Health care reforms, in particular the expansion of public and/or private health care benefit coverage to some or all population groups, is becoming an increasingly hot topic for discussion—and in some cases for action—at all levels of government. With almost 16% of Americans estimated to be uninsured for at least part of the year, opinion polls show health care near the top of the general public’s list of concerns. Little wonder that presidential candidates for the 2008 election are incorporating ‘‘universal (...) health care coverage’’ proposals in their campaign platforms. Will ‘‘cradle-to-grave’’ coverage for all become a reality or will they just experience cradle-to-grave debates over this issue? That is essentially one of the questions posed in the following discussion on the role of nonprofit health care organizations in promoting, and operating under, universal health care coverage. (shrink)

Diverse lines of evidence point to a basic human aversion to physically harming others. First, we demonstrate that unwillingness to endorse harm in a moral dilemma is predicted by individual differences in aversive reactivity, as indexed by peripheral vasoconstriction. Next, we tested the specific factors that elicit the aversive response to harm. Participants performed actions such as discharging a fake gun into the face of the experimenter, fully informed that the actions were pretend and harmless. These simulated harmful actions increased (...) peripheral vasoconstriction significantly more than did witnessing pretend harmful actions or to performing metabolically-matched non-harmful actions. This suggests that the aversion to harmful actions extends beyond empathic concern for victim harm. Together, these studies demonstrate a link between the body and moral decision making processes. (shrink)

Believing in God requires not only a leap of faith but also an extension of people’s normal capacity to perceive the minds of others. Usually, people perceive minds of all kinds by trying to understand their conscious experience (what it is like to be them) and their agency (what they can do). Although humans are perceived to have both agency and experience, humans appear to see God as possessing agency, but not experience. God’s unique mind is due, the authors suggest, (...) to the uniquely moral role He occupies. In this article, the authors propose that God is seen as the ultimate moral agent, the entity people blame and praise when they receive anomalous harm and help. Support for this proposition comes from research on mind perception, morality, and moral typecasting. Interestingly, although people perceive God as the author of salvation, suffering seems to evoke even more attributions to the divine. (shrink)

The ability to learn complex tasks is fundamental to being human. Rahman and Gray examine this process in the context of learning to play a simple video game, using a tool called SpotLight to examine the low‐level process of skill and strategy improvements during this process. This paper was awarded the Allen Newell Best Student‐Led Paper Award at ICCM 2019.

Reinforcement learning approaches to cognitive modeling represent task acquisition as learning to choose the sequence of steps that accomplishes the task while maximizing a reward. However, an apparently unrecognized problem for modelers is choosing when, what, and how much to reward; that is, when (the moment: end of trial, subtask, or some other interval of task performance), what (the objective function: e.g., performance time or performance accuracy), and how much (the magnitude: with binary, categorical, or continuous values). In this article, (...) we explore the problem space of these three parameters in the context of a task whose completion entails some combination of 36 state–action pairs, where all intermediate states (i.e., after the initial state and prior to the end state) represent progressive but partial completion of the task. Different choices produce profoundly different learning paths and outcomes, with the strongest effect for moment. Unfortunately, there is little discussion in the literature of the effect of such choices. This absence is disappointing, as the choice of when, what, and how much needs to be made by a modeler for every learning model. (shrink)

This book is a commentary on the surviving testimonia and fragments of Posidonius' work collected in Volume I of this edition. Posidonius was one of the most important philosophers and intellectuals writing in the first century BC Graeco-Roman world. The purpose of this commentary is to assess the fragmentary evidence and reports of Posidonius found in the writings of about sixty ancient authors, and to separate what Posidonius himself actually said from the interpretations and distortions of his reporters. Since Posidonius (...) also wrote at length on the sciences and on geography, and composed a large History, Kidd assesses his work against the philosophical, scientific, and historical writings of Posidonius' predecessors and contemporaries. Each fragment is explored through detailed examination of its context, philosophical and scientific content, and its relationship to Posidonius' whole thought and to contemporary ideas. This commentary proved too long for one volume and thus is issued in two separate books, which are available only as a set. (shrink)

Prompted by a 2019 essay by Jonathan Moreno in the Hastings Center Report, the Center's board of directors undertook a careful examination of the name of its preeiminent award, the Henry Knowles Beecher Award, which has been given to twenty‐nine individuals who have made lifetime contributions to bioethics. citing new research that revealed that Beecher's earlier experimentation on drugs had involved nonconsenting adults, Moreno urged the Center to reevaluate honoring Beecher through this award. After reviewing the relevant published evidence and (...) holding extensive discussions, the board decided to rename the award. We also took the opportunity to reframe the award to emphasize quality of scholarship and impact on thinking, practice, and policy rather than lifetime achievement. The new name—the Founders’ Award of The Hastings Center—reflects our desire to honor not only the Center's cofounders, Daniel Callahan and Willard Gaylin, but also others who helped found the field of bioethics. With great pride, the Center has announced that Patricia King of the Georgetown University Law Center is the 2021 recipient of the Founders’ Award. A distinguished civil rights lawyer, King was instrumental in ensuring justice as one of the three principles of The Belmont Report. (shrink)

Helen Neville has gathered ERP data suggesting that accessing an “implicit” memory system produces a qualitatively different kind of ERP wave than does accessing our “explicit” conscious memory system. These results corroborate the hypothesis that an early anterior priming effect indexes activity of a system specialized for words, while a later posterior priming effect indexes access to general, episodic representations of words. Moreover, she saw no effects in the masked paradigms using pseudo-words, further supporting the notion of an early lexicon. (...) However, we might not see any effects because the tasks use stimuli too complicated for an early automatic system to encode rapidly. Hence, masked priming effects for novel stimuli might be seen immediately with very simple input patterns. The following series of experiments was designed to test this hypothesis, as well as to try to differentiate the supposed early lexicon from other sorts of early access memory systems and to characterize more fully the capabilities of these early systems. In particular, ERP waveforms are compared for unmasked and masked priming conditions using simple 5-line visual patterns in experiments requiring subjects to make rapid decisions concerning the physical structure of the shapes. (shrink)

Telling stories about our experiences in dance brings to light unconscious knowledge and memories of the past and helps us understand our own decisions and practices. Reflexivity and story telling is central in the process of remembering and embodies some of the key aspects of autoethnography as a research tool. We are directed to examine and reflect on our experiences, analyzing goals and intentions, making connections between happenings and recounting each single experience. Dance has the potential for positive impact on (...) both physical and mental health among professional dancers as well as among dance students and has the power to connect them to culture and community in unique and important ways. Research has provided evidence that arts engagement provides positive forms of social inclusion, opportunities to share arts, culture, language, and values and points to the value of the arts in the prevention and amelioration of health problems. Together with those benefits of a dance experience there is clear evidence of what can be learned in, through and about dance. In this time of the Covid-19 pandemic it seemed more relevant and poignant to examine our own experiences in dance as well as those experiences of others that have influenced our lives. (shrink)

The current practice for UK Research Ethics Committees is to invite researchers to attend meetings at which their applications are to be considered and the National Research Ethics Service strongly recommends researchers to attend. There are no available data, however, to substantiate the value of researchers' attendance and particularly on the extent to which their attendance may influence the initial decision of the committee. This study attempts to address whether it is in the researchers' interest to commit substantial time and (...) resource to attend a REC meeting through using the REC decision on the research proposal as the main outcome measure. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines ideas of individual freedom in the Hellenistic city-states. It concentrates on the civic ideas expressed in the laws and decrees of Hellenistic cities, inscribed on stone, comparing them with Hellenistic historical and philosophical works. It places different Hellenistic approaches alongside modern liberal, neo-Roman republican and civic humanist theories of individual liberty, finding some overlaps with each of those modern approaches. The argument is that the Hellenistic Greeks developed innovative ways of combining demanding ideals of civic virtue and (...) the common good with equally robust ideals of individual freedom and ethical choice. They did so not least by adapting and developing traditional Greek approaches close to modern civic humanism, in ways very relevant to modern debates about how to reconcile civic duty, the common good and pluralism. (shrink)

It is argued that the moral theory undergirding J.S. Mill''s argumentin On Liberty is a species of perfectionism rather than any kind of utilitarianism. The conception of human flourishing that itinvokes is one in which the goods of personal autonomy and individualityare central. If this conception is to be more than the expression ofa particular cultural ideal it needs the support of an empiricallyplausible view of human nature and a defensible interpretation ofhistory. Neither of these can be found in Mill. (...) Six traditionalcriticisms of Mill''s argument are assessed. It is concluded thatin addition to depending on implausible claims about human natureand history Mill''s conception of the good contains disablingincommensurabilities. It is argued that these difficulties andincommensurabilities plague later liberal thinkers such as IsaiahBerlin and Joseph Raz who have sought to ground liberalism in avalue-pluralist ethical theory. No thinker in Mill''s liberal posterity has been able to demonstrate the universal authority of liberal ideals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:76. A REFUTATION OF HUME'S THEORY OF CAUSALITY1 Given Hume's conceptions of space and time, which I take to be fundamental to his theory of causality, it is not always possible to meet all of those conditions definitive of the cause-effect relation, i.e., those "general rules, by which we may know when" objects really 2 are "causes or effects to each other" (T. 173). To show this, it will (...) be necessary, first, to give a very brief exposition of Hume's conceptions of space and time, with regard chiefly to their implications for the nature of motion. Then, after briefly summarizing his views on the nature of the cause-effect relation, I shall proceed immediately to my objection. It should be noted first, however, that, if one instance of a cause-effect relation can be found to which Hume's analysis will not apply, that, presumably, would be sufficient to refute his theory. I shall not here repeat all of Hume's arguments for the indivisibility of space and time. Suffice it to say, he takes it to be fairly obvious that each must consist of a finite number of indivisible points or moments, each of which is distinct, and therefore separate, from every other, and, in the case of time, none of which ever "co-exist." Only one of his arguments for the indivisibility of space need concern us here. The argument is brief: The infinite divisibility of space implies that of time, as is evident from the nature of motion. If the latter, therefore, be impossible, the former must be equally so. (T. 31) The argument here seems, roughly, to be this: the motion of an object can be described only by giving its positions at various times (the nature of motion). If, therefore, an object, such as a ball moving along a line AB, can be assigned an infinite number of positions taken between A and B (the infinite divisibility of space), 77. the time taken to traverse AB must also be infinite, i.e., must consist of an infinite number of instants. But the finite time taken to traverse the distance AB is not infinitely divisible; therefore, neither is the line AB. This argument, of course, relies upon the assumption that, in traversing the line AB, the ball will occupy each of the points (whether finite or infinite) of which it consists. The argument can also be turned around so as to derive the finite divisibility of time from that of space. Here, too, it must be assumed that the ball occupies each of those instants which constitute the time taken to traverse the line AB. It thus seems clear that, on Hume's view, the ball's motion can be neither more nor less divisible than the space and time it takes to move. x In its motion from A to B, then, the ball will occupy first one, then another of the points lying between A and B until finally it has occupied them all and has moved from A to B. But, in saying that it will occupy first one and then another, we are saying nothing more than that it successively occupies a series of points, and, insofar as its occupation of these different points is successive, it takes time. We are in a position, then, to define motion (at least motion along a straight line) as "the successive occupation of adjacent, linearly ordered points or places." Now, this is very different from the usual conception of motion. The ball's motion between any two adjacent points is not a moving from one to the other. It is simply its being in the one place at one instant and its being in the other place at the next. It is not a continuous motion, but the occupation of discrete places at different times. It is, as it were, a series of instantaneous leaps. This interpretation, if it is accurate, may also serve to account for Hume's ill-understood propensity for 78. referring to cause and effect as objects rather than as events. Events must, on Hume's view of time at least, be essentially static. Unlike those... (shrink)

Using various official sources, the article explores competing conceptions of the 'under- achieving ' school which have been operationalised in recent years. It suggests that there have been multiple, potentially conflicting definitions in policy discourse to which recent innovations have merely added a further layer of complexity. Using a simple conceptual framework comparing judgements made within 'standards' and 'progress' frameworks for evaluating schools' performance, it highlights the very limited range of conditions where judgements made within one tradition would complement those (...) made within the other. As the educational system begins to turn increasingly to use of so-called 'value-added' approaches as a way forward, the implications of these analyses for policy development, particularly in relation to the alleviation of social and educational disadvantage, are considered. (shrink)

A reprint, with new Introduction, of the Harper Torch edition of 1970. The famous introductory lectures collected in this volume represent the distillation of Hegel’s mature views on the three most important activities of spirit, and have the further advantage, shared by his lectures in general, of being more comprehensible than those works of his published during his lifetime. A new Introduction, Select Bibliography, Analytical Table of Contents, and the restoration in the section headings of the outline of Hegel’s lectures (...) make this new edition particularly useful and welcome. (shrink)

In the course of the preparation of the introductory article on ‘Drama’ for Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, my attention was directed, not only to the problem of the origin of this type of drama, but also to the basal meaning of the Greek term S0009838800017535_inline1. It need scarcely be said that the rise of tragedy is almost universally connected with the cult of Dionysos . On the other hand, the theory has been advanced by Crusius , Hirt , (...) and especially Ridgeway , that tragedy arose not from the Dionysos-cult, but from the desire to honour and appease the dead. It is to this latter theory that I strongly incline, and I feel that tragedy can be connected with the cult of Dionysos only through this deity's aspect of a chthonic god who gave release from the lower world and who was later identified with Attis, Adonis, and Osiris. (shrink)

Book Information Philosophy and the Maternal Body: Reading Silence. By Michelle Boulous Walker. Routledge. London and New York. 1998. Pp. x + 235.