Scholars working in philosophy of action still struggle with the freedom/determinism dichotomy that stretches back to Hellenist philosophy and the metaphysics that gave rise to it. Although that metaphysics has been repudiated in current philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the dichotomy still haunts these fields. As such, action is understood as distinct from movement, or motion. In early China, under a very different metaphysical paradigm, no such distinction is made. Instead, a notion of self-caused movement, or spontaneity, is elaborated. (...) In this article a general conception of spontaneity from early Daoism is explained, detailing its constituent aspects. Similar notions appeared from time to time in Western philosophy, and these instances are pursued, exploring how their instantiations differed from Daoist spontaneity and why. Based on these approximate examples of spontaneity and on early Daoist spontaneity, new criteria are postulated for a plausible theory of action that dispenses with presuppositions that eventuate in a freedom/determinism dichotomy, and instead the possibility is offered of a general model of action that can be applied smoothly across current philosophical and cognitive scientific subdisciplines. (shrink)

Over five decades, Donald J. Munro has been one of the most important voices in sinological philosophy. Among other accomplishments, his seminal book The Concept of Man in Early China influenced a generation of scholars. His rapprochement with contemporary cognitive and evolutionary science helped bolster the insights of Chinese philosophers and set the standard for similar explorations today. -/- In this festschrift volume, students of Munro and scholars influenced by him celebrate Munro’s body of work in articles that extend his (...) legacy, exploring their topics as varied as the ethics of Zhuangzi’s autotelicity, the teleology of nature in Zhu Xi, and family love in Confucianism and Christianity. They also reflect on Munro’s mentorship and his direct intellectual influence. Through their breadth, analytical excellence, and philosophical insight, the articles in this volume exemplify the spirit of intellectual inquiry that marked Donald Munro’s career as scholar and teacher. -/- . (shrink)

This is the first book to explore the cognitive science of effortless attention and action. Attention and action are generally understood to require effort, and the expectation is that under normal circumstances effort increases to meet rising demand. Sometimes, however, attention and action seem to flow effortlessly despite high demand. Effortless attention and action have been documented across a range of normal activities--from rock climbing to chess playing--and yet fundamental questions about the cognitive science of effortlessness have gone largely unasked. (...) -/- This book draws from the disciplines of cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, behavioral psychology, genetics, philosophy, and cross-cultural studies. Starting from the premise that the phenomena of effortless attention and action provide an opportunity to test current models of attention and action, leading researchers from around the world examine topics including effort as a cognitive resource, the role of effort in decision making, the neurophysiology of effortless attention and action, the role of automaticity in effortless action, expert performance in effortless action, and the neurophysiology and benefits of attentional training. -/- Contributors: Joshua M. Ackerman, James H. Austin, John A. Bargh, Roy F. Baumeister, Sian L. Beilock, Chris Blais, Matthew M. Botvinick, Brian Bruya, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Marci S. DeCaro, Arne Dietrich, Yuri Dormashev, László Harmat, Bernhard Hommel, Rebecca Lewthwaite, Örjan de Manzano, Joseph T. McGuire, Brian P. Meier, Arlen C. Moller, Jeanne Nakamura, Evgeny N. Osin, Michael I. Posner, Mary K. Rothbart, M. R. Rueda, Brandon J. Schmeichel, Edward Slingerland, Oliver Stoll, Yiyuan Tang, Töres Theorell, Fredrik Ullén, Robert D. Wall, Gabriele Wulf. (shrink)

Trading on non-public material information is fertile ground for a discussion of ethical behavior. The long-running legal tug-of-war over what constitutes illegal insider trading delivers challenges to regulatory authorities charged with detecting and enforcing the law, and is likely one of the reasons that prosecution of insider trading events remains rather uncommon. One can observe both increased volume in the equity and option markets and run-ups in the stock price prior to the announcement of the acquisitions; however, the detection of (...) illegal or unethical insider trading can be difficult. Given the legal uncertainty around insider trading and the circumstantial evidence from the trading activity, it is almost impossible to identify unethical insider trades unless there is a whistleblower or trades are large in size and impeccable in timing. Using call option trading around two merger announcements with similar firms that resulted in different ultimate treatment from the SEC, we illustrate the struggle regulators and prosecutors have with identifying and enforcing unethical insider trades. (shrink)

How have figures of speech configured new concepts of time, space, and mind throughout history? Brian J. McVeigh answers this question in A Psychohistory of Metaphors: Envisioning Time, Space, and Self through the Centuries by exploring “meta-framing:” our ever-increasing capability to “step back” from the environment, search out its familiar features to explain the unfamiliar, and generate “as if” forms of knowledge and metaphors of location and vision. This book demonstrates how analogizing and abstracting have altered spatio-visual perceptions, expanding (...) our introspective capabilities and allowing us to adapt to changing social circumstances. (shrink)

We critically evaluate arguments in a recent Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics article by Svoboda, Adler, and Van Howe disputing the 2012 affirmative infant male circumcision policy recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We provide detailed evidence in explaining why the extensive claims by these opponents are not supported by the current strong scientific evidence. We furthermore show why their legal and ethical arguments are contradicted by a reasonable interpretation of current U.S. and international law and ethics. After (...) all considerations are taken into account it would be logical to conclude that failure to recommend male circumcision early in infancy may be viewed as akin to failure to recommend childhood vaccination to parents. In each case, parental consent is required and the intervention is not compulsory. Our evaluation leads us to dismiss the arguments by Svoboda et al. Instead, based on the evidence, infant male circumcision is both ethical and lawful. (shrink)

The relations of comparison and contrast among the viewpoints of characters and between the viewpoints of authors and characters is one of the most important dimensions of meaning in literary texts.... It is for this reason that the analysis of irony, as a central tonal medium for registering differences in point of view, occupies a position of singular importance in the interpretation of literary meaning.Irony stings. Among friends it might be playful, its target joining in the fun. But it is (...) hard to see irony figuring into any how-to guide for making friends in the first place. Indeed, the word is absent from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. More often irony is divisive, driving a wedge... (shrink)

In this chapter I take up the question of how Aristotle understood the relationship between the contemplative life and the active life in contributing to human flourishing and to the political regime. While the connections between Aristotle’s ethics and politics are abundant, there exists a prevalent assumption in the inclusive/dominant debate concerning the interpretation of eudaimonia (human flourishing) that Aristotle’s Politics cannot or should not play a prominent role in helping to understand eudaimonia. On the ‘inclusivist’ reading, eudaimonia is understood (...) as being a composite of all human goods or virtues. On the ‘dominant’ reading, eudaimonia is understood as being a single dominant good, theōria (contemplation). With this chapter I offer a competing interpretation which is in some ways similar to the recent ‘all-inclusive’ reading, but which relies heavily on the connection between Aristotle’s ethics and politics in order to explain how theōria fits into humans’ composite and political nature. (shrink)

Such a moral theology not only provides us with a convincing certainty of God's being, but it also has the great advantage that it leads us to religion, since it joins the thought of God firmly to our morality, and in this way it even makes better men of us. Kant, Lectures on Philosophical TheologyThis philosophy too, which takes up the thought of confederation in the concept of communicative, historically situated reason, will be able to provide no assurance (keine Zuversicht); (...) it stands in the sign of a transcendence from within and must content itself with the justified encouragement of a skeptical but non-defeatist “resistance to the gods and demons of a world contemptuous of man.” Habermas, “Israel oder Athen: Wem gehoert die anamnetische Vernunft?”. (shrink)

In Volume Two of Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays, Fortin deals with the relationship between religion and civil society in a Christian context: that of an essentially nonpolitical but by no means entirely otherwordly religion, many of whose teachings were thought to be fundamentally at odds with the duties of citizenship. Sections focus upon Augustine and Aquinas, on Christianity and politics; natural law, natural rights, and social justice; and Leo Strauss and the revival of classical political philosophy. Fortin's treatment of these (...) and related themes betrays a keen awareness of one of the significant intellectual events of our time: the recovery of political philosophy as a legitimate academic discipline. (shrink)

The ascendancy of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline / Daniel Dahlstrom -- Western philosophy of religion in the last hundred years / Eugene Thomas Long -- Western challenge to the development of the history of Chinese philosophy / A.S. Cua.

Prior to its publication, Gary Cox's MakingVotesCount was widely and eagerly anticipated. (Indeed, some years ago, I received a referee report dismissing my submission as unnecessary because superior analysis would eventually appear in Cox's then forthcoming manuscript.) Upon its release in 1998, the book was instantly lauded: it collected multiple awards, including the prestigious Woodrow Wilson prize for best book published on government, politics, or international affairs. This acclaim was scarcely surprising – Cox has been one of the foremost scholars (...) of elections and legislatures for the whole of his professional career. He is responsible for an impressive body of work spanning multiple research topics, nations, and methods of analysis. This book is testimony to his breadth, as it catalogs the key electoral features of virtually the whole set of modern democracies (more than 70), and makes frequent forays into diverse nations in search of empirical support for novel theoretical findings. In brief, Cox's project is to bring together a large formal, deductive literature on voting rules and social choice with an equally voluminous empirical, inductive literature on elections and party systems in the world's democracies. The prizes it garnered are one measure of the book's success at this merger; a large boost in Cox's swelling citation count will doubtless follow, reiterating the judgement that this is the major work on electoral law and voting to date. (shrink)

This handbook provides an overview of the research on the changing nature of work and workers by marshalling interdisciplinary research to summarize the empirical evidence and provide documentation of what has actually changed. Connections are explored between the changing nature of work and macro-level trends in technological change, income inequality, global labor markets, labor unions, organizational forms, and skill polarization, among others. This edited volume also reviews evidence for changes in workers, including generational change, that has accumulated across domains. Based (...) on documented changes in work and worker behavior, the handbook derives implications for a range of management functions, such as selection, performance management, leadership, workplace ethics, and employee well-being. This evaluation of the extent of changes and their impact gives guidance on what best practices should be put in place to harness these developments to achieve success. (shrink)

Disasters in sociotechnical systems are caused by many factors. For example, the tragic chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, was caused by a leaky valve and a maintenance error. Safety scientists and investigators call these proximate factors. But the tragedy was also caused by what experts call systemic factors, which include the facility’s design, the organization of its workforce, and the safety culture of the plant and surrounding community. Other disasters share a similarly complex causality, depending on a multitude of proximate (...) and systemic factors. Investigators and scientists distinguish between these different types of factors because they think each has distinctive causal features and also because they often think some factors are more significant causes of disasters than others. In this dissertation, I analyze these distinctions and the reasoning experts use when selecting important causes of disasters in cases like the Bhopal gas tragedy and the Challenger shuttle loss. Using James Woodward’s interventionist theory of causation, I explicate three causal concepts that can be used to distinguish among causal factors: amplifying/damping, causal inertia, and causal delay. I employ these concepts to elaborate and clarify the causal features safety scientists identify to draw distinctions among different types of causal factors, and their reasons for thinking some causes are more important than others for understanding disasters. My dissertation takes a pragmatic approach to causal selection. Although philosophers have emphasized John Stuart Mill’s remark that selecting individual causal factors is “capricious,” I base my approach on Mill’s deeper thinking about the logic of causal selection and the philosophical challenge it poses. I show that selections of causal factors in investigations of disasters and the surrounding discussions of safety are motivated primarily by the dual aim of preventing future disasters and making systems safer. Considering these purposes is essential to understand why investigators single out causes with certain features. Analyzing causal selection in terms of why certain types of causes with certain kinds of features are more useful than others for particular purposes clarifies vital reasoning about the important causes of disasters and enriches our understanding of causal knowledge. (shrink)

Preface -- Key themes of discussions -- June 2, 1991 session -- June 5, 1991 session -- June 7, 1991 session -- Appendix A: Features of conscious interiority -- Appendix B: Glossary of names -- References -- About the author -- Index.

The aim of this essay is to give a high-level overview of Irenaeus’s beatific vision, and to suggest that for him, the beatific vision has a temporal dimension (now and future) and a dimension of degree (lesser now, greater in the future). His beatific vision is witnessed as it intersects with at least four main ideas in his writing—the Trinity, anthropology, resurrection, and his eschatology. Irenaeus famously held that ‘the glory of God is living man, and the life of man (...) is the vision of God’ (AH 4.20.7), which speaks to the reality of seeing God in the present, but he could also look forward in anticipation to beholding the face of God in the resurrected body in the new creation. What made the latter possible is the gradual beholding of God in the present that makes one prepared to see God’s glory in the future. Additionally, the visio Dei is Trinitarian. We behold God in Christ, since God the Father is invisible, and it is the Holy Spirit who prepares us incrementally to see God. (shrink)

Renin is the rate‐limiting enzyme in a cascade that leads to production of angiotensin II, which is perhaps our most important regulator of salt and water balance and blood pressure. In this personal perspective, I describe how I entered the renin field 33 years ago by discovering that proteases increased the level of renin activity in biological fluids, so revealing the existence of a ‘pro’ form of the molecule. This led me on a journey that encapsulated all of the major (...) milestones in molecular discovery for renin. These included (1) the elucidation of the steps in renin biosynthesis, (2) the cloning of renin cDNA and its gene, (3) demonstration of the structure of the renin protein, (4) using the renin gene in the first genetic studies in hypertension, (5) finding the mechanism by which the major controller, cyclic AMP, regulates the promoter, (6) showing that a strong enhancer and its weak promoter control this physiologically regulatable gene in accord with the variegation (on/off switching) model, and (7) being the first to identify molecules involved in posttranscriptional control. The renin molecule, its gene and molecular control are now very well understood, but more fine details on the topic of renin continue to emerge to delight ‘reninologists’ and others. BioEssays 25:520–527, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In three experiments, subjects attempted to track multiple items as they moved independently and unpredictably about a display. Performance was not impaired when the items were briefly (but completely) occluded at various times during their motion, suggesting that occlusion is taken into account when computing enduring perceptual objecthood. Unimpaired performance required the presence of accretion and deletion cues along fixed contours at the occluding boundaries. Performance was impaired when items were present on the visual field at the same times and (...) to the same degrees as in the occlusion conditions, but disappeared and reappeared in ways which did not implicate the presence of occluding surfaces (e.g. by imploding and exploding into and out of existence, instead of accreting and deleting along a fixed contour). Unimpaired performance did not require visible occluders (i.e. Michotte’s tunnel effect) or globally consistent occluder positions. We discuss implications of these results for theories of objecthood in visual attention. (shrink)

What makes an object the same persisting individual over time? Philosophers and psychologists have both grappled with this question, but from different perspectives—philosophers conceptually analyzing the criteria for object persistence, and psychologists exploring the mental mechanisms that lead us to experience the world in terms of persisting objects. It is striking that the same themes populate explorations of persistence in these two very different fields—e.g. the roles of spatiotemporal continuity, persistence through property change, and cohesion violations. Such similarities may reflect (...) an underlying connection, in that psychological mechanisms of object persistence (especially relevant parts of mid-level visual object processing) may serve to underlie the intuitions about persistence that fuel metaphysical theories. This would be a way for cognitive science to join these two disparate fields, helping to explain the possible origins and reliability of some metaphysical intuitions, and perhaps leading to philosophical progress. (shrink)

Winner of the Schumpeter Prize, 2000 and Winner of the Smith Prize in Austrian Economics, 2000, this book explores how the limitations of human knowledge create both opportunities and problems in the modern economy. The growing field of evolutionary economics has developed as a result of the traditional failure of the discipline to explain certain phenomena that impact greatly on the economy. These are: *_Evolution_ - the impact on the economy of natural change over time *_Institutions_ - the impact on (...) the economy of government and/or company policy, rules and regulations *_Knowledge_ - the impact on the economy that is felt when new information becomes available _Knowledge, Institutions and Evolution in Economics _is a punchy overview of these topics and one that has become regarded as something of a modern classic that no serious social sciences academic or student should be without. (shrink)