It is evident, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has physicians confronting death and dying at unprecedented levels along with growing data suggesting that physicians who care for dying patients face complex emotional, psychological and behavioural effects, that there is a need for their better understanding and the implementation of supportive measures. Taking into account data positing that effects of caring for dying patients may impact a physician’s concept of personhood, or “what makes you, ‘you’”, we adopt Radha (...) Krishna’s Ring Theory of Personhood (RToP) to scrutinise the experiences of physicians working in intensive care units (ICU) using a fictional scenario that was inspired by real events. The impact of death and dying, its catalysts, internal constituents, external factors, dyssynchrony, and buffers, specific to ICU physicians, were identified and explored. Such a framework allows for ramifications to be considered holistically and facilitates the curation of strategies for conflict resolution. This evaluation of the RToP acknowledges the experience and wide-ranging effects it has on ICU physicians. As such, our findings provide insight into their specific needs and highlight the importance of support on a personal and organisational level. Although further research needs to be conducted, the RToP could serve as the basis for a longitudinal assessment tool supported by the use of portfolios or mentorship due to their provision of personalised, appropriate, specific, timely, accessible and long-term support. (shrink)

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually consistent. For (...) instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

Population-level biomedical research offers new opportunities to improve population health, but also raises new challenges to traditional systems of research governance and ethical oversight. Partly in response to these challenges, various models of public involvement in research are being introduced. Yet, the ways in which public involvement should meet governance challenges are not well understood. We conducted a qualitative study with 36 experts and stakeholders using the World Café method to identify key governance challenges and explore how public involvement can (...) meet these challenges. This brief report discusses four cross-cutting themes from the study: the need to move beyond individual consent; issues in benefit and data sharing; the challenge of delineating and understanding publics; and the goal of clarifying justifications for public involvement. The report aims to provide a starting point for making sense of the relationship between public involvement and the governance of population-level biomedical research, showing connections, potential solutions and issues arising at their intersection. We suggest that, in population-level biomedical research, there is a pressing need for a shift away from conventional governance frameworks focused on the individual and towards a focus on collectives, as well as to foreground ethical issues around social justice and develop ways to address cultural diversity, value pluralism and competing stakeholder interests. There are many unresolved questions around how this shift could be realised, but these unresolved questions should form the basis for developing justificatory accounts and frameworks for suitable collective models of public involvement in population-level biomedical research governance. (shrink)

Background Supporting physicians in Intensive Care Units s as they face dying patients at unprecedented levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic is critical. Amidst a dearth of such data and guided by evidence that nurses in ICUs experience personal, professional and existential issues in similar conditions, a systematic scoping review is proposed to evaluate prevailing accounts of physicians facing dying patients in ICUs through the lens of Personhood. Such data would enhance understanding and guide the provision of better support for (...) ICU physicians. Methods An SSR adopts the Systematic Evidenced Based Approach to map prevailing accounts of caring for dying patients in ICUs. To enhance the transparency and reproducibility of this process, concurrent and independent use of tabulated summaries, thematic analysis and directed content analysis is adopted. Results Eight thousand three hundred fifty-eight abstracts were reviewed from four databases, 474 full-text articles were evaluated, 58 articles were included, and the Split Approach revealed six categories/themes centered around the Innate, Individual, Relational and Societal Rings of Personhood, conflicts in providing end of life care and coping mechanisms employed. Conclusion This SSR suggests that caring for dying patients in ICU impacts how physicians view their personhood. To resolve conflicts within individual concepts of personhood, physicians use prioritization, reframing and rely on accessible, personalized support from colleagues to steer coping strategies. An adapted form of the Ring Theory of Personhood is proposed to direct timely personalized, appropriate and holistic support. (shrink)

Background Since its inception over half a century ago, a defining attribute of palliative care philosophy has been an insistence that this approach intends to neither hasten death nor prolong life. A commitment to facilitate a ‘natural’ end-of-life trajectory is ubiquitous in palliative care discourse. However, as an increasing number of jurisdictions around the world legislate to allow assisted death, palliative care providers are having to re-evaluate the relevance of this commitment for the relational ethics of their practice. Research Aims (...) and Participants In this paper, we explore how a sample of Canadian specialist palliative care nurses reflected on this longstanding disciplinary ethic of never intending to hasten death amidst evolving professional and ethical responsibilities to support people who explore and choose medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Research Design A qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with Canadian speciality palliative care nurses, conducted shortly after Canada legalized MAiD. We present an interpretive description through a framework of moral reflection; moral reflection consists of moral intuition, relational ethics, and moral coherence. Ethical Considerations Approval was granted from the Research Ethics Board of the University of Ottawa. Informed consent was obtained in writing and confirmed verbally at the time of each interview. We removed identifiers such as participant roles and geographic locations from interview quotes to protect confidentiality. Findings Across the different components of moral reflection, palliative care nurses negotiated their ethical positions amidst changes to end-of-life care. Conclusions Moral reflection and striving for moral coherence are ongoing processes; the goal is an engagement with moral plurality. As new jurisdictions consider and legalize MAiD, revisiting the early moral reflections of palliative care nurses can help nurses currently wrestling with similar ethical questions. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Inference has long been a concern in epistemology, as an essential means by which we extend our knowledge and test our beliefs. Inference is also a key notion in influential psychological or philosophical accounts of mental capacities, from perception via utterance comprehension to problem-solving. Consciousness, on the other hand, has arguably been the defining interest of philosophy of mind over recent decades. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the significance of consciousness for the proper understanding of the nature (...) and role of inference. It is commonly suggested that inference may be either conscious or unconscious. Yet how unified are these various supposed instances of inference? Does either enjoy explanatory priority in relation to the other? In what ways or senses, can an inference be conscious, or fail to be conscious, and how does this matter? This book brings together original essays from established scholars and emerging theorists that illustrate how several current debates in epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of mind can benefit from reflections on these and related questions about the significance of consciousness for inference. Contributors include: Kirk Ludwig and Wade Munroe; Michael Rescorla; Federico Bongiorno and Lisa Bortolotti; Berit Brogaard; Nicholas Allott; Jake Quilty-Dunn and Eric Mandelbaum; Corine Besson; Anders Nes; David Henderson, Terry Horgan, and Matjaž Potrč; Elijah Chudnoff; and Ram Neta. (shrink)

The role of Chan Buddhism for mind therapy is distinguished from psychotherapy by the objectives in diminishing or removing the deluded perceived self and the psychological self of attachments and cravings, which are considered as the more basic origins for psychological suffering and problems. The Buddhist concepts of impermanence, no-self and emptiness are discussed to explain the Buddhist explanation for human suffering. A four-stage theory is described to explain the common Buddhist meditation experience toward the realization of no-self. Removing (...) psychological attachment is found to be of explanatory value for many enlightenment episodes of Chan masters. Meditation concentration and reduction of self-attachment will mutually reinforce each other toward a complete therapy of the mind. An innovative approach for psychotherapy in going further to tackle a person's basic life attachments is suggested. (shrink)

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of (...) the right.Confucian Perfectionism examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice.Confucian Perfectionism critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era. (shrink)

This Source Book is devoted to the purpose of providing such a basis for genuine understanding of Chinese thought (and thereby of Chinese life and culture,...

What is belief? "Beliefs aim at truth" is the commonly accepted starting point for philosophers who want to give an adequate account of this fundamental state of mind, but it raises as many questions as it answers. For example, in what sense can beliefs be said to have an aim of their own? If belief aims at truth, does it mean that reasons to believe must also be based on truth? Must beliefs be formed on the basis of evidence alone? (...) Is truth the constitutive norm of belief? Does aiming at truth bring in a normative dimension to the nature of belief? How can the aim of truth guide the formation of our beliefs? In what ways do partial beliefs aim at truth? Is truth the aim of epistemic justification? Last but not least, is it knowledge rather than truth which is the fundamental aim of belief? In recent years, pursuing these questions has proved extremely fertile for our understanding of a wide range of current issues in philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, and meta-ethics. The Aim of Belief is the first book to be devoted to this fast-growing topic. It brings together eleven newly commissioned essays by leading authors on the aim of belief. Contributors: Jonathan Adler, Krister Bykvist, Timothy Chan, Pascal Engel, Kathrin Glüer, Anandi Hattiangadi, Michael Hicks, Paul Horwich, David Papineau, Andrew Reisner, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, Ralph Wedgwood, Åsa Wikforss, Daniel Whiting. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been increased awareness of unethical consumer practices in Asian countries. Asian consumers have gained a bad reputation for buying counterfeit products, such as computer software, fashion clothing and watches. In 1993, the estimated losses to US software companies due to Chinese counterfeiting stood at US $322 million (Kohut, 1994). The present study uses a consumer ethics scale developed by Muncy and Vitell (1992) to investigate consumers' ethical judgments from a Chinese perspective. The result shows that (...) consumers in different cultures utilize similar rules to assess the ethicality of a given situation. However, findings also show certain cultural elements that are unique in influencing Chinese consumers' ethical judgments. The results also indicate the need for the continued development of and investment in consumer education in Asia. (shrink)

Moral enhancement is a topic that has sparked much current interest in the world of bioethics. The possibility of making people ‘better,’ not just in the conventional enhancement sense of improving health and other desirable qualities and capacities, but by making them somehow more moral, more decent, altogether better people, has attracted attention from both advocates 1 2 and sceptics 3 alike. The concept of moral enhancement, however, is fraught with difficult questions, theoretical and practical. What does it actually mean (...) to be ‘more moral’? How would moral enhancement be defined and would it necessarily, as some have claimed, make the world a better or safer place? How would or could such enhancement be achieved safely and without undue constraint on personal liberty and autonomy? On this subject, a recent paper by Crockett et al 4 investigating the effects of the neurotransmitter serotonin on moral decision-making provides an intriguing scientific basis for examining what might or might not constitute moral enhancement. The study involved treatment with citalopram, a drug that increases the action of serotonin in the brain, and subsequent analysis of participants' decision-making behaviour in two different situations involving moral dilemmas: the well-known ‘Trolley Problem’ 5 and the ‘Ultimatum Game’. 6 The researchers found that citalopram promoted what they call ‘prosocial behaviour’, increasing the participants' aversion to causing direct harm to others: in the first scenario, they were less likely to select the option that required killing one in order to save five, and in the second, less likely to reject unfair offers at the expense of others. The Crockett study is fascinating both for its insight into human behaviour and because it appears to demonstrate that, at least on some accounts of moral behaviour, serotonin may in fact be a …. (shrink)

For two thousand years the Mencius was revered as one of the foundational texts of the Confucian canon, which formed the basis of traditional Chinese education. Today it commands considerable attention in current debates on "Asian values" raging in classrooms and boardrooms in both East Asia and the West. This volume, which represents the work of fifteen respected scholars of early Chinese thought and culture, is an especially timely effort to bring the Mencius under fresh scrutiny. Making use of recently (...) excavated manuscripts, the contributors approach the Mencius from novel perspectives, challenge established interpretations, and confront anew issues that continue to attract and divide students of this classic text. The famous Mencian doctrine of the "goodness" of human nature forms one main focus. Questions of context and interpretation bring into sharp relief key hermeneutical issues that surround the text. Does the Mencius present a coherent and systematically developed ethical teaching? Or should it be read as a composite work, comprising different layers of material that reflect different emphases and conflicting doctrines? Traversing contested territories and exploring new avenues of understanding, the essays presented here do not aim at settling debates; on the contrary, they afford ample opportunities for further discussion on the background, interpretation, and continued relevance of this classic of Confucian philosophy. Contributors: Roger T. Ames, Irene Bloom, A. Taeko Brooks, E. Bruce Brooks, Alan K. L. Chan, Kim-Chong Chong, Antonio S. Cua, Robert Eno, Jiuan Heng, Donald J. Munro, Ning Chen, David Nivison, Kwong-Loi Shun, Sor-Hoon Tan. (shrink)

Three claims are defended. (1) There is a conception of moral autonomy in Confucian ethics that to a degree can support toleration and freedom. However, (2) Confucian moral autonomy is different from personal autonomy, and the latter gives a stronger justification for civil and personal liberties than does the former. (3) The contemporary appeal of Confucianism would be strengthened by including personal autonomy, and this need not be seen as forsaking Confucian ethics but rather as an internal revision in response (...) to new social circumstances. From this inclusion emerges a new theory of liberties that recognizes the value of personal autonomy and the importance of the ethical good that liberties instrumentally serve to promote. (shrink)

Given the increasing importance attached to both corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance, this study investigates the association between these two complimentary mechanisms used by companies to enhance relations with stakeholders. Consistent with both legitimacy and stakeholder theory and controlling for industry profile, firm size, stockholder power/dispersion, creditor power/leverage, and economic performance, our analysis of the annual reports for a sample of 222 listed companies suggests that firms providing more CSR information: have better corporate governance ratings; are larger; belong (...) to higher profile industries; and are more highly leveraged. Our findings support the limited prior research suggesting a link between corporate governance quality and CSR disclosure in company annual reports and suggest that, rather than mandating specific disclosures, regulators might be better served focussing on corporate governance quality as a way of increasing CSR disclosures. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to show that there are actions which are non-intentional. An account is first given which links intentional and unintentional action to acting for a reason, or appropriate causation by an intention. Mannerisms and habitual actions are then presented as examples of behavior which are actions, but which are not done in the course of acting for a reason. This account has advantages over that of Hursthouse's "arational actions," which are allegedly intentional actions done for (...) no reason at all. Finally, one consequence of neglecting non-intentional action is discussed to illustrate its importance. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter to the volume The Aim of Belief, the editor surveys the fundamental questions in current debates surrounding the aim of belief, and identifies the major theoretical approaches. The main arguments of the ten contributions to the volume are outlined and located in the context of the existing literature.

In the second half of the twentieth century, a tendency among English language scholars of comparative theology and philosophy emerged in portraying Buddhist philosophy, and Japanese Zen Buddhist philosophy. In The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Dogen develops what some of the Kyoto school philosophers will later call a philosophy of nothingness based on his examination of the records of the Chinese Chan masters and other Buddhist texts. The philosophy of emptiness emerged around two thousand years ago in (...) the Prajnaparamita literature. Two of the sunyatavada texts that are important to the current discussion are nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakarika, and the Diamond Sutra. The sixth case of the Gateless Barrier introduces the rhetoric of silence in a narrative from. This rhetoric of silence is most visible in the four principles of Chan and the so-called flower sermon. Dogen argues that kyamuni's speech qua mitsugo comprises the non-dualism of individual and universal, form and formlessness. (shrink)

One version of Moore’s Paradox is the challenge to account for the absurdity of beliefs purportedly expressed by someone who asserts sentences of the form ‘p & I do not believe that p’. The absurdity of these beliefs is philosophically puzzling, given that Moorean sentences are contingent and often true; and express contents that are unproblematic when presented in the third-person. In this paper I critically examine the most popular proposed solution to these two puzzles, according to which Moorean beliefs (...) are absurd because Moorean sentences are instances of pragmatic paradox; that is to say, the propositions they express are necessarily false-when-believed. My conclusion is that while a Moorean belief is a pragmatic paradox, it is not just another pragmatic paradox, because this diagnosis does not explain all the puzzling features of Moorean beliefs. In particularly, while this analysis is plausible in relation to the puzzle posed by characteristic of Moorean sentences, I argue that it fails to account for. I do so in the course of an attempt to formulate the definition of a pragmatic paradox in more precise formal terms, in order to see whether the definition is satisfied by Moorean sentences, but not by their third-person transpositions. For only an account which can do so could address adequately. After rejecting a number of attempted formalizations, I arrive at a definition which delivers the right results. The problem with this definition, however, is that it has to be couched in first-person terms, making an essential use of ‘I’. Thus the problem of accounting for first-/third-person asymmetry recurs at a higher order, which shows that the Pragmatic Paradox Resolution fails to identify the source of such asymmetry highlighted by Moore’s Paradox. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines the liberal model of decision making for the terminally ill and contrasts it with the familial model that can be found in some Asian cultures. The contrast between the two models shows that the liberal model is excessively patient‐centred, and misconceives and marginalises the role of the family in the decision making process. The paper argues that the familial model is correct in conceiving the last journey of one's life as a sharing process rather than (...) a process of exercising one's prior or counterfactual choice, and concludes by suggesting a policy framework for the practice of familialism that can answer the liberal challenge that familialism cannot safeguard the patient from abuse and neglect. (shrink)

The last four decades have seen the emergence and flourishing of the field of bioethics and its incorporation into wide-ranging aspects of society, from the clinic or laboratory through to public policy and the media. Yet considerable debate still exists over what bioethics is and how it should be done. In this paper I consider the question of what makes good bioethics. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, I suggest that bioethics encompasses multiple modes of responding to moral disagreement, and (...) that an awareness of which mode is operational in a given context is essential to doing good bioethics. (shrink)

The first thorough study in English of the multi-faceted system of Mou Zongsan, this book examines key influences on the New Confucian thinker and introduces his Kantian- and Mahāyāna Fo-inflected moral metaphysical reading of the Lu-Wang Learning of the Mind.

This study empirically examines how Chinese executives perceive the role of guanxi and ethics played in their business operations. By factor-analyzing 850 valid replies collected from a comprehensive survey, the present study identifies three distinct ethics-related attitudes and two distinct guanxi-related attitudes for Chinese executives. The cluster analysis of the composite scores of these five attitudinal factors further indicates the existence of three distinct groups of Chinese executives that vary in their ethics and guanxi orientations. The three groups are unethical (...) profit seeker (UPS), anti-governance, guanxi-cultivator (AGGC), and apathetic executive (AE). The three groups are also found to be significantly different in such demographic characteristics as age and the ownership structure of the serving organization. Specifically, the inter-group comparison suggests that younger Chinese executives, and those working for privately-owned firms and joint ventures are more inclined to engage in unethical activities for profits. These findings provide useful insights for international investors to formulate their human resource and negotiation strategies in China. (shrink)

: Jing (respect) in ancient Confucianism can be seen as referring to either a frame of mind or an intentional state that includes the elements of singlemindedness, concentration, seriousness, caution, and a strong sense of responsibility. Hence, it can be seen as a due regard based on the perception of the worth of its object. It is the central element and the germ of li (ritual). A critical comparison is made between jing and the ideas of appraisal respect, recognition respect, (...) and identification respect as discussed in Western ethics. (shrink)

Much bioethical discussion has been devoted to the subject of human enhancement through various technological means such as genetic modification. Although many of the same technologies could be, indeed in many cases already have been, applied to non-human animals, there has been very little consideration of the concept of “animal enhancement”, at least not in those specific terms. This paper addresses the notion of animal enhancement and the ethical issues surrounding it. A definition of animal enhancement is proposed that provides (...) a framework within which to consider these issues; and it is argued that if human enhancement can be considered to be a moral obligation, so too can animal enhancement. (shrink)

Whole-genome analysis and whole-exome analysis generate many more clinically actionable findings than traditional targeted genetic analysis. These findings may be relevant to research participants themselves as well as for members of their families. Though researchers performing genomic analyses are likely to find medically significant genetic variations for nearly every research participant, what they will find for any given participant is unpredictable. The ubiquity and diversity of these findings complicate questions about disclosing individual genetic test results. We outline an approach for (...) disclosing a select range of genetic results to the relatives of research participants who have died, developed in response to relatives? requests during a pilot study of large-scale medical genetic sequencing. We also argue that studies that disclose individual research results to participants should, at a minimum, passively disclose individual results to deceased participants? relatives. (shrink)

Drawing on the general ethics and social psychology literature, this study presents a model to delineate the major factors likely to affect consumers’ intentions to bring their own shopping bags when visiting a supermarket (called “bring your own bags” or “BYOB” intention). The model is empirically validated using a survey of 250 Chinese consumers. Overall, the findings support the hypothesized direct influence of teleological evaluation and habit on BYOB intention, as well as that of deontological evaluation and teleological evaluation on (...) ethical judgment about the BYOB practice. Teleological evaluation exerts a much stronger influence on ethical judgment than does deontological evaluation. In addition, the findings reveal that consumers who perceive the BYOB practice to be more important are more inclined to rely on their ethical judgment to derive their BYOB intention. Academically, these findings provide some encouraging evidence for the application of general ethics theories to explain green consumption-related practices. Practically, the findings also suggest that a utilitarian approach (i.e., emphasizing the consequences of BYOB) may represent an effective means for the Chinese government to promote BYOB practice among consumers. (shrink)

Questions about sincerity play a central role in our lives. But what makes an assertion insincere? In this paper we argue that the answer to this question is not as straightforward as it has sometimes been taken to be. Until recently the dominant answer has been that a speaker makes an insincere assertion if and only if he does not believe the proposition asserted. There are, however, persuasive counterexamples to this simple account. It has been proposed instead that an insincere (...) assertion that p is one made by a speaker who (a) does not express his belief that p; or (b) does not believe that he believes that p; (c) does not assent to p; or (d) does not express any of these cognitive states. We show that these .. (shrink)

Byrne has demonstrated that although subjects can make deductively valid inferences of the modus ponens and modus tollens forms, these valid inferences can be suppressed by presenting an appropriate additional premise “If R then Q” with the original conditional “If P then Q”. This suppression effect challenges the assumption of all syntactic theories of conditional reasoning that formal rules of inference such as modus ponens is part of mental logic. This paper argues that both the syntactic and the mental model (...) accounts of the suppression effect are inadequate because they fail to give a principled account of the critical interpretive component involved in reasoning. In contrast, the relative salience model proposed in this study emphasized the centrality of the interpretative processes with the critical component being the relative salience of premises as judged by subjects on the basis of their prior knowledge activated in particular problem situations. Using 120 undergraduates and 120 policemen as subjects, predictions from the model were tested and confirmed in a suppression paradigm and evidence of convergent validity for the construct of salience were obtained. The results cannot be reconciled with either the syntactic view or the mental model view that have dominated theories of conditional reasoning. (shrink)

Issues of race, gender, nationality and religion have been the breeding ground of conflict and oppression throughout history. This book provides an engaging assessment of the dangers of defining the self against the other.