This essay is a response to Robert Norton's "The Myth of the Counter-Enlightenment". Norton's essay raises two issues. Is Isaiah Berlin's interpretation of Hamann and Herder based on one-sided and faulty scholarship, naively putting itself in the service of an anti-liberal myth about those figures originated by early twentieth-century German ideologues? A second issue flows from the first: if Berlin was mistaken in his reading of the work of Hamann and Herder, mistaking what they contributed to the Enlightenment, is Berlin's (...) very notion of a Counter-Enlightenment a fiction-a myth? Thorough analysis of those issues would require several essays. Instead, I try to sketch an alternative reading of Berlin's style of doing intellectual history, while highlighting the limitations of Norton's critique. (shrink)

When do descriptive regularities become prescriptive norms? We examined children's and adults' use of group regularities to make prescriptive judgments, employing novel groups that engaged in morally neutral behaviors. Participants were introduced to conforming or non-conforming individuals. Children negatively evaluated non-conformity, with negative evaluations declining with age. These effects were replicable across competitive and cooperative intergroup contexts and stemmed from reasoning about group regularities rather than reasoning about individual regularities. These data provide new insights into children's group concepts and have (...) important implications for understanding the development of stereotyping and norm enforcement. (shrink)

Reasoning almost always occurs in the face of incomplete information. Such reasoning is nonmonotonic in the sense that conclusions drawn may later be withdrawn when additional information is obtained. There is an active literature on the problem of modeling such nonmonotonic reasoning, yet no category of method-let alone a single method-has been broadly accepted as the right approach. This paper introduces a new method, called sweeping presumptions, for modeling nonmonotonic reasoning. The main goal of the paper is to provide an (...) example-driven, nontechnical introduction to the method of sweeping presumptions, and thereby to make it plausible that sweeping presumptions can usefully be applied to the problems of nonmonotonic reasoning. The paper discusses a representative sample of examples that have appeared in the literature on nonmonotonic reasoning, and discusses them from the point of view of sweeping presumptions. (shrink)

Magic angle spinning (MAS) NMR methods provide a means of obtaining high resolution structural data on rhodopsin and its photoin termediates. Current work has focused on the structure of the retinal chromophore and its interactions with surrounding protein charges. The recent development of MAS NMR methods for measuring internuclear distances with a resolution of ∼0.2 will complement diffraction methods for addressing key mechanistic questions.

It can be creepy to notice that something human-looking is not real. But can sensitivity to this phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, be predicted from superficially unrelated traits? Based on results from at least 489 participants, this study examines the relation between nine theoretically motivated trait indices and uncanny valley sensitivity, operationalized as increased eerie ratings and decreased warmth ratings for androids presented in videos. Animal Reminder Sensitivity, Neuroticism, its Anxiety facet, and Religious Fundamentalism significantly predicted uncanny valley sensitivity. (...) In addition, Concern over Mistakes and Personal Distress significantly predicted android eerie ratings but not warmth. The structural equation model indicated that Religious Fundamentalism operates indirectly, through robot-related attitudes, to heighten uncanny valley sensitivity, while Animal Reminder Sensitivity increases eerie ratings directly. These results suggest that the uncanny valley phenomenon may operate through both sociocultural constructions and biological adaptations for threat avoidance, such as the fear and disgust systems. Trait indices that predict uncanny valley sensitivity warrant investigation by experimental methods to explicate the processes underlying the uncanny valley phenomenon. (shrink)

This article presents a new proposal for understanding the establishment and maintenance of cooperation: the cooperation afforder with framing hypothesis, producing what can be called cooperation from afforder-framing . Three key moves are present. First, a special variety of the Stag Hunt game, the Cooperation Afforder game, will reliably produce mutualistic cooperation through an evolutionary process. Second, cognitive framing is a credible candidate mechanism to meet the special conditions and requirements of the Cooperation Afforder game. Third, once mutualistic cooperation is (...) established in this way, it will plausibly lead to broader forms of cooperation, even to limited forms of altruism. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is a folk theory characterized by the belief that a causal internal essence or force gives rise to the common outward behaviors or attributes of a category's members. In two studies, we investigated whether 4- to 7-year-old children evidenced essentialist reasoning about heart transplants by asking them to predict whether trading hearts with an individual would cause them to take on the donor's attributes. Control conditions asked children to consider the effects of trading money with an individual. Results (...) indicated that children reasoned according to essentialism, predicting more transfer of attributes in the transplant condition versus the non-bodily money control. Children also endorsed essentialist transfer of attributes even when they did not believe that a transplant would change the recipient's category membership. This finding runs counter to predictions from a strong interpretation of the “minimalist” position, an alternative to essentialism. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus has not only brought along disruptions to daily socio-economic activities, but sickness and deaths due to its high contagion. With no widely acceptable pharmaceutical cure, the best form of prevention may be precautionary measures which will guide against infections and curb the spread of the disease. This study explored the relationship between COVID-19 knowledge, risk perception, and precautionary behavior among Nigerians. The study also sought to determine whether this relationship differed for men and women. A web-based cross-sectional (...) design approach was used to recruit 1,554 participants from all geopolitical zones in Nigeria, through social media platforms using a snowball sampling technique. Participants responded to web-based survey forms comprising demographic questions and adapted versions of the Ebola knowledge scale, SARS risk perception scale, and precautionary behavior scale. Moderated mediation analysis of the data showed that risk perception mediated the association between COVID-19 knowledge and precautionary behavior and this indirect effect was in turn moderated by gender. Results indicate that having adequate knowledge of COVID-19 was linked to higher involvement in precautionary behavior through risk perception for females but not for males. It was also noted that awareness campaigns and psychological intervention strategies on COVID-19 related activities may be particularly important for males more than females. Drawing from the health belief model, we recommend that COVID-19 awareness campaigns should target raising more awareness of the risks associated with the infection to make individuals engage more in precautionary behaviors. (shrink)

In this paper, the theory and practice of therapeutic touch (TT) is scrutinized from a number of perspectives. Firstly, the alleged close relationship between TT and Martha Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human Beings is evaluated. Secondly, the employment of the language of modern physics in Rogers’ theory and TT is critically examined. The authors then review the research literature on TT's efficacy, completing their critique by discussing the ethical issues involved in the practice of TT. As each of the perspectives (...) considered reveals some concerns, the paper concludes that TT is a questionable intervention, underpinned by a very weak theoretical, clinical and research base. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a pilot study of differences in ethical evaluations between business faculty and students at a Southern university. Data were collected from 137 business students (46 freshmen and 67 seniors) and 34 business faculty members. Significant differences were found in 7 of the 30 situations between freshmen and faculty and four situations between seniors and faculty. When the combined means for each group were tested, there was no significant difference in the means at the 0.05 (...) level of significance. A trend was revealed, however, in that the majority of the time faculty members were the most ethically oriented followed by seniors and then freshmen. (shrink)

Survival after solid-organ transplantation has improved significantly, and many contemporary transplant recipients are of childbearing potential. There are limited data to guide decision-making surrounding pregnancy after transplantation, variations in clinical practice, and significant knowledge gaps, all of which raise significant ethical issues. Post-transplant pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of maternal and fetal complications. Shared decision-making is a central aspect of patient counselling but is complicated by significant knowledge gaps. Stakeholder interests can be in conflict; exploring these tensions can (...) help patients to evaluate their options and inform their deliberations. We argue that uniform, evidence-based recommendations for pregnancy after solid organ transplantation are needed. Conducting research, including patient-engaged studies, in this area should be priority for the transplant community. (shrink)

The effect of task difficulty on inter-task transfer is a classic issue in motor learning. We examined the relation between self-efficacy and transfer of learning after practicing different versions of a stick balancing task. Practicing the same task or an easier version led to significant pre- to post-test transfer of learning, whereas practicing a more difficult version did not. Self-efficacy increased modestly from pre- to post-test with easy practice, but decreased significantly with difficult practice. In addition, self-efficacy immediately prior to (...) the post-test was significantly lower after difficult practice than easy or intermediate practice. Self-efficacy immediately prior to the post-test, performance at the end of practice, and pre-test performance explained 75% of the variance in post-test performance. The mediating role of self-efficacy on transfer of learning offers an alternative explanation for recent findings on the superiority of easy-to-difficult transfer and may help clarify inconsistencies in earlier research. (shrink)

Cross-disciplinary scientific collaboration is emerging as standard operating procedure for many scholarly research enterprises. And yet, the skill set needed for effective collaboration is neither taught nor mentored. The goal of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative is to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration. This book, inspired by this initiative, presents dialogue-based methods designed to increase mutual understanding among collaborators so as to enhance the quality and productivity of cross-disciplinary collaboration. It provides a theoretical context, principal activities, and evidence for effectiveness that will assist (...) readers in honing their collaborative skills. (shrink)

The proliferation of digital data and internet-based research technologies is transforming the research landscape, and researchers and research ethics communities are struggling to respond to the ethical issues being raised. This paper discusses the findings from a collaborative project that explored emerging ethical issues associated with the expanding use of digital data for research. The project involved consulting with researchers from a broad range of disciplinary fields. These discussions identified five key sets of issues and informed the development of guidelines (...) orientated to meet the needs of researchers and ethics committee members. We argue that establishing common approaches to assessing ethical risks of research involving digital data will promote consistency in the ethical standards for research, enable the smooth functioning of ethics committees, and sustain public confidence in research. We conclude with recommendations for the development of educational resources for ethics committees, data management guidelines and further public education. (shrink)

The study of intellectual humility (IH), which is gaining increasing interest among cognitive scientists, has been dominated by a focus on individuals. We propose that IH operates at the collective level as the tendency of a collective’s members to attend to each other’s intellectual limitations and the limitations of their collective cognitive efforts. Given people’s propensity to better recognize others’ limitations than their own, IH may be more readily achievable in collectives than individuals. We describe the socio-cognitive dynamics that can (...) interfere with collective IH and offer the solution of building intellectually humbling environments that create a culture of IH that can outlast the given membership of a collective. We conclude with promising research directions. (shrink)

In this reply I consider David O’Connor’s article “A Variation on the Free Will Defense” in which he tries to show that natural evil is necessary for free will by showing that it is required for the possibility of “morally creditable free choice.” I argue that O’Connor’s reply to an anticipated objection was unsuccessful in showing that humans can be moral without the property he calls “p.” that an altered understanding of what “morally creditable free choice” is would not help. (...) and finally, that if God’s moral condition is fundamentally different than ours, it could not be used as an example of p being inessential for humans being moral. (shrink)

Heidegger's Being and Time: Critical Essays provides a variety of recent studies of Heidegger's most important work. Twelve prominent scholars, representing diverse nationalities, generations, and interpretive approaches deal with general methodological and ontological questions, particular issues in Heidegger's text, and the relation between Being and Time and Heidegger's later thought. All of the essays presented in this volume were never before available in an English-language anthology. Two of the essays have never before been published in any language ; three of (...) the essays have never been published in English before , and two of the essays provide previews of works in progress by major scholars. (shrink)

This article is the lead piece in a special report that presents the results of a bioethical investigation into chimeric research, which involves the insertion of human cells into nonhuman animals and nonhuman animal embryos, including into their brains. Rapid scientific developments in this field may advance knowledge and could lead to new therapies for humans. They also reveal the conceptual, ethical, and procedural limitations of existing ethics guidance for human‐nonhuman chimeric research. Led by bioethics researchers working closely with an (...) interdisciplinary work group, the investigation focused on generating conceptual clarity and identifying improvements to governance approaches, with the goal of helping scholars, funders, scientists, institutional leaders, and oversight bodies (embryonic stem cell research oversight [ESCRO] committees and institutional animal care and use committees [IACUCs]) deliver principled and trustworthy oversight of this area of science. The article, which focuses on human‐nonhuman animal chimeric research that is stem cell based, identifies key ethical issues in and offers ten recommendations regarding the ethics and oversight of this research. Turning from bioethics’ previous focus on human‐centered questions about the ethics of “humanization” and this research's potential impact on concepts like human dignity, this article emphasizes the importance of nonhuman animal welfare concerns in chimeric research and argues for less‐siloed governance and oversight and more‐comprehensive public communication. (shrink)

O‐glycosylation is the post‐translational process whereby carbohydrate is added to hydroxylated amino acids of proteins. The major O‐glycosylation pathway in animal cells is involved in the synthesis of oligosaccharides linked by N‐acetylgalactosamine to serine or threonine residues in ‘mucin‐type’ proteins or their analogs. In this review, we discuss the evidence for the cellular localization of the biosynthetic steps in this pathway and propose a simplified, consensus version. We also propose variations of the simple pathway to account for its heterogeneity and (...) variability in different cell types and differentiation states. (shrink)

Thinking about the first coming and how it relates to visions of a second coming is one of the most important ways for the Christian tradition to contribute to serious reflection on the structure of history, the significance of anticipation, and their importance for the structure of action. This paper draws on two texts, Flannery O’Connor’s novel, Wise Blood, and Thomas Sheehan’s historical and theological study, The First Coming, to lay a groundwork for such reflection. Rather than treating the texts (...) sequentially, this article intertwines them, following the structure of Sheehan’s book but illuminating it with O’Connor’s story. (shrink)

In her new book The American Pragmatists Cheryl Misak provides a reading of the history of American Pragmatism in which it is composed of two related yet distinct types of pragmatism. She characterizes the debate between these two types of pragmatism as a debate between those who assert (or whose view entails) that there is no truth and objectivity to be had anywhere and those who take pragmatism to promise an account of truth that preserves our cognitive aspiration of getting (...) things right. O... (shrink)

Transcendental philosophy has traditionally sought to provide non-contingent grounds for certain aspects of cognitive, moral, and social life. Further, it has made a claim to being 'ultimately' grounded in the sense that its account of experience should provide a non-dogmatic account of its own possibility. Most current approaches to transcendental philosophy seek to do justice to these twin aspects of the project by making an 'intersubjective turn', taking the structure of dialogue or social practice rather than the 'I think' or (...) consciousness as the locus of ultimate grounds. After examining the recent debate over transcendental arguments in order to illuminate the relations between two important versions of transcendental philosophy- the neo-Kantian version oriented toward justification of principles and the phenomenological version oriented toward clarification of meaning- this paper criticizes internally connected aspects of the intersubjective turn in K. O. Apel, Bernhard Waldenfels, and a recent 'practical' interpretation of Husserl. It is shown that the twin demands of the project can be redeemed only if ultimate grounding is seen first of all not as an epistemological or ontological question but as an ethical one. This requires modification of the appeal to intersubjectivity and a qualified return to the first-person perspective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Efficacious Grace and Free Will:Taking Aquinas at His WordSteven A. LongProfessor Steven Jensen, in his Nova et Vetera article "Efficacious Grace and Free Will: Six Inadequate Arguments," identifies arguments that he argues to be insufficient to show the compatibility of efficacious grace with free will.1 With respect to his analysis, I wish here to address only four conspicuous points: (1) whether in the discussion of efficacious grace "everyone" (...) agrees that the will is not determined by efficacious grace; (2) whether the fact that non-rational creatures are also contingent agents makes the specific contingency of choice that flows from the relation of the finite objects of the will to the intellectually specified formal object of the will (universal good) to be insufficient to constitute the nature of rational free choice; (3) whether Thomas's texts regarding the infallibility of divine premotion are "equivocal"; (4) whether the arguments being considered are properly identified principally as those of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Taylor O'Neill, and Steven Long or are not better first identified in historico-doctrinal terms as the teaching of Aquinas, and second, of several centuries of renowned theologians and philosophers prior in time and in dignity to the aforementioned authors—so that principally identifying these arguments with them, is rather like crediting them with the real distinction of essence and existence?2 [End Page 1105]I. "Everyone" Agrees That the Will Is Not Determined by Efficacious Grace?As to the nature of Thomas's teaching—or even of the account identified historically by the Holy See as "Thomist" with respect to the Congregatio de Auxiliis and held since by a very great many Thomistic authors—Prof. Jensen seems somewhat to miscast the nature of the propositions under consideration.3 He argues on 119 that, "In any case, everyone involved seems to be in agreement that the will should not be determined by efficacious grace." But this is not the case. What there is agreement about is that the will is not determined by efficacious grace in such a way that it is not also and simultaneously freely determined by the will itself. Manifestly this is a contradiction in terms if we define freedom as including a liberty of indetermination with respect to divine providential causality. But Thomas does not do this, and there is no good reason why one should.4 Thus Thomas in De malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4: [End Page 1106]Now it is manifest that when something moves something else, it is not from the fact that it is moving said to be the first mover; wherefore it is not excluded that it be moved by another, from which likewise it has this very thing, that it moves. In the same way, when something moves itself, it is not excluded from being moved by another, from which it has this very thing that it moves itself: and thus it is not inconsistent with freedom that God is the cause of the act of free will.5 [End Page 1107]In the Oesterle translation of De malo—a wonderful translation—nonetheless this passage is erroneously rendered (betimes even Homer nods) as "hence it is not precluded that it is moved by another and from that other has the very ability to move."6 But the passage refers to God as cause of the very act of free will, not merely of the "ability": "et sic non repugnat libertati quod Deus est causa actus liberi arbitrii." When something moves itself, this does not imply that the thing is not moved by another "from which it has this very thing that it moves itself." And "thus it is not inconsistent with freedom that God is the cause of the act of free will." That is, God causes the free self-determination of the human will (even at the level of nature, prior to the consideration of grace), by moving the will from potency to act with respect to its own self-motion. Whether at the level of nature or at the level of grace, God moves the will with respect to its own self-determination in freedom, and this motion is not "indeterminate... (shrink)

Grant Gillett's (2009) welcome and extremely thought-provoking target article addresses many complex issues of such far-ranging consequence that it seems impossible to provide a commentary worthy o...