Psychedelics have been recognized as model interventions for studying altered states of consciousness. However, few empirical studies of the shamanic state of consciousness, which is anecdotally similar to the psychedelic state, exist. We investigated the neural correlates of shamanic trance using high-density electroencephalography (EEG) in 24 shamanic practitioners and 24 healthy controls during rest, shamanic drumming, and classical music listening, followed by an assessment of altered states of consciousness. EEG data were used to assess changes in absolute power, connectivity, signal (...) diversity, and criticality, which were correlated with assessment measures. We also compared assessment scores to those of individuals in a previous study under the influence of psychedelics. Shamanic practitioners were significantly different from controls in several domains of altered states of consciousness, with scores comparable to or exceeding that of healthy volunteers under the influence of psychedelics. Practitioners also displayed increased gamma power during drumming that positively correlated with elementary visual alterations. Furthermore, shamanic practitioners had decreased low alpha and increased low beta connectivity during drumming and classical music and decreased neural signal diversity in the gamma band during drumming that inversely correlated with insightfulness. Finally, criticality in practitioners was increased during drumming in the low and high beta and gamma bands, with increases in the low beta band correlating with complex imagery and elementary visual alterations. These findings suggest that psychedelic drug-induced and non-pharmacologic alterations in consciousness have overlapping phenomenal traits but are distinct states of consciousness, as reflected by the unique brain-related changes during shamanic trance compared to previous literature investigating the psychedelic state. (shrink)

Abstract:Lately, the field of business ethics has begun to take an intense interest in the relationship between religion and business ethics. Various books and articles are being produced at an increasing rate using theoretical and qualitative research methods. However, to date, almost no data exist quantifying relationships between religion and business ethics. This paper begins to provide such data by testing the relationships between religious upbringing, religious practice, Christian beliefs, and attitudes toward corporate social responsibility. Analysis of our sample demonstrates (...) that religious practice and Christian beliefs have a weak relationship to attitudes toward corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Business schools are slowly waking up to the reality that most of the products and services discussed in management curricula serve a small portion of humanity. A small number of business schools has begun to address businesses designed to meet the needs of the poor (the so called “base of the pyramid”) in business in society courses or in dedicated elective courses. As the world heads into an era defined by pervasive uncertainty, perhaps a business mindset focusing on management in (...) the face of inherent unpredictability is a better model for reflecting on business in society. Effectuation theory describes a decision process employed by entrepreneurs and the poor that differs substantially from the rational choice paradigm that dominates management education. This theory of problem solving that views the environment as constructible by choice in the face of pervasive uncertainty may be a better foundation for theories of business insociety than existing frameworks. (shrink)

It may be hard to imagine how bullshit, or being strategically indifferent to the veracity of one’s assertions, might ever be morally permissible. Yet to categorically denounce it is to find oneself burdened with defending the impossibility of justifiable bullshit, the indefeasibility of truthfulness and the inculpability of inveterate bullshitters. A much more tenable position is to expand one’s notion of bullshit to include unintentional indifference to veracity while also characterizing bullshit (whether strategic or unintentional) as wrong only when it (...) constitutes negligence. Once bullshit is redefined in this fashion it becomes apparent that its preponderance in contemporary society is the work not of those who bullshit intentionally, but of those who uncritically consume and transmit the bullshit of others. Any attempt to disrupt the spread of negligent bullshit thus does well to consider our epistemic obligations not only as perceived experts, but as listeners. It is in this respect that the early Indian Buddhist critique of testimony proves quite helpful in reducing gullibility and, thereby, the likelihood of unintentional, yet negligent, bullshit. (shrink)

As self-conscious curators and critics of moral history, the early Confucians are relevant to the contemporary debate over the fate of memorials dedicated to morally flawed individuals. They provide us with a pragmatic justification that is distinct from those utilized in the current debate, and in many respects superior to the alternatives. In addition to supplying this curative philosophic resource, the early Confucian practices of ancestral memorialization suggest preventative measures we might adopt to minimize the chances of establishing divisive and (...) oppressive memorials in the future. (shrink)

New AI technologies have the potential to cause unintended harms in diverse domains including warfare, judicial sentencing, biomedicine and governance. One strategy for realising the benefits of AI whilst avoiding its potential dangers is to ensure that new AIs are properly ‘aligned’ with some form of ‘alignment target.’ One danger of this strategy is that – dependent on the alignment target chosen – our AIs might optimise for objectives that reflect the values only of a certain subset of society, and (...) that do not take into account alternative views about what constitutes desirable and safe behaviour for AI agents. In response to this problem, several AI ethicists have suggested alignment targets that are designed to be sensitive to widespread normative disagreement amongst the relevant stakeholders. Authors inspired by voting theory have suggested that AIs should be aligned with the verdicts of actual or simulated ‘moral parliaments’ whose members represent the normative views of the relevant stakeholders. Other authors inspired by decision theory and the philosophical literature on moral uncertainty have suggested that AIs should maximise socially expected choiceworthiness. In this paper, I argue that both of these proposals face several important problems. In particular, they fail to select attractive ‘compromise options’ in cases where such options are available. I go on to propose and defend an alternative, bargaining-theoretic alignment target, which avoids the problems associated with the voting- and decision-theoretic approaches. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan has recently defended the view that it is morally worse for a human being to suffer some harm than it is for a lower animal (such as a dog or a cow) to suffer a harm that is equally severe (ceteris paribus). In this paper, I argue that this view receives rather less support from our intuitions than one might at first suppose. According to Kagan, moreover, an individual’s moral status depends partly upon her ‘modal capacities.’ In this (...) paper, I argue that the most natural strategy for justifying Kagan’s theory faces some important challenges. More generally, I argue that philosophers who wish to defend the view that human beings have a higher moral status than that of the lower animals face a dilemma. Either their theory of moral status will imply (unacceptably) that some severely cognitively impaired human beings have a significantly lower moral status than that of typical human beings, or these philosophers will be forced to ground moral status in a set of properties so far removed from a subject’s actual capacities that it will become difficult to see why these kinds of properties should have such moral importance. (shrink)

Distinguishing “business” concerns from “ethical” values is not only an unfruitful and meaningless task, it is also an impossible endeavor. Nevertheless, fruitless attempts to separate facts from values produce detrimental second-order effects, both for theory and practice, and should therefore be abandoned. We highlight examples of exemplary research that integrate economic and moral considerations, and point the way to a business ethics discipline that breaks new ground by putting ideas and narratives about businesstogetherwith ideas and narratives about ethics.

A Brief Description of Neoplatonism R. Baine Harris Old Dominion University There are essentially three ways in which Neoplatonism may be considered to be ...

Theories of autobiographical memory emphasise effortful, generative search processes in memory retrieval. However recent research suggests that memories are often retrieved directly, without effortful search. We investigated whether direct and generative retrieval differed in the characteristics of memories recalled, or only in terms of retrieval latency. Participants recalled autobiographical memories in response to cue words. For each memory, they reported whether it was retrieved directly or generatively, rated its visuo-spatial perspective, and judged its accompanying recollective experience. Our results indicated that (...) direct retrieval was commonly reported and was faster than generative retrieval, replicating recent findings. The characteristics of directly retrieved memories differed from generatively retrieved memories: directly retrieved memories had higher field perspective ratings and lower observer perspective ratings. However, retrieval mode did not influence recollective experience. We discuss our findings in terms of cue generation and content construction, and the implication for reconstructive models of autobiographical memory. (shrink)

The advent of computer-assisted digital manipulation has raised new ethical concerns in news photography. A series of recent questionable manipulations in news magazines gives rise to a call for some systematic decision making and accountability. Protocols rather than codes of ethics are called for.

The nineteen essays that form this pioneering volume of comparative philosophy represent an exchange of ideas among specialists in Neoplatonism and specialists in Indian thought. These scholars have examined concepts and assertions that appear to be common to both philosophical traditions, as well as the possible historical influence of Indian sources upon late Greek philosophy, and specifically upon the Alexandrine Platonists. While most of the essays refer to Hinduism, several of them contain general surveys.

Clinical trials aim to minimise participant risk and generate new clinical knowledge for the wider population. Many military agencies are now investing efforts in pushing towards developing new treatments involving Brain-Computer Interfaces, Gene Therapy and Stem Cells interventions. These trials are targeting smaller disease groups, as such they give rise to novel participant risks of harms that are largely not accommodated by existing practice. This is of most concern with irreversible harms at early trial stages, where participants may forfeit any (...) future therapy, and in personalised medicine, where the individual participant assumes all of the trial risk. Given these new experimental interventions involve high risk of irreversible harms, how much risk should patients be exposed to when participating in experimental testing of innovative technologies? Designing clinical trials which better balance risk/benefit ratios for participants is crucial. The aim of this book chapter is to suggest a new stratified risk framework aimed at minimising the risk-benefit ratio to participants in clinical trials associated with high risk of irrevocable harms. We will argue it demands a higher-level of clinical data capture at earlier trial stages than predicated by current trial doctrine; it also requires publication of all trial data to minimise risk to participants of any future trial. (shrink)

Nucleosomes are the basic elements of chromatin structure. Polyamines, such as spermine and spermidine, are small ubiquitous molecules absolutely required for cell growth. Photoaffinity polyamines bind to specific locations in nucleosomes and can change the helical twist of DNA in nucleosomes. Acetylation of polyamines reduces their affinity for DNA and nucleosomes, thus the helical twist of DNA in nucleosomes could be regulated by cells through acetylation. I suggest that histone and polyamine acetylation act synergistically to modulate chromatin structure. On naked (...) DNA, the photoaffinity spermine bound preferentially to a specific ‘TATA’ sequence element, suggesting that polyamines may be involved in the unusual chromatin structure in this region. Further work is needed to test whether the specificities shown by photoaffinity polyamines are also shown by cellular polyamines; such experiments are now feasible. (shrink)

Understanding the neuroanatomical correlates of individual differences in executive function (EF) is integral to a complete characterization of the neural systems supporting cognition. While studies have investigated EF-neuroanatomy relationships in adults, these studies often include samples with wide variation in age, which may mask relationships between neuroanatomy and EF specific to certain neurodevelopmental time points, and such studies often use unreliable single task measures of EF. Here we address both issues. First, we focused on a specific age at which the (...) majority of neurodevelopmental changes are complete but at which age-related atrophy is not likely ( N = 251; mean age of 28.71 years, SD = 0.57). Second, we assessed EF through multiple tasks, deriving three factors scores guided by the unity/diversity model of EF, which posits a common EF factor that influences all EF tasks, as well as an updating-specific and shifting-specific factor. We found that better common EF was associated with greater volume and surface area of regions in right middle frontal gyrus/frontal pole, right inferior temporal gyrus, as well as fractional anisotropy in portions of the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (rSLF) and the left anterior thalamic radiation. Better updating-specific ability was associated with greater cortical thickness of a cluster in left cuneus/precuneus, and reduced cortical thickness in regions of right superior frontal gyrus and right middle/superior temporal gyrus, but no aspects of white matter diffusion. In contrast, better shifting-specific ability was not associated with gray matter characteristics, but rather was associated with increased mean diffusivity and reduced radial diffusivity throughout much of the brain and reduced axial diffusivity in distinct clusters of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus, the corpus callosum, and the right optic radiation. These results demonstrate that associations between individual differences in EF ability and regional neuroanatomical properties occur not only within classic brain networks thought to support EF, but also in a variety of other regions and white matter tracts. These relationships appear to differ from observations made in emerging adults ( Smolker et al., 2015 ), which might indicate that the brain systems associated with EF continue to experience behaviorally relevant maturational process beyond the early 20s. (shrink)

Bioethicist Peter Singer got a respectful reception Friday as he told advocates for the disabled it is morally acceptable to kill severely disabled newborns. The Governor's Commission on Disability was harshly criticized for inviting Singer to Friday's conference because of that stance, first enunciated in a 1979 book.

This paper defends the claim that mere temporal proximity always and without exception strengthens certain moral duties, including the duty to save – call this view Robust Temporalism. Although almost all other moral philosophers dismiss Robust Temporalism out of hand, I argue that it is prima facie intuitively plausible, and that it is analogous to a view about special obligations that many philosophers already accept. I also defend Robust Temporalism against several common objections, and I highlight its relevance to a (...) number of practical policy debates, including longtermism. My conclusion is that Robust Temporalism is a moral live option, that deserves to be taken much more seriously in the future. (shrink)