Online privacy policies or terms and conditions ideally provide users with information about how their personal data are being used. The reality is that very few users read them: they are long, often hard to understand, and ubiquitous. The average internet user cannot realistically read and understand all aspects that apply to them and thus give informed consent to the companies who use their personal data. In this article, we provide a basic overview of a solution to the problem. We (...) suggest that software could allow users to delegate the consent process and consent could thus be automated. The article investigates the practical feasibility of this idea. After suggesting that it is feasible, we develop some normative issues that we believe should be addressed before automated consent is implemented. (shrink)

"In The Ethics of Migration: An Introduction Adam Hosein systematically and comprehensively examines the ethical issues surrounding the concept of immigration. The book addresses important questions such as: - Can states claim a right to control their borders and if so to what extent? - Is detention ever a justifiable means of border enforcement? - Which criteria may states use to determine who should be admitted into their territory and how do these criteria interact with existing hierarchies of race (...) and gender? - Who should be considered a refugee? - Which rights are migrants who are present in a territory entitled to? - Is there an acceptable way to design a temporary worker program? - When, if ever, are amnesties for unauthorized migrants appropriate? Featuring case studies throughout, this textbook provides a philosophical introduction to an incredibly topical issue studied by students within the fields of political philosophy, applied ethics, global studies, politics, law, sociology and public policy"--. (shrink)

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

A hypothesis on the evolutionary origin of the genetic pathway of sex determination in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is presented here. It is suggested that the pathway arose in steps, driven by frequency‐dependent selection for the minority sex at each step, and involving the sequential acquisition of dominant negative, neomorphic genetic switches, each one reversing the action of the previous one. A central implication is that the genetic pathway evolved in reverse order from the final step in the hierarchy up (...) to the first. The possible applicability of the model to the other well‐characterized sex determination pathway, that of Drosophila melanogaster, and to sex determination in mammals, is discussed, along with some potential implications for pathway evolution in general. Finally, the specific molecular and population genetic questions that the model raises are described and some tests are proposed. (shrink)

The vitality of Platonism.--The divine origin of the soul.--The doctrine of the logos in Heraclitus.--The Hymn of Cleanthes.--Ancient Greek views of suffering and evil.--The moral and intellectual value of classical education.

In the paper, classical assumptions of the problem of change are presented and analyzed. The author considers following assumptions which make theses about: (i) identity and persistence through time; (ii) a conceptual change; (iii) intrinsic properties; and (iv) the Leibniz's Law. In the light of the analyses, it is shown that the problem of change does not have substantial nature and therefore cannot be treated as legitimization of the theories of persistence. Finally, the author acknowledges a relationship between the rethought (...) matter of change and the theories of persistence. (shrink)

The most apparent obstacles to a just, enlightened and peaceful social world are also, according to Kant, nature’s way of compelling us to realize those and other morally good ends. Echoing Adam Smith’s idea of the ‘invisible hand’, Kant thinks that selfishness, rivalry, quarrelsomeness, vanity, jealousy and self-conceit, along with the oppressive social inequalities they tend to produce, drive us to perfect our talents, develop culture, approach enlightenment and, through the strife and instability caused by our unsocial sociability, push (...) us towards justice, political equality and the highest good. What are we to make of these arguments, which seem to rely on questionable empirical assumptions, invoke dubious claims about natural teleology and sit uncomfortably with fundamental aspects of Kant’s ethical framework? I suggest that the arguments reveal one of Kant’s deep and important insights about the moral life by partially describing what a good and virtuous person reasonably hopes for. (shrink)

Epistemology and Relativism Epistemology is, roughly, the philosophical theory of knowledge, its nature and scope. What is the status of epistemological claims? Relativists regard the status of epistemological claims as, in some way, relative— that is to say, that the truths which epistemological claims aspire to are … Continue reading Epistemology and Relativism →.

The phenomenon of ‘canalization’ ‐ the genetic capacity to buffer developmental pathways against mutational or environmental perturbations ‐ was first characterized in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Despite enormous subsequent progress in understanding the nature of the genetic material and the molecular basis of gene expression, there have been few attempts to interpret the classical work on canalization in molecular genetic terms. Some recent findings, however, bear on one form of canalization, ‘genetic canalization’, the stabilization of development against mutational (...) effects. These data indicate that co‐expressed paralogous genes can function as mutual ‘back‐up’ elements in developmental processes. Paralogues, however, are far from the only basis of canalization: other genetic sources can be readily envisaged and some of these are described here. The evolutionary questions about genetic canalization and the mechanistic questions about developmental instability that still need to be addressed are also briefly discussed. (shrink)

This book presents the first collection of essays on the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru in a Western language. Ueda, the last living member of the Kyoto school, has fostered the East-West dialogue in all his works and has helped to open up the Western image of philosophy by engaging the Zen tradition. The book reflects this particular trait of Ueda’s philosophy, but it also covers all thematic fields of his writings. Contributions from both young and established scholars and experts from (...) Japan, Europe and the U.S. make this a unique introduction to and reception of Ueda’s philosophy. Readers will discover discussions of mysticism in the East and West, and consideration of modern philosophy topics including self-awareness, nature and poetic language. The book also presents a focussed look at language and nothingness, considering silence and nihilism. Chapters allow the reader to understand the timeliness of a thinking that mediates and transcends the dichotomy of East and West. This volume will appeal not only to scholars of Nishida, Japanese philosophy, mysticism and religious experience in Japan, but also to scholars of Western philosophy, especially those interested in Meister Eckhart, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber. It makes an ideal introduction to Zen philosophy and presents important contributions to scholarship on language and experience. (shrink)

C.H. Waddington is today remembered chiefly as a Drosophila developmental geneticist who developed the concepts of “canalization” and “the epigenetic landscape.” In his lifetime, however, he was widely perceived primarily as a critic of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. His criticisms of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory were focused on what he saw as unrealistic, “atomistic” models of both gene selection and trait evolution. In particular, he felt that the Neo-Darwinians badly neglected the phenomenon of extensive gene interactions and that the “randomness” of mutational (...) effects, posited in the theory, was a false postulate. This last criticism dealt with the phenomenon known today as “developmental constraints.” Although population genetics itself has evolved considerably from its form at mid-20th century, much of Waddington’s critique, it is argued here, retains cogency. Yet, he did not attempt to develop a full-fledged alternative theory himself. Perhaps most surprisingly, in retrospect, is that he did not try to marry his work on gene interactions in development with his evolutionary interests, to create a theory of “genetic networks” and their evolution. Whether evolutionary genetics today will incorporate “network thinking” as a central element or whether there will be a general retreat to the more atomistic approach offered by genomics, remains an open question. (shrink)

Here I reply to criticisms by Jeroen de Ridder and S. Kate Devitt to my "Collective (Telic) Virtue Epistemology".

Politicians invoke grand ideas: social justice, democracy, liberty, equality, community. But what do these ideas really mean? How can politicians across the political spectrum appeal to the same values? This new edition of Adam Swift's highly readable introduction to political philosophy answers these important questions, and includes new material on global justice, feminism, and method in political theory, as well as updated guides to further reading. This lively and accessible book is ideal for students, but it also brings the (...) insights of the world's leading political philosophers to a wide general audience. Using plenty of examples, it equips readers to think for themselves about the ideas that shape political life. Democracy works best when both politicians and voters move beyond rhetoric to think clearly and carefully about the political principles that should govern their society. But clear thinking is difficult in an age when established orthodoxies have fallen by the wayside. Bringing political philosophy out of the ivory tower and within the reach of all, this book provides us with tools to cut through the complexities of modern politics. In so doing, it makes a valuable contribution to the democratic process and this new edition will continue to be essential reading for students of political philosophy and theory. (shrink)

Emotionally arousing events reach awareness more easily and evoke greater visual cortex activation than more mundane events. Recent studies have shown that they are also perceived more vividly and that emotionally enhanced perceptual vividness predicts memory vividness. We propose that affect-biased attention (ABA) – selective attention to emotionally salient events – is an endogenous attentional system tuned by an individual's history of reward and punishment. We present the Biased Attention via Norepinephrine (BANE) model, which unifies genetic, neuromodulatory, neural and behavioural (...) evidence to account for ABA. We review evidence supporting BANE's proposal that a key mechanism of ABA is locus coeruleus–norepinephrine (LC–NE) activity, which interacts with activity in hubs of affective salience networks to modulate visual cortex activation and heighten the subjective vividness of emotionally salient stimuli. We further review literature on biased competition and look at initial evidence for its potential as a neural mechanism behind ABA. We also review evidence supporting the role of the LC–NE system as a driving force of ABA. Finally, we review individual differences in ABA and memory including differences in sensitivity to stimulus category and valence. We focus on differences arising from a variant of the ADRA2b gene, which codes for the alpha2b adrenoreceptor as a way of investigating influences of NE availability on ABA in humans. (shrink)

James Adam was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the (...) Greek text ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought. Volume 1 is devoted to Books 1–5, which discuss justice and the ideal society, while Volume 2 presents Books 6–10, on the place of the philosopher and questions of governance. (shrink)

In the 1950s Peter Strawson analyzed the works of Bertrand Russell regarding fundamental definitions of meaning, sentences and truth value. The debate between them uncovered many issues that Fregean, truth-functional logics have when defining concepts from natural language. To reconcile the Fregean paradigm with the reality of language use, Strawson proposed the concept of presuppositions  necessary preconditions for the truth of other sentences. We believe that his proposition stemmed primarily from the problem caused by the fact that Fregean, truth-functional (...) logics are not sensitive to the contents of sentences and reduce them to their logical values. This is bound to produce a mismatch between the way logic models reasoning and the way language users reason since real-life reasoning is performed on the contents of sentences and not their logical values. Inspired by the ideas of Strawson and Roman Suszko, who initiated the paradigm of non-Fregean logics, we propose a new solution to the debate between Strawson and Russell. In our solution, the content implication connective is used to express content relations between sentences. We move away from truth and falsehood as the sole two semantic correlates of sentences and instead work in a system where the contents of sentences are their semantic correlates. (shrink)

The recognition and reconciliation of ‘opposites’ lies at the heart of our most personal and global problems. These problems are ‘wicked’ in the sense that they are difficult or impossible to solve and arise at the interface of interdependent polarities. By exploring the human tendency to divide the world into two parts, _Wicked Problems & the Reconciliation of Opposites_ argues that our relationship with such pairings and polarities is profoundly important to the way we recognise and resolve wicked problems. Using (...) an original theory of bi-relational development, Adam proposes that our everyday ways of knowing and being can be powerfully located and understood in terms of the creation, emergence, opposition, convergence, collapse and trans-positioning of dyadic constituents. Chapters use this concept to frame key debates in and across domains of knowledge, including education, psychology, law and theology, as well as to offer a new perspective on the most profound problems of the twenty-first century: globalisation, sustainability and secularisation. This book is a comprehensive study of dyadic structrures and relationships and provides a multidisciplinary and original approach to human development. It will be of great interest to students and academics of social psychology, psychosocial development, psychoanalysis and transpersonal psychology, but it is also relevant within the fields of education, human development and theology. (shrink)

Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. Plato: Moral and Political Ideals by Adela Marion Adam, first printed in 1913, deals with the main substance of Plato's philosophy of ethics and politics, set within the context of (...) his intellectual debt to Socrates. (shrink)

Emergent research in metagenomics has unveiled large quantities of previously unknown and unclassified prokaryotic DNA. As these prokaryotes constitute the vast majority of microbial life in environmental samples, some microbiologists and commentators in scientific media have referred to this expansive unknown as ‘biological dark matter’, translating the rhetorical power of dark matter from the physical to the life sciences. Engaging literatues and approaches from across the philosophy, history, and social studies of science, we explore the cultural significance of the dark (...) matter theory in the physical sciences and examine the implications of its conceptual reworking in biology, through critically engaging the political narratives folded within dark matter’s genealogies. ‘Dark matter’ designates both zones of importance and zones of turbulence, simultaneously emphasizing microbiologists’ creativity whilst constructing new ways of relating to microbiota. Such a situation, we propose, also invites theoretical analysis as it calls for a conceptual reconsideration of the gene and its fundamental role within the life sciences. (shrink)

This book addresses late modern debates in Christian theology over the question of whether knowledge of God is available only through God's gracious self-revelation or through revelation plus philosophy or natural reason. The author examines the position of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange as an exemplar of the latter, and the countervailing position of Karl Barth as an exemplar of the former, and then shows how Aquinas's grammar of God both dissolves and transcends these contentious debates altogether.

This paper proposes a philosophically informed decision-making methodology, inspired by Aristotle, that encourages constructive discussions amongst employers and employees; is directed towards shared higher-level goals; is consistent with planning frameworks already in place in many businesses; can be amended over time without disruptive disputes; and accounts for the particularities of each industry, enterprise, workplace, and job. It seeks to establish a more fundamental basis for discussions about remote vs. in-person office work: specifically, the purpose and nature of the work of (...) those affected. If these matters can be decided, then subsequent discussions might be focused more upon the shared outcomes to which stakeholders are committed and less upon individual preferences and ‘hunches.’. (shrink)