During active vision, the eyes continually scan the visual environment using saccadic scanning movements. This target article presents an information processing model for the control of these movements, with some close parallels to established physiological processes in the oculomotor system. Two separate pathways are concerned with the spatial and the temporal programming of the movement. In the temporal pathway there is spatially distributed coding and the saccade target is selected from a Both pathways descend through a hierarchy of levels, the (...) lower ones operating automatically. Visual onsets have automatic access to the eye control system via the lower levels. Various centres in each pathway are interconnected via reciprocal inhibition. The model accounts for a number of well-established phenomena in target-elicited saccades: the gap effect, express saccades, the remote distractor effect, and the global effect. High-level control of the pathways in tasks such as visual search and reading is discussed; it operates through spatial selection and search selection, which generally combine in an automated way. The model is examined in relation to data from patients with unilateral neglect. (shrink)

Our target article discussed how emerging knowledge of the physiological processes involved in the control of saccadic eye movements provided the basis for a functional framework in which to understand the programming of such movements. The commentators raised many interesting issues in their varied responses that ranged from detailed discussion of the physiological substrate through issues of saccade control in reading. New evidence at the physiological level demonstrates that some elaborations are needed to the framework we proposed. Most clearly, the (...) spatial selection process operates in a manner different from our suggestion of an increase in activity in the salience map. Some commentators make the interesting and welcome proposal that the functional processes we outline may in fact be implemented with an even more unified physiological substrate (continuity between collicular fixation and build-up cells) than we envisaged. Extensions to the framework are discussed involving the planning of sequential saccades, saccades made in crossmodal situations, the influences of learning and memory, and binocular saccades. We consider carefully the commentaries proposing explicit attentional and/or executive processes in the programming of saccades. We integrate the comments of researchers investigating saccade control in neurological and neuropsychiatric patients and finally discuss whether the framework can account for saccades made in the course of reading. (shrink)

Advances in genomics have led to calls for developing population-based preventive genomic sequencing programs with the goal of identifying genetic health risks in adults without known risk factors. One critical issue for minimizing the harms and maximizing the benefits of PGS is determining the kind and degree of control individuals should have over the generation, use, and handling of their genomic information. In this article we examine whether PGS programs should offer individuals the opportunity to selectively opt out of the (...) sequencing or analysis of specific genomic conditions or whether PGS should be implemented using an all-or-nothing panel approach. We conclude that any responsible scale-up of PGS will require a menu approach that may seem impractical to some, but that draws its justification from a rich mix of normative, legal, and practical considerations. (shrink)

While somatic cell editing to treat disease is widely accepted, the use of human genome editing for “enhancement” remains contested. Scientists and policy-makers routinely cite the prospect of enhancement as a salient ethical challenge for human genome editing research. If preventive genome editing projects are perceived as pursuing human enhancement, they could face heightened barriers to scientific, public, and regulatory approval. This article outlines what we call “preventive strengthening research” (or “PSR”) to explore, through this example, how working to strengthen (...) individuals’ resistance to disease beyond what biomedicine considers to be the human functional range may be interpreted as pursuing human enhancement. Those involved in developing guidance for PSR will need to navigate the interface between preventive goals and enhancement implications. This article identifies and critiques three of these ideas in the interest of anticipating the wider emergence of PSR and the need for a normative approach for its pursuit. All three “candidate criteria” merit attention, but each also faces challenges that will need to be addressed as further research policy is developed. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

In this brief, we argue that there is a diversity of ways in which humans (Homo sapiens) are ‘persons’ and there are no non-arbitrary conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can include all humans and exclude all nonhuman animals. To do so we describe and assess the four most prominent conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can be found in the rulings concerning Kiko and Tommy, with particular focus on the most recent decision, Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc v Lavery.

John Baldwin began his presidential address last year by remarking that such an address affords the opportunity to speak to colleagues and friends about “what you've been working on and pondering for the past couple of years.” What then have I been thinking about ? If I'm honest with myself, I must admit that what I've really been doing is wondering: did I get it right last time? For I find, as do many of you, I'm sure, that new (...) research arises from old, that new questions come because one reads new texts—or maybe even the same texts—and suddenly asks oneself: if this is what it says, can I really be right about what I thought last year or the year before? The work I am beginning on metamorphosis in the years around 1200 originates in my own questioning of conclusions I drew about the same period in my study of bodily resurrection. (shrink)

Ever since Darwin, scholars have noted that cultural entities such as languages, laws and theories seem to evolve through variation, selection and replication. These essays consider whether this comparison is just a metaphor.

Recent scholarship has steadily been opening up for philosophical study an increasingly wide range of the philosophical literature of antiquity. We no longer think only of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and their pre-Socratic forebears, when someone refers to the views of the ancient philosophers. Julia Annas has been one of the philosophers most closely engaged in the renewed study of Hellenistic philosophy over the past fifteen years, enabling herself and other scholars to acquire the necessary ground-level knowledge of the widely-dispersed (...) texts and the problems of interpretation—both historical and philosophical—that they present. In her new book she takes the next step. She presents to the general philosophical public of today an extended reconstruction of the systems of moral philosophy that were developed and pitted in competition with one another during the period when refinement and professionalism were at their height in Greek philosophy—between the end of the 4th and the middle of the 1st centuries B.C. These include the moral philosophies of Epicurus and his followers, several generations of Stoics, sceptical philosophers both Academic and Pyrrhonian, and the “hybrid” theories put together by Antiochus of Ascalon and other Stoic-influenced philosophers as part of the modernizing revival of Aristotelian ethical thought that took place in the 1st century B.C. She finds significant commonalities among these otherwise very disparate theories, and much of the book is devoted to examining these and showing how the conception of ethics and morality that is common to the ancient theorists compares with and differs from what we are familiar with in modern and contemporary theory. She traces these commonalities back to Aristotle in his ethical treatises, and accordingly includes Aristotle’s theory as one among those to be examined—indeed, in a significant sense as the intellectual father or grandfather of the rest of them. She leaves Plato’s dialogues out of account, and she has nothing to say about ethics and moral philosophy in the revived Platonism that gradually came to dominate philosophical thought in later antiquity. Her book, then, is a book about the structure and content of ancient ethical theory during the Hellenistic period, the period when Greek philosophy was at its high-point in professionalism and sophistication. (shrink)

Donald Capps and John Capps's James and Dewey on Belief and Experience juxtaposes the key writings of two philosophical superstars. As fathers of Pragmatism, America's unique contribution to world philosophy, their work has been enormously influential, and remains essential to any understanding of American intellectual history. In these essays, you'll find William James deeply embroiled in debates between religion and science. Combining philosophical charity with logical clarity, he defended the validity of religious experience against crass forms of scientism. Dewey (...) identified the myriad ways in which supernatural concerns distract religious adherents from pressing social concerns, and sought to reconcile the tensions inherent in science's dual embrace of common sense and the aesthetic. James and Dewey on Belief and Experience is divided into two sections: the former showcases James, the latter is devoted to Dewey. Two transitional passages in which each reflects on the work of the other bridge these two main segments. Together, the sections offer a unique perspective on the philosophers' complex relationship of influence and interdependence. An editors' introduction provides biographical information about both men, an overview of their respective philosophical orientations, a discussion of the editorial process, and a brief commentary on each of the selections. Comparing what these foremost pragmatists wrote on both themes illumines their common convictions regarding the nature of philosophical inquiry and simultaneously reveals what made each a distinctive thinker. (shrink)

From a national U.S. sample of senior academic biochemists, ninety-four indicated that they personally knew of an incident of scientific wrongdoing. Among these individuals, less formal actions against an offending individual were endorsed when either actions were believed to have the potential to publicly embarrass the offending individual, or the actions might adversely affect the professional career of the whistleblower. These relationships remain significant after controlling for professional status, career age, and current level of formal departmental administrative responsibility. Study limitations (...) and implications are discussed. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In their trenchant panoramic overview – ranging from antiquity to the present-day – John and Anna Rist write with authority and ennui about nothing less than the loss of the foundational culture of the West. The authors characterize this culture as the 'original tradition', viewing its erosion as one which has led to anxiety about the entire value of Western thought. The causes of the disintegration are discussed with an intensity rare in academe. Critics of modernity ordinarily concentrate on (...) the Enlightenment and the book certainly offers deep analysis of Enlightenment thought. But it goes further. Thus the cruelty of modern totalitarianism is now depicted as in the spirit of the French Revolution and its implacable hostility to a vanished primordial heritage, while scientism, bureaucracy and consumerism appear as the only rivals to a threatening nihilism. The book argues that Western thought has created a set of conflicting moral and spiritual customs: to the detriment of coherence, in individual minds as in society and culture. (shrink)

The HIPAA Rules continue to support and bolster the importance of protecting the privacy and security of patients' protected health information. The HIPAA training requirements are at the cornerstone of meaningful implementation and provide a ripe opportunity for critical education.

The chapter focuses on the often neglected aspect of the perceptual experience—the impact and effect of the visual process on our attention-action interface. The chapter utilizes studies on eye movement control to explore further the linkage between action and perception. A selection function is ascribed to the visual system, which causes an intended motor action to be directed at a specific object within the visual field. This selective capability links the various visual representations with visual processing and motor programming. Succeeding (...) sections explore the concept of visual attention further and its relationship to eye movements, citing studies using the Moving Window Paradigm, the Sequential Attention Model, and Feature Integration Theory. These studies support the theory that visual attention precedes saccadic eye movement to a specific location of a stimulus in the visual field, and enables the motor system to bind the said location with a motor action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real HappinessJohn M. KollerInner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness. By Robert Thurman. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. Pp. xiv + 322. $24.95.Can the Buddhist culture of Tibet—until the middle of the twentieth century a medieval theocracy almost completely isolated from the rest of the world—point the way to the fulfillment of the American dream? In his (...) extraordinary book, Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness, Robert Thurman, a distinguished Buddhist scholar, argues that it can.Inner Revolution is a significant reconstruction of the basic teachings of Buddhism from a Tibetan perspective that shows the important sociopolitical dimensions [End Page 138] of Buddhism, arguing convincingly that mental transformation based on deep understanding of self and reality is the basis for far-reaching peaceful social and political revolution. The energizing vision behind this book is summed up on page 221, in the concluding paragraph of chapter 7, "The World-taming Adepts":To finish building the free society dreamed of by Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, we must draw upon the resources of the enlightened imagination, which can be systematically developed by the spiritual sciences of India and Tibet. We have not yet tamed our own demons of racism, nationalism, sexism, and materialism. We have not yet made peace with a land we took by force and have only partly paid for. We are a teeming conglomeration of people from different tribes who have yet to embrace fully the humanness in one another. And none of us can be really free until all of us are.This is the vision of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness" announced in the book's title. The means to the realization of this vision, the "cool revolution" that Thurman describes, is captured in the first words of the title, "Inner Revolution." This inner revolution is a transformation of the mind, a transformation effected by the deep understanding praised as prajñā or insight in the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It is the deep understanding to which Śākyamuni, the historical Buddha of our era, awakened, making him a Buddha. It is the understanding that the truth of existence, the Dharma, is that things exist in dynamic interdependence. Nothing—persons or things—exists permanently or separately. The fundamental insight of the Buddha, pratītyasamutpāda, is that, in the felicitous words of the Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nat Hanh, things inter-are, in dynamic interdependence. It is because of the dynamic interbeing of things that genuine social and political freedoms are impossible without inner freedom. It was in his awakening to the truth of dynamic interbeing that, as Thurman describes it, "The Buddha found that inner freedom—freedom from our negative emotions and obsessive self-concern—is the essential precondition for goodness and social liberty" (p. 30).There is a tendency among Buddhist scholars to ignore or slight the social and political implications of wisdom and compassion. This is partly the result of reading modern Western individualism into Buddhist teaching and consequently focusing exclusively on how the individual person is transformed by wisdom and compassion, ignoring the social transformation inherent in the transformation of individuals. It is also partly the result of a failure to understand that compassionate action is as central to Buddhism as enlightened understanding. But Thurman clearly understands that the fundamental aim of Buddhist teaching and practice is to become a Buddha. And to become a Buddha, as Śāntideva says in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, a text that has inspired Tibetan Buddhists for over a thousand years, one takes the Bodhisattva vow to work tirelessly and unceasingly to bring happiness to all beings. In Śāntideva's own words: "As long as space abides and as long as the world abides, so long may I abide, destroying the sufferings of the world" (10.55). Compassion is inseparable from wisdom. When one awakens the mind of enlightenment (bodhicitta), compassion arises, leading one to take the Bodhisattva vow that Śāntideva expresses in 3.7 : [End Page 139] "I am medicine for the sick. May I be both the doctor and... (shrink)