The book uses Zen Buddhism as the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness.

This work argues that philosophy is not just useful, but vital, for thinking coherently about priorities in health policy and public policy.

Is there a world beyond the senses? Can we perceive future events before they occur? Is it possible to communicate with others without need of our complex sensory-perceptual apparatus that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years? Can our minds/souls/personalities leave our bodies and operate with all the knowledge and information-processing ability that is normally dependent upon the physical brain? Do our personalities survive physical death?

Abstract:Disturbing cases continue to be published of patients declared brain dead who later were found to have a few intact brain functions. We address the reasons for the mismatch between the whole-brain criterion and brain death tests, and suggest solutions. Many of the cases result from diagnostic errors in brain death determination. Others probably result from a tiny amount of residual blood flow to the brain despite intracranial circulatory arrest. Strategies to lessen the mismatch include improving brain death determination training (...) for physicians, mandating a test showing complete intracranial circulatory arrest, or revising the whole-brain criterion. (shrink)

This paper defends an invariance-based account of laws of nature: Laws are generalizations that remain invariant under various sorts of changes. Alternatively, laws are generalizations that exhibit a certain kind of independence from background conditions.

Research involving human subjects is much more stringently regulated than many other nonresearch activities that appear to be at least as risky. A number of prominent figures now argue that research is overregulated. We argue that the reasons typically offered to justify the present system of research regulation fail to show that research should be subject to more stringent regulation than other equally risky activities. However, there are three often overlooked reasons for thinking that research should be treated as a (...) special case. First, research typically involves the imposition of risk on people who do not benefit from this risk imposition. Second, research depends on public trust. Third, the complexity of the moral decision making required favors ethics committees as a regulative solution for research. (shrink)

Baggs and Chemero (2018)propose that certain tensions between enaction and ecological psychology arise due different interpretations about what is meant by the “environment.” In the enactive approach the emphasis is on the umwelt, which describes the environment as the “meaningful, lived surroundings of a given individual.” The ecological approach, on the other hand, emphasises what they refer to as the habitat “the environment as a set of resources for a typical, or ideal, member of a species.” By making this distinction, (...) these authors claim they are able to retain the best of both the ecological and the enactive approaches. Herein I propose an account of the individuation of habits that straddles this distinction, what I call a compatabilist account. This is done in two parts. The first part teases out a host of compatibilities that exist between the enactive account as developed byDi Paolo et al. (2017)and the skilled intentionality framework as developed byBruineberg and Rietveld (2014)andRietveld and Kiverstein (2014). In part two these compatibilities are brought together with the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon to develop the notion of enhabiting. Enhabiting describes a set of ongoing processes by which an umwelt emerges from and is reproduced within the relationship between an embodied subject and their habitat. Thus, enhabiting points toward a point of intersection between enaction and ecological psychology. To enhabit is bring forth (to enact), within (to inhabit). (shrink)

In this paper, I explore one way to bring bioethics and environmental ethics closer together. I focus on a question at the interface of health, sustainability, and justice: How well does a society promote health with the use of no more than a just share of environmental capacity? To address this question, I propose and discuss a mode of assessment that combines a measurement of population health, an estimate of environmental sustainability, and an assumption about what constitutes a fair or (...) just share. This mode of assessment provides an estimate of the just and sustainable life expectancy of a population. It could be used to monitor how well a particular society promotes health within just environmental limits. It could also serve as a source of information that stakeholders use when they deliberate about programs, policies, and technologies. The purpose of this work is to focus attention on an ethical task: the need to fashion institutions and forms of life that promote health in ways that recognize the claims of sustainability and justice. (shrink)

In a seminal 1977 article, Rumelhart argued that perception required the simultaneous use of multiple sources of information, allowing perceivers to optimally interpret sensory information at many levels of representation in real time as information arrives. Building on Rumelhart's arguments, we present the Interactive Activation hypothesis—the idea that the mechanism used in perception and comprehension to achieve these feats exploits an interactive activation process implemented through the bidirectional propagation of activation among simple processing units. We then examine the interactive activation (...) model of letter and word perception and the TRACE model of speech perception, as early attempts to explore this hypothesis, and review the experimental evidence relevant to their assumptions and predictions. We consider how well these models address the computational challenge posed by the problem of perception, and we consider how consistent they are with evidence from behavioral experiments. We examine empirical and theoretical controversies surrounding the idea of interactive processing, including a controversy that swirls around the relationship between interactive computation and optimal Bayesian inference. Some of the implementation details of early versions of interactive activation models caused deviation from optimality and from aspects of human performance data. More recent versions of these models, however, overcome these deficiencies. Among these is a model called the multinomial interactive activation model, which explicitly links interactive activation and Bayesian computations. We also review evidence from neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies supporting the view that interactive processing is a characteristic of the perceptual processing machinery in the brain. In sum, we argue that a computational analysis, as well as behavioral and neuroscience evidence, all support the Interactive Activation hypothesis. The evidence suggests that contemporary versions of models based on the idea of interactive activation continue to provide a basis for efforts to achieve a fuller understanding of the process of perception. (shrink)

I present a new perspective on the meaning of indistinguishability of classical particles. This leads to a solution to the problem in statistical mechanics of justifying the inclusion of a factor N! in a probability distribution over the phase space of N indistinguishable classical particles.

Patients -- Clients -- Welfare assessment -- Clinical choices -- Achieving animal welfare goals -- Beyond the clinic.

Within the corporate social responsibility research field, the construct of organizational reputation has been extensively scrutinized as a crucial mediator between the firm CSR engagement and valuable organizational outcomes. Yet, the existing literature on organizational reputation suffers from substantive divergence between the studies in terms of defining the construct’s domain, dimensional structure, and the methodological operationalization. The current study aims to refine the organizational reputation construct by reconciling varying theoretical perspectives within the construct’s definitional landscape, suggesting a holistic but parsimonious (...) triadic view on the organizational reputation construct for customer stakeholders. Based on commonly used extant organizational reputation measures, we theoretically and empirically develop the customer-based triadic organizational reputation scale and position it as a superordinate multidimensional construct influencing three distinct first-order dimensions: product and service efficacy, societal ethicality, and market prominence. Results show that the proposed triadic conceptualization of organizational reputation is theoretically defensible, and the resulting scale is cross-culturally generalizable and performs well compared with existing, longer measures of organizational reputation. Together, the organizational reputation model developed here suggests that, for cognitive economy and functional efficiency, customers will access a second-order reflective model of organizational reputation as the default implicit attitude, which in turn will activate reflections of the implicit attitude in the form of first-order dimensions. (shrink)

Individuals and businesses make numerous payments every day. They sometimes have choices about what forms of payment to make or accept, and at other times are effectively forced to use a particular form. Often there is an asymmetric power relationship between payer and payee that raises the issue of whether one side unfairly exploits the other. Is it unethical exploitation for an employer to pay employees with a fee-laden payroll card over other more convenient forms of payment? Does the fee (...) structure of payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard unfairly exploit merchants? The bitcoin payment system is an ethical as well as technological evolution as it was designed to be an electronic payment system that does not rely upon trust. Can an entire payment system like bitcoin be “evil,” as charged by Krugman? Payment tools as such are ethically neutral, but can be used in an ethical or unethical manner. (shrink)

The essays contained in this volume illustrate the work of Fr. James A. Weisheipl, whose writing and teaching have resulted in important additions to our understanding of nature and motion.

In his new book, Constitutional Essentials, Frank Michelman provides a splendid elaboration and defense of ‘the constitutional theory of political liberalism’ implicit in John Rawls’s classic work, Political Liberalism. In this essay, we make some observations about what a difference 30 years makes, comparing the political and constitutional climate in which Rawls wrote and published Political Liberalism in 1993 with the climate in which Michelman wrote and published this exegesis of it. We focus on (1) changes in our circumstances of (...) pluralism, including the accentuation of polarization and unreasonable views, and (2) the simultaneous breakdown of trust in the Supreme Court authoritatively to resolve disputes concerning constitutional essentials. Throughout, we acknowledge and seek to reckon with the possibility that Michelman may have given Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy its fullest, most coherent account just at the moment when the possibility of realizing it seems to be passing. (shrink)

Following Jacques Hadamard, applied mathematicians typically investigate their models in the form of well-set problems, which actually consist of a family of applicational circumstances that vary in specific ways with respect to their initial and boundary values. The chief motive for investigating models in this wider manner is to avoid the improper behavioral conclusions one might reach from the consideration of a more restricted range of cases. Suitable specifications of the required initial and boundary variability typically appeal to previously established (...) experimental conclusions as to how the target system will behave under a range of eternally applied manipulations of the form “If the conditions pertaining to S were altered in manner M, internal features X would/would not alter”. In his investigations of causal reasoning within other parts of science, our first author has emphasized the conceptual importance of counterfactuals of this nature, for which he was been often criticized by authors of a self-styled “metaphysical” inclination. The purpose of this note is to argue, pace these objections, that closely analogous considerations have long been part of the practice of investigating differential equation models in a sensible way. (shrink)

I’ll describe a range of systems for nonmonotonic conditionals that behave like conditional probabilities above a threshold. The rules that govern each system are probabilistically sound in that each rule holds when the conditionals are interpreted as conditional probabilities above a threshold level specific to that system. The well-known preferential and rational consequence relations turn out to be special cases in which the threshold level is 1. I’ll describe systems that employ weaker rules appropriate to thresholds lower than 1, and (...) compare them to these two standard systems. (shrink)

Understanding Poststructuralism presents a lucid guide to some of the most exciting and controversial ideas in contemporary thought. This is the first introduction to poststructuralism through its major theorists - Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Kristeva - and their central texts. Each chapter takes the reader through a key text, providing detailed summaries of the main points of each and a critical and detailed analysis of their central arguments. Ideas are clearly explained in terms of their value to both critical thinking (...) and to contemporary issues. Criticisms of poststructuralism are also assessed. The aim throughout is to illuminate the main methods of poststructuralism - deconstruction, libidinal economics, genealogy and transcendental empiricism - in context. A balanced and up-to-date assessment of poststructuralism, the book presents the ideal introduction to this most revolutionary of philosophies. (shrink)

DUMMETT HAS BEEN CONCERNED WITH SHOWING HOW ONE MIGHT GIVE\nAN ANTI-REALIST ACCOUNT OF RESTRICTED CLASSES OF SENTENCES.\nTHIS PAPER ARGUES THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO GIVE AN\nANTI-REALIST ACCOUNT OF ALL CLASSES OF SENTENCES. THAT IS,\nIN THE CASE OF NO CLASSES OF SENTENCES DOES TRUTH TRANSCEND\nWHAT CAN BE WARRANTED. THE KEY TO GLOBAL ANTI-REALISM IS\nREPLACING DUMMETT'S EMPIRICISM WITH A COHERENTIST ACCOUNT\nOF WARRANT. THE AUTHOR POINTS OUT THAT COLIN McGINN'S\nARGUMENT AGAINST GLOBAL ANTI-REALISM FAILS.

In the wake of Locke’s Essay, empiricists faced the challenge of giving an empiricist account of the origins of moral knowledge. Locke did not rise to this challenge and relied on revelation as the source of moral knowledge. Other empiricists, including Hume and Hutcheson, opted for either emotivism or subjectivism. Clarke and others opted for rationalism and non-naturalism. In contrast, Catharine Cockburn’s meta-ethics combined Locke’s empiricism with naturalism. She held that moral good is natural good and that natural good is (...) known just as any other matters of natural fact are known: empirically. Cockburn’s position was unusual for its time, and the full originality and appeal of her meta-ethical position have not been fully appreciated. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 2010, given by James Griffin, an American philosopher.

abstract In a number of contexts one comes across the suggestion that cultures are collective owners of cultural property, such as particularly significant works of art. Indigenous peoples are often held to be collective owners of cultural property, but they are not the only ones. Icelandic culture is said to have a claim on the Flatejarbók and Greek culture is held to own the Parthenon Marbles. In this paper I investigate the conditions under which a culture is the rightful owner (...) of cultural property. I argue against the claims that cultures inherit cultural property. I also argue that a culture's claim to own cultural property is seldom, if ever, founded on either practices employed in the culture or collective production of cultural property. I maintain, however, that the very value of cultural property for some culture can, in some instances, provide the basis for the culture's claim on the property. (shrink)

Notably absent from much of the psychological literature on emotion regulation are attempts to answer explicitly normative questions about the phenomenon. It is one thing to explain how emotional states are regulated. It is another thing to say something about what reasons there are to regulate our emotions, whether and why we might sometimes be obligated to regulate our emotions, and how we regulate our emotions well, or optimally. This paper is an attempt at the latter task, focused specifically on (...) a type of emotion regulation also receiving little attention in the literature—what I call dispositional emotion regulation. Dispositional regulation occurs, when it does, at some point or period of time significantly prior to the onset of affected emotional states or episodes, and by means of modifying the subject’s emotional dispositions. And it is done well, or optimally, I argue, when it is done with an aim toward achieving and maintaining a coherent and comprehensible self, in the sense Shaftesbury had in mind. (shrink)

This is the text available from Emory University.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Our ability to survive in a world beset by looming global perils depends ultimately on our collective will to harness our intellects and change our behaviors. In order to respond appropriately, people must first believe that serious problems exist, that there are potential solutions, and that they have a role to play in finding and implementing them. Without such beliefs, individual change is unlikely. In order to promote belief change, it is important to understand how beliefs are learned, what their (...) functions are, and why they are so often resistant to change. These issues are discussed in this article, along with the role that social dilemmas play in inhibiting individually prosocial behavior. (shrink)