In two independent yet complementary studies, the current research explored the developmental changes of young children’s conceptualization of learning, focusing the role of knowledge change and learning intention, and its association with their developing theory of mind ability. In study 1, 75 children between 48 and 86 months of age judged whether a character with or without a genuine knowledge change had learned. The results showed that younger children randomly attributed learning between genuine knowledge change and accidental coincidence that did (...) not involve knowledge change. Children’s learning judgments in familiar contexts improved with age and correlated with their ToM understanding. However, the correlation was no longer significant once age was held constant. Another sample of 72 children aged between 40 and 90 months participated in study 2, where children were asked to judge whether the story protagonists intended to learn and whether they eventually learned. The results suggested that children over-attributed learning intention to discovery and implicit learning. Stories with conflict between the learning intention and outcome appeared to be most challenging for children. Children’s intention judgment was correlated with their ToM understanding, and ToM marginally predicted intention judgment when the effect of age was accounted for. The implication of the findings for school readiness was discussed. Training studies and longitudinal designs in the future are warranted to better understand the relation between ToM development and children’s learning understanding. (shrink)

Limitations of Dienes & Perner's (D&P's) theory are traced to the assumption that the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness is true. D&P claim that 18-month-old children are capable of explicitly representing factuality, from which it follows (on D&P's theory) that they are capable of explicitly representing content, attitude, and self. D&P then attempt to explain 3-year-olds' failures on tests of voluntary control such as the dimensional change card sort by suggesting that at this age children cannot represent content and (...) attitude explicitly. We provide a better levels-of-consciousness account for age-related abulic dissociations between knowledge and action. (shrink)

This article addresses a common yet rarely discussed aspect of hospital care—a pro-active approach to ethical dilemmas. Potential ethical conflicts often present warning signs to clinicians, analogous to the warning lights on a car’s dashboard. Using a recent case study, a commonly encountered clinical decision—a conflict about whether to terminally extubate a critically ill patient versus whether to offer a tracheostomy— we describe a pro-active approach to ethical conflicts and outline three learning objectives: (1) the need for a robust understanding (...) of the term “futility,” (2) the need for an appreciation of the various and often conflicting interpretations of “improved/improving,” and (3) the need to understand the challenges of surrogate decision making. (shrink)

Relational complexity provides a metric for measuring task demands, and in this respect has much in common with the cognitive complexity and control theory. However, relational complexity does not account for the relative difficulty of different relational types, and appears to underestimate the importance of changes in children's ability to act on the basis of their understanding.

Extraterrestrial Altruism examines a basic assumption of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI): that extraterrestrials will be transmitting messages to us for our benefit. This question of whether extraterrestrials will be altruistic has become increasingly important in recent years as SETI scientists have begun contemplating transmissions from Earth to make contact. Technological civilizations that transmit signals for the benefit of others, but with no immediate gain for themselves, certainly seem to be altruistic. But does this make biological sense? Should we (...) expect altruism to evolve throughout the cosmos, or is this only wishful thinking? Is it dangerous to send messages to other worlds, as Stephen Hawking has suggested, or might humankind benefit from an exchange with intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy? Would extraterrestrial societies be based on different ethical principles, or would we see commonalities with Earthly notions of morality? Extraterrestrial Altruism explores these and related questions about the motivations of civilizations beyond Earth, providing new insights that are critical for SETI. Chapters are authored by leading scholars from diverse disciplines—anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, cosmology, engineering, history of science, law, philosophy, psychology, public policy, and sociology. The book is carefully edited by Douglas Vakoch, Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute and professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The Foreword is by Frank Drake. This interdisciplinary book will benefit everybody trying to understand whether evolution and ethics are unique to Earth, or whether they are built into the fabric of the universe. (shrink)

Market-based social governance schemes that establish standards of conduct for producers and traders in international supply chains aim to reduce the negative socioenvironmental effects of globalization. While studies have examined how characteristics of social governance schemes promote socially responsible producer behavior, it has not yet been examined how these same characteristics affect consumer behavior. This is a crucial omission, because without consumer demand for socially produced products, the reach of the social benefits is likely to be limited. We develop a (...) comprehensive model that links twocharacteristics of market-based social governance schemes—(1) stringency and enforcement of requirements, and (2) promotion—to two conditions required for governance schemes to generate significant social benefits: (1) socially responsible behavior of participating firms; and (2) consumer demand for socially produced products which, in turn, expands products produced according to social governance schemes, and thus, the quantity of social benefits. We discuss market-based social governance schemes in the context of fair trade coffee. (shrink)

This article considers six types of Platonic Innatism and compares them to the nativisms of early modern writers. I first dismiss a type of innatism similar to the target of the first book of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding and then discuss four types of innatism that might be considered “live options” for the one Plato employs in his theory of recollection: a Kantian “constructivist” innatism, a Cartesian “dispositional” innatism, a Leibnizian “content” innatism, and a Malebranchian “transcendent” innatism. Finally, in (...) closing, I discuss “condition innatism”. Though this last position is frequently referenced in Platonic scholarship, I argue that the position is incoherent. (shrink)

This article seeks to answer why there are two different versions of Meno’s Paradox. I argue that the dilemma contained in Socrates’s version is a pre-existing puzzle, familiar to both Meno and Socrates before their discussion. The two versions of the paradox are thus different because Meno’s version is a mistaken attempt to remember the puzzle contained in Socrates’s version. Although Meno’s version is a mistaken attempt to state Socrates’s version, it is a philosophically richer puzzle that makes three interesting (...) points about inquiry and recognition. After arguing that Socrates’s version is unsound and that Meno’s version is an attempt to recollect or remember it, I analyze Meno’s version in detail. In closing, I consider the relationship between the notion of recognition, which figures prominently in Meno’s version, and the theory of recollection, suggesting that the latter may have arisen as an attempt to explain the origin of moral intuitions. (shrink)

This article examines the theory of recollection in Plato's Meno and attempts to unravel some long-standing puzzles about it. What are the prenatal objects of the soul's vision? What are the post-natal objects of the soul's recollection? What is innate in the Meno? Why does Socrates (prima facie) suggest that both knowledge and true opinion are innate? The article pays particular attention to the ana- prefix in the verbs aneuriskô, anakineô and analambanô, and suggests that they are used for two (...) distinct stages of recollection: a phenomenological stage of ‘finding again’ or ‘awakening’ our innate content, which Plato calls doxa, and an epistemic stage of ‘getting it back’ as epistêmê. Thinking of the verbs with this ‘back/again’ sense of the ana- prefix (instead of as ‘up’, in the common translation of analambanô as ‘take up’) allows us to understand why Plato would simultaneously imply that our souls had prenatal epistêmê, have post-natal innate true opinion and have the potential to analambanein epistêmê. He is not talking about ‘taking up’ epistêmê that he also calls doxa, but about ‘getting back’ the epistêmê we had prenatally. The article concludes with an examination of what this innate content is, suggesting that it is a type of ‘principle’ and ‘essential’ mental content. (shrink)

This paper provides a rigorous defense of innate true belief in the Meno, to my knowledge, the first of its kind. While several commentators have proposed innate true belief in the past, the position has never been defended or explained in detail. Instead, the most thorough discussions of Plato’s innatism have opted for different innate objects. I defend my proposal against these recent alternatives by showing that the passages often thought to imply innate knowledge can be read in other ways. (...) I then argue that they should be so read, because of an “awareness condition” Plato had on knowledge at the time. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze some of the ethical dimensions of going private transactions (GPTs), wherein publicly traded firms are taken private. Financial theory suggests that efficiencies may be realized in these transactions such that outside shareholders are made better off. Empirical evidence supports this theory. We therefore argue that GPTs are not inherently exploitive or unethical. The issues of the fiduciary duty of corporate managers to shareholders and their obligations to non-shareholders are also explored.

This article examines inequality from a framework of justice that attends to the socially situated nature of market activity, including exchange. I argue that accounts of unsituated exchange—accounts of market exchange that abstract from social situations, such as philosopher Robert Nozick’s influential libertarian account of justice—overlook various factors that contribute to growing economic inequality in contemporary society. Analyses of market exchange must incorporate the role of “third parties” who play a role in shaping and/or who are affected by economic transactions. (...) The involvement of these additional parties, including the government and future generations, is not interference but, instead, an integral part of the economic and moral accounting of exchange. An approach to justice and inequality which embeds exchange within multiple dimensions of economy and society is needed; the latter part of this article traces such a socially situated approach. (shrink)

Psychiatrists should refrain from treating mentally ill prisoners on death row in order to restore their “competency to be executed.” Such “treatment” renders them double agents, in the service of the state as well as the prisoner. Participation in an act that will bring about a prisoner's death is expressly forbidden by the AMA Code of Ethics. It recalls the behavior of Nazi physicians, who used their professional skills not to heal but to kill.

Regional integration over the past decade has facilitated a huge flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Latin America. Less is known, however, about why these newforeign enterprises decided to enter specific markets. This study investigates three recent investments in Costa Rica: two by U.S.-based multinational corporations (MNCs) and another by an MNC based in Spain. The behavior of these MNCs is examined in their initial bargaining and subsequent operations. Through the lens of political economy, this study concludes that Costa (...) Rica’s stable democratic institutions and formalized economic links through multilateral and regional trade and investment accords constitute an advanced factor of comparative advantage that attracted foreign investment to Costa Rica and induced the MNCs to become responsive to host country interests. (shrink)

Although the similarities between the trial of Socrates and the trial of Jesus have been discussed since the age of the Apologists, the same cannot be said about the anonymously written Trial of Maximus the Confessor and Plato’s Apology. My paper seeks to start this discussion. First I look at the historical context of each trial, finding that each was preceded by a rebellion that the accused was suspected of inciting. Then I summarize the Trial, noting numerous similarities between it (...) and the Apology. After this, I examine some of these similarities in detail. In particular, I show that the defense speeches of both Socrates and Maximus reveal a layer of duplicity endemic to the text: while both Socrates and Maximus appear to exonerate themselves, their defense speeches actually contain harsh mockeries of their accusers. Next, I elucidate the consanguinity between the defendants’ opposition to their cities’ god, whom they feel compelled to reject, and their introduction of new gods into their cities —a charge for which both defendants were tragically convicted. Finally, I examine the manner in which both figures play gadfly to their city. (shrink)

Although the similarities between the trial of Socrates and the trial of Jesus have been discussed since the age of the Apologists, the same cannot be said about the anonymously written Trial of Maximus the Confessor and Plato’s Apology. My paper seeks to start this discussion. First I look at the historical context of each trial, finding that each was preceded by a rebellion that the accused was suspected of inciting. Then I summarize the Trial, noting numerous similarities between it (...) and the Apology. After this, I examine some of these similarities in detail. In particular, I show that the defense speeches of both Socrates and Maximus reveal a layer of duplicity endemic to the text: while both Socrates and Maximus appear to exonerate themselves, their defense speeches actually contain harsh mockeries of their accusers. Next, I elucidate the consanguinity between the defendants’ opposition to their cities’ god, whom they feel compelled to reject, and their introduction of new gods into their cities —a charge for which both defendants were tragically convicted. Finally, I examine the manner in which both figures play gadfly to their city. (shrink)

This article argues that the analogical argument employed by Augustine in De Trinitate (the soul-God analogy) is formally identical to the analogical argument employed by Plato in the Republic (the city-soul analogy). The similarities between these two analogies, however, have received insufficient attention in the secondary literature. My goal is to fill this lacuna. I first provide a summary of the analogical methodology of these two works, and I then proceed to translate these two analogies into one analogical argument form, (...) showing that they are formally equivalent. I then differentiate these two analogies from other analogical arguments by focusing on their exploratory and programmatic character. This differentiation helps to capture the uniqueness of these two analogies, to understand their function, and, ultimately, to appreciate more fully the consonance between Augustine’s methodology and Plato’s. (shrink)

This study tests an integrative model of corporate political action, the filter model, based on the behavioral theory of the firm. The filter model posits that external political, economic, and industry environments are mediated by organizational structures and resources to affect a firm’s political actions. The authors rate the filter model’s predictive power against that of an economic-based direct-effects model by examining the efforts of about 1,100 U.S.-domiciled manufacturing firms to influence trade policy. LISREL analysis demonstrates that the integrative filter (...) model provides a superior explanation of corporate political action. (shrink)

This book sets Gaudda in historical context and develops a commentary that makes the meaning and significance of the Alatasaanti text clear. In the Alatasaanti , Gaudda uses terms made familiar by Buddhism in order to expound his Vedantic philosophy. It places him at the watershed between Mahayana Buddhism and Vedanta. Among the important issues discussed are Gaudda's radical doctrine of non-production (ajati), that is, the view that despite appearances nothing is ever actually brought into existence; his notion of the (...) illusory nature of sensory experience; his conviction that reality is "not two" (and certainly not more than two); his theory of knowledge; and the "touchless yoga" he hoped would dispel our illusions about ourselves and our world. His logic and the content of his arguments are examined critically. "This is a very useful and valuable work. The topic is a central one in Indian philosophy, yet not many books and none in recent times, have ventured to explore it. The author does a persuasive job, especially given the controversial nature of the topic. The book's chief merit is its clear and readable style. The format clearly elucidates the Ajativada of Gaudda through critical and historical introduction, summaries, translations and commentary. This is a work which will not only draw general readers who are interested in Indian philosophy but also serious scholars who are concerned about textual interpretations. The translation of the text is very well done, both in terms of readability and authenticity." -- Deen K. Chatterjee, University of Utah. (shrink)