Habituation, a form of non‐associative learning, isno longer studied exclusively within the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Indeed, the same stimulus–response pattern is observed at the molecular, cellular, and organismal scales and is not dependent upon the presence of neurons. Hence, a more inclusive theory is required to accommodate aneural forms of habituation. Here an abstraction of the habituation process that does not rely upon particular biological pathways or substrates is presented. Instead, five generalizable elements that define the habituation process (...) are operationalized. The formulation can be applied to interrogate systems as they respond to several stimulation paradigms, providing new insights and supporting existing behavioral data. The model can be used to deduce the relative contribution of elements that contribute to the measurable output of the system. The results suggest that habituation serves as a general biological strategy that any system can implement to adaptively respond to harmless, repetitive stimuli. (shrink)

Postgraduate research has undergone unprecedented change in the past ten years, in response to major shifts in the role of the university and the disciplines in knowledge production and the management of intellectual work. New kinds of doctorates have been established that have expanded the scope and direction of doctoral education. A new audience of supervisors, academic managers and graduate school personnel is engaging in debates about the nature, purpose and future of doctoral education and how institutions and departments can (...) best respond to the increasing demands that are being made. Discussion of the emerging issues and agendas is set within the context of the international policy shifts that are occurring and considers the implications of these shifts on the changing external environment. This engaging book acquaints the readers with new international trends in doctoral education identifies new practices in supervision, research, teaching and learning enables practitioners of doctoral education to contribute to the debates and help shape new understandings questions the purposes of doctoral study and how they are changing considers the balance between equipping students as researchers and the conduct of original research Including contributions from both those who have conducted formal research on research education and those whose own practice is breaking new ground within their universities, this thought-provoking book draws on the expertise of those currently making a stimulating contribution to the literature on doctoral education. (shrink)

Although we have learned much about the neuropsychological control of facial expressions of emotion, there is still much work to do. We suggest that future work integrate advances in our theoretical understanding of the roles of volition and consciousness in the elicitation of emotion and the production of facial expressions with advances in our understanding of its underlying neurophysiology. We first review the facial musculature and the neural paths thought to innervate it, as well as previous attempts at understanding the (...) neural control of facial expressions of emotion, focusing on the voluntary-involuntary dichotomy and studies of hemispheric specialization. In the second section, we discuss four major aspects of the psychology of facial expressions of emotion that have particular import to their neurophysiological substrates. We offer these as a starting point for a better integration of psychological and neurophysiological perspectives in considering the neuropsychological control of facial expressions of emotion. (shrink)

Images of mindsuperbly summarizes work on cognitive neuroscienee using PET scanning. Some of the data emphasized suggests that parietal cortex is involved in the disengagement of attention. We have discovered neurons in awake monkeys which could perform this function. Another point of emphasis is the concept of neutral cues. Although an appealing concept, it is extremely difficult to define what is actually neutral.

Despite the supreme political and economic significance of boundaries--and ongoing challenges to existing national boundaries--scant attention has been paid to their ethics. This volume explores how diverse ethical traditions understand the political and property rights reflected in territorial and jurisdictional boundaries. It is the first book to bring together thinkers from a range of traditions, both religious and secular, to discuss the ethics of boundaries. Each contributor represents a tradition's views on questions surrounding the use of boundaries to delimit property (...) and political rights. What does it mean to own something? What resources should not be privately owned? What justifies the erection of political boundaries between one people and another? How ''hard'' should such boundaries be? What rights extend to minorities within a state? Should territorial boundaries coincide with social ones? Does national autonomy have an ethical basis, or is it an aspect of modern power politics? Should we aim for a more inclusive community than that afforded by modern nation-states? Cross-chapter dialogue and a substantive conclusion draw out similarities and differences among the traditions represented, traditions that include Christianity, classical liberalism, Confucianism, international law, Islam, Judaism, liberal egalitarianism, and natural law. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Nigel Biggar, Joseph Boyle, Joseph Chan, Russell Hardin, Will Kymlicka, Loren Lomasky, Robert McCorquodale, Richard B. Miller, David Novak, Sulayman Nyang, Michael Nylan, Raul C. Pangalangan, Daniel Philpott, Jeremy Rabkin, Hillel Steiner, M. Raquibuz Zaman, and Noam J. Zohar. (shrink)

This captivating new book, a milestone in Buddhist and comparative studies, is a compilation of seventeen essays celebrating the work and thought of Nolan Pliny Jacobson. A profoundly motivated interdisciplinary thinker, Jacobson sought to discover, clarify, and synthesize points of similarity among leading thinkers of different Oriental and Western cultures. For almost half a century, he articulated his vision of an emerging world civilization, one in which all people can feel and express their creative, constructive powers for the benefit of (...) others as well as for themselves. Jacobson believed that philosophy and the works of philosophers should be understood as a vital force enriching all civilizational experience. His own philosophic perspective was rooted in the conviction that novelty is the source of all experience and the center of a creativity that lives beyond words, arguments, and rational paradigms. Throughout his career, Jacobson explored Buddhist texts and personalities, spending much time in the Orient, particularly Myanmar and Japan. He also closely studied the works of numerous Western philosophers, including Whitehead, Dewey, Peirce, James, Hartshorne, and Wieman. Jacobson believed that American philosophy and Buddhism concurred in many ways, with the potential to form a powerful basis for the development of a world civilization. The essays in this volume are organized around Jacobson’s activities, publications, and interests. Authored by an impressive selection of scholars, the essays are grouped into four sections—"Historical Context," "Central Issues," "Practical Implications," and "The Japan Emphasis." Hajime Nakamura, Charles Hartshorne, Kenneth K. Inada, Seizo Oho, and numerous others discuss freedom, creativity, and Buddhism’s self-corrective nature, setting forth their reasons for sharing Jacobson’s ideas and visions. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to shed light on the nature of explanation in computational neuroscience. I argue that computational models in this domain possess explanatory force to the extent that they describe the mechanisms responsible for producing a given phenomenon—paralleling how other mechanistic models explain. Conceiving computational explanation as a species of mechanistic explanation affords an important distinction between computational models that play genuine explanatory roles and those that merely provide accurate descriptions or predictions of phenomena. It (...) also serves to clarify the pattern of model refinement and elaboration undertaken by computational neuroscientists. (shrink)

Page's target article makes a good case for the strength of localist models. This can be characterized as an issue of where new information is integrated with respect to existing knowledge structures. We extend the analysis by discussing the dimension of when this integration takes place, the implications, and how they guide us in the creation of cognitive models.

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of narratives in our understanding of the relationship between food, agriculture, and the environment. Narratives are the most comprehensive way of representing things that have a historical dimension. They are crucial for putting events into context, portraying characters, and depicting scenarios. The chapter argues that environmental ethics needs to embrace the “narrative turn” in order to account for the diversity of ethical issues surrounding food, agriculture, and the environment, as well as to connect overarching stories (...) about food systems to our everyday lives. It identities several narratives commonly seen in the United States that frame the way we understand food and environmental issues. A narrative approach provides an alternative to theory-driven environmental ethics toward practical, non-academic focus on actual problems and solutions. (shrink)

Is the relationship between psychology and neuroscience one of autonomy or mutual constraint and integration? This volume includes new papers from leading philosophers seeking to address this issue by deepening our understanding of the similarities and differences between the explanatory patterns employed across these domains.

In “On Begging the Systematicity Question,” Wayne Davis criticizes the suggestion of Cummins et al. that the alleged systematicity of thought is not as obvious as is sometimes supposed, and hence not reliable evidence for the language of thought hypothesis. We offer a brief reply.

The return of STS to its historical roots / Baird Callicott -- Phil-tech meets eco-phil / Don Idhe -- Is technology use insidious? / Kyle Whyte, Ryan Gunderson, Brett Clark -- Resistance to risky technologies / Paul Thompson -- Remediation technologies and respect for others / Ben Hale -- Early geoengineering governance / Clare Heyward -- Design for sustainability / Ibo van de Poel -- Industrial ecology and environmental design / Braden Allenby -- Ecodesign in the era of symbolic consumption (...) / Zhang Wei -- Do we consume too much? / Mark Sagoff -- Sustainable technologies for sustainable lifestyles / Philip Brey -- Sustainable animal agriculture and environmental virtue ethics / Raymond Anthony -- Technology, responsibility, and meat / Wyatt Galusky. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

Is the societal-level of analysis sufficient today to understand the values of those in the global workforce? Or are individual-level analyses more appropriate for assessing the influence of values on ethical behaviors across country workforces? Using multi-level analyses for a 48-society sample, we test the utility of both the societal-level and individual-level dimensions of collectivism and individualism values for predicting ethical behaviors of business professionals. Our values-based behavioral analysis indicates that values at the individual-level make a more significant contribution to (...) explaining variance in ethical behaviors than do values at the societal-level. Implicitly, our findings question the soundness of using societal-level values measures. Implications for international business research are discussed. (shrink)

We argue that the current ethical and regulatory framework for permissible risk levels in pediatric research can be helpfully understood in terms of children’s moral right to adequate protection from harm. Our analysis provides a rationale for what we propose as the highest level of permissible risk in pediatric research without the prospect of direct benefit: what we call “relatively minor” risk. We clarify the justification behind the usual standards of “minimal risk” and “a minor increase over minimal risk” and (...) explain why it is permissible to impose any risks at all on child participants who do not stand to benefit directly from enrollment in research. Finally, we illuminate some aspects of the concept of “best interests.”. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

Co-authored by three prominent philosophers of art, Jazz and the Philosophy of Art is the first book in English to be exclusively devoted to philosophical issues in jazz. It covers such diverse topics as minstrelsy, bebop, Voodoo, social and tap dancing, parades, phonography, musical forgeries, and jazz singing, as well as Goodman's allographic/autographic distinction, Adorno's critique of popular music, and what improvisation is and is not. The book is organized into three parts. Drawing on innovative strategies adopted to address challenges (...) that arise for the project of defining art, Part I shows how historical definitions of art provide a blueprint for a historical definition of jazz. Part II extends the book's commitment to social-historical contextualism by exploring distinctive ways that jazz has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. Chapters 4 and 5 use the lens of jazz vocals to provide perspective on racial issues previously unaddressed in the work, after which chapter 6 examines the broader premise that jazz was a socially progressive force in American popular culture. Part III concentrates on a topic that has entered into the arguments of each of the previous chapters: what is jazz improvisation? It outlines a pluralistic framework in which distinctive performance intentions distinguish distinctive kinds of jazz improvisation. This book is a comprehensive and valuable resource for any reader interested in the intersections between jazz and philosophy. (shrink)

Completeness is an important but misunderstood norm of explanation. It has recently been argued that mechanistic accounts of scientific explanation are committed to the thesis that models are complete only if they describe everything about a mechanism and, as a corollary, that incomplete models are always improved by adding more details. If so, mechanistic accounts are at odds with the obvious and important role of abstraction in scientific modelling. We respond to this characterization of the mechanist’s views about abstraction and (...) articulate norms of completeness for mechanistic explanations that have no such unwanted implications. _1_ Introduction _2_ A Balancing Act: When Do Details Matter? _3_ The Norms of Causal Explanation _4_ The Norms of Constitutive Explanation _5_ Salmon-Completeness _6_ From More Details to More Relevant Details _7_ Non-explanatory Virtues of Abstraction _8_ From Explanatory Models to Explanatory Knowledge _9_ Mechanistic Completeness Reconsidered _10_ Conclusion. (shrink)