Behavioral research suggests that rule-governed behavior should be less sensitive to environmental changes and thus more resistant to extinction (disconfirmation) than contingency-governed behavior. The opposite is implied in Davey's discussion of ontogenetic and phylogenetic contributions to fear development. The generality of the behavioral findings and their apparent inconsistency with the present article should be further explored with more sensitive research paradigms.

l i ver Cromwell delivered history's most famous rebuke to the heroworshiping that irons all subtlety into flawless cardboard: Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at al l ; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it. Helena Cronin, in The Ant and the Peacock , displays a raw talent clearly equal (...) to that of our finest portraitists, but has placed herself into a position even worse than Mr. Lely's. Cromwell's painter at least faced the subject himself; Cronin has produced an uncritical gloss upon a false and simplistic view that never was more than a caricature of Darwinian theory. (shrink)

This volume collects Jay Garfield 's essays on Madhyamaka, Yogacara, Buddhist ethics and cross-cultural hermeneutics. The first part addresses Madhyamaka, supplementing Garfield 's translation of Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, a foundational philosophical text by the Buddhist saint Nagarjuna. Garfield then considers the work of philosophical rivals, and sheds important light on the relation of Nagarjuna's views to other Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophical positions.

Our current intellectual system provides us with a far more complete and accurate understanding of nature and ourselves than was available in any previous society. This gain in understanding has arisen from two sources: the use of the 'scientific method', and the breaking up of our intellectual enterprise into increasingly narrower disciplines and research programmes. However, we have failed to keep these narrow specialities connected to the intellectual enterprise as a whole. The author demonstrates that this causes a number of (...) difficulties. We have no viewpoint from which we can understand the relationships between the disciplines and lack a forum for adjudicating situations where different disciplines give conflicting answers to the same problem. We seriously underestimate the differences in methodology and in the nature of principles in the various branches of science. This provocative and wide-ranging book provides a detailed analysis and possible solutions for dealing with this problem. (shrink)

The UK Government published various circulars to indicate the importance of respecting the privacy and dignity of NHS patients following the implementation of the Human Rights Act, 1998. This research used an ethnographic method to determine the extent to which health professionals had in fact upheld the philosophy of these documents. Fieldwork using nonparticipant observation, and unstructured and semistructured interviews with patients and staff, took place over six months in three acute care wards in a large district NHS trust hospital. (...) Applying the principles of phenomenology and grounded theory, the data were analysed and the contents organized into 11 key categories, leading to the formulation of a privacy model. The level of intrusion into patients’ privacy by health professionals was measured against the benchmarking of the ‘dignity and privacy’ factors contained in the Department of Health’s The essence of care document and Article 8(2) of the Human Rights Act. The findings established that patients had little privacy in the wards, and that the terms ‘privacy of the person’ and ‘dignity’ are interrelated. (shrink)

This article provides excerpts and highlights from the insights of twenty global leaders, business executives, and sustainability experts who gathered at the Esalen Institute in California for four days in March 2002 to discuss how to best leverage change toward an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable global economy. The conference topic was sparked by the path-breaking book Natural Capitalism, which outlines an expanded vision of capitalism suitable for the environmental era. The natural capitalism model is qualitatively different from industrial era (...) capitalism in that it counts both humanity and ecosystem services as valid sources of capital in addition to the traditionally recognized sources, financial and manufactured. One early adopter of natural capitalism, CEO of the Atlanta -based carpet tiling company, Interface, shared how increased efficiency and greater employee and customer satisfaction have resulted. Although some of the conference participants forecasted that globalization is likely to bring humanity face-to-face with a planetary-wide environmental, financial, and social crisis, the overall message of this gathering was positive. Through the imaginative implementation of evolutionary and biomimicry design models in the cultural, financial, and economic spheres, novel solutions to global problems already are being discovered, and, if such innovative and solutions-oriented design thinking can spread rapidly enough, humanity may be able to ameliorate-or even obviate-the deleterious effects of globalization. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The participation of adolescents in genetic research engenders unusual problems concerning the nature of their informed consent. In this study we analyze 70 consent documents collected from genetics investigators in the United States who conduct research with children and adolescents. We find that many consent documents do not reflect either the current or the developing ethical and legal standards for research with adolescents and that in many cases the documents are simply confusing or unclear. We make recommendations for change to (...) reflect more adequately the changing perspective concerning the autonomous decision-making capacity of adolescents. (shrink)

On February 18, 1519, Cortés set sail for Mexico with about 600 men and, perhaps more important, 16 horses. Two years later, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán lay in ruins, and one of the world’s great civilizations had perished.

I forgive the slight spin of sloganeering conveyed by the motto so frequently cited by proponents of a cosmos chock full of organisms: "Life will fed a way." Life is resilient and quite capable (especially in bacterial form) of living in the most damnably improbable places-from nearly boiling ponds in Yellowstone National Park to tiny pores in rocks as deep as two miles below the earth's surface. But even this degree of resilience must work within limits; if life ever evolved (...) on the Martian surface during its initial billion years with running water, the planet's later desiccation probably extinguished our solar system's second experiment in advanced carbon chemistry. (shrink)

Assertive community treatment (ACT) is a widely propagated team approach to community mental health care that ‘assertively’ engages a subgroup of individuals with severe mental illness who continuously disengage from mental health services. It involves a number of interested parties – including clients, carers, clinicians and managers. Each operates according to perceived ethical principles related to their values, mores and principles. ACT condenses a dilemma that is common in psychiatry. ACT proffers social control whilst simultaneously holding therapeutic aspiration. The clients’ (...) perspective of this dilemma was studied in interviews with 12 clients using the ‘grounded theory’ approach. Results suggest that clients’ disengagement is as much a historical and cultural phenomenon as a result of lack of insight. Many clients had experienced rejection of early help–seeking behaviour and all had been subject to coercive interventions. These coercive interventions were experienced as an attack on identity. All felt that their voice had not been listened to in previous interactions with psychiatric services. Consequentially the clients had an increased level of arousal around issues of power, which needs to be incorporated when examining the ethics of community psychiatry. Traditional notions of the difference between persuasion and coercion – for example – may need to be adapted for this client group. Results are compared with the provider perspective. We conclude that the perspectives differ on two key dimensions. Such an empirical approach to examining psychiatric ethics may ensure that we incorporate the subjectivities of various interested parties in the clinical decision–making process. (shrink)

Uses an ongoing legal controversy to explore the controversial subject of religious liberty and education.

An explanation of the mathematics needed as a foundation for a deep understanding of general relativity or quantum field theory.

What does it mean to be human? Philosophers and theologians have been wrestling with this question for centuries. Recent advances in cognition, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and robotics have yielded insights that bring us even closer to an answer. There are now computer programs that can accurately recognize faces, engage in conversation, and even compose music. There are also robots that can walk up a flight of stairs, work cooperatively with each other and express emotion. If machines can do everything we (...) can, does that mean we are machines? -/- This book examines whether an artificial person can be constructed and if so, what that might tell us about our future and ourselves. Different human capacities such as perception, creativity, consciousness, social behavior, and free will are described in separate chapters. Technological advances in these areas are summarized and compared to our own abilities. The book adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, with a naturalistic perspective drawn from biology and psychology matched against a technological perspective based on computer science and robotics. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays written on a variety of topics relevant to the future of humankind. The chapters are organized foundationally starting with how it is we can know and understand reality. This is followed by descriptions of future technologies and the new science that will drive them. Then we take a look at ourselves, how smart we are and how intelligent our machines may become. The final sections paint a larger picture, examining civilization with a focus (...) on what we’ve done wrong historically and how we may correct such mistakes. (shrink)

In its focus on heuristics as opposed to hierarchically structured general principles, expert systems technology suggests a pedagogic strategy with affinities to the approaches of some of the creative philosophers of East and West, and a challenge to the reliance on presentation of general principles found in academic tradition. A tutoring approach to classroom presentation may be seen to relate to the point that non-trivial general principles cannot be verbally expressed without substantial loss of meaning.

THE SCHIAVO CASE Four commentators discuss what made it so difficult, why it was more complex than most realized, and what we should do differently.

The process of apprenticeship is one means of entering a new profession. Along with the technical skills entailed in learning a new job, apprentices need to acquire proficiency in appropriate ways of communicating in order to construct a convincing professional identity. Data collected on a New Zealand building site provides evidence of the extent of the situated learning in which building apprentices engage. Becoming an accepted member of the community of practice centrally involves learning to recognize and respond appropriately to (...) a wide range of differently encoded directives, for instance. But membership also entails developing an understanding of more subtle interactional norms, such as acceptable topics of small talk and appropriate forms and quantities of humour on the job. This article examines evidence that suggests these understandings develop gradually as apprentices move from peripheral to core status in their chosen professional community of practice. We also explore the implications of the analysis for a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the community of practice framework. (shrink)

Beginning with Fanon’s challenge to the universality of the project of ontology, this paper considers whether and how Merleau-Ponty’s early and late thinking may yield a response. From the outset, Merleau-Ponty’s appeal to the materiality of the body is intended as a limit on the scope of ontology. As I argue, however, Merleau-Ponty’s early concept of ‘one’s own body’ suggests an “ontological equality” that would be shared among all embodied beings; implicitly, this early approach risks reinforcing Fanon’s concern that ontology (...) is indifferent to embodied experiences of racial exclusion and oppression. Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology of the flesh, by contrast, entails a more radically differential structure of the body that troubles the notion of equality in principle, suggesting an ontology that could be more attentive to the fundamental grounds of systemic oppression.Cet article examine si, et de quelle manière, la réflexion de Merleau-Ponty peut répondre au défi lancé par Fanon à l’universalité du projet ontologique. La revendication initiale que fait Merleau-Ponty de la matérialité du corps est considérée comme une limite du champ de l’ontologie. Pourtant, comme je voudrais le montrer, la première conception merleau-pontienne du corps propre suggère une « égalité ontologique » qui devrait être commune pour tous les êtres incarnés ; implicitement, cette première approche risque de renforcer l’inquiétude de Fanon au sujet de l’indifférence de l’ontologie envers les expériences incarnées de l’exclusion raciale et de l’oppression. L’ontologie de la chair merleau-pontienne, au contraire, implique une structure du corps radicalement différentielle qui bouleverse la notion du principe d’égalité, en suggérant une ontologie qui pourrait être plus attentive aux fondements du système d’oppression.Questo articolo prende le mosse dalla sfida di Fanon all’universalità del progetto dell’ontologia ed esamina se e come il pensiero del primo e dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty possa fornirvi una risposta. A prima vista, il richiamo di Merleau-Ponty alla materialità del corpo viene inteso come un limite all’orizzonte dell’ontologia. Tuttavia, come mi propongo di sostenere, il concetto di “corpo proprio” nel primo Merleau-Ponty suggerisce un’“uguaglianza ontologica” che sarebbe condivisa da tutti gli esseri incarnati. Implicitamente, questa posizione rischia di rinforzare la preoccupazione di Fanon rispetto al fatto che l’ontologia sia indifferente alle esperienze incarnate di esclusione e oppressione razziali. L’ontologia della carne dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty, al contrario, implica una più radicale struttura differenziale del corpo, che complica la nozione di un’uguaglianza di principio e che suggerisce un’ontologia potenzialmente più attenta ai fondamenti dell’oppressione sistematica. (shrink)

In this study, I explore the viability of what Carl Dreyer called film novels or filmscripts in the form of novels. I show that these novels are viable---that is, they can be written and filmed in ways that deeply engage us in understanding them. ;In the introduction, I explain that this study is a poetics---that is, it formally defines film novels, specifies a standard for successful film novels, and specifies ways of creating film novels so that they are likely to (...) be successful. I then survey what scholars have written about these script-like novels. ;In the first chapter, I define film novels as short, visually engaging novels-that is, short novels that continually engage readers in picturing scenes. I then explore the historical background of this type of novel. ;In the second chapter, I explain that successful film novels are interpretively engaging---that is, they engage readers, not only in continually picturing scenes, but also in thoughtfully interpreting them. I then trace the history of film novels and show how they, and films based on them, have engaged readers and viewers in interpreting them. ;In the third chapter, I explain that thoughtful interpretation can be understood as generous interpretation if we use the word generous as Jean-Paul Sartre did. Drawing on Sartre's philosophy of literature, I explain how generous writers engage readers in generous interpretation. ;In the fourth chapter, I explain how writers can generously create characters and plots for film novels. In the fifth, I present detailed exercises to help writers generously create scenes and storylines for film novels. In the sixth, I explain how filmmakers can generously turn film novels into films. ;I conclude that film novels come from a tradition of highly visual novels, film novels can be deeply engaging, and this engaging quality can be preserved in films. (shrink)

_Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic, 2nd Edition_ offers an innovative, friendly, and effective introduction to logic. It integrates formal first order, modal, and non-classical logic with natural language reasoning, analytical writing, critical thinking, set theory, and the philosophy of logic and mathematics. An innovative introduction to the field of logic designed to entertain as it informs Integrates formal first order, modal, and non-classical logic with natural language reasoning, analytical writing, critical thinking, set theory, and the philosophy of (...) logic and mathematics Addresses contemporary applications of logic in fields such as computer science and linguistics A web-site linked to the text features numerous supplemental exercises and examples, enlightening puzzles and cartoons, and insightful essays. (shrink)