Examining the costs and motivations of warfare is key to conundrums concerning the relevance of this troubling phenomenon to the evolution of social attachment and cooperation, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood—the developmental time period during which many participants are first recruited for warfare. The study focuses on Samburu, a pastoralist society of approximately 200,000 people occupying northern Kenya’s semi-arid and arid lands, asking what role the emotionally sensitized, peer-driven adolescent life stage may have played in the cultural and genetic (...) coevolution of coalitional lethal aggression. Research in small-scale societies provides unparalleled opportunities for sharply defined variables, particularly in age generation societies in which all young men are initiated into “warriorhood.” Proposing an epigenetic and component behavior approach, we examine whether raiding activities such as number of raids, killing, and sparing enemy lives associate with DNA methylation in two candidate genes: MAOA, linked to mood and arousal, and NR3C1, linked to stress and immune response. We report statistically significant associations between the epigenetic variables and the combat variables of overall raiding activity and reportedly showing mercy to enemies. In contrast, epigenetic variables did not associate with post-traumatic stress disorder symptom scores, and the only combat variable associated with PTSD was losing one’s own livestock in a raid. These findings raise important questions concerning the mechanisms driving warfare’s paradoxical mix of violent and altruistic behaviors. (shrink)

The Second Amendment is accepted as protecting a right, but it is commonly accepted that the right is not unrestricted. I will explore the most commonly suggested restrictions proposed by gun control advocates and show why these restrictions to the Second Amendment are unjustifiably high, especially when compared with restrictions we accept for other Constitutional rights. I argue that these restrictions violate a central function of the Second Amendment—to enable the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. The three (...) restrictions I will be discussing are: licensing requirements for gun ownership, gun tracing with a national database of gun owners, and concealed carry restrictions. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom that influences university policy on what is considered valid sexual consent has undergone radical change over the past twenty years. Valid consent being the criteria that makes subsequent sexual behavior morally justified because the consent is morally transformative in the way that matters. Affirmative consent policies are now being used increasingly at universities across the country, as well as forming the basis for legislation in some U.S. states. University policies that define affirmative consent are varied, but policies (...) generally require the consent to be voluntary, conscious, unambiguous, and ongoing. The consent can be communicated verbally or behaviorally as long as it is clear and continues throughout the sexual encounter. I will argue against both the unambiguous and ongoing requirements of sexual consent. I contend that we should reject the affirmative model of sexual consent because of the problems with these requirements and I then offer some reasons in favor of returning to a lack of dissent model of sexual consent. (shrink)

My dissertation develops a defense of a right to self-defense against the state. I set aside anarchist theories and grant for the sake of argument that the state has legitimate political authority. My goal is to convince non-anarchists that the right to self-defense extends to individuals against the state and the state’s agents. I argue that the right to self-defense is a fundamental, negative, claim right. The right to self-defense has these characteristics: (1) it is fundamental, meaning that it is (...) not derivative of any other right—it doesn’t appeal to any other right for its justification (2) it is negative, meaning that it simply requires others to refrain from certain action, and (3) it is a claim right, rather than a permission right, which means that it logically entails correlative duties on others. I also challenge some basic tenets of the orthodox account of justified defensive force, including the imminence, necessity, and proportionality conditions. My argument is a controversial one; many will resist the idea that an individual could be justified in self-defense against the state for a variety of reasons, ranging from thinking the idea is absurd or dangerous, to thinking that even if it is morally permissible, it is impractical. I aim to rebut these objections and to provide strong moral reasons to show why individuals do in fact have this right. -/- This research explores the relationship between one of our most basic rights—the right to self-defense—with our most basic political relationship—the relationship between the individual and the state. Part of my aim is to convince non-anarchist readers of philosophical claims that are usually only supported by anarchists. The reason this is important, beyond being academically interesting, is that if I am successful, it could allow a great majority of individuals to rethink their relationship with the state; not just at a basic level, but also in other applied areas such as gun rights, drug laws, and issues surrounding punishment and imprisonment. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the two types of self-deception, usually labeled straight and twisted self-deception. In straight cases the self-deceptive belief coincides with the subject’s desire. In twisted cases, by contrast, the self-deceptive belief opposes the subject’s desire as in the example of Othello’s conviction of Desdemona’s infidelity. Are both these contrasting types of deceptive beliefs cases of SD? The argument of this paper shall answer this question in the positive, yet in different way from the unitary explanation of (...) straight and twisted SD proposed by Alfred Mele. The causal account of SD claims to provide a unitary and simple explanation for both straight and twisted SD, and considers such a unitary explanation as a specific virtue of the causal view. Within the same causal model, the difference between straight and twisted self-deception is explained by a difference in the motivational state that in twisted cases is dominated by emotions. The paper will critically examine this claim, and advance an alternative explanation based on a different view of self-deception where emotions play a role alongside wishes both in straight and in twisted case. (shrink)

(2011). The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America; Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Educational Studies: Vol. 47, Xenophobia in Schools, pp. 402-408.

The framework of cognitive linguistics can be an efficient tool to represent the conceptual scope of meaning extension in reduced lexicons of pidgins and creoles. Image-schema based metaphors (Lakoff, 1993; Cienki, 1998) underlie the usage of English straight and its Tok Pisin counterpart stret, but the creole employs the concept in more contexts than English. The resultant variation in the scope of metaphor takes the form of a particular source domain being used to conceptualize more target domains than in (...) the lexifier language. Functioning mainly as a compensation strategy, the variation is the effect of strong influence of English on the conceptual system of the creole. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: New Frontiers for College Sex “I'm no queer!” The Paradox within Identity and Practice “You just might like it”: The Straight Sex Experiment Challenges to College Sex Experimentation Toward Alternative Notions of Sexual Experimentation.

Jon Haidt, a leading figure in contemporary moral psychology, advocates a participation-centric view of religion, according to which participation in religious communal activity is significantly more important than belief in explaining religious behaviour and commitment. He describes the participation-centric view as ‘Straight out of Durkheim’. I argue that this is a misreading of Durkheim, who held that religious behaviour and commitment are the joint products of belief and participation, with neither belief nor participation being considered more important than the (...) other. I further argue that recent evidence from the cognitive science of religion provides support for Durkheim’s balanced account of religion and counts strongly against Haidt’s participation-centric view of religion. I suggest that Haidt’s adherence to the participation-centric view of religion is better explained by his desire to accept an account of religion that is consistent with his social intuitionist moral psychology than by his desire to accept an account of religion that accords with available scientific evidence about religion. (shrink)

How does one make the right choices when faced with ethical dilemmas? Social service professionals use a unique set of principles to guide their decisions within a broad and complex array of situations. Straight Talk about Professional Ethics, Second Edition provides readers with the guidelines that will help them make decisions in a manner that is clinically and ethically effective. This book explains the seven core concepts that guide ethical practice in the helping professions: self-determination, informed consent, competence, confidentiality (...) and privacy, attention to conflicts of interest, maintenance of professional boundaries, and professionalism and integrity. Developing a commitment to the ethics of a profession and an understanding of how those ethics apply to commonly occurring workplace situations is a major element of professional preparation. (shrink)

Linda Treviño and Kate Nelson bring together a mix of theory and practice in Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk about How to Do It Right 6th Edition. In this new edition, the dynamic author team of Linda Treviño, prolific researcher and Distinguished Professor, and Kate Nelson, Professor and longtime practitioner of strategic organizational communications and human resources, equip students with the pragmatic knowledge they need to identify and solve ethical dilemmas, understand their own and others’ ethical behavior, and promote (...) ethical behavior in their organization. Managing Business Ethics is the perfect text to prepare students for a range of roles in the business world— managers across business functions, communications professionals, compliance officers, corporate counsels, human resources managers, and senior executives. (shrink)

David Gauthier stages a competition between two arguments, each of which purports to decide once for all transparent agents which is best, being a straight or being a constrained maximizer. The first argument, which he criticizes and rejects, is for the greater utility, on a certain weak assumption, of straight maximization for all transparent agents. The second, which he endorses, is for the greater utility on the same weak assumption of constrained maximization for all transparent agents.In Section I, (...) Gauthier’s account of constrained maximization is presented, and his use in the two arguments of the idea of choosing a disposition to choose actions is noted. Section II is about the unfortunate argument that Gauthier criticizes. This argument is flawed in ways additional to those he notices, but a less ambitious form of reasoning can, for individuals whose probabilities and values are right, be good for the greater expected utility of straight maximization. Section III takes up the argument that Gauthier endorses and maintains that it is wrong in a way specific to it as well as in ways closely related to all of the first argument’s noted flaws. An Appendix features a three-person prisoners’ dilemma and includes demonstrations of principal conclusions reached in the body of this paper. (shrink)

Drawing upon feminist, queer, and crip phenomenology, this essay argues that the distinct temporality of the lived, stuttering body disturbs the normalized “choreography” of communication and thereby threatens the disabled speaker's recognition as a speaking subject. Examined through the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Alfred Schutz, the disabled speaking body is temporally “out of step” with the normalized bodily rhythms and pace of communicative practices in relation to both lived and objective time. Disciplined for his incalculable and therefore irrational bodily (...) choreography, the disabled speaker is foregrounded against an objective, instrumentally ordered world constituted by a disembodied and hegemonic “straight-masculine” time. Although dominant communicative choreographies may often be unlivable for disabled speakers, cripping communicative time rejects the cardinal value of futurity and invites interlocutors to gather in a noninstrumentalized and nonproductive present. This reshaping of communicative space enacts new modes of relationality and opens up an array of communicative futures suppressed or cut off by straight-masculine time. (shrink)

The paper suggests a straight solution to the problem of meaning skepticism presented in Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. The solution is based on Ladov’s moderate solution to the problem. Ladov’s solution is to the effect that the total skepticism cannot be a theory because it cannot be stated without performative contradiction. This entails that only a limited skepticism is possible as a theory. I argue that the limited skepticism is compatible with the view that meaning can (...) be known provided the knowledge of meaning is construed as an internal part of a speech act, not as a result of interpretation of behavioral facts. (shrink)

In Judaism Straight Up, Moshe Koppel explores the central differences between traditional societies--including traditional Judaism--and contemporary cosmopolitan ones. He explains everything you always wanted to know about the subtleties of Jewish morality, tradition, and belief, and how these have unfolded to beat cosmopolitanism at its own game: advancing cooperation, fairness, and freedom. Written with incisiveness and droll wit--and a scientific sensibility that draws on economics, game theory, and other disciplines--Judaism Straight Up reveals the secret of Jewish traditionalism's endurance."--Page (...) [4] of cover. (shrink)

Ozomatli's history of formation, the multiplicity of its sounds, the role played by its music in enabling political activism and political coalitions illuminate the relations between identities and politics at the present moment. The group is grounded in Los Angeles contemporary Chicano/a culture and in the new social relations, new knowledges, and new sensibilities of an emerging global city in a transnational era. Speaking from the interstices between commercial culture and the new social movements, Ozomatli's music and political work offers (...) us invaluable bottom‐up perspectives on the terrain of counter‐politics and cultural creation at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

The article considers the straight solution of S. Kripke’s skeptical problem concerning the stability of linguistic meaning proposed by E.V. Borisov’s. The distinction between two kinds of introspection related to the knowledge of linguistic meaning is analyzed. The moderate solution of the skeptical problem as a basis for the straight solution is explored. It is suggested that R. Carnap’s conception of linguistic frameworks can be useful for the solution of skeptical problem.

The aim of this paper is to show that the A-theorist's argument from experience is undermined by a commitment to ‘experiential punctivism' - the view that instantaneous (or near-instantaneous) experiences are metaphysically prior to durative ones. The experiences to which the A-theorist's argument appeals are those of processual events. For these experiences to constitute perceptions of temporal passage it would be necessary to perceive such processes qua processes; but, if experiential punctivism were true, this would be impossible. We could only (...) ever perceive those processes qua temporal variation, which merely amounts to an awareness of change as described by the B-theory. If there is such a phenomenon as the passing of time, it could not be an object of our experience. (shrink)

This article argues that one of our only pieces of evidence for Roman marriage between cinaedi, Juvenal's second satire, has been consistently misread and in fact describes a marriage between a cinaedus and a sex worker. It begins by providing the context for the passage in question and its traditional reading, and then demonstrates that the critical phrase siue hic recto cantauerat aere refers to financial, not erotic, exchanges. The article finally discusses the implications of this correction, which are far (...) more substantial than one might expect for a contentious ablative. (shrink)

Kripke argues that there are no genuine facts as to what words mean. The present chapter begins with a discussion of how this conclusion should be construed and proceeds to criticize the various considerations marshalled in favour of it. The central flaw is shown to be Kripke's explicit assumption that a given property of a word may provide it with a given meaning only if two interrelated conditions are satisfied: that, from the information that some word possesses the given property, (...) we may read off what it must mean, and that we can explain why this property will engender that particular meaning. It is concluded that there are, after all, perfectly genuine empirical facts of meaning. (shrink)

I highlight three features of P.F. Strawson’s later, neglected work on freedom and responsibility. First, in response to a criticism by Rajendra Prasad, Strawson explicitly rejects an argument put forward in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ against the relevance of determinism to moral responsibility. Second, his remarkable acceptance of Prasad’s criticism motivates him to take the ‘straight path’, that is, to be straightforward about the relation between determinism, freedom, the ability to do otherwise and the conditions of responsibility. He claims that (...) the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition of responsibility and provides a list of additional conditions, including a knowledge condition. Third, he clarifies the relation between responsibility, quality of will and the reactive attitudes. The latter do not figure essentially in his answer to the question, ‘What are the conditions of responsibility?’, but they do play an essential role in his answer to the question, ‘Why do we have the concept of responsibility?’ We have it, Strawson suggests, because of our natural concern about the quality of will with which people act, a concern expressed in our reactive attitudes. I argue that, although Strawson’s later work definitely involves a shift of emphasis when compared to ‘Freedom and Resentment’, his overall account of freedom and responsibility is coherent. The later work helps to better understand the nature and significance of Strawson’s contribution, and to identify problems with common interpretations of and objections to ‘Freedom and Resentment’. (shrink)

Part of a symposium on *The Rationality of Perception* by Susanna Siegel (2017 Oxford University Press).

In writing this book I have received a considerable variety of assistance, which I am glad to acknowledge.

What is it for a speech act to be sincere? The most common answer amongst philosophers is that a speech act is sincere if and only if the speaker is in the state of mind that the speech act functions to express. However, a number of philosophers have advanced counterexamples purporting to demonstrate that having the expressed state of mind is neither necessary nor sufficient for speaking sincerely. One may nevertheless doubt whether these considerations refute the orthodox conception. Instead, it (...) may be argued, they expose other ways of elucidating sincerity in speech. “Sincerity in speech” is ambivalent between a number of different conceptions. Against this background this paper presents two alternative conceptions, viz., Sincerity as Spontaneity and Sincerity as Presenting Oneself as one takes Oneself to be and develops a third conception which we may call Sincerity as a Communicative Virtue. This conception emphasizes the speaker’s intention in communicating her attitudes and the need to be properly justified in saying what one does. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Looking Death Straight in the Eye:The Wisdom and Witness of the SaintsPaul Murray O.P.At the Basilica of San Clemente here in Rome, the tomb which lies directly under the high altar contains, according to received tradition, the relics of both St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch. Elsewhere, in the San Clemente complex, there is another tomb or sarcophagus, unknown to the public, whose original place (...) may well have been in the atrium of the Basilica. It now finds its place in the garden of the Irish Dominican Collegio adjoining the Basilica.This tomb, an ancient Roman sarcophagus of grey marble, was re-used in medieval times, around the year 1300, in order to house the remains of a certain Nicolaus Boniseniore.1 Nicolaus, a lawyer by profession, belonged to a prominent Sienese family which, in the late thirteenth century, were bankers to the papacy. Why I have chosen to make reference to this particular tomb is because, inscribed across its front in bold letters, is an unusually striking statement concerning death. Nicolaus who was, we are told in the inscription, "distinguished" during his life "by the glory of his knowledge of the law,"2 now speaks from the tomb, as it were, stripped of all prestige and glory, his haunting, ghostly words a warning to all those coming after him of the vanity of earthly endeavor. [End Page 923]Recognise in me, you who read this how limited are the possibilities of mankind. As I was, what you are, I was Lord of my possibilities. Now I am no more because I am dust and bones. So will you too no longer be the master of your own potential when you will be interred. The fame of the world, honours, prominent position, rank and influence, nobility, strength, pleasure, celebrity, delights and laments, high birth and wisdom, … vigour, boldness and intimidation, bruised pride, illness and everything passes except for the love of God. … Finally, I was abandoned to wretched death. Then according to the will of Christ I was shut up in this grave. Naked was enough for me, who once could not do without a big house, a wide bed, fine clothes and tableware. Without a bed I am laid naked in this marble tomb. I have no pillow, sheets, mattress or linen. I have no overgarment, not even an undershirt. To die is the destiny of all. Death admits no respect for honour; it spares neither the greatest nor the smallest. There are three things which you should know in order to live correctly: be thankful for death, pious and disdainful of worldly goods.3Few texts written in the Christian era, or indeed in any era, evoke with such compelling force the sharp, devastating impact of death, the utter and complete loss of so many treasured earthly goods and pleasures, earthly honors, powers, and privileges. But the statement itself, although composed in the Christian era and by a Christian believer—is it in any real sense Christian in spirit? Yes, we do hear sounded, it is true, a few notes of Christian piety, but these are decidedly faint and seem almost to lack conviction. What we don't hear sounded anywhere in the text is the clear note of Christian hope. Although the sarcophagus has obviously been made to serve as a Christian tomb, there survives in the statement of Niccolò an almost pagan perspective on death, a grim and unhappy sense of doom, a stark melancholy. Pagan stone, pagan marble, entombs the Christian voice.But what is it, we need to ask, that constitutes an authentic Christian understanding of death? My aim in the present paper is, while offering a few general comments on the question, to explore how, over the centuries, death has been viewed and approached by the Christian saints. Three sections comprise the work: (1) Facing Death: The Distinctive Christian Vision; (2) Scandal or Blessing: Christian Grief in the Face of Death; (3) Imagining the Unimaginable: Visions of the Afterlife. [End Page 924]Facing Death: The Distinctive Christian VisionFour centuries before Christ, around the year 441 BC, the Greek chorus in one of the plays by... (shrink)

Recent philosophical work on sexuality has focused primarily on sexual orientation. Yet, there’s another normatively significant phenomenon in the neighborhood: sexual identity. Here, I develop a cultural theory of queer and straight sexual identity. In particular, I argue that sexual identity is a matter of inclusion/exclusion in relation to queer and straight cultures, which are differentiated in terms of characteristic practices involving kinship and political resistance.

Major psychoanalytic thinkers from Freud to Ricoeur to Lacan considered the Oedipus complex the key to explaining the human psyche and human sexuality, even culture itself. But, in fact, they were merely theorizing males. In this title, originally published in 1993, the author reassesses the benchmark concepts of Freudian thought, building on feminist criticisms of psychoanalysis and the new history of sexuality. The psychoanalytic questions become political questions: How do the norms of heterosexuality and masculinity themselves emerge within modern society (...) and culture? How do the institutions of compulsory heterosexuality and modern patriarchy shape identity and desire? What make heterosexuality compulsory in our society? Brenkman argues that the larger social world is part and parcel of the Oedipus complex. He challenges psychoanalysis to reinvent its cultural project, as a therapeutics and an ethics, by recovering the moral-political dimension in its approach to family, sexuality and gender. Straight Male Modern casts a new light on psychoanalysis’s contribution to modern life, revealing the richness of the Freudian tradition’s encounter with modern politics and culture, and the poverty of its response. (shrink)

Sexuality researchers have demonstrated how the progressive campuses of selective universities shape hookups, sexual fluidity, and same-gender sex among straight-identified women. However, this research cannot fully explain a puzzling demographic pattern: women with the lowest levels of educational attainment reported the highest lifetime prevalence of same-gender sex. To make sense of this puzzle, I draw on interviews with 35 women systematically recruited from a demographic survey. I find early motherhood forecloses possibilities to develop or claim LGBTQ identities as women (...) prioritize seemingly incompatible discourses of self-sacrifice and good motherhood; sexual friendships and safety strategies provide opportunities to meaningfully explore same-gender sex and desire; and participants reject “queer” and embrace “bisexual” in the opposite pattern observed among their more privileged peers. This study underscores the situated nature of sexuality knowledge by offering an intersectional analysis of how women beyond the college hookup scene and located outside spaces permeated with LGBTQ discourses enact sexual fluidity and make meaning of same-gender sex. (shrink)

This study concerns the ideas of one particular philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose views of time, intuition, and creativity have had a significant impact on art, literature, and the humanities, both in his time and in our own. Although it is generally recognized that Bergson's ideas have significantly impacted the arts and the humanities, it has not been recognized how they have also had a creative influence on the sciences as well. Nor has it been realized that this was one of (...) his most basic contentions. Bergson's conception of intuition--his fundamental insight into reality--was not limited to fugitive insights into human existence. By realizing previously unsuspected possibilities for research and discovery, his endeavors were also meant to make possible new advances in the sciences. If it enabled his cousin by marriage, Marcel Proust, to explore human memory in depth, it also inspired psychologists like Daniel Schachter to use Bergson's ideas to make real contributions to contemporary memory science. If his notion of creative evolution brought many thinkers to a belief in human creative freedom, it brought others (notably Alexis Carrel and Pierre Lecomte de Noüy) to a scientific study of biological time. Among his successful speculations was the theory of the Big Bang cosmology. 'Getting Bergson Straight' shows many points at which Bergson's ideas anticipated future developments in the sciences. This was seen clearly by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis de Broglie who viewed Bergson's physics as presaging quantum physics. Thus, the text is well situated for arts, humanities, social science, and natural science classrooms studying creative thinking and/or intellectual history. (shrink)

In traditional and popular accounts, Zen Buddhism is depicted as a practice that rejects literary study and intellectualization in favor of a direct experience of enlightenment that is beyond words. Indeed, the Zen school has traditionally defined itself as a "separate transmission outside the teachings, not dependent on words and letters". Even when regarding the tradition's literary output, Zen literature is famous for its antinomian dialogues replete with outrageous antics, frequent non sequiturs, and crude, illiterate utterances that appear to validate (...) the perspective that Zen simply rejects logical thinking, rational discourse, literary cultivation, and any systematic means of study. While it is... (shrink)

A guide to developing logical thought and expression through discussion and exercises.