Standard models of cognition are built from abstract, amodal, arbitrary symbols, and the meanings of those symbols are given solely by their interrelations. The target article (Glenberg 1997t) argues that these models must be inadequate because meaning cannot arise from relations among abstract symbols. For cognitive representations to be meaningful they must, at the least, be grounded; but abstract symbols are difficult, if not impossible, to ground. As an alternative, the target article developed a framework in which representations are grounded (...) in perception and action, and hence are embodied. Recent work (Glenberg & Robertson 1999; 2000; Glenberg & Kaschak 2002; Kaschak & Glenberg 2000) extends this framework to language. (shrink)

The tutelage of our mentors as scientists included the analogy that writing a good scientific paper was an exercise in storytelling that omitted unessential details that did not move the story forward or that detracted from the overall message. However, the advice to not get lost in the details had an important flaw. In science, it is the many details of the data themselves and the methods used to generate and analyze them that give conclusions their probative meaning. Facts may (...) sometimes slow or distract from the clarity, tidiness, intrigue, or flow of the narrative, but nevertheless they are important for the assessment of what was done, the trustworthiness of the science, and the meaning of the findings. Nevertheless, many critical elements and facts about research studies may be omitted from the narrative and become hidden from scholarly scrutiny. We describe a “baker’s dozen” shortfalls in which such elements that are pertinent to evaluating the validity of scientific studies are sometimes hidden in reports of the work. Such shortfalls may be intentional or unintentional or lie somewhere in between. Additionally, shortfalls may occur at the level of the individual or an institution or of the entire system itself. We conclude by proposing countermeasures to these shortfalls. (shrink)

Alfandre et al. helpfully outlines the case for attending to contingency planning as well as to crisis measures during a pandemic. The authors provides a helpful framework for reflecting on...

Emotion dysregulation (ED) is a vulnerability factor for affective disorders that may originate from deficits in cognitive control (CC). Although measures of ED are often designed to assess trait-like tendencies, the extent to which such measures capture a time-varying (TV) or state-like construct versus a time-invariant (TI) or trait-like personality characteristic is unclear. The link between the TV and TI components of ED and CC is also unclear. In a 6-wave, 5-month longitudinal study, community participants (n = 1281) completed the (...) Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-16), a commonly used measure of ED and measures of CC. A latent variable (trait-state-occasion) model showed that the proportion of TI factor variance (.80) was greater than the TV factor variance (.19). Although TV factor stability was significant, the coefficients were small in magnitude. Furthermore, regression weights for the ED TI factor (average β = −.62) were significant and larger than those for the TV factor (average β = −.10) in predicting latent CC at each of the six-time points. These findings suggest that ED, as assessed by the DERS-16, is largely TI and this TI component is more strongly linked to CC than the TV component. (shrink)

This article explores Karl Rahner’s conception of the “Liturgy of the World” in light of the theme for the 2019 Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America, “Another World is Possible: Violence, Resistance and Transformation.” Employing Rahner’s hermeneutics of worship, violence can be conceived as a denial of this cosmic liturgy, transformation as conversion to it, and resistance as the stance opposing the denial. Resistance entails solidarity with all humanity in liturgical participation and in action for social justice. (...) Metz’s political-theological critique of Rahner, with assistance from Bruce Morrill’s analysis of Metz’s work for liturgical theology, and Rahner’s reference to Teilhard’s “Cosmic Mass,” taken today in light of contemporary cosmology with assistance from Roger Haight’s non-dualistic approach to models of God, are among the implications to be considered for engaging Rahner’s vision in ongoing efforts at liturgical renewal. (shrink)

As necessary austerity measures make major inroads into western health services, this paper investigates the philology of austerity and finds that there are two subtly similar yet importantly different derivations from the Latin and the Greek. The Latin austerus is an abstract term meaning dry, harsh, sour; whereas the Greek austeros has a more embodied and literal meaning of making the tongue dry. What seems an initially subtle difference between the metaphorical and the metonymic plays out as involving seriously different (...) outcomes between harsh economic measures and the literal effects on the people suffering under measures that actually make the tongue dry. The paper argues that between the trope and the literal that which Wittgenstein described as ‘a language game’ ensues wherein the metaphorical through a sleight of grammar is passed off as being real while, the literal effects on real people is downplayed as metaphorical ‘collateral damage’. The paper further argues that within this grammar that forces itself upon us, the game of capital is played out through what the author terms an austerity bargain that is levelled by the financial elites: healthy capitalism equals a healthy society. The paper then examines the six elements of the social determinants of health and what actually contributes to a healthy society. Rather than being under an individual threat of exclusion from what Marx termed a superabundance, the paper considers the irreducible differences between the game of capital's individualism, and, the social determinants of health's social inclusion, legitimization and that which Habermas termed public authentication. The paper concludes that not only do necessary austerity measures need to be critiqued but that they radically undermine what determines a healthy society. It follows also that the social determinants of health, radically undermine the bargain inherent for the privileged few within the game of capital. (shrink)

In 2017 we published a paper in this journal proposing a philosophical framework for recognizing ecological communities as natural entities, the Evolutionary Community Concept. That paper attracted a lengthy reply; herein we take the opportunity to clarify critical aspects of the ECC and use a case study to demonstrate how the ECC can be made operational. We maintain the ECC provides a framework useful for establishing objectives associated with ongoing and proposed restoration and conservation efforts.

Many theories assimilate the idioms of modality to those of quantification; they hold that so-and-so is possible iff there is a "world" at which it is true that so-and-so. "Modal realism" identifies worlds with certain concrete particulars, and truth at a world with what is true of it. Rival "ersatz" theories identify worlds with certain abstract entities and identify what is true at them with what they represent. ;David Lewis argues that pre-theoretic modal intuitions are best explained by modal (...) realism. I try to make a case for ersatzism. ;First, I argue that modal realism is flawed on the grounds that it entails the impossibility of certain intuitively possible spatiotemporal structures; it fails to explain fully even those intuitions with which it is compatible; and it renders the origin of modal knowledge mysterious. ;Next, I argue that objections to ersatzism are not conclusive. ;Lewis objects that even a generic version of ersatzism requires an unnameable and maybe unintelligible primitive relation. I suggest that the problems with naming are perfectly general; they have nothing to do with metaphysical theories of modality in particular. And I suggest a solution taken from Lewis himself. I also argue that any purported unintelligibility is due to illegitimately assimilating the relation to spatiotemporal relations. ;Finally, I consider some difficulties with a version of ersatzism that aims to reduce modality to impure set-theory. One concerns the accommodation of intuitions about properties that are not, but might have been, instantiated. Another concerns accommodation of intuitions about relations of exclusion and entailment among properties. I suggest that these difficulties are due to faulty assumptions about the nature of properties rather than any fundamental flaws in this ersatz approach. So I propose an account of properties that when incorporated into ersatzism circumvents these difficulties and allows it to claim the advantages of modal realism without its drawbacks. Unlike traditional accounts, this takes the essence of a property to consist in its role in imposing a certain classificational structure on the particulars that instantiate it, rather than in any unique and irreducible "quiddity". (shrink)

Objective: To explore the relationship between pharmacists'' tenure in the community setting and their moral reasoning abilities. Design: Systematic random sample design. Setting: A large southeastern city in the United States. Participants:450 independent and chain community pharmacists identified from the state board of pharmacy list of licenced community pharmacists. Interventions: A mailed questionnaire that included a well-known moral reasoning instrument and collected demographic information. Main Outcome Measures: Moral Reasoning abilities and tenure of community pharmacists. Results: As a group, community pharmacists (...) with greater years of tenure in community practice scored significantly lower on moral reasoning than those pharmacists with fewer years of tenure (p = 0.016). Conclusion: Four plausible explanations for the results are given including: a) a selection of lower ethical reasoners and/or an exodus of higher ethical reasoners from the community setting; b) a retrogression in the moral reasoning skills as community pharmacists obtain tenure in this setting; c) differences between the low and high moral reasoning groups may be due to a cohort effect; and d) the obtained practitioner sample may not have been representative of the population of community pharmacists. (shrink)

Ethical reflection on the practice of war stands in a long tradition in Western philosophy and theology, a tradition which begins with the writings of Plato and Augustine and encompasses accounts of justified warfare offered by writers from the Medieval period to the present. Ethical reflection on nuclear war is of necessity a more recent theme. The past few years have seen an enormous increase in popular as well as scholarly concern with nuclear issues, and philosophers have joined theologians in (...) exploring the moral issues surrounding the harnessing of atomic forces in the service of war. (shrink)

In his autobiographical-biographical study, Father and Son, Edmund Gosse describes how one evening, during his childhood, while his father was praying at - or, rather, over - his bed, a rather large insect dark and flat, with more legs than a self-respecting insect ought to need, appeared at the bottom of the counterpane, and slowly advanced… I bore it in silent fascination till it almost tickled my chin, and then I screamed ‘Papa! Papa!’. My Father rose in great dudgeon, removed (...) the insect and then gave me a tremendous lecture. 1. (shrink)

How do people attribute responsibility in situations where the contributions of multiple agents combine to produce a joint outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. In this article, we explore a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts. We draw on the structural model account of actual causation (e.g., Halpern & Pearl, 2005) and its extension to responsibility judgments (Chockler & Halpern, 2004). We review the main (...) theoretical and empirical issues that arise from this literature and propose a novel model of intuitive judgments of responsibility. This model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from previous studies and is supported by a new experiment that manipulates both pivotality and criticality. We also discuss possible extensions of this model to deal with a broader range of causal situations. Overall, our approach emphasizes the close interrelations between causality, counterfactuals, and responsibility attributions. (shrink)

This article explores the opportunities and challenges of using journalistic exemplars in the digital network to explicate intellectual virtues necessary for flourishing in that network. It seeks to advance media ethics theorizing by drawing together exemplar-based virtue theory, specifically Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory, and work on intellectual virtues, in particular Baehr’s delineation of nine intellectual virtues. After a description of theoretical foundations, this article articulates an approach to identifying and explicating intellectual virtues through journalistic exemplars in the digital network. It (...) then applies this approach to the work of two journalists who have frequently and thoughtfully used social media. This exploratory analysis suggests the proposed approach holds promise for explication of individual virtues and identification of patterns among them. The approach also carries challenges and limitations, partly related to the nature and scope of virtual evidence for enactment of virtues by journalists. The authors suggest future research to minimize these limitations and continue advancing theorizing within this framework. (shrink)

It is well-known that the invocation of `equilibrium processes' in thermodynamics is oxymoronic. However, their prevalence and utility, particularly in elementary accounts, presents a problem. We consider a way in which their role can be played by sets of sequences of processes demarcated by curves carrying the property of accessibility. We also examine the vexed question of whether equilibrium processes are necessarily reversible and the revision of this property in relation to sets of sequences of such processes.

Comments that perhaps few psychologists would now describe themselves as strict behaviorists; however, a review of the literature suggests that methodological and radical behaviorism continue to exert a powerful influence on current research, even in such nominally cognitive areas as imagery and hypothesis learning. In many ways this influence has been healthy, leading to a productive emphasis on the importance of environmental variables in shaping behavior, but some of its consequences have been rather less benign. After reviewing the historical arguments (...) against the use of introspection, the author concludes that most either are invalid or no longer possess their original force, so the benefits from a wider use of introspection now seem likely to outweigh the possible costs. (shrink)

A natural experiment was conducted studying the relations among student cheating, motivation, religiosity, and attitudes toward cheating. Students enrolled in a dual religious/college curriculum were surveyed regarding their cheating behavior, attitudes toward cheating, religiosity, and learning/grade motivations toward classes. Business and liberal arts college students were represented. Results strongly support the following conclusions. First, grade orientation is associated with increases in self-reported cheating. Second, among these religious students, more religiosity correlates with reduced reports of cheating in all courses. This result (...) appears to be due to the unique effect of religion on self-reported cheating rates and, depending on course content, on a reduction of grade orientation in religious students. Third, business students report more cheating than their liberal arts counterparts, even when taking the same courses. They have less critical attitudes toward cheating and greater grade orientation, both of which statistically contribute to this difference, but other factors are involved as well. Keywords: academic integrity, motivation, religiosity, cheating. (shrink)

An exploratory model is presented as a heuristic to indicate how individual perceptions of corporate reputation (before joining) and corporate ethical values (after joining) generate specific individual organizational senses of fit. The paper suggests that an ethical dimension of person-organization fit may go some way in explaining superior acquisition and retention of staff by those who are attracted to specific organizations by levels of corporate social performance consonant with their ethical expectations, or who remain with them by virtue of better (...) personal ethical fits with extant organizational ethical values. Specifically, the model suggests that individual misfits that arise from ethical expectations that either exceed or fall short of perceived organizational ethical performances lead to problematic acquisition and retention behavioural outcomes. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida's extensive early writings devoted considerable attention to "being as presence," the reality underlying the history of metaphysics. In Derrida on Being as Presence: Questions and Quests, David A. White develops the intricate conceptual structure of this notion by close exegetical readings drawn from these writings. White discusses cardinal concepts in Derrida's revamping of theoretical considerations pertaining to language--signification, context, negation, iterability--as these considerations depend on the structure of being as presence and also as they ground "deconstructive" reading. (...) White's appraisal raises questions invoking a range of problems. He deploys these questions in conjunction with thematically related quests that arise given Derrida's conviction that the history of metaphysics, as variations on being as presence, has concealed and skewed vital elements of reality. White inflects this critical apparatus concerning being as presence with texts drawn from that history--e.g., by Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Hume, Kant, Whitehead. The essay concludes with a speculative ensemble of provisional categories, or zones of specificity. Implementing these categories will ground the possibility that philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular can be pursued in ways which acknowledge the relevance of Derrida's thought when integrated with the philosophical enterprise as traditionally understood. (shrink)

In this clear and reasoned discussion of self- knowledge and the self, the author asks whether it is really possible to know ourselves as we really are. He illuminates issues about the nature of self-identity which are of fundamental importance in moral psychology, epistemology and literary criticism. Jopling focuses on the accounts of Stuart Hampshire, Jean-Paul Sartre and Richard Rorty, and dialogical philosophical psychology and illustrates his argument with examples from literature, drama and psychology.

This essay that takes up Rawls's journey from philosophical theology through moral philosophy to democratic theory and political philosophy and pauses at, to reflect on, a few significant points early in the journey. It aims to provide a sense of some of Rawls's important early concerns and commitments that structure or at least cast significant shadows over his later work in political philosophy, A Theory of Justice and subsequent works. According to Rawl, moral philosophers construct theoretical models to explain and (...) predict familiar, everyday, noncontroversially competent moral judgments. Rawls refers to this work as “explication” and “ethics as science.” Rawls distinguishes between two tasks essential to moral philosophy. Ethical theory or moral theory starts with but takes us beyond ethics as science by helping us to refine and deepen our understanding of plausible candidate explications. (shrink)

This paper presents a comparison of social kinship (patrilineage) and biological kinship (genetic relatedness) in predicting cooperative relationships in two different economic contexts in the fishing and whaling village of Lamalera, Indonesia. A previous analysis (Alvard, Human Nature 14:129–163, 2003) of boat crew affiliation data collected in the village in 1999 found that social kinship (patrilineage) was a better predictor of crew affiliation than was genetic kinship. A replication of this analysis using similar data collected in 2006 finds the same (...) pattern: lineage is a better predictor than genetic kinship of crew affiliation, and the two together explain little additional variance over that explained by lineage alone. However, an analogous test on food-sharing relationships finds the opposite pattern: biological kinship is a better predictor of food-sharing relationships than is social kinship. The difference between these two cooperative contexts is interpreted in terms of kin preferences that shape partner choice, and the relative autonomy with which individuals can seek to satisfy those preferences. Drawing on stable matching theory, it is suggested that unilineal descent may serve as a stable compromise among multiple individuals’ incongruent partner preferences, with patriliny favored over matriliny in the crew-formation context because it leads to higher mean degrees of relatedness among male cooperators. In the context of food-sharing, kin preferences can be pursued relatively autonomously, without the necessity of coordinating preferences with those of other households through the institution of lineage. (shrink)

In the course of an immune response, antibodies undergo affinity maturation in order to increase their efficiency in neutralizing foreign invaders. Affinity maturation occurs by the introduction of multiple point mutations in the variable region gene that encodes the antigen binding site. This somatic hypermutation is restricted to immunoglobulin genes and occurs at very high rates. The precise molecular basis of this process remains obscure. However, recent studies using a variety of in vivo and in vitro systems have revealed important (...) regulatory regions, base motifs that are preferred targets of mutation and evidence that transcription may play an active role in hypermutation. BioEssays 20:227–234, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The ultimate tool, it could be said, is the brain and body. Therefore, a way to understand tool use is to study the brain's control of the body. A more manageable aim is to use the tools of cognitive science to explore the planning of physical actions. Here, I focus on two kinds of physical acts which directly or indirectly involve tool use: producing finger‐press sequences, and walking and reaching for objects. The main question is how people make choices between (...) finger‐press sequences, and how people make choices between walk‐and‐reach sequences. Are the choices made with reference to motor imagery, in which case the longer the sequences are the longer it takes to choose between them, or are shortcuts taken which rely on distinctive features of the alternatives? The reviewed experiments favor the latter alternative. The general view of action planning emerging from this work is one in which action features are highlighted and held in memory, not just to choose between potential actions but also to control the unfolding of long actions over time. Speculations are offered about tool use. (shrink)

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the anatomy of both thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, together with the relationships between their constituent parts. Based on this analysis, using the renormalization group and finite-size scaling, we give a definition of a large but finite system and argue that phase transitions are represented correctly, as incipient singularities in such systems. We describe the role of the thermodynamic limit. And we explore the implications of this picture of critical phenomena for the questions of (...) reduction and emergence. (shrink)

Gastrulation is a key milestone in the development of an organism. It is a period of cell proliferation and coordinated cellular rearrangement, that creates an outline of the body plan. Our current understanding of mammalian gastrulation has been improved by embryo culture, but there are still many open questions that are difficult to address because of the intrauterine development of the embryos and the low number of specimens. In the case of humans, there are additional difficulties associated with technical and (...) ethical challenges. Over the last few years, pluripotent stem cell models are being developed that have the potential to become useful tools to understand the mammalian gastrulation. Here we review these models with a special emphasis on gastruloids and provide a survey of the methods to produce them robustly, their uses, relationship to embryos, and their prospects as well as their limitations. (shrink)