Our shared moral framework is negotiated as part of the social contract. Some elements of that framework are established (tell the truth under oath), but other elements lack an overlapping consensus (just when can an individual lie to protect his or her privacy?). The tidy bits of our accepted moral framework have been codified, becoming the subject of legal rather than ethical consideration. Those elements remaining in the realm of ethics seem fragmented and inconsistent. Yet, our engineering students will need (...) to navigate the broken ground of this complex moral landscape. A minimalist approach would leave our students with formulated dogma—principles of right and wrong such as the National Society for Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics for Engineers—but without any insight into the genesis of these principles. A slightly deeper, micro-ethics approach would teach our students to solve ethical problems by applying heuristics—giving our students a rational process to manipulate ethical dilemmas using the same principles simply referenced a priori by dogma. A macro-ethics approach—helping students to inductively construct a posteriori principles from case studies—goes beyond the simple statement or manipulation of principles, but falls short of linking personal moral principles to the larger, social context. Ultimately, it is this social context that requires both the application of ethical principles, and the negotiation of moral values—from an understanding of meta-ethics. (shrink)

The efficiency of engineering applied to civilian projects sometimes threatens to run away with the social agenda, but in military applications, engineering often adds a devastating sleekness to the inevitable destruction of life. The relative crudeness of terrorism (e.g., 9/11) leaves a stark after-image, which belies the comparative insignificance of random (as opposed to orchestrated) belligerence. Just as engineering dwarfs the bricolage of vernacular design—moving us past the appreciation of brush-strokes, so to speak—the scale of engineered destruction makes it difficult (...) to focus on the charred remains of individual lives. Engineers need to guard against the inappropriate military subsumption of their effort. Fortunately, the ethics of warfare has been an ongoing topic of discussion for millennia. This paper will examine the university core class I’ve developed (The Moral Dimensions of Technology) to meet accreditation requirements in engineering ethics, and the discussion with engineering and non-engineering students focused by the life of electrical engineer Vannevar Bush, with selected readings in moral philosophy from the Dao de Jing, Lao Tze, Cicero, Aurelius Augustinus, Kant, Annette Baier, Peter Singer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Judith Thomson. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

An overview of the latest interdisciplinary research on human morality, capturing moral sensibility as a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms. Over the past decade, an explosion of empirical research in a variety of fields has allowed us to understand human moral sensibility as a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms shaped through evolution, development, and culture. Evolutionary biologists have shown that moral cognition evolved to aid cooperation; developmental psychologists have demonstrated that the elements that underpin (...) morality are in place much earlier than we thought; and social neuroscientists have begun to map brain circuits implicated in moral decision making. This volume offers an overview of current research on the moral brain, examining the topic from disciplinary perspectives that range from anthropology and neurophilosophy to justice and law. The contributors address the evolution of morality, considering precursors of human morality in other species as well as uniquely human adaptations. They examine motivations for morality, exploring the roles of passion, extreme sacrifice, and cooperation. They go on to consider the development of morality, from infancy to adolescence; findings on neurobiological mechanisms of moral cognition; psychopathic immorality; and the implications for justice and law of a more biological understanding of morality. These new findings may challenge our intuitions about society and justice, but they may also lead to more a humane and flexible legal system. Contributors Scott Atran, Abigail A. Baird, Nicolas Baumard, Sarah Brosnan, Jason M. Cowell, Molly J. Crockett, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, Andrew W. Delton, Mark R. Dadds, Jean Decety, Jeremy Ginges, Andrea L. Glenn, Joshua D. Greene, J. Kiley Hamlin, David J. Hawes, Jillian Jordan, Max M. Krasnow, Ayelet Lahat, Jorge Moll, Caroline Moul, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Alexander Peysakhovich, Laurent Prétôt, Jesse Prinz, David G. Rand, Rheanna J. Remmel, Emma Roellke, Regina A. Rini, Joshua Rottman, Mark Sheskin, Thalia Wheatley, Liane Young, Roland Zahn. (shrink)

The writings of the Frankfurt school, in particular of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas, caught the imagination of the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s and became a key element in the Marxism of the New Left. Partly due to their rise to prominence during the political turmoil of the 1960s, the work of these critical theorists has been the subject of continuing controversy in both political and academic circles. However, their ideas are frequently misunderstood. In this major (...) work, now available from Polity Press, David Held presents a much-needed introduction to, and evaluation of, critical theory. Some of the major themes he considers are critical theory's relation to Marx's critique of political economy, Freudian psychoanalysis, aesthetics and the philosophy of history. There is also an extended discussion of critical theory's substantive contribution to the analysis of capitalism, culture, the family, the individual, as well as its contribution to epistemology and methodology. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the role of two models of well-being in the prediction of psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, namely PERMA and mature happiness. According to PERMA, well-being is mainly composed of five elements: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning in life, and achievement. Instead, mature happiness is understood as a positive mental state characterized by inner harmony, calmness, acceptance, contentment, and satisfaction with life. Rooted in existential positive psychology, this harmony-based happiness represents the result of living in (...) balance between positive and negative aspects of one's life. We hypothesized that mature happiness would be a more prominent protective factor during the present pandemic than the PERMA composite. A total of 12,203 participants from 30 countries responded to an online survey including the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21), the PERMA-Profiler, and the Mature Happiness Scale-Revised (MHS-R). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that PERMA and mature happiness were highly correlated, but nonetheless, they represented two separate factors. After controlling for demographic factors and country-level variables, both PERMA Well-being and MHS-R were negative predictors of psychological distress. Mature happiness was a better predictor of stress, anxiety, and general distress, while PERMA showed a higher prediction of depression. Mature happiness moderated the relation between the perceived noxious effects of the pandemic and all markers of distress (depression, anxiety, stress, and total DASS-21). Instead, PERMA acted as a moderator in the case of depression and stress. These findings indicate that inner harmony, according to the mature happiness theory, is an essential facet of well-being to be taken into consideration. The results of this study can also orient policies aimed to alleviate the negative effects of the pandemic on mental health through the promotion of well-being. (shrink)

The question whether two things can be in the same place at the same time is an ambiguous one. At least three distinct questions could be meant: Can two things simpliciter be in the same place at the same time? Can two things of the same kind be in the same place at the same time? Can two substances of the same kind be in the same place at the same time? The answers to these questions vary. In what follows, (...) all three will be discussed in the light both of recent and of classic earlier examinations of the matter. The following theses will be defended. (shrink)

A comprehensive and stimulating study which presents the views of 71 leading theorists on the underlying mechanisms and functions of the primary visual cortex.

Here a group of philosophers, economists and political theorists discuss the work of David Gauthier, which seeks to show that rational individuals would accept certain moral constraints on their choices. The possibilities and limitations of a contractarian approach to issues of justice is analyzed.

The Addresses to the German Nation is one of Fichte's best-known works. It is also his most controversial work because of its nationalist elements. In this book, David James places this text and its nationalism within the context provided by Fichte's philosophical, educational and moral project of creating a community governed by pure practical reason, in which his own foundational philosophical science or Wissenschaftslehre could achieve general recognition. Rather than marking a break in Fichte's philosophy, the Addresses to the (...) German Nation and some lesser-known texts from the same period are shown to develop themes already present in his earlier writings. The themes discussed include the opposition between idealism and dogmatism, the role of Fichte's 'popular' lectures and writings in leading individuals to the standpoint of idealism, the view of history demanded by idealism and the role of the state in history. (shrink)

David Hume is commonly known as one of the greatest philosophers to write in English. He was also one of the foremost political and economic theorists and one of the finest historians of the eighteenth century. His political essays reflect the entire range of his intellectual engagement with politics - as political philosophy, political observation and political history - and function as an extension of and supplement to works such as his Treatise of Human Nature and his History of (...) England. The twenty-seven most important essays are presented in this fully annotated edition, together with excerpts from the History of England which illuminate their context. This major addition to the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy and the history of ideas. (shrink)

The secession issue appears to many contemporary thinkers to reveal a fatal flaw in the idea of national self-determination. The question is whether national minorities who come to want to be politically self determining should be allowed to separate from the parent state and form one of their own. Here the idea of national self-determination may lead us in one of two opposing directions. If the minority group in question regards itself as a separate nation, then the principle seems to (...) support its claims: if the Québécois or the Catalans come to think of themselves as having national identities distinct from those of the Canadians or the Spanish, and to seek political independence on that basis, then if we are committed to national self-determination we should support their claims. But we then face the challenge that once national identities begin to proliferate there is no feasible way of satisfying all such claims, given elementary facts of geography and population spread. (shrink)

This Companion provides a systematic introductory overview of Richard Rorty's philosophy. With chapters from an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars, the volume addresses virtually every aspect of Rorty's thought, from his philosophical views on truth and representation and his youthful obsession with wild orchids to his ruminations on the contemporary American Left and his prescient warning about the election of Donald Trump. Other topics covered include his various assessments of classical American pragmatism, feminism, liberalism, religion, literature, and philosophy itself. Sympathetic (...) in some cases, in others sharply critical, the essays will provide readers with a deep and illuminating portrait of Rorty's exciting brand of neopragmatism. (shrink)

Business and society (B&S) scholarship that uses the theoretical perspective of institutionalism combines different research approaches to values. Within the B&S literature drawing on institutionalism, we identified and categorized the research on values according to a spectrum of normative and/or descriptive approaches (including both and neither approaches). Primarily, we focused on how the normative and descriptive approaches interrelate and integrate. We argue that drawing on John Dewey’s pragmatism and Philip Selznick’s institutionalism can help further an integrative approach, which holds great (...) potential for advancing theorization in the B&S field while increasing its practical relevance. (shrink)

"Written by a well-known and respected author, this book reflects careful scholarship by someone who has extensive experience in the field and creative insights.

This article reviews recent work aimed at developing a new framework, based on signal detection theory, for understanding the relationship between explicit (e.g., recognition) and implicit (e.g., priming) memory. Within this framework, different assumptions about sources of memorial evidence can be framed. Application to experimental results provides robust evidence for a single-system model in preference to multiple-systems models. This evidence comes from several sources including studies of the effects of amnesia and ageing on explicit and implicit memory. The framework allows (...) a range of concepts in current memory research, such as familiarity, recollection, fluency, and source memory, to be linked to implicit memory. More generally, this work emphasizes the value of modern computational modelling techniques in the study of learning and memory. (shrink)

When I woke up a few days ago, the following thoughts ran through my mind. ‘I need a haircut. If I don't get it first thing this morning, I won't have another chance for two weeks. But if I go to the barber down the road, he'll want to talk to me about philosophy. So I'd better go to the one in Camden Town. The tube will be very crowded, though. Still, it's a nice day. Why don't I just walk (...) there? It will only take twenty minutes. So I'd better put on these shoes now, have breakfast straight away, and then set out for Camden.’. (shrink)

The last one hundred years has seen unimaginable technological progress transforming every aspect of human life. Yet we seem unable to shake a profound unease with the direction of modern technology and its ideological siblings, global capitalism and massive consumption. Philosophers such as Marcuse, Borgmann and especially Heidegger, have developed important analyses of technological society, however in this book David Lewin argues that their ideas have remained limited either by their secular context, or by the narrow conception of religion (...) that they do allow. This study guides the reader along the newly formed paths of the philosophy of technology, arguing that where those paths come to an abrupt end, a religious discourse is needed to articulate the ultimate concerns that drive technological action. It calls for a meditation on the central insight of many religious traditions that, in an ultimate sense, we 'know not what we do.' To acknowledge that we know not what we do is the first step towards a theology of technology that draws upon insights from the mystical theological tradition, as well as from recent developments in the continental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Hand's End offers a new philosophy of technology as the fundamental way in which humans experience and define nature―the tool as humanity extended. Rothenberg examines human inventions from the water wheel to the nuclear bomb and discusses theories of technology in the thought of philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Marx, Heidegger, Spinoza, Mumford, and McLuhan.

In their comprehensive article, Bayefsky and Berkman outline a framework for limiting access to certain types of fetal genetic information through professional self-regulation. Given the rap...

Taking a social identity approach to health behaviors, this research examines whether experimentally “activating” the human identity is an effective public-health strategy to curb the spread of COVID-19. Three goals of the research include examining: whether the human identity can be situationally activated using an experimental manipulation, whether activating the human identity causally increases behavioral intentions to protect the self and others from COVID-19, and whether activating the human identity causally increases behaviors that help protect vulnerable communities from COVID-19. Across (...) two preregistered experiments, results suggest the manipulation of identification with humanity had a significant but small effect on participants’ psychological bond with all humanity, but not their concern for all humanity. However, the manipulation had no causal effect on health-related behavioral intentions or helping behaviors that reduce the spread of COVID-19. Limitations, future directions, and direct benefits of the research are discussed. (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)

Gothic cathedrals like Chartres were built in a discontinuous process by groups of masons using their own local knowledge, measures, and techniques. They had neither plans nor knowledge of structural mechanics. The success of the masons in building such large complex innovative structures lies in the use of templates, string, constructive geometry, and social organization to assemble a coherent whole from the messy heterogeneous practices of diverse groups of workers. Chartres resulted from the ad hoc accumulation of the work of (...) many men. (shrink)

The Analects is a series of glimpses into how Confucius and his students engaged in their projects of moral self-cultivation. This chapter seeks to describe the way in which the outlines of a moral psychology arises from the text and how the text poses issues that came to be central to the Chinese philosophical tradition. It will be argued that the text provides exemplars of moral self-cultivation, that it makes emotion central to virtue and therefore makes emotional self-cultivation a central (...) focus of moral development, that it highlights the relational nature of moral cultivation as a process that is conducted with others, that it raises difficult and crucial issues about the relation between intuitive and affective styles of action on the one hand and on the other hand action based on deliberation and reflection, and that it has some useful approaches to the problem of situationism that has recently been raised for virtue ethics. (shrink)

This article theorizes the dermalogical turn – heralded by the publication of this special issue – from a sensory studies perspective. Sensory studies involves a cultural approach to the study of the senses and a sensory approach to the study of culture. The skin is both an object and means of perception. Understandings of the skin and of touch vary across cultures: the skin may be seen as social rather than individual, as porous instead of an envelope, and as knowledgeable (...) or sentient in its own right rather than subservient to the eye or brain (i.e. cognition). These contrasting understandings have important implications for practice. Haptic Field, a performative sensory environment designed by Chris Salter, which enables the visitor to try on a second skin, is discussed as a means of shaking up conventional Western understandings of the skin and of touch, and facilitating the communication of skin knowledge across cultures. (shrink)

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This first volume contains the critical text of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, followed by the shortin which Hume set out the key arguments of the larger work; the volume concludes with A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh, Hume's defence of the Treatise when it was under attack from ministers seeking to prevent Hume's appointment as (...) Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. (shrink)

In recent scholarship, a widely agreed upon definition of post-truth has proved elusive, particularly because the term is used in tandem with so-named alternative facts, fake news, misinformation, and references to an anti-expert, anti-intellectual climate. This paper will consider recent educators’ efforts in the Australasian region to address the political and cultural disruption that post-truth has evoked, by inquiring into how their pedagogy mirrors or differs from that used in public spaces by protest movements. In the first section, scholarship on (...) post-truth will be examined for how it constitutes a form of revisionist history, in which the present has been corrupted over time by comparison to a more idealised and distant past. The second section will focus on how theories about the construction of knowledge, such as Latour’s notion of hybridised modernity and notions of historical consciousness, can be used to frame forms of activism as means to educate the public and disrupt the dominant political ideologies. The focus in the last section will be on examining how educators might enable learners’ critical literacy so they can accommodate and overcome the negativity, cynicism, and disempowerment which characterises a post-truth paradigm. (shrink)

This essay offers a fresh interpretation of Bhartr̥hari’s concept of “insight”, and of its identification as the object of a sentence in the second kāṇḍa of the Vākyapadīya. Earlier scholars dealing with this topic disagreed on three main points: whether an epistemologically rigorous concept of insight can be found in Bhartr̥hari’s work, or if the notion remains irrevocably vague and equivocal; whether the concept of pratibhā primarily belongs to linguistics, or to action theory; whether Bhartr̥hari’s identification of insight as the (...) object of a sentence should be taken literally or figuratively. Starting from a close analysis of all passages in Bhartr̥hari’s work mentioning pratibhā, I identify, first of all, a univocal understanding of insight, valid throughout the Vākyapadīya, as immediate cognition informed by verbal transmission, in other words as a form of practical knowledge, non-representational yet essentially productive and dynamic. Showing, on this basis, how Bhartr̥hari’s understanding of language at the level of sentences is pragmatic rather than referential, I demonstrate, against the view prevalent in the late grammatical tradition, that a literal interpretation of his provocative statement on pratibhā as vākyārtha remains perfectly plausible. This thesis is further corroborated by the consideration of post-Bhartr̥hari philosophical sources elaborating on his ideas, which allow us better to understand in what sense pratibhā can legitimately be thought of as cognition “without an object”. (shrink)

I advance a stipulational account of symmetry-to-reality inference, according to which symmetries are part of the content of theories. For a theory to have a certain symmetry is for the theory to stipulate that models related by the symmetry represent the same possibility. I show that the stipulational account compares positively with alternatives, including Dasgupta’s epistemic account of symmetry, Møller-Nielsen’s motivational account, and so-called formal and ontic accounts. In particular, the stipulational account avoids the problems Belot and Dasgupta have raised (...) against formal and ontic accounts of symmetry while retaining many of the advantages of these otherwise-attractive frameworks. (shrink)

One of the most significant contributions to the field in recent times, David Clough's work On Animals: Volume 1, Systematic Theology, should ensure that theologies of creation, redemption, and eschatological fulfillment give proper attention to animals. In a landmark study, he draws upon resources in Scripture and tradition to present a systematic theology that is alert to the place of animals in the divine economy. Amidst his relentless criticism of all forms of anthropocentrism, however, it is asked whether some (...) unresolved tensions emerge in relation to the traditional doctrine of God, the use of the category of the “personal” in theology, and the incarnation of the Word of God as a human creature. (shrink)