The precise relationship between callosal morphology and specific connectivity is not yet known. Callosal axons are often presumed to be arranged according to their origin. In humans, this is true for the genu and the splenium, which convey axons from the prefrontal and occipital cortices, respectively, but not for the body, where axons from wide parts of the cortex are intermingled.

Qualitative and quantitative research on the impact of medical and health humanities teaching in baccalaureate education is sparse. This paper reviews recent studies of the impact of medical and health humanities coursework in pre-health professions education and describes a pilot study of baccalaureate students who completed semester-long medical humanities courses in the Division of Medical Humanities & Bioethics at the University of Rochester. The study format was an email survey. All participants were current or former baccalaureate students who had taken (...) one or more courses in literature and narrative in medicine, bioethics, history of medicine, and/or visual arts and healthcare during the past four years. The survey gathered numerical data in several areas: demographic information, career plans, self-reported influence of coursework on educational and career plans, and self-reported influence of coursework on intellectual skills and abilities. It also gathered narrative commentary that elaborated on students’ responses to the numerically-based questions. Notable findings from preliminary analysis of the data include higher scores of self-reported impact of the coursework on specific habits of mind and on preparedness for intended career rather than on gaining admission to future educational programs. Discussion of the results focuses on several potential future directions this type of study might take, including multi-center, longitudinal, and sequential approaches. (shrink)

Aim: Streamlining consent for low-risk comparative effectiveness research (CER) could facilitate research, while safeguarding patients' rights. Materials & methods: 2618 adults were randomized to one of seven consent approaches (six streamlined and one traditional) for a hypothetical, low-risk CER study. A survey measured understanding, voluntariness, and feelings of respect. Results: Participants in all arms had a high understanding of the trial and positive attitudes toward the consent interaction. Highest satisfaction was with a streamlined approach showing a video before the medical (...) appointment. Participants in streamlined were more likely to mistakenly think a signature was required. Conclusion: Streamlined consent was no less acceptable than traditional, signed consent. Streamlined and traditional approaches achieved similar levels of understanding, voluntariness and a feeling that the doctor–patient interaction was respectful. (shrink)

This book offers both the theoretical background behind the minority effect, teachers' personal experiences as they experienced being a minority, and their analyses and insights for teaching diverse learners. This book uses real-life experiences of diverse people to illustrate that, if not understood and addressed, situational minorities at school or work are unlikely to perform at their highest potentials.

L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les relations entre les mères ayant des enfants en situation de handicap ou présentant des difficultés développementales et les professionnelles au sein de crèches collectives dites inclusives. Dans le cadre d’une étude plus vaste, réalisée en France, portant sur le soutien des familles de jeunes enfants porteurs de handicap ou présentant des difficultés développementales, un entretien semi-directif a été réalisé auprès de neuf mères et de dix professionnelles pour analyser leurs relations. L’analyse qualitative de (...) données est réalisée selon l’approche de Braun et Clarke (2006). Les principaux résultats mettent en évidence, pour les mères, l’importance du partage d’informations, le soutien apporté par les professionnelles ainsi que leurs compétences. Les professionnelles, quant à elles, soulignent l’échange d’informations et leur rôle d’accompagnement dans l’acceptation du handicap de l’enfant ou dans le processus de parentalité. Les résultats sont discutés et des pistes d’intervention sont proposées. (shrink)

De Marco et al 1 argue that the standard account of medical ‘invasiveness’ (as ‘incision’ or ‘insertion’) fails to capture three aspects of its existing use, namely that invasiveness can come in degrees, often depends on features of alternative medical interventions and can be non-physical. They propose a new schematic account that suggests that medical interventions can possess ‘basic invasiveness’ (which can come in degrees and of which they suggest at least two types: physical and mental), and ‘threshold invasiveness’ which (...) can depend on the alternatives a specific intervention is being compared with. While we agree that the standard account of invasiveness fails to capture existing use and are supportive of their aim, here we express scepticism about the practical utility of De Marco et al ’s revised account. Our scepticism concerns the application of De Marco et al’s revised account in the narrow context of clinician–patient communication and deliberation about medical interventions within clinical practice, which we see as a crucial context for its use. While De Marco et al do not specify the contexts in which their revised account could be used, we assume from their discussion of treatment interventions (e.g. non-invasive prenatal testing, ventilation) and their comparison to ‘more or less invasive’ options, that at least one of the purposes in mind for …. (shrink)

Much has been written about the need for trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI), but the underlying meaning of trust and trustworthiness can vary or be used in confusing ways. It is not always clear whether individuals are speaking of a technology’s trustworthiness, a developer’s trustworthiness, or simply of gaining the trust of users by any means. In sociotechnical circles, trustworthiness is often used as a proxy for ‘the good’, illustrating the moral heights to which technologies and developers ought to aspire, at (...) times with a multitude of diverse requirements; or at other times, no specification at all. In philosophical circles, there is doubt that the concept of trust should be applied at all to technologies rather than their human creators. Nevertheless, people continue to intuitively reason about trust in technologies in their everyday language. This qualitative study employed an empirical ethics methodology to address how developers and users define and construct requirements for trust throughout development and use, through a series of interviews. We found that different accounts of trust (rational, affective, credentialist, norms based, relational) served as the basis for individual granting of trust in technologies and operators. Ultimately, the most significant requirement for user trust and assessment of trustworthiness was the accountability of AI developers for the outputs of AI systems, hinging on the identification of accountable moral agents and perceived value alignment between the user and developer’s interests. (shrink)

There is disagreement in the literature about the exact nature of the phenomenon of empathy. There are emotional, cognitive, and conditioning views, applying in varying degrees across species. An adequate description of the ultimate and proximate mechanism can integrate these views. Proximately, the perception of an object's state activates the subject's corresponding representations, which in turn activate somatic and autonomic responses. This mechanism supports basic behaviors that are crucial for the reproductive success of animals living in groups. The Perception-Action Model, (...) together with an understanding of how representations change with experience, can explain the major empirical effects in the literature. It can also predict a variety of empathy disorders. The interaction between the PAM and prefrontal functioning can also explain different levels of empathy across species and age groups. This view can advance our evolutionary understanding of empathy beyond inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism and can explain different levels of empathy across individuals, species, stages of development, and situations. Key Words: altruism; cognitive empathy ; comparative; emotion; emotional contagion; empathy ; evolution; human; perception-action; perspective taking. (shrink)

It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported discovery, (...) number adaptation’s existence seems to be nearly undisputed, with dozens of papers documenting support for the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to offer a counterweight — to critically assess the evidence for and against number adaptation. After surveying the many reasons for thinking that number adaptation exists, we introduce several lesser-known reasons to be skeptical. We then advance an alternative account — the old news hypothesis — which can accommodate previously published findings while explaining various (otherwise unexplained) anomalies in the existing literature. Next, we describe the results of eight pre-registered experiments which pit our novel old news hypothesis against the received number adaptation hypothesis. Collectively, the results of these experiments undermine the number adaptation hypothesis on several fronts, whilst consistently supporting the old news hypothesis. More broadly our work raises questions about the status of adaptation itself as a means of discerning what is and is not a visual attribute. (shrink)

William Norris Clarke, S.J., one of the leading Thomist scholars in the United States, came to the Philippines recently and delivered a series of lectures in the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of Santo Tomas on various philosophical topics inspired by the thought of St. Thomas. Fr. Clarke is now a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in Fordham University. He was co-founder and editor (l961-85) of the International Philosophical Quarterly and is the author of some 60 articles, plus the (...) following books: The Philosophical Approach to God, The Universe as Journey, Person and Being, Explorations in Metaphysics: Being—God—Person, and The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Fall, 2000).He continues to fulfill his mission of propagating the thoughts of St. Thomas—-the “creative retrieval of St. Thomas,” as he puts it—-in and out of the U.S.An brief excerpt from this interview was originally published in Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture1/3, 1997. (shrink)

Many meta-ethicists are alethists: they claim that practical considerations can constitute normative reasons for action, but not for belief. But the alethist owes us an account of the relevant difference between action and belief, which thereby explains this normative difference. Here, I argue that two salient strategies for discharging this burden fail. According to the first strategy, the relevant difference between action and belief is that truth is the constitutive standard of correctness for belief, but not for action, while according (...) to the second strategy, it is that practical considerations can constitute motivating reasons for action, but not for belief. But the former claim only shifts the alethist's explanatory burden, and the latter claim is wrong—we can believe for practical reasons. Until the alethist can offer a better account, then, I argue that we should accept that there are practical reasons for belief. (shrink)

A surfeit of research confirms that people activate personal, affective, and conceptual representations when perceiving the states of others. However, researchers continue to debate the role of self–other overlap in empathy due to a failure to dissociate neural overlap, subjective resonance, and personal distress. A perception–action view posits that neural-level overlap is necessary during early processing for all social understanding, but need not be conscious or aversive. This neural overlap can subsequently produce a variety of states depending on the context (...) and degree of common experience and emotionality. We outline a framework for understanding the interrelationship between neural and subjective overlap, and among empathic states, through a dynamic-systems view of how information is processed in the brain and body. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

With the growth of precision medicine research on health data and biospecimens, research institutions will need to build and maintain long-term, trusting relationships with patient-participants. While trust is important for all research relationships, the longitudinal nature of precision medicine research raises particular challenges for facilitating trust when the specifics of future studies are unknown. Based on focus groups with racially and ethnically diverse patients, we describe several factors that influence patient trust and potential institutional approaches to building trustworthiness. Drawing on (...) these findings, we suggest several considerations for research institutions seeking to cultivate long-term, trusting relationships with patients: Address the role of history and experience on trust, engage concerns about potential group harm, address cultural values and communication barriers, and integrate patient values and expectations into oversight and governance structures. (shrink)

In his interesting and provocative article ‘Being Good in a World of Need’, Larry Temkin argues for the possibility of a type of Each-We Dilemma in which, if we each produce the most good we can individually, we produce a worse outcome collectively. Such situations would ostensibly be troubling from the standpoint of effective altruism, the project of finding out how to do the most good and doing it, subject to not violating side-constraints. We here show that Temkin’s argument is (...) more controversial than it may appear initially regarding both impartiality and goodness. This is because it is both inconsistent with (i) a plausible conception of impartiality (Anonymity) and inconsistent with (ii) the standard view of goodness (the Internal Aspects View). Moreover, because (i) and (ii) are entailed by the sense of ‘impartial goodness’ that effective altruism tentatively adopts, Temkin’s argument is less relevant to effective altruism than he suggests. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the best way for a non-naturalist to explain why the normative supervenes on the natural is to claim that, while there are some sui generis normative properties whose essences cannot be fully specified in non-normative terms and do not specify any non-normative sufficient conditions for their instantiation, there are certain hybrid normative properties whose essences specify both naturalistic sufficient conditions for their own instantiation and sufficient conditions for the instantiation of certain sui generis normative properties. This (...) is the only metaphysical explanation for supervenience on offer, the chapter argues, that can both clearly maintain the pre-theoretical commitments of non-naturalism, and provide a metaphysical explanation not just for supervenience, but for all metaphysical necessities involving natural and normative properties. (shrink)

Nurses are responsible for the well-being and quality of life of many people, and therefore must meet high standards of technical and ethical competence. The most common form of ethical guidance is a code of ethics/professional practice; however, little research on how codes are viewed or used in practice has been undertaken. This study, carried out in six European countries, explored nurses’ opinions of the content and function of codes and their use in nursing practice. A total of 49 focus (...) groups involving 311 nurses were held. Purposive sampling ensured a mix of participants from a range of specialisms. Qualitative analysis enabled emerging themes to be identified on both national and comparative bases. Most participants had a poor understanding of their codes. They were unfamiliar with the content and believed they have little practical value because of extensive barriers to their effective use. In many countries nursing codes appear to be ‘paper tigers’ with little or no impact; changes are needed in the way they are developed and written, introduced in nurse education, and reinforced/implemented in clinical practice. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 283-298, Spring 2022.

Digital phenotyping will potentially enable earlier detection and prediction of mental illness by monitoring human interaction with and through digital devices. Notwithstanding its promises, it is certain that a person’s digital phenotype will at times be at odds with their first-person testimony of their psychological states. In this paper, we argue that there are features of digital phenotyping in the context of psychiatry which have the potential to exacerbate the tendency to dismiss patients’ testimony and treatment preferences, which can be (...) instances of epistemic injustice. We first explain what epistemic injustice is, and why it is argued to be an extensive problem in health and disability settings. We then explain why epistemic injustice is more likely to apply with even greater force in psychiatric contexts, and especially where digital phenotyping may be involved. Finally, we offer some tentative suggestions of how epistemic injustice can be minimised in digital psychiatry. (shrink)

Climate change is more than a discrete issue demanding political attention and response. A changing climate permeates political life as material processes of planetary change reverberate in our bodies, affecting subterranean processes of attention and evoking bodily responses at and below the threshold of awareness. By way of example, I explore the register of bodily feeling to raise the possibility that proliferating anomalies in atmospheric, oceanic, and seismic activities are entering into subliminal experiences of time and confounding embodied expectations of (...) how the future is likely to flow from the past. The essay concludes with a preliminary discussion of how micropolitical strategies to amplify visceral experiences of climatic changes might valuably contribute to larger programs for climate action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Impatience to EmpathyStephanie Pierce and Kavita Shah AroraWe gave J.H. a label the first time we met her, as many often do—“Uncooperative.” She was a patient with autism and intellectual delay who had presented to the emergency department (ED) with vaginal bleeding. After receiving the gynecology consult request from the emergency medicine physicians, we were already mentally formulating our recommendations based on the information they told us over (...) the phone. “Does not cooperate with exam,” “no acute surgical intervention is currently warranted,” and “recommend outpatient follow–up.”When we arrived in her room, she was sitting in the hospital bed surrounded by a protective shield of caregivers from her group home. We introduced ourselves as the gynecology team but it was obvious that J.H. could not communicate verbally. Upon speaking with her caregivers we learned that she had Cowden syndrome, a genetic disease that confers significantly increased risks for several types of cancer including endometrial, thyroid, and breast cancers. J.H. had also been having heavy vaginal bleeding, which was difficult for her caregivers to manage, and this was the reason she was brought into the emergency department. After attempting to gain as much information as we could from the caregivers, we started to perform an abdominal exam, which made J.H. extremely agitated. We quickly stopped the exam and the caregivers helped to calm J.H. We remember our mixture of emotions—bewilderment at the agitation and commotion in the exam room full of people, frustration at not being able to complete our exam fully, and annoyance that this “difficult patient” was taking up our limited time between surgical cases. Thankfully, these knee–jerk reactions were quickly replaced by feelings of concern for the patient and the realization of how frightening an experience this must be for her—being in a strange place with white walls and unfamiliar people, unable to communicate her thoughts.J.H.’s mother, her surrogate decision–maker, was not at the hospital that day but the caregivers told us that she had expressed a strong desire for her daughter to have a prophylactic hysterectomy due to her lifetime risk for developing uterine cancer as well as a permanent solution to the bleeding concerns. What had initially started as a simple ED consult was now turning into a complex question. The ethical and legal dilemma was obvious—whether to perform a major surgery that would irreversibly sterilize a patient who could not consent on her own behalf in order to minimize the potential risk of cancer later in life. While medical management could improve the bleeding and potentially reduce the risk of cancer, frequent exams would be necessary [End Page 19] to ensure that the medication was working and that premalignant changes were not occurring in J.H.’s uterus. However, based on our experience in the emergency department, J.H. would need anesthesia for such exams and it was doubtful the medications would completely normalize her elevated risk of uterine malignancy. We knew that in order to address this question, we would need to see J.H. again along with her mother to have a frank discussion about the risks and benefits of such a decision, and so we made plans to see her in our outpatient clinic.Several days later, J.H., her mother, and the group home caregivers arrived in the office. Anticipating a complex discussion, we had requested a representative from the hospital ethics committee to join us at the visit. We didn’t know what to expect meeting J.H.’s mother for the first time but as we sat in the room talking, it was obvious that she was truly trying to act in her daughter’s best interest. Similarly, it was touching to watch the faces of the caregivers from the group home as they nodded in solidarity with J.H.’s mother, also clearly wanting what was best for her and supporting her mother in this difficult decision. J.H., meanwhile, seemed content to sit silently with us during the discussion, surrounded as she was by people who cared deeply for her well–being.After extensive partnership with the ethics consultants... (shrink)

The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as (...) a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon. (shrink)

Unconsented pelvic exams under anesthesia are assaults cloaked in defense of healthcare education. Preemptive linguistic qualifiers “presumed” or “implied” attempt to justify such violations with flippancy toward their oxymoronic implications: to suggest a priori that consent can be assumed undermines its otherwise standalone social, ethical, and medico-legal reverence. In this paper I conceptualize “medical sexual assault” and argue that presumed consent for intimate exams exemplifies its definition. By bluntly describing pelvic exams as “penetration,” this work aims to reify the intimate (...) reality of the clinical label “pelvic exam” and to call attention to cisheteronormative and androcentric assumptions involved in its practice. Additionally, this scholarship seeks to create a foundation toward broader work in conceptualizing clinical rape culture. Given recent national survey data indicating a surprising frequency of unconsented intimate exams, detailed language as to their problematics is necessary for ongoing legal and ethical efforts. Explicit consent for intimate exams must be the standard of care for conscious and unconscious patients. (shrink)

Growing interest in embedded research approaches—where research is incorporated into clinical care—has spurred numerous studies to generate knowledge relevant to the real-world needs of patients and other stakeholders. However, it also has presented ethical challenges. An emerging challenge is how to understand the nature and extent of investigators’ obligations to patient-subjects. Prior scholarship on investigator duties has generally been grounded upon the premise that research and clinical care are distinct activities, bearing distinct duties. Yet this premise—and its corresponding implications—are challenged (...) when research and clinical care are deliberately integrated. After presenting three case studies from recent pragmatic clinical trials, we identify six differences between explanatory trials and embedded research that limit the application of existing scholarship for ascertaining investigator duties. We suggest that these limitations indicate a need to account for the implications of usual care and to move beyond a narrow focus on the investigator-subject dyad, one that better reflects the team- and institution-based nature of contemporary health systems. (shrink)

Moral duties are regularly attributed to groups. Does this make conceptual sense or is this merely political rhetoric? And what are the implications for these individuals within groups? Collins outlines a Tripartite Model of group duties that can target political demands at the right entities, in the right way and for the right reasons.

Classic statements of research ethics advise against permitting physician-investigators to obtain consent for research participation from patients with whom they have preexisting treatment relationships. Reluctance about “dual-role” consent reflects the view that distinct normative commitments govern physician–patient and investigator–participant relationships, and that blurring the research–care boundary could lead to ethical transgressions. However, several features of contemporary research demand reconsideration of the ethics of dual-role consent. Here, we examine three arguments advanced against dual-role consent: that it creates role conflict for the (...) physician-investigator; that it can compromise the voluntariness of the patient-participant’s consent; and that it promotes therapeutic misconceptions. Although these concerns have merit in some circumstances, they are not dispositive in all cases. Rather, their force—and the ethical acceptability of dual-role consent—varies with features of the particular study. As research participation more closely approximates usual care, it becomes increasingly acceptable, or even preferable, for physicians to seek consent for research from their own patients. It is time for a more nuanced approach to dual-role consent. (shrink)

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, people have been eager to learn what factors, and especially what public health policies, cause infection rates to wax and wane. But figuring out conclusively what causes what is difficult in complex systems with nonlinear dynamics, such as pandemics. We review some of the challenges that scientists have faced in answering quantitative causal questions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and suggest that these challenges are a reason to augment the moral dimension of conversations about causal inference. We (...) take a lesson from Martha Nussbaum—who cautions us not to think we have just one question on our hands when we have at least two—and apply it to modeling for causal inference in the context of cost-benefit analysis. (shrink)

The pragmatism—anti-pragmatism debate concerns whether practical considerations can constitute genuinely normative wrong-kind reasons (WKRs) for and against doxastic attitudes, whereas the encroachment—anti-encroachment debate concerns whether practical considerations can affect what right-kind reasons (RKRs) one has or needs to have in order to enjoy some epistemic status. While these are two separate issues, my main aim is to show that pragmatists have a plausible debunking explanation to offer of encroachment cases: that the practical considerations in these cases only generate WKRs against (...) belief, rather than affect the RKRs one has or needs to have, so that the agents in these cases ought to withhold belief, but only in a practical or all-things-considered sense. Moreover, I argue that the pragmatist debunker's explanation of what's going on in encroachment cases is more plausible than the encroacher's because they're structurally identical to cases involving WKRs against other attitudes like admiration and fear. These analogous WKR-cases not only support the surprising conclusion that pragmatists should be anti-encroachers, but they also challenge the encroacher's view independently of whether pragmatism is true. (shrink)

In the third Critique Kant details an aesthetic operation of judgment that is surprising considering how judgment functioned in the first Critique. In this book, I defend an understanding of Kant’s theory of Geschmacksurteil as detailing an operation of the faculties that does not violate the cognitive structure laid out in the first Critique. My orientation is primarily epistemological, elaborating the determinations that govern the activity of pure aesthetic judging that specify it as a "bestimmte" type of judgment without transforming (...) it into "ein bestimmendes Urteil". I focus on identifying how the logical functions from the table of judgments operate in the pure aesthetic judgment of taste to reveal "the moments to which this power of judgment attends in its reflection". In the course of doing so, a picture emerges of how the world is not just cognizable in a Kantian framework but also charged with human feeling, acquiring the inexhaustible, inchoate meaningfulness that incites "much thinking". The universal communicability of aesthetic pleasure serves as the foundation that grounds robust intersubjective relations, enabling genuine connection to others through a shared a priori feeling. (shrink)

Is there more to Buddhism than sitting in silent meditation? Is modern Buddhism relevant to the problems of daily life? Does it empower individuals to transform their lives? Or has Buddhism become too detached, so still and quiet that the Buddha has fallen asleep? Waking the Buddha tells the story of the Soka Gakkai International, the largest, most dynamic Buddhist movement in the world today--and one that is waking up and shaking up Buddhism so it can truly work in ordinary (...) people's lives. Drawing on his long personal experience as a Buddhist teacher, journalist, and editor, Clark Strand offers broad insight into how and why the Soka Gakkai, with its commitment to social justice and its egalitarian approach, has become a role model, not only for other schools of Buddhism, but for other religions as well. Readers will be inspired by the struggles and triumphs of the Soka Gakkai's three founding presidents--individuals who staked their lives on the teachings of the Lotus Sutra and the extraordinary power of those teachings to help people become happy. (shrink)

It is well established that beliefs provide powerful cues that influence reasoning. Over the last decade research has revealed that judgments based upon logical structure may also pre-empt deliberative reasoning. Evidence for ‘intuitive logic’ has been claimed using a range of measures (i.e. confidence ratings or latency of response on conflict problems). However, it is unclear how well such measures genuinely reflect logical intuition. In this paper we introduce a new method designed to test for evidence of intuitive logic. In (...) two experiments participants were asked to make random judgments about the logical validity of a series of simple and complex syllogistic arguments. For simple arguments there was an effect of logical validity on random responding, which was absent for complex arguments. These findings provide a novel demonstration that people are intuitively sensitive to logical structure. (shrink)

David Lewis famously argued that the time traveller ‘can’ murder her grandfather, even though she never will: it is compossible with a particular set of facts including her motive, opportunity and skill . I argue that while ordinary agents ‘can’ under Lewis’s conception, philosophers cannot – the latter will not only fail to fulfill their homicidal intentions but also fail to form them in the first place.