Critical Faculty Research Articles

Moral and nonmoral innate constraints

Charles J. Lumsden and E.O. Wilson, in their writings together and individually, have proposed that human behaviors, whether moral or nonmoral, are governed by innate constraints (which they have termed “epigenetic rules”). I propose that if a genetic component of moral behavior is to be discovered, some sorting out of specifically moral from nonmoral innate constraints will be necessary. That some specifically moral innate constraits exist is evidenced by virtuous behaviors exhibited in nonhuman mammals, whose behavior is usually granted to be importantly governed by genetic factors. Propensities for such virtuous behaviors may have been passed to humans as highly conserved mammalian genes and continue to influence us. I propose that these constitute at least a “rudimentary morality” and may account in part for the moral intuitions. But other innate constraints which are nonmoral in nature interact with the specifically moral innate constraints and with culture to yield human moral decisions and actions. Any model which aims to identify the genetic component of moral behaviors or behaviors with moral import must provide not only a delineation of cultural causes but must also distinguish between those genetic causes which may have their origin in innate moral constraints from others which are fundamentally nonmoral because the critical faculty necessary to higher level human morality itself arises in part from innate constraints of a nonmoral type; i.e., the processes of inductive reasoning common to both ethics and science. Finally, humans who could bring the nonmoral evaluative capacities to bear upon whatever moral intuitions might be genetically conserved in mammalian heritage would have an advantage over similar beings who could not.

The Endings of Hemingway's Garden of Eden

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL purists may never be happy with the concept of a posthumous novel edited by someone other than the author. Nor are scholars the only ones who have such reservations. Even Jack Hemingway, who stands to gain financially from the posthumous publication of his father's works, has remarked, Much of the posthumous work would have been rejected out of hand by [Hemingway's] own critical faculty without extensive rewriting-cutting and pruning he would have refused to have anyone do but himself. Jack's brother Patrick, feeling ambivalent about the publication of the unfinished works, stresses the importance of readers' remembering that the posthumous works were never edited into final form by Hemingway himself.' Nevertheless, most readers are grateful to Tom Jenks, the Scribner editor who put the large manuscript into publishable shape so that all might see new facets of a standard American author. An examination of the manuscript of The Garden of Eden suggests that Jenks probably performed his job as well as nearly anyone but Hemingway himself could have done. That job, like that of a novelist, was not to provide a definitive text with notes and tables of variant readings but to produce a readable story in which the major themes come together to make a coherent statement about life. Jenks got most of the good material that was in the manuscript and cut out many distracting elements. Yet in handling the ending of the novel, Jenks departed radically from Hemingway's express intentions. Anyone reading The Garden of Eden must be struck by the

Habermas on Power and Rationality

-and against the backgorund of a shift from a positive to a negative dialecticreason was once and for all stripped of its claim to validity. This was the result of a differentiation of the autonomous logic of various value spheres from one another. In consequence, reason could no longer be distinguished from power. Due to the naturalistic equation of validity and power claims (Habermas 1985b, p. 137), the critical faculty was permanently bypassed. The critique of ideology outdid itself by unmasking rationality as a degraded attempt at self-preservation gone wild. Thus Horkheimer and Adorno were

Mental impairment in unilateral frontal tumours: role of the laterality of the lesion.

Seventy-two patients with left frontal lobe tumours and 68 patients with right frontal lobe tumours were studied clinically and experimentally. Left frontal lobe tumours were consistent with poorer motor and mimical activity, speech disturbances, manifested as efferent motor or dynamic aphasia, slowing down of the tempo of mental processes, deterioration of verbal memory, reduced generalization ability, difficulties in attention shifting and stereotyped thinking. In mild cases, the above impairments were associated with depressed feelings, in advanced cases with apathico-abulic syndrome. Right frontal lobe tumours were found to raise spirits and led to euphoria, underestimation of one's disorder and full anosognosia, loss of critical faculty, attention instability and distractibility. Development of mental disorders in left-sided frontal tumours mainly depends on tumour localization, while in right-sided ones tumour size and malignancy are the determining factors.

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego—A Lifetime Later

In a retrospective evaluation of Freud's essay, the author discusses the formation of emotionally fused mass movements, the implications of drastically changing social patterns and staggering population increases. He sees the critical faculty of the individual ego as the only safeguard against the pull of mass regressions. However, for people long held in subjection, fusion in a common political purpose can constitute a first step toward individual self-awareness, although their leaders may be terrorists, agents of the accumulated aggression. Only the concept of a death drive fully explains the recurrence of mass regression; only the fear of our enormous destructive power may offset its terrible seduction.

Walter Bagehot and Deference

UNTIL RECENTLY THE REPUTATION of Walter Bagehot has stood high with students of nineteenth-century England. Because he was man of many parts, not only historians, but also students of literature, politics, economics have admired him. Many of them, if asked, would probably have agreed with that master of Victorian studies, G. M. Young, that Bagehot was their favorite Victorian. Bagehot wrote well. He was maker of memorable phrases, nman also of sympathy, taste, learning, wit. If, as Young has said, he was not greatest man alive working between I837 I90I, so much the better. Bagehot was a man not illustrious or consummate to be companionable, but one, nevertheless, whose ideas took root are still bearing. ' In short, Bagehot was easy to like, to such man posterity tends to be kind, restraining the critical faculty it exercises so readily upon less likeable more eminent men.2 Not that critical voices have never been heard. Maynard Keynes early in this century noted that Bagehot did not always reach the level of his reputation. His economics was better psychology than it was economics. He could theorize to limited degree in familiar fields of observation. But he was sometimes tempted beyond his powers. He could become entangled in a train of inference, as Keynes noted, that was too long for him or for which, not truly caring, he had no steady patience. Similarly, even his gift for psychological insight was limited. It was good when exercised upon those of middle position, primarily business men, financiers, politicians. It was less good when exercised upon either the high or the low. Genius violent feeling on the one hand, wrote Keynes, and servitude, confinement, distress upon the other were beyond him.' During the last decade, however, voices critical of Bagehot have grown more numerous. For the most part the critics have been political scientists.4 But

The Courtier and the Scholemaster

critical faculty, serving no military function but employed purely for pleasure, is partial goal of the courtier's training. Once suggested, critical judgment has natural extension: a knowledge of how to draw and an acquaintance with the art of painting itself (77). If drawing were to produce no other utility or pleasure, helps in judging the excellence of statues both ancient and modern, vases, buildings, medallions, cameos, intaglios, and the like, and it also brings one to know the beauty of living bodies (82). Aesthetic appreciation from an apprenticeship to expertise is part of truly liberal education, development of the powers of the mind for their own sake. The courtiers underline the liberal values of the critical faculty when they emphasize the solace of musical appreciation for older men who are past their military prime and the centrality of discernment for women, who never play military role and need no martial training (106, 207-211). The result of such faculty is an abstract, mature enjoyment; [subtle words] cause the reader to proceed with more restraint and concentration, to reflect more, and to enjoy the talent and doctrine of the writer; and, by judiciously exerting himself little, he tastes that pleasure which is had when we achieve great things (49). Here is Renaissance contribution to the education of gentleman. The guests of Duchess Elisabetta are, quite rightly, considered neither humanist pedagogues nor literary scholars. But, as the principle of discreet judgment involves aesthetic education, so it extends to the theory of literature. The debate between Ludovico, Federico, and the others about levels of vocabulary is really digression from the outline of an ideal courtier, but it is introduced by an admonition to avoid affected use of foreign or obsolete words. The authority of antiquity, the value of imitation, and the gravity and mastery of hieratic diction are set against appeal to contemporary audience, development in

Arturo Miolati (1869-1956)

Previous articleNext article No AccessArturo Miolati (1869-1956)George B. KauffmanGeorge B. Kauffman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 61, Number 2Summer, 1970 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/350623 Views: 2Total views on this site Citations: 9Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1970 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Anthony S. Travis Non-BASF Ammonia Technologies, (Apr 2018): 225–264.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68963-0_10Anthony S. Travis Nobel Prizes and New Technologies, (Jul 2015): 111–143.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19357-1_5Karl-Heinz Ernst, Ferdinand R. W. P. Wild, Olivier Blacque, Heinz Berke Alfred Werners Koordinationschemie: neue Erkenntnisse aus alten Proben, Angewandte Chemie 123, no.4646 (Oct 2011): 10970–10977.https://doi.org/10.1002/ange.201104477Karl-Heinz Ernst, Ferdinand R. W. P. Wild, Olivier Blacque, Heinz Berke Alfred Werner’s Coordination Chemistry: New Insights from Old Samples, Angewandte Chemie International Edition 50, no.4646 (Oct 2011): 10780–10787.https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201104477Karl-Heinz Ernst, Heinz Berke Optical activity and Alfred Werner's coordination chemistry, Chirality 23, no.33 (Oct 2010): 187–189.https://doi.org/10.1002/chir.20912Franco Calascibetta Chemistry in Czechoslovakia between 1919 and 1939: J. HeyrovskýA and the Prague Polarographic School, Centaurus 39, no.44 (Jul 2007): 368–381.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0498.1997.tb00043.xGeorge B. Kauffman Alfred werner's research on geometrically isomeric coordination compounds, Coordination Chemistry Reviews 15, no.11 (Sep 1975): 1–92.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-8545(00)80389-6Michael Conrad Thermodynamic correlates of evolution, Biosystems 6, no.11 (Jul 1974): 1–15.https://doi.org/10.1016/0303-2647(74)90007-0George B. Kauffman Alfred Werner's research on polynuclear coordination compounds, Coordination Chemistry Reviews 9, no.3-43-4 (Feb 1973): 339–363.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-8545(00)82082-2

Editor for 17 years

Abstract Abstract Extract When the New Zealand Veterinary Association decided to publish a New Zealand Veterinary Journal in 1952, it made a wise choice in appointing J. C. Newhook as its first honorary editor. A successful editor requires to be a man with a very wide knowledge in the whole field of veterinary science outside his own specialty, with a well-developed critical faculty and with the ability to write good lucid prose and to give painstaking attention to detail. In 1952, the Association chose such a man.

Philosophical Problems of Space and Time

By Adolf Grunbaum London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. 1964. Pp. 208. Price 70s. One result of the rapid advance of technology has been to blunt the critical faculty whereby we should be continuously reviewing the fundamentals of our knowledge in any sphere of intellectual activity. For it is only too possible that some process may 'work ' (especially on a large scale), and yet be little understood in the epistemological sense.

The fallacy of saving time at the chair

The ideas expressed here are the results of the writer's own experiences, dissatisfactions, and subsequent search for solutions to his problems. They are not intended as an indictment of others, but are offered in the hope that they may stimulate thinking in regard to some of the problems that are facing the dental profession: 1. The need for continuing education for the professional man, either on a formal basis or through a constructive program of reading, the ideas of which will be incorporated in his practice. 2. The desirability of maintaining high standards of prosthodontic teaching in our dental schools. 3. The need for the development of a critical faculty within each of us which will elevate our own standards of value and result in a better service to our patients. If the suggestions made herein are deemed idealistic and lacking in practicality to the general practitioner, he should consider the practical aspects which such a program connotes. A slow growth factor is characteristic of the development of a prosthodontic practice. The time that is spent with patients in educating them during the preoperative prosthodontic period conditions them both mentally and physically for a transitional change and will automatically reduce the postoperative treatment required. If the dentist can achieve a postoperative vision in the treatment planning stage, a real and not a fallacious saving of time can be effected.The dentist who attempts the rehabilitation of the dental cripples in his practice, who is concerned with the preservation of their ridges, who is willing to take the time to make study casts, photographs, and phonetic records of his younger patients and preserve these records for future reference will find that these services are appreciated by his patients. His real concern for their welfare is the greatest practice builder at his command.When the oral health problems of each patient become a true challenge to the ingenuity of the dentist, time automatically ceases to be the limiting factor of his service. His intellectual curiosity is aroused as he seeks the best solution for the individual patient, and his vocation becomes his avocation for he begins to experience the stimulating urge for creative thinking.

Found: A Realistic Market Measure

W ALL STREET, WHICH INSISTS on utmost realism in its statistics, has long operated in a curious nevernever land so far as market yardsticks are concerned. Most of the averages by which it measures changes in stock prices are so hopelessly mired in mathematical confusion that they inevitably mislead all but those who study them with a practiced eye. This is not news to the veteran market analyst. Common sense and a well-developed critical faculty taught him long ago that something was amiss. Nevertheless he still can hardly avoid a flush of ebullience when the Dow-Jones industrials, for example, soar eight points in a single day; or at least a fleeting disquiet when they sink by a like amount. He knows that he can restore his perspective by making certain calculations that reveal the true average change in the Dow-Jones industrials: $1.22. If he also bears in mind that this represents only the change in 29 of the 900-odd industrial common stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange (plus one utility), he is properly armed against extremes of joy or despair.

Subjective Judgment in Statistical Analysis: An Experimental Study

Summary As part of an experimental study of the effect of stopping iterative maximum likelihood calculations after one cycle, twenty-one scientists were asked to judge by eye the positions for a pair of parallel probit regression lines in a biological assay. This paper reports the results obtained from each pair of lines after one cycle of various forms of probit calculation. Although all the conditions of the experiment were chosen so as to be unfavourable to the drawing of good lines, one cycle of iteration brought every estimate within 1½ per cent. of the maximum likelihood value, as compared with a range of 32 per cent. and a maximum error of 27 per cent. for the estimates read directly from the graphs. The fiducial limits as calculated after one cycle were brought within a range of about 5 per cent. around the true values. The subjects for this study were deliberately chosen as having no experience of probit methods. The results confirm me in the opinion I have often expressed, namely that, unless a diagram showing probits plotted against log dose is exceptionally irregular, a single cycle of iteration initiated by any reasonable trial regression line will give a satisfactory approximation. Experience in drawing the trial lines undoubtedly makes the first cycle better still, but even the inexperienced can do quite well. I am in no way suggesting that the critical faculty of the statistician is unnecessary in deciding when iteration may be stopped: care is needed in order to ensure that all doubtful cases have additional cycles, but users of the probit method may find some comfort in the thought that their trial lines are seldom as bad as they fear! When the form of calculation recently proposed by Cornfield and Mantel was used, results after one cycle were rather better, but, since those by the usual technique were so good, the practical advantage was not great. Additional calculations on some very extreme pairs of trial lines suggest that, if the data were so scanty or so irregular as to make the positions of the lines very uncertain, the Cornfield-Mantel procedure would then be markedly superior: in such circumstances, more than one cycle of iteration would certainly be needed, but this procedure might reduce the number of cycles. A further practical point in connection with data of this type is that an error of making the slopes of the trial lines too small is preferable to an error of making the slopes too large, since the latter is more likely to increase the number of cycles needed or even to make the iteration diverge.

History is on Our Side

UNDER title “History is on Our Side”, Dr. Joshep Needham has brought together twelve essas addresses written or delivered between 1931 and 1942, some of which were revised during his stay in China. Most of them display the omnivorous character of Dr. Needham's reading, and some of them have the charm and persuasiveness that marked his earlier book, “Time: the Refreshing River”. But in spite of a certain spiritual quality, they are rarely so convincing as his earlier book. They lack unity, and the book as a whole is a rather confused mixture of science, politics, religion and philosophy in which the enthusiasm of a convert has warped the judgment and critical faculty that one would expect of a scientific man of Dr. Needham's standing. Dogmatism and a tendency to ex cathedra judgments rob the book of any pretensions to form a serious contribution to either political or religious thought: one is left no wiser at the end as to what ‘political religion’ may be, or ‘scientific faith’. History is on Our Side A Contribution to Political Religion and Scientific Faith. By Joseph Needham. Pp. 226. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1946.) 8s. 6d. net.

On the Study of Diplomatic History

field of diplomatic history in 19oO's. The indictment invites scrutiny. No one, I suppose, would deny that temptation to cultivate field was strong and natural. Very rapidly an unprecedented quantity of evidence was made available. In 1934 Professors Gooch and Temperley pointed out that material for study of Balkan wars was the fullest that has yet been published on any period of history. They concluded: From technical point of view, therefore, no epoch is more likely to repay labors of historian or to supply as ample material for critical faculty.' Since objective of graduate instruction is to impart technical knowledge and to train critical faculty, student and instructor alike rejoiced at opening of a relatively unplowed field across which a straight furrow might be driven.

Speech and Voice

IN this elegant and well-documented study, the author uses a life-time of clinical experience and a highly developed critical faculty when discussing the cognate work of others. As befits a member of the Tavistock Clinic, the only large body of consultative and practising psycho-therapists in Great Britain, the author sees in the development of speech in the individual a parallelism to the development of the body through a compressed re-capitulation of the evolutionary development of the species through the ages. Thus, from the very first id cries of the baby every further stage of speech control, as a method of communicating ideas, is but adding a further layer of psychological development on what is more primitive. Conversely, the major defects of speech, representing loss of such higher layers, such as aphasia, dyslalia, and stammering, are treated by conducting the patient through a yocal training largely based on the evolution of language, deduced by the comparative study of primitive languages and the natural efforts of an infant in endeavouring to make his wants understood ; this, of course, in addition to any ad hoc psychological treatment. Speech and Voice Their Evolution, Pathology and Therapy. By Dr. Leopold Stein. Pp. xii + 233. (London : Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1942.) 15s. net.

Diseases of the Nervous System

THE first edition of this book appeared in September 1940, and the fact that a second edition has been needed within a year (this edition was published in August) speaks for itself. Dr. Walshe planned this book for the use of practitioners and medical students ; and there can be no doubt that he has been entirely successful in his object. The need of just such a book as this has been long felt by those engaged in teaching students the fundamental elements of neurology, and those of us who are familiar with Dr. Walshe's powers of lucid exposition and his critical faculty will not be surprised by his success. Diseases of the Nervous System Described for Practitioners and Students. By Dr. F. M. R. Walshe. Second edition. Pp. xvi + 325. (Edinburgh: E. and S. Livingstone, 1941.) 12s. 6d. net.

The Critical Faculty of Edward Robinson

The Critical Faculty of Edward Robinson

Lady Gomme

BY the death of Lady Gomme, which took place on January 5 at the age of eighty-five years, folklore studies in Great Britain have lost a staunch supporter of long standing. With her husband, the late Sir George Laurence Gomme, whom she, as Alice Bertha Merck, married in 1875, she took a prominent part in the early activities of the newly constituted Folk-Lore Society, of which they were among the founders. Throughout their married life, and after her husband's death, her organizing ability, her knowledge of her subject and its personnel, and her keen critical faculty, gave her, as of right, a foremost place in every movement for promoting the recording and scientific study of folk beliefs, customs and institutions. Lady Gomme helped to found the two societies, now merged, devoted to the study of folk-dance and song, and strongly influenced the late Sir Cecil Sharp in his work of collecting folk-songs and dances. She herself was the author of two works, which have long been regarded as standard books of reference and models of their kind—“Children's Singing Games, with the Tunes to which they are Sung”(1894, Second Series, 1895) and “A Dictionary of British Folk-Lore, Vol. 1: Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland” (Pt. 1, 1894 ; Pt. 2, 1898).

Constable's Portrayal of Weather

MB. L. C. W. Bonacina's paper on "John Constable's Centenary: His Position as a Painter of Weather"(Qtiart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., October 1937) is a notable contribution to that affiliation of the Nature studies of the artist and scientific worker which is so much to be desired. The character of the country in which Constable was born and bred evidently influenced his practice of emphasizing cloud effects in landscape. The Suffolk countryside where the celebrated pictures of Flatford Mill, Dedham Mill and Stoke-by-Nayland were painted is the plain seen by the traveller on the London and North-Eastern Railway when crossing the Biver Stour above Manningtree. Here the land presents none of those emphatic forms which in rugged scenery tend to concentrate attention on the lower half of the confronting hemisphere, so the eye ranges freely over the sky, and the cloud is as important as the field in the composition of the picture. Originals of Constable's paintings are readily accessible in the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and many are familiar as engravings, so that Mr. Bonacina's judgments can easily be tested. We welcome his conclusion that Constable's generalization of particular types of cloud in a manner not possible for photography is of service to the meteorologist. The analysis of certain pictures in which transitory forms are so perfectly depicted as to introduce a cinematic effect is a notable contribution to art criticism. It is indeed entirely appropriate that the student of natural science should thus contribute to the understanding of landscape painting, for the critical faculty is as a rule more highly developed in the man of science than in the artist—who does more than he knows.