Ad hominem arguments are generally dismissed on the grounds that they are not attempts to engage in rational discourse, but are rather aimed at undermining argument by diverting attention from claims made to assessments of character of persons making claims. The manner of this dismissal however is based upon an unlikely paradigm of rationality: it is based upon the presumption that our intellectual capacities are not as limited as in fact they are, and do not vary as much as they (...) do between rational people. When we understand rationality in terms of intellectual virtues, however, which recognize these limitations and provide for the complexity of our thinking, ad hominem considerations can sometimes be relevant to assessing arguments. (shrink)

This study looked for evidence of biases in the allocation and disengagement of attention in dysphoric individuals. Participants studied images for a recognition memory test while their eye fixations were tracked and recorded. Four image types were presented (depression-related, anxiety-related, positive, neutral) in each of two study conditions. For the simultaneous study condition, four images (one of each type) were presented simultaneously for 10 seconds, and the number of fixations and the total fixation time to each image was measured, similar (...) to the procedure used by Eizenman et al. (2003) and Kellough, Beevers, Ellis, and Wells (2008). For the sequential study condition, four images (one of each type) were presented consecutively, each for 4 seconds; to measure disengagement of attention an endogenous cuing procedure was used (Posner, 1980). Dysphoric individuals spent significantly less time attending to positive images than non-dysphoric individuals, but there were no group differences in attention to depression-related images. There was also no evidence of a dysphoria-related bias in initial shifts of attention. With respect to the disengagement of attention, dysphoric individuals were slower to disengage their attention from depression-related images. The recognition memory data showed that dysphoric individuals had poorer memory for emotional images, but there was no evidence of a conventional mood-congruent memory bias. Differences in the attentional and memory biases observed in depressed and dysphoric individuals are discussed. (shrink)

Aging is accompanied by changes in general cognitive functioning which may impact the learning rate of older adults; however, this is often not controlled for in cognitive aging studies. We investigated the contribution of differences in learning rates to age-related differences in landmark knowledge acquired from route learning. In Experiment 1 we used a standard learning procedure in which participants received a fixed amount of exposure to a route. Consistent with previous research, we found age-related deficits in associative cue and (...) landmark sequence knowledge. Experiment 2 controlled for differences in learning rates by using a flexible exposure learning procedure. Specifically, participants were trained to a performance criterion during route learning before being tested on the content of their route knowledge. While older adults took longer to learn the route than younger adults, the age-related differences in associative cue knowledge were abolished. The deficit in landmark sequence knowledge, however, remained. Experiment 3 replicated these results and introduced a test situation in which a deficit in landmark sequence knowledge yielded an increased likelihood of disorientation in older adults. The findings of this study suggest that age-related deficits in landmark associative cue knowledge are attenuated by controlling for learning rates. In contrast, landmark sequence knowledge deficits persist and are best explained by changes in the learning strategy of older adults to acquire task essential associative cue knowledge at the expense of supplementary sequence knowledge. (shrink)

Background While prenatal surgery historically was performed exclusively for lethal conditions, today intrauterine surgery is also performed to decrease postnatal disabilities for non-lethal conditions. We sought to describe physicians' attitudes about prenatal surgery for lethal and non-lethal conditions and to elucidate characteristics associated with these attitudes. Methods Survey of 1200 paediatric surgeons, neonatologists and maternal–fetal medicine specialists. Results Of 1176 eligible physicians, 670 responded. In the setting of a lethal condition for which prenatal surgery would likely result in the child (...) surviving with a severe disability, most respondents either disagreed or strongly disagreed that they would recommend the surgery. Male physicians were twice as likely to recommend surgery for the lethal condition, as were physicians who believe that abortion is morally wrong. Older physicians were less likely to recommend surgery. For non-lethal conditions, most respondents agreed that they would recommend prenatal surgery, even if the surgery increases the risk of prematurity or fetal death. Compared with MFMs, surgeons were less likely to recommend such surgery, as were physicians not affiliated with a fetal centre, and physicians who were religious. Conclusion Physician’s attitudes about prenatal surgery relate to physicians’ beliefs about disability as well as demographic, cultural and religious characteristics. Given the variety of views, parents are likely to receive different recommendations from their doctors about the preferable treatment choice. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

Donald Trump’s election and the subsequent roiling of the U.S. political scene have been an unsettling spectacle and have occurred during an increase in right-wing power around the world.1 Why did...

BackgroundThe pursuit of a cure for HIV is a high priority for researchers, funding agencies, governments and people living with HIV (PLWH). To date, over 250 biomedical studies worldwide are or have been related to discovering a safe, effective, and scalable HIV cure, most of which are early translational research and experimental medicine. As HIV cure research increases, it is critical to identify and address the ethical challenges posed by this research.MethodsWe conducted a scoping review of the growing HIV cure (...) research ethics literature, focusing on articles published in English peer-reviewed journals from 2013 to 2021. We extracted and summarized key developments in the ethics of HIV cure research. Twelve community advocates actively engaged in HIV cure research provided input on this summary and suggested areas warranting further ethical inquiry and foresight via email exchange and video conferencing.DiscussionDespite substantial scholarship related to the ethics of HIV cure research, additional attention should focus on emerging issues in six categories of ethical issues: (1) social value (ongoing and emerging biomedical research and scalability considerations); (2) scientific validity (study design issues, such as the use of analytical treatment interruptions and placebos); (3) fair selection of participants (equity and justice considerations); (4) favorable benefit/risk balance (early phase research, benefit-risk balance, risk perception, psychological risks, and pediatric research); (5) informed consent (attention to language, decision-making, informed consent processes and scientific uncertainty); and (6) respect for enrolled participants and community (perspectives of people living with HIV and affected communities and representation).ConclusionHIV cure research ethics has an unfinished agenda. Scientific research and bioethics should work in tandem to advance ethical HIV cure research. Because the science of HIV cure research will continue to rapidly advance, ethical considerations of the major themes we identified will need to be revisited and refined over time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 1, April 2000, pp. 159-169 Hume and Matthew Prior's "Alma" CHRISTOPHER MACLACHLAN In 1987 M. A. Box identified the verse quotations in Hume's essays "Of Essay Writing" and "The Epicurean."1 It is therefore odd that in their edition of a selection of the essays, Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar should state in a note to "Of Essay Writing" that "the source of this (...) couplet has not been located. In his [1985] edition of the Essays Eugene Miller has suggested that it may belong to the same author or poem as the couplet quoted in 'The Epicurean'."2 Miller of course was quite right, for, as Box showed, both couplets come from Matthew Prior's poem "Alma: or, The Progress of the Mind," first published in 1718.3 The first couplet reads as follows in "Of Essay Writing": Stunn'd and worn out with endless chat, Of Will did this, and Nan did that? (Essays 1) The question mark is not in the original, but is required because Hume is using the quotation to end an interrogative sentence, and Hume has replaced "Nan said that" with "Nan did that," but otherwise these are clearly lines 524 and 525 of the third canto of "Alma" (p. 514). In "The Epicurean" appear these lines: What foolish figure must it make? Do nothing else but sleep and ake. (Essays 79) Christopher MacLachlan is at the School of English, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland, e-mail: [email protected] 160 Christopher MacLachlan The italics are not in the original, and the first line reads "A foolish figure He must make," but these are clearly lines 116 and 117 of the first canto of "Alma." Beyond these identifications Box's note does not go, except to point out a reference to the poem in Hume's Treatise. Hume is arguing that "shou'd an author compose a treatise, of which one part was serious and profound, another light and humorous, every one wou'd condemn so strange a mixture, and wou'd accuse him of the neglect of all rules of art and criticism," one of which he says "requires a consistency in every performance" since "the mind is incapable of passing in a moment from one passion and disposition to quite a different one." But he immediately adds: Yet this makes us not blame Mr. Prior for joining his Alma and his Solomon in the same volume; tho' that admirable poet has succeeded perfectly well in the gaiety of the one, as well as in the melancholy of the other... because [the reader] considers these performances as entirely different, and by this break in the ideas, breaks the progress of the affections. (T II ii 8)4 This is useful in confirming Hume's acquaintance with the poem. His use of its name, and the contrast with Prior's earlier work, "Solomon on the Vanity of the World,"5 suggests he also expected his readers to be familiar at least with the nature of both poems. Even in 1781, when Samuel Johnson opened the second volume of his Lives of the English Poets with his life of Prior, he could write as though Prior were still a well-known poet, though there are signs in Johnson's comments on the poems themselves that they were not as widely read as before. He does, however, single out "Alma" and "Solomon" for particular comment. Johnson's life of Prior may signal the beginning of the decay of his reputation from the relatively high regard in which he was held in the first part of the eighteenth century, when he could be ranked with Pope and Swift, to his present obscurity. But more striking than the fact that Hume shared a taste for Prior's verse is the prominence he gave to "Alma," and the implication that he knew this poem very well, for the couplets he quotes from it are not only from widely spaced parts of the poem (one just over a hundred lines from its beginning, and the other less than a hundred from its end),6 but they... (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 1, pp 118 - 147 This paper challenges the widespread emphasis on the absence of God in post- Holocaust historiography, theology, and art by suggesting that Barnett Newman’s _Stations of the Cross_ may have been conceived under the theological category of the apophatic rather than the aesthetic category of the sublime. This paper focuses on the “anti-realist” position of Newman and other artists for whom the Holocaust necessitated a renewed aniconic tendency in Jewish aesthetics. His (...) work, I suggest, holds out a tension between absolute absence and redemptive presence that at once resists and affirms a negative aesthetic of God’s solidarity with suffering. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the utility for employing case study methodologies to provide sufficient external validity upon which to craft policy relevant to maintaining healthy democratic politics. The broader theoretical context is an investigation into the conditions that might structurally condition democracies to fail via democratic means. Venezuela’s democratic decline serves as the basis for the heuristic case study, wherein the objective is to identify the failures of the Venezuelan case in a larger framework that addresses the complexity of institutional design (...) in democratic political systems states broadly. Cases are selected based upon the objective of the researcher, and similarly, the case study methodology chosen rests firmly on their research goals. Lastly, the chapter outlines the research design necessary for satisfying broader inquiry within the more modest approach to how heuristic case studies can be used to inform both theory and policy. (shrink)

It may be true that we are epistemically in the dark about various things. Does this fact ground the truth of fallibilism? No. Still, even the most zealous skeptic will probably grant that it is not clear that one can be incognizant of their own occurrent phenomenal conscious mental goings-on. Even so, this does not entail infallibilism. Philosophers who argue that occurrent conscious experiences play an important epistemic role in the justification of introspective knowledge assume that there are occurrent beliefs. (...) But this assumption is false. This paper argues that there are no occurrent beliefs. And it considers the epistemic consequences this result has for views that attempt to show that at least some phenomenal beliefs are infallible. (shrink)

One of the greatest challenges facing materialist theories of the human mind is the problem of intentionality. As many non-materialists of various stripes have pointed out, it is very difficult to say, if the human mind is a purely material thing, how this material thing can be about or represent another thing wholly distinct from itself. However, for their part, these same non-materialists have relied heavily or exclusively on this intuition that one material thing cannot be about another. In this (...) paper, that hole in the intentionality objection to materialist theories of mind is filled by way of providing the germ of a new theory of the metaphysics of intentionality. On this view, intentionality just is partial identity. Partial identity is a concept introduced by David Armstrong and used by Donald Baxter to give a metaphysics of instantiation. The aboutness exhibited by our mental activity is simply a partial identity relation between the mind and the object of thought. This thesis, I contend, is a faithful interpretation of Brentano’s “intentional inexistence,” which the objects of thought have in the mind and which he held to be characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. Some interesting and fortuitous consequences, including an elucidation of precisely why one material thing can never be about something distinct from itself, are then examined, and finally a defense against some objections is given. (shrink)

Embryo adoption, when oriented to the rescue of a dignified human person, is a merciful and morally licit response to an evil consequence of in vitro fertilization and the freezing of embryos. Those who object to embryo adoption not only misconstrue the relevant moral reasoning but exhibit confusion among the object, intention, and circumstances and between two very different potential objects. Because the mercy and charity effected through embryo adoption are at the very heart of moral action, juridical arguments that (...) undermine people’s confidence in these priorities have far-reaching, harmful implications. (shrink)

During the 12th century, certain questions came into focus and inspired speculation about the heavens and the earth, namely, “mobile being”. In other words, nature was “discovered” in the 12th century. It is in the wake of this discovery that, in the 1250s, Bonaventure developed his view of the created world while commenting on the interpretation of the Genesis account of creation found in the church fathers, as these had been anthologized in Peter the Lombard's Sentences.

Bonaventure holds that God does all things with power, wisdom, and goodness; such as in the case of the restoration. If Incarnation is examined as a work of God in the light of power, wisdom, and goodness, we can see why it is the most perfect of all God's works, for there cannot be any greater act of power than to combine within a single person two natures: the human and divine. While Bonaventure stresses the gratuity of the redemption — (...) that is, God was in no way obliged to save us — he is very clear that man could not have been saved by any healer other than God. (shrink)

Bonaventure uses “sacrament” to refer to all signs of faith in the Redeemer, even those that are not explicitly focused on Jesus of Nazareth. He refers to this as the “diversity” of the sacraments. “Sacraments” in this sense were instituted from the very beginning, but they have enjoyed diversity through three different ages and their concomitant laws: the law of nature, the law of scripture, and the law of grace.

Combining philosophical reflections with deep self-exploration to delve into the ancient mystery of death and rebirth, this book emphasizes collective rather than individual transformation. Drawing upon twenty years of experience working with nonordinary states, the author argues that when the deep psyche is hyper-simulated using Stanislaw Grof's powerful therapeutic methods, the healing that results sometimes extends beyond the individual to the collective unconscious of humanity itself.

A paradigm-breaking exploration of how collective intelligence functions in groups with practical guidelines for teachers.

Ectogestation involves the gestation of a fetus in an ex utero environment. The possibility of this technology raises a significant question for the abortion debate: Does a woman’s right to end her pregnancy entail that she has a right to the death of the fetus when ectogestation is possible? Some have argued that it does not Mathison & Davis. Others claim that, while a woman alone does not possess an individual right to the death of the fetus, the genetic parents (...) have a collective right to its death Räsänen. In this paper, I argue that the possibility of ectogestation will radically transform the problem of abortion. The argument that I defend purports to show that, even if it is not a person, there is no right to the death of a fetus that could be safely removed from a human womb and gestated in an artificial womb, because there are competent people who are willing to care for and raise the fetus as it grows into a person. Thus, given the possibility of ectogestation, the moral status of the fetus plays no substantial role in determining whether there is a right to its death. (shrink)

Contributions to this volume examine three main areas relating to the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas: the foundation of metaphysics within Thomism; the use of metaphysics in fundamental philosophical issues within Thomism; and the use of metaphysics in central theological issues.

This paper looks at nine different ways of defining scientism in order to show that potential definitions of the term conform to a general pattern: a definition of scientism either is self-defeating or else cannot really count as a construal of scientism in the first place. Advocates for the experimental sciences would therefore be better off accepting a middle position—one might say a broadly Thomistic approach to science—between the extremes of scientism on the one hand and a religious fundamentalism that (...) ignores the important contributions of the experimental sciences on the other. Such a middle position recognizes both the intellectual significance and the inherent limitations of the scientific method employed within the experimental sciences. (shrink)