Hume’s account of contrariety in Book I of the Treatise poses several interpretive puzzles. I consider each in turn and offer a novel interpretation of contrariety based on Hume’s discussion of the passions. That Book II and Book I form a complete chain of reasoning suggests that the way in which passions are related is analogous to the way in which ideas are related in the understanding. I argue that Hume identifies three species of empirical contrariety in Book II: contraries, (...) oppositions, and contradictions. All three species help clarify Hume’s remarks concerning contrariety in Book I. I further identify a second genus I call logical contrariety by drawing on Hume’s discussion of fictitious duration and distance. (shrink)

The paper aims at providing an exhaustive analysis of the key concept of glory in Hobbes's works. It is argued that the meaning and role of glory are essentially the same in all Hobbes's writings. The paper claims that in Elements of Law, De Cive, Leviathan, De Homine, Behemoth and in the Correspondence the desire of glory and ambition are given by Hobbes a crucial role in the explanation of human conflict. The paper argues that the status of glory vis-a-vis (...) other passions changes radically in Leviathan and De Homine: whereas in the earlier works glory was the ultimate motivation of most (if not all) individuals, i.e. the genus of all passions; in later works it becomes a species or instance of human passions. In Leviathan no concept is raised to the central position previously occupied by glory. (shrink)

This article makes several conceptual proposals for a closer analysis of recognition more or less in line with Axel Honneth's account of recognition: (1) a proposal as to the genus of recognitional attitude and recognition, (2) a sketch of an analytical scheme intended to be heuristically useful for analysing the different species of recognitional attitude and recognition, (3) some proposals as to the precise contents of self-conceptions involved in each species and subspecies of recognition, and (4) suggestions as to the (...) relation of the species of recognitional attitude to social settings and concrete personal relationships as well as to the totalities of attitudes instantiated in these settings and relationships. A guiding idea is that the somewhat mechanistic Meadian vocabulary of 'urges' and 'internalizations' of Honneth's original formulations should be replaced with formulations where recognition is consistently conceptualized as consisting of attitudes with propositional or judgmental content. (shrink)

There is a broad consensus in the literature that in the section on ‘The Genus’ in theScience of Logic, Hegel argues that any living being must exist among other instances of its kind, with which it reproduces to create future generations, and out of which it was itself produced. This view is not only hard to motivate philosophically, it also seems to contradict many things Hegel says elsewhere in his system about the details of living nature, especially concerning the reality (...) of spontaneous generation. After an examination of the secondary literature on ‘The Genus’, I offer an alternative view of this section, which I call ‘the Modal Reading’. The Modal Reading sees the language of pluralities in ‘The Genus’ as really Hegel's peculiar way of articulating certain modal features of thoughts about the living: to grasp a living individual as living, we need to distinguish not only between this individual and its environment, but also between the things this individual actually does and other possibilities which it does not actualize. The Modal Reading has a logical motivation insofar as it articulates what is needed to think of a living being as living, but it also avoids saddling Hegel with the problematic entailments he is usually read as taking on in this section. A further upshot of the Modal Reading is that approaching Hegel in this way provides us with a way to see Hegel as defending a non-nominalistic alternative to essentialist accounts of living kinds. Finding a way to read ‘The Genus’ which coheres with Hegel's views elsewhere in his system thus shows Hegel to have been an especially subtle and penetrating thinker, with continuing relevance for the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Our species' behavioral and cognitive evolution constitute a key research topic across many scientific disciplines. Based on ethnographic hunter-gatherer data, Stibbard-Hawkes challenges the common link made between past material culture and cognitive capacities. Despite this adequate criticism, archaeology must retain a central role for studying these issues due to its unique access to relevant empirical evidence in deep time.

In his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx famously claims that the human being is or has a ‘Gattungswesen.’ This is often understood to mean that the human being is a ‘species-being’ and is determined by a given ‘species-essence.’ In this chapter, I argue that this reading is mistaken. What Marx calls Gattungswesen is precisely not a ‘species-being,’ but a being that, in a very specific sense, transcends the limits of its own given species. This different understanding of the genus-character (...) of the human being opens up a new perspective on the naturalism of the early Marx. He is not informed by a problematic speciesist and essentialist naturalism, as is often assumed, but by a different form of naturalism which I propose to call ‘dialectical naturalism.’ The chapter starts (I) by developing Hegel’s account of genus which provides us with a useful background for (II) understanding Marx’s original notion of a genus-being and its practical, social, developmental character. In the last section, I show that (III) the actualization of our genus-being thus depends on the production of a specific type of ‘second nature’ that is at the heart of Marx’s dialectical naturalism. (shrink)

In his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx famously claims that the human being is or has a ‘Gattungswesen.’ This is often understood to mean that the human being is a ‘species-being’ and is determined by a given ‘species-essence.’ In this chapter, I argue that this reading is mistaken. What Marx calls Gattungswesen is precisely not a ‘species-being,’ but a being that, in a very specific sense, transcends the limits of its own given species. This different understanding of the genus-character (...) of the human being opens up a new perspective on the naturalism of the early Marx. He is not informed by a problematic speciesist and essentialist naturalism, as is often assumed, but by a different form of naturalism which I propose to call ‘dialectical naturalism.’ The chapter starts (I) by developing Hegel’s account of genus which provides us with a useful background for (II) understanding Marx’s original notion of a genus-being and its practical, social, developmental character. In the last section, I show that (III) the actualization of our genus-being thus depends on the production of a specific type of ‘second nature’ that is at the heart of Marx’s dialectical naturalism. (shrink)

In his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx famously claims that the human being is or has a ‘Gattungswesen.’ This is often understood to mean that the human being is a ‘species-being’ and is determined by a given ‘species-essence.’ In this chapter, I argue that this reading is mistaken. What Marx calls Gattungswesen is precisely not a ‘species-being,’ but a being that, in a very specific sense, transcends the limits of its own given species. This different understanding of the genus-character (...) of the human being opens up a new perspective on the naturalism of the early Marx. He is not informed by a problematic speciesist and essentialist naturalism, as is often assumed, but by a different form of naturalism which I propose to call ‘dialectical naturalism.’ The chapter starts (I) by developing Hegel’s account of genus which provides us with a useful background for (II) understanding Marx’s original notion of a genus-being and its practical, social, developmental character. In the last section, I show that (III) the actualization of our genus-being thus depends on the production of a specific type of ‘second nature’ that is at the heart of Marx’s dialectical naturalism. (shrink)

Many philosophers have refused to recognize Chinese traditions as genuinely philosophical. The conceptual foundations of these exclusionary efforts appear in Aristotle’s dividing philosophy from rhetoric, then associating philosophy with truth, and rhetoric with metaphor. The Chinese have frequently been defined as metaphorical thinkers, in contrast with the logical, scientific, or literal pursuits of Occidental traditions. Because metaphor is classed with rhetoric, and Chinese was associated with metaphor, critics had a way to say that the Chinese weren’t participating in philia-sophia as (...) rational inquiry into truth. I draw on two strands of 20th century philosophy to move us beyond this exclusionary framing: conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and Gadamerian hermeneutics. Together these point to a conception of truth that welcomes Chinese traditions and suggests a fusion of horizons that introduces new metaphors for thinking about the role of philosophy. We can see philosophy as a subdiscipline of the more capacious and equally honorable discipline of hao-xue (好學), love of learning. This points us towards a new way forward for global philosophy—away from the thorny issues of access to sophia and towards a conception of hao-xue as the highest of human aims. We can shift the burden of membership qualifications and ask, does the west have hao-xue? As we’ll see, the west, particularly through the influence of Socrates, does have hao-xue, and we can rejoice that philosophy is welcomed into the big tent and can find its rightful place as a subdiscipline of the hallowed human endeavor to love learning. (shrink)

Different species of realism have been proposed in the scientific and philosophical literature. Two of these species are direct realism and causal pattern realism. Direct realism is a form of perceptual realism proposed by ecological psychologists within cognitive science. Causal pattern realism has been proposed within the philosophy of model-based science. Both species are able to accommodate some of the main tenets and motivations of instrumentalism. The main aim of this paper is to explore the conceptual moves that make both (...) direct realism and causal pattern realism tenable realist positions able to accommodate an instrumentalist stance. Such conceptual moves are (i) the rejection of veritism and (ii) the re-structuring of the phenomena of interest. We will then show that these conceptual moves are instances of the ones of a common realist genus we name pragmatist realism. (shrink)

There seems to be an inconsistency at the heart of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: a differentia is said both to presuppose its genus (in vii 12) and to be logically independent from it (in x 7). I argue that the relation of analogy resolves this inconsistency, restores the coherence of the concepts of differentia and species, and gives x 7 its rightful place in the development of the Metaphysics.

Mr. Slattery’s article of a year ago presents an opportunity for the following: some remarks ordered to clarifying the distinction between the expression and the signification of a genus; some remarks on what it means to say that the differences of a genus lie outside that genus, and that the differences of a genus are appropriate to, or belong per se to, the genus; and a remark to show that the species and the difference are not the same.

WE wish to call into question the basic objection to the generic status of being: and here we mean by ‘being’, not the act of existence, but essence. It is objected that whereas being contains all its differences, the genus does not do so. This objection is unsupported by the evidence and therefore fails. A concomitant objection that being is analogical and that the genus is univocal also fails, since the genus is itself analogical. The strange thing is that St. (...) Thomas agrees that the genus contains its differences and that it is analogical; yet Thomists deny that being is a genus. St. Thomas compares the relation of being to the categories with that of the genus to the species. He says that the difference is not outside the genus, but is rather a determination of it. He says that the genus is equivocal, not purely so but as being analogical. It is evident, therefore, from what he says, that being as meaning essence, is the supreme genus. (shrink)

Arguments against essentialism in biology rely strongly on a claim that modern biology abandoned Aristotle's notion of a species as a class of necessary and sufficient properties. However, neither his theory of essentialism, nor his logical definition of species and genus (eidos and genos) play much of a role in biological research and taxonomy, including his own. The objections to natural kinds thinking by early twentieth century biologists wrestling with the new genetics overlooked the fact that species have typical developmental (...) cycles and most have a large shared genetic component. These are the "what-it-is-to-be" members of that species. An intrinsic biological essentialism does not commit us to Aristotelian notions, nor even modern notions, of essence. There is a long-standing definition of "species" and its precursor notions that goes back to the Greeks, and which Darwin and pretty well all biologists since him share, that I call the Generative Conception of Species. It relies on there being a shared generative power that makes progeny resemble parents. The "what-it-is-to-be" a member of that species is that developmental type, mistakes in development notwithstanding. Moreover, such "essences" have always been understood to include deviations from the type. Finally, I shall examine some implications of the collapse of the narrative about essences in biology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 143-150 [Access article in PDF] Species Nova [To See Anew]Art as Ecology David Haley Looking Back From space, looking back at earth, we may see three key issues: the accelerating increase of the human species, the accelerating decrease of other species, and the accelerating effects of climate change. We might ask, how are we to cope with these changes creatively?That our societies tend (...) to value economics over ecology, and monoculture and agro-industry over diversity and permaculture, is certainly worthy of ethical attention. Here I want to invoke a call for integrating art as a necessary contribution to ecological intervention. I consider how artists may engage uncertainty, and how art may be used to develop new ways of seeing and "drawing." This is art for evolutionary survival, not commodification. Art that practices care, shared responsibility, and diversity in the pursuit of eco-centric cultures. Although this paper mainly references visual art forms, this should not be taken to exclude others. Here I am primarily concerned with identifying some of the possible forms of ecological or eco-art. This is art practiced by artist and inventors in the manner of the archetype of Daedalus and worthy of the name implied by the root of the word art. Rt, an ancient term from the Rg Vedas, refers to the virtuous, continuing creation of the cosmos. [End Page 143] Seeing is Believing/ Uncertainty in View The suffix species nova is ascribed by scientists to a new bacterium species, prior to the confirmation of its existence in the appropriate academic journals. The word species means "to look" and "a class of things, living organisms capable of exchanging genes, classified as a taxonomic rank below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial." It also refers to "the visible form of each of the elements of consecrated bread and wine in the Eucharist." Nova refers to the mistaken sighting of a new star, a flash of brightness that quickly dims. Something novel is a new kind of nature, something strange or previously unknown, and novelty refers to invention. Species nova: two words that evoke ideas about innovations of visual experience and belief.I use the phrase to denote the potential for understanding a new order and evolutionary change—"to see anew." I am also aware that species nova could mean a mistaken religious experience, or a class of living things that flashes brightly and quickly dims. Uncertainty is embedded in the richness of meanings.It is ten years since the Earth Summit in Rio popularized the notion of sustainable development and introduced Agenda 21 as a strategy to achieve it. Sadly, culture and art, two of the systems that define humanity, were not mentioned among the necessary tools for building a better future.But what is sustainable development? Is it about conservation, restoration, or regeneration? Will it stop global warming and feed the poor, or is it like candyfloss—a confection of transient comfort, with no real meaning? Has it become a corrupt cultural construct, an anthropocentric myth in the vain pursuit of hope?Recently the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed that "most of the warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities." However, the projections and models that have been developed for policy makers to envisage climate change scenarios demonstrate the limits of our ability to understand the situation, let alone adapt to it. A recent review in Nature, comparing two twenty-year forecasts ironically concluded: Uncertainties therefore remain that are beyond the statistical uncertainties described in the two papers. But both sets of authors point out that the upper bound on the potential warming for 2100 may well be [End Page 144] above the IPCC figure of 5.8K under 'heavy emissions' scenarios. So policy-makers should not discount the possibility of a very warm climate considering long-range policy options. (Funnel 2001, 5) A subsequent article in Nature's Climate Change Review reveals even more concern about communicating scientific uncertainty, because models that simulate long-term climate changes cannot be tested using real... (shrink)

The longstanding species problem in biology has a history that suggests a solution, and that history is not the received history found in many texts written by biologists or philosophers. The notion of species as the division into subordinate groups of any generic predicate was the staple of logic from Aristotle through the middle ages until quite recently. However, the biological species concept during the same period was at first subtly and then overtly different. Unlike the logic sense, which relied (...) on definitions of the essence of both genus and species, biological species from the time of Epicurus were consistently considered to involve a reproductive element: in short, living species relied not on essential definitions, but on the generative cause, which might not be definable. I term this the generative conception of species: species were the generation by reproduction of form. This undercuts the claim that species before Darwin were essentialist, and divorces the notion of a type from that of essence. In fact, as late as the end of the nineteenth century, logicians explicitly treated biological “species” as a homonym only of logical essentialist species, and permitted considerable deviation from the type or form. At every point, species in logic were thought to be a subset, in effect, of some more general notion. I sketch a history of both philosophical and biological traditions of the species concept, before turning to the current conceptions. These are reconsidered in the light of this history, and in particular Mayr’s changing views are shown to be somewhat Whiggish, historiographically. Of the many touted biological species concepts, only one of which (Mayr’s) is called _the_ Biological Species Concept, none appears to capture all the relevant facts, intuitions, and operational requirements of biology. Cladistic conceptions, however, have much in common with the older philosophical literature, in that the natural group of cladism is the clade, or monophyletic group. After considering the Individuality Thesis, and the metaphysics of species, we see that species are the most particular terminal taxa in a clade, and that they are “defined” in terms of the particular synapomorphies, or evolved characters, that are causally responsible for keeping the lineages that organisms form distinct from one another. In this way, we can remain within the generative conception of species that has been in play for over two millennia, and yet avoid the pitfalls of prior attempts to find a universal conception of species. (shrink)

This paper isolates a hard, long-standing species problem: developing a comprehensive and exacting theory about the constitutive conditions of the species category, one that is accurate for most of the living world, and which vindicates the widespread view that the species category is of more theoretical import than categories such as genus, sub-species, paradivision, and stirp. The paper then uncovers flaws in several views that imply we have either already solved that hard species problem or dissolved it altogether – so-called (...) We Are Done views. In doing so the paper offers new criticisms of the general lineage species concept (GLSC), evolutionary species concept (EvSC), biological species concept (BSC), other similar concepts, Ereshefsky’s eliminative pluralism about the species category, and both Mishler’s pessimism and Wilkins’ phenomenalism about that category. Opposed to We Are Done views, the paper argues for a Revving Up view, on which we are nearly ready to begin the hard species problem in earnest. To help work towards these conclusions, the paper begins with an outline of a new kind of view of species (Barker 2019a), which proposes they are feedback systems of a mathematically specifiable and empirically testable sort. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a complete Natural Kind Semantics for an Essentialist Theory of Kinds. The theory is formulated in two-sorted first order monadic modal logic with identity. The natural kind semantics is based on Rudolf Willes Theory of Concept Lattices. The semantics is then used to explain several consequences of the theory, including results about the specificity (species–genus) relations between kinds, the definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences and the existence (...) of negative kinds. First, I show under which conditions the Hierarchy principle, which has been subjected to counterexamples in the literature, holds. I also show that a different principle about the species–genus relations between kinds, namely Kant’s Law, follows from the essentialist theory. Second, I introduce two new operations for kinds and show that they can be used to provide traditional definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences. Finally, I show that these operations of specific difference induce, for each kind, a uniquely specified contrary kind and a uniquely specified subcontrary kind, which can be used as semantic values for non-classical predicate negations of kind terms. (shrink)

We present the first comprehensive taxonomic revision and review the biology of the olingos, the endemic Neotropical procyonid genus Bassaricyon, based on most specimens available in museums, and with data derived from anatomy, morphometrics, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, field observations, and geographic range modeling. Species of Bassaricyon are primarily forest-living, arboreal, nocturnal, frugivorous, and solitary, and have one young at a time. We demonstrate that four olingo species can be recognized, including a Central American species (Bassaricyon gabbii), lowland species with (...) eastern, cis-Andean (Bassaricyon alleni) and western, trans-Andean (Bassaricyon medius) distributions, and a species endemic to cloud forests in the Andes. The oldest evolutionary divergence in the genus is between this last species, endemic to the Andes of Colombia and Ecuador, and all other species, which occur in lower elevation habitats. Surprisingly, this Andean endemic species, which we call the Olinguito, has never been previously described; it represents a new species in the order Carnivora and is the smallest living member of the family Procyonidae. We report on the biology of this new species based on information from museum specimens, niche modeling, and fieldwork in western Ecuador, and describe four Olinguito subspecies based on morphological distinctions across different regions of the Northern Andes. (shrink)

Speciation is an aspect of evolutionary biology that has received little philosophical attention apart from articles mainly by biologists such as Mayr (1988). The role of speciation as a terminus a quo for the individuality of species or in the context of punctuated equilibrium theory has been discussed, but not the nature of speciation events themselves. It is the task of this paper to attempt to bring speciation events into some kind of general scheme, based primarily upon the work of (...) Sergey Gavrilets on adaptive landscapes, using migration rate, or gene flow, as the primary scale, and concluding that adaptive and drift explanations are complementary rather than competing. I propose a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic selection, and the notion of reproductive reach and argue that speciation modes should be discriminated in terms of gene flow, the nature of selection maintaining reproductive reach, and whether the predominant cause is selective or stochastic. I also suggest that the notion of an adaptive “quasispecies” for asexual species is the primitive notion of species, and that members of reproductively coherent sexual species are additionally coadapted to their mating partners. (shrink)

Tanabe Hajime, another pole of the so-called Kyoto-School of Philosophy of modern Japan, attempts to construct a dialectical, triadic logic of genus, species and individual as a creative synthesis between Eastern and Western philosophy. Although the formal pattern of his method is influenced by the Hegelian dialectic, the way of his thinking is rather prevailed by Kantian dualism. This makes a sharp contrast to his mentor Nishida Kitaro, whose logic of Topos or Place qua Absolute Nothingness is criticized as all-embracing (...) and static in character by him. The difference between them might be parallel to that of Greek and Latin theology concerning the Trinity. Tanabe never presupposes any preexistent entity as the primordial One in the eternal dimension, but rather maintains the individuality as the free subjective agent in the field of history. The dichotomy between the universal and the individual is overcome in and through the mediation of the third term— the species — as the negatively self-realized, specific form of the genus. The species, however, turns out to be the self-estrangement, when it loses the perpetually negative mediation of the free subjective activity of the individual. (shrink)

This book uncovers a logical structure that is common to many, if not all, of the kinds posited by scientific taxonomies. Specification relations, such as those holding between determinates and determinables (determination), are central to this logical investigation of kinds. The species–genus relation is a familiar specification relation for substantival kinds, but this book focuses on adjectival kinds—whose instances are properties—instead. Determination relations are then used to structure kinds at the same level of abstraction into property spaces, which in (...) turn leads to a theory for individuating properties (tropes). These determination relations are contrasted with realization relations, the latter being the favored way of understanding the connection between the mental and the physical. Particular attention is given to the distinction between multiple realizability and multiple determination, and it is argued that determination and realization are mutually exclusive. The claim that multiple realizability entails various senses of autonomy is defended from various reductionist challenges. These theories of determination and realization then provide general standards for establishing the autonomy of the special sciences or, conversely, their reduction. (shrink)

According to the achievement account of the value of knowledge, knowledge is finally valuable because it is a species of a finally valuable genus, achievement. The achievement account is said to solve Pritchard's tertiary value problem, the problem of showing that knowledge enjoys a different kind of value than mere true belief. This paper argues, first, that AA fails to solve TVP, and, second, that Pritchard's motivations for TVP are inadequate. They do, however, motivate a weaker value problem, one that (...) can be solved by showing that knowledge is weakly superior to mere true belief. Finally, third, we argue that knowledge does enjoy this form of weak superiority. Since this argument rests on AA's key species-genus claim, AA can retain the upper hand in the debate. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphor theory is among the challenging theories that the cognitive linguistics has presented to the field of metaphor in recent years. By leaving aside the relationship of species-genus, transmission and similarity, a new metaphor mechanism is introduced by this theory. Moreover, this theory reveals that metaphors belong to concepts based on experience, not to words. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which made a remarkable contribution to metaphor studies, has also attracted the attention of those who are interested in the Qur'an (...) studies. As a result, literature dealing with the metaphors in the Qur'an through the lens of this theory has emerged. This theory is implemented to analyse metaphors existing in everyday language and does not aim to offer an approach to the analysis of metaphors in sacred texts. Despite this, the number of studies examining the Qur'an through the lens of theory is increasing day by day. By focusing on this paticular literature, this study discusses the method followed by researchers, how they apply the theory, its contribution to the Qur'anic studies, and the existing deficiencies in the literature. This study questions the extent to which the theory contributes to the field of Qur’anic studies, the problems it has created in the field and whether it could be resolved. (shrink)

Chapter 20 of Plotinus’ treatise VI, 2 [43] has received particular attention because it seems to deal with the Intellect. However, the connection of this chapter with chapter 19 is problematic insofar as the latter deals with the ways in which species are generated by the first genera. Our aim will be to show that chapter 20 can only be understood in the light of the notion of genus. More precisely, Plotinus’ aim in this chapter is to demonstrate the priority (...) of the genus over its species by means of the theory of double activity. In order to demonstrate this point, the notion of Intellect is introduced by Plotinus as a model (παράδειγμα) to conceive this priority. We will study successively these two chapters to justify this point, insisting on the link between them as well as on the reinterpretation of some key Aristotelian concepts. This study also shows that the use of the comparison with science allows Plotinus to justify the primacy of the intelligible totalities that are the Soul and the Intellect as well as the generation of their respective parts, the particular souls and the particular intellects. (shrink)

The per se beings are those signified by the ultimate predicates in species–genus hierarchies: what a thing is, quality, quantity, relation, and so forth. Understanding change requires the investigation of the potential versus actual existence of any such per se being. Yu argues that Aristotle’s references in his central text on the focal structure of being to process, generation, and destruction imply that substance is the focus not only of the other per se beings but also of potential versus (...) actual being. But, he holds, for different reasons, that the other per se beings depend on substance, whereas change in the category of substance raises the greatest difficulties for Parmenides’s argument against generation. (shrink)

The species comprising the fungal endophyte genus “Epichloë ”are symbionts of cool season grasses. About half the species in this genus are strictly vertically transmitted, and evolutionary theory suggests that these species must be mutualists. Nevertheless, Faeth and Sullivan (e.g., 2003) have argued that such vertically transmitted endophytes are ’usually parasitic,’ and Müller and Krauss (2005) have argued that such vertically transmitted endophytes fall along a mutualism-parasitism continuum. These papers (and others) have caused confusion in the field. We used a (...) systematic review to show that close to half of the published papers in this field incorrectly categorize the interaction. Here, we develop the argument that advantages and disadvantages are not the same things as mutualism and parasitism and that experimental evidence must be interpreted in the context of theory. We argue that, “contra ”Faeth and Sullivan, it is highly unlikely that such strictly vertically transmitted endophytes can be parasites, and that, “contra ”Müller and Krauss, it is inappropriate to apply the continuum concept to strictly vertically transmitted endophytes. We develop a mathematical model to support and illustrate our arguments. We use the model to clarify that parasitism “requires ”some degree of horizontal transmission, and that while it is appropriate to use the continuum concept when referring to the genus as a whole, or to species that possess horizontal transmission, we argue that it is inappropriate to use the concept when referring to species that are strictly vertically transmitted. (shrink)

Species that died without leaving descendants Darwin called ‘utterly extinct’. They far outnumber the ancestors of all living things, so they resemble the dark matter of modern cosmology, which far outweighs visible matter. He realized in 1837 that their absence is what creates the groups in a natural classification. In his Notebook B he combined the idea that species multiply with the idea that ancestors' relatives must mostly be extinct. The fossil Megatherium was utterly extinct. The iconic branching ‘I think’ (...) diagram shows extinction causing the origin of genera by eliminating intermediate species. Darwin’s concept of taxonomic ranks, starting with the genus, was informed by his interaction with taxonomists. Based on his familiarity with demography, Darwin reasoned that the survival of transitional forms was unlikely, which helped him decide to focus at the species level. When drafting his theory in the 1840s, he left out these speculative ideas, but they emerged again in the 1850s when he realized his theory needed a cause for branches to diverge. His ecological answer worked at the species level, but his Principle of Divergence was unconvincing at higher taxonomic levels. In the Origin, Darwin repeatedly insisted on the importance of utter extinction. (shrink)

Interest in philosophical anthropology in the early twelfth century was limited to the logical question of how to think and speak about dead humans. This question was prompted by the logic of living and dead humans based on the doctrine of substance found in Aristotle’s Categories and in the division of substance, as outlined by Porphyry to exemplify the logic of genus and species relations in the Isagoge. Abelard held the view that there is no such thing as a dead (...) human, and this provoked an intense response from his contemporaries. Abelard’s contemporaries, including Alberic of Paris and other anonymous authors, mounted a number of arguments against Abelard’s views. The stakes were high for them: as realists about species and genera, Abelard’s denial that there are dead humans threatened their entire interpretation of the structure of species and genera, and thereby their theory of universals. (shrink)

Female crested gibbons (genus Nomascus) perform conspicuous sequences of twitching movements involving the rump and extremities. However, these dances have attracted little scientific attention and their structure and meaning remain largely obscure. Here we analyse close-range video recordings of captive crested gibbons, extracting descriptions of dance in four species (N. annamensis, N. gabriellae, N. leucogenys and N. siki). In addition, we report results from a survey amongst relevant professionals clarifying behavioural contexts of dance in captive and wild crested gibbons. Our (...) results demonstrate that dances in Nomascus represent a common and intentional form of visual communication restricted to sexually mature females. Whilst primarily used as a proceptive signal to solicit copulation, dances occur in a wide range of contexts related to arousal and/or frustration in captivity. A linguistically informed view of this sequential behaviour demonstrates that movement within dances is organized in groups and follows an isochronous rhythm — patterns not described for visual displays in other non-human primates. We argue that applying the concept of dance to gibbons allows us to expand our understanding of communication in non-human primates and to develop hypotheses on the rules and regularities characterising it. We propose that crested gibbon dances likely evolved from less elaborate rhythmic proceptive signals, similar to those found in siamangs. Although dance displays in humans and crested gibbons share a number of key characteristics, they cannot be assumed to be homologous. Nevertheless, gibbon dances represent a striking model behaviour to investigate the use of complex gestural signals in hominoid primates. (shrink)

In the heterothallic species Neurospora crassa, strains of opposite mating type, A and a, must interact to give the series of events resulting in fruiting body formation, meiosis, and the generation of dormant ascospores. The mating type of a strain is specified by the DNA sequence it carries in the mating type region; strains that are otherwise isogenic can mate and produce ascospores. The DNA of the A and a regions have completely dissimilar sequences. Probing DNA from strains of each (...) mating type with labelled sequences from the A and the a regions has shown that, unlike in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, only a single copy of a mating type sequence is present in a haploid genome. The failure to switch is explainable by the physical absence of DNA sequences characteristic of the opposite mating type. While the mating type sequences must be of the opposite kind for mating to occur in the sexual cycle, two strains of opposite mating type cannot form a stable heterokaryon during vegetative growth; instead, they fuse abortively to give a heterokaryon incompatibility reaction, which results in death of the cells along the fusion line. The DNA sequences responsible for this reaction are coextensive with those sequences in the A and a regions which are necessary to initiate fruiting body formation. The genus Neurospora also includes homothallic species – ones in which a single haploid nucleus carries all the information necessary to form fruiting bodies, undergo meiosis, and produce new haploid spores. One such species, N. terricola, contains one copy each of the A and the a sequences within each haploid genome. Another homothallic species, N. africana, contains a single copy of the A sequence in the haploid genome, but does not contain any sequences corresponding to the a sequence. We present a model for the role of the mating type‐specific sequences in heterothallic and homothallic species of Neurospora and we speculate on the origin of the different modes of reproduction in the genus Neurospora. (shrink)

Kripke argued that there might not have been unicorns: since unicorns are fictional species, they are necessarily fictional. There are three arguments aimed at showing the fictionality of unicorns, but all of them fail. There would be unicorns if there were a single species or genus of animals resembling the unicorns of pictures. This also serves as an instructive example of the failure of the accessibility relation between possible worlds to be both transitive and symmetrical.

Part of rethinking philosophy today, the author believes, is to rethink our logical concepts. The author questions the ontological existence of the proposition as the content of sentential utterances—written or spoken—as it was originally proposed by John Searle. While a performative is an utterance where the speaker not only utters a sentential or illocutionary content such as a statement, but also performs the illocutionary force such as the act of stating, the author reasserts John Austin’s constative as the general label (...) (genus) of specific utterances (species) that can be rendered true or false such as a statement, assertion, description, and prediction. In the remainder of the paper, the author tries to show that it is a category mistake for someone to assert a statement or to state an assertion. (shrink)

Plants belonging to the genus Salsola (Family: Chenopodiaceae) are common in the arid and semiarid regions of our planet with no less than 69 different Salsola species found in Namibia and the Republic of South Africa. This genus is used as a traditional medicine and aqueous extracts of Salsola have been used by Bushmen women as an oral contraceptive. Ingestion of the Namibian shrub Salsola tuberculatiformis Botsch. by pregnant Karakul sheep leads to prolonged gestation and fetal post‐maturity and, as a (...) result, the pelts of the new‐born karakul lambs are worthless. This initiated an investigation into the active agents in the plant, using the terminal enzyme in adrenal corticosteroidogenesis, cytochrome P450‐dependent 11β‐hydroxylase (P450c11), as a bioassay. Although the active fraction, S2, was extremely labile, partial structure determination suggested the presence of synephrine and a highly reactive aziridine. Therefore a more stable analogue, 2‐(4‐acetoxyphenyl)2‐chloro‐N‐methylethylammonium‐chloride (compound A), was synthesised, which, like the active plant extracts, inhibited adrenal steroidogenesis and acted as a contraceptive. In addition, compound A was stabilised by interaction with steroid‐binding globulins in plasma thus enhancing biological activity in vivo. These findings provided explanations for the complex biological effects of the shrub as well as a new insight into the mode of action of chemically labile plant products in vivo. BioEssays 25:612–619, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Since Darwin, a genetic continuity of morphological and behavioral traits between all living beings has been taken for granted. This paper describes eight irreducible classes of descriptive traits on the basis of the presence or absence of (a) repetitivity, (b) correlation with natural environment properties and (c) inner integration. It is argued that some of these classes should neither be used in taxonomy nor in phylogenetic reconstructions. The remaining classes imply an inner dynamic indivisibility on the one hand, and an (...) evident relation to the concept of the reaction norm on the other. These implications, in turn, may lead to the recognition of much broader „natural species” units which embrace forms usually grouped within a genus or family. Morphological and behavioral gaps between such „natural species” have to be considered in relation to the rather mysterious developmental, integrative and adaptive potential of a particular natural species. Paleontological data seem to confirm the existence of such gaps. This introduces a serious objection to the theory of common descent and to the cognitive utility of the macro- and megaevolutionary „phylogenetic trees.”. (shrink)

Knowledge‐fallibilism is a species of a genus that I call knowledge‐failabilism. Each is a theory of knowledge's nature. One apparent challenge to knowledge‐failabilism's truth is theprima facieabsurdity of Moorean assertions like ‘It's raining but I do not believe that it is.’ Does each such assertion convey an implicit and unfortunate contrast, even a contradiction? I argue that thisUntenable Contrast analysisfails: no such contrast is present within the speaker's perspective at the pertinent time.

Rudolph Agricola’s De inventione dialectica has rightly been regarded as the most original and influential textbook on argumentation, reading, writing, and communication in the Renaissance. At the heart of his treatment are the topics ( loci ), such as definition, genus, species, place, whole, parts, similars, and so on. While their function in Agricola’s system is argumentative and rhetorical, the roots of the topics are metaphysical, as Agricola himself explicitly acknowledges. It has led scholars to characterize Agricola as a realist (...) or even an extreme realist. This article studies two little treatises on universals by Agricola that throw further light on his realism. It is suggested that they could be viewed as an early step in his long-term project of revising and re-organizing the systems of topics as he encountered them in Aristotle, Cicero, and Boethius. The article offers a close analysis of the treatises, suggesting that Agricola’s realism owes a (general) debt to the school of the Scotists. In both earlier and later work Agricola emphasizes the common aspects of things that enable us to categorize and talk about things without denying their fundamental unicity and individuality. An edition of Agricola’s second treatise on universals—a reply to a critic—is added. (shrink)

Aristotle’s categorical syllogistic is the first formal deductive system in the history of formal sciences. Most parts or elements of the system are validated by modern (first-order) mathematical logic, but the system is quite limited in scope, as it is incapable of analyzing inferences other than the ‘figure syllogisms’ consisting of a couple of_ a-e-i-o_ premises and an _a-e-i-o_ conclusion, containing three ‘moderately’ universal terms – terms that express neither a highest genus nor a lowest species – each of which (...) is common to a different couple of propositions out of the three. Logicians in the following ages dealt with various questions concerning the addition of various (novel) logical forms into this limited system, among which are singular predications, i.e. categorical propositions with a singular term as subject, and the most common choice has been interpreting singular predications as _universal _predications. This paper tries to take a strictly formal perspective on the system of categorical syllogisms, and argues in detail for a much simpler and fairly effective assimilation or translation scheme for singular predications. The key to the proposed scheme is the preservation of the supposed inferential relation between opposite singular predications, namely _contradiction_. It is argued that the resulting _singularized _syllogistic moods, which are also validated by first-order logic (under its standard renderings of _a-e-i-o_ and singular predications), promote in turn the mentioned type of treatment, since they call for the employment of two of the four subaltern moods of the system, disregarded by Aristotle, which are _formally _there. (shrink)

The paper offers an account of luck, fate, and fortune. It begins by showing that extant accounts of luck are deficient because they do not identify the genus of which luck is a species. That genus of properties, the tychic, alert an agent to occasions on which the external world cooperates with or frustrates their goal-achievement. An agent’s sphere of competence is the set of goals that it is possible for them to reliably achieve. Luck concerns occasions on which there (...) is a mismatch between attempt and result; in bad luck the external world thwarts goal-achievement within the agent’s sphere of competence, in good luck the external world assists goal-achievement beyond the agent’s sphere of competence. Fateful events are those where, more passively, the agent finds the external world achieving or frustrating their goals. Fortune concerns the contraction and expansion of the agent’s sphere of competence. Eight reasons are given for accepting the account; its theoretical virtues and various things it explains. Lastly, three objections are answered; that the tychic properties relate to well-being rather than agency, that there are alternative theories of fortune available in the contemporary literature, that the account draws arbitrary distinctions between synonyms. (shrink)

For many centuries, heroic virtue has been for the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints the golden rule to assess sanctity. It was Prospero Lambertini who developed the criteria, setting an extremely high standard that at the same time fitted the various types and stages of human life. With the shift from admiration to imitation of the saints, new methods of studying their life became necessary. From the 20th century onwards, heroicity of virtue was defined by the Congregation in (...) terms not of unusual and extraordinary actions, but the constant and exact fulfilment of the duties of one’s state of life. Sanctity in the canonical sense, according to the Second Vatican Council, differs in degree and does not constitute a different species in the genus “good Catholic”. The new laws for beatification employ no longer the courtroom model, investigating separate virtues, but the academic model of researching and writing a doctoral dissertation, with the accent on a person’s spiritual growth. What makes the saints different from other Christians is their particularly focused passion; the real significance of their life, however, only becomes clear when it is over. It is then, too, that we can understand their specific mission and their meaning for the life of the Church, as tradition at its most living and models of holiness for their particular age. The study of the live of the saints , necessary to assess sanctity, needs its own method. Belonging as they do to a tradition that is essentially religious, the true image of the saints is best perceived by the light of faith. Hagiology cannot, however, ignore modern science. Not only does it depend on the material gathered by historians, it also needs history and psychology for its interpretation. The final judgment pertains to the Pope, or to be more precise, to the Spirit. (shrink)

In Ennead III.7.11--13, Plotinus describes the genesis of time, and time's nature as the life of soul, and the moving image of eternity. In this dissertation, Ennead III.7.11--13 was read, using an exegetical method, which comprised, raising questions, and answering them, in strictly Plotinian terms, by contemplating the pieces that best fit into these puzzles. Some answers discovered were as follows. ;Before its appearance, time exists as the seed of time in Intellect. This is a state of rest because of (...) its relative unity, its participation in the genus rest, and its absence of tolma. Time's genesis comprises an eternal manifestation of a change of identity from seed to actualization. Time is generated in four logical steps. Soul becomes diluted upon its generative acts, mainly because of tolma. Soul has a far richer contemplation of Intellect underlying its genesis of the sensibles, than that underlying its genesis of time. ;Soul undergoes ontological loss in its generation of time and the sensible universe. Beginning with tolma, and the desires for autonomy unleashed by tolma, soul's multiplicity is enhanced. Yet this multiplicity is also tempered by soul's unquiet power's glance of aspiration towards Intellect. This glance is the contemplation, which fecundates soul's generation of time. Soul's power is its strength, but the unquietness of this power can indicate ontological loss. Tolma in soul incurs evil, because tolma thwarts soul from contemplating Intellect. ;The genus-species structure of soul is involved in the generation and omnipresence of time, through the actualization of the genus in its species. Time is ideally omnipresent when time is kairos. Soul is immortal and impassible, and it is only soul's activity and progeny, which are temporal. Time is the life of soul, insofar as movement is predicated of this life at three levels: the logical, the perceptible, and the spatial. Time itself is a poorer life than eternity, time itself is not alive, and yet, time is not unreal. Time is a moving image of eternity through the common predicates applied to both, which are their shared characteristics, defining the essence of the image that time constitutes. (shrink)