This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Subjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance through engagement with the legacies of Jean Baudrillard and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.

What happens when an entire group of human beings is excluded from the definition of humanity? How is the power of language used to distort reality? What happens when a comprehensive economic plan is based on theft, brainwashing, slave labor, and murder? These and other philosophical questions about the Holocaust are contemplated in Contemporary Portraits of Auschwitz. In 1988, a group of philosophers who had survived the Holocaust, or had known people at the Auschwitz death camp, decided to found an (...) organization that would examine the philosophical implications of Shoah: the Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the Holocaust. Noting that the history and the personal horror stories had been told and retold, SPSGH's founders Sander Lee, Berel Lang, and Alan Rosenberg argued that too little study had been so far devoted to the philosophy of Hitler's final solution and other genocides. Auschwitz problematized the Enlightenment concept of humanity, and other concepts. The perfection of state-sponsored and -administered mass death issued in new forms of language, moral indifference, and forgetting. Philosophy often even fails to mention the Holocaust in discussions of National Socialism. And the disaster of Auschwitz has been largely neutralized by the normalization of a "ruined" language. This volume includes essays in several areas: Witnesses and Testimonies; Morality and Ethics; Art and Poetry; History and Memory; and The Crisis of Representation. Contributors are Karyn Ball, Eve Bannet, Debra Bergoffen, James Bernauer, Klaus Dorner, Jennifer N. Fink, Roger Fjellstrom, Ruth Liberman, Burkhard Liebsch, Alan Milchman, Raj Sampath, Paul Sars, Hans Seigfried, Thomas W. Simon, Dan Stone, Peter Strasser, Frans van Peperstratten, Erik M. Vogt, Andrew Weinstein, and others. (shrink)

A school of idealism: meditatio laici, by J. Cappon.--Beati possidentes, by R. M. Wenley.--Moral validity: a study in Platonism, by R. C. Lodge.--Plato and the poet's eidōla, by A. S. Ferguson.--Some reflections on Aristotle's theory of tragedy, by G. S. Brett.--The function of the phantasm in St. Thomas Aquinas, by H. Carr.--The development of the psychology of Maine de Biran, by N. J. Symons.--A plea for eclecticism, by H. W. Wright.--Some present-day tendencies in philosophy, by J. M. MacEachran.--Evolution and (...) personality, J. G. Hume.--Emergent realism, by J. Muirhead.--Bibliography of publications by Dr. John Watson (p. 343-346). (shrink)

We might begin a search for the possibility of translation with a search for a common moral foundation for both the Eastasian world and the Western world. Answers come easily with a qualified yes or no; for example, we might make a list or table comparing how East and West think about adultery. This is unsatisfying; we ourselves are often unclear what we think and feel about these issues. So, a few of the more circumspect might ask where our own (...) sense of the moral arises. Perhaps we will seek the source of the OUGHT. Our friends from the Orient might ask us what these words moral or OUGHT mean. I do not think the West can as easily convey to the East what it means by sense of obligation as the West imparts technology. Try to translate our word obligation by the Japanese word giri; this translation is suspect since for the West, obligations are obligations only if they grate against the well ingrained inclinations of our being. The Kantian necessary test of authenticity of the true moral act will be if we act against the grain of our inclinations. (shrink)

Antisocial behaviors including bullying, violence, and aggression have been an area of intense interest among researchers, clinicians, policy makers, and the general public because of their grievous consequences on individuals and society. Our understanding of the origins and development of these behaviors in individuals has recently progressed with the application of new scientific advancements and technologies such as neuroimaging, genomics, and research methods that capture behavioral changes in the first few years of life.The Origins of Antisocial Behavior: A Developmental Perspective (...) provides an overview of the recent research on the development of antisocial behavior and synthesizes this information to inform readers not only of the risks, but also how they interact, to result in antisocial and aggressive behavior. The volume is divided into three sections: advances in neuroscience, advances in behavioral and clinical research, and legal and policy implications. Specific topics include genetic markers and aggressive behavior, the use of fMRI to track adolescent brain development, the role of peer influences on aggression, parenting and temperament, screening tools for diagnosing antisocial behavior in toddlers and adolescents, and how new research will influence interventions, policy, and future study. Experts from genetics, neuroimaging, and developmental science discuss the insights these scientific approaches have provided in understanding how nature and the environment interact in the emergence of antisocial behavior. The Origins of Antisocial Behavior is an important and unique resource that will be of use to developmental scientists, mental health professionals, and policymakers involved in the juvenile justice system. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page W15-W16.

Meta-learning is even more broadly relevant to the study of inductive biases than Binz et al. suggest: Its implications go beyond the extensions to rational analysis that they discuss. One noteworthy example is that meta-learning can act as a bridge between the vector representations of neural networks and the symbolic hypothesis spaces used in many Bayesian models.

He then proceeds with an examination of the picture theory developed by Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Goodman, and concludes with an examination of Patricia Churchland, Ruth Millikan, Robert Cummins, and Mark Rollins. The use of the historical development of representationalism to pose a central problem in contemporary cognitive science is unique.

Revisits, reassesses, and reclaims the legacy of May '68 in light of our present cultural and historical emergency.

Revisits, reassesses, and reclaims the legacy of May '68 in light of our present cultural and historical emergency.

Emotional reactivity has been implicated in the development and maintenance of anxiety. The metacognitive model suggests that maladaptive metacognitive beliefs may inc...

This study looked for evidence of biases in the allocation and disengagement of attention in dysphoric individuals. Participants studied images for a recognition memory test while their eye fixations were tracked and recorded. Four image types were presented (depression-related, anxiety-related, positive, neutral) in each of two study conditions. For the simultaneous study condition, four images (one of each type) were presented simultaneously for 10 seconds, and the number of fixations and the total fixation time to each image was measured, similar (...) to the procedure used by Eizenman et al. (2003) and Kellough, Beevers, Ellis, and Wells (2008). For the sequential study condition, four images (one of each type) were presented consecutively, each for 4 seconds; to measure disengagement of attention an endogenous cuing procedure was used (Posner, 1980). Dysphoric individuals spent significantly less time attending to positive images than non-dysphoric individuals, but there were no group differences in attention to depression-related images. There was also no evidence of a dysphoria-related bias in initial shifts of attention. With respect to the disengagement of attention, dysphoric individuals were slower to disengage their attention from depression-related images. The recognition memory data showed that dysphoric individuals had poorer memory for emotional images, but there was no evidence of a conventional mood-congruent memory bias. Differences in the attentional and memory biases observed in depressed and dysphoric individuals are discussed. (shrink)

Description: The book is, so to say, a bouquet in two respects. It is, first, a presentation of academic tributes, in the form of a festschrift, to a well-known Indian philosopher Professor Margaret Chatterjee; and, second, a hand-picked collection of original essays of multifaceted reflection for serious students of philosophy. Areas of study covered are various-metaphilosophy, philosophy or religion, metaphysics, aesthetics, existentialism, and Indian and comparative philosophies; and so are the lands of the philosophers who have contributed to the making (...) of this volume: India, England, Greece, America, Canada, and Japan. The work is a signal product of international cooperation and philosophy-a cause which Professor Chatterjee has been actively pursuing for long and with great success. (shrink)

We acknowledge the limitations in measures of moral reasoning and pursue an alternative technique by investigating past behaviors as they relate to present behavioral intentions. Our purpose is to evaluate the merits of patterned normative behavior for predicting present and future, morally relevant outcomes. Participants completed a policy capturing experimental design responding to questions that orthogonally varied the situational nature of the decision context. Results indicate that past normative behaviors are significantly and directly related to ethical behavioral intentions. Moreover, they (...) moderate the relationships between situational factors and intended outcomes as well as moral reasoning and intended outcomes. (shrink)

THE MOST SACRED FREEDOM includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2014 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the seventh annual conference sponsored by Mercer Universitys Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for Americas Founding Principles. Together, these essays explore the great principle of religious liberty by charting its development in the Western tradition and reconsidering its place at Americas founding. The book begins with a comparison between the flood accounts in Genesis and the (...) Mesopotamian Atra-Has's and advances all the way to the 2014 Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The intervening chapters examine the contributions of figures such as Emperor Julian, Roger Williams, Cecilius Calvert, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the American Founders. Contributors to the volume are Steven Grosby, Jeremiah H. Russell, Maura Jane Farrelly, Daniel Cullen, John Witte, Jr., Scott Yenor, David Ramsey, and Michael Novak. (shrink)

People diagnosed with cancer typically want information from their doctor or nurse. However, many individuals now turn to the Internet to tackle unmet information needs and to complement healthcare professional information. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore the content of commonly searched cancer websites from a critical nursing perspective, as this information is accessible, and allows patients to address their information needs in ways that healthcare professionals cannot. This qualitative examination of websites is informed by Carper's fundamental (...) patterns of knowing and complemented with the critical view to technology espoused by the philosophy of technology. We conducted a review of 20 websites using a two‐step interpretive descriptive approach and thematic analysis. We identified the dominant discourse to be focused on empirical information on treatment, prognosis, and cure, and a paucity of sociopolitical, ethical, personal, and esthetic information. In place of holistic, nuanced, and accurate knowledge nurses may provide, patients find predominantly empirical and biomedical information online. Discussion explores and critiques online cancer content, gaps in information, and the importance of information diversity. Implications focus on needed discourse around pervasive technologies and the nursing role in assessing and directing patients to holistic information. (shrink)

The formation of mature large rRNAs from larger primary transcripts is very different in bacterial and mammalian cells. In both, cotranscription can help to assure the coordinated production of various rRNA species. However, in bacteria, processing is ordered, initiated by cleavages at double‐stranded stems which enclose the mature sequences; several cleavages are required to produce each mature terminus; and the final steps occur in polysomes, apparently linked to continued protein synthesis. In mouse cells, in contrast, cleavages generate nearly all mature (...) termini stochastically and directly, with no evidence for double‐stranded stems as cleavage signals; and processing occurs in the nucleolus, long before any new rRNA chains arrive in polysomes. Spacer sequences also serve different potnetial functions at the evolutionary extremes. In bacteria, transcribed spacer sequences are associated with different secondary structures in the pre‐rRNA compared to the mature rRNA, and these may promote ribosome formation. In mammalian cells, analyses are too premature to assign any comparable function to transcribed spacer sequences, but the non‐transcribed spacers are probably critical in the organization and replication of nucleoli, functions that are absent from bacteria. (shrink)

In the final analysis, sustainable agriculture must derive from applied ecology, especially the principle of the regulation of the abundance and distribution of species (and, secondarily, their activities) in space and time. Interspecific competition in natural ecosystems has its counterparts in agriculture, designed to divert greater amounts of energy, nutrients, and water into crops. Whereas natural ecosystems select for a diversity of species in communities, recent agriculture has minimized diversity in favour of vulnerable monocultures. Such systems show intrinsically less stability (...) and resilience to perturbations. Some kinds of crop rotation resemble ecological succession in that one crop prepares the land for successive crop production. Such rotations enhance soil organic processes such as decomposition and material cycling, build a nutrient capital to sustain later crop growth, and reduce the intensity of pest buildup. Species in natural communities occur at discrete points along the r-K continuum of reproductive maturity. Clearing forested land for agriculture, rotational burning practices, and replacing perennial grassland communities by cereal monocultures moves the agricultural community towards the r extreme. Plant breeders select for varieties which yield at an earlier age and lower plant biomass, effectively moving a variety towards the r type. Features of more natural landscapes, such as hedgerows, may act as physical and biological adjuncts to agricultural production. They should exist as networks in agricultural lands to be most effective. Soil is of major importance in agroecosystems, and maintaining, deliberately, its vitality and resilience to agricultural perturbations is the very basis of sustainable land use. (shrink)