This essay is an investigation into the social construction of agents and agency, linked directly to a cross-cultural predilection toward accumulation, categorization and data distribution in the interest, whether latent or manifest, of community formation. It is presented as a mediation on mediation, emerging out of ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration1 oriented around creative design of multiple interfaces into distributed information spaces, accessed through utilization of an agent technology called the “Information personae.” As such it is tenuously positioned at the nexus of (...) art, computer science, engineering and cultural studies, sitting comfortably at home in none. (shrink)

This book argues that a conscientiously objecting medical professional should receive an exemption only if the grounds of an objector's refusal are reasonable. It defends a detailed, contextual account of public reasonability suited for healthcare, which builds from the overarching concept of Rawlsian public reason. The author analyzes the main competing positions and maintains that these other views fail precisely due to their systematic inattention to the grounding reasons behind a conscientious objection; he argues that any such view is plausible (...) to the extent that it mimics the 'reason-giving requirement' for conscience objections defended in this work. Only reasonable objections can defeat the prior professional obligation to assign primacy to patient well-being, therefore one who refuses a patient's request for a legally available, medically indicated, and safe service must be able to explain the grounds of their objection in terms understandable to other citizens within the public institutional structure of medicine. The book further offers a novel policy proposal to deploy the Reasonability View: establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. It concludes that the Reasonability View is a viable and attractive position in this debate. A New Theory of Conscientious Objection in Medicine: Justification and Reasonability will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in bioethics, medical ethics, and philosophy of medicine, as well as thinkers interested in the intersections between law, medical humanities, and philosophy. (shrink)

(1997). Considering moral sensitivity in media ethics courses and research: An essay review by Robert F. Potter. Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 51-57. doi: 10.1207/s15327728jmme1201_4.

Much of traditional AI exemplifies the explicit representation paradigm, and during the late 1980''s a heated debate arose between the classical and connectionist camps as to whether beliefs and rules receive an explicit or implicit representation in human cognition. In a recent paper, Kirsh (1990) questions the coherence of the fundamental distinction underlying this debate. He argues that our basic intuitions concerning explicit and implicit representations are not only confused but inconsistent. Ultimately, Kirsh proposes a new formulation of the distinction, (...) based upon the criterion ofconstant time processing.The present paper examines Kirsh''s claims. It is argued that Kirsh fails to demonstrate that our usage of explicit and implicit is seriously confused or inconsistent. Furthermore, it is argued that Kirsh''s new formulation of the explicit-implicit distinction is excessively stringent, in that it banishes virtually all sentences of natural language from the realm of explicit representation. By contrast, the present paper proposes definitions for explicit and implicit which preserve most of our strong intuitions concerning straightforward uses of these terms. It is also argued that the distinction delineated here sustains the meaningfulness of the abovementioned debate between classicists and connectionists. (shrink)

This is a book about the role that psychological impairment should play in a theory of criminal liability. Criminal guilt in the Anglo-American legal tradition requires both that the defendant committed some proscribed act and did so with intent, knowledge, or recklessness. The second requirement corresponds to the intuitive idea that people should not be punished for something they did not do 'on purpose' or if they 'did not realize what they were doing'. Unlike many works in this area, this (...) book addresses the automatism and insanity defences by examining the types of functional impairment that typical candidates for these defences actually suffer. What emerges is a much wider conceptual framework that allows us to understand the significance of psychological states and processes for the attribution of criminal responsibility in a manner that is logically coherent, morally defensible, and consistent with research in psychopathology. (shrink)

This article argues that practitioners have a professional ethical obligation to dispense emergency contraception, even given conscientious objection to this treatment. This recent controversy affects all medical professionals, including physicians as well as pharmacists. This article begins by analyzing the option of referring the patient to another willing provider. Objecting professionals may conscientiously refuse because they consider emergency contraception to be equivalent to abortion or because they believe contraception itself is immoral. This article critically evaluates these reasons and concludes that (...) they do not successfully support conscientious objection in this context. Contrary to the views of other thinkers, it is not possible to easily strike a respectful balance between the interests of objecting providers and patients in this case. As medical professionals, providers have an ethical duty to inform women of this option and provide emergency contraception when this treatment is requested. (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a novel stance on semantic representation, and its relationship to context sensitivity. Connectionist-minded philosophers, including Clark and van Gelder, have espoused the merits of viewing hidden-layer, context-sensitive representations as possessing semantic content, where this content is partially revealed via the representations'' position in vector space. In recent work, Bodén and Niklasson have incorporated a variant of this view of semantics within their conception of semantic systematicity. Moreover, Bodén and Niklasson contend that they (...) have produced experimental results which not only satisfy a kind of context-based, semantic systematicity, but which, to the degree that reality permits, effectively deals with challenges posed by Fodor and Pylyshyn (1988), and Hadley (1994a). The latter challenge involved well-defined criteria for strong semantic systematicity. This paper examines the relevant claims and experiments of Bodén and Niklasson. It is argued that their case fatally involves two fallacies of equivocation; one concerning ''semantic content'' and the other concerning ''novel test sentences''. In addition, it is argued that their ultimate construal of context sensitive semantics contains serious confusions. These confusions are also found in certain publications dealing with "latent semantic analysis". Thus, criticisms presented here have relevance beyond the work of Bodén and Niklasson. (shrink)

Defenders of medical professionals’ rights to conscientious objection (CO) regarding emergency contraception (EC) draw an analogy to CO in the military. Such professionals object to EC since it has the possibility of harming zygotic life, yet if we accept this analogy and utilize jurisprudence to frame the associated public policy, those who refuse to dispense EC would not have their objection honored. Legal precedent holds that one must consistently object to all forms of the relevant activity. In the case at (...) hand, then, I argue that these professionals must also oppose morally innocuous practices that may prevent pregnancy after fertilization. These results reveal that such objectors cannot offer a plausible and consistent objection to harming zygotic life. Additionally, there are good reasons to reject the analogy itself. In either case, these findings call into question the case supporting refusals of EC based on scruples. (shrink)

In his analysis of subliminal perception research, Erdelyi documented two important phenomena: subchance perception and temporal variability in stimulus availability and accessibility. This Commentary addresses three issues raised by Erdelyi's review: the importance of distinguishing “micro” from “macro” temporal shifts; the need to analyze perception without awareness data at the level of the individual as well as the group; and parallels between the dissociations associated with neuroclinical phenomena and those observed in patients with certain forms of personality pathology. Continued integration (...) of laboratory findings with in vivo observations of clinical syndromes will yield a more cohesive and heuristic approach to the study of implicit mental states. (shrink)

This landmark volume brings together the work of the world's leading researchers in sublimated perception. This compilation marks a fundamental shift in the current study of subliminal effects: No longer in question is the notion that perception without awareness occurs. Now, the emphasis is on elucidating the parameters of subliminal effects and understanding the conditions under which stimuli perceived without awareness significantly influence affect, cognition, and behavior. PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS firmly establishes subliminal perception within the mainstream of psychological science. Well (...) represented here are the two main research branches that have emerged: One directly investigates the nature of subliminal effects; the other uses subliminal techniques as tools for investigating psychological phenomena such as hypnosis, dreaming, repression, social judgment and inference, psychopathology, and symptom formation. Broadly grouped into three main sections, the contributed chapters explore * The cognitive perspective--including implicit memory and implicit perception, the measurement of unconscious perceptual processes, and methods for revealing unconscious processes * The clinical perspective--exploring the cognitive and dynamic aspects of subliminal perception, memory, and consciousness; direct recovery of subliminal stimuli; and validation of subliminal psychodynamic activation * The social perspective--discussing subliminal mere-exposure effects, affect and social perception, and the role of subliminality in social psychology Timely and thought-provoking, PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS is sure to be of enormous interest to all psychoanalytic clinicians and scholars, as well as cognitive, clinical, and social psychologists whose work touches upon issues relating to psychopathology, perception, cognition, and memory. (shrink)

Many artists and music labels rely on partnerships with brands to pay for the production costs of their music videos. In exchange, the brands are featured in those videos. To enhance the transparency of these embedded forms of advertising, sponsorship disclosures are required. However, it remains unknown what the content of these disclosures in music videos should be to enhance sponsor transparency for adolescents. We examined how disclosure type affected adolescents’ conceptual and attitudinal persuasion knowledge. In addition, effects on responses (...) toward the brand, music video, and artist were examined. An experiment showed that none of the tested disclosures enhanced adolescents’ conceptual persuasion knowledge. However, disclosures explaining that the embedded brand helped pay for the production cost of the video led to lower attitudinal persuasion knowledge and, consequently, to more positive attitudes toward the brand, video, and artist, and to increased intentions to purchase the brand. (shrink)

Ancell and Sinnott-Armstrong argue that medical providers possess wide freedoms to determine the scope of their practice, and therefore, prohibiting almost any conscientious objections is a bad idea. They maintain that we could create an acceptable system on the whole which even grants accommodations to discriminatory refusals by healthcare professionals. Their argument is premised upon applying a free market mechanism to conscientious objections in medicine, yet I argue their Market View possesses a number of absurd and troubling implications. Furthermore, I (...) demonstrate that the fundamental logic of their main argument is flawed. Thinkers who wish to address the issues raised in this debate in general or by discriminatory conscience objections in particular should avoid the Market View and instead envisage theories that assess the reasons underlying conscientious refusals in medicine. (shrink)

Berkhofer ranges through a vast archive of recent writings by a broad range of authors. He explicates the opposing paradigms and their corresponding dilemmas by presenting in dialogue form the positions of modernists and postmodernists, formalists and deconstructionists, textualists and contextualists.

The current conflict between the recording industry and a portion of its customers who are involved in illicit copying of music files arose from innovations involving the compression and electronic distribution of files over the internet. This paper briefly describes some of the challenges faced by the recording industry, and examines some of the ethical issues that arise in various industry and consumer responses to the opportunities and threats presented by these innovations. The paper concludes by highlighting the risks associated (...) with responses that threaten further innovation, ultimately reducing the chances of finding solutions that hold appeal for all parties. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the Reasonability View: the position that medical professionals seeking a conscientious exemption must state reasons in support of their objection and allow those reasons to be subject to evaluation. Recently, this view has been criticized by Jason Marsh as proposing a standard that is either too difficult to meet or too easy to satisfy. First, I defend the Reasonability View from this proposed dilemma. Then, I develop this view by presenting and explaining some of the (...) central criteria it uses to assess whether a conscientious objection is proper grounds for extending an exemption to a medical practitioner. (shrink)

Mary Anne Warren provides a well‐known defense of the liberal position in the abortion debate, yet her argument is subject to the objection that it implies that infanticide is morally permissible. In a postscript to her original article, Warren argues that her position does not commit her to the moral acceptability of infanticide. I argue that the reasoning Warren presents in her postscript on infanticide undermines her original main argument in support of the liberal view: she cannot use this argument (...) to both defend the liberal view on abortion and establish that infanticide is morally wrong. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Don Marquis argues that abortion is morally wrong in most cases since it deprives the fetus of the value of its future. I criticize Marquis’s argument for the modified conservative view by adopting an argumentative strategy in which I work within his basic account: if it is granted that his fundamental idea is sound, what follows about the morality of abortion? I conclude that Marquis is faced with a dilemma: either his position must shift towards the extreme conservative view (...) on which abortion is never morally permissible, or he must abandon any recognizably conservative view. This dilemma suggests that Marquis’s view is either deeply implausible or that he cannot use this argument to successfully support his preferred position. (shrink)

It is argued that van der Velde and de Kamps employ binding circuitry that effectively constitutes a form of conjunctive binding. Analogies with prior systems are discussed and hypothetical origins of binding circuitry are examined for credibility.

Within AI and the cognitively related disciplines, there exist a multiplicity of uses of belief. On the face of it, these differing uses reflect differing views about the nature of an objective phenomenon called belief. In this paper I distinguish six distinct ways in which belief is used in AI. I shall argue that not all these uses reflect a difference of opinion about an objective feature of reality. Rather, in some cases, the differing uses reflect differing concerns with special (...) AI applications. In other cases, however, genuine differences exist about the nature of what we pre-theoretically call belief. To an extent the multiplicity of opinions about, and uses of belief, echoes the discrepant motivations of AI researchers. The relevance of this discussion for cognitive scientists and philosophers arises from the fact that (a) many regard theoretical research within AI as a branch of cognitive science, and (b) even if theoretical AI is not cognitive science, trends within AI influence theories developed within cognitive science. It should be beneficial, therefore, to unravel the distinct uses and motivations surrounding belief, in order to discover which usages merely reflect differing pragmatic concerns, and which usages genuinely reflect divergent views about reality. (shrink)

The situationist challenge to global character traits claims that on the basis of findings in social psychology, we should only accept at most the existence of local or context-sensitive traits. In this article I explore a neglected area of J. S. Mill's work to outline an account of context-sensitive traits. This account of traits, coupled with a sophisticated consequentialist ethical framework, suggests an interesting view on which persons govern the circumstances of their actions in order to best promote overall well-being.

Robert Dobbin presents a new translation into clear modern English of the first book of Epictetus' Discourses, accompanied by the first ever commentary on the work in English. The Discourses, composed around AD 100, are a key source for ancient Stoicism, one of the most influential schools of thought in Western philosophy.

This paper builds upon previous work in which I argue that we should assess a provider's reasons for his or her objection before granting a conscientious exemption. For instance, if the medical professional's reasoned basis involves an empirical mistake, an accommodation is not warranted. This article poses and begins to address several deep questions about the workings of what I call a reason-giving view: What standard should we use to assess reasons? What policy should we adopt in order to evaluate (...) the reasons offered by medical practitioners in support of their objections? I argue for a reasonability standard to perform the essential function of assessing reasons, and I offer considerations in support of a policy establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. (shrink)

Robert Almeder provides a comprehensive discussion and definitive refutation of our common conception of truth as a necessary condition for knowledge of the world, and to defend in detail an epistemic conception of truth without falling into the usual epistemological relativism or classical idealism in which all properties of the world turn out to be linguistic in nature and origin. There is no other book available that clearly and thoroughly defends the case for an epistemic conception of truth and (...) also claims success in avoiding idealism or epistemological relativism. (shrink)

Positions taken in the current debate over free will can be seen as responses to the following conditional: If every action is caused solely by another event and a cause necessitates its effect, then there is no action to which there is an alternative. The Libertarian, who believes that alternatives are a requirement of free will, responds by denying the right conjunct of C’s antecedent, maintaining that some actions are caused, either mediately or immediately, by events whose effects could be (...) different, even if they were to recur under identical circumstances. We have here a denial of Laplacian Determinism (LD), according to which the condition of the world at any instant makes only one state possible at any other instant.¹ One prominent defender of this view, Robert Kane, holds that unless an agent’s neural mechanisms operated indeterministicly in forming her character she is not responsible for its manifestations.² This requirement is entailed by the principle of “ultimate responsibility” (UR) according to which an act is freely willed only if (a) its agent is personally responsible for its performance in the sense of having caused it to occur by voluntarily doing something that was avoidable and (b). (shrink)

A new and critical edition of Hegel’s Religionsphilosophie Vorlesungen is in preparation. These important lectures will also appear in English and Spanish translation concurrently with the German edition. Walter Jaeschke of the Hegel-Archiv staff is constructing the German text, to be published by Felix Meiner Verlag ; Peter C. Hodgson of Vanderbilt University is editing the English translation; Ricardo Ferrara of the University of Buenos Aires is editing the Spanish translation. Jaeschke, Hodgson and Ferrara have entered into an agreement regarding (...) common editorial principles for the different language versions. Jaeschke explained the background and some of the guiding principles of the project in a two-part article printed in the 1980 Owl. Hodgson followed the second part of Jaeschke’s article with his own statement of procedures for the English translation. My purpose in this paper is to provide an update to Hodgson’s statement by giving additional information about the new edition, a progress report on work on the English translation, and a foretaste of some of the interesting differences which are emerging as the distinct lecture series become clearly and accurately distinguished from one another for the first time. (shrink)

The first edition of this book was published in 1977. At that time the field of thanatology, the study of death and dying, was still reasonably new and was dominated by research done by psychiatrists and social scientists. The most notable person in the field at the time was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who was widely credited with having brought thanatology into public view with the 1969 publication of her book On Death and Dying. Two research centers on death and dying were (...) gaining national reputations: The Foundation of Thanatology in New York (Austin Kutscher, director), and the Center for Death Education and Research (Robert Fulton, director) at the University of Minnesota. (shrink)

A process-oriented model of belief is presented which permits the representation of nested propositional attitudes within first-order logic. The model (NIM, for nested intensional model) is axiomatized, sense-based (via intensions), and sanctions inferences involving nested epistemic attitudes, with different agents and different times. Because NIM is grounded upon senses, it provides a framework in which agents may reason about the beliefs of another agent while remaining neutral with respect to the syntactic forms used to express the latter agent's beliefs. Moreover, (...) NIM provides agents with a conceptual map, interrelating the concepts of knowledge, belief, truth, and a number of cognate concepts, such as infers, retracts, and questions. The broad scope of NIM arises in part from the fact that its axioms are represented in a novel extension of first-order logic, -FOL (presented herein). -FOL simultaneously permits the representation of truth ascriptions, implicit self-reference, and arbitrarily embedded sentences within a first-order setting. Through the combined use of principles derived from Frege, Montague, and Kripke, together with context-sensitive semantic conventions, -FOL captures the logic of truth inferences, while avoiding the inconsistencies exhibited by Tarski. Applications of -FOL and NIM to interagent reasoning are described and the soundness and completeness of -FOL are established herein. (shrink)

De Finetti's treatise on the theory of probability begins with the provocative statement PROBABILITY DOES NOT EXIST, meaning that probability does not exist in an objective sense. Rather, probability exists only subjectively within the minds of individuals. De Finetti defined subjective probabilities in terms of the rates at which individuals are willing to bet money on events, even though, in principle, such betting rates could depend on state-dependent marginal utility for money as well as on beliefs. Most later authors, from (...) Savage onward, have attempted to disentangle beliefs from values by introducing hypothetical bets whose payoffs are abstract consequences that are assumed to have state-independent utility. In this paper, I argue that de Finetti was right all along: PROBABILITY, considered as a numerical measure of pure belief uncontaminated by attitudes toward money, does not exist. Rather, what exist are de Finetti's `previsions', or betting rates for money, otherwise known in the literature as `risk neutral probabilities'. But the fact that previsions are not measures of pure belief turns out not to be problematic for statistical inference, decision analysis, or economic modeling. (shrink)