Two recent overviews of costly signalling theory—Maynard-Smith and Harper ( 2003 ) and Searcy and Nowicki ( 2005 )—both refuse to count signals kept honest by punishment of dishonesty, as costly signals, because (1) honest signals must be costly in cases of costly signalling, and (2) punishment of dishonesty itself requires explanation. I argue that both pairs of researchers are mistaken: (2) is not a reason to discount signals kept honest by punishment of dishonesty as cases of costly signalling, and (...) (1) betrays too narrow a focus on certain versions of costly signalling theory. In the course of so arguing, I propose a new schema for classifying signal costs, which suggests productive research questions for future conceptual and empirical work on costly signalling. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to clarify the role of self-interest in Moist thought and by doing so to refute the Self-Interest Thesis. Toward these ends, I will examine passages from the Mozi bearing on the role of self-interest in Moist ethics and psychology and show that, in each case, an alternative interpretation explains them better than the Self-Interest Thesis does. I will argue that the Moists recognize the obvious truth that self-interest figures among people’s basic motives, but they (...) believe people also have other important sources of motivation. (shrink)

Frege attempted to provide arithmetic with a foundation in logic. But his attempt to do so was confounded by Russell's discovery of paradox at the heart of Frege's system. The papers collected in this special issue contribute to the on-going investigation into the foundations of mathematics and logic. After sketching the historical background, this introduction provides an overview of the papers collected here, tracing some of the themes that connect them.

Charles Taylor has recently stated his religious leanings as being at the core of his philosophical vision for a better society. At the heart of this vision is his emphasis on transcendence: that there is something beyond life as we know it. Some years earlier, Taylor had explicitly endorsed the work of Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch for the way he wanted to talk about the issue of transcendence; however, neither figures prominently in his recent writings. While there may be (...) differing reasons for this omission, my main concern in this article is to show how the issue of transcendence in Benjamin's and Bloch's writings offers an interesting comparison with Taylor's work on this issue. Moreover, Benjamin and Bloch will be shown to offer ways in which Taylor can more fully express his own undeveloped articulation of transcendence through a consideration of the themes of religion, God, time and death. (shrink)

Book Reviewed in this article:The Return of the Political. By Chantal Mouffe.Specters of Marx. By Jacques Derrida.Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Edited and Introduced By Amy Gutmann.Liberal Nationalism. By Yael Tamir.What's the Matter with Liberalism? By Ronald Beiner.Thick and Thin: Moral Argument At Home and Abroad. By Michael Walzer.

The idea of a canonical transformation emerged in 1837 in the course of Carl Jacobi's researches in analytical dynamics. To understand Jacobi's moment of discovery it is necessary to examine some background, especially the work of Joseph Lagrange and Siméon Poisson on the variation of arbitrary constants as well as some of the dynamical discoveries of William Rowan Hamilton. Significant figures following Jacobi in the middle of the century were Adolphe Desboves and William Donkin, while the delayed posthumous publication in (...) 1866 of Jacobi's full dynamical corpus was a critical event. François Tisserand's doctoral dissertation of 1868 was devoted primarily to lunar and planetary theory but placed Hamilton–Jacobi mathematical methods at the forefront of the investigation. Henri Poincaré's writings on celestial mechanics in the period 1890–1910 succeeded in making canonical transformations a fundamental part of the dynamical theory. Poincaré offered a mathematical vision of the subject that differed from Jacobi's and would become influential in subsequent research. Two prominent researchers around 1900 were Carl Charlier and Edmund Whittaker, and their books included chapters devoted explicitly to transformation theory. In the first three decades of the twentieth century Hamilton–Jacobi theory in general and canonical transformations in particular would be embraced by a range of researchers in astronomy, physics and mathematics. (shrink)

Within the field of causal inference, it is desirable to learn the structure of causal relationships holding between a system of variables from the correlations that these variables exhibit; a sub-problem of which is to certify whether or not a given causal hypothesis is compatible with the observed correlations. A particularly challenging setting for assessing causal compatibility is in the presence of partial information; i.e. when some of the variables are hidden/latent. This paper introduces the possible worlds framework as a (...) method for deciding causal compatibility in this difficult setting. We define a graphical object called a possible worlds diagram, which compactly depicts the set of all possible observations. From this construction, we demonstrate explicitly, using several examples, how to prove causal incompatibility. In fact, we use these constructions to prove causal incompatibility where no other techniques have been able to. Moreover, we prove that the possible worlds framework can be adapted to provide a complete solution to the possibilistic causal compatibility problem. Even more, we also discuss how to exploit graphical symmetries and cross-world consistency constraints in order to implement a hierarchy of necessary compatibility tests that we prove converges to sufficiency. (shrink)

From ancient Greece to the present, philosophers have variously emphasized either the similarities or the differences between humans and nonhuman animals as a basis for ethical conclusions. Thus animal ethics has traditionally involved both factual claims, usually about animals’ mental states and capacities, and ethical claims about their moral standing. However, even in modern animal ethics the factual claims are often scientifically uninformed, involve broad generalizations about diverse taxonomic groups, and show little agreement about how to resolve the contradictions. Research (...) in cognitive ethology and animal welfare science provides empirical material and a set of emerging methods for testing the plausibility of claims about animal mentation and thus for clarifying the interests and needs of animals. We suggest that progress in animal ethics requires both philosophically informed science to provide an empirically grounded understanding of animals, and scientifically informed philosophy to explore the ethical implications that follow. (shrink)

In “Body, Cyborgs and the Politics of Incarnation,” Bruno Latour recounts the story of Professor Paul Churchland, his colleague, carrying a portrait of his wife. “Nothing unusual in this,” Latour writes. “No, except that this picture was an image produced by computed tomography, a CT scan of his wife’s inner brain, in full colour”. The image of Professor Church-land proudly showing off a full-color CT of his wife’s beautiful brain has a wonderful sense of absurdity to it, and its punch (...) line depends on the reader being jolted by the strangeness of medical imagery standing in place of portraiture—no matter how stunning the cerebellum.However.. (shrink)

These comments on Cohen’s paper (IJPP, this issue) focus on the question of whether Cohen’s attempt to derive antidotes from incompatible or contradictory philosophical camps— such as Hume’s subjective theory of beauty, on the one hand, and Augustine’s objectivist account—present a fatal problem for Cohen’s LBT. The paper concludes with suggesting a constructive way around the problem.

In A Secular Age Charles Taylor endorses Mikhail Epstein’s notion of ‘minimal religion’ as his preferred orientation to the good for Western secular society. This article examines the basis of Epstein’s ‘minimal religion’ which rests on the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. It is shown that Freud’s theories are incompatible with Taylor’s own thought, and in the case of Jung, Epstein fails to develop the latter’s contribution to our understanding of religion. Moreover, although Taylor endorses Epstein’s work (...) he makes no reference to Jung. To this end, the importance of Jung’s theories in relation to religion are elucidated and offered as a way to forge a dialogue between a nuanced humanist position and the theistic vision offered by Taylor. (shrink)

Based upon the Decision Field Theory (Busemeyer and Townsend 1993), we tested a model of dynamic reasoning to predict the effect of time pressure on analytical and experiential processing during decision-making. Forty-six participants were required to make investment decisions under four levels of time pressure. In each decision, participants were presented with experiential cues which were either congruent or incongruent with the analytical information. The congruent/incongruent conditions allowed us to examine how many decisions were based upon the experiential versus the (...) analytical information, and to see if this was affected by the varying degrees of time pressure. As expected, the overall accuracy was reduced with greater time pressure and accuracy was higher when the experiential and analytical cues were congruent than when they were incongruent. Of great interest was the data showing that under high time pressure participants used more experiential cues than at other time pressures. We suggest that the dynamic reasoning paradigm has some future potential for predicting the effects of experiential biases in general, and specifically under time pressure. (shrink)

This article combines in-depth interviews and Karen Barad's work on materiality to think about the ways in which the materiality of blood might be understood in relation to sociality and blood-borne virus prevention among BDSM (bondage and domination, dominance and submission and sadomasochism) body modification practitioners in Sydney, Australia. In doing so, it confronts questions of how the materiality of blood can be theorized in ways that neither presume a fixed, a priori ontological status or essence, nor exclude it from (...) an active role in the production of realities. In taking account of both its co-constitutive role in practice, and its figurative power (as flow) in understanding the mind/body, discourse/materiality conjunctions at work in BDSM body modification practice, we aim to illuminate further the imbrication of materiality and meaning, and generate a more complex and fruitful account of blood for the purposes of blood-borne virus prevention and education. (shrink)

This exploratory study engages with eight case studies of music performances broadcast online to investigate the role of music in facilitating social cohesion, intercultural understanding and community resilience during a time of social distancing and concomitant heightened racial tensions. Using an online ethnographic approach and thematic analysis of video comments, the nature of audience engagement with music performances broadcast via YouTube during COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 is explored through the lens of ritual engagement with media events and models of social (...) capital. The eight case studies featured virtual choirs, orchestras and music collaborations of various genres, including classical, pop and fusion styles drawing from European, Asia Minor, South African, West African, North African, Arabic, South Asian, and East Asian cultural origins. Five overarching themes resulted from thematic analysis of video comments, includingInteraction,Unity,Resilience,Identity, andEmotion. The paper contributes important theorisation that ritual engagement and social learning fosters intercultural understanding through engaging with music both cognitively and emotionally, which can in turn shape both individual and collective identity. Online platforms provide scope for both bonding and bridging opportunities. Community resilience is supported through the sharing of knowledge, sustaining music practice during social distancing, as well as emotional support shared among audience participants, with potential wellbeing outcomes. (shrink)