Anecdotal reports obtained from three individuals with prosopagnosia, all of whom have participated in an investigation, capture the essence of their impairment. This article focuses on the contrast between two prominent forms of prosopagnosia, one of which results from an acquired brain insult in an otherwise premorbidly normal individual and a second which appears to be lifelong and occurs in the absence of any obvious brain damage, at least as evident on conventional brain imaging. It reviews two central issues: the (...) first concerns the similarities and differences in the psychological representations of faces in acquired prosopagnosia and congenital prosopagnosia, and the second concerns the nature of the underlying neural representations of faces in these two populations. Some well-established overlapping behavioral characteristics are identified. (shrink)

v. 1. Editorial introduction -- v. 2. The English and Latin texts (i) -- v. 3. The English and Latin texts (ii).

The newly updated Right and Wrong 2nd Edition is an accessible introduction to the major traditions in western philosophical ethics, written in a lively and engaging style. It is designed for entry-level ethics courses and includes real-life ethical scenarios chosen to appeal directly to students. Greatly expanded and improved, this successful text introduces students to the major ethical traditions, and provides a simple methodology for resolving ethical dilemmas Treats teleological and deontological approaches to ethics as the two most important traditions, (...) but now includes chapters on virtue ethics and the ethics of care The very accessible writing style speaks directly to students’ own experience Draws examples from three types of real-life ethical scenarios submitted by students: academic dishonesty, partying, and personal relationships Provides a concise treatment of this notoriously complex subject, perfect for entry-level ethics and applied ethics courses. (shrink)

When making decisions, humans can observe many kinds of information about others' activities, but their effects on performance are not well understood. We investigated social learning strategies using a simple problem-solving task in which participants search a complex space, and each can view and imitate others' solutions. Results showed that participants combined multiple sources of information to guide learning, including payoffs of peers' solutions, popularity of solution elements among peers, similarity of peers' solutions to their own, and relative payoffs from (...) individual exploration. Furthermore, performance was positively associated with imitation rates at both the individual and group levels. When peers' payoffs were hidden, popularity and similarity biases reversed, participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered. We conclude that when peers' solutions can be effectively compared, imitation does not simply permit scrounging, but it can also facilitate propagation of good solutions for further cumulative exploration. (shrink)

A subcategory of medical tourism, reproductive tourism has been the subject of much public and policy debate in recent years. Specific concerns include: the exploitation of individuals and communities, access to needed health care services, fair allocation of limited resources, and the quality and safety of services provided by private clinics. To date, the focus of attention has been on the thriving medical and reproductive tourism sectors in Asia and Eastern Europe; there has been much less consideration given to more (...) recent ‘players’ in Latin America, notably fertility clinics in Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. In this paper, we examine the context-specific ethical and policy implications of private Argentinean fertility clinics that market reproductive services via the internet. Whether or not one agrees that reproductive services should be made available as consumer goods, the fact is that they are provided as such by private clinics around the world. We argue that basic national regulatory mechanisms are required in countries such as Argentina that are marketing fertility services to local and international publics. Specifically, regular oversight of all fertility clinics is essential to ensure that consumer information is accurate and that marketed services are safe and effective. It is in the best interests of consumers, health professionals and policy makers that the reproductive tourism industry adopts safe and responsible medical practices. (shrink)

A current advance within the agricultural industry is the use of genetic engineering to produce novel crops for food production. This technology raises questions about how societies should position themselves with respect to genetically modified (GM) crop development and implementation; namely, how should the potentials and risks of this technology be evaluated? We argue that current methods to evaluate the risks and benefits of GM crops are inadequate and not conducive to the strategic development of this technology, where a way (...) to ameliorate technology assessments for GM crops is to include farmers in the research process of evaluating these crops prior to their commercialization. However, particularities concerning the ethical status of such research require special consideration and vigilance. For example, in such technology assessment initiatives, farmers would occupy both the roles of research participant and research investigator. Other particularities surface due to factors related to the nature of GM crops. These particularities are examined with reference to concepts drawn from the field of research ethics, namely informed consent, compensatory decisions, and issues of participant inclusion/exclusion. (shrink)

In this book Thomas Wren uncovers and assesses the largely hidden philosophical assumptions about human motivation that have shaped contemporary psychological ...

INTRODUCTION Although the writings of Thomas Reid are very fertile and interesting, his life is biographically barren in comparison to such seventeenth - and ...

THE NATURE OF ART is a collection of 29 seminal, historically-organized readings that are focused on a basic philosophical question: What is Art? Including writings from the Western tradition'both Continental and Analytic traditions'as well as non-Western, minority, and feminist writings, this volume provides students with a rich set of resources to explore this matter both broadly and deeply. Introductions to each reading situate the selection amidst each respective thinker's body of work and the greater philosophical context in which the remarks (...) arose. Reading questions accompany each selection, drawing students' attention to key points to be encountered. Hailed by reviewers and adopters for its clarity and rigor, Wartenberg's THE NATURE OF ART offers a lively and engaging introduction to the philosophy of art. (shrink)

For courses in Business Ethics A fresh approach to the assumptions that underlie business practices Two recent events — the 2008 economic meltdown and the ongoing concentration of the nation's wealth in the hands of a very small percentage of the population — have led many people to question a number of basic assumptions about business, corporations, and the workings of contemporary free-market capitalism in a global economy. Written as a dialogue between Socrates and a hypothetical contemporary CEO,Socrates Comes to (...) Wall Street leads students to think critically about perspectives and practices that are taken as “givens” in most American business schools and corporations. Employing this original and provocative approach, author Thomas White seeks to encourage the next generation of business leaders to be more astute about the implications of their actions, and to act more prudently and more fairly than we have seen in the recent past. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Personhood: A Start Are Dolphins Persons? Language and the Hand Personhood Redefined Conclusion: What Kind of Beings Are Dolphins?

David Ekdahl (2023), in a constructive and thoughtful commentary, outlines both points of agreement with and suggestions for further research arising from our paper ‘Crossing the Fictional Line: Moral Graveness, the Gamer’s Dilemma, and the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far’ (Montefiore & Formosa, 2023).

According to a widely held view, a Kantian intuition functions like a singular term. I argue that this view is false. Its apparent plausibility, both textual and philosophical, rests on attributing to Kant a Fregean conception of judgment. I show that Kant does not hold a Fregean conception of judgment and argue that, as a consequence, intuition cannot be understood on analogy with singular terms.

The extent to which visual information on the contralateral, unattended side influences the performance of patients with hemispatial neglect was studied in a visuomotor reaching task. We replicated the well-established finding that, relative to target-alone trials, normal subjects are slower to reach to targets in the presence of visual distractors which appear either ipsilateral or contralateral to the target, with greater interference in the former condition. Six patients with hemispatial neglect showed even greater interference than did the normal subjects when (...) the distractor appeared ipsilaterally but showed no significant interference from contralateral distractors. This pattern of performance was qualitatively similar for patients with lesions restricted to posterior regions and for patients with more extensive lesions involving both posterior and anterior brain regions. These findings suggest that, in the visuomotor domain, information on the contralateral side is processed minimally, if at all, in patients with hemispatial neglect. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume questions one of the most fundamental tenets of social theory by focusing on detachment, an important but neglected aspect of social life. Going against the grain of recent theoretical celebrations of engagement, this book challenges us to re-think the relational basis of social theory. In so, doing it brings to light the productive aspects of disconnection, distance and detachment. Rather than treating detachment simply as the moral inversion of compassion and engagement, the volume brings together empirical studies (...) and theoretical comments by leading anthropologists, sociologists and science studies scholars. Taken together, these illustrate the range of contexts within which distance and disconnection can offer meaningful frameworks for action. Positioned at the cutting edge of social theory, this landmark volume will be of great interest to students and academics across the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being better than another kind. Other theories of goodness—those that take there to be (...) absolute goodness—are comparatively rich: they offer grounds for judging some types of things better than others because they have more absolute goodness. Moorean accounts, for example, can tell us that humans and human experiences are superior to bees and blades of grass. But such theories tend to be descriptively poor: they struggle to tell us in virtue of what this is so. In this essay we motivate and flesh out a view that splits the difference between accounts of goodness as relative and accounts of goodness as absolute. Such a view holds promise only if the mechanics of this kind of metaphysics of goodness can be worked out. Here we present a view on which the paradigm for absolute goodness is God and the paradigm for each kind of relative goodness is a divine idea. (shrink)

Proceedings of a conference held in Apr. 2008 in Washington, D.C.

It is somewhat misleading to think of the Franciscans as forming a “school” in ethics, since there was a fair bit of diversity among Franciscans. Nonetheless, one can identify certain characteristic tendencies of Franciscan moral thought, and certain “celebrity” Franciscans whose views in ethics and moral psychology are particularly noteworthy. I shall first offer an overview of the general character of Franciscan moral thought in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and then turn to a more detailed examination of (...) the thought of John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) and William Ockham (c. 1288-1347) on three central matters of debate: the nature of the virtues, the relationship between intellect and will, and the relationship between moral requirements and the divine will. (shrink)

Father Williams explains how the conscience is formed through our training and experiences and informed by the Holy Spirit, making it an essential tool for daily living. He uses familiar and surprising characters to illustrate the positive choices conscience can direct--and the disaster that results when a conscience is undeveloped or ignored. Questions he tackles include "Is it more important to be smart or good?""Is there a morally right thing to do in every situation?" and "Is the Christian moral life (...) an exciting adventure, or a necessary burden?" Rich, provocative, and practical for everyday decision making, KNOWING RIGHT FROM WRONG is a must-read for all who hunger for personal holiness. (shrink)

Als einer der prominentesten Vertreter seines Faches hat Horst Bredekamp nicht nur die Kunst- und Bildgeschichte tiefgehend geprägt, sondern auch in Kultur und Politik gewirkt. Dabei hat er es geschafft, belastbare Brücken zwischen diesen oft weit auseinander liegenden Bereichen zu schlagen. Ein Porträt Bredekamps als Gelehrter und disziplinübergreifender Vermittler scheint aufgrund dieser Fülle an Handlungsebenen nur über ein Tableau von Berichten derjenigen möglich, die mit ihm über die Jahre im Austausch standen, ihn begleitet und geprägt, mit ihm diskutiert und gestritten (...) haben. Dabei sind die Fragen an diese Wegbegleiter auch gleichzeitig an den Wissenschaftsbetrieb des 21. Jahrhunderts gerichtet; Sie bilden somit eine Positionsschrift zur Lage der Wissenschaft in Deutschland und an internationalen Forschungsinstituten. (shrink)

The reaction to Darwin's Origin of Species varied in many countries according to the roles played by national scientific institutions and traditions and the attitudes of religious and political groups. The contributors to this volume, including M. J. S. Hodge, David Hull, and Roberto Moreno, gathered in 1972 at an international conference on the comparative reception of Darwinism. Their essays look at early pro- and anti-Darwinism arguments, and three additional comparative essays and appendices add a larger perspective. For this paperback (...) edition, Thomas F. Glick has added a new preface commenting on recent research. (shrink)

Shrek! focuses on an issue in the philosophy of language, a relatively new area of philosophical investigation that first emerged during the twentieth century. Some philosophers disagree with the claim that you cannot separate the descriptive and evaluative elements of linguistic statements. This is because they take descriptive statements to be the basic elements of language, to which our subjective attitudes get attached later in a contingent manner. At its most basic level language presents a symbolic picture of facts in (...) the world. Shrek! presents what philosophers call a thought experiment that purports to show that the descriptive and evaluative contents of sentences are really distinct. The chapter ends by suggesting how to discuss the philosophy of language with children. (shrink)