In this study, we used a word search puzzle paradigm to investigate age differences in the rate of information gain and the cues used to make patch-departure decisions in information foraging. The likelihood of patch departure increased as the profitability of the patch decreased generally. Both younger and older adults persisted past the point of optimality as defined by the marginal value theorem, which assumes perfect knowledge of the foraging ecology. Nevertheless, there was evidence that adults were rational in terms (...) of being sensitive to the change in RG for making the patch-departure decisions. However, given the limitations in cognitive resources and knowledge about the ecology, the estimation of RG may not be accurate. Younger adults were more likely to leave the puzzle as the long-term RG incrementally decreased, whereas older adults were more likely to leave the puzzle as the local RG decreased. However, older adults with better executive control were more likely to adjust their likelihood of patch-departure decisions to the long-term change in RG. Thus, age-dependent reliance on the long-term or local change in RG to make patch-departure decisions might be due to individual differences in executive control. (shrink)

Plato's Republic has proven to be of astounding influence and importance. Justly celebrated as Plato's central text, it brings together all of his prior works, unifying them into a comprehensive vision that is at once theological, philosophical, political and moral. The essays in this volume provide a picture of the most interesting aspects of the Republic, and address questions that continue to puzzle and provoke, such as: Does Plato succeed in his argument that the life of justice is the most (...) attractive one? Is his tripartite analysis of the soul coherent and plausible? Why does Plato seem to have to force his philosopher-guardians to rule when they know this is something that they ought to do? What is the point of the strange and complicated closing Myth of Er? This volume will be essential to those looking for thoughtful and detailed excursions into the problems posed by Plato's text and ideas. (shrink)

This Companion provides a fresh and comprehensive account of this outstanding work, which remains among the most frequently read works of Greek philosophy, indeed of Classical antiquity in general. The sixteen essays, by authors who represent various academic disciplines, bring a spectrum of interpretive approaches to bear in order to aid the understanding of a wide-ranging audience, from first-time readers of the Republic who require guidance, to more experienced readers who wish to explore contemporary currents in the work’s interpretation. The (...) three initial chapters address aspects of the work as a whole. They are followed by essays that match closely the sequence in which topics are presented in the ten books of the Republic. Since the Republic returns frequently to the same topics by different routes, so do the authors of this volume, who provide the readers with divergent yet complementary perspectives by which to appreciate the Republic’s principal concerns. (shrink)

This full-length study of Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, now in paperback, is written in the belief that such concerted scrutiny of a single dialogue is an important part of the project of understanding Plato so far as possible 'from the inside' - of gaining a feel for the man's philosophy. The focus of this account is on how the resources both of persuasive myth and of formal argument, for all that Plato sets them in strong contrast, nevertheless complement and reinforce each (...) other in his philosophy. Not only is the dialogue in its formal structure a dovetail of myth and argument, but the philosophic life that it praises is also shaped by an acknowledgement of the limitations of argument and the importance of mythical understanding. By means of this correlation of form and content Plato invites his readers, through the very act of reading, to take a first step along the path of the philosophical life. (shrink)

Tracing a central theme of Plato's Republic , G. R. F. Ferrari reconsiders in this study the nature and purpose of the comparison between the structure of society and that of the individual soul. In four chapters, Ferrari examines the personalities and social status of the brothers Glaucon and Adeimantus, Plato's notion of justice, coherence in Plato's description of the decline of states, and the tyrant and the philosopher king—a pair who, in their different ways, break with the terms of (...) the city-soul analogy. In addition to acknowledging familiar themes in the interpretation of the Republic —the sincerity of its utopianism, the justice of the philosopher's return to the Cave—Ferrari provocatively engages secondary literature by Leo Strauss, Bernard Williams, and Jonathan Lear. With admirable clarity and insight, Ferrari conveys the relation between the city and the soul and the choice between tyranny and philosophy. City and Soul in Plato's Republic will be of value to students of classics, philosophy, and political theory alike. (shrink)

This report describes the rationale, approaches, organization, and resource development leading to a large-scale deletion bin map of the hexaploid wheat genome. Accompanying reports in this issue detail results from chromosome bin-mapping of expressed sequence tags representing genes onto the seven homoeologous chromosome groups and a global analysis of the entire mapped wheat EST data set. Among the resources developed were the first extensive public wheat EST collection. Described are protocols for sequencing, sequence processing, EST nomenclature, and the assembly of (...) ESTs into contigs. These contigs plus singletons were used for selection of distinct sequence motif unigenes. Selected ESTs were rearrayed, validated by 5′ and 3′ sequencing, and amplified for probing a series of wheat aneuploid and deletion stocks. Images and data for all Southern hybridizations were deposited in databases and were used by the coordinators for each of the seven homoeologous chromosome groups to validate the mapping results. Results from this project have established the foundation for future developments in wheat genomics. (shrink)

First published in 2000, this translation of one of the great works of Western political thought is based on the assumption that when Plato chose the dialogue form for his writing, he intended these dialogues to sound like conversations - although conversations of a philosophical sort. In addition to a vivid, dignified and accurate rendition of Plato's text, the student and general reader will find many aids to comprehension in this volume: an introduction that assesses the cultural background to the (...) Republic, its place within political philosophy, and its general argument; succinct notes in the body of the text; an analytical summary of the work's content; a full glossary of proper names; a chronology of important events; and a guide to further reading. The result is an accomplished and accessible edition of this seminal work, suitable for philosophers and classicists as well as historians of political thought at all levels. (shrink)

The ability to feel pain is a property of human beings that seems to be based entirely in our biological natures and to place us squarely within the animal kingdom. Yet the experience of pain is often used as an example of a mental attribute with qualitative properties that defeat attempts to identify mental events with physiological mechanisms. I will argue that neurophysiology and psychology help to explain the interwoven biological and subjective features of pain and recommend a view of (...) pain which differs in important respects from the one most commonly accepted. (shrink)

This paper presents a theoretical elaboration of the ethical framework of classical capitalism as formulated by Adam Smith in reaction to the dominant mercantilism of his day. It is seen that Smith's project was profoundly ethical and designed to emancipate the consumer from a producer and state dominated economy. Over time, however, the various dysfunctions of a capitalist economy — e.g., concentration of wealth, market power — became manifest and the utilitarian ethical basis of the system eroded. Contemporary capitalism, dominated (...) as it is by large corporations, entrenched political interests and persistent social pathologies, bears little resemblance to the system which Smith envisioned would serve the common man. Most critiques of capitalism are launched from a Marxian-based perspective. We find, however, that by illustrating the wide gap between the reality of contemporary capitalism and the model of amoral political economy developed by Smith, the father of capitalism proves to be the most trenchant critic of the current order. (shrink)

Antipathy towards the possibility that God exists is a common attitude, which has recently been clearly expressed by Thomas Nagel. This attitude is presumably irrelevant to the question whether God does exist. But it raises two other interesting philosophical issues. First, to what extent does this attitude motivate irrational belief? And secondly, how should the attitude be evaluated? This paper investigates that latter issue. Is the hope that God does not exist a morally proper hope? I simplify this question by (...) interpreting the relevant attitude as an aversion towards the Christian picture of the world coupled with a preference for the naturalist atheistic picture. And comparing the content of those two world pictures, I argue that the attitude, though partly explicable, is morally unjustifiable, for clearly recognisable reasons. Regardless, then, of further concerns about the doxastic influence of this attitude, we ought to be ashamed of our antipathy to God, which reflects badly upon us. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to determine the relative frequency of course offerings on social issues and business ethics in American business schools. Specifically, a random sample of the curricula of 119 American business schools were analyzed in order to gauge the importance given to coursework on ethics and social issues. The findings indicated that the incidence of such courses was generally low in American business curricula, particularly at the graduate level. These findings are discussed in light of the (...) current concern for more responsible corporate behavior. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1922 Edition.

This paper discusses the surprising resurgence in the fortunes of the British eugenics movement in the 1930s. It is argued that although mass unemployment may in the long run have discredited that version of eugenics in which social dependence and destitution were attributed to genetic defect, in the short run the Depression was often perceived as a vindication of the eugenical creed. In particular, the attempt to reduce the fertility of the unemployed by popularising birth control techniques, and the voluntary (...) sterilization campaign aimed at preventing the propagation of defectives from the so-called Social Problem Group, satisfied the urge felt by many conservative members from the professional classes to respond creatively to the country's crisis, without endangering existing social and economic institutions. It is also shown that not until 1938 did events in Germany cause substantial damage to the cause of eugenics in Britain. In fact, the ‘German experiment’ was actually greeted with approval by certain British eugenists of an authoritarian cast of mind. However, the Society as a whole never identified with these right-wing extremists, thanks in part to the moderating influence exercised by its General Secretary, Dr. C. P. Blacker, whose prime concern was with psycho-medical problems likely to concern people of all party persuasions. (shrink)

In this talk I consider a body of my more recent work in order to isolate the shared approach that it takes to reading Platonic dialogue, an approach which had been absent from my writing on Plato up to that point and is largely absent from any of the traditions that influence how most of us read Plato. Its key feature is a refusal to treat the character Socrates as operating as if he were Plato’s secret agent within the dialogue—as (...) if one should attribute to Socrates all of the cunning and the control with which one might credit instead the author who scripted Socrates’s habitual triumphs. The focus of this new approach is rather on Plato’s “writerly” philosophizing: on how Plato exploits the distinction between what he and his character Socrates are up to as philosophers in order to guide our sense of his own activity and aims as a philosophic writer. (shrink)

As microeconomic calculus and macroeconomic estimation superseded earlier approaches to political economy, broad questions about how things are (ontology), how things might be known (epistemology), and how science should proceed (methodology) were neglected. As a corrective, Critical Realism (CR) has been proposed as an alternative to the orthodox deductive‐nomological (ODN) tradition; i.e., to mathematical deduction and statistical induction. In their place, retroduction—the use of analogy, metaphor, intuition and ordinary language—is supposed to illuminate root causes by identifying the deep mechanisms that (...) govern events. CR offers guidelines for social science that are of a most general kind: from initial “premises,” retroduction proceeds to hypotheses about deep structures and mechanisms. The initial premises are determined by a desire to understand events that surprise us. However, nothing is thereby excluded, including ODN. And since historical processes are revealed neither by assumption nor by the net effects of whatever initial conditions hold, it might be apposite to drop the search for (deep) socio‐economic laws and to use whatever evidence is at hand to see whether, and the extent to which, ideal types apply to any given historical sequence. (shrink)

Steve Biko died in detention in South Africa in 1977. Critical ethical issues are raised both by the conduct of the doctors responsible for Biko's care and by the subsequent response of the medical profession as a whole. Because those issues are relevant to all healthcare professionals everywhere, the Biko affair provides a useful case study in medical ethics. We discuss the case in this article, describing how we use it in our teaching.

Informed consent is required for any medical procedure although the situations in which it is given are beset by uncertainties and indeterminacies. These make medicolegal scrutiny of such situations very difficult. Although some people find the decision in the Sidaway case incomprehensible because of its continuing regard for a 'professional practice standard' in informed consent, I will argue that an important fact in many cases is the moral integrity of the doctor concerned and the pattern of his practice. This may (...) provide the only morally principled and legally accessible evidence enabling a correct decision to be made in a difficult case. Although the epistemological significance of a professional practice standard is thereby defended the 'prudent patient standard' for what counts as consent is left intact. (shrink)