Training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) is required for many research trainees nationwide, but little is known about its effectiveness. For a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of a short-term course in RCR, medical students participating in an NIH-funded summer research program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) were surveyed using an instrument developed through focus group discussions. In the summer of 2003, surveys were administered before and after a short-term RCR course, as well as to (...) alumni of the courses given in the summers of 2002 and 2001. Survey responses were analyzed in the areas of knowledge, ethical decision-making skills, attitudes about responsible conduct of research, and frequency of discussions about RCR outside of class. The only statistically significant improvement associated with the course was an increase in knowledge, while there was a non-significant tendency toward improvements in ethical decision-making skills and attitudes about the importance of RCR training. The nominal impact of a short-term training course should not be surprising, but it does raise the possibility that other options for delivering information only, such as an Internet-based tutorial, might be considered as comparable alternatives when longer courses are not possible. (shrink)

The least infringement principle has been widely endorsed by public health scholars. According to this principle, public health policies may infringe upon “general moral considerations” in order to achieve a public health goal, but if two policies provide the same public health benefit, then policymakers should choose the one that infringes least upon “general moral considerations.” General moral considerations can encompass a wide variety of goals, including fair distribution of burdens and benefits, protection of privacy and confidentiality, and respect for (...) autonomy.In this article, we argue that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's 2006 HIV screening recommendations may violate the least infringement principle. This is a concern because, although not legally binding, the Recommendations appear to have already influenced state laws and will likely continue to do so as legislative proposals continue to be passed. At a minimum, therefore, the Recommendations have important implications for HIV screening within the United States. (shrink)

Attentional bias towards threat can be demonstrated by enhanced processing of threat-related targets and/or greater interference when threat-related distractors are present. These effects are argued to reflect processing within the orienting and executive control networks of the brain respectively. This study investigated behavioural and electrophysiological correlates of early selective attention and top-down attentional control among females with high or low spider fear. Participants completed a novel flanker go/nogo task in which a central schematic flower or spider stimulus was flanked by (...) either congruent or incongruent distractors. Participants responded to green stimuli and withheld response to yellow stimuli. High fear participants demonstrated significantly shorter reaction times and greater P1 amplitude to spider targets, suggesting specific hypervigilance towards threat-relevant stimuli. In contrast to predictions, there was little evidence for behavioural interference effects or differences in N2 amplitude when distractor stimuli were threat-relevant. (shrink)

While improving the theoretical account of base-rate neglect, Barbey & Sloman's (B&S's) target article suffers from affect neglect by failing to consider the fundamental role of emotional processes in decisions. We illustrate how affective influences are fundamental to decision making, and discuss how the dual process model can be a useful framework for understanding hot and cold cognition in reasoning.

In his later works Nietzsche repeatedly underscores the importance of philosophical methods. In Beyond Good and Evil, for example, he takes issue with the ‘awkw.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections by Matthew LeveringBrant PitreDid Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections by Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 272 pp.In his book Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections, Matthew Levering writes "to make the case" that there is "good reason" to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus (1). In this (...) self-described work of "theological apologetics" (211), Levering argues from a threefold foundation for the credibility of Jesus's resurrection: (1) "the New Testament evidence," considered from the perspective of historical investigation; (2) the "sheer strangeness" of the apostolic claim that [End Page 1347] Jesus was "resurrected" and not just resuscitated or exalted into heaven as an immortal soul; (3) and the intrinsic credibility of the "supreme love" revealed through his death and resurrection (2–4). As this threefold foundation makes clear, Levering draws together both "historical and theological reasons for believing that Jesus' Resurrection happened" (4).In chapter 1, Levering contends that, while "faith does not stand or fall upon the results of historical research, those who insist that the truth of Jesus' Resurrection has nothing to do with the domain of historical investigation are mistaken" (30). To this end, he offers a survey of three figures: (1) the Belgian Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx; (2) the American Protestant biblical scholar Dale C. Allison Jr.; and (3) the Anglican bishop and biblical theologian N. T. Wright. Levering exposes the serious flaws of contemporary attempts to reduce the resurrection claims of early Christians to hallucinations or visions of someone who has recently died. In particular, Levering finds compelling Wright's argument that the bodily resurrection of Jesus provides "the best historical explanation" of the early Christian claim that what first-century Jews expected to happen to everyone at the end of time had in fact happened to only one person—Jesus of Nazareth—in the middle of time. From a strictly historical point of view, claims that the disciples were merely moved by grace to a new experience Jesus being "alive" or that they simply experienced hallucinatory visions of Jesus after his death fail to explain the "radical change of eschatology" that took place in the early Church (56).In chapter 2, Levering explores the question of whether "the Church's mediation is truly effective in enabling us to share in the apostolic communion with the risen Jesus" (63). He first offers a sympathetic overview of the Protestant biblical scholar Richard Bauckham's book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2003; 2nd ed., 2017), in which he claims that the Gospels rest largely on "eyewitness testimony" (87–88). According to Levering, Bauckham's historical arguments show that "the ongoing presence of eyewitnesses provides a reason for not being skeptical about the major events of Jesus' life as reported by the Gospels, including his Resurrection" (89). At the same time, Levering insists that eyewitness memory is only one "mode of historical remembrance" utilized by the Church; in addition, Jesus also "willed that the historical remembrance of his Resurrection be an ecclesial reality" (90)—that is, a liturgical act of "remembrance" that takes place above all in the Eucharistic liturgy.In chapter 3, Levering aims to shed light on "the role of the Old Testament in aiding the discernment of the historical credibility of Jesus's Resurrection" (91). This chapter presents a stark contrast to contemporary [End Page 1348] studies of the resurrection that begin (and end) with the New Testament data. In it, Levering surveys the work of three contemporary scholars—Dale Allison, N. T. Wright, and the Jewish scholar Jon Levenson—and puts them in conversation with Thomas Aquinas's thirteenth-century commentary on the account of Jesus's resurrection in John 20–21. As this chapter amply demonstrates, it is "precisely in the scriptural history that the Creator God has guided, that we come to know that given such a God and such a history, Jesus' Resurrection is believable" (112). According to Levering, "the entire Old Testament" (113) is a necessary prolegomenon for understanding what it even means to say that Jesus has been raised in the first... (shrink)

I thank Dr. Matthew Parrott and Dr. V.Y. Allison-Bolger very much for their valuable comments on my paper. They have given me the chance to reflect further on the account of thought insertion I propose, and I respond to them with enthusiasm. I also thank the Editor of this journal for arranging this discussion and for giving me the opportunity to reply. Both Dr. Parrott and Dr. Allison-Bolger are concerned about whether my account is fundamentally tenable. They suggest (...) that I make two incompatible claims in the paper: I deny that a schizophrenic thinker suffering from thought insertion has the appropriate dispositions to enter the cause/reason-giving practice for the thought that she... (shrink)

History, Philosophy and Science Teaching argues that science teaching and science teacher education can be improved if teachers know something of the history and philosophy of science and if these topics are included in the science curriculum. The history and philosophy of science have important roles in many of the theoretical issues that science educators need to address: the goals of science education; what constitutes an appropriate science curriculum for all students; how science should be taught in traditional cultures; what (...) integrated science is; how scientific literacy can be promoted; and the conflict which can occur between science curriculum and deep-seated religious or cultural values and knowledge. In part, answers to these questions hinge on views about the nature of science, views that are best informed by historical and philosophical study. Outlining the history of liberal, or contextual, approaches to the teaching of science, Michael Matthews elaborates contemporary curriculum developments that explicitly address questions about the nature and the history of science. He provides examples of classroom teaching and develops useful arguments on constructivism, multicultural science education and teacher education. The book will appeal to school and university science teachers, educators of science teachers, and historians and philosophers of science. (shrink)

'Backsliding', 'weakness of, will', ' moral weakness', '"lack of self-restraint', 'lack of self-control'. Do all these have the same meaning ? Is there a philosophical problem here, and if so, what precisely is it? How is an account of what happens in cases to which these terms apply related to the meaning of the words, and to the philosophical problem? These are the questions which I shall try to discuss in this paper.

Recent develops in AI technology have led to increasingly sophisticated forms of video manipulation. One such form has been the advent of deepfakes. Deepfakes are AI-generated videos that typically depict people doing and saying things they never did. In this paper, I demonstrate that there is a close structural relationship between deepfakes and more traditional fake barn cases in epistemology. Specifically, I argue that deepfakes generate an analogous degree of epistemic risk to that which is found in traditional cases. Given (...) that barn cases have posed a long-standing challenge for virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge, I consider whether a similar challenge extends to deepfakes. In doing so, I consider how Duncan Pritchard’s recent anti-risk virtue epistemology meets the challenge. While Pritchard’s account avoids problems in traditional barn cases, I claim that it leads to local scepticism about knowledge from online videos in the case of deepfakes. I end by considering how two alternative virtue-theoretic approaches might vindicate our epistemic dependence on videos in an increasingly digital world. (shrink)

What makes certain scientific research controversial? And when does scientific research go beyond being merely controversial to be something far worse? We propose a diagnostic framework for distinguishing between scientific research that is merely controversial and that which is abhorrent. Our framework places research projects along two axes of a value‐harm map. Most research, fortunately, is both valuable and harmless. However, research may be controversial if it is either valuable but harmful or harmless but valueless. The most concerning quadrant of (...) our value‐harm map includes research that is both valueless and harmful, which is abhorrent science. The article's analysis considers a series of case studies, highlighting “new genomic race science” as an exemplar of abhorrent science. (shrink)

Kant's philosophy of arithmetic / by Charles Parsons -- Visual geometry / by James Hopkins -- The proof-structure of Kant's transcendental deduction / by Dieter Henrich -- Imagination and perception / by P.F. Strawson -- Kant's categories and their schematism / by Lauchlan Chipman -- Transcendental arguments / by Barry Stroud -- Strawson on transcendental idealism / by H.E. Matthews -- Self-knowledge / by W.H. Walsh -- The age and size of the world / by Jonathan Bennett.

It is clear from these and other definitions that development, no matter how it is conceived, involves change. However, it is also clear that not all change constitutes development. A particular change could be part of a process of development, but could also be part of several other processes, such as those of alteration, modification, deformation, adaptation, regression, degradation and the like. Thus it is necessary to differentiate between changes that can be said to be part of a process of (...) development, and those that cannot. In an attempt to make such a distinction and in line with the above-mentioned definitions of development one could say that changes that are part of development are changes that bring about increased likeness to some more advanced or better state of being. (shrink)

Genetic explanation of complex human behavior presents an excellent test case for pluralism. Although philosophers agree that successful scientific investigation of behavior is pluralistic, there remains disagreement regarding integration and elimination—is the plurality of approaches here to stay, or merely a waystation on the road to monism? In this paper we introduce an issue taken very seriously by scientists yet mostly ignored by philosophers—the missing heritability problem—and assess its implications for disagreement among pluralists. We argue that the missing heritability problem, (...) which isn’t going anywhere any time soon, implies that pluralism in behavior genetics is both practically ineliminative and theoretically non-integrative. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Against Definition. Eric Matthews. -/- Keywords: definition, mental illness, ideology -/- Varelius rightly says, in the very first sentence of his article, that 'The nature of mental disorder is a controversial issue.' But I do not think he recognizes just how deeply controversial it is. He hopes to be able to find a way of resolving the controversy by his chosen method, based on a consideration of (...) 'the goals that we have in classifying certain persons as mentally disordered.' However, not only does the adoption of that method presuppose that the controversy is resoluble, it is also somewhat circular. For to be able to set out the goals that we have in classifying some people as mentally disordered, we already have to know which persons we so classify, and so what is meant by calling them 'mentally disordered.' There are several appeals to alleged 'intuitions' and one to a 'paradigm case' in Varelius's article; but, if we had such intuitions, they would be all we needed to define the concept of mental disorder, and there would be no need for the further reference to our goals in demarcating this class of human conditions.I want to argue that any alleged 'intuitions' we might have in regard to mental disorder are philosophically useless, and that the controversy about the nature of mental disorder is intrinsically irresoluble. Any claimed intuition can always be met by a rival intuition that is irreconcilable with the first. It is this, indeed, that makes the dispute about mental disorder essentially philosophical, rather than scientific, in character. Philosophical positions have to be based on, and defended by, rational argument, but there necessarily comes a point in any philosophical dispute at which no rational argument can settle the matter one way or the other. Varelius derives his methodology of considering goals of demarcation from some work done using this method on the concept of science. But people have different goals for demarcating 'science' from 'non-science' or 'pseudo-science.' The demarcation is not made, as Varelius suggests, on the basis of such criteria as testability of hypotheses or clarity of concepts; or rather, the application of these criteria themselves is determined by the goals of demarcation. The debate about what is to count as a 'science' is irresoluble in part because what we classify as such has evaluative and practical consequences. To be a 'science,' in our culture, is to be a valued activity, to have a status to be aspired to. This makes arguments about what it is to be scientific what I would like to call 'ideological' in character. Similar considerations apply to the dispute about the nature of mental disorder. Human societies have always distinguished madness from reason, disturbed or disordered behavior, thoughts, and emotions from those that are not disordered. But the purpose of making the distinction, and thus the character of the distinction made, has varied from society to society and from one historical period to another. The historian Roy Porter, in his short work Madness: A Brief History (2002) describes some of the different images of madness which have prevailed at different times in Western culture—as a divine punishment for hubris, as [End Page 53] a source of poetic inspiration, as the inevitable result of moral excess, as diabolical possession, and so on. The modern idea of mental disorder as mental illness is only one possible way of classifying together certain sorts of deviations from normality. Varelius's method of arriving at a definition of mental illness involves 'considering the goals that we have in classifying certain persons as mentally disordered.' But we can ask who are the 'we' in question, and whether 'we' have only one set of goals in classifying people in this way. The history referred to in the preceding paragraph suggests that 'we' means those members of society who do not regard themselves as disordered—the 'normal' people whose behavior can be readily understood by other normal people. Classifying someone as mentally disordered is distinguishing them as 'not one of us,' and this can serve various purposes, for instance, treating them as objects of entertainment in a human zoo, as in Bedlam; or treating them as moral. (shrink)

In a series of exquisite examples that could only have been gathered by a professional philosopher with an extraordinary respect for young minds, Gareth...

The first edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy took the dialogue of science and philosophy from Aristotle through to Newton. This second edition adds eight chapters, taking the dialogue through the Enlightenment and up to Darwin. This anthology is an attempt to help bridge the gap between the history of science and the history of philosophy.

This book provides a richly documented account of the historical, cultural, philosophical and practical dimensions of feng shui. It argues that where feng shui is entrenched educational systems have a responsibility to examine its claims, and that this examination provides opportunities for students to better learn about the key features of the nature of science, the demarcation of science and non-science, the characteristics of pseudoscience, and the engagement of science with culture and worldviews. The arguments presented for feng shui being (...) a pseudoscience can be marshalled when considering a whole range of comparable beliefs and the educational benefit of their appraisal. Feng shui is a deeply-entrenched, three-millennia-old system of Asian beliefs and practices about nature, architecture, health, and divination that has garnered a growing presence outside of Asia. It is part of a comprehensive and ancient worldview built around belief in chi the putative universal energy or life-force that animates all existence, the cosmos, the solar system, the earth, and human bodies. Harmonious living requires building in accord with local chi streams; good health requires replenishment and manipulation of internal chi flow; and a beneficent afterlife is enhanced when buried in conformity with chi directions. Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on the proper manipulation of internal chi by acupuncture, tai-chi and qigong exercise, and herbal dietary supplements. Matthews has produced another tour de force that will repay close study by students, scientists, and all those concerned to understand science, culture, and the science/culture nexus. Harvey Siegel, Philosophy, University of Miami, USA With great erudition and even greater fluidity of style, Matthews introduces us to this now-world-wide belief system. Michael Ruse, Philosophy, Florida State University, USA The book is one of the best research works published on Feng Shui. Wang Youjun, Philosophy, Shanghai Normal University, China The history is fascinating. The analysis makes an important contribution to science literature. James Alcock, Psychology, York University, Canada This book provides an in-depth study of Feng Shui in different periods, considering its philosophical, historical and educational dimensions; especially from a perspective of the ‘demarcation problem’ between science and pseudoscience. Yao Dazhi, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 5-8.

This chapter outlines something of Mario Bunge’s long life and career as a physicist-philosopher originally living and working in Argentina for 40 years, then in Canada for nearly 60 years. It indicates the extraordinary breadth, depth and quantity of his research publications. It deals briefly with some key components of his work, such as: systemism, causation, theory analysis, axiomatization, ontology, epistemology, physics, psychology and philosophy of mind, social science, probability and Bayesianism, defence of the Enlightenment project, and education. Finally, the (...) chapter gives an account of the structure of the festschrift, and an indication of each of the 41 contributions. (shrink)

Constructivism is one of the most influential theories in contemporary education and learning theory. It has had great influence in science education. The papers in this collection represent, arguably, the most sustained examination of the theoretical and philosophical foundations of constructivism yet published. Topics covered include: orthodox epistemology and the philosophical traditions of constructivism; the relationship of epistemology to learning theory; the connection between philosophy and pedagogy in constructivist practice; the difference between radical and social constructivism, and an appraisal of (...) their epistemology; the strengths and weaknesses of the Strong Programme in the sociology of science and implications for science education. The book contains an extensive bibliography. Contributors include philosophers of science, philosophers of education, science educators, and cognitive scientists. The book is noteworthy for bringing this diverse range of disciplines together in the examination of a central educational topic. (shrink)

Philotheus boehner's "medieval logic" gives the impression that medieval supposition theory and modern quantification theory agree on their interpretation of particular propositions but differ on their interpretation of universal propositions. Matthews shows that this impression is mistaken: they differ on both particular and universal propositions, And the basic reason is that the medievals quantify over terms while modern logicians quantify over variables. (staff).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 437-438 [Access article in PDF] Michael V. Wedin. Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Oxford Aristotle Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 482. Cloth, $55.00. Michael Wedin has written the equivalent for Aristotle of what biblical scholars would call a "harmony of the gospels." It is a wonderfully rich and argumentatively dense reconstruction of (...) Aristotle's two most important treatises on substance, the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta, works that many of our most able Aristotle scholars have declared irreconcilable.The first chapter, on "the plan" of the Categories, includes a sensible account of the role in that work of the "onymies," as Wedin calls homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy. The second chapter, which focuses on "nonsubstantial individuals" in the Categories, gives the most philosophically sophisticated reconstruction known to me of how Aristotle might have conceived this white in Socrates to be a nonrecurrent particular. Having myself contributed to the glut of recent scholarship on nonsubstantial individuals in the Categories, I have personal, as well as professional, reasons to praise the rigor and insight of this chapter.In Chapter 3 Wedin tries to pin down the ontological commitment of Aristotle's Categories. Since, if there were no primary substances there would not be anything else, the fundamental ontological commitment of the Categories is a commitment to primary substances. Individual nonsubstances exist just in case there are primary substances in which they inhere. As for species and genera of substances and species and genera of the nonsubstantial individuals that inhere in them, Wedin finds Aristotle curiously indifferent to their existence.Chapter 4, a transitional chapter, takes up a range of possible views on the relation between the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Incompatibilism is argued against, yet the arguments for compatibilism in recent commentaries are found to be insufficient. In the next chapter Wedin moves on to his own statement of, and justification for, compatibilism.The key to Wedin's compatibilist interpretation is the distinction he draws between being a substance and being the "substance-of" something. Zeta can then be seen to be supplementing, rather than revising, let alone contradicting, the Categories, if Zeta can be understood to be about the substance-of the primary substances of the Categories (157-8).Aristotle proposes in Z3 three candidates for what the substance of, say, Socrates, is, namely, his matter, his form, and the compound of the two. Aristotle settles on form and discusses form as essence in Z4 and Z5, which discussion Wedin takes up in his own [End Page 437] Chapter 6. Then in Chapter 7 Wedin takes on the enigmatic claim of Z6, "In the case of things that are primary and spoken of per se, it is clear that the thing and the essence of the thing are the same" (1032a4-6).Wedin makes Chapter 8, which is primarily a treatment of Z10 and Z11, a discussion of Aristotle on "compositional plasticity," that is, on whether, say, the form of human being might be realized in something other than flesh and bones. "[O]ne could grant," Wedin writes, that to be a human being is just to be a member of a determinate biological species and so to have a very specific material nature, and yet insist that the form of such creatures be realizable in quite different sorts of matter. Creatures so constituted would not be human beings but they would be entities with similar functional capacities and states... From the point of view of philosophy of mind, for example, what matters are the psychological capacities, functions, and states characteristic of persons. Just what these are is determined by a form—the form that happens to be realized in human matter. (340-41) In Chapter 9 Wedin turns to Z13, which, as he acknowledges, has often been thought to be the most confounding chapter in Zeta. Wedin draws on Z16 to help resolve the aporia with which Z13 ends (roughly this... (shrink)

This book unites the worlds of physics and depth psychology through analysis of carefully selected existing and new dream materials. Their interpretation by Matthews provides fertile ground for the unifying of the extreme opposites of psyche and matter and forms a continuation of the deep dialogue between acclaimed psychologist Carl Jung and Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli. What emerges is an individuation process where inner and outer worlds are intertwined through a succession of dream images, culminating with that of the (...) ring i, the mathematical function at the heart of quantum physics. This mysterious function unites wave and particle and symbolically carries the quality of paradox. The occurrence of the ring i in Pauli's and the author's dreams suggests paradox is a necessary psychological state to experience a living union between psyche and matter. Analysis of accompanying materials further indicates the arising of a new world view where inner and outer, mind and matter, may again be seen as a unified whole. This book is an engaging read for academics and researchers in the field of Jungian psychology and will appeal to those interested in the novel application of quantum physics to philosophy, psychology and spirituality. (shrink)

Putnam and Searle famously argue against computational theories of mind on the skeptical ground that there is no fact of the matter as to what mathematical function a physical system is computing: both conclude (albeit for somewhat different reasons) that virtually any physical object computes every computable function, implements every program or automaton. There has been considerable discussion of Putnam's and Searle's arguments, though as yet there is little consensus as to what, if anything, is wrong with these arguments. In (...) the present paper we show that an analogous line of reasoning can be raised against the numerical measurement (i.e., numerical representation) of physical magnitudes, and we argue that this result is a reductio ad absurdum of the challenge to computational skepticism. We then use this reductio to get clearer about both (i) what's wrong with Putnam's and Searle's arguments against computationalism, and (ii) what can be learned about both computational implementation and numerical measurement from the shortcomings of both sorts of skeptical argument. (shrink)