I argue that results in perception science do not support the claim that there is semantic perception or that typical, unreflective utterance comprehension is a perceptual process. Phenomena discussed include evidence-insensitivity, the Stroop effect, pop-out, and adaptation – as well as how these phenomena might relate to the function, format, and structure of perceptual representations. An emphasis is placed on non-inferential transitions from perceptual to conceptual representations, which are important for debates about the admissible contents of perception more generally.

Nick Shea’s Representation in Cognitive Science commits him to representations in perceptual processing that are about probabilities. This commentary concerns how to adjudicate between this view and an alternative that locates the probabilities rather in the representational states’ associated “attitudes”. As background and motivation, evidence for probabilistic representations in perceptual processing is adduced, and it is shown how, on either conception, one can address a specific challenge Ned Block has raised to this evidence.

Theories of consciousness divide over whether perceptual consciousness is rich or sparse in specific representational content and whether it requires cognitive access. These two issues are often treated in tandem because of a shared assumption that the representational capacity of cognitive access is fairly limited. Recent research on working memory challenges this shared assumption. This paper argues that abandoning the assumption undermines post-cue-based “overflow” arguments, according to which perceptual conscious is rich and does not require cognitive access. Abandoning it also (...) dissociates the rich/sparse debate from the access question. The paper then explores attempts to reformulate overflow theses in ways that don’t require the assumption of limited capacity. Finally, it discusses the problem of relating seemingly non-probabilistic perceptual consciousness to the probabilistic representations posited by the models that challenge conceptions of cognitive access as capacity-limited. (shrink)

Who are the best subjects for judgment tasks intended to test grammatical hypotheses? Michael Devitt ( [2006a] , [2006b] ) argues, on the basis of a hypothesis concerning the psychology of such judgments, that linguists themselves are. We present empirical evidence suggesting that the relevant divide is not between linguists and non-linguists, but between subjects with and without minimally sufficient task-specific knowledge. In particular, we show that subjects with at least some minimal exposure to or knowledge of such tasks tend (...) to perform consistently with one another—greater knowledge of linguistics makes no further difference—while at the same time exhibiting markedly greater in-group consistency than those who have no previous exposure to or knowledge of such tasks and their goals. (shrink)

Linguistic intuitions are a central source of evidence across a variety of linguistic domains. They have also long been a source of controversy. This chapter aims to illuminate the etiology and evidential status of at least some linguistic intuitions by relating them to error signals of the sort posited by accounts of on-line monitoring of speech production and comprehension. The suggestion is framed as a novel reply to Michael Devitt’s claim that linguistic intuitions are theory-laden “central systems” responses, rather than (...) endorsed outputs of a modularized language faculty (the “Voice of Competence”). Along the way, it is argued that linguistic intuitions may not constitute a natural kind with a common etiology; and that, for a range of cases, the process by which intuitions used in linguistics are generated amounts to little more than comprehension. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the accounting scandals of the early 2000s, the accounting profession experienced increased legislation and rules regulating ethical behavior of professional accountants and accounting firms. This paper considers ethics education for professional accountants (particularly Certified Public Accountants (CPAs)) and concludes that there is a need for a broader, principles-based approach to continuing professional ethics (CPE) in the United States. This conclusion is supported by the recent trend toward principles-based global ethics standards and a review of the current (...) professional standards and CPE requirements for ethics education for CPAs. We present tools, such as listing core values, creation of a personal mission statement, and the utilization of a comprehensive ethical decision-making framework, that can be incorporated into ethics CPE courses for CPAs, ethics education in academic programs, and ethical decisions in practice. We also present results from a survey about ethical dilemmas distributed to a sample of CPAs taking CPE ethics courses. Consistent with our expectations, we find that for ethical dilemmas in which professional standards more clearly apply and the facts were less ambiguous, the CPAs in the sample responded with higher average levels of ethicality and more agreement than for ethical dilemmas when professional standards were not as applicable and facts were more ambiguous. Finally, the paper demonstrates how a comprehensive ethical decision-making framework may be applied to ethical dilemmas, particularly those that cannot be satisfactorily resolved using a rulesbased approach and makes recommendations for future research. (shrink)

Pragmatism has recently gained ground as a theoretical perspective in sociology. The approach is not without its critics, however. One common charge is that pragmatism is oriented toward the micro and not well suited for the explanation of meso- or macro-level events, processes, or outcomes. In this paper—a review essay—I consider whether the charge has merit. I examine four studies that draw heavily on pragmatism and give some indication of its explanatory potential. Taken together, these studies suggest that pragmatism has (...) much to offer analysts of large-scale social phenomena. At the same time, key issues remain to be worked out. (shrink)

In this title, new and established scholars demonstrate the application of feminism in a range of academic disciplines including history, philosophy, politics, and sociology.

The speech-to-song illusion ( Deutsch et al., 2011 ) tracks the perceptual transformation from speech to song across repetitions of a brief spoken utterance. Because it involves no change in the stimulus itself, but a dramatic change in its perceived affiliation to speech or to music, it presents a unique opportunity to comparatively investigate the processing of language and music. In this study, native English-speaking participants were presented with brief spoken utterances that were subsequently repeated ten times. The utterances were (...) drawn either from languages that are relatively difficult for a native English speaker to pronounce, or languages that are relatively easy for a native English speaker to pronounce. Moreover, the repetition could occur at regular or irregular temporal intervals. Participants rated the utterances before and after the repetitions on a 5-point Likert-like scale ranging from “sounds exactly like speech” to “sounds exactly like singing.” The difference in ratings before and after was taken as a measure of the strength of the speech-to-song illusion in each case. The speech-to-song illusion occurred regardless of whether the repetitions were spaced at regular temporal intervals or not; however, it occurred more readily if the utterance was spoken in a language difficult for a native English speaker to pronounce. Speech circuitry seemed more liable to capture native and easy-to-pronounce languages, and more reluctant to relinquish them to perceived song across repetitions. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 16th century in Germany, religious ends and human art joined forces to produce a sacred rhetoric: a rhetoric that could transform human nature, and explain at the same time how such transformation was possible according to both science and scripture. No longer was it enough to ask in Scholastic fashion ‘What is man?’ - his essence and unique faculties, his special place in God’s world. A new question took on urgency in the wake of religious (...) reformation, namely ‘What could man become?’ But theology alone could not provide a practical response to this question. Rhetoric, in its various adopted forms, could. Consequently rhetoric emerged as architectonic of the human sciences in Reformation Germany, shaping pedagogy as a practical art. Whereas scholars have paid a good deal of attention to the way in which the exact sciences such as mathematics influenced Enlightenment human science, the history of human science as practical art has received little attention. This article contributes to such a history by showing how rhetoric as a practical protreptic art structured human scientific initiatives in the wake of Philipp Melanchthon’s Reformation pedagogy. (shrink)

The introduction of respiratory machines in the 1950s may have saved the lives of many, but it also challenged the notion of death itself. This development endowed “machines” with the power to form a unique ontological creature: a live body with a “dead” brain. While technology may be blamed for complicating things in the first place, it is also called on to solve the resulting quandaries. Indeed, it is not the birth of the “brain-dead” that concerns us most, but rather (...) its association with a web of epistemological and ethical considerations, where technology plays a central role. The brain death debate in Israel introduces highly sophisticated religious thought and authoritative medical expertise. At focus are the religious acceptance and rejection of brain death by a technologically savvy group of rabbis whose religious doctrine––along with a particular form of religious reasoning––is used to support the truth claims made from the scientific community but challenge the ways in which they are made credible. In our case, brain death as “true” death is made religiously viable with the very use of technological apparatus and scientific rhetoric that stand at the heart of the scientific ethos. (shrink)

An overview of debates surrounding the use of meta-linguistic judgments in linguistics, including recent relevant empirical results.

Normal mature human language users arguably possess two kinds of knowledge of meaning. On the one hand, they possess semantic knowledge that rationalizes their linguistic behavior. This knowledge can be characterized homophonically, can be self-ascribed without adverting to 3rd-person evidence, and is accessible to consciousness. On the other hand, there are empirical grounds for ascribing to them knowledge, or cognition, of a compositional semantic theory. This knowledge lacks the three qualities listed above. This paper explores the possible relations among these (...) two kinds of semantic knowledge. Is the former derived from the latter? Do these ascriptions in fact characterize the same states albeit in different ways? Special attention is paid to the varying philosophical and empirical commitments that different answers incur. (shrink)

Using philosophical guidelines--and applying these guidelines throughout a patient's lifespan--this text assists readers in making ethically sound choices in nursing. It explores both traditional and contemporary ethical theories and acknowledges changing trends in the health field, incorporating issues such as managed care. Includes clinical case studies within each chapter. Incorporates a new organization in Part Two, in three sections entitled "Developmental Highlights," "Issues and Problems," and "Morally Reasoned Nursing Interventions." Provides new "What if?" questions throughout to help apply theory to (...) real events. Offers extensive analysis of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Includes thorough coverage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its moral complexities. Discusses organ transplantation and experimental medical treatments in ethical context. Ideal for practicing nurses looking for a reference on professional ethics. (shrink)

We raise three issues concerning the Eichenbaum, Otto & Cohen (1994) model. (1) We argue against the strict division of labor that Eichenbaum et al. attribute to neocortical and limbic regions. (2) We raise the possibility that the anterior and posterior portions of the hippocampus may be important for different types of information processing. (3) We argue that, rather than reflecting relational processing, different neural responses to “match” and “nonmatch” trials may relate to different required spatial responses.

This book describes the development of the scientific article from its modest beginnings to the global phenomenon that it has become today. The authors focus on changes in the style, organization, and argumentative structure of scientific communication over time. This outstanding resource is the definitive study on the rhetoric of science.

It is fascinating to see the extent to which European thought took a melancholic turn in the decades before World War I.Almost simultaneously, a number of related ideas became matters of major concern, particularly for middle-class intellectuals. Among these were the notion that life is by nature “incomplete,” that there is an irreconcilable opposition between desire and fulfillment, that the contemporary world is ugly and “impure,” and that existence itself is in a “fallen” state and apparently unredeemable. These ideas stimulated (...) a mood of melancholic sadness, since the realm of values and the realm of matter were by all appearances unbridgeable. Not surprisingly, a whole literary and philosophical generation felt compelled to speak of the “tragic,” or the “tragic vision,” or “tragic consciousness.”. (shrink)

There is no serious work of which I am aware that does not consider the artistic and literary doctrine of “socialist realism” an intellectual disaster. When Zhdanov announced this doctrine as official Soviet policy at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, his words put an end to a variety of artistic experiments which had taken place within the context of the Russian and European Left during the previous two decades. Suddenly socialist realism, or Zhdanovism, became the only “correct” (...) Marxist approach to the question of what art in general, and literature in particular, should say, and how it should say it. (shrink)

Military Medical Ethics for the 21st Century is the first full length, broad-based treatment of this important subject. Written by an international team of practitioners and academics, this book provides interdisciplinary insights into the major issues facing military-medical decision makers and critically examines the tensions and dilemmas inherent in the military and medical professions. In this book the authors explore the practice of battlefield bioethics, medical neutrality and treatment of the wounded, enhancement technologies for war fighters, the potential risks of (...) dual-use biotechnologies, patient rights for active duty personnel, military medical research and military medical ethics education in the 21st Century. (shrink)

Rimé makes the important observation that the literature on adult emotion and emotion regulation has largely focused on the individual level of analysis. He argues, we believe correctly, that emotion research would benefit by addressing the fact that emotional events provoke not only individual responses, but systematic social responses as well. We present examples of our own research that are in accord with Rimé's central claims, and that demonstrate the benefits of considering the goals that are provoked and satisfied by (...) emotions, as well as the social context of emotional responding. We conclude by advocating a dynamic systems approach that would allow an integration of individual and social levels of analysis in the study of adult emotion and emotion regulation. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 50-52.

A discrição da presença do princípio de reciprocidade na formulação hobbesiana oblitera importantes dimensões na sua teoria. Entre estas, a necessidade intrínseca de que os súditos estejam instados a utilizar a sua capacidade de produzir juízos. Apresentam-se diversas circunstâncias que corroboram essa tese, o que mostra que a atividade de julgar não foi confiscada pelo soberano. Ao contrário, ela é mesmo necessária para o seu sistema.

After the question “how could Hobbes write the natural law, if it is nowritten law?” I’ll try to approach the relationship between natural and civil law after the instauration of the commonwealth. In this sense, I’ll pay attention to the hobbesian distinction among “written law” and “written register” of law and a few consequences after this distinction. For example, if, how Hobbes says, the correct interpretation of natural law doesn’t depend on philosophers, but only on the authority of commonwealth, would (...) include itself the legitimation of the formulation of the natural laws? The paradox of the first question seems to be important, however, negligenced from hobbesian critical literature. Its intent is to investigate this negligence into better understanding his philosophical postulate, that includes important points like the “silence of law”, the right of self-defense, foro interno and foro externo, State and government. (shrink)

About 6,000 individuals participate in the U.S. transplant system as a living organ donor each year. Organ donation by living individuals is a unique procedure, where healthy patients undergo a major surgical operation without any direct functional benefit to themselves. In this article, the authors explore how the ideal of informed consent guides education and evaluation for living organ donation. The authors posit that informed consent for living organ donation is a process. Though the steps in this process are partially (...) standardized through national health policy, they can be improved through institutional structures at the local, transplant center-level. Effective structures and practices aimed at supporting and promoting comprehensive informed consent provide more opportunities for candidates to ask questions about the risks and benefits of living donation and to opt out voluntarily Additionally, these practices could enable new ways of measuring knowledge and improving the consent process. (shrink)

Research on opioid use in pregnancy is critically important to understand how the opioid epidemic has affected a generation of children, but also raises significant ethical and legal challenges. Embedded ethicists can help to fill the gaps in ethics oversight for such research, but further guidance is needed to help strike the balance between integration and independence.