Belief’s Own Ethics

Parental beliefs about portion size, not children's own beliefs, predict child BMI

BACKGROUND Increases in portion size are thought by many to promote obesity in children. However, this relationship remains unclear. Here, we explore the extent to which a child's BMI is predicted both by parental beliefs about their child's ideal and maximum portion size and/or by the child's own beliefs. METHODS Parent-child (5-11 years) dyads (N = 217) were recruited from a randomized cont...

Institutions , Beliefs and Ethics : Eugenics as a Case Study

T article uses an examination of the most troubling strand of the eugenics movements—coercive negative eugenics—to challenge the way many philosophers conceive of ethics. It is commonly assumed that to prepare ourselves for the difficult choices thrust upon us by advances in genomic science we must understand what went wrong in eugenics. The term “eugenics” encompasses a diversity of different ...

Developmental Readiness in the Understanding of Own and Other’s False Beliefs

One of the most important milestones in the development of theory of mind is the understanding of false beliefs. This study compares children’s understanding of representational change and others’ false beliefs and evaluates the effectiveness of an appearance-reality training for improving children’s false belief understanding. A total of 78 children ranging in age from 41 to 47 months were tra...

With my own ears: the ethics of sound in non-fiction film and TV

Sound in non-fiction is routinely manipulated in order to accentuate, suppress or replace some aspects of sound to present a clearer, more intelligible, exciting, involving or dramatic representation to the audience. This manipulation, or potential for manipulation, indicates the need for a discussion on the ethical dimensions of such a practice. Ethical models across a range of disciplines suc...

Doctors should not try to ban boxing--but boxing's own ethics suggests reform.