Routine action sequences critically rely on neural mechanisms maintaining contextual and temporal information to disambiguate similar tasks (e.g. making coffee or tea). In this study we show the involvement of areas in temporal and lateral prefrontal cortices in maintaining temporal and contextual information for the execution of hierarchically‐organized action sequences.

Research programs in empirical psychology over the past few decades have led scholars to posit implicit biases. This is due to the development of innovative behavioural measures that have revealed aspects of our cognitions which may not be identified on self-report measures requiring individuals to reflect on and report their attitudes and beliefs. But what does it mean to characterise such biases as implicit? Can we satisfactorily articulate the grounds for identifying them as bias? And crucially, what sorts of cognitions (...) are in fact being measured; what mental states or processes underpin such behavioural responses? In this paper, we outline some of the philosophical and empirical issues engaged when attempting to address these three questions. Our aim is to provide a constructive taxonomy of the issues, and how they interrelate. As we will see, any view about what implicit bias is may depend on a range of prior theoretical choices. (shrink)

Implicit bias training (IBT) is now frequently provided by employers, in order to raise awareness of the problems related to implicit biases, and of how to safeguard against discrimination that may result. However, as Atewologun et al (2018) have noted, there is very little systematicity in IBT, and there are many unknowns about what constitutes good IBT. One important issue concerns the tone of information provided regarding implicit bias. This paper engages this question, focusing in particular on the observation that (...) much bias training is delivered in exculpatory tone, emphasising that individuals are not to blame for possessing implicit biases. Normative guidance around IBT exhorts practitioners to adopt this strategy (Moss-Racusin et al 2014). However, existing evidence about the effects of moralized feedback about implicit bias is equivocal (Legault et al 2011; Czopp et al 2006). Through a series of studies, culminating in an experiment with a pre-registered analysis plan, we develop a paradigm for evaluating the impact of moralized feedback on participants’ implicit racial bias scores. We also conducted exploratory analyses of the impact on their moods, and behavioural intentions. Our results indicated that an exculpatory tone, rather than a blaming or neutral tone, did not make participants less resistant to changing their attitudes and behaviours. In fact, participants in the blame condition had significantly stronger explicit intentions to change future behaviour than those in the ‘no feedback’ condition (see experiment 3). These results indicate that considerations of efficacy do not support the need for implicit bias feedback to be exculpatory. We tease out the implications of these findings, and directions for future research. (shrink)

Explorations about and around the ethics of virtue dominated philosophical thinking in the ancient world, and recent moral philosophy has seen a massive revival of interest in virtue ethics as a rival to Kantian and utilitarian approaches. To help users make sense of the gargantuan--and, often, dauntingly complex--body of literature on the subject, this new four-volume collection is the latest addition to Routledge's acclaimed Critical Concepts in Philosophy series. The editor has carefully assembled classic contributions, as well as more recent (...) work, to create a one-stop 'mini library' of the best and most influential scholarship. While Volume I focuses on the Greek and Roman founding fathers, it also brings together key works that examine the roots of virtue ethics in Christian, Asian, and other traditions. Volume II is organized around 'Religious Virtue Ethics', especially in the last sixty years or so, and Volume III brings together 'Modern Virtue Ethics'. The final volume in the collection assembles major works on topics such as the beginning and end of life; the environment; animal rights; business ethics; sports ethics; the virtues and the economy; the virtues and political life; studies of particular virtues; and debates about whether particular traits are indeed virtues. With a comprehensive index and a useful synoptic introduction newly written by the editor, Virtue Ethicswill be welcomed as an indispensable resource for both reference and research. in the last sixty years or so, and Volume III brings together 'Modern Virtue Ethics'. The final volume in the collection assembles major works on topics such as the beginning and end of life; the environment; animal rights; business ethics; sports ethics; the virtues and the economy; the virtues and political life; studies of particular virtues; and debates about whether particular traits are indeed virtues. With a comprehensive index and a useful synoptic introduction newly written by the editor, Virtue Ethicswill be welcomed as an indispensable resource for both reference and research. (shrink)

Beginning with the seminal work by Williams and Nagel, moral philosophers have used auto accident hypotheticals to illustrate the phenomenon of moral luck. Moral luck is present in the hypotheticals because two equally careless drivers are assessed differently because only one of them caused an accident. This Article considers whether these philosophical discussions might contribute to the public policy debate over compensation for auto accidents. Using liability and insurance practices in the United States as an illustrative example, the Article explains (...) that auto liability insurance substantially mitigates moral luck and argues that, as a result, the moral luck literature is unlikely to make a significant contribution to this public policy debate. The debate would benefit more from philosophical analysis of victims’ luck, which is not as substantially mitigated by liability insurance. (shrink)

Over fifteen years after first reporting to the State of New York, the Harvard Medical Practice Study continues to have a significant impact in medical malpractice policy debates. In those debates the HMPS has come to stand for four main propositions. First, “medical injury… accounts for more deaths than all other kinds of accidents combined” and “more than a quarter of those were caused by substandard care.” Second, the vast majority of people who are injured as result of substandard care (...) do not file a claim. Third, “a substantial majority of malpractice claims filed are not based on provider carelessness or even iatrogenic injury.” Fourth, “whether negligence or a medical injury had occurred… bore little relation to the outcome of the claims.”Medical malpractice researchers have long known that the HMPS provides far stronger support for the first two of these propositions than for the last two; the HMPS was not designed or powered to reach strong conclusions about the validity of medical malpractice claims. (shrink)

This text develops students' ability to philosophise and learn about philosophy and education. It challenges readers to use philosophy as a tool within education and as a set of theories to understand education by developing solutions to problems as they occur within practice. Assuming no pre-existing philosophical background, this book explores topics such as: the limits of a religious-based education; the desire for 'alternative facts' or 'truths'; and the struggle in the teacher-student relationship. This book will support all those on (...) Education, Childhood or Youth Studies courses in developing a critical perspective and understanding the true value of philosophy within education. (shrink)

Wnt proteins form a family of secreted signaling proteins that play a key role in various developmental events such as cell differentiation, cell migration, cell polarity and cell proliferation. It is currently thought that Wnt proteins activate at least three different signaling pathways by binding to seven transmembrane receptors of the Frizzled family and the co-receptor LRP6. Despite our growing knowledge of intracellular components that mediate a Wnt signal, the molecular events at the membrane have remained rather unclear. Now several (...) publications1-4 indicate that Frizzled receptors are G-protein coupled and kinases were identified that phosphorylate the co-receptor LRP6. These data deepen our understanding of Wnt-mediated signal transduction and provide more insight into how specificity may be achieved. BioEssays 28: 339–343, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Explores questions concerning animals from a continental perspective.

What is it that unites episodes of the emotion of annoyance? The paper considers possible analyses of the content of the state of annoyance, and concludes that this emotion should be understood to involve a negative construal of an object, event, or state of affairs as having failed to exemplify one of a suite of kinds of everyday quality or excellence. This account permits us to see what is common to a varied range of superficially-disjointed emotional responses, and to make (...) sense of the conditions under which annoyance is appropriate or inappropriate. Moreover, it reveals something of what we care about in everyday and social contexts, in our ordinary dealings with persons and artefacts. (shrink)

It is a fact that Hegel’s immense presence, and above all his own self-serving reading of the history of philosophy as leading up to his own position, has tended to detract attention from other views. Hegel’s position consciously builds upon its predecessors. If philosophy culminates in Hegel’s thought, then other theories are mainly valuable in that they survive as lower moments of the Hegelian synthesis. Hegel insists that he takes up what is positive in prior views. Hence, the mere fact (...) that an earlier idea does not reappear in Hegelian guise is an indication that it is unworthy of further attention. (shrink)

(2005). Reflections on the Appointment of Dr. Edmund Pellegrino to the President's Council on Bioethics. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 5, No. 6, pp. W8-W9. doi: 10.1080/15265160500388640.

Este trabajo recorre el constructivismo epistemológico de Vico. Por "constructivismo" se entiende la visión de que el objeto cognitivo no es algo simplemente dado sino en cierto modo "construido" por el sujeto como una condición de conocimiento. Se piensa que en este camino Vico figura como uno de los más importantes innovadores epistemológicos de los tiempos modernos. Vico entendió que, no pudiendo nosotros conocer independientemente la realidad, las condiciones de conocimiento son entonces, de algún modo, formas de constructivismo. De esta (...) manera anticipó cualquier forma posterior de constructivismo, entre otras: la conocida revolución copernicana de Kant.This paper is a review of Vico’s epistemological constructivism. By "constructivism" is understood the view that the congnitive object is not a simple given but rather in some way "constructed" by the subject as a condition of knowledge. It is believed that in this way Vico set the stage for one of the most important epistemological innovations in modern times. Vico grasped that, since we cannot know independent reality, the conditions of knowledge is some form of constructivism. He anticipated thus all later forms of constructivism, including inter alia: Kant’s better known Copernican revolution. (shrink)

Meat is ubiquitous in videogames and, when consumed by avatars or their agents, will frequently confer some aid or benefit. In many games it serves as the most nourishing form of sustenance for those who are hungry, but it can also operate as the most effective restorative for those who are injured, as a potent source of temporary power-ups and enhancements, or as a valuable resource to be spent on permanent improvements and upgrades. In short, in so far as it (...) functions as an indispensable, life-giving food stuff, meat comes to represent vitality. As a common condition of humans and animals, however, meat can also take on a rather different significance, as is illustrated by the game Super Meat Boy, and the ambiguous claim that its protagonist is a “boy made of meat”. (shrink)

In the videogame Trojan Horse, players are given the task of defending the ancient city of Troy from invading Achaeans, who attack the city both at ground level and by scaling the walls by means of their massive wooden horse. The frontal assault depicted in the game thus bears only passing resemblance to the traditional tale, in which wily Odysseus and a select band of warriors enter and ultimately capture the city by secreting themselves inside the horse. Much work has (...) been done in the genre of what might be called vegan apologetics, the explicit defence of veganism against the attacks of its opponents. This essay, however, considers an alternative, complementary tactic, which eschews confrontation in favour of a less direct stratagem. (shrink)

A comparative study of the literature on party changes shows that there are many different views on why and how parties change. The existing literature is rather theoretical. Most authors have based their model on a survey of a limited number of parties. The only general conclusion one can draw is that both external and internal factors can provoke party changes. In this contribution, we concentrate on the role of the internal factors. We find that change is less likely to (...) happen when the party is divided in several factions. Furthermore the party organisation influences the changes. In highly institutionalised parties changes wil be more difficult than in less organised parties. Finally the role of the party president cannot be neglected. He has to analyse and interpret the external challenges. Only if he thinks that a change is necessary, the party is likely to change. In brief, party change is a dynamic process that is led by the party elite. (shrink)

A central controversy in cognitive science concerns the roles of rules versus similarity. To gain some leverage on this problem, we propose that rule‐ versus similarity‐based processes can be characterized as extremes in a multidimensional space that is composed of at least two dimensions: the number of features (Pothos, 2005) and the physical presence of features. The transition of similarity‐ to rule‐based processing is conceptualized as a transition in this space. To illustrate this, we show how a neural network model (...) uses input features (and in this sense produces similarity‐based responses) when it has a low learning rate or in the early phases of training, but it switches to using self‐generated, more abstract features (and in this sense produces rule‐based responses) when it has a higher learning rate or is in the later phases of training. Relations with categorization and the psychology of learning are pointed out. (shrink)

This unique book provides a gentle introduction to an increasingly important type of formal logic called CLAUSAL FORM LOGIC (CFL). Having evolved out of human reasoning, CFL represents the ideal to which all computer-based systems must approximate. Most present day computational logic systems are based on it, including the well-know artificial intelligence language PROLOG.

Anderson and Rosenberg’s guidance theory of representation offers an analysis of mental content that strongly emphasises the influence that intentional states have upon the production and modulation of bodily behavior. On this view, a mental state gains both its status as a representation, and its content, in virtue of occupying a particular role in the guidance of action. I present three related challenges for the guidance theory, before defending an alternative model that is grounded not in action-guidance, but in action-selection. (...) Firstly, I argue that the guidance theory fails to explain an important category of perceptual misrepresentation. Secondly, I propose that the content ascriptions predicted by the theory are not sufficiently determinate. Thirdly, I propose that the contents implicated by the guidance view do not match those that are naturally ascribed in the explanation of intentionally-directed behavior. The modified account that I develop responds to these concerns, and suggests that representational states depict affordance properties: the opportunities and obstacles that the subject’s environment offers for the pursuit of goals and plans. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: On the Analytic Revolt Against Idealism Analysis, Analyticity, and Analytic Philosophy Moore, Russell, and Early Analytic Philosophy On Wittgenstein Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and Ordinary Language Philosophy Analytic Philosophy in the US.

My topic concerns the interrelation between religion, politics and ethics in a time of terror, or at least a historical moment when the general problem of terrorism has come to occupy center stage. The frequent view that 9/11 represents a wholly new situation, a break with the past makes it difficult, perhaps impossible to understand it. I believe that it is because 9/11 does not break with but continues tendencies already underway that it occurred and we can understand it. My (...) paper, which insists on continuity as opposed to rupture, consists of six parts. The first part evokes two well known approaches to 9/11: the clash of cultures, or civilizations, due to Samuel Huntington, and religious incompatibility defended, i.A. by Bernard Lewis. In the second and third parts argue that both approaches incorrectly presuppose the autonomy of culture and religion. In the fourth part I contend that in the modern world religion and politics are subordinated to economic factors. In the fifth and last part I suggest how ethics can be recovered from a constructivist perspective. (shrink)

It has sometimes erroneously been thought that theory of knowledge worthy of the name, or even epistemology as such comes to an end with Kant. This view is an error, since there are profound views of knowledge in the post-Kantian philosophical tradition, including that in Hegel’s thought. Now epistemology is a wide topic that includes a variety of themes. One of the main themes in the theory of knowledge in modern philosophy, especially in recent years, has been the issue of (...) foundationalism. The idea of foundationalism has been understood in different ways. But for purposes of this discussion, I will understand “foundationalism” to mean “some form of the Cartesian approach to philosophy through a self-justifying first principle.” In this paper, I will provide a brief, critical study of the theme of foundationalism in the Science of Logic. The aim of my discussion is to point to an unresolved tension between Hegel’s general commitment to epistemological circularity as the appropriate strategy for knowledge and the linear form of argument in this book. (shrink)