Discusses the Catholic Church's teaching on a number of topics, such as faith and reason, knowing God, Christ's role, conscience, individual freedom, and social issues.

ABSTRACTHow does practice change our behaviors such that they go from being awkward, unskilled actions to elegant, skilled performances? This is the question that I wish to explore in this paper. In the first section of the paper, I will defend the tight connection between practice and skill and then go on to make precise how we ought to construe the concept of practice. In the second section, I will suggest that practice contributes to skill by structuring and automatizing the (...) motor routines constitutive of skilled actions. I will cite how this fact about skilled action has misled many philosophers to conclude that skills are mindless or bodily. In the third section of the paper, I will challenge this common misconception about automaticity by appealing to empirical evidence of motor chunking. This evidence reveals that there are two opposing processes involved in the automaticity of skilled action: one process that is largely associative, which I will call “concatenation,” and a second which is a contro... (shrink)

Biologists and economists use models to study complex systems. This similarity between these disciplines has led to an interesting development: the borrowing of various components of model-based theorizing between the two domains. A major recent example of this strategy is economists’ utilization of the resources of evolutionary biology in order to construct models of economic systems. This general strategy has come to be called evolutionary economics and has been a source of much debate among economists. Although philosophers have developed literatures (...) on the nature of models and modeling, the unique issues surrounding this kind of interdisciplinary model building have yet to be independently investigated. In this paper, we utilize evolutionary economics as a case study in the investigation of more general issues concerning interdisciplinary modeling. We begin by critiquing the distinctions currently used within the evolutionary economics literature and propose an alternative carving of the conceptual terrain. We then argue that the three types of evolutionary economics we distinguish capture distinctions that will be important whenever resources of model-based theorizing are borrowed across distinct scientific domains. Our analysis of these model-building strategies identifies several of the unique methodological and philosophical issues that confront interdisciplinary modeling. (shrink)

Concepts are the constituents of thoughts. Therefore, concepts are vital to any theory of cognition. However, despite their widely accepted importance, there is little consensus about the nature and origin of concepts. Thanks to the work of Lawrence Barsalou, Jesse Prinz and others concept empiricism has been gaining momentum within the philosophy and psychology literature. Concept empiricism maintains that all concepts are copies, or combinations of copies, of perceptual representations—that is, all concepts are couched in the codes of perceptual representation (...) systems. It is widely agreed that any satisfactory theory of concepts must account for how concepts semantically compose (the compositionality requirement) and explain how their intentional content is determined (the content determination requirement). In this paper, I argue that concept empiricism has serious problems satisfying these two requirements. Therefore, although stored perceptual representations may facilitate some traditionally conceptual tasks, concepts should not be identified with copies of perceptual representations. (shrink)

One of the obstacles facing massive modularity is how a pervasively modular mind might generate non-domain-specific thoughts by integrating the content produced by various domain-specific modules. Peter Carruthers has recently argued that the operations of the language faculty are constitutive of the process by which the human mind is able to integrate content from heterogeneous conceptual domains. In this article, I first argue that Carruthers's data do not provide support for either of two possible interpretations of his thesis. In addition, (...) I provide empirical and theoretical reasons for thinking content integration is performed external to the language faculty. (shrink)

In this discussion, we ponder the discourse about the ‘body of the Divine’ in the Indian tradition. Beginning with the Vedas, we survey the major eras and thinkers of that tradition, considering various notions of the Supreme Divine Being it produced. For each, we ask: is the Divine embodied? If so, then in what way? What is the nature of the body of the Divine, and what is its relationship to human bodies? What is the value of the body of (...) the Divine to the spiritual aspirant? We consider, where relevant, which views are pantheistic and which might be considered panentheistic. Panentheism is connected with discourse on the world as the body of God. It has origins in medieval Christian theology with anticipatory traces in Plato’s Timeaus. Under pantheism, were the world to end—were it to collapse or disappear irreversibly, perhaps, into a huge black hole—then God would disintegrate without a remainder as well; for in this view the Divine Spirit is the universe. The same is not true under panentheism which posits a more complex relationship between the Divine and the world. According to panentheism, God pervades the world—God is in the world—and at the same time, God sustains the world—the world is in God. This allows that God be greater than, transcendent of and independent of the world. In our conclusion we remark on how the views we have surveyed link to, resonate with, or dis-compare with the current—should one say revivified—interest in intellectual quarters with panentheism. (shrink)

A central idea in moral and political philosophy, 'autonomy' is generally understood as some form of self-governance or self-direction. Certain Stoics, modern philosophers such as Spinoza, and most importantly, Immanuel Kant, are among the great philosophers who have offered important insights on the concept. Some theorists analyze autonomy in terms of the self being moved by its higher-order desires. Others argue that autonomy must be understood in terms of acting from reason or from a sense of moral duty independent of (...) the passions. Autonomy seems closely related to the notion of freedom, but in what sense: freedom from coercion, freedom from psychological constraints, or freedom from material necessity? Various approaches to these and similar questions yield different implications for public policy. Is capitalism, social democracy or socialism more favorable to autonomy? The essays in this volume address these important questions. (shrink)

Arid Waters is a photographic response to the growing crisis of water scarcity, which exists because our culture thinks of water as a commodity, or an abstract legal right, rather than the most basic physical source of life. The Water in the West Project began as a collaborative effort designed to present an artistic response to water as a social issue. Photography historian Ellen Manchester and the photographers - Mark Klett, Terry Evans, Laurie Brown, Peter Goin, Robert Dawson, Martin (...) Stupich, Gregory Conniff, and Wanda Hammerbeck - address the question: How can photography contribute to the urgent public debate over water use and allocation? Project members prepared an exhibition of their work, defining it as a laboratory and emphasizing the process of working through ideas. Contact prints and numerous work prints were displayed on the walls of the Sheppard Fine Art Gallery at the University of Nevada, Reno, and simultaneously the Nevada Humanities Committee sponsored a conference entitled "Water in the Arid West." Participants included historians, writers, ranchers, politicians, lawyers, students, and community members. Arid Waters documents the evolution of the Water in the West Project from its inception as a group collaboration to the foundation of an archive. Ellen Manchester, codirector of the Water in the West Project, has written an informative introduction that provides a historical perspective for the collaboration. Including 59 photographs from the eight photographers, Arid Waters is a testimony to the role photography has played in western history. (shrink)

(2011). Korn and Freidlin's Misunderstanding of the Null Hypothesis Significance Testing Procedure. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 15-16.

These essays apply influential, pathbreaking psychological studies about women's lives to literature. In their analyses of fictional portraits, contributors both challenge and confirm psychological theories about female identity, about 'connection/separation' as developmental catalysts, and about the impact of gender on 'voice,' moral decision-making, and epistemology in relation to classical and contemporary literary texts, written by both women and men.

BackgroundThis paper represents a portion of the findings from one of the first research studies eliciting the lived experience of adults with an early diagnosis of Phenylketonuria living in Ireland. Ireland has one of the highest prevalence rates of PKU in Europe, however, little is known about the experience of Irish adults with PKU. Furthermore, Ireland is one of the first countries in the world to introduce neonatal screening followed by the introduction of long-term dietary therapy over 50 years ago. (...) This study presents the first comprehensive assessment of the lived experience of Irish adults with PKU on long term dietary therapy.MethodsNarrative data was collected from eleven self-selected participants, using semi-structured interviews. The interviews were divided into five sections focused on eliciting a holistic understanding of the lived experience of adults with PKU living in Ireland. Thematic analysis was guided by Colaizzi's Framework in conjunction with NVivo qualitative data analysis software.FindingsFindings from the original research encompassed a broad understanding of the lived experience of adults with PKU living in Ireland, including factors influencing dietary therapy and managing PHE blood levels. The themes being discussed within this article are those which appear to be least represented within current literature: living with PKU, including reproductive health, the importance of self-management and establishing routine, support networks in adulthood and concerns regarding aging with PKU.ConclusionIt was evident from the findings that a diagnosis of PKU can influence how adults with PKU may experience aging and their own mortality. These findings offer new insight into the vulnerability attached to the experience of aging with PKU and may be beneficial to advocacy groups and for future development of policy and practice. (shrink)

Strategies for dealing with problems and making decisions in a moral way.

In lieu of hand-waving, let us begin our treatment of psychological research on metaphor by considering some common interests shared by psychologists, on the one hand, and by philosophically oriented humanists, on the other. At least four areas have proved sufficiently central to both groups to merit extensive discussion in the respective literatures. At first issue centers on the specificity of the processes involved in metaphor: Is metaphoric skill a capacity especially intertwined with linguistic skills, or is it a much (...) broader human capacity, one identified with general perceptual and conceptual processes? A related question has arisen within the area of language: Is metaphor a special kind of trope, with its own rules, properties, and applications, or should it be closely allied with such other tropes as similes, analogies, or hyperbole? The third issue moves yet further within the circle of metaphor to treat the question of whether all metaphors are of a piece, or whether various types of metaphor each require their own analysis. And a final issue of concern to both groups is the question of whether metaphoric usage or by considering its pragmatic aspects—the various speech acts employed within a community.1 One could go on to state other issues, but this tetrad should suffice to indicate the common body of concern addressed by experimental and humanistic researchers. · 1. Cf. Cohen, "The Semantics of Metaphor" and John Searle, "Presentation on Metaphor and Pragmatics" . Howard Gardner, a developmental psychologist, is codirector of Harvard Project Zero and a clinical investigator at the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital. His books include The Quest for Mind, The Arts and Human Development, and, most recently, Developmental Psychology: An Introduction. Ellen Winner teaches in the psychology department of Boston College and is a research associate at Harvard Project Zero. A developmental psychologist, she has conducted research on the development and breakdown of metaphoric language capacities and has examined the emergence of metaphoric capacities in very young children. (shrink)

The present organ procurement system in the United States has failed to alleviate the chronic shortage of organs. Neither policies that require request for organ donation, nor increased educational...

Courts and legal commentators have been notoriously unsuccessful in articulating a rule to differentiate between uncompensated police power regulations of land by govemment and situations in which the govemment can only interfere with property rights if it provides compensation to those owners who suffer losses. Noticeably absent from most discussions of this “takings” issue is any foundational underpinning in a theory of justice with respect to property holdings. Can two of the most influential contemporary theories ofjustice-that of John Rawls and (...) Robert Nozick -provide such needed support for the analysis of the “takings” issue? By employing the vehicle of three hypothetical exampIes I investigate this question and reach some conclusions conceming the applicability of such abstract theories of justice to the real world. (shrink)

Art teaches us not only what to see but what to be.Artists refashion stories with paintbrush and chisel. Their narrations reach back through time to the mysteries of cave painting at Altamira and Lascaux, over seventeen thousand years ago. We no longer know what stories the pictures on those walls were meant to illustrate, but we can try to imagine, even now.1Images speak a different language from words. They tell stories differently. Yet, for many generations, since art history was legitimized (...) as a discipline in American academia, early in the twentieth century2 illustration has been treated with a measure of condescension. Bernard Berenson, among others, intimates, in his Italian Painters of the Renaissance.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethos in Steig’s and Sendak’s Picture Books: The Connected and the Lonely ChildEllen Handler SpitzThere was the child, listening to everything...—Yasunari Kawabata1IntroductionPicture-book characters spring to life in both verbal and visual registers. Moving about the page before our eyes as well as speaking and acting in their respective stories, they often make a long-lasting impact on children. Pictures and words, moreover, may overlap but are never commensurate; like the (...) words and notes of a song, they mean and evoke differently even while being experienced together. This brief essay considers a small selection of works by two distinguished twentieth-century American authors-artists: William Steig (1907–2003) and Maurice Sendak (b. 1928). It argues that, with their artful words and pictures, Steig and Sendak construct very different—even contrasting—visions of childhood. By “ethos” in this context I mean to suggest a vision of what a child is, a sense of what it means both to be a child and to address one. Such visions differ not only through the ages and from one culture and locale to another but also from one author-artist of the same period and locale to another. Invited to speak on Sendak’s and Steig’s respective works at meetings scheduled just a week apart in New York City during the winter of 2007, I found in these paired invitations a fortuitous opportunity to juxtapose several of their works and thereby discover some arresting contrasts and formulate the following readings.2First, a word on the topic of methodology. Nearly one hundred years have elapsed since Freud published his celebrated-cum-notorious foray into psychobiography with Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood,3 wherein shards of circumstantial biographical evidence were laid out in seductive mosaic patterns secured with a grout of ingenious speculation. Despite subsequent decades of critical reflection, Freud’s method soldiers on nonetheless as a modus operandi in the psychological interpretation of art and literature.4 By bracketing a small selection of Steig’s and Sendak’s works here and limiting myself to extracting a tentative underlying ethos from them, I am [End Page 64] taking the position that to write psychologically one need not mention or exploit a creator’s personal life. This essay points gently toward psychological approaches that ask what we can see when we look carefully at the pages of works. What can we find when we share children’s books with children? Why, for example, has Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are sold over seventeen million copies (and its Amazon rank last time I checked was around 145, which means that only 144 other books in the United States were selling more copies at that particular moment), whereas his later work Outside Over There—a book that apparently figures prominently in his personal life—comes nowhere close?5 While market figures do not correlate flawlessly with children’s actual preferences (adults, not children, are the buyers), I would aver that, in this case, they do reflect the success and beloved status of Where the Wild Things Are, since the figures tally with additional facts: the book continues to appeal in its fifth decade post publication; it is known and has been translated worldwide, dramatized, and set to music6; and its characters have been fashioned into ubiquitous stuffed toys. On the other hand, in my (limited) experience, young children seem to find Outside Over There unsettling, unintelligible, even “creepy” and often have trouble sitting still through a full rendition. Some adults, on the other hand, praise that book as poetic and admire its more complex art. Such discrepancies in reception deserve our attention; they hint at fallow fertile fields lying over the rainbow, far beyond the much-plowed tracts of authorial psychobiography. This essay gestures casually toward those fields.The Connected Child“My dear Deborah,” said Doctor De Soto, “you must have been reading my mind.7Let’s begin with William Steig, who is best known for his New Yorker cartoons. His work for children extends back to 1968,8 however, when he was already a man in his sixties. Setting aside the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Pictorial World of the ChildEllen Handler SpitzThe Pictorial World of the Child, by Maureen Cox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 357 pp., paper.Scholarly, informative, and impartial are adjectives that spring to mind with respect to Maureen Cox's book, The Pictorial World of the Child, a text principally but not exclusively devoted to the subject of children's drawings and to ways in which children seem to understand pictorial (...) representations as well as create them. Because of its clarity and comprehensiveness, this book seems well-suited for classroom use. Effectively organized into a cogent selection of significant subtopics, it summarizes and presents a vast array of contributions by colleagues whose work Cox surely respects and treats in an admirably evenhanded way. Since, as she states at the beginning of her book, a serious scholarly interest in children's pictures has been with us for over a century, her task is prodigious, and she accomplishes it with grace and precision. It is perhaps to her credit that Cox does not argue passionately on one side or another of a host of thorny issues in her field about which many scholars, teachers, and theorists seem to exhibit strong one-sided views. How should art be taught to young children, for example? Should they be given total freedom or required to perform an ordered set of tasks? In every case, Cox offers her readers a panoply of perspectives and invites them to entertain the spectrum of opinion and then decide for themselves or not.The book is written, therefore, as far as I can tell, to promulgate no particular thesis of any kind. It simply is what it purports to be, namely, an overview of the field by someone who has a deep knowledge of it. It informs and educates through its systematic citation of experimental situations, test results, evaluations, neurological research, art historical material, and the like, and, while acknowledging disagreements right and left, it does not enter into philosophical debate. If one were inclined to fault the book at all, one might criticize it for this—that is, for lacking sufficient skepticism and deep questioning. But surely that would be niggardly, for nowhere does Cox state philosophizing to be her purpose in these pages. I would argue, in fact, to the contrary—that Cox underestimates herself when she states as her principal aim merely the furthering of interest in and appreciation of children's drawings (7). To my mind, she goes far beyond that modest goal to enlighten and educate her readers.Let me give some examples of Cox's treatment of controversial topics. It is arguable, for example, as to whether or not young children understand representational duality and can tell the difference between a pictured representation and the object pictured. A broad spectrum of research, claims, and beliefs are citable on both sides here, with the most up-to-date [End Page 110] scholars being persuaded that young children are far more sophisticated than we had previously thought. But conjure up, if you will, on the other side that well-known photograph in which a baby holds a picture of a clock to his ear and tries to hear it ticking. (This image, subtitled "How they read it," was printed on the jacket of Mary Calderone and Edward Steichen's The First Picture Book of 1930, which was reissued by the Frances Mulhall Achilles Library at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1991.) After citing numerous sources and experiments, Cox equivocates as follows: "It seems that young children may know the difference between a picture and the real object it represents, but their behaviour is often confusing" (25); to me, this seems exactly right. We simply cannot accept a blanket statement meant to cover all cases, and, as with many or even most of the topics under consideration in this book, there are no definitive answers. Thus, the fact that Cox chooses to present intriguing research but leave the conclusions open seems preferable to joining sides in a spurious debate and one, perforce, with huge cultural and historical contingencies, contingencies to which indeed she pays heed from time to time... (shrink)

In this article the author argues that men and boys have been historically and structurally rendered an invisible group of victims in international human rights and policy responses towards conflict-related sexual violence stemming from the United Nations. The apparent female-focused approach of instruments on sexual violence is criticized followed by a discussion – through analysis and interviews with legal scholars and champions for the recognition of male survivors’ experiences – of the first ‘emergence’ of male victims in these instruments and (...) key actors involved in this process. The existing serious dichotomy between visible and invisible victims is prominently based on their ‘gender identity’ and leads to structural discrimination of male victims of rape or other forms of sexual violence. To overcome this situation and develop more inclusive instruments, a reconceptualization is needed of the meaning and use of words like ‘gender’ and ‘gender-based violence’. Additionally, a more intersectional approach to sexual violence should be adopted, understanding that victims have a multitude of identities such as ethnicity or religious affiliation that make them particularly vulnerable to suffering. (shrink)

What constitutes a just tax system, and what are its moral foundations? Should a society's tax regime be designed to achieve a just distribution of wealth among its citizens, or should such a regime be designed to promote economic growth, rising standards of living, and increasing levels of employment? Are these two goals compatible or incompatible? Why should justice not require, or at least lead to, an increase in general prosperity? The essays in this volume examine the history of tax (...) policies and the normative principles that have informed the selection of various types of taxes and tax regimes; economic data to discover which tax policies lead to economic growth; particular theories of justice or property rights regarding the design of tax systems; and other essays propose specific tax reforms. Still others challenge traditional theories of taxation, offering new ways of understanding the fiscal relationship between governments and their citizens. (shrink)

Presents a comprehensive introduction to the period, covering such topics as science, education, art and architecture, aesthetics, and music, as well as the key terms, individuals, locations, and significant works.

This article shows how institutionalism, a theory in organisational social science, provides a model for diagnosing organisational challenges that influence the ethical practices and integration in the Norwegian Army. Institutionalism provides tools for analysing the differences between expressed values and actual practices and for understanding the organisational dynamics that unfold at the crossroads of the organisation's formal structure, informal culture and stakeholder relations. In this article we present and discuss such differences and dynamics in the Norwegian Army based on findings (...) from a survey and a number of workshops. We also provide some suggestions for effective implementation of strategies for strengthening ethics in such an organisation. We argue that the perspective taken in this project is also relevant for other highly professionalised complex organisations and that such interdisciplinary research will strengthen practical ethics' potential for real impact. (shrink)

Shifting Burdens explores the process and features of mental patient deinstitutionalization as it occurred in America in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper examines the disillusionments American society had with mental institutions, such as faltering standards of care, staff failures, and inadequate treatment options. These issues resulted in the movement towards deinstitutionalization, resulting in the burden of care for displaced mental patients being shifted onto community homes and patients families. Shifting Burdens challenges the notion that deinstitutionalization at the time was (...) a successful endeavour, as the question of care for mental patients continues to exist today. (shrink)