This brief volume is the first in a series of monographs designed to introduce the main types of ethical theory from ancient Greece to the present. The series provides an historical purview for the beginner, brief but accurate, interspersed with critical evaluation from a modern analytic point of view. Huby's volume on Greek Ethics is more expository than evaluative in nature, with most attention directed toward Plato and Aristotle. Some of the virtues of the volume, in spite of the lack (...) of critical comment, are: 1) The attempt to show the historical continuity of problems. ; 2) A careful treatment of Greek terms, notably physis, nomos, arete, dikaios, sophrosyne, philia, eros, emphasizing multiple meanings and connotations and, where necessary, indicating any differences between Greek and present day usage which might tend to confuse the reader.—C. L. H. (shrink)

The principal contemporary moral views are treated under three headings: 1) Intuitionism, represented by G. E. Moore, H. A. Prichard, and W. D. Ross; 2) Emotivism, as expounded by C. L. Stevenson; and 3) Prescriptivism, R. M. Hare's view. Warnock carefully distinguishes the questions these views were designed to answer from the questions which he feels they do in fact answer. Warnock emphasizes throughout the problem of the relation between moral discourse and conduct, as well as the question of the (...) possibility of moral "argument" in the sense of giving "reasons" for a moral viewpoint. In the latter half of the volume Warnock sketches what he takes to be some of the necessary requirements for a more adequate moral theory. He discusses "Naturalism" and rejects the blanket term as misleading unless the precise view one labels "naturalistic" is spelled out. Warnock distinguishes two "anti-naturalist" views: 1) that description and evaluation are different, i.e., that evaluation is not "reducible" to description and 2) that they are logically independent. He considers 1) a platitude. He accepts 2), but rejects what might be considered a further implication of this view—that absolutely anything might be regarded as a criterion of evaluation. In conclusion Warnock suggests that it might be profitable to look for the distinctive features of moral discourse in the content rather than the form. A good introduction to critical thinking, Warnock's account raises more questions than it answers.—C. L. H. (shrink)

Mrs. Warnock opens her discussion with a warning against the attempt to define existentialism, or to treat it as a single, unified position. With this warning in mind, she then proceeds to trace some of the general features of existentialist "ethics" through the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre. Mrs. Warnock sees the common aim of these thinkers as the attempt to "free people from illusion." She particularly stresses 1) the breakdown of the distinction between thinking and feeling, and the (...) resultant blurring of the line between an ethics and the rest of each thinker's philosophy; and 2) the breakdown of the distinction between feeling and acting—in Sartre's words "we try to change the world." Throughout the volume the import of the role of freedom, choice, and anguish are emphasized.—C. L. H. (shrink)

At Moore’s time, the main-stream ethical theory is the doctrine that pleasure alone is good as an end as held by the hedonistic utilitarianism. Moore, however, asserts that good, not composed of any parts, is a simple notion and indefinable, and naturalistic ethical theories, in particular hedonistic utilitarianism, interpret intrinsic good as a property of a single natural object---pleasure, which is also the sole end of life, thus violates naturalistic fallacy. Moore seems to believe that there exist things other than (...) pleasure that are also intrinsically good and has searched for them. But Moore has not clearly stated what these things are, nor has he given any justification for why they are intrinsically good. This paper discusses Moore’s arguments and difficulties of utilitarianism. With the subjectivistic utilitarian theory of value, Unified Utilitarian Theory (UTT) discards the classification of value into intrinsic and instrumental and proves to be exempt of all theexisting difficulties with utilitarianism related to pleasure, including naturalistic fallacy, vagueness of pleasure and sole end of life, double counting, etc. (shrink)

Given a set of objects characterized by a number of attributes, hidden patterns can be discovered in them for the grouping of similar objects into clusters. If each of these clusters can be considered as exemplifying a certain concept, then the problem concerned can be referred to as a concept discovery problem. This concept discovery problem can be solved to some extent by existing data clustering techniques. However, they may not be applicable when the concept involved is vague in nature (...) or when the attributes characterizing the objects can be qualitative, quantitative, and fuzzy at the same time. To discover such concepts from objects with such characteristics, we propose a Genetic-Algorithm-based technique. By encoding a specific object grouping in a chromosome and a fitness measure to evaluate the cluster quality, the proposed technique is able to discover meaningful fuzzy clusters and assign membership degrees to objects that do not fully exemplify a certain concept. For evaluation, we tested the proposed technique with simulated and real data and the results are found to be very promising. (shrink)

Health Wearable Devices enhance the quality of life, promote positive lifestyle changes and save time and money in medical appointments. However, Wearable Devices store large amounts of personal information that is accessed by third parties without user consent. This creates ethical issues regarding privacy, security and informed consent. This paper aims to demonstrate users’ ethical perceptions of the use of Wearable Devices in the health sector. The impact of ethics is determined by an online survey which was conducted from patients (...) and users with random female and male division. Results from this survey demonstrate that Wearable Device users are highly concerned regarding privacy issues and consider informed consent as “very important” when sharing information with third parties. However, users do not appear to relate privacy issues with informed consent. Additionally, users expressed the need for having shorter privacy policies that are easier to read, a more understandable informed consent form that involves regulatory authorities and there should be legal consequences the violation or misuse of health information provided to Wearable Devices. The survey results present an ethical framework that will enhance the ethical development of Wearable Technology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAdopting a temporally distant perspective on stressors reduces distress in adults. Here we investigate whether the extent to which individuals project themselves into the future influences distancing efficacy. We also examined modulating effects of age across adolescence and reactive aggression: factors associated with reduced future-thinking and poor emotion regulation. Participants read scenarios and rated negative affect when adopting a distant-future perspective, near-future perspective, or when reacting naturally. Self-report data revealed significant downregulation of negative affect during the distant-future condition, with a (...) similar though non-significant skin conductance pattern. Importantly, participants who projected further ahead showed the greatest distress reductions. While temporal distancing efficacy did not vary with age, participants reporting greater reactive aggression showed reduced distancing efficacy, and projected themselves less far into the future. Fi... (shrink)

The study examines the ontological similarity between the concept of competitor orientation and questionable intelligence-gathering efforts. Respondents from the hotel industry were surveyed with self-administered questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to identify the structure underlying variables of market orientation and ethical judgment on questionable intelligence-gathering efforts. The results suggest that the surveyed hotel managers are unable to distinguish the legitimate tactics of competitor orientation from the questionable practice of industrial espionage.

The concept of evolvability—the capacity of a population to produce and maintain evolutionarily relevant variation—has become increasingly prominent in evolutionary biology. Paleontology has a long history of investigating questions of evolvability, but paleontological thinking has tended to neglect recent discussions, because many tools used in the current evolvability literature are challenging to apply to the fossil record. The fundamental difficulty is how to disentangle whether the causes of evolutionary patterns arise from variational properties of traits or lineages rather than being (...) due to selection and ecological success. Despite these obstacles, the fossil record offers unique and growing sources of data that capture evolutionary patterns of sustained duration and significance otherwise inaccessible to evolutionary biologists. Additionally, there exist a variety of strategic possibilities for combining prominent neontological approaches to evolvability with those from paleontology. We illustrate three of these possibilities with quantitative genetics, evolutionary developmental biology, and phylogenetic models of macroevolution. In conclusion, we provide a methodological schema that focuses on the conceptualization, measurement, and testing of hypotheses to motivate and provide guidance for future empirical and theoretical studies of evolvability in the fossil record. (shrink)

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recently declared transhumance pastoralism as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The notion of heritage seeks to recognize the culture behind the seasonal grazing movements along herding routes, between distant and dissimilar ecosystems. The pastoral families move with their herds from pasturelands used during the winter (winter-lands) to areas pastured during the summer (summer-lands). Whereas this is a key step towards the recognition of the cultural dimension associated to this ancient practice, a (...) relevant feature of transhumance pastoralism is its strong linkage with environmental dynamics. This activity developed in a spatiotemporal and co-evolutionary trajectory, which gave rise to a pastoral territory. A territory is the union or linkage of a meaning with a specific place, that is, the space that is appropriated and valued, both symbolically and instrumentally, by human groups. Hence, the pastoral territory represents the socio-ecological system that integrates a pastoral-based community with the natural environment that it inhabits. We propose a co-evolutionary approach to analyzing some key attributes of transhumant pastoralism, which modulate the socio-ecological interdependence. Based on a study case from Northwest Patagonia, Argentina, we identified and characterized seven attributes: (I) mobility, (II) connectivity, (III) temporal synchrony, (IV) local interdependence, (V) local ecological knowledge, (VI) adaptive capacity legacy, and (VII) mixture of land tenure. We discuss these features as examples that represent keystone socio-ecological attributes for the recognition of transhumant pastoral territories as a biocultural heritage. (shrink)

Moral Case Deliberations are reflective dialogues with a group of participants on their own moral dilemmas. Although MCD is successful as clinical ethics support, it also has limitations. 1. Lessons learned from individual MCDs are not shared in order to be used in other contexts 2. Moral learning stays limited to the participants of the MCD; 3. MCD requires quite some organisational effort, 4. MCD deals with one individual concrete case. It does not address other, similar cases. These limitations warrant (...) research into complementary ways of providing CES to healthcare professionals. Our research objective was therefore to develop a low threshold CES tool based on a series of MCDs on autonomy in long-term care. We used a qualitative research design in which we analyzed the process and content of a series of MCDs, combined with reflections on the theoretical background of MCD. In total 28 MCDs were analyzed by means of a thematic content analysis. In various rounds of development, the results of the analysis were combined with theoretical reflections on CES. Consequently, the tool was evaluated in three focus groups and adjusted. The CES tool, called ‘moral compass’, guides the users through a series of six subsequent questions in order to methodically reflect on their concrete moral dilemma, in the form of a booklet of 23 pages. It combines a methodical element that encourages and structures a reflection process with a substantive element, including norms, values, options, strategies, and insights regarding dealing with client autonomy. By using data from a series of MCDs, combined with theoretical reflections on MCD, ethics support and moral learning, we developed a thematic, low-threshold CES tool that supports healthcare professionals in daily practice in dealing with moral questions regarding client autonomy. It integrates examples and insights from earlier MCDs on the same topic. The moral compass is not a replacement of, but can be used complementary to MCD. The feasibility and impact of the moral compass need to be investigated in an evaluative follow-up study. The methodology presented in this paper may be used to develop moral compasses on different topics in various healthcare organizations. (shrink)

This volume of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus contains several works intended for scholarship in Classics. It includes discourse on the correct pronunciation of Latin and Greek, rhetoric, and Classical Latin, in a compendium of the handbook by Lorenzo Valla, as well as a declamation in praise of medicine.

Mole's (2008 [this issue]) argument that consciousness is a necessary concomitant of attention rests on the question of what is being attended in spatial attention. His answer is space. Some authors, including ourselves, claim that the fact that the processing of unseen objects can be modulated by spatial attention (e.g. Kentridge et al., 1999; 2004; 2008; Marzouki et al., 2007; Sumner et al., 2006) demonstrates that visual attention is not a sufficient precondition for visual awareness. Mole, however, contends that as (...) space, rather than any object that might occupy that space, is what is being attended, these experiments do not constitute evidence for a dissociation between attention and consciousness. We disagree. To understand the source of this disagreement we need to understand the various processes encompassed by the term 'attention' and to consider experimental evidence illustrating how these processes operate. We review evidence that spatial attention can be deployed with the specific goal of determining the properties of objects occupying the attended region of space. One might, for example, attend to a location with the goal of determining the colour of objects occupying that space as efficiently as possible. Mole's assumption that all that is attended in spatial attention is space is not consistent with this evidence. We conclude that attention can be directed at objects by mechanisms of so- called 'spatial attention' without those objects necessarily eliciting conscious visual experience and hence that attention is not a sufficient precondition for visual awareness. (shrink)

Hypnotic responding might be due to attenuated frontal lobe functioning after the hypnotic induction. Little is known about whether personality traits linked with frontal functioning are associated with responsiveness to hypnotic suggestions. We assessed whether hypnotic suggestibility is related to the traits of self-control and impulsivity in 154 participants who completed the Brief Self-Control Scale, the Self-Regulation Scale, the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale , and the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility . BIS-11 non-planning impulsivity correlated positively with HGSHS:A . Furthermore, (...) in the best model emerging from a stepwise multiple regression, both non-planning impulsivity and self-control positively predicted hypnotic suggestibility, and there was an interaction of BIS-11 motor impulsivity with gender. For men only, motor impulsivity tended to predict hypnotic suggestibility. Hypnotic suggestibility is associated with personality traits linked with frontal functioning, and hypnotic responding in men and women might differ. (shrink)