Respected Catholic ethicists have recently defended the use of salpingostomy and methotrexate in the management of ectopic pregnancies.This article examines the arguments for the revised assessments to determine whether there are sound reasons to believe that these two methods do not constitute the direct and immediate killing of innocent human beings. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 65–82.

We review the major phenomena of skilled typing and propose a model for the control of the hands and fingers during typing. The model is based upon an Activation‐Trigger‐Schema system in which a hierarchical structure of schemata directs the selection of the letters to be typed and, then, controls the hand and finger movements by a cooperative, relaxation algorithm. The interactions of the patterns of activation and inhibition among the schemata determine the temporal ordering for launching the keystrokes. To account (...) for the phenomena of doubling errors, the model has only “type” schemata—no “token” schemata—with only a weak binding between the special schema that signals a doubling, and its argument. The model exists as a working computer simulation and produces an output display of the hands and fingers moving over the keyboard. It reproduces some of the major phenomena of typing, including the interkeystroke interval times, the pattern of transposition errors found in skilled typists, and doubling errors. Although the model is clearly inadequate or wrong in some of its features and assumptions, it serves as a useful first approximation for the understanding of skilled typing. (shrink)

This Element is on new developments in the psychology of reasoning that raise or address philosophical questions. In traditional studies in the psychology of reasoning, the focus was on inference from arbitrary assumptions and not at all from beliefs, and classical binary logic was presupposed as the only standard for human reasoning. But recently a new Bayesian paradigm has emerged in the discipline. This views ordinary human reasoning as mostly inferring probabilistic conclusions from degrees of beliefs, or from hypothetical premises (...) relevant to a purpose at hand, and as often about revising or updating degrees of belief. This Element also covers new formulations of dual-process theories of the mind, stating that there are two types of mental processing, one rapid and intuitive and shared with other animals, and the other slow and reflective and more characteristic of human beings. The final topic covered is the new developments and rationality. (shrink)

This paper examines potential predictors of ethical decisions regarding insider trading. An interactionist perspective is taken, in which person variables, situational variables, and the interaction of these two sets of variables are viewed as influencing ethical decisions. The results of our study support such a perspective. Ethical decisions regarding insider trading appear to be a function of a complex set of interacting variables related to both the person and the situation. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This study examines the way ethical decisions are made in controversial cases at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, to see if codes of ethics can be efective at a newspaper known for its commitment to ethics. The study concludes that a code is efective in that environment especially on conflict-of-interest questions. A critical factor in the code's efectiveness is an ethical culture in which editors support ethical standards vigorously and foster a process that encourages newsroom debate over controversial cases.

The two main psychological theories of the ordinary conditional were designed to account for inferences made from assumptions, but few premises in everyday life can be simply assumed true. Useful premises usually have a probability that is less than certainty. But what is the probability of the ordinary conditional and how is it determined? We argue that people use a two stage Ramsey test that we specify to make probability judgements about indicative conditionals in natural language, and we describe experiments (...) that support this conclusion. Our account can explain why most people give the conditional probability as the probability of the conditional, but also why some give the conjunctive probability. We discuss how our psychological work is related to the analysis of ordinary indicative conditionals in philosophical logic. (shrink)

A study in the logic of theory change, examining the properties of maxichoice contraction and revision operations.

This study builds on prior research investigating the antecedents of firm supererogation. Examining vehicle recalls in the U.S. automobile industry from 1966 to 2010 reveals that surveillance-based government enforcement programs can have widespread industry effects on a specific type of supererogatory action, firm volunteerism. Specifically, increases in government surveillance are associated with firms going beyond what is legally required of them by initiating voluntary product recalls for defects not covered in existing government regulation. Such effects are shown to be unique (...) among surveillance efforts as other government enforcement activities, such as standards-based regulation, are revealed to have a negative association with firm supererogation. (shrink)

Investigates the resolution of contradictions and ambiguous derogations in a code, by means of the imposition of partial orderings.

David E Cooper; Practice, Philosophy and History: Carr vs. Jonathan, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 181–186, https:/.

As discussion intensifies, and critics exploit what they see as a serious press abuse of anonymous sources, this article explores current practices and policies, as well as examines justification for and danger of anonymous source usage. Seven guidelines are listed and discussed which may help editors and reporters decide whether to use the anonymous source: editor authorization, just cause, last resort, fullest possible identification, proportionality, just intentions, and second source verification.

This study uses theories of moral reasoning and moral competence to investigate how university codes of ethics, perceptions of ethical culture, academic pressure from significant others, and ethics pedagogy are related to the moral development of students. Results suggest that ethical codes and student perceptions of such codes affect their perceptions of the ethical nature of the cultures within these institutions. In addition, faculty and student discussion of ethics in business courses is significantly and positively related to moral competence among (...) students. Our results point to the need to further examine the connections among academic institutional structures, ethics pedagogy, and students’ moral development. (shrink)

: In this paper, I lay out a case for why those objects of aesthetic attention which are principally characterized as natural objects should be understood not statically, as existing in merely a three-dimensional fixed state, but as dynamic, as existing in a space-time context, complete with change, movement, and flux. After this, I explain why this is important, how the dynamic nature of natural objects raises a concern for aesthetically evaluating natural objects, and how that concern may be addressed.

David E Cooper; Linguistics and ‘Cultural Deprivation’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 113–120, https://doi.org/10.1.

In order for theology to have a cognitive dimension, it is necessary to have procedures for testing and critically evaluating theological models. We make use of certain features of scientific models to show how science has been able to move beyond the poles of foundationalism, represented by logical positivism, and antifoundationalism or relativism, represented by the sociologists of knowledge. These ideas are generalized to show that constructing and testing theological models similarly offers a means by which theology can move beyond (...) confessionalism and postmodernism. Our starting point is Paul Tillich's concept of God as the ground of being and the different levels of consciousness and thinking that accompany his understanding of theology. The ontological argument of Anselm is shown to play a key role, not as a proof for the existence of God but as a means for testing theological models. An example of a theological model, drawn from the domain of philosophy of science, is presented to show how theological models are constructed and tested. (shrink)

Although scientific and commercial excitement about genomic biobanks has subsided since the biotech bust in 2000, they continue to fascinate life scientists, bioethicists, and politicians alike. Indeed, these assemblages of personal health information, human DNA, and heterogeneous capital have become and remain important events in the ethics and politics of the life sciences. For starters, they continue to reveal and produce the central scientific, technological, and economic paradigms so ascendant in biology today: genome, infotech, and market. Biobanks also illustrate what (...) might be called the new distributive politics of biomedical research. Within those politics, the commodification of persons – or at the very least, of their informational representations – has challenged the ontological, ethical, and political underpinnings of the social contract between researchers and their human research subjects. In brief, biobanks are unsettling relations between genes, tissue, medical records, and persons. But it is also clear that these relations are increasingly being restructured by new rights of control, access, exclusion, and use known as “property,” both material and intellectual. (shrink)

This 1993 book discusses the rise of the marginalist conception of the firm in the context of economic thought over the past two centuries, and explains why economists continue to defend a theory with demonstrable shortcomings. Professor Schrader argues that the marginalist view of the firm retains its support not through any comparative advantage in empirical or predictive power, but by virtue of its being a part of the predominant marginalist economic programme. The clear problems that beset the marginalist approach (...) to the firm signal a general dilemma for economic theory as a whole. (shrink)

There has been relatively little debate about Nietzsche’s place in environmental ethics, but the lines of the debate are well marked. He has been viewed as an anthropocentrist by Michael E. Zimmerman, a humanist by Ralph Acampora, a biocentrist and deep ecolo­gist by Max Hallman, a constructivist by Martin Drenthen, and an ecocentrist by Graham Parkes. Nietzsche does provide a theory of intrinsic value and his philosophy of nature is germane to an environmerntal ethic. His philosophical biology grounds his value (...) theory. The secondary literature contains three main claims plaguing the debate about his views. First, commentators tend to ignore or downplay Nietzsche’s biology. Second, his value theory is not adequatey addressed. Third, does Nietzsche’s emphasis on hierarchy enable him to maintain that human life is more valuable than that of other life forms, but that the lower life forms have a different kind of value insofar as they enable and support higher life forms? This view is roughly parallel in many respects to the views of Paul Taylor, David Ray Griffin, and Michael E. Zimmerman. (shrink)

This paper addresses an apparent tension between a familiar claim about meaning in general, to the effect that the meaning of anything owes to its place, ultimately, within a ‘form of life’, and a claim, also familiar, about the meaning of human life itself, to the effect that this must be something ‘beyond the human’. How can life itself be meaningful if meaning is a matter of a relationship to life? After elaborating and briefly defending these two claims, two ways (...) of amending and thereby reconciling them are considered and rejected. These ways involve either spiriting away the issue of life's meaning or encouraging unwelcome metaphysical views. The author then argues that, rather than remove the tension between the two claims, each should be viewed as expressing an aspect of a delicate metaphysical position. This position is distinguished from ones, like transcendental idealism and constructivism, with which it might be confused, and is then related to Daoist and Zen thought and to the later philosophy of Heidegger. Crucial to the position is the proposal that the ‘beyond the human’ which enables life to be meaningful is both ineffable and ‘intimate’ with life itself. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to examine the predictions of three theories of human logical reasoning, (a) mental model theory, (b) formal rules theory (e.g., PSYCOP), and (c) the probability heuristics model, regarding the inferences people make for extended categorical syllogisms. Most research with extended syllogisms has been restricted to the quantifier “All” and to an asymmetrical presentation. This study used three-premise syllogisms with the additional quantifiers that are used for traditional categorical syllogisms as well as additional syllogistic figures. (...) The predictions of the theories were examined using overall accuracy as well as a multinomial tree modelling technique. The results demonstrated that all three theories were able to predict response selections at high levels. However, the modelling analyses showed that the probability heuristics model did the best in both Experiments 1 and 2. (shrink)

David E Cooper; On Reading Nietzsche on Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 17, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 119–126, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 39-50 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]The Acquisitive AttitudeDavid E. W. FennerAt my university, a small regional university in the south, I teach many "general education" courses in philosophy. The majority of freshmen and sophomores who populate these courses have never seen a dance performance, an opera, a symphony, or a stage play. Many have never been to an art gallery. At this (...) small university we have an active gallery; 1 besides the student and faculty shows each year, we can count on at least a half dozen other exhibitions, either single-artist shows or thematic compilations. Except when prepping for an upcoming show, the gallery is never closed. This means there are ample occasions for me to take my general education students for a visit to the gallery. In preparing them for our little field trip, I try to find a balance between two things. On the one hand, I want to leave the occasion open-ended to promote whatever sorts of personal experiences they may have in connection with viewing the artworks; the idea that they may come out of the gallery thinking this was yet one more meaningless academic exercise they had to endure makes me physically ill (so great is my passion for this opportunity to introduce them to their first art gallery experience). On the other hand, without any structure, many students will walk through the space at a brisk pace and exit quickly. This again would be a serious failure. Therefore, I give them an assignment for their visit, one that is meant to spotlight their potential enjoyment of the gallery while at the same time engaging them critically. The assignment is simple: "choose your favorite piece and be prepared to give some reasons for why this piece is better than the rest; and choose your least favorite piece and be prepared to offer some reasons for why this piece is worse than the rest." The reasons that I get back, in support of both of their judgments, frequently turn on traditional things like the representational quality of the (mimetic) work, the emotional content—either expressed or inspired—and formal considerations like balance and elegance. The conflation between identifying artistic [End Page 39] merit and their own, perhaps fairly naive, reactions is something I do not worry about at this level. This conflation may be warranted in certain theories of artistic worth—and it is something I am sympathetic to—but the real point is to encourage in the students a connection between enjoyment of the experience of viewing art and viewing it with a critical eye. If I can introduce just that one concept, the field trip has been a success. I can build on that later.I take a "critical thinking" approach to art criticism. I believe that the evaluative aspects of art criticism essentially have to do with advancing claims for which arguments and evidence can be offered. If critical thinking means seeking out and being able to advance reasons for the adoption or holding of a position, and this requires the logical skills involved with correct argument formulation and the epistemic skills involved with quality evidence gathering, then art criticism is essentially critical thinking applied to a certain content: art. Art evaluation happens in two arenas. First, there are issues of context and issues of subjectivity (Where did this work come from? Who did it? How does this work relate to other works and other times? How does this work connect to values other than purely aesthetic—or, better, artistic—ones, such as moral ones?). The effects of these sorts of considerations are relative to the viewer, her access and attention to information about the work, and the experience of viewing. The second arena is the one internal to the work itself. This is the formalist arena. Advancing a claim concerning the work's possession of a certain aesthetic feature generally takes the form of evidencing that possession on the basis of the work's possession of certain nonaesthetic, or... (shrink)

The week, twenty-five years ago, of the Apollo spacecraft's return visit to the moon was described by Richard Nixon as the greatest since the Creation. Across the Atlantic, a French Academician judged the same event to matter less than the discovery of a lost etching by Daumier. Attitudes to technological achievement, then, differ. And they always have. Chuang-Tzu, over 2,000 years ago, relates an exchange between a Confucian passer-by and a Taoist gardener watering vegetables with a bucket drawn from a (...) well. ‘Don't you know that there is a machine with which 100 beds are easily watered in a day?’—‘How does it work?’—‘It's a counterbalanced ladle’—‘too clever to be good … all machines have to do with formulae, artificiality [which] destroy native ingenuity … and prevent the Tao from residing peacefully in one's heart’. ‘Engines of mischief, in the words of the Luddite song, or testaments to ‘the nobility of man [as] the conqueror of matter’, in those of Primo Levi, the products of technology continue to inspire phobia and philia. (shrink)

Presents nicholas malebranche's interpretation of chinese philosophy as found in his "entretien d'un philosophe chretien et d'un philosophe chinois" (1708). Treats background (transition from 17th century insular to 18th century cosmopolitan eurocentrism), Sources (primarily artus de lionne, Bishop of rosalie and former missionary to china), And motivation (defense of his philosophy against the charge of spinozism). Discusses malebranche's interpretation of neo-Confucian terms "li" and "ch'i" and their relationship to his definition of god. Places the "entretien" in the context of the (...) malebranche-Leibniz correspondence and interprets the work as a stimulus for leibniz' more substantive "discours sur la theologie naturelle des chinois" (1716). (shrink)

This excellent collection contains 13 essays from Gadamer's _Kleine Schriften, _dealing with hermeneutical reflection, phenomenology, existential philosophy, and philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer applies hermeneutical analysis to Heidegger and Husserl's phenomenology, an approach that proves critical and instructive.

The shape of theological humanism -- Ideas and challenges -- The humanist imagination -- Thinking of God -- The logic of Christian humanism -- On the integrity of life -- The task of theological humanism -- Our endangered garden -- A school of conscience -- Masks of mind -- Religion and spiritual integrity -- Living theological humanism.

Barbey & Sloman (B&S) relegate the logical rule of the excluded middle to a footnote. But this logical rule is necessary for natural sampling. Making the rule explicit in a logical tree can make a problem easier to solve. Examples are given of uses of the rule that are non-constructive and not reducible to a domain-specific module.