An examination of the controversial "theory of mind" hypothesis, which states that children with autism are unable to comprehend other people's mental states. The theory relates to the most fundamental questions of normal development as well as to autism i.

Why do children with autism have such trouble developing normal social understanding of other people's feelings? This new edition updates the field by linking autism research to the newest methods for studying the brain.

G.A. Cohen criticizes Rawls’s account of justice because his difference principle permits inequalities that reflect the relative scarcity of different skills and natural abilities. Instead of viewing the ‘basic structure’ as the primary subject of justice, Cohen argues that individual citizens should cultivate an egalitarian ethos, which would enable a just society to dispense with the use of incentive payments to induce individuals to use their talents in socially ideal ways. This study examines Cohen’s critique, including his (...) rejection of ‘incentives,’ and vindicates Rawls’s approach. Ultimately, Cohen’s argument fails to grapple with the moral pluralism that characterizes modern, democratic societies, whereas Rawls’s theory is constructed to accommodate such pluralism. (shrink)

The almost 300 articles contain not only historical accounts but also some indication of the state of present day study in classical philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 153-156 [Access article in PDF] JHI 2000 Donald R. Kelley It was just sixty years ago that this Journal first made its appearance. Two hundred thirty-nine issues later it continues in a world transformed by war, overpopulation, cultural shocks, scientific and technological transformations, globalization, the avalanche of information produced by electronic exchange, and "the acceleration of just about everything." Yet (...) despite these factors and the strains of postmodernism and cultural alterity, 1 it has not entirely lost touch with its intellectual innocence, faith in humanistic learning, and reliance on enlightened reason. This continuity itself may seem something of a novelty in an age of distrust of history and "rage against reason," but for some of us it reflects the critical spirit and intellectual context out of which such ostensibly subversive attitudes emerge, and reemerge. To some extent, moreover, the diversity of opinions about intellectual traditions is the result of specializations, and special interests, which have changed the climate of opinion since the time of Arthur O. Lovejoy, principal founder of the JHI. Lovejoy's vision was super- as well as inter-disciplinary; that is, he intended to include in the agenda of "history of ideas" particular areas of history of philosophy, literature, art, science, social science, etc., as well as the larger intellectual and cultural areas into which these disciplinary histories extend. 2 These days, however, all these disciplinary traditions have their own more specialized journals and do not need to seek a vehicle in publications of more general interest. What remains then, for the most part, is the interdisciplinary arena in which larger questions of human experience should be posed--and for Lovejoy, as for so many epigones and critics, the main "larger question" is not only one of value but also of specifically historical inquiry. 3 [End Page 153]The first issue of the JHI appeared under the editorship of Lovejoy (with Philip Wiener, who did most of the editorial work, as "managing editor"), assisted by a committee that included two historians, three philosophers, four literary scholars, and one political theorist; namely, Crane Brinton, Gilbert Chinard, Morris Cohen, Francis Coker, Richard McKeon, Perry Miller, Marjory Nicolson, J. H. Randall, J. Salwyn Schapiro, and Louis Wright. The first volume featured contributions from each of these, including Wiener, except for Miller (vol. 2), Shapiro (vol. 3), McKeon (vol. 8), and Coker. 4 During the first five years there were also reviews of books by Dilthey (by Horace L. Friess), Croce (Schapiro), Mannheim (Randall), Perry Miller (Herbert W. Schneider), Van Wyck Brooks (Miller) and Alfred Kazin (F. O. Matthiessen). In this period the disciplinary distribution of articles was not markedly different from that of the past five years, nor was the ranking of fields by number of submissions. 5 Most important, the original interdisciplinary thrust of Lovejoy's agenda, if not his attachment to the spiritualist currency of "unit-ideas," has survived growing specialization.At first the history of ideas was pursued largely in the shadow of the history of philosophy; for in this field, according to Lovejoy, "is to be found the common seed-plot, the locus of initial manifestation in writing, of the greater number of the more fundamental and pervasive ideas, and especially of the ruling preconceptions, which manifest themselves in other regions of intellectual history." 6 Lovejoy's concern was always with concepts, especially "-isms," and yet in some ways he anticipated the "linguistic turn" of the later years of this century, pointing out in particular "the role of semantic shifts, ambiguities, and confusions, in the history of thought and taste," for "nearly all of the great catchwords have been equivocal--or rather, multivocal." 7 If ideas could be given stable definitions, they were nonetheless often, in the context of language, in conflict, even in the mind of a single thinker; for such was the "anomaly of knowledge." 8 So Lovejoy was at pains to distinguish the various meanings of [End Page 154] catch-words like "nature," "perfectibility," "romanticism," "progress," and "pragmatism," not to mention more inflammatory terms of wartime ideological debate.But... (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to Mario Bunge in honor of his sixtieth birthday. Mario Bunge is a philosopher of great repute, whose enormous output includes dozens of books in several languages, which will culminate with his Treatise on Basic Philosophy projected in seven volumes, four of which have already appeared [Reidel, I 974ff. ]. He is known for his works on research methods, the foundations of physics, biology, the social sciences, the diverse applications of mathematical methods and of systems analysis, (...) and more. Bunge stands for exact philosophy, classical liberal social philosophy, rationalism and enlightenment. He is brave, even relentless, in his attacks on subjectivism, mentalism, and spiritualism, as well as on positivism, mechanism, and dialectics. He believes in logic and clarity, in science and open-mindedness - not as the philosopher's equivalent to the poli tician's rhetoric of motherhood and apple pie, but as a matter of everyday practice, as qualities to cultivate daily in our pursuit of the life worth living. Bunge's philosophy often has the quality of Columbus's egg, and he is prone to come to swift and decisive conclusions on the basis of argu ments which seem to him valid; he will not be perturbed by the fact that most of the advanced thinkers in the field hold different views. (shrink)

What is unique about China is the agreement on all sides that men are naturally equal. This is the second of our two central themes. ...

Fifteen essays addressing conceptions of individualism and holism as they emerged in Chinese literature and philosophy from the time of Confucius and Chuang-tzu to the present.

Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life offers a bold new assessment of the role of the domestic sphere in modernist literature, architecture, and design.

The network approach to psychopathology posits that mental disorders can be conceptualized and studied as causal systems of mutually reinforcing symptoms. This approach, first posited in 2008, has grown substantially over the past decade and is now a full-fledged area of psychiatric research. In this article, we provide an overview and critical analysis of 363 articles produced in the first decade of this research program, with a focus on key theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions. In addition, we turn our attention (...) to the next decade of the network approach and propose critical avenues for future research in each of these domains. We argue that this program of research will be best served by working toward two overarching aims: (a) the identification of robust empirical phenomena and (b) the development of formal theories that can explain those phenomena. We recommend specific steps forward within this broad framework and argue that these steps are necessary if the network approach is to develop into a progressive program of research capable of producing a cumulative body of knowledge about how specific mental disorders operate as causal systems. (shrink)

The generation of evidence is integral to the work of public health and health service providers. Traditionally, ethics has been addressed differently in research projects, compared with other forms of evidence generation, such as quality improvement, program evaluation, and surveillance, with review of non-research activities falling outside the purview of the research ethics board. However, the boundaries between research and these other evaluative activities are not distinct. Efforts to delineate a boundary – whether on grounds of primary purpose, temporality, underlying (...) legal authority, departure from usual practice, or direct benefits to participants – have been unsatisfactory. (shrink)

A study of the road to modern problem solving in China, winding between a traditional Confucian style of inquiry and one associated with science.

American politicians often claim a moral imperative to ensure quality affordable health care to all Americans, but as Donald Munro points out, leaders rarely outline the content of this moral standard and whether it can be applied to all societies. Munro turns to recent research in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology to identify the ethical principles that help humans succeed as individuals and as cooperative groups. He then applies these principles to two practical problems affecting contemporary China: the moral (...) complexity of responding to global warming and the lack of consistency within the Chinese legal system. (shrink)

Radical Orthodoxy (RO) accepts the post-structuralist critiques of autonomous human agency while liberation theologians embrace Enlightenment ideals ofsubjectivity and the secular political space where agency is exercised. RO theologians think that by accepting these premises, liberation theology fails to resist violence and nihilism that are the inevitable fruit of secular autonomy. I want to formulate a liberationist response to these objections. Liberationists do not see human and divine agency as fundamentally opposed, but rather the deepest strivings of the human spirit (...) for justice are on the same trajectory as the Kingdom of God. Human and divine agency are tied together through the notion of a utopia whereby these strivings for justice are expressed in a finite and historical way. This emancipative use of reason in the construction of a utopia provides a means for divine and human agency to interact without destroying the human autonomy of the secular sphere. (shrink)

In this volume Donald Munro, author of important studies on early and contemporary China, provides a critical analysis of the doctrines of the Sung Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi (1130-1200). For nearly six centuries Confucian orthodoxy was based on Chu Hsi's commentaries on Confucian classics. These commentaries were the core of the curriculum studied by candidates for the civil service in China until 1905 and provided guidelines both for personal behavior and for official policy. Munro finds the key to the (...) complexities of Chu Hsi's thought in his mode of discourse: the structural images of family, stream of water, mirror, body, plant, and ruler. Furthermore, he discloses the basic framework of Chu Hsi's ethics and the theory of human nature that is provided by these illustrative images. As revealed by Munro, Chu Hsi's thought is polarized between family duty and a broader altruism and between obedience to external authority and self-discovery of moral truth. To understand these tensions moves us toward clarifying the meaning of each idea in the sets. The interplay of these ideas, selectively emphasized over time by later Confucians, is a background for explaining modern Chinese thought. In it, among other things, Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism co-exist. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In this volume Donald Munro, author of important studies on early and contemporary China, provides a critical analysis of the doctrines of the Sung Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi. For nearly six centuries Confucian orthodoxy was based on Chu Hsi's commentaries on Confucian classics. These commentaries were the core of the curriculum studied by candidates for the civil service in China until 1905 and provided guidelines both for personal behavior and for official policy. Munro finds the key to the complexities (...) of Chu Hsi's thought in his mode of discourse: the structural images of family, stream of water, mirror, body, plant, and ruler. Furthermore, he discloses the basic framework of Chu Hsi's ethics and the theory of human nature that is provided by these illustrative images. As revealed by Munro, Chu Hsi's thought is polarized between family duty and a broader altruism and between obedience to external authority and self-discovery of moral truth. To understand these tensions moves us toward clarifying the meaning of each idea in the sets. The interplay of these ideas, selectively emphasized over time by later Confucians, is a background for explaining modern Chinese thought. In it, among other things, Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism co-exist. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)