetically modifiedcrops looked set to be approved for commercialproduction in the European Union, the approvalprocedure appears to have become bogged down onceagain by disagreements among and within member states.Old controversies have resurfaced in new forms. Theintractability of the issues suggests that theregulatory procedure has had too narrow a focus,leaving outside its boundary many of the morefundamental aspects that cause people in the EuropeanUnion most concern. Regulators have come underconsiderable pressure to ensure their risk assessmentdecisions are (...) soundly science-based. Ethical issueshave been deemed to lie beyond the scope of theregulatory procedure, as a matter to be consideredseparately by professional ethicists. Yet it has beensuggested that all environmental controversies at rootinvolve disputes about fundamental ethical principles.This paper examines how the ethical issues arecurrently suppressed or sidelined. It discusses how anappreciation of systems thinking and a check on thevalues that underpin decisions, using boundary testingquestions, might contribute to a more constructiveregulatory dialogue, with ethical issues considered asintegral in a way that takes better account ofpeople's concerns. (shrink)

Demonstrates the unique, pervasive, and overwhelmingly important role of other people within our lived experience. Drawing on the original phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Simone de Beauvoir, and John Russon, as well as recent research in child psychology, The Other in Perception argues for perception’s inherently existential significance: we always perceive a world and not just objective facts. The world is the rich domain of our personal and interpersonal lives, and central to this world is the role of (...) other people. We are “paired” with others such that our perception is really the enactment of a coinhabiting of a shared world. These relations with others shape the very way in which we perceive our world. Susan Bredlau explores two uniquely formative domains in which our pairing relations with others are particularly critical: childhood development and sexuality. It is through formative childhood experience that the essential, background structures of our world are instituted, which has important consequences for our developed perceptual life. Sexuality is an analogous domain of formative intersubjective experience. Taken as a whole, Bredlau demonstrates the unique, pervasive, and overwhelmingly important role of other people within our lived experience. (shrink)

Pragmatism and Justice is an interdisciplinary volume of new and seminal essays by political philosophers, social theorists, and scholars of pragmatism which provides a comprehensive introduction and lasting resource for scholars of pragmatist thought and questions of justice.

The doctrine of abstract ideas contains Locke’s views on the nature of generality and how we think in general terms-the nature of universals, of general concepts, and how we classify. While Reid rejects abstract ideas, he accepts Locke’s insight that we have an ability to abstract. In this paper, I show how Reid preserves Locke’s insight, while providing a more versatile and forward-looking account of universals and concepts than Locke was able to give.Reid replaces abstract ideas with what he calls (...) “general conceptions.” But general conceptions are really three different things. First, they are universals---non-mental intrinsically general objects of acts of abstraction and conception. I show how Reid is able to make the claim that there are universals without being committed to holding that universals really exist. This claim, together with his type/token distinction, enables Reid to better explain how we have knowledge of attributes and use general terms meaningfully. The general features of our experience are not ideas and are not produced by the faculty of abstraction---but that faculty enables us to distinguish them.In the second sense, a general conception is an act of mind which takes universals as objects. Thinking in general tenns is not the manipulation of abstract ideas---it is engaging in acts of conceiving. Such acts are made possible by general conceptions in the third sense, namely, general concepts. While Reid does not distinguish this sense explicitly, I argue that he takes general concepts to be dispositions or abilities to distinguish general features of objects and to use the general terms of language as other users do. So rather than producing mental entities---abstract ideas---that act as standards to help us classify, abstraction makes possible the development of abilities to use general terms and classify objects. (shrink)

Quine and Putnam argued for mathematical realism on the basis of the indispensability of mathematics to science. They claimed that the mathematics that is used in physical theories is confirmed along with those theories and that scientific realism entails mathematical realism. I argue here that current theories of confirmation suggest that mathematics does not receive empirical support simply in virtue of being a part of well confirmed scientific theories and that the reasons for adopting a realist view of scientific theories (...) do not support realism about mathematical entities, despite the use of mathematics in formulating scientific theory. (shrink)

The population of most non-dominant ethnic groups in the USA is growing dramatically. Faculty members are challenged to develop curricula that adequately prepare our future nurses. An increased focus on clinical ethics has resulted from the use of sophisticated technology, changes in health care financing, an increasing elderly population and the shift of care from inpatient to outpatient settings. Nurses frequently face situations demanding resolution of ethical dilemmas involving cultural differences. Nursing curricula must include content on both ethics and cultural (...) sensitivity. Active student participation is an important element providing a foundation for ethical practice. A proposed educational format was introduced with graduating baccalaureate students. In a pilot study, curricular content on cultural sensitivity and ethical practice was taught in separate modules. Students were then asked to identify and problem solve an ethical dilemma involving patients and professional caregivers from vastly different cultures. Course faculty members provided discussion questions to guide the students' thinking. (shrink)

Dandruff is a common scalp condition, which frequently causes psychological distress in those affected. Dandruff is considered to be caused by an interplay of several factors. However, the pathogenesis of dandruff remains under‐investigated, especially with respect to the contribution of the hair follicle. As the hair follicle exhibits unique immune‐modulatory properties, including the creation of an immunoinhibitory, immune‐privileged milieu, we propose a novel hypothesis taking into account the role of the hair follicle. We hypothesize that the changes and imbalance of (...) yeast and bacterial species, along with increasing proinflammatory sebum by‐products, leads to the activation of immune response and inflammation. Hair follicle keratinocytes may then detect these changes in scalp microbiota resulting in the recruitment of leukocytes to the inflammation site. These changes in the scalp skin immune‐microenvironment may impact hair follicle immune privilege status, which opens new avenues into exploring the role of the hair follicle in dandruff pathogenesis. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/mEZEznCYtNs. (shrink)

Quine and Putnam argued for mathematical realism on the basis of the indispensability of mathematics to science. They claimed that the mathematics that is used in physical theories is confirmed along with those theories and that scientific realism entails mathematical realism. I argue here that current theories of confirmation suggest that mathematics does not receive empirical support simply in virtue of being a part of well confirmed scientific theories and that the reasons for adopting a realist view of scientific theories (...) do not support realism about mathematical entities, despite the use of mathematics in formulating scientific theory. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 247-279.

Responding to comments by Cheshire Calhoun and Arnold Burms, this piece clarifies some of Wolf’s ideas about the relation between meaningfulness in life, on the one hand, and reasons of love, fulfillment, and objective value, on the other. Meaning tends to come from activities whose reasons are grounded in love of a worthy object, and not necessarily from reasons having anything to do with an interest in meaningfulness itself. But what counts as a worthy object cannot be determined either from (...) a totally neutral and impersonal point of view or from the points of view of specific other people who matter to the subject. (shrink)

The Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger is best known for his existential analysis (Daseinsanalyse) presented in a series of case studies in the 1940s, but his existential anthropology of mania of the early 1930s has received less attention. He introduced this new existential science as a disciplinary hybrid of existential philosophy and clinical psychiatry, and, in doing so, transformed the genre of narrow medical case study into a broader discourse of philosophical anthropology. The very ambitiousness of his method, however, tended to (...) eclipse the individuality of his manic patient; its delineation of the conditioning structures of manic experience rendered the patient’s life-history and her functional state as secondary to these structures. (shrink)

Successful preimplantation genetic diagnosis to avoid creating a child affected by a genetically-based disorder was reported in 1989. Since then PGD has been used to biopsy and analyze embryos created through in viuo fertilization to avoid transferring to the mother’s uterus an embryo affected by a mutation or chromosomal abnormality associated with serious illness. PGD to avoid serious and early-onset illness in the child-to-be is widely accepted. PGD prevents gestation of an affected embryo and reduces the chance that the parents (...) will be faced with a difficult decision of whether to terminate the pregnancy. More controversial have been PGD to select the sex of the child-to-be for “family balancing”, PGD for mere susceptibility to disease and for late-onset disorders such as Alzheimer diseas, and most controversially, PGD to create a donor child who is Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA-matched with a preexisting sibling in need of stem cell transplant. (shrink)

Our urban problem is how to revive the reality of the outside as a dimension of human experience.Richard Sennett.