Anhedonia, or a deficit in the liking, wanting, and seeking of rewards, is typically assessed via self-reported “in-the-moment” emotional and motivational responses to reward stimuli and activities. Given that mental imagery is known to evoke emotion and motivational responses, we conducted two studies to investigate the relationship between mental imagery use and self-reported anhedonia. Using a novel Reward Response Scale (adapted from the Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale, DARS; Rizvi et al., 2015) modified to assess deliberate and spontaneous mental imagery use, (...) Study 1 (N = 394) compared uninstructed and instructed mental imagery use, and Study 2 (N = 586) conducted a test of replication of uninstructed mental imagery use. Results showed that greater mental imagery use was associated with higher reward response scores (Study 1 & 2), and this relationship was not moderated by whether imagery use was uninstructed or instructed (Study 1). Importantly, mental imagery use moderated the convergence between reward response and depression scale measures of anhedonia, with lower convergence for those reporting higher mental imagery use (Study 1 & 2). Results suggest that higher spontaneous mental imagery use may increase self-reported reward response and reduce the convergence between reward response scale and depression questionnaire measures of anhedonia. [199 / 200 words]. (shrink)

Much of computational cognitive science construes human cognitive capacities as representational capacities, or as involving representation in some way. Computational theories of vision, for example, typically posit structures that represent edges in the distal scene. Neurons are often said to represent elements of their receptive fields. Despite the ubiquity of representational talk in computational theorizing there is surprisingly little consensus about how such claims are to be understood. The point of this chapter is to sketch an account of the nature (...) and function of representation in computational cognitive models. (shrink)

Philosophers often find themselves in disagreement with contemporary philosophers they know full well to be their epistemic superiors on the topics relevant to the disagreement. This looks epistemically irresponsible. I offer a detailed investigation of this problem of the reflective epistemic renegade. I argue that although in some cases the renegade is not epistemically blameworthy, and the renegade situation is significantly less common than most would think, in a troublesome number of cases in which the situation arises the renegade is (...) blameworthy in her disagreement with recognized epistemic superiors. I also offer some thoughts on what it would mean for philosophical practice for us to refrain from being renegades. Finally, I show how a new kind of radical skepticism emerges from modest theses regarding the renegade. (shrink)

Debating Single-Sex Education provides both practitioners and policymakers with a timely, detailed, and focused compilation of the issues surrounding single-sex education. It includes qualitative case studies and quantitative evidence of the effects of single-sex education on student achievement.

This paper reports the experience of reconstructing a surveying instrument—the plane table—using the description found in Arthur Hopton’s Speculum topographicum: or The topographicall glasse : ‘Of the Plaine Table, with a description thereof, and the parts thereunto belonging’. One of the most detailed early printed descriptions of the instrument, it is illustrated with woodcut diagrams of components but no image of the complete plane table. The reconstruction process did not prove entirely straightforward. An examination of its various stages reveals how (...) Hopton’s text set out to persuade and lead the reader, rather than issuing orders to be followed exactly; the reader, left to make some decisions himself, would thus create a plane table with an element of uniqueness in its character. The role of the maker of such an instrument, even when following written instructions, was a creative and collaborative one, rather than purely passive.Keywords: Reconstruction; Instrument; Diagrams; Text; Instrument-maker; Collaboration. (shrink)

Teaching competency in bioethics has been a concern of the field since its start. In 1976, The Hastings Center published the first report on the teaching of contemporary bioethics. Graduate programs culminating in an MA or PhD were not needed at the time, concluded the report. “In the future, however,” the report speculated, “the development and/or changing social priorities may at some point allow, or even require, the creation of new academic structures for graduate education in bioethics.” Although that future (...) might be upon us, the creation of a terminal degree in bioethics has its detractors. Scholars have debated whether bioethics is a discipline with its own methods and theoretical grounding, a multidisciplinary field bringing various professional perspectives to bear on particular types of problems, a set of problem-solving skills to resolve moral disagreements, or something else entirely. Whether or not efforts to develop the methods and theory of bioethics have matured to the point that it is now a discipline in the strictest sense, new bioethics training programs have appeared at all postsecondary levels. In this essay, we examine the number and types of U.S. programs and degrees in this growing field. (shrink)

If you retain your belief upon learning that a large number and percentage of your recognized epistemic superiors disagree with you, then what happens to the epistemic status of your belief? I investigate that theoretical question as well has the applied case of philosophical disagreement—especially disagreement regarding purely philosophical error theories, theories that do not have much empirical support and that reject large swaths of our most commonsensical beliefs. I argue that even if all those error theories are false, either (...) (a) the average philosopher’s true commonsensical beliefs are epistemically impoverished, or (b) a good portion of philosophy is bunk and philosophers should give up most of their error theories despite the fact that their supporting arguments are generally as good as or even better than other philosophical arguments. (shrink)

Comments on Karen Neander's A Mark of the Mental.

Many philosophers are sceptical about the power of philosophy to refute commonsensical claims. They look at the famous attempts and judge them inconclusive. I prove that, even if those famous attempts are failures, there are alternative successful philosophical proofs against commonsensical claims. After presenting the proofs I briefly comment on their significance.

A new kind of skepticism about philosophy is articulated and argued for. The key premise is the claim that many of us are well aware that in the past we failed to have good responses to substantive objections to our philosophical beliefs. The conclusion is disjunctive: either we are irrational in sticking with our philosophical beliefs, or we commit some other epistemic sin in having those beliefs.

Abstract Finding the western just war criterion of reasonable chance of success to be a contribution to ethical decision making about armed conflict requires dealing with a number of critiques. Specifying ?probability? rather than the alternatives ?hope? or ?chance?, and raising standards of evidence involved, makes the term less vague. Expanding the concept of ?success? to include morally defensible aims that can be achieved without military victory enriches the understanding of the moral relationship between ends and means in armed conflict. (...) Asking decision makers to accept moral responsibility for the costs of possible failure is a unique contribution to the just war criteria. The enriched concept of reasonable probability of success thus offers morally significant insights to prewar jus ad bellum decisions, and can benefit ethical decision-making about whether to continue once fighting has begun. (shrink)

In the philosophy of perception, representationalism is the view that all phenomenological differences among mental states are representational differences, in other words, differences in content. In this paper I defend an alternative view which I call external sortalism, inspired by traditional adverbialism, and according to which experiences are not essentially representational. The central idea is that the external world serves as a model for sorting, conceptualizing, and reasoning surrogatively about perceptual experience. On external sortalism, contents are construed as a kind (...) of gloss on experiences themselves. We can retain what is attractive about representationalism, namely, that perceptual experiences can be evaluated for accuracy, without problematic commitment to the idea that they bear a substantive, representational relation to external objects and properties and that this relation determines the phenomenal character of experience. (shrink)

PurposeFacebook users are both producers and consumers, in the sense that they produce the disclosures that allow for Facebook's business success and they consume services. The purpose of this paper is to examine how best to characterize the commercialized and compliant members. The authors question the Facebook assertion that members knowingly and willingly approve of personal and commercial transparency and argue, instead, that complicity is engineered.Design/methodology/approachA survey of Facebook users was conducted between December 2010 and April 2011 at one private (...) and four public universities. Respondents were questioned about: the level of their consumer activity on Facebook; their knowledge of Facebook advertiser data sharing practices and their attitude toward such; their use of sharing restrictions and the groups targeted; and their assessment of transparency benefits versus reputation and consumer risks.FindingsNo evidence was found to support the Facebook account of happy prosumers. Members reported that they avoided advertisements as much as possible and opposed data sharing/selling practices. However, many respondents were found to be relatively uneducated and passive prosumers, and those expressing a high concern for privacy were no exception.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the nonprobability sampling method, the results may lack generalizability.Practical implicationsTo avoid unwanted commercialization, users of social networking sites must become more aware of data mining and privacy protocols, demand more protections, or switch to more prosumer‐friendly platforms.Originality/valueThe paper reports empirical findings on Facebook members' prosumption patterns and attitudes. (shrink)

I’m going to argue for a set of restricted skeptical results: roughly put, we don’t know that fire engines are red, we don’t know that we sometimes have pains in our lower backs, we don’t know that John Rawls was kind, and we don’t even know that we believe any of those truths. However, people unfamiliar with philosophy and cognitive science do know all those things. The skeptical argument is traditional in form: here’s a skeptical hypothesis; you can’t epistemically neutralize (...) it, you have to be able to neutralize it to know P; so you don’t know P. But the skeptical hypotheses I plug into it are “real, live” scientific-philosophical hypotheses often thought to be actually true, unlike any of the outrageous traditional skeptical hypotheses (e.g., ‘You’re a brain in a vat’). So I call the resulting skepticism Live Skepticism. Notably, the Live Skeptic’s argument goes through even if we adopt the clever anti-skeptical fixes thought up in recent years such as reliabilism, relevant alternatives theory, contextualism, and the rejection of epistemic closure. Furthermore, the scope of Live Skepticism is bizarre: although we don’t know the simple facts noted above, many of us do know that there are black holes and other amazing facts. (shrink)

In “Divine Freedom,” I argue that morally significant incompatibilist freedom is a great good. So God possesses morally incompatibilist freedom. So, God can do wrong or at least can do worse than the best action He can do. So, God is not essentially morally perfect. After careful consideration of numerous objections, I conclude that this argument is undefeated.

Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations brings together new essays by leading literary scholars of the British and European middle ages and early modern period who have been influenced by the groundbreaking scholarship of Richard Helgerson. The contributors evince the ongoing impact of Helgerson's work in critical debates including those of nationalism, formal analysis, and literary careerism.

ABSTRACT ‘The Seducer’s Diary’ is not a nostalgic account of a Romantic seducer-figure, and it does not represent the ‘ethical’ rejection of such Romanticism. Instead, it portrays the violence involved just as much in conventional bourgeois marriage as in works of erotic fantasy, and it reveals the necessary failure of both these projects. Although the suffering they may cause is real enough, they never manage to achieve the mastery they seek to impose. At the same time, this radical cultural critique (...) functions as a philosophical allegory of imagination. For, if the main character is a seducer, he is also an artist, and if the material he seeks to shape is a woman, it is also the image produced by imagination as such. Kierkegaard's tale illustrates, and interrogates, the necessary role played by the image in mediating between the ‘real’ and the ‘meaningful.’. (shrink)

Without some form of objectivity, Harbour argues, there is no firm grounding other than taste for criticizing whatever constitutes another culture's values, or even for reforming one's own—and there is no firm grounding for moral objections to someone such as Hitler or Idi Amin.

Those of us who take skepticism seriously typically have two relevant beliefs: (a) it’s plausible (even if false) that in order to know that I have hands I have to be able to epistemically neutralize, to some significant degree, some skeptical hypotheses, such as the brain-in-a-vat (BIV) one; and (b) it’s also plausible (even if false) that I can’t so neutralize those hypotheses. There is no reason for us to also think (c) that the BIV hypothesis, for instance, is plausible (...) or probably true. In order to take skepticism seriously it’s sufficient to hold (a) and (b); one need not hold (c). Indeed, philosophers who accept (a) and (b) never endorse (c). Show me a philosopher who suspects that he is a brain in a vat and I’ll show you someone who is deranged! That’s one thing that bothers undergraduates in philosophy. They object: why on earth do some philosophers take the BIV hypothesis to pose any threat at all to our beliefs given that those very same philosophers think that there’s no real chance that the BIV hypothesis is true? Sure, the BIV hypothesis is formally inconsistent with my belief that I have hands, so if the former is true then my belief is false. But so what? Why should that bare inconsistency matter so much? Is this strange attitude amongst philosophers the result of some logic fetish infecting the philosophical community? It is sometimes said that the skeptical hypotheses are not only inconsistent with our beliefs but are explanatory of our experiences, which is supposed to make them more of a threat. But students aren’t fooled: although the skeptical hypotheses may attempt to explain why our experience is as it is, it’s the kind of attempt appropriate for science fiction movies that are all special effects and virtually no plot. No one with any sense of reality will take the evil demon hypothesis to be even tenuously explanatory. (shrink)

Actions expressing strong emotions such as anger can be appropriate responses when an agent judges a serious injustice to have been committed. Certainly, a woman can experience these conditions and express herself through actions such as gesturing aggressively, gritting her teeth, or lashing out verbally. If she is consequently labeled “crazy,” “hysterical,” or “a bitch,” what has gone awry? This paper offers an analysis of the common charge of inappropriateness in the case of women’s actions expressing emotion. To begin, I (...) will present core normative distinctions that define appropriate emotional expression. Following this, the “double-bind” of women’s actions expressing emotion will be explored with reference to the conflicting normative practices outlined in the first section of the paper. Put briefly, when a female agent surpasses gendered behavioral expectations, she is seen as having failed what can be called the first test of social coping. The perception of this failure shuts down further avenues for interpreting her behavior. Instead, the social inappropriateness of her emotion is used as further proof of irrationality. The arguments of the second section leave no doubt that gendered norms in the case of actions expressing emotions must be rejected both on epistemological and moral grounds. The final section of the paper explores epistemically and ethically viable alternatives for deciding the rational appropriateness of actions expressing emotion. (shrink)

The Self and Its Emotions Kristján KristjánssonNew York: Cambridge University Press, 2010288 pages, ISBN: 0521114780 (hbk); $85.00 The self and its emotions offers a wide-ranging critique of what i...

Despite the propensity of species introductions to disrupt ecosystems through community disassembly, the use of species translocations is becoming more widely accepted. In this paper, we examine ethical investigations into human migration in an attempt to evaluate how translocation may be justified. Previous attempts to make the analogy between human and species migration have been prone to black and white thinking. We argue that the disagreement between nativist and cosmopolitan approaches to introduced species can be defused by extending the analogy (...) through the migration ethics literature. Additionally, by extending the discussion to the special status of refugees, we are able to develop a theoretical framework for species migrations that acknowledges the risk of species introduction while recognising that special obligations towards endangered species may necessitate the use of translocations. (shrink)

This edited text recaptures many of Joe L. Kincheloe's national and international influences. An advocate and a scholar in the social, historical, and philosophical foundations of education, he dedicated his professional life to his vision of critical pedagogy. The authors in this volume found mentorship, as well as kinship, in Joe and express the many ways in which he and his work made profound differences in their work and lives. Joe's research always pushed the limits of what critically reflective and (...) informed teaching entailed, never diluting the import of comprehending the complexity of sociopolitical, cultural, economic, and educational discourses and practices. Dedicated to a praxis of social and political activism rooted in students' development as citizens and workers, the labor of teachers as action researchers, cultural workers, and social mediators is always at the heart of all he achieved. We who were so influenced directly and indirectly by him knew his genius and relished the generosity with which he shared his ideas, advice, encouragement, and art. The world is better because of Joe L. Kincheloe scholarship-inextricably related to "critical" critical thinking and enactment of education that tenaciously interrupts complacency, mediocrity, always responding thoughtfully to particular educational contexts. (shrink)

Can we ever truly answer the question, “Who am I?” Moderated by Alex Voorhoeve (London School of Economics), neuro-philosopher Elie During (University of Paris, Ouest Nanterre), cognitive scientist David Jopling (York University, Canada), social psychologist Timothy Wilson (University of Virginia),and ethicist Frances Kamm (Harvard University) examine the difficulty of achieving genuine self-knowledge and how the pursuit of self-knowledge plays a role in shaping the self.

Understanding firms' interfaces with the community has become a familiar strategic concern for both firms and non-profit organizations. However, it is still not clear when different community engagement strategies are appropriate or how such strategies might benefit the firm and community. In this review, we examine when, how and why firms benefit from community engagement strategies through a systematic review of over 200 academic and practitioner knowledge sources on the antecedents and consequences of community engagement strategy. We analytically describe evidence (...) on the rise of the community engagement strategy literature over time, its geographical spread and methodological evolution. A foundational concept underlying many studies is the ' continuum of community engagement'. We build on this continuum to develop a typology of three engagement strategies: transactional, transitional and transformational engagement. By identifying the antecedents and outcomes of the three strategies, we find that the payoffs from engagement are largely longer-term enhanced firm legitimacy, rather than immediate cost-benefit improvements. We use our systematic review to draw implications for future research and managerial practice. (shrink)

For years philosophers argued for the existence of distinct yet materially coincident things by appealing to modal and temporal properties. For instance, the statue was made on Monday and could not survive being flattened; the lump of clay was made months before and can survive flattening. Such arguments have been thoroughly examined. Kit Fine has proposed a new set of arguments using the same template. I offer a critical evaluation of what I take to be his central lines of reasoning.

This book focuses on the central party apparatus of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front branches established in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Jordan in the 1970s, and the most influential and innovative of the DF women's organizations: the Palestinian Federation of Women's Action Committees in the occupied territories. Until now, no study of a Palestinian political organization has so thoroughly engaged with internal gender histories. In addition, no other work attempts to systematically compare branches (...) in different regional locations to explain those differences. Students of gender and Middle East studies, especially those with a specialty in Palestinian studies, will find this work to be of critical importance. This book will also be of great interest to those working on political protest movements and factional ties. (shrink)

BackgroundBesides balancing burdens and benefits of intensive care, ethical conflicts in the process of decision-making should also be recognised. This calls for an ethical analysis relevant to clinicians. The aim was to analyse ethically difficult situations in the process of deciding whether a patient is admitted to intensive care unit.MethodsAnalysis using the ‘Dilemma method’ and ‘wide reflective equilibrium’, on ethnographic data of 45 patient cases and 96 stakeholder interviews in six UK hospitals.Ethical analysisFour moral questions and associated value conflicts were (...) identified. Who should have the right to decide whether a patient needs to be reviewed? Conflicting perspectives on safety/security. Does the benefit to the patient of getting the decision right justify the cost to the patient of a delay in making the decision? Preventing longer-term suffering and understanding patient’s values conflicted with preventing short-term suffering and provision of security. To what extent should the intensivist gain others’ input? Professional independence versus a holistic approach to decision-making. Should the intensivist have an ongoing duty of care to patients not admitted to ICU? Short-term versus longer-term duty to protect patient safety. Safety and security were key values at stake in the ethical conflicts identified. The life-threatening nature of the situation meant that the principle of autonomy was overshadowed by the duty to protect patients from harm. The need to fairly balance obligations to the referred patient and to other patients was also recognised.ConclusionProactive decision-making including advance care planning and escalation of treatment decisions may support the inclusion of patient autonomy. However, our analysis invites binary choices, which may not sufficiently reflect reality. This calls for a complementary relational ethics analysis. (shrink)