This paper is a response to the 26 commentaries on my paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness". First, I respond to deflationary critiques, including those that argue that there is no "hard" problem of consciousness or that it can be accommodated within a materialist framework. Second, I respond to nonreductive critiques, including those that argue that the problems of consciousness are harder than I have suggested, or that my framework for addressing them is flawed. Third, I address positive (...) proposals for addressing the problem of consciousness, including those based in neuroscience and cognitive science, phenomenology, physics, and fundamental psychophysical theories. Reply to: Baars, Bilodeau, Churchland, Clark, Clarke, Crick & Koch, Dennett, Hameroff & Penrose, Hardcastle, Hodgson, Hut & Shepard, Libet, Lowe, MacLennan, McGinn, Mills, O'Hara & Scutt, Price, Robinson, Rosenberg, Seager, Shear, Stapp, Varela, Velmans. (shrink)

The ipsilesional arm of stroke patients often has functionally limiting deficits in motor control and dexterity that depend on the side of the brain that is lesioned and that increase with the severity of paretic arm impairment. However, remediation of the ipsilesional arm has yet to be integrated into the usual standard of care for upper limb rehabilitation in stroke, largely due to a lack of translational research examining the effects of ipsilesional-arm intervention. We now ask whether ipsilesional-arm training, tailored (...) to the hemisphere-specific nature of ipsilesional-arm motor deficits in participants with moderate to severe contralesional paresis, improves ipsilesional arm performance and generalizes to improve functional independence. We assessed the effects of this intervention on ipsilesional arm unilateral performance [Jebsen–Taylor Hand Function Test ], ipsilesional grip strength, contralesional arm impairment level [Fugl–Meyer Assessment ], and functional independence [Functional independence measure ]. Intervention occurred over a 3 week period for 1.5 h/session, three times each week. All sessions included virtual reality tasks that targeted the specific motor control deficits associated with either left or right hemisphere damage, followed by graded dexterity training in real-world tasks. We also exposed participants to 3 weeks of sham training to control for the non-specific effects of therapy visits and interactions. We conducted five test-sessions: two pre-tests and three post-tests. Our results indicate substantial improvements in the less-impaired arm performance, without detriment to the paretic arm that transferred to improved functional independence in all three posttests, indicating durability of training effects for at least 3 weeks. We provide evidence for establishing the basis of a rehabilitation approach that includes evaluation and remediation of the ipsilesional arm in moderately to severely impaired stroke survivors. This study was originally a crossover design; however, we were unable to complete the second arm of the study due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We report the results from the first arm of the planned design as a longitudinal study. (shrink)

This article explores Marx’s contention that the achievement of full personhood and, not just consequently, but simultaneously, of genuine intersubjectivity depends upon the attainment of recognition for one’s place in the social division of labour, recognition which is systematically denied to some individuals and groups of individuals through the capitalist organization of production and exchange. This reading is then employed in a critique of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition which, it is argued, cannot account for the systematic obstacles faced by (...) some struggles for recognition. (shrink)

This essay provides a brief overview of ethical issues and challenges relevant to international firms doing business in China. Those issues include the uncertainties of further economic liberalization within an authoritarian government framework, the impacts of bribery and low transparency on competitiveness and profitability, uncertainty about what ethics and values within the Chinese cultural ethos will prevail in shaping economic behavior, questions about the rights and status of Chinese workers, and significant challenges of environmental sustainability.

How Heidegger criticizes and "locates" science, and some problems with what he is trying to do.

There was a strong consensus in the commentaries that animals' performances in metacognition paradigms indicate high-level decisional processes that cannot be explained associatively. Our response summarizes this consensus and the support for the idea that these performances demonstrate animal metacognition. We amplify the idea that there is an adaptive advantage favoring animals who can – in an immediate moment of difficulty or uncertainty – construct a decisional assemblage that lets them find an appropriate behavioral solution. A working consciousness would serve (...) this function well. This explains why animals may have the functional equivalent of human declarative consciousness. However, like other commentators who were friendly to this equivalence, we approach carefully the stronger claims that animals' metacognitive performances imply full-blown self-awareness or phenomenal consciousness. We discuss the commentators' interesting ideas for future research, as well as their intriguing ideas about the evolution and development of metacognition and its relation to theory of mind. We also discuss residual confusions about existing research and remaining methodological issues. (shrink)

Although most agree that St. Anselm’s ontological argument is problematic, there is no consensus as to what, exactly, is the flaw in the argument. In this essay, I propose what I take to be a novel criticism of the argument. Specifically, I claim that Anselm is guilty of an equivocation in his use of the word “God,” using it sometimes to refer to a being and sometimes to refer to a concept. Any attempt to remove this equivocation, I show, is (...) doomed to failure; it is impossible to render the argument (or some version thereof) sound. (shrink)

The design and interpretation of self-experimentation need to be integrated with existing scientific knowledge. Otherwise observations on oneself cannot make a creative contribution to the advance of empirical understanding.

In response to increasing calls to realize more potential from diversity in organizations, Frances Hesselbein, CEO of Peter Drucker Leadership Institute, challenged management scholars to enrich the understanding of diversity. Her challenge contains descriptive and normative elements, and extends beyond learning only "about" others, toward "diversifying oneself." With this purpose in mind, this two-stage study develops a framework of divergent learning. The first stage describes a philosophical foundation grounded in literature that orients its key concepts toward divergent learning. The second (...) stage adds a layer of practical insights, gathered from professionals in eight different fields, providing channels of access and application within organizational contexts. (shrink)

It's not often that a psychologist wins a Nobel Prize. And not often that two psychologists revolutionise their own field, and penetrate related disciplines such as economics, finance, law, marketi...

Peter McHugh’s influence on those of us who studied and worked with him as part of York University’s graduate sociology programme in Toronto from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s, while lasting and undeniable, is not necessarily immediately apparent nor easily articulated. What follows is a brief reflection on how this difficulty can be understood as integral to Peter McHugh’s unique contribution both to those of us fortunate enough to have studied with him, and more broadly, to the discipline of (...) sociology itself. (shrink)

Hommel et al. propose that high-level perception and action planning share a common representational domain, which facilitates the control of intentional actions. On the surface, this point of view appears quite different from an alternative account that suggests that “action” and “perception” are functionally and neurologically dissociable processes. But it is difficult to reconcile these apparently different perspectives, because Hommel et al. do not clearly specify what they mean by “perception” and “action planning.” With respect to the visual control of (...) action, a distinction must be made between conscious visual perception and unconscious visuomotor processing. Hommel et al. must also distinguish between the what and how aspects of action planning, that is, planning what to do versus planning how to do it. (shrink)

Evidence from 45 early studies of resistance to extinction following reinforcement of differing amounts, taken in sum, challenges both the basic and the augmented models of Nevin & Grace. The augmented model seems too ad hoc in salvaging the analogy between persistence in behavior and concepts from physics, as my meta-analysis of these data affirms.

Development ethicists from one society may help understand and evaluate social change in another society. After examining several types of such cross-cultural assessments, the author argues that insider-outsider hybrids are the most promising cross-cultural dialogue partners.

Bruce Ackerman, Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 240.

We examine the compromises that are actually made in modern scientific discourse concerning atoms. We conclude that even the ideals of clarity and consistency can be legitimately compromised in order to obtain other advantages.

This article makes the case that place-based and environmental education theory and practice must be responsive to, while attempting to transform, the institutional dynamics of schooling. In the present climate of education in the USA two dynamics of schooling deserve particular attention with respect to the possibilities for place-based and environmental education: the discourse of accountability and the discourse of collaboration. Drawing especially on Foucault's analyses of disciplinary power and governmentality, I show how practices associated with accountability and collaboration limit (...) or preclude the deepening and spreading of place-based and environmental education. However, I also argue that even given the serious limitations imposed by current trends of collaboration and accountability, these trends offer place-based and environmental educators powerful entry points through which to initiate change within the formal school setting. The conclusion of the paper outlines three models of collaboration for place-conscious education through which accountability is redefined in the interest of places. (shrink)

Approaches the contemporary issues of bioethics within the context of Jewish tradition.

This Article examines the genesis and evolution of the Restatements of Property. The author argues that, while the Restatement (First) of Property took as its original purpose to restate the law, in the course of its creation it was turned to reform. Subsequent Restatements of Property are dedicated almost wholly to reform. The author concludes that this shift in objectives has sparked criticism and rendered these works of less value and interest to the legislatures, bench and the bar, which have (...) largely ignored the property Restatements. (shrink)

Welch's essay addresses the complicated issue of whether to hold leaders accountable for their ethical decisions and conduct. Are there minimal standards for ethical behavior?

Plato's dialogue "The Statesman" has often been found structurally puzzling because of its apparent diffuseness and disjointed transitions. This book interprets the dialogue in ways which account for this problematic structure, and which also connect the primary themes of the dialogue with two subsequent dialogues "The Philebus" and "The Laws.".

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)

Poverty, inequality, violence, environmental degradation, and tyranny continue to afflict the world. Ethics of Global Development offers a moral reflection on the ends and means of local, national, and global efforts to overcome these five scourges. After emphasizing the role of ethics in development studies, policy-making, and practice, David A. Crocker analyzes and evaluates Amartya Sen's philosophy of development in relation to alternative ethical outlooks. He argues that Sen's turn to robust ideals of human agency and democracy improves on (...) both Sen's earlier emphasis on 'capabilities and functionings' and Martha Nussbaum's version of the capability orientation. This agency-focused capability approach is then extended and strengthened by applying it to the challenges of consumerism and hunger, the development responsibilities of affluent individuals and nations, and the dilemmas of globalization. Throughout the book the author argues for the importance of more inclusive and deliberative democratic institutions. (shrink)

Although the basic ideas of the ontological argument can be found in Aristotle and Philo Judaeus, the argument received its classical formulation in Anselm's Proslogion and his Reply to the objections raised by Gaunilo. During the succeeding nine centuries the argument has had a chequered career. It was supported by some scholastic theologians but rejected by Aquinas. Descartes and Leibniz offered their own versions of the proof but Kant's refutation of the argument has generally been accepted as conclusive during the (...) past century and a half. Nevertheless, interest in the proof has never completely disappeared—perhaps provoked by Aquinas' suggestion that the proof may be valid for God even though it cannot be valid for us because of the inadequacy of our knowledge of God. Recently there has been a revival of interest in the ontological argument. J. N. Findlay put the argument into reverse to show the necessary non-existence of God in an article in 1948 but in later writings he has suggested that the argument may have positive significance. In 1960 Norman Malcolm published a paper in which he distinguished two basically different forms of the ontological argument in the Proslogion and defended the possible validity of the second of them. (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)

At the center of Rawls’s work post-1980 is the question of how legitimate coercive state action is possible in a liberal democracy under conditions of reasonable disagreement. And at the heart of Rawls’s answer to this question is his liberal principle of legitimacy. In this paper I argue that once we attend carefully to the depth and range of reasonable disagreement, Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy turns out to be either wildly utopian or simply toothless, depending on how one reads (...) the ideal of reciprocity it is meant to embody. To remedy this defect in Rawls’s theory, I␣undertake to develop the outlines of a democratic conception of legitimacy, drawing first on Rawls’s generic conception of legitimacy in The Law of Peoples and second on a revised understanding of reciprocity between free and equal citizens. On this revised understanding, what free and equal citizens owe one another is not reciprocity in judgment, but reciprocity of interests. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay tells the story of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's “dissociation of concepts,” which they introduced in 1958 and is in use as a tool of criticism by many rhetorical critics. The story begins in England with John Locke's development of associative reasoning in 1770 and then moves to France, with Remy de Gourmont extending associative reasoning with the concept of dissociation in 1899. Gourmont's dissociation crosses the Atlantic and is then developed by Kenneth Burke in 1931. In turn, Perelman (...) and Olbrechts-Tyteca absorbed and expanded Locke, Gourmont, and Burke's theories of association and dissociation in 1958. They crafted a tool, the dissociation of concepts, that equips rhetorical reasoning with the capacity to navigate between the promise and perils of fission and fusion. Since 1958, many scholars have made productive use of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's innovation. The essay concludes with some possible futures for their dissociation of concepts. (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.