Selected articles from the Naval War College Press on ethics and the twenty-first-century military professional."--Provided by publisher.

This volume focuses on naval leadership and ethics with respect to the individual leader and how his or her values and actions affect military cohesion, mission success, and the profession of arms. Moving beyond the "right and wrong" of personal ethics to examine the broader field of professional military ethics, this carefully selected collection of relevant materials from the Naval Institute's vast collection of articles recognizes the range of experience, perspectives, and opinions that are found in the sea services and (...) argues that diversity does not preclude acceptance of common core values and standards of performance within any unit."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

At any given time, a subject has a multiplicity of conscious experiences. A subject might simultaneously have visual experiences of a red book and a green tree, auditory experiences of birds singing, bodily sensations of a faint hunger and a sharp pain in the shoulder, the emotional experience of a certain melancholy, while having a stream of conscious thoughts about the nature of reality. These experiences are distinct from each other: a subject could experience the red book without the singing (...) birds, and could experience the singing birds without the red book. But at the same time, the experiences seem to be tied together in a deep way. They seem to be unified, by being aspects of a single encompassing state of consciousness. (shrink)

Neurovascular coupling (NVC), the transient regional hyperemia following the evoked neuronal responses, is the basis of blood oxygenation level-dependent techniques and is generally adopted across physiological conditions, including the intrinsic resting state. However, the possibility of neurovascular dissociations across physiological alterations is indicated in the literature. To examine the NVC stability across sleep–wake states, we used electroencephalography (EEG) as the index of neural activity and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as the measure of cerebrovascular response. Eight healthy adults were recruited (...) for simultaneous EEG-fMRI recordings in nocturnal sleep. We compared the cross-modality (EEG vs. fMRI) consistency of functional indices (spectral amplitude and functional connectivity) among five states of wakefulness and sleep (state effect). We also segregated the brain into three main partitions (anterior, middle and posterior) for spatial assessments (regional effect). Significant state effects were found on δ, α and fMRI indices and regional effects on the α and fMRI indices. However, the cross-state EEG changes in spectral amplitude and functional connectivity did not consistently match the changes in the fMRI indices across sleep–wake states. In spectral amplitude, the δ band peaked at the N3 stage for all brain regions, while the fMRI fluctuation amplitude peaked at the N2 stage in the central and posterior regions. In regional connectivity, the inter-hemispheric connectivity of the δ band peaked at the N3 stage for all regions, but the bilateral fMRI connectivity showed the state changes in the anterior and central regions. The cross-modality inconsistencies across sleep–wake states provided preliminary evidence that the neurovascular relationship may not change in a linear consistency during NREM sleep. Thus, caution shall be exercised when applying the NVC presumption to investigating sleep/wake transitions, even among healthy young adults. (shrink)

Neural activity varies continually from moment to moment. Such temporal variability (TV) has been highlighted as a functionally specific brain property playing a fundamental role in cognition. We sought to investigate the mechanisms involved in TV changes between two basic behavioral states, namely having the eyes open (EO) or eyes closed (EC) in vivo in humans. To these ends we acquired BOLD fMRI, ASL, and [18F]-fluoro-deoxyglucose PET in a group of healthy participants (n = 15), along with BOLD fMRI and (...) [18F]-flumazenil PET in a separate group (n = 19). Focusing on an EO- vs EC-sensitive region in the occipital cortex (identified in an independent sample), we show that TV is constrained in the EO condition compared to EC. This reduction is correlated with an increase in energy consumption and with regional GABAA receptor density. This suggests that the modulation of TV by behavioral state involves an increase in overall neural activity that is related to an increased effect from GABAergic inhibition in addition to any excitatory changes. These findings contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying activity variability in the human brain and its control. (shrink)

A collection of essays presented at "Frater, Magister, Minister, Episcopus. The Works and Worlds of Bonaventure," a conference held at St. Bonaventure University, commemorating the 800th Centennial of Saint Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor.

This book holds classical liberalism responsible for an American concept of beauty that centers upon women, wilderness, and machines. For each of the three beauty components, a cultural entrepreneur supremely sensitive to liberalism’s survival agenda is introduced. P.T. Barnum’s exhibition of Jenny Lind is a masterful combination of female elegance and female potency in the subsistence realm. John Muir’s Yosemite Valley is surely exquisite, but only after a rigorous liberal education prepares for its experience. And Harley Earl’s 1955 Chevrolet Bel (...) Air is a dreamy expressionist sculpture, but with a practical 265 cubic inch V-8 underneath. Not that American beauty has been uniformly pragmatic. The 1950s are reconsidered for having temporarily facilitated a relaxation of the liberal survival priorities, and the creations of painter Jackson Pollock and jazz virtuoso Ornette Coleman are evaluated for their resistance to the pressures of pragmatism. The author concludes with a provocative speculation regarding a future liberal habitat where Emerson’s admonition to attach stars to wagons is rescinded. (shrink)

Disorders of volition are often accompanied by, and may even be caused by, disruptions in the phenomenology of agency. Yet the phenomenology of agency is at present little explored. In this paper we attempt to describe the experience of normal agency, in order to uncover its representational content.

In this paper we defend the doxastic conception of delusions against the metacognitive account developed by Greg Currie and collaborators. According to the metacognitive model, delusions are imaginings that are misidentified by their subjects as beliefs: the Capgras patient, for instance, does not believe that his wife has been replaced by a robot, instead, he merely imagines that she has, and mistakes this imagining for a belief. We argue that the metacognitive account is untenable, and that the traditional conception of (...) delusions as beliefs should be retained. (shrink)

The Uncertainty of Analysis pursues key issues raised in the author's earlier Discourse of Modernism, a ground-breaking work which focused attention on the nature of discourse and the ways in which one culturally dominant "discursive class" may be replaced by another. In this timely and provocative collection of his essays, Timothy J. Reiss shows how efforts to reconfirm the force and power of modernist, analytico-referential discourse in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries have actually brought to the fore (...) internal contradictions, have made clear the problematic nature of the dominant discourse, and have precipitated the emergence of competing discourses. Reiss considers the explorations in foundational logic by Frege and Peirce; examinations of language and its relations to mind by Saussure, Greimas, and Chomsky; work in linguistic and scientific epistemology by Wittgenstein and Heisenberg; and the attempts to analyze the nature of society by Sartre and other Western Marxists. Reiss turns to some practitioners of literary criticism and theory who have sought to escape past constraints, and he points to what appear to be erroneous routes away from the dilemmas raised by these philosophers and critics. (shrink)

New insights into the microbiome, epigenetics, and cognition are radically challenging our very idea of what it means to be 'human', while an explosion of neo-materialist thinking in the humanities has fostered a renewed appreciation of the formative powers of a dynamic material environment. The Matter of History brings these scientific and humanistic ideas together to develop a bold new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past, one that reveals how powerful organism and things help to create humans in all their dimensions, (...) biological, social, and cultural."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Given its ubiquitous presence in everyday experience, it is surprising that the phenomenology of doing—the experience of being an agent—has received such scant attention in the consciousness literature. But things are starting to change, and a small but growing literature on the content and causes of the phenomenology of first-person agency is beginning to emerge.2 One of the most influential and stimulating figures in this literature is Daniel Wegner. In a series of papers and his book The Illusion of Conscious (...) Will (ICW) Wegner has developed.. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemology has been moving away from classical foundationalism—the thesis that our empirical knowledge is grounded in perceptual beliefs we know with certainty. McGrew reexamines classical foundationalism and offers a compelling reconstruction and defense of empirical knowledge grounded in perceptual certainty. He articulates and defends a new version of foundationalism and demonstrates how it meets all the standard criticisms. The book offers substantial rebuttals of the arguments of Kuhn and Rorty and demonstrates the value of the classical analytic approach to (...) philosophy. 'Foundations' will interest philosophers of science, language, and the mind. (shrink)

This book is a careful reexamination of the internal development of Husserl's thought as well as of the ways in which Heidegger used and transformed the phenomenological method.

Suggests that the ability to distinguish between truths and opinions is made difficult by the use of declarative statements to reflect opinions, and offers help in determining the difference between similar statements.

This book investigates "cultural instruments," meaning normative forms of analysis and practice that are central to Western culture. It explores their history from antiquity to the early Enlightenment and their use and reworking by different cultures, moving from Europe to Africa and the Americas, especially the Caribbean, in the process giving close readings of a wide range of authors.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The dissertation examines Davidson and Heidegger's rejections of correspondence truth, as well as their claims that truth is theoretically primitive. Truth is primitive in the sense that it cannot be reduced to, nor defined in terms of, some other more theoretically basic concepts, such as those offered in correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic accounts of truth. The fact that truth cannot be defined in terms of more basic concepts does not mean that there are not important and meaningful things to say (...) about truth; Davidson and Heidegger's agreement that there is more to say about truth distinguishes them from minimalist approaches to truth. Davidson and Heidegger make explicit truth's conceptual relationship to other important areas of inquiry such as language, subjectivity, and ontology. The dissertation claims that the two philosophers agree, despite radically different background texts and methodologies, on the fundamental relationship between self, other, and world. The dissertation moves beyond mere comparison by showing that Davidson's own position commits him to a Heideggerian treatment of truth, or something like it. I argue that understanding the similarities and supplemental arguments offered by each philosopher leads to a better overall account of truth than that offered by each philosopher individually. Moreover, I argue that although Heidegger and Davidson offer primarily transcendental arguments, their theories can accommodate naturalistic theories of language and concept acquisition. (shrink)

Previous research has suggested that bodily signals from internal organs are associated with diverse cortical and subcortical processes involved in sensory-motor functions, beyond homeostatic reflexes. For instance, a recent study demonstrated that the preparation and execution of voluntary actions, as well as its underlying neural activity, are coupled with the breathing cycle. In the current study, we investigated whether such breathing-action coupling is limited to voluntary motor action or whether it is also present for mental actions not involving any overt (...) bodily movement. To answer this question, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), and respiratory signals while participants were conducting a voluntary action paradigm including self-initiated motor execution (ME), motor imagery (MI), and visual imagery (VI) tasks. We observed that the voluntary initiation of ME, MI, and VI are similarly coupled with the respiration phase. In addition, EEG analysis revealed the existence of readiness potential (RP) waveforms in all three tasks (i.e., ME, MI, VI), as well as a coupling between the RP amplitude and the respiratory phase. Our findings show that the voluntary initiation of both imagined and overt action is coupled with respiration, and further suggest that the breathing system is involved in preparatory processes of voluntary action by contributing to the temporal decision of when to initiate the action plan, regardless of whether this culminates in overt movements. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine the implications of the uncodifiability thesis for principlism as a pluralistic and non-absolute generalist ethical theory. In this regard, I begin with a brief overview of W.D. Ross’s ethical theory and his focus on general but defeasible prima facie principles before turning to 2) the revival of principlism in contemporary bioethics through the influential work of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress; 3) the widespread adoption of specification as a response to the indeterminacy of abstract (...) general principles and the limitations of balancing and deductive approaches; 4) the challenges raised to fully specified principlism by the uncodifiability thesis and 5) finally offer a defense of the uncodifiability thesis against various critiques that have been raised. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Drawing upon the collective action model of institutional change, I reconceptualize moral imagination as both a social process and a cognitive one. I argue that moral outcomes are not produced by individual actors alone; rather, they emerge from collective action processes that are influenced by political conditions and involve behaviors that include issue framing and resource mobilization. I also contend that individual moral imagination involves the integration of moral sensitivity with consideration of collective action dynamics. I illustrate my arguments with (...) a case study of the Chad-Cameroon oil project. The paper suggests new directions in teaching and research on moral imagination. (shrink)

This paper looks at the concept of neighborhood canonicity introduced by BRIAN CHELLAS [2]. We follow the lead of the author's paper [9] where it was shown that every non-iterative logic is neighborhood canonical and here we will show that all logics whose axioms have a simple syntactic form-no intensional operator is in boolean combination with a propositional letter-and which have the finite model property are neighborhood canonical. One consequence of this is that KMcK, the McKinsey logic, is neighborhood canonical, (...) an interesting counterpoint to the results of ROBERT GOLDBLATT and XIAOPING WANG who showed, respectively, that KMcK is not relational canonical [5] and that KMcK is not relationally strongly complete [11]. (shrink)

Although the notion can be found in Anscombe.

Solon's extraordinary claim, that we should call "no one happy who is still living", presents a fascinating and distinctive argument about happiness and the length of a human life. The issues Solon raises are important, and even if we think his pessimistic conclusion is an exaggeration we can still appreciate his central concern how conceptions of happiness and the length of a human life are connected. The purpose of this paper is to explore a few of these problems, in particular (...) the reason why Aristotle's reply to Solon in the Nicomachean Ethics is somewhat ambiguous. We find Aristotle addressing Solon's claim at the outset of Eth. Nic. A 10, troubled in one sense by its conclusion, yet struck by its partial truth. On the one hand, he thinks that requires a "complete life" or at the very least, a sufficient and "complete span of time", both of which are compatible with Solon's advice that we should postpone calling someone happy until a later point in life. But on the other hand Aristotle defines in such a way that raises the question whether he needs to accept Solon's claim in any form. In particular, if happiness is defined in terms of excellent activity as Aristotle repeatedly claims, why should we wait until a person dies to call him or her happy? Why shouldn't excellent actions, at the very time they are performed, count someone as happy? The puzzle, in short, is the fact that Aristotle defines happiness in terms of activities that are complete without developing over time, and yet also claims that happiness requires a "complete lifetime". (shrink)

We discuss three varieties of affective dynamics. In each case, we suggest how these affective dynamics should be operationalized and measured in daily life using time-intensive methods, like ecological momentary assessment or ambulatory assessment, and recommend time-sensitive analyses that take into account not only the variability but also the temporal dependency of reports. Studies that explore how these affective dynamics are associated with psychological disorders and symptoms are reviewed, and we emphasize that these affective processes are within a nexus of (...) other components of emotion regulation. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates the arguments advanced by Hubert Dreyfus in his debate with John McDowell regarding the nature of skilled coping. The paper argues that there are significant methodological shortcomings in Dreyfus’ position. The paper examines these methodological limitations and attempts to clarify the problems by re-framing the issues in terms of intentionality, and the specific intentional structures that may or may not be present in skilled coping. The paper attempts to show that the difficulties facing Dreyfus arise from (...) his implicit adherence to a final myth of the mental. The last myth of the mental is the belief thatmental coping is fundamentally different than embodied coping because the former is characterized by mindedness while the latter is not. Dreyfus characterizes the mental as constituted by a kind of interiority while everyday expertise or embodied coping is characterized by exteriority to the exclusion of any type of interiority. I undermine this Cartesian assumption in Dreyfus’ position by showing that the criteria and phenomenological descriptions he uses to characterize embodied coping apply equally to mental coping. (shrink)