bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Essential Child
Authors: Gelman Susan A.
Published: September 2007

Essentialism is the idea that certain categories, such as “dog,” “man,” or “intelligence,” have an underlying reality or true nature that gives objects their identity. This book argues that essentialism is an early cognitive bias. Young children's concepts reflect a deep commitment to essentialism, and this commitment leads children to look beyond the obvious in many converging ways: when learning words, generalizing knowledge to new category members, reasoning about the insides of things, contemplating the role of nature versus nurture, and constructing causal explanations. This book argues against the standard view of children as concrete or focused on the obvious, instead claiming that children have an early, powerful tendency to search for hidden, non-obvious features of things. It also disputes claims that children build up their knowledge of the world based on simple, associative learning strategies, arguing that children's concepts are embedded in rich folk theories. Parents don't explicitly teach children to essentialize; instead, during the preschool years, children spontaneously construct concepts and beliefs that reflect an essentialist bias. The book synthesizes over fifteen years of empirical research on essentialism into a unified framework and explores the broader lessons that the research imparts concerning, among other things, human concepts, children's thinking, and the ways in which language influences thought.
Introduction
Authors: Gelman Susan A.
Published: September 2007

This introduction concerns essentialism in everyday thought. Roughly, essentialism is the view that categories have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly but that gives an object its identity. According to essentialism, categories (such as “boy,” “girl,” or “intelligence”) are real, in several senses: they are discovered (rather than invented), they are natural (rather than artificial), they predict other properties, and they point to natural discontinuities in the world. The question of whether children are essentialists runs directly against a powerful portrait of children's concepts as perceptually driven, concrete, and atheoretical. This chapter argues that children's concepts are not merely perceptually based, concrete, or built up from specifics, but rather reflect folk theories and a powerful capacity to look beyond the obvious. The discussion focuses on essentialism as an early, domain-specific cognitive bias; children's concepts as embedded in theories; and language as an influence on cognitive development.
Causal Explanations, Causal Determinism
Authors: Gelman Susan A.
Published: September 2007

People appeal to hidden, nonobvious features in constructing certain categories. The question that arises is: why should this be? The essentialist position proposes that causes are more important than effects — and causes are more internal, hidden, nonobvious than are effects (at least for natural kinds). This chapter argues for the centrality of causes in children—s concepts by showing that children's understanding of cause can determine which features are pivotal in the categories they form, and that children's explanations for category structure appeal to essences or essence-like constructs. It is also suggested that the link between essences and categories follows from children's propensity to search for causes.
Conclusions to Part I
Authors: Gelman Susan A.
Published: September 2007

Children display evidence for two elements of essentialism: treating certain categories as richly structured kinds and assuming that some as-yet-undefined causal placeholder is responsible for the structure of such categories. This chapter examines four central issues: which categorical domains are essentialized; whether essentializing of living kinds is biological, on either a naive-biological or correct-biological construal; the role of statistical information in essentialist reasoning; and what individual essentialism is and how it compares to kind essentialism.
Why Do We Essentialize?
Authors: Gelman Susan A.
Published: September 2007

The question of why we essentialize gives rise to a variety of other questions, concerning issues such as where essentialism is located, or what properties of the mind give rise to essentialism. Essentialism has many benefits; it provides a framework for making valuable category-based inferences, for example. Furthermore, the many ways in which children essentialize the natural world reveal precocious abilities to categorize and benefit from categories. Yet essentialism also carries with it serious costs. It encourages and justifies stereotyping of social categories (including those of race, gender, and sexual orientation), and perpetuates the assumption that artificial distinctions (such as caste or class) are natural, inevitable, and fixed. This chapter argues that essentialism is rooted neither in its costs nor its benefits, but falls out as a consequence of children being very good at a number of other skills: distinguishing appearance from reality, searching for causes, noting correlational clusters, and understanding how labeling works.
“Pioneers of Japanese Development”
Authors: Azuma Eiichiro
Published: September 2007

This chapter explores how history writing helped forge an undifferentiated memory that would guide the Issei through the years preceding their wartime internment. The success of the Japanese exclusion movement led many Issei to grope for something in which to take pride and for which to hope, albeit under the general principle of acquiescence. Writing a common history was the Issei historians' attempt to replace the group's crisis of racial subordination with a shared memory of their “glorious” past in the post-1924 years.
Helping Japan, Helping Ourselves
Authors: Azuma Eiichiro
Published: September 2007

This chapter examines the meanings of Japanese immigrant nationalism. The origin of modern Issei nationalism can be traced to the rise of Japanese militarism in Manchuria in the early 1930s, which drastically transformed the hitherto estranged relationship between the empire and the immigrant community after 1924. For policy makers in Japan, Japanese residents in the United States became politically relevant at this time in the context of the growing tension with Anglo-American powers. The rise of Japanese immigrant patriotism and Japan's attempt to exploit it for geopolitical purposes, did not result in the metamorphosis of the Issei into a replica of the Japanese militarist or the ultranationalist extremist, as anti-Japanese agitators often claimed. Instead, Issei patriotism inaugurated another phase of the immigrant-state partnership where immigrant dreams and Japan's state mandate converged in complex ways.
Introduction
Authors: McGinn Thomas A. J.
Published: September 2007

This introduction discusses the subject of the book, namely the legal rules affecting the practice of female prostitution in Rome during the central part of its history, a period extending from approximately 200 BC to AD 250. The book looks at the origins and content of the legal norms created for prostitution. The aim is to examine these norms in relation to the wider social context, discuss how the legal and political authorities were able to adapt this to society's needs, and illustrate crucial issues relating to marginal groups, marriage, sexual behavior, the family, slavery, and citizen status, especially the status of women. Prostitution, for years a marginal theme in historiography, stands at the center of some fundamental modern concerns with past societies.
TheLex Iulia et Papia
Authors: McGinn Thomas A. J.
Published: September 2007

This chapter examines the ancient Roman law lex Iulia et Papia, which consists of a marriage law, the lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus, and a comitial statute, the lex Papia Poppaea. The two enactments are usually distinguished in the sense that the first encouraged marriage; the second, the bearing of children. In fact, the lex Iulia itself rewarded parents. The second statute both supplemented and partly recast the first, eliminating loopholes and relaxing some of the rules. Thus the jurists and modern commentators can refer to the two laws as one: the lex Iulia et Papia. To understand better the connection between the two statutes, one might invoke the jurist Papinian's famous observation on the relationship between the ius civile and the ius honorarium: the lex Papia Poppaea functioned “to support, supplement, and correct” the lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus.
Emperors, Jurists, and theLex lulia de Adulteriis Coercendis
Authors: McGinn Thomas A. J.
Published: September 2007

This chapter examines the ancient Roman law lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis, with emphasis on imperial law generated by emperor and Senate and the law of the jurists. The juristic definition of “prostitute” under the adultery statute is discussed, along with criminal pimping under the statute, the moral significance that the jurists attributed to the main species of lenocinium, and the offenses against the lex Iulia that came to be viewed by the jurists as a species of lenocinium. The lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis was the only special criminal law on which the jurists wrote monographs. Three of the Severan greats, Ulpian, Papinian, and Paul, made notable contributions in this area. If these men felt any hostility toward the statute, it is well masked. Their approach to the interpretation of the law is typical of the general juristic position. This in turn may be described as quite favorable, insofar as it aids the policy goals pursued by the statute wherever possible through extensive interpretation.
The Taxation of Roman Prostitutes
Authors: McGinn Thomas A. J.
Published: September 2007

The tax on prostitutes instituted by Caligula provides solid evidence on its economic importance and the attitude of the imperial administration to it. The scattered and fragmentary nature of this evidence is given close attention here so we can extracat the true significance of the tax. This chapter examines the information given by Suetonius and Dio and discusses the motives for its introduction, methods of collection and calculation, later history and eventual abolition, and, finally, the provincial evidence for details of administration. The aim is to assess not only the success of the tax in terms of the original motives for its introduction but also the other effects of the tax, for it has some important implications for Roman public policy toward prostitution in general.
Conclusion
Authors: McGinn Thomas A. J.
Published: September 2007

This conclusion reviews the topics discussed. Firstly it presents an analytical summary of the findings contained in all the chapters and then in brings together a synthetic conclusion for the book.
Lost Knowledge
Authors: DeLong David W.
Published: September 2007

This book shows how the cost of losing human knowledge in a technology-intensive world seriously affects organizational success. It explains what leaders must do to retain critical know-how as millions of aging baby boomers begin retiring from the workforce in the next decade. This aging workforce will produce an unprecedented skills shortage in many sectors. Particularly at risk is the tacit or experiential knowledge needed to maintain high levels of performance in today's complex technological, scientific, and management fields. The book shows how this threatened loss of intellectual capital or “brain drain” can be addressed with increased attention to workforce planning, knowledge management, and knowledge retention initiatives. It provides a framework and action plan to help managers tackle the interdependent challenges of increased retirements, more competitive recruiting, and greater turnover among mid-career employees created by changing workforce demographics.
Case Study
Authors: Stohlgren Thomas J.
Published: September 2007

This chapter considers the difficulties in designing the plant diversity component of monitoring programs designed to report the condition and production of the nation's forests, including changes in understory plant diversity. The methods were modified to be flexible enough to work equally well in a variety of forest types, yet standardized enough to allow for highly comparable data on plant diversity across the United States. The US Department of Agriculture's Forest Health Monitoring program accomplished this task. It is a national program that makes annual evaluations of the condition, changes, and trends in the health of forest ecosystems in the US. The monitoring program consists of a nationwide, uniform distribution of sample plots providing a large, unbiased sample of the nation's forests (1 plot/63,942 ha).
Nonspatial Statistical Modeling of Plant Diversity
Authors: Stohlgren Thomas J.
Published: September 2007

This chapter presents selected examples of non-spatial statistical modeling of plant diversity including correlation and simple regression, multiple regression, path coefficient analysis, canonical correspondence analysis, regression tree analysis, and logistic regression. It provides more details and considerations in their applications. Data from published studies are used to illustrate typical applications and interpretations of results to address several commonly asked questions from students. Suggestions and recommendations are also provided, including: having clear analysis objectives in mind, testing multiple techniques, and considering spatial analysis following non-spatial modeling of plant diversity.
Spatial Analysis and Modeling
Authors: Stohlgren Thomas J.
Published: September 2007

Data on plant diversity are inherently spatial. There are various spatial techniques available to map and model plant diversity, or the distributions of selected species at landscape scales. This chapter discusses point distribution maps, range maps, spatial interpolation (kriging), spatial integration, and validating spatial models by assessing model “uncertainty”. The advantages and disadvantages of various modeling approaches are discussed.
Concepts for Assessing Temporal Changes in Plant Diversity
Authors: Stohlgren Thomas J.
Published: September 2007

There are several considerations in developing appropriate strategies for monitoring plant diversity at landscape scales. Many plant ecologists and land managers are rightly concerned with either current and rapidly emerging issues or long-term, chronic issues involving trends in plant diversity and the threats to that diversity. Thus, various strategies for monitoring plant diversity might be considered including retrospective studies, chronosequence studies, and monitoring plant diversity with permanent plots. Several examples are provided. The constraints and limitations of long-term studies are also discussed.
Case Study
Authors: Stohlgren Thomas J.
Published: September 2007

Improved sampling designs are needed to detect, monitor, and predict plant migrations and plant diversity changes caused by climate change and other human activities. This chapter provides a methodology based on multi-scale vegetation plots established across forest ecotones to monitor changing patterns of plant diversity, invasion of non-native plant species, and plant migrations at landscape scales. The methods are applied in the forests of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.
Case Study
Authors: Stohlgren Thomas J.
Published: September 2007

The variability inherent in all natural landscapes poses a significant challenge in designing accurate and complete inventories of plant diversity given typical cost constraints. One option is to establish many large plots across the landscape, or maybe twice as many smaller plots across the landscape for the same cost. However, all designs have cost limitations. In this case study, three plot designs were used: a large, multi-scale plot; a smaller multi-scale plot; and a single-scale plot to assess the advantages and disadvantages associated with the integrated use of three vegetation sampling plot designs.
PROBABLY
Authors: Wierzbicka Anna
Published: September 2007

English has a much larger repertoire of epistemic (sentential) adverbs than other European languages, possibly indeed without parallel in other languages of the world. The set of these adverbs includes the following: probably, possibly, clearly, obviously, presumably, evidently, apparently, supposedly, conceivably, undoubtedly, allegedly, reportedly, arguably, unquestionably, seemingly, certainly, and in American English likely. As this chapter discusses in some detail, this rich repertoire of epistemic adverbs developed in English gradually. Undoubtedly, the rise of this semantico-grammatical category in English was related to the rise of verbal epistemic phrases, such as I presume, I assume, I gather, I understand, I suppose, and so on. The cultural concerns reflected in the two categories are essentially the same, and in both cases they can be linked with the post-Lockean emphasis on the limitations of human knowledge, on the need to distinguish knowledge from judgment, on differentiating between different “degrees of assent.” But to compare the class of “epistemic adverbs” in different languages one must first identify this class in each language, and for this one needs some explicit semantic criteria. In the absence of a detailed semantic analysis of the individual words it is impossible to rigorously delimit the class in question; and without delimiting it, it is impossible to compare its size across language boundaries. This chapter shows that the use of the NSM methodology makes it possible to carry out such detailed semantic analysis, and to establish that the proliferation of epistemic adverbs is indeed a distinctive feature of English. The legal scholar Larry Solan (1999) has observed that British “17th century thinkers, influenced heavily by John Locke, developed an epistemology that differentiated among various kinds of evidence.” It is shown that in the English-speaking world, this epistemology differentiating among various kinds and degrees of certainty has had an impact on ordinary ways of speaking, and on the English language itself, and this impact continues to this day.
1Playing with Poetry
Authors: McGill Scott
Published: September 2007

This chapter provides an overview of how authors created the Virgilian centos and explores topics in the texts' reception, with an emphasis on the issues they raise related to allusion. The examination for the most part uses the 4th-century CE Ausonius' poetics of the cento as its basis. Subjects include how the poems serve as language games; the role of mnemotechnics in their composition; and the different ways audience members can read the works allusively, i.e., against their Virgilian subtexts.
Animals
Authors: Olson Eric T.
Published: September 2007

This chapter examines animalism, the view that we are biological organisms. It is based on the claim that human organisms think just as we do. This implies that if I am not an organism, I am one of at least two thinkers of my thoughts, making it hard to see how I could know that I am the nonanimal thinker: the thinking-animal problem. Some proposed solutions are critically examined, notably Shoemaker's claim that human organisms cannot think and Noonan's account of how we might know that we are not the animals thinking our thoughts. Familiar objections to animalism are then reviewed, such as its implication that personal identity does not consist in psychological continuity. It is argued that these objections are weak and that more serious worries lie elsewhere.
8 Nihilism
Authors: Olson Eric T.
Published: September 2007

This chapter examines the view that we do not exist because there are no human thinkers: nihilism. Nihilism is defended against the charge that it is an absurd denial of the obvious, or that it is self‐refuting. Attempts by Kant and others, such as Russell, Unger, and Wittgenstein, to defeat nihilism by showing that thought requires a thinker are examined and found wanting. Attention then turns to attempts to paraphrase statements apparently about people into terms compatible with nihilism. Although this is difficult because nihilists will want to deny the existence of any composite objects, no conclusive objections to the project are found. It is then argued that nihilism, like solipsism, is depressing, and that someone who accepted it consistently would appear to deprive herself of any reasons for action.
What Now?
Authors: Olson Eric T.
Published: September 2007

This chapter proposes that animalism, the temporal‐parts view, and nihilism are the best accounts of what we are. It then takes up metaphysical objections to animalism hinted at earlier. It is proposed that animalists answer them by endorsing a sparse ontology of material objects. It is then argued that we can work out what we are by discovering when composition occurs: if composition is universal, we are temporal parts of animals; if there is no composition, we do not exist; and intermediate theories of composition lead almost inevitably to animalism. Finally, the view that there is no theory of composition‐‐that composition is brute‐‐is claimed to rule out any good account of what we are.
Creating Language Crimes
Authors: Shuy Roger W.
Published: September 2007

This book describes and illustrates eleven powerful conversational strategies used by undercover police officers and cooperating witnesses who secretly tape-record targets in criminal investigations. Twelve actual criminal case studies are used as examples. These strategies creating illusion of guilt include the apparently deliberate use of semantic ambiguity, blocking the targets’ words (by creating static on the tape, interrupting them, speaking on their behalf, and manipulating the off/on switch); rapidly changing the subject before targets can respond (the “hit and run” strategy); contaminating the tape with irrelevant information that can make targets appear to be guilty; camouflaging illegality by making actions appear to be legal; isolating targets from important information that they need in order to make informed choices; inaccurately restating things the target has said; withholding crucial information from targets; lying to targets about critical information; and scripting targets in what to say on tape. These conversational strategies gain power from the fact that the targets do not know that they are being recorded, and often let things go right by them during the discourse. Nor do they know that the real audience of the conversations consists of later jury listeners, who do not know the full context of these conversations. Unlike everyday, unrecorded conversation, the most critical listening takes place at a future time and under very different circumstances. It is shown that undercover officers and their cooperating witnesses make use of essentially the same conversational strategies.
INTRODUCTION
Authors: Devine A. M. , Stephens Laurence D.
Published: September 2007

This introductory chapter discusses the importance of word order in the elicitation of textual meaning and methodologies for studying word order. It surveys theoretical concepts used in the book, including thematic roles, pragmatic (informational) structure, tripartite structures, semantics of focus, typetheoretical notation, discourse configurationality, and prosodic structure.
VERB POSITIONS
Authors: Devine A. M. , Stephens Laurence D.
Published: September 2007

This chapter starts with an analysis of factors responsible for verbs in nonfinal positions, including polarity focus, theticity, discourse cohesion operators, and raising to topic. The second half of the chapter covers the copula, the auxiliary, and the existential.
HYPERBATON
Authors: Devine A. M. , Stephens Laurence D.
Published: September 2007

This chapter analyzes the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of various types of phrasal discontinuity: genitive hyperbaton, pre- and postmodifier hyperbaton, hyperbaton with noun, adjective and prepositional heads, attribute complement hyperbaton, and minor hyperbata like clitic, interrogative, and conjunct hyperbaton. A reanalysis theory based on category shifting is proposed and integrated into data on variation across styles.
Rx: Volunteer: A Prescription for Healthy Aging
Authors: Hirschfelder Adam S. , Reilly Sabrina L.
Published: September 2007

This chapter outlines one potentially useful yet, to date, virtually unexamined practical public health application of the research on the health benefits of volunteerism — the involvement of primary care physicians as volunteerism advocates. There are several reasons that physicians may be effective volunteerism advocates. First, volunteering tends to drop off after age sixty-five, at the precise time when its health benefits have been shown to be the most pronounced and when doctor visits are frequent. Second, studies have shown that older adults in particular are receptive to health advice from their physicians. Last, physicians have been effective advocates for increased physical activity in older adults, and involvement in volunteering may actually be easier to achieve, given the resistance of much of this population to exercise programs.
Volunteerism, Religiousness, Spirituality, and the Health Outcomes of Older Adults
Authors: Omoto Allen M. , Schlehofer Michèle M.
Published: September 2007

This chapter explores the interrelationships among volunteerism, religiousness, and health among older adults. It attempts to provide evidence for possible connections between religiousness, spirituality, and volunteerism, as well as for their association with health among older adults. Religiousness and spirituality were significantly correlated with an array of mental health indicators, most consistently life satisfaction and (freedom from) depression. These associations are consistent with other research that has demonstrated the positive effects of religiousness and spirituality on mental health. The study also finds evidence for the beneficial effects of volunteering on physical health.
Introduction to theCompendium of Training
Authors: Mrozik Susanne
Published: September 2007

This chapter begins with an explanation of the purpose of the book, which is to offer a new approach to the study of Buddhist ethics by asking what we can learn about Buddhist ethics if we make the body the focus of ethical inquiry. It then discusses the two main goals of the study, methodological and theoretical perspectives, literary genre of the text, and the historical origins of the Compendium of Training. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.
Revisioning Virtue
Authors: Mrozik Susanne
Published: September 2007

This chapter summarizes the arguments of the book and considers their ethical implications for both medieval and contemporary readers of the Compendium of Training. It employs a feminist hermeneutics of recovery and suspicion to suggest how an early medieval Indian Buddhist discourse on bodies can offer intellectual resources for contemporary scholars and practitioners.
What Are the Genetic Differences That Made Us Human?
Authors: Johnson Norman A.
Published: September 2007

Humans differ from chimpanzees and other apes with respect to our large brains and our abilities to use language, among other differences. This chapter discusses several candidate genes involved in brain size and linguistic ability (e.g., FOXP2) upon which natural selection appears to have acted in the human lineage. The complete genome sequences of humans, chimpanzees, and mouse (an outgroup) allow evolutionary geneticists to determine what genetic changes have occurred along the lineage that led to us. The McDonald-Kreitman tests and other tests to detect positive selection (Chapter 4) allow for the determination of which changes have been involved in adaptive evolution.
The Politics of Orthodox‐Greek Catholic Relations
Authors: Stan Lavinia , Turcescu Lucian
Published: September 2007

In 1989 the Romanian state was called to return Roman and Greek Catholic property confiscated by communist authorities and transferred to the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church's refusal to return disputed churches hampered the Orthodox‐Catholic dialogue, both locally and internationally. The property restitution case study illustrates the dilemma of a state torn between its need to maintain popularity with the Orthodox electorate and its desire to meet standards of religious freedom required for accession to the European Union. We analyze the different arguments proposed by the Orthodox, the Greek Catholics, and the Romanian state for and against restitution.
2 Defining Grammatical Complexity
Authors: McWhorter John
Published: September 2007

This chapter presents a definition of grammatical complexity, based on three ideas. First, languages differ in the degree to which they overtly and obligatorily mark semantic distinctions; this difference is termed as one of overspecification. Second, a particular aspect of one grammar may differ from that aspect in another's in terms of the number of rules (in phonology and syntax) or foundational elements (in terms of phonemic inventory) required to generate surface forms. Third, grammars differ in the degree to which they are festooned with irregularity and suppletion. Inflection and complexity, and whether one grammar can be more complex than another are discussed.
3 Epistemological Caveats
Authors: McWhorter John
Published: September 2007

This chapter addresses three fundamental objections of a philosophical nature that the book's framework may elicit. These include linguistic egalitarianism, incomplete data, and the issue of audience.
5 Mandarin Chinese
Authors: McWhorter John
Published: September 2007

This chapter shows that while Altaic languages had a decisive effect upon Mandarin, transfer was a relatively minor factor, while reduction due to non-native competence was comprehensively transformative. The evidence also suggests that the crucial locus of transformation was not the occupations by Genghis Khan (13th through 14th centuries) or the Manchus (1644-1911), but the widespread resettlement of conquered and dispossessed peoples amid Han Chinese on the northern Chinese frontier from the 600s through the 800s under the Tang dynasty. A comparison of Mandarin with its sister languages in nine aspects of grammar is presented.
9 A New Typology of Language Contact
Authors: McWhorter John
Published: September 2007

This chapter reiterates the qualitative differences in overall structural complexity between the five languages considered in the book and their sister languages, and states that these differences were caused by incomplete acquisition of a moderate degree in contact situations. However, a problem remains: that there is no clear place for the phenomenon identified in conventional models of language contact. Instead, the reduction in question — where perceived at all — has tended to elicit surmises that the languages are, or were once, pidgins or creoles. But these claims fail to compel, because neither synchrony, diachrony, nor sociohistorical data support classing these languages with Saramaccan, Haitian Creole, Papiamentu, and Tok Pisin.
11 Audi on Nondoxastic Faith
Authors: William P. Alston
Published: September 2007

This chapter argues that Audi's account of nondoxastic propositional faith is inadequate, and that the specifications given by Audi are either in tension with each other or insufficient to specify a distinct propositional attitude. It goes on to offer an account of an attitude what is called ‘acceptance’, whose voluntary character serves to distinguish it from belief. It then argues that acceptance can serve as the “cognitive core” of religious and non‐religious faith, and, more specifically, that acceptance without belief is adequate for Christianity. Thus, according to this chapter, acceptance can successfully play the role Audi wishes his nondoxastic faith to play.
Shared We-Attitudes
Authors: Tuomela Raimo
Published: September 2007

This chapter focuses on I-mode we-attitudes and develops several varieties of them. Basically, e.g. a we-goal is a goal that an agent has because the others in the group have it, under conditions of mutual social awareness. There is also a discussion of a circularity problem that arises in some contexts involving coordination of attitudes and actions when communication is not possible.
Joint Intention and We-Intention
Authors: Tuomela Raimo
Published: September 2007

The creation and conceptual nature of full-blown we-mode we-intentions and joint intentions is discussed in this chapter. Intending jointly as a group (= in the we-mode) is taken to entail the individual participants' shared we-intentions in the we-mode. A detailed account of we-intentions is given, and an alleged circularity problem concerning the circularity of accounting for joint intentions in terms of we-intentions is dissolved. It is also argued that we-mode joint intentions—and we-mode attitudes and actions in general—are irreducible to their I-mode counterparts. This is largely because of the group-reason requirement that the we-mode involves.
Maintenance and Implementation of Task Rules
Authors: Sakai Katsuyuki
Published: September 2007

This chapter shows that part of the anterior frontal cortex, the frontopolar cortex (FPC), is involved in the preparation of behaviors that require active manipulation of external information. During task preparation, the FPC interacts with different posterior prefrontal regions, depending on the task at hand. Further, the prefrontal activity that reflects behavioral rules (i.e., the task set) also predicts subsequent performance of cognitive tasks, as well as the level of activity of posterior areas during task performance. Based on these findings, this chapter argues that the interactions between the FPC and posterior frontal regions reflect not only the maintenance of the rule of the task to be performed, but also the process of implementing the rule for subsequent behavior.
Time Course of Executive Processes: Data from the Event‐Related Optical Signal
Authors: Gratton Gabriele , Low Kathy A. , Fabiani Monica
Published: September 2007

This chapter discusses a series of experiments in which a pre‐cue signals which of several dimensions of an upcoming stimulus is relevant on a particular trial. The event‐related optical signal is used to follow the time course of activity in different cortical areas after the pre‐cue. The data show two types of preparatory brain activities: (1) a domain‐general set, involving first the left middle frontal gyrus and then the lateral parietal cortex; and (2) a domain‐specific set, involving secondary sensory and motor areas of the brain. These data suggest that task preparation involves the operation of a hierarchical, top‐down system.
Moral Understandings
Authors: Walker Margaret Urban
Published: September 2007

This book defends an expressive-collaborative model of morality that challenges common assumptions in philosophical ethics. Morality is best revealed in practices of responsibility that express shared understandings about who we are, what we value, and to whom we are accountable for what we do. Morality is collaborative as we reproduce or shift our moral understandings together in many daily interactions of social life. For this reason, moral practices cannot be separated from other social practices, nor moral identities from social roles and institutions in particular ways of life; morality is not socially modular. But not everyone has the same power to set or change moral terms, and differently valued social-moral identities with different responsibilities and privileges are the rule in human societies. This book argues for empirically informed and politically critical ethics that aims for transparency about the moral significance of social differences including, but not only, gender differences. The book responds to the work of major philosophers of the 20th century, such as Bernard Williams, John Rawls, Robert Goodin, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre, while putting the tools of feminist epistemology and ethics to use. It also challenges uncritical assumptions in academic ethics about what we are in a position to know and for whom we are in a position to speak. This text is the second edition and contains an updated view of the state of moral philosophy, a new chapter on the moral and epistemological significance of public projects of truth-telling, and a concluding response to some common questions about the book.
8 Unnecessary Identities
Authors: Urban Walker Margaret
Published: September 2007

Representational practices affect moral perception and moral recognition, and so are proper studies for moral philosophy. Using Wittgenstein's idea that a human body pictures a soul, this chapter examines three patterns of representation of human bodies that impair or bias moral perception and proper recognition of human beings. Stereo-graphy fuses representation of the bodies of one kind of human being to a particular kind of comportment. Porno-graphy repetitively pictures certain bodies in sexualized ways. Necro-graphy produces representations of bodies that picture living human beings as already dead or beyond hope, or inscribe dead human bodies with an insult to their humanity. Moral graphics — the study of morally significant patterns of representation — aids in understanding the construction of identities, the nature and impact of stereotypes, and the fact that some kinds of prejudice are not easily accessible by conscious reflection.
Reduction and Supervenience
Authors: Horst Steven
Published: September 2007

This chapter outlines the contemporary conversation in philosophy of mind. Reductionists claim the mind can or must be reducible to natural phenomena. Eliminativists claim the mind cannot be so reduced and that this implies that our mentalistic categories should be eliminated in favor of a more naturalistic vocabulary. Dualists point to an explanatory gap between mind and nature and argue that this implies the mind is not reducible to something else, and that this entails either substance or property dualism. Mysterians agree that the mind is irreducible but trace this to a limitation of our ability to understand mind‐body relations. Nonreductive materialists also reject reduction but hold that the mind is nothing over and above a set of natural phenomena. All of these views share the assumption that intertheoretic reduction is the norm in the natural sciences, and this assumption motivates both reductionism and the idea that the explanatory gap poses a unique and disturbing problem.
Melancholic Freedom
Authors: Kim David Kyuman
Published: September 2007

Why does agency — the capacity to make choices and to act in the world — matter to us? Why is it meaningful that our intentions have effects in the world, that they reflect our sense of identity, that they embody what we value? What kinds of motivations are available for political agency and judgment in an age that lacks the enthusiasm associated with the great emancipatory movements for civil rights and gender equality? What are the conditions for the possibility of being an effective agent when the meaning of democracy has become less transparent? This book addresses these crucial questions by uncovering the political, moral, philosophical, and religious dimensions of human agency. The book treats agency as a form of religious experience that reflects implicit and explicit notions of the good. Of particular concern are the moral, political, and religious motivations that underpin an understanding of agency as meaningful action. Through a critical engagement with the work of theorists such as Judith Butler, Charles Taylor, and Stanley Cavell, this book argues that late modern and postmodern agency is found most effectively at work in “projects of regenerating agency” or critical and strategic responses to loss. Agency as melancholic freedom begins and endures, this text maintains, through the moral and psychic losses associated with a broad range of experiences, including the moral identities shaped by secularized modernity and the multi-fold forms of alienation experienced by those who suffer the indignities of racial, gender, class, and sexuality discrimination and oppression. This book calls for renewing the sense of urgency in our political and moral engagements by seeing agency as a vocation, where the aspiration for self-transformation and the human need for hope are fundamental concerns.
Love of the Good among the Ruins
Authors: Kim David Kyuman
Published: September 2007

This chapter discusses the philosophical and historical account that Charles Taylor developed on agency, identity, and the good, in particular in his collected essays and in Sources of the Self. The chapter begins with a discussion of Taylor's theories of agency and language and the philosophical anthropology that he develops. Taylor's retrieval and critique of the ethos of Romantic expressivism and his turn to modernism as a resource for responding to this are examined.
Problems of Causal Redundancy
Authors: Thomasson Amie L.
Published: September 2007

Causal redundancy arguments allege that all the causal work attributed to ordinary macroscopic objects is really performed (jointly) by their microscopic parts, making ordinary objects epiphenomenal. Trenton Merricks holds that this shows there are no such things, since, if there were ordinary objects such as baseballs, they would be causally efficacious. It is argued, however, that Merricks' argument is either invalid or unsound, depending on how one understands “overdetermination”. This chapter makes the case that standard prohibitions against overdetermination do not apply where there are analytic entailments between the causal claims, so we can accept the causal claims of, for example, a baseball and of simples arranged baseballwise, without them being rivals in claims to causal efficacy or yielding redundant “double causation”.
Identity, Persistence, and Modality
Authors: Thomasson Amie L.
Published: September 2007

The hybrid theory of reference developed in Chapter 2 has important consequences for our understanding of metaphysical claims about identity, persistence, and modality, which are drawn out in this chapter. Specifically, it leads to the view that the most basic conditions of existence, identity, and persistence for the objects we refer to are discoverable by a kind of conceptual analysis, and the most basic claims about these conditions are analytic. This in turn leads to the conceptualist view that the most basic modal claims are likewise analytic. Conventionalist views are often said (e.g., by Michael Rea and Crawford Elder) to lead to objectual anti-realism, but it is argued that modal conceptualism clearly does not. Moreover, modal conceptualism is independently appealing, since it can help soften epistemic and ontological worries about modality.
The World We Want
Authors: Louden Robert B.
Published: September 2007

This book compares the future world that Enlightenment intellectuals had hoped for with the world as it really is. It explores the ways the two worlds differ, and why are they so different; to what extent our world is or isn't the world such intellectuals desired, and the extent to which we still want their world. Unlike previous philosophical critiques and defenses of the Enlightenment, this study focuses extensively on the relevant historical and empirical records first, by examining carefully what kind of future Enlightenment intellectuals actually hoped for; second, by tracking the different legacies of their central ideals over the past two centuries. But in addition to documenting the significant gap that still exists between Enlightenment ideals and current realities, the book also attempts to show why the ideals of the Enlightenment still elude us. What does our own experience tell us about the appropriateness of these ideals? Which Enlightenment ideals do not fit with human nature? Why is meaningful support for these ideals, particularly within the US, so weak at present? Which of the means that Enlightenment intellectuals advocated for realizing their ideals are inefficacious? Which of their ideals have devolved into distorted versions of themselves when attempts have been made to realize them? How and why, after more than two centuries, have we still failed to realize the most significant Enlightenment ideals? In short, what is dead and what is living in these ideals?
Spirits as Concepts
Authors: Cohen Emma
Published: September 2007

Chapter 6 considers the form and spread of spirit concepts, drawing heavily on ethnographic data and emerging theories within epidemiological studies of culture. This chapter suggests why spirit concepts are an ubiquitous feature of human culture, arguing (on the basis of cutting‐edge research in the cognitive sciences) that such concepts have a distinct cognitive advantage in cultural transmission.
Aggressive Nationalism
Authors: Ellis Richard E.
Published: September 2007

This book examines the public debate that took place over Chief Justice John Marshall's famous decision in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). It sheds new light on how the case came before the US Supreme Court. It also examines many of the key issues involved in the case that John Marshall either slighted or totally ignored: the private profit-making nature of the Second Bank of the United States (2 BUS); the power of the 2 BUS to create branches in the states without their consent, which many people viewed as a direct assault upon the sovereignty of the states and which they feared would lead to the creation of other privately controlled profit-making national corporations that could operate within a state and yet be beyond its control; and the differences between a tax levied by a state for the purposes of raising revenue and one which was meant to destroy the operations of the branches of the 2 BUS. These issues are particularly important to understand because they were at the heart of Ohio's unwillingness to abide by the Supreme Court's decision and which eventually led to Osborn et. al. v. Bank of the United States (1824) and formed the basis for Andrew Jackson's famous veto for the rechartering of the 2 BUS in 1832. The book also examines the relationship between McCulloch v. Maryland and the creation of a federal program of internal improvements.
Renowned Goddess of Desire
Authors: Biernacki Loriliai
Published: September 2007

The role of women and ideas of gender are fundamental components of all religious traditions. Tantric traditions in particular offer a unique perspective on women's participation in religious traditions since they frequently incorporate worship of Goddesses, along with ordinary women as participants in religious rites. This book examines the representations of women within Tantra using a case study of a selection of Hindu Tantric texts from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries in Northeast India. Arguing for a nuanced perspective of women in Tantra, this book presents evidence for women's enhanced status in some traditions of Tantra, with women in the roles of guru and initiate. This book also addresses images of women within the Tantric rite of sexual union, arguing for multiple versions and motivations for this notorious practice. Especially this book addresses issues of discourse and speech, women's speech and speech about women, suggesting the imbrication of women's bodies within ideas of women's speech. This book examines a number of Tantric texts that have so far not been translated into Western languages. One appendix delineates the historical context for fifteenth through eighteenth century in the Northeast region of India and also surveys images of women found across a wide range of Tantric texts. The second appendix gives a chapter by chapter synopsis of the primary text used for this study, the Bṭhannīla Tantra, “The Great Blue Tantra,” a long and so far untranslated Tantric text.