The Birds of Aristophanes is unique among his extant plays in that it employs a chorus in which each member has an individual identity, that is, in which each chorus-member represents a different kind of bird. The consequent variety of costume must have been a great visual embellishment to the play, and one is led to wonder how commonly the device employed in Birds featured in Old Comedy in general. Two parallels are frequently cited in the choruses of Eupolis' and (...) Ameipsias' , both of which will be considered below, but, although those plays do indeed provide our best evidence outside Birds, I wish to argue here that we may reasonably suspect that some other old comedies known to us had choruses of the type in question, which I designate ‘individualized’ or ‘multiform’ choruses. (shrink)

Objectivism and projectivism are standardly taken to be incompatible theories of color. Here we argue that this incompatibility is only apparent: objectivism and projectivism, properly articulated so as to deal with basic objections, are in fundamental agreement about the ontology of color and the phenomenology of color perception.

We argue that relationalism entails an unacceptable claim about the content of visual experience: that ordinary ‘red’ objects look like they look like they look like they’re red, etc.

We can trace the “evolutionary epic” (named by E. O. Wilson, 1978) back to earlier writers, beginning with Robert Chambers (1844). Its basic elements are: fixation on seeing human history as rooted in biology; an aspiration toward telling the whole history of humankind (in its essential features); and insistence on the overall coherence of the projected narrative. The claim to coherence depends on assuming either that the universe possesses an “embedded rationality,” or that it is guided by divine purpose. (...) This article proposes the term “idealism” to refer to these two assumptions taken together, for in practice they were closely linked. Nietzsche (1881) was perhaps the first thinker to point out the evolutionary epic's dependence on such an idealism, and he also pointed out that the assumptions of embedded rationality and of divine purpose are closely connected. Darwin's theory of descent with modification (1859) was sharply inconsistent with these assumptions: he was not an “idealist” in the sense indicated here, and not a proponent of the evolutionary epic. Proclaiming his “materialism,” Wilson (1978) failed to acknowledge that the epic depends on idealist assumptions; other adherents of the genre (M. Dowd, L. Rue) resurrect (knowingly or not) its theological roots. (shrink)

This book is a manifesto for what John Alcock calls “orthodox sociobiology,” the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior following the premise that behaviors and their mechanisms evolve under the primary influence of natural selection acting on individual differences in genetic success. Sociobiology focuses narrowly on finding adaptive explanations for social behaviors while attempting a grand synthesis of biological and social sciences. Alcock's book is largely defensive, aimed at refuting criticisms and a perception that, twenty‐five years (...) after its proclamation, sociobiology is moribund. Alcock's defense relies not on an extensive review of relevant literature but on the persuasiveness of arguments illustrated with favored examples. He emphasizes sociobiology of human cultures and prescribes practical applications for restructuring societal institutions.The major argument against orthodox sociobiology is summarized in Edward O. Wilson's book Consilience : “We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture. We also know that biology has an important effect on the origin of culture and its transmission. … Culture allows a rapid adjustment to changes in the environment through finely tuned adaptations invented and transmitted without correspondingly precise genetic prescription. In this respect human beings differ fundamentally from all other animal species” . This argument denies that human social behaviors are best understood as biologically evolved adaptations and places them outside the domain of the genetical theory of natural selection.Alcock's major claim for sociobiology's triumph is its use of comparative methodology to identify ultimate causes of social behaviors. Over the past twenty‐five years, evolutionary biologists have developed rigorous systematic methodologies for making comparative inferences in evolutionary research. Such explicitly phylogenetic approaches provide more powerful tests of ultimate causality in evolution than the comparative methods available when sociobiology was first proposed. Although the success of sociobiology would seem to lie in its ability to use the strongest comparative methods to test its major claims, Alcock's examples rely entirely on archaic methodology that no contemporary evolutionist should accept.The hypothesis of adaptation predicts that a character enhances its possessor's ability to utilize resources for survival or reproduction relative to alternatives against which it has been tested evolutionarily. Phylogenetic analysis of species possessing the character and their closest relatives identifies the comparisons appropriate for testing this hypothesis. Hypothetical adaptations are mapped onto phylogenies to identify their origins, antecedent conditions, associated characters, environmental contexts, and selective regimes. Alcock forfeits the power of evolutionary study by arguing that sociobiologists “can only use data from unrelated species known to experience similar selection pressures” in the “independent convergence test” of adaptation. No animal species are completely unrelated, nor are their behaviors adaptive in an absolute sense. Even comparisons of analogous characters across species must consider phylogeny because homologous genes and developmental programs can be utilized for analogous roles in different species. Without a firm grounding in phylogenetic principles, Alcock's methods cannot effectively test hypotheses of evolutionary causality.Alcock spends much effort defending sociobiology against the criticism that its major claims constitute untestable adaptationist stories. David Barash's sociobiological interpretations of mating behavior in bluebirds receive particular attention because Stephen Jay Gould criticized them as untestable. Alcock shows that Barash and others have empirically rejected some explanations in favor of better ones, although the hypotheses tested and the knowledge gained reside entirely in proximate mechanisms, not the ultimate causes that constitute sociobiology's main challenge. Gould's criticism therefore withstands Alcock's counterarguments.Readers unfamiliar with evolution should consult recent books such as Brian Hall's Evolutionary Developmental Biology , Jeffrey Levinton's Genetics, Paleontology, and Macroevolution , and John Avise's Phylogeography to see evolutionary disciplines that have triumphed over the past twenty‐five years. These disciplines contrast with sociobiology in their methodological rigor and profound reformulation of major theories. By contrast, Alcock's sociobiology seems essentially unchanged from the 1970s. If twenty‐five years of sociobiological study have produced only a repetition of its initial conjectures, their effectiveness as testable hypotheses seems doubtful.Alcock acknowledges “human evolutionary psychology” as a new subdiscipline of sociobiology. Indeed, orthodox sociobiology seems to be relocating from biology to psychology departments. My interpretation of this move is that sociobiology has not kept pace with evolutionary biology and therefore has sought refuge in a traditionally nonevolutionary discipline that has not yet incorporated the current critical standards of comparative evolutionary research.Sociobiology has served evolutionary biology mainly by revealing the limits of reductionist selective arguments, thereby directing us to move beyond them. (shrink)

The main purpose of this work is to show the internal theoretical connections of the two fundamental paradigms that describe the evolution of the human species, that is, the Lamarckian paradigm and the Darwinian paradigm. In carrying out this task, I begin by presenting the two evolutionary concepts. Understanding the content of these paradigms allows us to focus on the argumentation proposed by modern evolutionary biologists on the issue of the evolution of Homo sapiens; more precisely, on the paraphrased concept (...) of “genetic drive.” Employed so far in a narrow range of genetic phenomena, it was — thanks to Allan Wilson — transformed into the concept of “cultural drive” and used to explain innovations appearing in not only genetic but also cultural endowments of the human species. This type of application of the concept of cultural drive in the structure of the Homo sapiens theory of evolution has recently been proposed by Kevin Laland. Then I show what kind of deviations are produced by the cultural factors of the evolution of Homo sapiens and how they can not only be included in the mechanisms of species evolution, but also how they constitute the “material” on which civilization changes take place. (shrink)

Instead of an editorial, in this issue of Environmental Values the publishers have been invited to comment on a local environmental issue that currently looms large in our Scottish island backyard. Divided from mainland Scotland by fifty miles of sea, the Outer Hebrides are a peripheral part of the already peripheral Scottish Highlands - a region of low production, and high demands on thinly spread national services. Fifteen years ago our economic salvation was to be the creation of the largest (...) stone quarry in Europe, to supply aggregate for the construction industry in South-east England and mainland Europe. After two Public Inquiries and much legal wrangling this proposal was eventually laid to rest. Its eventual defeat was at least partly due to the united front against the proposed development that was maintained by a coalition of virtually all the environmental NGOs that function north of the English border.1In environmental terms, aggregates, the landscape damage caused by quarrying, and the connection with road-building and increasing motor traffic are readily characterised as a 'bad thing', but the latest threat to the Scottish and island landscape is a less clear-cut environmental bad. The prospect of large-scale windfarms, and the associated transmission lines that would be required to deliver electric power from them to markets in the South, is one that has already divided environmental groups; with Friends of the Earth generally in favour, Greenpeace equivocal, and landscape- and wildlife-oriented NGOs against. For wind energy has long been promoted as a 'green' alternative to damaging fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear power, and its proponents argue that we should not be deflected on merely aesthetic grounds from grasping a technology that could save the world from climate catastrophe. This division of the environmental camp inevitably makes it more likely the developers will prevail. As with the superquarry, scale is part of the problem: the proposed developments are massive - mouth-wateringly so to local councils and landowners attracted by the prospect of multi-million pound revenues, devastatingly so to the majority of local residents and to the many walkers and climbers who visit the Highlands and Islands for their majestic and unspoilt scenery.The following extracts from recent press releases by the John Muir Trust and the local campaigning group Moorlands Without Turbines, and the developers' mock-up of thevisual impact of one of the local proposals above, will convey to readers the scale of proposals for Scottish windfarms, the strength of local feeling and the real dilemmas faced by NGOs in developing a coherent response.... targets set in the [renewable energy] strategy for Highland Council area are greater than those of the Scottish Executive for the whole of Scotland ... The Scottish Executive has a renewable energy target for 2020 which requires another 3,400 MW in Scotland. The Highland Council Renewable Strategy sets a target of over 4,000 MW from new renewable energy.The Highland Council targets do not seem to have been strategically set in relation to factors outside the Highlands but look as if they are based on the maximum possible installation based on the most liberal planning regime.2Scottish Executive Minister Allan Wilson has given the first official statistics on the number of objections for the proposed North Lewis Peatlands Windfarm - the world's largest onshore windfarm.In a response to written questions by Green MSP Shiona Baird, Mr. Wilson states: 'Prior to Comhairle nan Eilean Siar [Western Isles Council] submitting its consultation response the Executive recorded six responses in support and 2,713 objections to the Lewis Windpower proposal from Western Isles residents. Since Western Isles Council submitted their consultation response, the Executive has recorded 11 responses of support and 1,860 objections to the Lewis Windpower proposal, from Western Isles residents'In total a massive 6,131 objections have been received of which 4,573 come from local people. The figures show that for every person who wrote to support the scheme from the islands 269 people wrote and objected.Lewis based Moorland without Turbines chairperson Catriona Campbell, who is campaigning against the joint AMEC and British Energy project said:'At last we have official confirmation of the unprecedented level of protest against this industrialisation of our land. Till now our local MSP and Council have refused to acknowledge the sentiment of the island. The Council voted in favour of it against the wishes of those who will be affected. Every community council and councillor in North Lewis, the area directly affected, has voted resoundingly against it.'...The proposed 234 turbines, each higher than the Forth Rail bridge, and 167km of new road would cover moorland that is protected by European Law for its wildlife interest, including international populations of species such as Golden Eagles, Red-throated Divers and Golden Plovers.3The Lingerabay Superquarry saga was a rich source for academic case-studies; we confidently predict that we shall hear more about the 'green energy' debate in the pages of this journal. (shrink)

In the advertising discourse of human genetic database projects, of genetic ancestry tracing companies, and in popular books on anthropological genetics, what I refer to as the anthropological gene and genome appear as documents of human history, by far surpassing the written record and oral history in scope and accuracy as archives of our past. How did macromolecules become "documents of human evolutionary history"? Historically, molecular anthropology, a term introduced by Emile Zuckerkandl in 1962 to characterize the study of primate (...) phylogeny and human evolution on the molecular level, asserted its claim to the privilege of interpretation regarding hominoid, hominid, and human phylogeny and evolution vis-à-vis other historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, physical anthropology, and paleoanthropology. This process will be discussed on the basis of three key conferences on primate classification and evolution that brought together exponents of the respective fields and that were held in approximately ten-years intervals between the early 1960s and the 1980s. I show how the anthropological gene and genome gained their status as the most fundamental, clean, and direct records of historical information, and how the prioritizing of these epistemic objects was part of a complex involving the objectivity of numbers, logic, and mathematics, the objectivity of machines and instruments, and the objectivity seen to reside in the epistemic objects themselves. (shrink)

Philosophers have long suspected that thought and discourse about what we ought to do differ in some fundamental way from statements about what is. But the difference has proved elusive, in part because the two kinds of statement look alike. Focusing on judgments that express decisions--judgments about what is to be done, all things considered--Allan Gibbard offers a compelling argument for reconsidering, and reconfiguring, the distinctions between normative and descriptive discourse--between questions of "ought" and "is." Gibbard considers how our (...) actions, and our realities, emerge from the thousands of questions and decisions we form for ourselves. The result is a book that investigates the very nature of the questions we ask ourselves when we ask how we should live, and that clarifies the concept of "ought" by understanding the patterns of normative concepts involved in beliefs and decisions. An original and elegant work of metaethics, this book brings a new clarity and rigor to the discussion of these tangled issues, and will significantly alter the long-standing debate over "objectivity" and "factuality" in ethics. Table of Contents: I. Preliminaries 1. Introduction: A Possibility Proof 2. Intuitionism as Template: Emending Moore II. The Thing to Do 3. Planning and Ruling Out: The "Frege-Geach" Problem 4. Judgment, Disagreement, Negation 5. Supervenience and Constitution 6. Character and Import III. Normative Concepts 7. Ordinary Oughts: Meaning and Motivation 8. Normative Kinds: Patterns of Engagement 9. What to Say about the Thing to Do: The Expressivistic Turn and What it Gains Us IV. Knowing What to Do 10. Explaining with Plans 11. Knowing What to Do 12. Ideal Response Concepts 13. Deep Vindication and Practical Confidence 14. Impasse and Dissent References Index This is a remarkable book. It takes up a central and much-discussed problem - the difference between normative thought and "descriptive" thought. It develops a compelling response to that problem with ramifications for much else in philosophy. But perhaps most importantly, it brings new clarity and rigor to the discussion of these tangled issues. It will take some time to come to terms with the details of Gibbard's discussion. It is absolutely clear, however, that the book will reconfigure the debate over objectivity and "factuality" in ethics. --Gideon Rosen, Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University Gibbard,/author> writes elegantly, and the theory he develops is innovative, philosophically sophisticated, and challenging. Gibbard defends his theory vigorously and with admirable intellectual honesty. --David Copp, Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University. (shrink)

In what does philosophical progress consist? 'Vertical' progress corresponds to development within a specific paradigm/framework for theorizing (of the sort associated, revolutions aside, with science); 'horizontal' progress corresponds to the identification and cultivation of diverse paradigms (of the sort associated, conservativism aside, with art and pure mathematics). Philosophical progress seems to involve both horizontal and vertical dimensions, in a way that is somewhat puzzling: philosophers work in a number of competing frameworks (like artists or mathematicians), while typically maintaining that only (...) one of these is correct (like scientists). I diagnose this situation as reflecting that we are presently quite far from the end of inquiry into philosophical methodology. The good news is that we appear to be making advances on this score. The bad news is that failure to recognize or make explicit that our standards are in flux often leads to dogmatism, as I illustrate by attention to three assumptions presently operative in metaphysical and metametaphysical contexts. I close by identifying a tension between vertical and horizontal progress in philosophy, and suggesting an updated version of Carnap's principle of tolerance for new philosophical forms. (shrink)

Individuals are a prominent part of the biological world. Although biologists and philosophers of biology draw freely on the concept of an individual in articulating both widely accepted and more controversial claims, there has been little explicit work devoted to the biological notion of an individual itself. How should we think about biological individuals? What are the roles that biological individuals play in processes such as natural selection (are genes and groups also units of selection?), speciation (are species individuals?), and (...) organismic development (do genomes code for organisms)? Much of our discussion here will focus on organisms as a central kind of biological individual, and that discussion will raise broader questions about the nature of the biological world, for example, about its complexity, its organization, and its relation to human thought. (shrink)

Key ideas discussed in this guide include: art and aesthetics fun and free time nature and reason things, thoughts and being right This Routledge Critical ...

The evil-god challenge holds that theism is highly symmetrical to the evil-god hypothesis and thus it is not more reasonable to accept one rather than the other. But, since it is not reasonable to accept the evil-god hypothesis, it is not reasonable to accept theism. This article will primarily focus on defending the challenge from two recent objections which hold that it follows from the nature of moral motivation that theism is intrinsically much more likely to be true than the (...) evil-god hypothesis. However, I will also argue that there is a different intrinsic asymmetry between the hypotheses which favours theism. (shrink)

We show that Weak Vopěnka’s Principle, which is the statement that the opposite category of ordinals cannot be fully embedded into the category of graphs, is equivalent to the large cardinal principle Ord is Woodin, which says that for every class [Formula: see text] there is a [Formula: see text]-strong cardinal. Weak Vopěnka’s Principle was already known to imply the existence of a proper class of measurable cardinals. We improve this lower bound to the optimal one by defining structures whose (...) nontrivial homomorphisms can be used as extenders, thereby producing elementary embeddings witnessing [Formula: see text]-strongness of some cardinal. (shrink)

This article briefly outlines Ørsted's early aesthetic thought by placing it in the context of his affiliations with early German romanticism, and by examining the poetics and philosophy of language contained in a prize-winning essay on aesthetics that he wrote in 1796. Further, this article presents an example of how aesthetic and linguistic strategies in his writing helped shape the meaning of the theoretical terms utilized in his early scientific work. Toward this end, the focus of the article will be (...) limited to a central passage from the first installment of his Kemiske Breve (Chemical Letters), which he published in 1798 at the age of twenty-one. (shrink)

“Ignorance,” Jim Hudson, the art dealer, declares shortly before the climactic scene in the 2017 film, Get Out. “They mean well, but they have no idea what real people will go through”...

I conclude that Gibbard fails to solve several of the traditional problems for expressivism. He solves some of these problems, but his solutions to them in effect give up expressivism. Of course, one might respond that it does not really matter whether his theory is expressivist. In some ways, I agree. Gibbard says many fascinating things about morality which have at most indirect connections to his expressivist analysis. I am thinking especially of his later discussions of hyperscepticism, parochialism, and indirect (...) pragmatism. These views could still be developed even if he gave up expressivism. All I have tried to show here is that he does need to give up expressivism unless he can solve the problems that I have raised. (shrink)

The volume addresses the historical context of Henry, e.g. his writings and his participation in the events of 1277; examines Henry’s theology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics; and studies Henry’s influence on John Duns Scotus and Pico della Mirandola.

Cunningham and Kavic [1] rightly note that standard accounts of surgical complications—ours included—have focused on postoperative events [2, 3]. As they point out, this postoperative focus leaves open the question of how we should categorize adverse intraoperative events. They argue that we should distinguish between two types of adverse intraoperative events: those that introduce additional risk of postoperative complications and those that do not. On their account, adverse intraoperative events that introduce additional risk of postoperative complications are intraoperative complications, whereas (...) those that do not are simple errors. Cunningham and Kavic say little about why we might want to make this distinction. We take it that the underlying purpose is to focus attention on the importance of diligence in surgical performance. Gawande defines diligence as ‘‘the necessity of giving sufficient attention to detail to avoid error and prevail against obstacles’’ [4, p. 8]. It is clear that diligence in surgery requires us to attend not just to those adverse intraoperative events that lead to postoperative complications but also to adverse intraoperative events that increase the risk of postoperative complications. We wholeheartedly agree about the importance of diligence in surgery, both in the intraoperative and the.. (shrink)

. In this paper I present two ways in which climate modelers use general circulation models for exploratory purposes. The complexity of Earth’s climate system makes it difficult to predict precisely how lower-order climate dynamics will interact over time to drive higher-order dynamics. The same issues arise for complex models built to simulate climate behavior like the Community Earth Systems Model. I argue that as a result of system complexity, climate modelers use general circulation models to perform model dynamic exploration (...) and climate dynamic exploration. MDE and CDE help climate modelers to better understand the dynamic structure of the general circulation model system and the actual climate system, respectively. (shrink)

On the basis of an analysis of a single paper on plate tectonics, a paper whose actual content is nowhere in evidence, Frederick Suppe concludes that no standard model of confirmation—hypothetico-deductive, Bayesian-inductive, or inference to the best explanation—can account for the structure of a scientific paper that reports an experimental result. He further argues on the basis of a survey of scientific papers, a survey whose data and results are also absent, that papers which have a rather stringent length limit, (...) such as the one on plate tectonics, are typical of science. Thus, he concludes that no standard confirmation scheme is capable of dealing with scientific practice. Suppe also requires that an adequate model of philosophical testing should be able to account for everything in such scientific papers, in which space is at a premium. (shrink)

In The Market Experience, Robert Lane restates the central criticism of economic views of human satisfaction?namely, that they define welfare as utility and, in practice if not in theory, use money as the measure of utility, while in reality utility (or welfare) ought to be defined as happiness. In exploring the implications of this noneconomic definition for our assessment of markets, Lane summarizes the evidence about how people assess their own happiness more successfully than he clarifies the meaning of that (...) word. Since increases in income above a certain minimum do not increase happiness, work must be made more meaningful. (shrink)

The invisibility of nursing work has been discussed in the international literature but not in relation to learning clinical skills. Evans and Guile's (Practice‐based education: Perspectives and strategies, Rotterdam: Sense, 2012) theory of recontextualisation is used to explore the ways in which invisible or unplanned and unrecognised learning takes place as newly qualified nurses learn to delegate to and supervise the work of the healthcare assistant. In the British context, delegation and supervision are thought of as skills which are learnt (...) “on the job.” We suggest that learning “on‐the‐job” is the invisible construction of knowledge in clinical practice and that delegation is a particularly telling area of nursing practice which illustrates invisible learning. Using an ethnographic case study approach in three hospital sites in England from 2011 to 2014, we undertook participant observation, interviews with newly qualified nurses, ward managers and healthcare assistants. We discuss the invisible ways newly qualified nurses learn in the practice environment and present the invisible steps to learning which encompass the embodied, affective and social, as much as the cognitive components to learning. We argue that there is a need for greater understanding of the “invisible learning” which occurs as newly qualified nurses learn to delegate and supervise. (shrink)

_Becoming Human_ argues that human identity was articulated and extended across a wide range of textual, visual, and artifactual assemblages from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. J. Allan Mitchell shows how the formation of the child expresses a manifold and mutable style of being. To be human is to learn to dwell among a welter of things. A searching and provocative historical inquiry into human becoming, the book presents a set of idiosyncratic essays on embryology and infancy, play (...) and games, and manners, meals, and other messes. While it makes significant contributions to medieval scholarship on the body, family, and material culture, _Becoming Human_ theorizes anew what might be called a medieval ecological imaginary. Mitchell examines a broad array of phenomenal objects—including medical diagrams, toy knights, tableware, conduct texts, dream visions, and scientific instruments—and in the process reanimates distinctly medieval ontologies. In addressing the emergence of the human in the later Middle Ages, Mitchell identifies areas where humanity remains at risk. In illuminating the past, he shines fresh light on our present. (shrink)

In preparing for a lecture on the ethics of surgical complications, it became apparent that confusion exists about the definition of a ‘‘surgical complication.’’ Is it, as one medical website states, ‘‘any undesirable result of surgery?’’ [1]. In the European Journal of Surgery, Veen et al. [2] provide a more elaborate definition: ‘‘every unwanted development in the illness of the patient or in the treatment of the patient’s illness that occurs in the clinic’’ [2]. An esteemed historian of science suggests (...) yet another definition in a recent volume on surgical complications: ‘‘a complication, in any sphere of endeavour, is something out of the norm, and the product of extraneous and unexpected factors’’ [3]. Such is the discrepancy in definitions that Rampersaud et al. [4] declared in 2006 that ‘‘presently, there is no clear or consistent definition of a complication in the surgical literature.’’ Much research in surgery aims to reduce the risk of surgical complications. However, until we have a stable and agreed definition of what counts as a surgical complication, we cannot reliably compare different studies to discover what best reduces the chance of surgical complications [5]. Therefore, the topic is more than mere pedantry; defining surgical complications will help us with the broader question of how to improve surgical practice. A basic PubMed search returned nearly 800 articles with the phrases ‘‘surgical complications’’ or ‘‘surgical complication’’ in the title. But unlike the sources above. (shrink)

I argue that gensler's claims (in "philosophical studies" 48:57-72 and 49:83-98) about abortion are unsound. In addition, His argument is not a kantian consistency argument as he claims, But consequentialism in disguise.