With the growth of neuroscience research, new neuroscience and society (NeuroX) fields like neuroethics, neurolaw, neuroarchitecture, neuroeconomics, and many more have emerged. In this article we report on lessons learned about mentoring students in the interdisciplinary space of neuroscience and society. We draw on our experiences with the recently launched Dana Foundation Career Network in Neuroscience & Society. This resource supports educators and practitioners mentoring students aiming to apply neuroscience in diverse fields beyond medicine and biomedical science. Through our (...) programming, we identified three key lessons: (1) students are interested in exploring a wide range of neuroscience and society intersections; (2) outreach to underserved institutions generates avenues for students to join NeuroX conversations; and (3) by offering free access to online NeuroX resources and a network of subject-matter experts, the Career Network joins many partners helping to bridge the gap between neuroscience and society. (shrink)

Trust in the doctor-patient relationship is an indispensable structural element for the medical profession. The discourse concerning trust and its importance in the healthcare context, although quite old, elicits increasingly more interest in research, especially for empirical approaches. The importance of trust in the doctor and in the medical profession can be demonstrated by starting from the Christian meaning of illness and medicine ; generally, the patristic sources see medicine and physicians as God’s gifts. T he perception of Christian physicians (...) as dedicated, unselfish and compassionate preservers or restorers of health, always committed to the good of their patients is well known. The model of the Christian physician is a Hippocratic model, of one who seeks the sick so that he may bring relief to them and strengthen them. When illness occurs, Christianity affirms an ethical duty to struggle against sickness, which if unaddressed can lead to death. The moral requirement to care for the health of the body indicates it is appropriate to use healing methods that will enhance health and maintain life. The aim of this paper is to explore the dimensions of the concept of trust in the doctor-patient relationship, by starting from the Christian meaning of illness and of the role of the doctor. The paper presents a number of essential theoretical elements related to trust, as presented in the literature dealing with the doctor-patient relationship: the meaning of trust, its dimensions, its stages of development, its impact, its sources, the patient’s perspectives on trust, the importance of trust for healthcare systems. (shrink)

To describe phenomena that occur at different time scales, computational models of the brain must incorporate different levels of abstraction. At time scales of approximately 1/3 of a second, orienting movements of the body play a crucial role in cognition and form a useful computational level embodiment level,” the constraints of the physical system determine the nature of cognitive operations. The key synergy is that at time scales of about 1/3 of a second, the natural sequentiality of body movements can (...) be matched to the natural computational economies of sequential decision systems through a system of implicit reference called deictic in which pointing movements are used to bind objects in the world to cognitive programs. This target article focuses on how deictic bindings make it possible to perform natural tasks. Deictic computation provides a mechanism for representing the essential features that link external sensory data with internal cognitive programs and motor actions. One of the central features of cognition, working memory, can be related to moment-by-moment dispositions of body features such as eye movements and hand movements. (shrink)

Jim buys a ticket in a million-ticket lottery. He knows it is a fair lottery, but, given the odds, he believes he will lose. When the winning ticket is chosen, it is not his. Did he know his ticket would lose? It seems that he did not. After all, if he knew his ticket would lose, why would he have bought it? Further, if he knew his ticket would lose, then, given that his ticket is no different in its chances (...) of winning from any other ticket, it seems that by parity of reasoning he should also know that every other ticket would lose. But of course he doesn’t know that; in fact, he knows that not every ticket will lose. (shrink)

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. (...) Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated. (shrink)

Abstract: Each affective state has distinct motor-expressions, sensory perceptions, autonomic, and cognitive patterns. Panksepp (1998) proposed seven neural affective systems of which the SEEKING system, a generalized approach-seeking system, motivates organisms to pursue resources needed for survival. When an organism is presented with a novel stimulus, the dopamine (DA) in the nucleus accumbens septi (NAS) is released. The DA circuit outlines the generalized mesolimbic dopamine-centered SEEKING system and is especially responsive when there is an element of unpredictability in forthcoming rewards. (...) We propose that when the outcome of this interaction is unexpected or unanticipated then Panksepp’s “cognitive or expectancy reset” mechanism involving the cognitive dissonance would yield the subjective emotion of surprise. In order to appropriately react to the environment’s stimuli one needs fundamental processes that would enable one to distinguish between what is novel and what has been already experienced, as well as the different degrees of novelty. Novel events are those whose essential features of the representation (visceral and perceptual) are altered and being discrepant provoke more sustained attention. Novelty arises from salient and arousing events and the organism experiences surprise, as coming out of a habitual state. In this framework, we shall look at established theories of emotions and propose a different approach to their taxonomy. (shrink)

Animate vision systems have gaze control mechanisms that can actively position the camera coordinate system in response to physical stimuli. Compared to passive systems, animate systems show that visual computation can be vastly less expensive when considered in the larger context of behavior. The most important visual behavior is the ability to control the direction of gaze. This allows the use of very low resolution imaging that has a high virtual resolution. Using such a system in a controlled way provides (...) additional constraints that dramatically simplify the computations of early vision. Another important behavior is the way the environment “behaves‘. Animate systems under real-time constraints can further reduce their computational burden by using environmental cues that are perspicuous in the local context. A third source of economy is introduced when behaviors are learned. Because errors are rarely fatal, systems using learning algorithms can amortize computational cost over extended periods. Further economies can be achieved when the learning system uses indexical reference, which is a form of dynamic variable binding. Animate vision is a natural way of implementing this dynamic binding. (shrink)

_On the Lyricism of the Mind: Psychoanalysis and Literature_ explores the lyrical dimension of the psychic space. It is not presented as an artistic disposition, but rather as a universal psychic quality which enables the recovery and recuperation of the self. The specific nature of human lyricism is defined as the interaction as well as the integration of two psychic modes of experience originally defined by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion: The emergent and the continuous principles of the self. Dana (...) Amir elaborates Bion's general notion of an interaction between the emergent and the continuous principles of the self, offering a discussion of the specific function of each principle and of the significance of the various types of interaction between them as the basis for mental health or pathology. The author applies these theoretical notions in her analytic work by means of literary illustrations showing how the lyrical dimension may be used to teach psychoanalytic readings of literature and explore the connection between psychoanalytic and literary languages._ _ On the Lyricism of the Mind presents a new psychoanalytic understanding of the capacity to heal, to grieve, to love and to know, using literary illustrations but also literary language in order to extract a new formulation out of the classic psychoanalytic language of Winnicott and Bion. This book will appear to a wide audience to include psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and art therapists. It is also extremely relevant to literary scholars, including students of literary criticism, philosophers of language and philosophers of mind, novelists, poets, and to the wide educated readership in general._ _. (shrink)

Nelkin presents a simple and natural account of freedom and moral responsibility which responds to the great variety of challenges to the idea that we are free and responsible, before ultimately reaffirming our conception of ourselves as agents. Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility begins with a defense of the rational abilities view, according to which one is responsible for an action if and only if one acts with the ability to recognize and act for good reasons. The view is (...) compatibilist -- that is, on the view defended, responsibility is compatible with determinism -- and one of its striking features is a certain asymmetry: it requires the ability to do otherwise for responsibility when actions are praiseworthy, but not when they are blameworthy. In defending and elaborating the view, Nelkin questions long-held assumptions such as those concerning the relation between fairness and blame and the nature of so-called reactive attitudes such as resentment and forgiveness. Her argument not only fits with a metaphysical picture of causation -- agent-causation -- often assumed to be available only to incompatibilist accounts, but receives positive support from the intuitively appealing Ought Implies Can Principle, and establishes a new interpretation of freedom and moral responsibility that dovetails with a compelling account of our inescapable commitments as rational agents. (shrink)

There are powerful skeptical challenges to the idea that we are free. And yet, it seems simply impossible for us to shake the sense that we really are free. Some are convinced that the skeptical challenges are insurmountable and resign themselves to living under an illusion, while others argue that the challenges can be met. Even among those who believe that our sense of ourselves as free is at least roughly accurate, there are deep differences of opinion concerning what freedom (...) requires. On the one hand, there are “libertarians” about freedom, those who believe both that we are free and that freedom requires the falsity of determinism. On the other hand, there are “compatibilists”, those who believe that freedom is compatible with determinism. While there is an impressive variety of arguments and motivations available on all sides of the debate over freedom, our inescapable sense of ourselves as free has played a recurrent and key role in the debate, sometimes explicit and sometimes not. In this paper, I explore one way that our self-conception has been used by libertarians against compatibilists, and I argue that the reasoning employed is not convincing. The libertarian appeal to our self-conception hinges on locating in each of us an essential commitment to indeterminism, or, more cautiously, a commitment to something that, with the addition of a few plausible (if not self-evident) premises, entails indeterminism. The idea, then, is that we are “natural” indeterminists, seeing our actions as undetermined (or, again, more cautiously, as having qualities that, upon reflection, we can recognize entail the falsity of determinism). By itself, this is not an argument to the effect that we are correct in 1 believing that our actions are undetermined, or to the effect that freedom requires indeterminism. But if we are in fact natural indeterminists when it comes to our own actions, then that fact serves as important motivation for libertarianism, especially if our supposed natural indeterminism captures our unshakeable sense of freedom. Kant famously located our sense of freedom in our nature as rational agents, claiming that we must act under the “idea of freedom.”2 This has suggested to many that: (R) Rational deliberators, in virtue of their very nature as rational deliberators, must represent themselves as free.. (shrink)

Dana Sawyer unpacks the philosophy-spirituality of Huxley, Watts, and Dass (as well as contemporaries, including Mirabai Starr and Richard Rohr) in ways readers will find intriguing, creating an original view of human nature, revealing why this mystical understanding of the world is called "perennial." During the 1960s and '70s, "Perennial Philosophy" was the most popular theory regarding what the world's mystical traditions held in common, and it was touted as the best platform for understanding the nature of human consciousness, (...) including how to expand it therapeutically with meditation, yoga, and psychedelic drugs. Consequently, books by Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Huston Smith, Stanislav Grof, Frances Vaughan, Ram Dass, and other Perennialists were widely available and sold like hotcakes. However, during the '80s, their shared perspective fell out of fashion. The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded corrects several common errors while providing a short, up-to-date overview of the general perspective. The goal is to reveal the continued relevance of Perennial Philosophy during this time of psychedelic renaissance, when many are seeking ways to interpret their experiences, with an engaging narrative free of philosophical shop talk. The result is a demonstration of how Perennial Philosophy applies to all who are interested in self-realization. This book will appeal to the millions today who are involved with mindfulness meditation, hatha yoga, Transcendental Meditation, Tibetan Buddhism, Kabbalah, Zen, Sufism, Shamanic drumming, Christian Centering Prayer, or their own DIY approaches to spiritual awakening. (shrink)

In conclusion, then, the situationist literature provides a rich area of exploration for those interested in freedom and responsibility. Interestingly, it does not do so primarily because it is situationist in the sense of supporting the substantive thesis about the role of character traits. Rather it is because it makes us wonder whether we really do act on a regular basis with the particular normative, epistemic,and reactive capacities that are central to our identity as free and responsible agents.

Derek Parfit claims that all that rationally matters for a person is psychological connectedness or continuity, even without identity. A psychological replica of a person whose body is destroyed upon the replication rationally should be considered just as valuable as the original person. I argue against this, maintaining that any such copying procedure would be objectionable. First, I argue that a copy of an original person does not preserve identity to the original person. And second, I argue that because a (...) copy does not retain the identity of the orignial, it is not irrational to regard a copy as of less value than the original. (shrink)

This commentary argues that Caraway’s analysis of romantic love is incomplete, and that the concept of exclusivity may be in basic conflict with other components of her analysis.

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and (...) early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. (shrink)

The philosophy of education began, in the work of Plato, with two normative questions: What should humans be taught? And by what method should they be taught it? Those simple questions have been obscured by ever-increasing complexity in educational philosophy. The philosophy of education may currently include too much, and so this review of four general texts uses this criterion of a book’s merit: the ability to retain what is most obviously philosophical and eliminate what is not. On that criterion, (...) two of the books, one by Nel Noddings and another by Randall Curren, are especially noteworthy in their value for students and teachers of educational philosophy. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean theme (...) of a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics.Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God. After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve infinite collections of Grim Reapers, assassins, demons, deafening peals, or even sentences. These paradoxes have recently been used in arguments for finitist metaphysical theses such as temporal finitism, causal finitism, and discrete views of time. Here we develop a new finite Benardete-like paradox. We then use this paradox to defend a companions in guilt argument that challenges recent applications of patchwork principles on behalf of the aforementioned finitist arguments. Finally, we develop another problem for those applications by (...) examining the notion of exact duplication. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) was a leading figure in the Neo- Kantian philosophical movement that dominated European thought before 1918. He was also an inaugural figure in modern Jewish philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book explores Cohen's striking claim that ethics is rooted in law - a claim developed both in his philosophical ethics and his philosophy of Judaism, in particular in his writings on "love-of-neighbor," up to and including his well-known Religion of Reason. Dana Hollander proposes (...) that neither Cohen's systematic philosophy nor his "Jewish" philosophy should be seen as the dominant framework for his oeuvre as a whole, but that his understanding of key philosophical questions take shape in the passages between both corpuses, a trait that could be seen as paradigmatic for modern Jewish philosophy. Ethics Out of Law taps into one of the prime topics of current interest in the field of Jewish philosophy: the nature of Jewish political existence and the changing configurations of "law" that this entails. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Dana Sonnenschein 495 Dana Sonnenschein A History of Lace Textile Research Centre, Leiden, NL Lace is the creation of a series of holes to form a design. Categorized as looping, interlacing, circular in definition and sometimes in the making. In Europe, in the late Middle Ages, women began filling in cutwork or drawn threads with nets of stars and (...) flowers in colored silks and silver-gilt. Needle lace is like embroidery in the air. * Later, bobbin lace. Mathematical, precise. Each bobbin a wooden handle like a flower bulb sending up a stalk ending in a spool instead of petals. Lace was brought to Zurich from Italy in about 1536. The whole history of lace-making is women. Men sold it and made the profit. * 496 Dana Sonnenschein Afloat on a round, midnight-blue velvet pillow, a half-finished lace collar, one side a ring of flowers radiating thread to a couple dozen bobbins around the rim, the other side dots and dashes on sky-blue paper— An old lace-maker has died, and her family has given her things to the research center. * Has anyone here made lace before? Once, Eefe says, her forearms crossing back and forth like a girl slowly twirling jump-ropes for Double Dutch. She smiles at the memory, shakes her head, afraid to touch the wooden handles now. Lace is the history of women, a series of holes that make a design. * Leaning in, I remember my grandmother’s eyes blurred behind glasses and wonder how this old woman did such fine work. Perhaps someone else set the pins, and she read them with her fingertips, whispering the Dutch words for anemone, meadow-flax, tulips, humming a bobbin tell, a song to remind her what to do with her hands, another kind of dance in another kind of Netherland. Dana Sonnenschein 497 Or perhaps she stopped making lace when memory grew clearer than sight but kept this cushion as a place she could still touch her past though the blooms lie flat and pale. * Irish lace is three-dimensional— a corner garden of cornflowers displayed near rows of fine Belgian trim arched like church windows— so many hours, panes, blooms, tendrils, we are speechless and so is the teacher. She calls Marika out of the office— You make lace, explain. * She shows us her tiny circlet of blue Torchon. I touch two loose threads, ask if that’s where she began. And finished, she says; It is hard to make the connection. Lace is the history of women. You always have a pattern, Marika says. Honiton lace is strict, every pin mapped out. With Belgian, you can be more free, fill in a shape with fantasy—I like this kind. You can move from this bloom to that leaf or fern spiral next with a little bridge called a bride. 498 Dana Sonnenschein She points to a zigzag. Fan here. We stare at the mark, mystified. You are always working with only four; it’s very logical, she says. Eefe adds, The threads and bobbins will show you the way. What’s missing is the knowledge of when to pass over or under when you want a rose or lily. Marika’s grandmother taught her lace thirty years ago. She’s learning again now. It’s nice to do. But you need a teacher. It’s a complicated subject. She makes a few passes with pairs of bobbins then undoes her work, looks up, smiles. She doesn’t know how to say what she means in English and might not say more in Dutch. Even when it’s on the table in front of us, lace is what’s missing, the art of making something of absences, of what is felt more than known, the history of women. There is no grandmother among us. Note The italicized passages in the first two sections and the query about whether anyone has made lace are drawn from my notes on Dr. Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood ’s lecture during the Intensive Textile Course, September 19–23, 2016. Dana Sonnenschein 499 The Great Chain of Being is one loop pulled through another in... (shrink)

Architecture as Experience investigates the perception and appropriation of places across intervals of time and culture. The particular concern of the volume is to bring together fresh empirical research and animate it through contact with theoretical sophistication, without overwhelming the material. The chapters establish the continuity of a particular physical object and show it in at least two alternative historical perspectives, in which recognisable features are shown in different lights. The results are often surprising, inverting the common idea of a (...) historic place as having an enduring meaning. This book shows the insight that can be gained from learning about earlier constructions of meaning which have been derived from the same buildings that stand before us today. (shrink)

Review of Cristian Radu, Vintilă Horia or the Vocation of Wholeness (Vintilă Horia sau vocaţia totalităţii), (Cluj-Napoca: Accent Press, 2011).

Controversy: Reading. Darwin. Through. Dascalian. Eyes. Anna Carolina K.P. Regner Abstract Marcelo Dascal has ... In the present text, I explore the impact of his approach on the analysis of Charles Darwin's 'one long argument', as Darwin calls his theory of the origin of species. ... Perspectives on Theory of Controversies and the Ethics of Communication, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 2, DOI ...

REVERE Award Finalist, PreK-12 Learning Group, Association of American Publishers! " Functional scientific literacy requires an understanding of the nature of science and the skills necessary to think both scientifically and ethically about everyday issues." -- from the introduction to It's Debatable! This book encourages scientific literacy by showing you how to teach the understanding and thinking skills your students need to explore real-world questions like these: - Should schools charge a "tax" to discourage kids from eating unhealthy foods? - (...) Should local governments lower speed limits to reduce traffic fatalities? - Should pharmaceutical companies be allowed to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers? At the core of the exploration is the Socioscientific Issues Framework. The framework gives students practice in the research, analysis, and argumentation necessary to grapple with difficult questions and build scientific literacy. After introducing the concept of the framework and explaining how it aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards, the book shows you how to implement it through seven units targeted to the elementary, middle, and high school levels. You even find out how to develop your own socioscientific issues curriculum. Both practical and content-rich, It's Debatable! doesn't shy away from controversy. Instead, the authors encourage you and your students to confront just how messy the questions raised by science (and pseudoscience) can be. After all, as the authors note, " The only way for our students to be prepared for participation in societal discourse is to have practice in their school years, and what better place than the science classroom?". (shrink)

In everyday life, we assume that there are degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. Yet the debate about the nature of moral responsibility often focuses on the “yes or no” question of whether indeterminism is required for moral responsibility, while questions about what accounts for more or less blameworthiness or praiseworthiness are underexplored. In this paper, I defend the idea that degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness can depend in part on degrees of difficulty and degrees of sacrifice required for performing the (...) action in question. Then I turn to the question of how existing accounts of the nature of moral responsibility might be seen to accommodate these facts. In each case of prominent compatibilist and incompatibilist accounts that I consider, I argue that supplementation with added dimensions is required in order to account for facts about degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. For example, I argue that the reasons-responsiveness view of Fischer and Ravizza requires supplementation that takes us beyond even fine-grained measures of degrees of reasons-responsiveness in order to capture facts about degrees of difficulty to extend the reasons-responsiveness view by appealing to such measures). I conclude by showing that once we recognize the need for these additional parameters, we will be in a position to explain away at least some of the appeal of incompatibilist accounts of moral responsibility. (shrink)