Despite great advances in understanding genetic mechanisms, there still exists a bias toward equating genes with innate modules that determine important developmental events. But genes are equally relevant to understanding developmental plasticity shaped by ecological events. In other words, the term 'genetic inheritance' does not specify ontogenetic mechanisms. Here we present a case history of a species assumed to be under the control of prespecified genetic wiring to direct critical behavioral events such as communication and mating. We show, however, that (...) exogenetic processes stemming from the species's ontogenetic niche provide an alternative view of the flexibility of development especially with respect to behavioral performance. (shrink)

Animal welfare science and ecology are both generally concerned with the lives of animals, however they differ in their objectives and scope; the former studies the welfare of animals considered ‘domestic’ and under the domain of humans, while the latter studies wild animals with respect to ecological processes. Each of these approaches addresses certain aspects of the lives of animals living in the world though neither, we argue, tells us important information about the welfare of wild animals. This paper argues (...) for the development of a new scientific discipline ‘welfare biology’ to address these issues and more, given the deficiencies of pre-existing life science disciplines to research the subject. Welfare biology is the study of the welfare of all living beings who have a welfare, with a value orientation toward promoting that welfare, regardless of the beings’ situation or relationship to humans and our activities. (shrink)

_341_ _Objectives: _In patients with multivessel disease both the detection of the culprit lesion and the exact allocation are important preconditions for sufficient treatment and improved outcome. In a vessel based approach the combination of quantitative coronary angiography and fractional flow reserve measured by a pressure wire should be advantageous compared to myocardial SPECT, as morphological and functional information is delivered simultaneously. Therefore our aim was to evaluate MS in the detection and allocation of hemodynamically significant stenoses obtained by the (...) combined gold standard QCA plus FFR in patients with multivessel disease. _Methods: _FFR and QCA of 95 vessels in 80 patients have been evaluated. Hemodynamically significant target lesions were defined as intermediate stenoses between 50 and 75% with an FFR. (shrink)

We report on the deliberations of an interdisciplinary group of experts in science, law, and philosophy who convened to discuss novel ethical and policy challenges in stem cell research. In this report we discuss the ethical and policy implications of safety concerns in the transition from basic laboratory research to clinical applications of cell-based therapies derived from stem cells. Although many features of this transition from lab to clinic are common to other therapies, three aspects of stem cell biology pose (...) unique challenges. First, tension regarding the use of human embryos may complicate the scientific development of safe and effective cell lines. Second, because human stem cells were not developed in the laboratory until 1998, few safety questions relating to human applications have been addressed in animal research. Third, preclinical and clinical testing of biologic agents, particularly those as inherently complex as mammalian cells, present formidable challenges, such as the need to develop suitable standardized assays and the difficulty of selecting appropriate patient populations for early phase trials. We recommend that scientists, policy makers, and the public discuss these issues responsibly, and further, that a national advisory committee to oversee human trials of cell therapies be established. **NB we did not reccommend a NAC, we think it might be appropriate**. (shrink)

If stem cell-based therapies are developed, we will likely confront a difficult problem of justice: for biological reasons alone, the new therapies might benefit only a limited range of patients. In fact, they might benefit primarily white Americans, thereby exacerbating long-standing differences in health and health care.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 147 Eric Andrew James The Representational Necropolitics of Black Women in Zombie Dystopia Video Games Though Stuart Hall defends popular representation as an important terrain of political struggle, he also argues that images of difference are dominated by “racialized regimes of representation” manifest in stereotypes and invisibilities.1 These ensure that marginal identities are reduced, essentialized, and rendered (...) other. One of the most powerful tools for this form of silencing in the popular representation repertoire is the notion of an established genre. In US popular culture, creators and critics alike often position people who experience multiple layers of oppression as constitutively outside the expectations of existing genres. Their absence is attributable not simply to creator racism but also to that genre’s relationships to intersecting categories of difference and domination, such as race and gender. Beginning with the preponderance of representational violence in popular media, this article draws from existing work by feminists of color in order to model a critique of US representational precarity. To illustrate the political tensions in popular US culture, I stage my intervention into a medium whose industry has had particularly fraught struggles with representation: video gaming. There, I focus specifically on 1. Stuart Hall, “The Spectacle of the Other,” in Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader, ed. Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor, and Simeon J. Yates. (London: Sage, 2001), 325–44. 148 Eric Andrew James recent attempts to represent Black women, whom the gaming industry has held up as emblematic of difference and diversity. 2 These attempts are marred by predictable disasters and pitfalls. In particular, I discuss how the representational politics of Black women in popular zombie dystopia games repeats a similar violence as the previous silencing of Black women in these spaces. The gaming industry’s struggles with representation in the wake of Gamergate are demonstrative of broader tensions in Black women’s representation in popular media. Thus, while I am focused on video games, I also intend this analysis to reflect on feminist studies of the relationship between genre and representation. I advance existing scholarship on video game representations of Blackness by theorizing violence enacted at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in game genres. Specifically, I position this intervention as a point of departure from TreaAndrea M. Russworm’s chapter in Gaming Representation: “Dystopian Blackness and the Limits of Racial Empathy in The Walking Dead and The Last of Us.”3 This chapter provides a compelling critique of the relationship between the dystopian game genre and Black representation, highlighting the lack of self-reflexivity in mass-market representations of Blackness. Expanding this project by taking another look at her objects of study—The Last of Us (2013– 2014) and Telltale’s The Walking Dead (2012)—I argue that taking Black women’s multiple jeopardy as foundational to the zombie dystopia genre offers a deeper look at the grammars of representational violence. My use of multiple jeopardy refers to Deborah K. King’s theorization of how multiple layers of oppression exponentially multiply individual disadvantages. As King describes, “The modifier ‘multiple’ refers not only to several, simultaneous oppressions but to the multiplicative 2. AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps, “Representation Matters: Positive Portrayals of Black Women in Video Games,” Medium, February 28, 2017, https:// medium.com/legendary-women/representation-matters-positive-portrayals -of-black-women-in-video-games-c96cf9f66fdf; Jef Rouner, “Would You Believe There Have Been Only 14 Playable Black Women in Gaming?” Houston Press, June 5, 2015, https://www.houstonpress.com/arts/would-you-believethere -have-been-only-14-playable-black-women-in-gaming-7484017. 3. TreaAndrea M. Russworm, “Dystopian Blackness and the Limits of Racial Empathy in The Walking Dead and The Last of Us,” Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games, ed. Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea M. Russworm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 109–28. Eric Andrew James 149 relationships among them as well.”4 These layers of oppression are often contradictory and may leave no avenues for action; the expectations placed on one for their race become impossible to fulfill because of the contradictory expectations placed on them for their gender or sexuality. This multiple jeopardy thus introduces... (shrink)

In his article, “What should ChatGPT mean for bioethics?” I. Glenn Cohen explores the bioethical implications of Open AI’s chatbot ChatGPT and the use of similar Large Language Models (LLMs) (Cohen...

Cerebral organoid models in-of-themselves are considered as an alternative to research animal models. But their developmental and biological limitations currently inhibit the probability that organoids can fully replace animal models. Furthermore, these organoid limitations have, somewhat ironically, brought researchers back to the animal model via xenotransplantation, thus creating hybrids and chimeras. In addition to attempting to study and overcome cerebral organoid limitations, transplanting cerebral organoids into animal models brings an opportunity to observe behavioral changes in the animal itself. Traditional animal (...) ethics frameworks, such as the well-known three Rs (reduce, refine, and replace), have previously addressed chimeras and xenotransplantation of tissue. But these frameworks have yet to completely assess the neural-chimeric possibilities. And while the three Rs framework was a historical landmark in animal ethics, there are identifiable gaps in the framework that require attention. The authors propose to utilize an expanded three Rs framework initially developed by David DeGrazia and Tom L. Beauchamp, known as the Six Principles (6Ps). This framework aims to expand upon the three Rs, fill in the gaps, and be a practical means for assessing animal ethical issues like that of neural-chimeras and cerebral organoid xenotransplantation. The scope of this 6Ps application will focus on two separate but recent studies, which were published in 2019 and 2020. First, they consider a study wherein cerebral organoids were grown from donors with Down syndrome and from neurotypical donors. After these organoids were grown and studied, they were then surgically implanted into mouse models to observe the physiological effects and any behavioral change in the chimera. Second, they consider a separate study wherein neurotypical human embryonic stem cell-derived cerebral organoids were grown and transplanted into mouse and macaque models. The aim was to observe if such a transplantation method would contribute to therapies for brain injury or stroke. The authors place both studies under the lens of the 6Ps framework, assess the relevant contexts of each case, and provide relevant normative conclusions. In this way, they demonstrate how the 6Ps could be applied in future cases of neural-chimeras and cerebral organoid xenotransplantation. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo present the ethical issues, moral arguments, and reasons found in the ethical literature on organoid models.DesignIn this systematic review of reasons in ethical literature, we selected sources based on predefined criteria: The publication mentions moral reasons or arguments directly relating to the creation and/or use of organoid models in biomedical research; These moral reasons and arguments are significantly addressed, not as mere passing mentions, or comprise a large portion of the body of work; The publication is peer-reviewed and published (...) in an academic article, book, national-level report, working paper, or Ph.D. thesis; The publications collected are in English.AnalysisEach article was read in-depth for identifiable moral reasons, arguments, and concerns. These were then inductively classified and synthesized to create broader categories of reasons, and eventually an overarching conceptual scheme was created.ResultsA total of twenty-three sources were included and analyzed out of an initial 266 collected sources. Five themes of ethical issues and arguments were found: Animal Experimentation; Clinical Applications and Experiments; Commercialization and Consent; Organoid Ontology and Moral Status; and Research Ethics and Research Integrity. These themes are then further broken down into sub-themes and topics. Given the extensive nature of the topics found, we will focus on describing the topics that comprised of more in-depth reasons and arguments rather than few, passing mentions or concerns.ConclusionsThe ethics of organoids requires further deliberation in multiple areas, as much of the discussions are not presented as in-depth arguments. Such sentiments are also echoed throughout the organoid ethics literature. (shrink)

Ethical deliberations are unfolding for potentially controversial organoid‐entities such as brain organoids and embryoids. Much of the ethical deliberation centers on the questionable moral status of such organoid‐entities. However, while such work is important and appropriate, ethical deliberations may become too exclusively rooted in moral status and potentially overshadow other relevant moral dilemmas. The ethical discussion on organoid models can benefit from insights brought forth by both Judith Jarvis Thomson and Don Marquis in how they attempted to advance the abortion (...) debate. To discuss other abortion ethical issues more fully, both Thomson and Marquis assumed differing moral status positions of the conceptus and followed lines of reasoning based on these moral status assumptions. We suggest a similar approach with controversial organoid‐entities like brain organoids and embryoids. To avoid overshadowing or overlooking other relevant ethical issues, ethicists ought to first assume an organoid‐entity moral status position (such as a high moral status or no moral status) and explore any possible arguments that may result from such a position. While we ought not to copy the content of Thomson and Marquis' arguments exactly for organoid‐entities, it is worthwhile to translate their arguments' overarching structures. This paper explores the relevant insights of Thomson and Marquis, how they can be translated into the organoid ethics debate, and what possible lines of inquiry may be worth exploring based on particular moral status assumptions. (shrink)

Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temporal phenomenology—the temporal phenomenology hypothesis. We empirically investigate a particular version of the temporal belief hypothesis according to (...) which future-bias is explained by the belief that time robustly passes. Our results do not match the apparent predictions of this hypothesis, and so provide evidence against it. But we also find that people give more future-biased responses when asked to simulate a belief in robust passage. We take this to suggest that the phenomenology that attends simulation of that belief may be partially responsible for future-bias, and we examine the implications of these results for debates about the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we might conclude that they are irrational. This paper investigates one hypothesis, according to which future-bias (...) is explained by our having a phenomenology that we describe, or conceive of, as being as of time robustly passing. We empirically tested this hypothesis and found no evidence in its favour. Our results present a puzzle, however, when compared with the results of an earlier study. We conclude that although robust passage phenomenology on its own probably does not explain future-bias, having this phenomenology and taking it to be veridical may contribute to future-bias. (shrink)

Heidegger's later thought is a thinking of things, so argues Andrew J. Mitchell in The Fourfold. Heidegger understands these things in terms of what he names "the fourfold"--a convergence of relationships bringing together the earth, the sky, divinities, and mortals--and Mitchell's book is the first detailed exegesis of this neglected aspect of Heidegger's later thought. As such it provides entré to the full landscape of Heidegger's postwar thinking, offering striking new interpretations of the atomic bomb, technology, plants, animals, weather, (...) time, language, the holy, mortality, dwelling, and more. What results is a conception of things as ecstatic, relational, singular, and, most provocatively, as intrinsically tied to their own technological commodification. A major new work that resonates beyond the confines of Heidegger scholarship, The Fourfold proposes nothing less than a new phenomenological thinking of relationality and mediation for understanding the things around us. (shrink)

Board composition, insider participation on compensation committees, and director compensation practices can potentially cause conflicts of interest between directors and shareholders. If these corporate governance structures result in situations where actions beneficial to directors do not also benefit shareholders, then shareholders may suffer.Corporate ethics programs usually address conflicts of interest that may arise in the firm''s activities. Some boards of directors take active roles in their firms'' ethics programs by actively overseeing the programs. This paper empirically examines the relationship between (...) ethics programs and potential conflicts of interest and the relationship between board involvement in a firm''s ethics program and potential conflicts of interest. (shrink)

Deflationists hold that it does not seem to us, in experience, as though time robustly passes. There is some recent empirical evidence that appears to support this contention. Equally, empirical evidence suggests that we naïvely represent time as dynamical. Thus deflationists are faced with an explanatory burden. If, as they maintain, the world seems to us in experience as though it is non-dynamical, then why do we represent time as dynamical? This paper takes up the challenge of investigating, on the (...) part of the deflationist, one candidate explanation. We hypothesise that people’s belief that the future is what we call deliberatively open partly explains why they represent time as dynamical. In a series of two experiments we test this hypothesis. We find no evidence that beliefs about deliberative openness explain why people represent time as dynamical. Hence there remains an explanatory burden for the deflationist to discharge. (shrink)

Empirical evidence shows that people have multiple time-biases. One is near-bias; another is future-bias. Philosophical theorising about these biases often proceeds on two assumptions. First, that the two biases are _independent_: that they are explained by different factors (the independence assumption). Second, that there is a normative asymmetry between the two biases: one is rationally impermissible (near-bias) and the other rationally permissible (future-bias). The former assumption at least partly feeds into the latter: if the two biases were not explained by (...) different factors, then it would be less plausible that their normative statuses differ. This paper investigates the independence assumption and finds it unwarranted. In light of this, we argue, there is reason to question the normative asymmetry assumption. (shrink)

Many philosophers have become sceptical of the use of thought experiments in theorising about personal identity. In large part this is due to work in experimental philosophy that appears to confirm long held philosophical suspicions that thought experiments elicit inconsistent judgements about personal identity, and hence judgements that are thought to be the product of cognitive biases. If so, these judgements appear to be useless at informing our theories of personal identity. Using the methods of experimental philosophy, we investigate whether (...) people exhibit inconsistent judgements and, if they do, whether these judgements are likely to be the source of cognitive bias or, instead, sensitivity to some relevant factor. We do not find that people’s judgements are sensitive to any of the factors we investigate (relevant or irrelevant), nor that people have inconsistent judgements across cases. Rather, people’s judgements are best explained by them having a very minimal account of what it takes for a person to survive. Since this pattern of judgements is no reason to think that we are subject to cognitive bias, we see no reason, as things stand, to be sceptical of our judgements. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that most people unambiguously have a phenomenology as of time passing, and that this is a datum that philosophical theories must accommodate. Moreover, it has been assumed that the greater the extent to which people have said phenomenology, the more likely they are to endorse a dynamical theory of time. This paper is the first to empirically test these assumptions. Surprisingly, our results do not support either assumption. One experiment instead found the reverse (...) correlation: people were more likely to report having passage phenomenology if they endorsed a non-dynamical theory of time. Given that people do not have an unambiguous phenomenology as of time passing, we conclude that this is suggestive evidence in favor of veridical non-dynamism—the view that our phenomenology is veridical, and that it does not unambiguously represent that time passes. Instead, our phenomenology veridically has some quite different content. (shrink)

Many manipulation arguments against compatibilism rely on the claim that manipulation is relevantly similar to determinism. But we argue that manipulation is nothing like determinism in one relevant respect. Determinism is a "universal" phenomenon: its scope includes every feature of the universe. But manipulation arguments feature cases where an agent is the only manipulated individual in her universe. Call manipulation whose scope includes at least one but not all agents "existential manipulation." Our responsibility practices are impacted in different ways by (...) universal and existential phenomena. And this is a relevant difference, especially on Strawsonian approaches to moral responsibility, which take facts about our responsibility practices to be deeply connected to the nature of responsibility itself. We argue that Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility are immune to manipulation arguments, and no attempt to modify the scope of manipulation or determinism featured in these arguments will help incompatibilists secure their desired conclusion. (shrink)

This book brings together emerging perspectives from organization theory and management, environmental sociology, international regime studies, and the social studies of science and technology to provide a starting point for discipline-based studies of environmental policy and corporate environmental behavior. Reflecting the book’s theoretical and empirical focus, the audience is two-fold: organizational scholars working within the institutional tradition, and environmental scholars interested in management and policy. Together this mix forms a creative synthesis for both sets of readers, analyzing how environmental policy (...) and organizational practices are shaped, spread and contested. (shrink)

Proponents of manipulation arguments against compatibilism hold that manipulation scope (how many agents are manipulated) and manipulation type (whether the manipulator intends that an agent perform a particular action) do not impact judgments about free will and moral responsibility. Many opponents of manipulation arguments agree that manipulation scope has no impact but hold that manipulation type does. Recent work by Latham and Tierney (2022, 2023) found that people's judgments were sensitive to manipulation scope: people judged that an agent was less (...) free and responsible when a manipulation was existential (impacting at least one but not all agents) than when the manipulation was universal (impacting every agent). This study examines people's judgements about existential and universal manipulation cases that involve both intentional and non‐intentional outcomes. We found that manipulation scope also affects people's free will and responsibility judgments in manipulation cases involving both intentional and non‐intentional outcomes. Interestingly, we also found that manipulation type influences the effect that manipulation scope has on people's free will judgments but not their moral responsibility judgments, which indicates that people's free will and responsibility judgments can come apart. This puts pressure on the prevalent assumption that judgments about free will and moral responsibility are conceptually bound together. (shrink)

We investigated, experimentally, the contention that the folk view, or naïve theory, of time, amongst the population we investigated is dynamical. We found that amongst that population, ~ 70% have an extant theory of time that is more similar to a dynamical than a non-dynamical theory, and ~ 70% of those who deploy a naïve theory of time deploy a naïve theory that is more similar to a dynamical than a non-dynamical theory. Interestingly, while we found stable results across our (...) two experiments regarding the percentage of participants that have a dynamical or non-dynamical extant theory of time, we did not find such stability regarding which particular dynamical or non-dynamical theory of time they take to be most similar to our world. This suggests that there might be two extant theories in the population—a broadly dynamical one and a broadly non-dynamical one—but that those theories are sufficiently incomplete that participants do not stably choose the same dynamical theory as being most similar to our world. This suggests that while appeals to the ordinary view of time may do some work in the context of adjudicating disputes between dynamists and non-dynamists, they likely cannot do any such work adjudicating disputes between particular brands of dynamism. (shrink)

How can artists create works of computer art or Internet art in which audience members become genuine artists and collaborate with the original artists on the self-same work that they began? To answer this question, this essay will reflect on the work of philosophers who focus on questions concerning art completion and the ontology of computer art. This essay will also reflect on the artistic work of the trio LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner, whose artwork can serve as a model for (...) creating collaborative, digital art. (shrink)

The only collection of Mead's writings published during his lifetime, these essays have heretofore been virtually inaccessible. Reck has collected twenty-five essays representing the full range and depth of Mead's thought. This penetrating volume will be of interest to those in philosophy, sociology, and social psychology. "The editor's well-organized introduction supplies an excellent outline of this system in its development. In view of the scattered sources from which these writings are gathered, it is a great service that this volume renders (...) not only to students of Mead, but to historians."—H. W. Schneider, _Journal of the History of Philosophy_. (shrink)

There are two kinds of time bias: near bias and future bias. While philosophers typically hold that near bias is rationally impermissible, many hold that future bias is rationally permissible. Call this normative hybridism. According to arbitrariness objections, certain patterns of preference are rationally impermissible because they are arbitrary. While arbitrariness objections have been leveled against both near bias and future bias, the kind of arbitrariness in question has been different. In this article we investigate whether there are forms of (...) arbitrariness that are common to both kinds of preferences and, hence, whether there are versions of the arbitrariness objection that are objections to both near bias and future bias. If there are, then this might go some way toward undermining normative hybridism and to defending thoroughgoing time-neutralism. (shrink)

Introduction: Philosophy in Spite of Itself Aristotle defines man as the political and rational animal, but the readings in this book are guided by his ...

Boarding school is a major educational option for many students (e.g., students living in remote areas, or whose parents are working interstate or overseas, etc.). This study explored the motivation, engagement, and achievement of boarding and day students who are educated in the same classrooms and receive the same syllabus and instruction from the same teachers (thus a powerful research design to enable unique comparisons). Among 2,803 students (boardingn= 481; dayn= 2,322) from 6 Australian high schools and controlling for background (...) attributes and personality, we found predominant parity between boarding and day students in their motivation, engagement, and achievement. We also found that classroom-average motivation, engagement, and achievement was not significantly affected by the number of boarders (relative to day students) in the classroom. In addition, the effects of boarding were generally not moderated by students’ background or personality attributes. We conclude that boarders have academic opportunities and outcomes that are comparable to their day student counterparts. Implications for students, teachers, and parents are discussed. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes contends that a wise sovereign would censor books and limit verbal discourse for the majority of citizens. But this article contends that it is consistent with Hobbes’s philosophy to claim that a wise sovereign would allow a small number of citizens – those individuals who engage in scientific discourse and who are magnanimous and just – to disagree freely amongst themselves, engaging in discourse on controversial topics. This article reflects on Hobbes’s contention that these individuals can tolerate one (...) another’s differences and engage in verbal disagreement without any risk to the commonwealth. By engaging in open discourse, these individuals can better create valuable technology and provide counsel to the sovereign that is necessary to maintain peace. (shrink)

In recent years, third-party forgiveness has received renewed attention, much of it negative. While a few have undertaken important attempts to defend or expound accounts of third-party forgiveness, many suspect that it is incoherent, vicious, or both. If true, this would be bad news for Christians, for Christians rely on notions of third-party forgiveness for their accounts of salvation and pastoral authority. I think there is reason to think that some notions of third-party forgiveness can overcome the critics’ worries. In (...) what follows, I argue that third-party forgiveness is more common, coherent, salutary, and diverse in species than many critics suppose. After considering key objections to third-party forgiveness, I offer a constructive account of it that makes sense of these objections while also defending the underlying concept and act. What emerges from this defense is a newfound appreciation for the diverse species of third-party forgiveness. Still, some of these species are more intelligible and safeguarded from declension than others, and I conclude by examining the limits of third-party forgiveness by considering its most contentious species. (shrink)

This article revisits the Frankfurt School’s reflections on race, anti-Semitism and fascism, focusing especially on the theory of race implicit in Dialectic of Enlightenment. It argues that this theory has the potential to be developed into a critical functionalist theory of race that avoids both class and race reductionism, offering a thoroughly intersectional competitor to currently dominant philosophies of race. The key to such a theory is the view that racialization plays a functional role in sustaining capitalist exploitation. While Horkheimer (...) and Adorno focus on the scapegoat function of racialization, I argue that this function, while important, does not exhaust the possible functionalities of racialization and neglects an especially crucial function: the maintenance of a specifically racial form of exploitation. (shrink)

This paper empirically investigates one aspect of the folk concept of time by testing how the presence or absence of directedness impacts judgements about whether there is time in a world. Experiment 1 found that dynamists, showed significantly higher levels of agreement that there is time in dynamically directed worlds than in non-dynamical non-directed worlds. Comparing our results to those we describe in Latham et al., we report that while ~ 70% of dynamists say there is time in B-theory worlds, (...) only ~ 45% say there is time in C-theory worlds. Thus, while the presence of directedness makes dynamists more inclined to say there is time in a world, a substantial subpopulation of dynamists judge that there is time in non-directed worlds. By contrast, a majority of non-dynamists judged that there was time in both growing block worlds and C-theory worlds, with no significant differences between the means. Experiment 2 found that when participants are only presented with non-dynamical worlds—namely, a directed world and a non-directed world—they report significantly higher levels of agreement that there is time in B-theory worlds. However, the majority of participants still judge that there is time in C-theory worlds. We conclude that while the presence of directedness bolsters judgements that there is time, most people do not judge it to be necessary for time. (shrink)

Ushenko presented his philosophy of logic in vehement opposition to "the postulationist theory." In the endeavor to amputate logic from philosophy and absorb it within mathematics, the postulationists viewed logic as an isolated object-logic to be discussed in meta-logic and construed its symbolic formulas as a game played according to arbitrarily established rules. The objections Ushenko raised are no longer novel, but twenty years ago the entire controversy was new. Above all, he stressed the numerous difficulties entangling the meta-logic. He (...) scored the menace of an infinite regress of meta-logics, and insisted that the consequences of Gödel's work necessarily frustrate the initial great expectations of the postulationists. No purely formal system can be internally proved to be self-consistent and certainly no formal language can ever become as comprehensive as English, though the price of such comprehensiveness is the inevitable occurrence of contradictory sentences. Moreover, he argued that, despite the postulationists' pretense that rules like the principle of non-contradiction were mere conventions for playing the game of logic, these rules proved ubiquitous by trespassing from the object-logic and intruding into the ultimate reaches of the meta-logic. (shrink)

An Enquiry into the Nature of Liberation: Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Paramokṣanirāsakārikāvṛtti, a Commentary on Sadyojyotiḥ’s Refutation of Twenty Conceptions of the Liberated State. Edited and translated by Alex Watson, Dominic Goodall, and S. L. P. Anjaneya Sarma. Collection Indologie, vol. 122. Pondicherry: Institut Français de Pondichéry, École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2013. Pp. 508. €38.