The precise relationship between callosal morphology and specific connectivity is not yet known. Callosal axons are often presumed to be arranged according to their origin. In humans, this is true for the genu and the splenium, which convey axons from the prefrontal and occipital cortices, respectively, but not for the body, where axons from wide parts of the cortex are intermingled.

Aim: Streamlining consent for low-risk comparative effectiveness research (CER) could facilitate research, while safeguarding patients' rights. Materials & methods: 2618 adults were randomized to one of seven consent approaches (six streamlined and one traditional) for a hypothetical, low-risk CER study. A survey measured understanding, voluntariness, and feelings of respect. Results: Participants in all arms had a high understanding of the trial and positive attitudes toward the consent interaction. Highest satisfaction was with a streamlined approach showing a video before the medical (...) appointment. Participants in streamlined were more likely to mistakenly think a signature was required. Conclusion: Streamlined consent was no less acceptable than traditional, signed consent. Streamlined and traditional approaches achieved similar levels of understanding, voluntariness and a feeling that the doctor–patient interaction was respectful. (shrink)

Qualitative and quantitative research on the impact of medical and health humanities teaching in baccalaureate education is sparse. This paper reviews recent studies of the impact of medical and health humanities coursework in pre-health professions education and describes a pilot study of baccalaureate students who completed semester-long medical humanities courses in the Division of Medical Humanities & Bioethics at the University of Rochester. The study format was an email survey. All participants were current or former baccalaureate students who had taken (...) one or more courses in literature and narrative in medicine, bioethics, history of medicine, and/or visual arts and healthcare during the past four years. The survey gathered numerical data in several areas: demographic information, career plans, self-reported influence of coursework on educational and career plans, and self-reported influence of coursework on intellectual skills and abilities. It also gathered narrative commentary that elaborated on students’ responses to the numerically-based questions. Notable findings from preliminary analysis of the data include higher scores of self-reported impact of the coursework on specific habits of mind and on preparedness for intended career rather than on gaining admission to future educational programs. Discussion of the results focuses on several potential future directions this type of study might take, including multi-center, longitudinal, and sequential approaches. (shrink)

This book offers both the theoretical background behind the minority effect, teachers' personal experiences as they experienced being a minority, and their analyses and insights for teaching diverse learners. This book uses real-life experiences of diverse people to illustrate that, if not understood and addressed, situational minorities at school or work are unlikely to perform at their highest potentials.

L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les relations entre les mères ayant des enfants en situation de handicap ou présentant des difficultés développementales et les professionnelles au sein de crèches collectives dites inclusives. Dans le cadre d’une étude plus vaste, réalisée en France, portant sur le soutien des familles de jeunes enfants porteurs de handicap ou présentant des difficultés développementales, un entretien semi-directif a été réalisé auprès de neuf mères et de dix professionnelles pour analyser leurs relations. L’analyse qualitative de (...) données est réalisée selon l’approche de Braun et Clarke (2006). Les principaux résultats mettent en évidence, pour les mères, l’importance du partage d’informations, le soutien apporté par les professionnelles ainsi que leurs compétences. Les professionnelles, quant à elles, soulignent l’échange d’informations et leur rôle d’accompagnement dans l’acceptation du handicap de l’enfant ou dans le processus de parentalité. Les résultats sont discutés et des pistes d’intervention sont proposées. (shrink)

This is an amended version of material that first appeared in A. Clark, Microcognition: Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and Parallel Distributed Processing (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989), Ch. 1, 2, and 6. It appears in German translation in Metzinger,T (Ed) DAS LEIB-SEELE-PROBLEM IN DER ZWEITEN HELFTE DES 20 JAHRHUNDERTS (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. 1999).

A Photcopy of Thinking Things Through, Princeton Univeresity Press, 1980.

Moral duties are regularly attributed to groups. Does this make conceptual sense or is this merely political rhetoric? And what are the implications for these individuals within groups? Collins outlines a Tripartite Model of group duties that can target political demands at the right entities, in the right way and for the right reasons.

We show that a popular class of connectionist models (which we label 'first order connectionism') looks unlikely to provide the kind of resources required by the hypothesis. We examine some alternative hybrid models that seem more promising. Finally, we raise a more purely philosophical issue concerning the conditions under which a being can count as a genuine believer or cognizer.".

Inherent in providing healthcare for youth lie tensions among best interests, decision-making capacity, rights, and legal authority. Transgender youth experience barriers to needed gender-affirming care, often rooted in ethical and legal issues, such as healthcare provider concerns regarding youth capacity and rights to consent to hormone therapy. Even when decision-making capacity is present, youth may lack the legal authority to give consent. The aims of this paper are therefore to provide an empirical analysis of minor trans youth capacity to consent (...) to hormone therapy and to address the normative question of whether there is ethical justification for granting trans youth the authority to consent to this care. Through qualitative content analysis of interviews with trans youth, parents, and healthcare providers, we found that trans youth demonstrated the understandings and abilities characteristic of the capacity to consent to hormone therapy and that they did consent to hormone therapy with positive outcomes. Employing deontological and consequentialist reasoning and drawing on a foundation of empirical evidence, human rights, and best interests we conclude that granting trans youth with decisional capacity both the right and the legal authority to consent to hormone therapy via the informed consent model of care is ethically justified. (shrink)

Words have determinable sense only within a complex of unstated assumptions, and all interpretation must therefore go beyond the given material. This book addresses what is man's place in the Aristotelian world. It also describes man's abilities and prospects in managing his life, and considers how far Aristotle's treatment of time and history licenses the sort of dynamic interpretation of his doctrines that have been given. The ontological model that explains much of Aristotle's conclusions and methods is one of life-worlds, (...) in which the material universe of scientific myth is no more than an abstraction from lived reality, not its transcendent ground. (shrink)

Clark Butler presents an innovative analysis of Hegel's most challenging work in _Hegel's Logic_ -- the first major English-language treatment of Hegel's _Science of Logic_ to appear in nearly fifteen years. Although earlier commentators on the _Logic_ have considered standard analytical philosophy-and with it modern logic-in opposition to Hegel. Butler views it as a legitimate approach in terms of which Hegel needs to be understood. This interpretation allows him to address the rigor of Hegel's thought on several levels as (...) at once an exercise in purely conceptual redefinition and a full-bodied work in metaphysical ontology and even theology. The result is an account of the _Logic_ intelligible to analytical philosophers as well as non-specialists. (shrink)

Which kinds of responsibility can we attribute to which kinds of collective, and why? In contrast, which kinds of collective responsibility can we not attribute—which kinds are ‘gappy’? This study provides a framework for answering these questions. It begins by distinguishing between three kinds of collective and three kinds of responsibility. It then explains how gaps—i.e. cases where we cannot attribute the responsibility we might want to—appear to arise within each type of collective responsibility. It argues some of these gaps (...) do not exist on closer inspection, at least for some collectives and some of the time. (shrink)

This article takes as its starting point the recent work of Frank Ankersmit on subjective historical experience. Such an experience, which Ankersmit describes as a ‘sudden obliteration of the rift between present and past’ is connected strongly with the Deweyan theory of art as experiential, which contains an account of aesthetic experience as affording a similar breakdown in the polarization of the subject and object of experience. The article shows how other ideas deriving from the phenomenological tradition and the philosophy (...) of perception can fruitfully be applied to the same terrain, and an account of aesthetic experience is built up that stresses embodied, differential and virtual aspects in the perception of aesthetic objects. The disruption and/or enhancement of these aisthetic aspects of perception, coupled with the self-conscious reflection thereby occasioned, is put forward as an account of aesthetic experience that links Ankersmit’s ideas with those of others, and a critical reading is made of a section of Ankersmit’s Sublime Historical Experience that centers on his experience of a painting by Francesco Guardi. The fijinal section aims at strengthening aspects of Ankersmit’s ideas and renews his critique of the radical constructivism of Oakeshott. (shrink)

We applied TETRAD II, a causal discovery program developed in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy, to a database containing information on 204 U.S. colleges, collected by the US News and World Report magazine for the purpose of college ranking. Our analysis focuses on possible causes of low freshmen retention in U.S. colleges. TETRAD II finds a set of causal structures that are compatible with the data.

Recent literature in philosophy of science has addressed purported notions of explanatory virtues—‘explanatory power’, ‘unification’, and ‘coherence’. In each case, a probabilistic relation between a theory and data is said to measure the power of an explanation, or degree of unification, or degree of coherence. This essay argues that the measures do not capture cases that are paradigms of scientific explanation, that the available psychological evidence indicates that the measures do not capture judgements of explanatory power, and, finally, that the (...) measures do not provide useful methods for selecting hypotheses. 1. Introduction2. Some Proposed Measures of Explanatory Virtues3. Descriptive Inadequacy3.1 Excellent but false explanations3.2 Causal explanation4. Psychological Inadequacy5. Finding the Truth6. Conclusion. (shrink)

Philosophers often talk as though each ability is held by exactly one agent. This paper begins by arguing that abilities can be held by groups of agents, where the group is not an agent. I provide a new argument for—and a new analysis of—non-agentive groups’ abilities. I then provide a new argument that, surprisingly, obligations are different: non-agentive groups cannot bear obligations, at least not if those groups are large-scale such as ‘humanity’ or ‘carbon emitters.’ This pair of conclusions is (...) important, since philosophers who endorse large-scale non-agentive groups’ abilities almost universally endorse their obligations. More importantly, the twin arguments (one for abilities, one against obligations) make the following novel contribution: abilities imply agency-involving explanations, while obligations imply action-guidance. This general conclusion should be of interest beyond social ontology. (shrink)

Tomasello argues in the target article that a sense of moral obligation emerges from the creation of a collaborative “we” motivating us to fulfill our cooperative duties. We suggest that “we” takes many forms, entailing different obligations, depending on the type of the relationship in question. We sketch a framework of such types, functions, and obligations to guide future research in our commentary.

The possibility of extended cognition invites the possibility of extended knowledge. We examine what is minimally required for such forms of technologically extended knowledge to arise and whether existing and future technologies can allow for such forms of epistemic extension. Answering in the positive, we explore some of the ensuing transformations in the ethical obligations and personal rights of the resulting ‘new humans.’.

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Modern western political thought revolves around globality, focusing on the partitioning and the connecting up of the earth’s surface. But climate change and the Anthropocene thesis raise pressing questions about human interchange with the geological and temporal depths of the earth. Drawing on contemporary earth science and the geophilosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, this article explores how geological strata are emerging as provocations for political issue formation. The first section reviews the emergence – and eventual turn away from – concern (...) with ‘revolutions of the earth’ during the 18th- and 19th-century discovery of ‘geohistory’. The second section looks at the subterranean world both as an object of ‘downward’ looking territorial imperatives and as the ultimate power source of all socio-political life. The third section weighs up the prospects of ‘earth system governance’. The paper concludes with some general thoughts about the possibilities of ‘negotiating strata’ in more generative and judicious ways. (shrink)

This article denies that Hegel upheld the objective truth of any contradictory statements. Yet he did admit objective contradictions in the sense of intersubjectively held contradictory beliefs at the basis of some institutions, most famously lordship and bondage. He also shared the belief of Zeno, the inventor of dialectic, that continuous motion is self-contradictory but is an objective contradiction more widely shared by all institutions presupposing continuants (people and ordinary things).

Elämme historian vaihetta, jossa uuden poliittisen visioinnin tarve on tulossa polttavan kiireelliseksi. Tyytymättömyys perinteisiä poliittisia vaihtoehtoja kohtaan ja uskon puute muodollista demokratiaa kohtaan kasvavat teollistuneissa länsimaissa. Tyytymättömyys on toistaiseksi näkynyt ennen kaikkea epäpolitisoitumisena, johon on sisältynyt dramaattinen luottamuksen menetys suhteessa poliittisiin puolueisiin sekä laajamittaista äänestämättä jättämistä. Idässä marxilaista oikeaoppisuutta haastaa toisinajattelun liikehdintä, joka ilmenee usein hiljaisena uskollisuuden ja yhteistyön hylkäämisenä, toisinaan taas dramaattisina aika ajoin toistuvina kapinoina. Lisäksi niin idässä kuin lännessäkin on kulttuurista vastarintaa, joka heikosti – mutta kenties profeetallisesti (...) – osoittaa tarpeen uudelle, erilaisia ääniä yhdistävälle visiolle. (shrink)

We present evidence of a potentially serious source of error intrinsic to all spotted cDNA microarrays that use IMAGE clones of expressed sequence tags (ESTs). We found that a high proportion of these EST sequences contain 5V-end poly(dT) sequences that are remnants from the oligo(dT)-primed reverse transcription of polyadenylated mRNA templates used to generate EST cDNA for sequence clone libraries. Analysis of expression data from two single-dye cDNA microarray experiments showed that ESTs whose sequences contain repeats of consecutive 5V- end (...) dT residues appeared to be strongly coexpressed, while expression data of all other sequences exhibited no such pattern. Our analysis suggests that expression data from sequences containing 5V poly(dT) tracts are more likely to be due to systematic cross-hybridization of these poly(dT) tracts than to true mRNA coexpression. This indicates that existing data generated by cDNA microarrays containing IMAGE clone ESTs should be filtered to remove expression data containing significant 5V poly(dT) tracts. D 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

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The conditional intervention principle is a formal principle that relates patterns of interventions and outcomes to causal structure. It is a central assumption of the causal Bayes net formalism. Four experiments suggest that preschoolers can use the conditional intervention principle both to learn complex causal structure from patterns of evidence and to predict patterns of evidence from knowledge of causal structure. Other theories of causal learning do not account for these results.

A fictional consideration of the hazards life might hold if certain theories of mind were true. Originally given as an after dinner talk at the University of North Carolina Conference.