Biography of Habermas -- Critical theory -- Habermas and his works -- An assessment of the impact of Habermas -- Conclusion.

We have structured our response according to five questions arising from the commentaries: (i) What is sentience? (ii) Is sentience a necessary or sufficient condition for moral standing? (iii) What methods should guide comparative cognitive research in general, and specifically in studying invertebrates? (iv) How should we balance scientific uncertainty and moral risk? (v) What practical strategies can help reduce biases and morally dismissive attitudes toward invertebrates?

Nineteenth-century British entomologist William Kirby is best known for his generic division of bees based on tongues and his vigorous defence of natural theology. Focusing on these aspects of Kirby's work has lead many current scholars to characterise Kirby as an "essentialist." As a result of this characterisation, many important aspects of his work, Monographia Apum Angliœ (1802) have been over-looked or misunderstood. Kirby's religious devotion, for example, have lead some scholars to assume Kirby used the term "type" for connecting (...) an ontological assumption about essences with a creationist assumption about species fixity, which I argue conceals a variety of ways Kirby employed the term. Also, Kirby frequently cautioned against organising a classification system exclusively by what he called "analytic reasoning," a style of reasoning 20th century scholars often associate with Aristotelian logic of division. I argue that Kirby's critique of analytic reasoning brought the virtues of his own methodological agenda into sharp relief. Kirby used familiar metaphors in the natural history literature-Ariadne's thread, the Eleusinian mysteries, and Bacon's bee and spider metaphors-to emphasise the virtues of building tradition and cooperation in the goals and methodological practices of 19th century British naturalists. (shrink)

Deci and Ryan’s Basic Human Needs Theory (BHNT) claims that thriving is contingent upon the satisfaction of our fundamental psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This article considers how BHNT might complement a theological understanding of flourishing with particular reference to competence, and vice versa. By perceiving charismata as spiritual competencies with a mix of natural and supernatural qualities, it is possible to utilise insights from BHNT to identify circumstances that can support or thwart their cultivation. Whilst spiritual gifts (...) are uniquely and diversely manifest in the individuals comprising the church community, they operate collectively since the Spirit instigates and enables them for a common purpose. Thus, as the sum of its interdependent parts, the church has a Spirit gifted ‘communal competence’ that is maximised in submission to, and unity with, others and God. (shrink)

This article is about the power of critical thinking through embryos and embryology in bioart. In this instance, critical thinking does not promise revolution or a takedown of bioengineering, but basic empowerment through scientific knowledge. I argue that the use of embryos in Jill Scott’s Somabook (2011) and Adam Zaretsky’s DIY Embryology (2015) constitutes an instance of what Philip Galanter identifies as complexism. In turn, the complexism of embryology reveals two modes of critical thinking. First, embryology distils the awe and (...) wonder that come with basic scientific literacy. In turn, scientific literacy provides agency for individuals through a trifecta of feeling, belief and pragmatism: based on the frisson of curiosity and wonder that comes with recognizing biological complexity, it frees individuals from the bounds of superstition and metaphysics while building a path to fact-based problem solving. Second, as works of art bearing embryos they are part of the politics and history of embryology that emerged in contrast to genetics almost a century ago. Distinct from the coding of genetics as nucleus-centric, separate, homogeneous, a matter of being, and male, embryology was coded as cytoplasmic, interactive, heterogeneous, a matter of becoming, and feminist. (shrink)

This article is about the power of critical thinking through embryos and embryology in bioart. In this instance, critical thinking does not promise revolution or a takedown of bioengineering, but basic empowerment through scientific knowledge. I argue that the use of embryos in Jill Scott’s Somabook (2011) and Adam Zaretsky’s DIY Embryology (2015) constitutes an instance of what Philip Galanter identifies as complexism. In turn, the complexism of embryology reveals two modes of critical thinking. First, embryology distils the awe and (...) wonder that come with basic scientific literacy. In turn, scientific literacy provides agency for individuals through a trifecta of feeling, belief and pragmatism: based on the frisson of curiosity and wonder that comes with recognizing biological complexity, it frees individuals from the bounds of superstition and metaphysics while building a path to fact-based problem solving. Second, as works of art bearing embryos they are part of the politics and history of embryology that emerged in contrast to genetics almost a century ago. Distinct from the coding of genetics as nucleus-centric, separate, homogeneous, a matter of being, and male, embryology was coded as cytoplasmic, interactive, heterogeneous, a matter of becoming, and feminist. (shrink)

This short article argues that an adequate response to the implications for governance raised by ‘Big Data’ requires much more attention to agency and reflexivity than theories of ‘algorithmic power’ have so far allowed. It develops this through two contrasting examples: the sociological study of social actors used of analytics to meet their own social ends and the study of actors’ attempts to build an economy of information more open to civic intervention than the existing one. The article concludes with (...) a consideration of the broader norms that might contextualise these empirical studies, and proposes that they can be understood in terms of the notion of voice, although the practical implementation of voice as a norm means that voice must sometimes be considered via the notion of transparency. (shrink)

Understanding how scientific activities use naming stories to achieve disciplinary status is important not only for insight into the past, but for evaluating current claims that new disciplines are emerging. In order to gain a historical understanding of how new disciplines develop in relation to these baptismal narratives, we compare two recently formed disciplines, systems biology and genomics, with two earlier related life sciences, genetics and molecular biology. These four disciplines span the twentieth century, a period in which the processes (...) of disciplinary demarcation fundamentally changed from those characteristic of the nineteenth century. We outline how the establishment of each discipline relies upon an interplay of factors that include paradigmatic achievements, technological innovation, and social formations. Our focus, however, is the baptism stories that give the new discipline a founding narrative and articulate core problems, general approaches and constitutive methods. The highly plastic process of achieving disciplinary identity is further marked by the openness of disciplinary definition, tension between technological possibilities and the ways in which scientific issues are conceived and approached, synthesis of reductive and integrative strategies, and complex social interactions. The importance – albeit highly variable – of naming stories in these four cases indicates the scope for future studies that focus on failed disciplines or competing names. Further attention to disciplinary histories could, we suggest, give us richer insight into scientific development. (shrink)

A common worry about the genetic engineering of human beings is that it will reduce human genetic diversity, creating a biological monoculture that could not only increase our susceptibility to disease but also hasten the extinction of our species. Thus far, however, the evolutionary implications of human genetic modification remain largely unexplored. In this paper, I consider whether the widespread use of genetic engineering technology is likely to narrow the present range of genetic variation, and if so, whether this would (...) in fact lead to the evolutionary harms that some authors envision. By examining the nature of biological variation and its relation to population immunity and evolvability, I show that not only will genetic engineering have a negligible impact on human genetic diversity, but also that it will be more likely to ensure rather than undermine the health and longevity of the human species. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented major challenges to society, exposing preexisting ethical weaknesses in the modern social fabric’s ability to respond. Distrust in government and a lessened authority of science to determine facts have both been exacerbated by the polarization and disinformation enhanced by social media. These have impaired society’s willingness to comply with and persevere with social distancing, which has been the most powerful initial response to mitigate the pandemic. These preexisting weaknesses also threaten the future acceptance of vaccination (...) and contact tracing, two other tools needed to combat epidemics. Medical ethicists might best help in this situation by promoting truth-telling, encouraging the rational adjudication of facts, providing transparent decision-making and advocating the virtue of cooperation to maximize the common good. Those interventions should be aimed at the social level. The same elements of emphasizing cooperation and beneficence also apply to the design of triage protocols for when resources are overwhelmed. A life-stages approach increases beneficence and reduces harms. Triage should be kept as simple and straightforward as reasonably possible to avoid unwieldly application during a pandemic. (shrink)

Stephen Jay Gould argued that replaying the ‘tape of life’ would result in radically different evolutionary outcomes. Recently, biologists and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the theoretical importance of convergent evolution—the independent origination of similar biological forms and functions—which many interpret as evidence against Gould’s thesis. In this paper, we examine the evidentiary relevance of convergent evolution for the radical contingency debate. We show that under the right conditions, episodes of convergent evolution can constitute valid natural experiments (...) that support inferences regarding the deep counterfactual stability of macroevolutionary outcomes. However, we argue that proponents of convergence have problematically lumped causally heterogeneous phenomena into a single evidentiary basket, in effect treating all convergent events as if they are of equivalent theoretical import. As a result, the ‘critique from convergent evolution’ fails to engage with key claims of the radical contingency thesis. To remedy this, we develop ways to break down the heterogeneous set of convergent events based on the nature of the generalizations they support. Adopting this more nuanced approach to convergent evolution allows us to differentiate iterated evolutionary outcomes that are probably common among alternative evolutionary histories and subject to law-like generalizations, from those that do little to undermine and may even support, the Gouldian view of life. (shrink)

Normativity is widely regarded as the ability to make evaluative judgments based on a shared system of social norms. When normativity is viewed through the cognitively demanding lens of human morality, however, the prospect of finding social norms innonhuman animals rapidly dwindles and common causal structures are overlooked. In this paper, I develop a biofunctionalist account of social normativity and examine its implications for how we ought to conceptualize, explain, and study social norms in the wild. I propose that we (...) think of social normative systems as behavior-regulatory power structures that resolve conflicts between nested levels of selection in favor of the higher level. I argue that the best case for social norms outside of humans is not in the animals one might expect, such as primates or other large-brained vertebrates, but rather in social insects. Finally, I engage with a number of potential objections to this unorthodox proposal. (shrink)

The consensus among research scientists on anthropogenic global warming has grown to 100%, based on a review of 11,602 peer-reviewed articles on “climate change” and “global warming” published in the first 7 months of 2019.

Skuce et al., responding to Powell, title their article, “Does It Matter if the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming Is 97% or 99.99%?” I argue that the extent of the consensus does matter, most of all because scholars have shown that the stronger the public believe the consensus to be, the more they support the action on global warming that human society so desperately needs. Moreover, anyone who knows that scientists once thought that the continents are fixed in place, (...) or that the craters of the Moon are volcanic, or that the Earth cannot be more than 100 million years old, understands that a small minority has sometimes turned out to be right. But it is hard to think of a case in the modern era in which scientists have been virtually unanimous and wrong. Moreover, as I show, the consensus among publishing scientists is demonstrably not 97%. Instead, five surveys of the peer-reviewed literature from 1991 to 2015 combine to 54,195 articles with an average consensus of 99.94%. (shrink)

I have vigorously absorbed the negative element of the age in which I live, an age that is, of course, very close to me, which I have no right ever to fight against, but as it were a right to represent. The slight amount of the positive, and also of the extreme negative, which capsizes into the positive, are something in which I have had no hereditary share. I have not been guided into life by the hand of Christianity – (...) admittedly now slack and failing – as Kierkegaard was, and have not caught the hem of the Jewish prayer shawl – now flying away from us – as the Zionists have. I am an end or a beginning.1. (shrink)

There is a tendency in both scientific and humanistic disciplines to think of biological evolution in humans as significantly impeded if not completely overwhelmed by the robust cultural and technological capabilities of the species. The aim of this article is to make sense of and evaluate this claim. In Section 2 , I flesh out the argument that humans are ‘insulated’ from ordinary evolutionary mechanisms in terms of our contemporary biological understandings of phenotypic plasticity, niche construction, and cultural transmission. In (...) Section 3 , I consider two obvious objections to the above argument based on the growing literatures related to gene-culture coevolution and recent positive selection on the human genome, as well as a pair of less common objections relating to the connection between plasticity, population size and evolvability. In Section 4 , I argue that both the ‘human evolutionary stasis argument’ and its various detractor theories are premised on a fundamental conceptual flaw: they take evolutionary stasis for granted, since they fail to conceive of stabilizing selection as a type of evolution and drift as a universal tendency that dominates in the absence of selection. Without the continued operation of natural selection, the very properties that are purported to reduce the evolutionary response to selection in humans would themselves drift into non-functionality. I conclude that properly conceived, biological evolution is a permanent and ineradicable fixture of any species, including Homo sapiens. (shrink)

J P Powell; On Learning to be Original, Witty, Flexible, Resourceful etc, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 2, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 43–49, https.

Steven Pinker has said that one of the most important questions humans can ask of themselves is whether moral progress has occurred or is likely to occur. Buchanan and Powell here address that question, in order to provide the first naturalistic, empirically-informed and analytically sophisticated theory of moral progress--explaining the capacities in the human brain that allow for it, the role of the environment, and how contingent and fragile moral progress can be.

Despite several decades of debate, the concept of disease remains hotly contested. The debate is typically cast as one between naturalism and normativism, with a hybrid view that combines elements of each staked out in between. In light of a number of widely discussed problems with existing accounts, some theorists argue that the concept of disease is beyond repair and thus recommend eliminating it in a wide range of practical medical contexts. Any attempt to reframe the ‘disease’ discussion should answer (...) the more basic sceptical challenge, and should include a meta-methodological critique guided by our pragmatic expectations of what the disease concept ought to do given that medical diagnosis is woven into a complex network of healthcare institutions. In this paper, we attempt such a reframing, arguing that while prevailing accounts do not suffer from the particular defects that prominent critics have identified, they do suffer from other deficits—and this leads us to propose an amended hybrid view that places objectivist approaches to disease on stronger theoretical footing, and satisfies the institutional-ethicaldesiderataof a concept of disease in human medicine. Nevertheless, we do not advocate a procrustean approach to ‘disease’. Instead, we recommend disease concept pluralism between medical and biological sciences to allow the concept to serve the different epistemic and institutional goals of these respective disciplines. (shrink)

Liberal proponents of genetic engineering maintain that developing human germline modification technologies is morally desirable because it will result in a net improvement in human health and well-being. Skeptics of germline modification, in contrast, fear evolutionary harms that could flow from intervening in the human germline, and worry that such programs, even if well intentioned, could lead to a recapitulation of the scientifically and morally discredited projects of the old eugenics. Some bioconservatives have appealed as well to the value of (...) retaining our “given” human biological nature as a reason for restraining the development and use of human genetic modification technologies even where they would tend to increase well-being. In this article, I argue that germline intervention will be necessary merely to sustain the levels of genetic health that we presently enjoy for future generations—a goal that should appeal to bioliberals and bioconservatives alike. This is due to the population-genetic consequences of relaxed selection pressures in human populations caused by the increasing efficacy and availability of conventional medicine. This heterodox conclusion, which I present as a problem of intergenerational justice, has been overlooked in medicine and bioethics due to certain misconceptions about human evolution, which I attempt to rectify, as well as the sordid history of Darwinian approaches to medicine and social policy, which I distinguish from the present argument. (shrink)

During the early modern period, a framework broadly attributable to Descartes sought to establish all knowledge on a foundation of indubitable truths that are fully clear and totally certain: intuitions. A powerful challenge to treating these seemingly unassailable intuitions as epistemic foundations is that the only truths which can be known in this fashion are so obvious and useless that they could not produce any other knowledge. Rationalists typically respond to this worry by maintaining that there are substantive intuitive truths. (...) Other natural options are to maintain that tautologous truths can serve as a fit foundation, or to reject this framework entirely. Empiricists like Locke, Hume, Condillac, and Mill opt for these other solutions. While Locke and Hume offer views that revise and refine this framework, Condillac and Mill engage in more radical departures from it. An interesting result of this difference in approach is that we see Locke and Hume subdividing reason between two domains – one in which intuition reigns, and one which is more properly the domain of the senses – while in Condillac and Mill we see two differing approaches – analysis and induction, respectively – to unifying all human reasoning within a single domain. (shrink)

Many people believe that Somalia’s economy has been in chaos since the collapse of its national government in 1991. We take a comparative institutional approach to examine Somalia’s performance relative to other African countries both when Somalia had a government and during its extended period of anarchy. We find that although Somalia is poor, its relative economic performance has improved during its period of statelessness. We also describe how Somalia has provided basic law and order and a currency, which have (...) enabled the country to achieve the coordination that has led to improvements in its standard of living. (shrink)

From Descartes to Hume, philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries developed a dialectic of radically conflicting claims about the nature of the self. In the Paralogisms of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant comes to terms with this dialectic, and with the character of theexperiencing self. Powell seeks to elucidate these difficult texts, in part by applying to the Paralogisms insights drawn from Kant's Transcendental Deduction. His reading shows that the structure of the Paralogisms provides an essential key (...) to understanding both Kant's critique of "rationalpsychology" and his theory of self-consciousness. As Kant realized, the ways in which we must represent ourselves to ourselves have import not only for epistemology, but for our view of persons and of our own immortality, and for moral philosophy as well. Kant's theory of self-consciousness is alsoshown to have implications for contemporary discussions of the problem of other minds, functionalism, and the problem of indexical self-reference. (shrink)

In this paper my aim is to approach the referential–attributive distinction in the interpretation of definite descriptions, originally discussed by Donnellan, from a cognitive perspective grounded in Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory. In particular, I argue that definite descriptions encode a procedural semantics, in the sense of Blakemore, which is neutral as between referential and attributive readings. On this account, the distinction between referential and attributive readings arises as a result of the differing links that exist between different types of (...) mental representation and the world, rather than as a result of the differing links between language and mental representations. (shrink)

Introduction -- The development of feminist social theory -- Gender and class -- The aging body and gender -- Conclusion.

A sample from the Ubatuba fragment collected in Brazil in 1957 was tested with the intent of examining the isotope ratios of its primary element, magnesium, and the trace elements strontium, barium, copper, and zinc. As background, the history of chemical testing of the Ubatuba fragments during the 1960s-1980s at multiple labs with varying capabilities is reviewed and then the remainder of the paper examines recent tests completed in 2017 and 2018 that for the first time used HR-ICPMS techniques to (...) look at the isotopic ratios of the minor constituents as well as the primary magnesium makeup of the sample. The magnesium isotope ratios were found to fall within terrestrial limits while the results on the isotope ratios of the trace elements was inconclusive. Recommendations are made for improving the process of examining the trace elements. Keywords: Ubatuba, isotope, magnesium, HR-ICPMS, UFO. (shrink)

Many philosophers invoke the "wisdom of nature" in arguing for varying degrees of caution in the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. Because they view natural selection as akin to a master engineer that creates functionally and morally optimal design, these authors tend to regard genetic intervention with suspicion. In Part II, we examine and ultimately reject the evolutionary assumptions that underlie the master engineer analogy (MEA). By highlighting the constraints on ordinary unassisted evolution, we show how intentional genetic (...) modification can overcome many of the natural impediments to the human good. Our contention is that genetic engineering offers a solution that is more eff icient, reliable, versatile, and morally palatable than the lumbering juggernaut of Darwinian evolution. In Part III, we evaluate a recent attempt to ground precautionary enhancement heuristics in adaptive etiology. Our problem with this approach is two-fold: first, it is based on the same "strong adaptationist" interpretation of evolution that motivates the flawed MEA, and second, the etiological concept of function on which it relies provides indirect and potentially misleading information about the likely consequences of genetic intervention. We offer instead enhancement criteria based on causal relationships in ontogeny. We conclude that rather than grounding a presumption against deliberate genetic modification, the causal structure of the living world gives us good moral reason to pursue it. (shrink)

The spiritual rewards and intellectual challenges of Eastern philosophy are revealed in this visually stunning book, illustrated by Joe Lee and with 19th-century engravings. Eastern philosophy is not only an intellectual pursuit, but one that involves one’s entire being. Much of it is so deeply entwined with the non-intellectual art of meditation, that the two are impossible to separate. In this survey of the major philosophies of India, China, Tibet and Japan, Jim Powell draws upon his knowledge of Sanskrit (...) and Chinese, as well as decades of meditation. Whether tackling Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Dogen, the Dalai Lama or Patanjal–Powell’s insights are deeply illuminating. All the major philosophies of India, China, Tibet and Japan are explained and everyone, from beginner to expert, will find Eastern Philosophy For Beginners an insightful overview. (shrink)

Cicero may be best known as a politician, but he was also one of the few significant Roman writers of philosophy. This book presents a new and exciting selection of current scholarly work on this neglected side of him, establishing Cicero firmly on the agenda as a serious philosophical.

Daniel Taylor and Dawn Goodwin present a case study of the Morecambe Bay Inquiry (MBI), which examined the high rate of maternal and neonatal deaths over a period of 9 years (2004–2013), within the small maternity unit of Furness General Hospital (FGH), one of the three hospitals comprising Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust.1 They examine this through a conceptual lens, and provide a solution involving changes in medical education. This commentary explores both these elements. First, they use the lens of ‘Normalisation (...) of Deviance’ (NoD) to explain organisational failure. However, other available lenses such as ‘Sociology of Disasters’, ‘Organisational Silence’ and ‘Comfort-seeking Behaviour’ may point to different problems and solutions. More justification for their choice of the lens of NoD would have been useful. Similarly, more justification for their focus on a cluster of five ‘serious untoward incidents’ (SUIs) occurring in 2008 would also have been useful. They suggest that before 2008, the perinatal mortality rate was low, patient satisfaction was high and recent level 2 accreditation of maternity services by the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts all suggested standards of care within the obstetric department were adequate. This stream of positive signals is likely to have contributed towards a genuine belief of safe operation within the maternity unit by staff and board members. However, as they acknowledge, the first problem can be seen in 2004. According to the MBI,2 there were SUIs in the years before and after 2008, but this …. (shrink)