Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable (...) if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement. (shrink)

One of the largely untapped potentials of Sausserian semiotics is the ability it provides to examine shifts in the cultural meanings attached to objects and ideasacross time. To explore this potentiality, we trace the intertextual evolution of one of the most enduring mythic figures, the vampire. Our analysis begins with ancient texts and moves forward in time to contemporary cinematic and televised depictions of the vampire. We document the deployment of the vampire as a vehicle carrying oppositional meanings as it (...) moves through various eras. For example, vampires may connote both racism and racial resistance, homophobia and gay acceptance, women’s subjugation and women’s empowerment. By using the vampire to mediate contested, liminal regions of cultural discourse, storytellers have constructed increasingly complex and multivocal portraits of this figure. At present, vampire narratives have come to resemble an alternative universe of human morality and behavior, complete with family structures, emotional depth, and interpersonal conflicts. (shrink)

This essay argues that political, economic, and cultural developments have made the twentieth century disciplinary approach to philosophy unsustainable. It (a) discusses the reasons behind this unsustainability, which also affect the academy at large, (b) describes applied philosophy as an inadequate theoretical reaction to contemporary societal pressures, and (c) proposes a dedisciplined and interstitial approach??field philosophy??as a better response to the challenges facing the twenty-first century philosophy.

(or not oveA-complete.) . Let * be a unary operator defined on the set F of formulas of the language £ (ie, if A is a formula of £, then *A is also a ...

Offering a field-defining survey of the topic, this is the first book to engage all the key figures in the social imaginaries field. It offers new perspectives on the productive tension between social imaginaries and the creative imagination, providing the first programmatic approach to the field as a whole.

Provability, Computability and Reflection.

(Statement of Responsibility) by C.A. Stephens ; illustrated.