In the context of climate change, the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, growing food insecurity, and rising inflation, the inequities in the dominant food system and subsequent vulnerabilities are being made ever more visible. Policies and programs that can support social and economic security while responding to intensifying environmental challenges are urgently needed. Basic income is receiving increasing attention as one such policy tool in jurisdictions around the world. However, its applications to food systems are underdeveloped. This discussion paper considers (...) basic income as a policy tool for supporting food systems sustainability in Canada drawing on our collaborative research as part of Coalition Canada’s Case for Basic Income Series. We suggest that a basic income may contribute to addressing precarity in livelihoods and food access while offering potential co-benefits for local food production and community well-being. We also underscore that basic income is not a panacea for all problems facing food systems and must be considered alongside other public supports and initiatives. We conclude by identifying areas for further research and policy investigation for food systems scholars and practitioners. (shrink)

This book investigates the subjective and objective representations of the world, developing analogies between secondary qualities and indexical thoughts and arguing that subjective representations are ineliminable. Throughout, McGinn brings together historical and contemporary discussions to illuminate old problems in a novel way.

As arti® cial intelligence moves ever closer to the goal of producing fully autonomous agents, the question of how to design and implement an arti® cial moral agent (AMA) becomes increasingly pressing. Robots possessing autonomous capacities to do things that are useful to humans will also have the capacity to do things that are harmful to humans and other sentient beings. Theoretical challenges to developing arti® cial moral agents result both from controversies among ethicists about moral theory itself, and from (...) computational limits to the implementation of such theories. In this paper the ethical disputes are surveyed, the possibility of a `moral Turing Test ’ is considered and the computational di culties accompanying the diŒerent types of approach are assessed. Human-like performance, which is prone to include immoral actions, may not be acceptable in machines, but moral perfection may be computationally unattainable. The risks posed by autonomous machines ignorantly or deliberately harming people and other sentient beings are great. The development of machines with enough intelligence to assess the eŒects of their actions on sentient beings and act accordingly may ultimately be the most important task faced by the designers of arti® cially intelligent automata. (shrink)

Now available in paperback, this acclaimed book introduces categories and elementary toposes in a manner requiring little mathematical background. It defines the key concepts and gives complete elementary proofs of theorems, including the fundamental theorem of toposes and the sheafification theorem. It ends with topos theoretic descriptions of sets, of basic differential geometry, and of recursive analysis.

In this paper we1 assess the potential for research on nonhuman animals to address questions about the phenomenology of painful experiences. Nociception, the basic capacity for sensing noxious stimuli, is widespread in the animal kingdom. Even rel- atively primitive animals such as leeches and sea slugs possess nociceptors, neurons that are functionally specialized for sensing noxious stimuli (Walters 1996). Vertebrate spinal cords play a sophisticated role in processing and modulating nociceptive signals, providing direct control of some motor responses to noxious (...) stimuli, and a basic capacity for Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning (Grau et al. 1990; Grau 2002). Higher brain systems provide additional layers of association, top-down control, and cognition. In humans, at least, these higher brain systems also give rise to the conscious experiences that are characteristic of pain. What can be said about the experiences of other animals who possess nervous systems that are similar but not identical to humans? (shrink)

Of the seven $1,000,000 Clay Millennium Prize Problems in mathematics, just one would immediately appeal to Leonard Euler. That is “Existence and Smoothness of the Navier-Stokes Equation” (Fefferman 2000). Euler gave the basic equation in the 1750s. The work to this day shows Euler’s intuitive, vividly physical sense of mathematics.

Seven chimpanzees in twenty-seven experiments run over the course of five years at his University of Louisiana laboratory in New Iberia, Louisiana, are at the heart of Daniel Povinelli’s case that chimpanzee thinking about the physical world is not at all like that of humans. Chimps, according to Povinelli and his coauthors James Reaux, Laura Theall, and Steve Giambrone, are phenomenally quick at learning to associate visible features of tools with specific uses of those tools, but they appear to lack (...) cognitive access to forces and other invisible causal features of those tools. Povinelli’s chimps appar- ently rely on a trial-and-error strategy to learn whether a particular tool is suitable for a particular task, and and having mastered one task they appear unable to generalize to other tasks on the basis of tool properties that are not directly visible. Thus, for instance, Povinelli’s research subjects did not immediately recognize that a tool that had been demonstrated to be non- rigid would be unsuitable for dragging a piece of food towards them. When presented with a choice between a rigid, T-shaped “rake” that they had used many times previously and a rake with non-rigid arms, Povinelli and Reaux found, over the course of eight trials, that their chimps chose the non-rigid rake as frequently as they chose the rigid one (experiment 9, chapter 7). (shrink)

In this response to the work of Michael Dummett, McGinn aims to vindicate the plausibility of a realist outlook. Realism claims that a sentence's truth is ‘epistemically unconstrained’ or ‘knowledge‐transcendent’, in the sense that the world is as it is independently of our knowing truths about it. Contra Dummett's arguments against the tenability of this realist conviction, McGinn's counter‐argument proceeds by showing, first, ‘that it is an empiricist dogma to suppose that we cannot acquire conceptions that transcend our experience,’ and (...) second, ‘that we can connect experience‐transcendent conceptions with linguistic use by making the observation that such conceptions are fit subjects for communicative speech acts’. (shrink)

Cognitive ethologists are in need of a good theoretical framework for attributing intentional states. Heyes and Dickinson (1990) present criteria that they claim are necessary for an intentional explanation of behavior to be justified. They suggest that questions of intentionality can only be investigated under controlled laboratory conditions and they apply their criteria to laboratory experiments to argue that the common behavior of approaching food is not intentional in most animals. We dispute the details of their argument and interpretation of (...) the laboratory experiments. While criteria such as those suggested have a role to play in comparative studies of cognition, both laboratory and field studies are important for assessing the applicability of intentional explanations across different taxa. (shrink)

A number of authors make a seemingly compelling case for holding the victim of a wrong morally obliged to accept the genuine apology of the wrongdoer. This is a crucial issue in questions of reparative justice, since reparation typically requires not just the giving but also the acceptance of an apology. Yet it is a case that we should ultimately reject. If it is credible to think that the victim might suffer anew in exercising any duty of this kind, that (...) suffering must be factored into the moral reckoning from the outset. It is only if we can be sure that the victim will not suffer again by attending to, and ultimately accepting, the wrongdoer’s apology that it would be right to impose upon her any duty of this kind. Yet, in all non-trivial cases, the victim’s burden is unknowable in advance and has the potential to be considerable. In such situations, I argue, the victim has no duty to accept the wrongdoer’s apology. There are limits, too, to the utility of the bipartite victim-wrongdoer account of reparation on which such arguments are typically predicated. For the harm the wrongdoer causes is not exclusively suffered by the immediate victim but also by the community of all potential victims. Genuine reparative justice requires more than a recalibration of the relative moral standing of the wrongdoer and the victim through the giving and receiving of an apology. I consider how this might be achieved without imposing upon the victim a burden that fails to achieve the moral reckoning anticipated. (shrink)

Category theory has two unexpected links to constructivism: First, why is topos logic so close to intuitionistic logic? The paper argues that in part the resemblance is superficial, in part it is due to selective attention, and in part topos theory is objectively tied to the motives for later intuitionistic logic little related to Brouwer’s own stated motives. Second, why is so much of general category theory somehow constructive? The paper aims to synthesize three hypotheses on why it would be (...) so, with three that suggest it is not. (shrink)

Note is taken of the requirement (expressed in the British Educational Reform Act 1988 and other documents) that the curriculum should contribute to the spiritual development of pupils in the school and of society. Declining to reject the term as vacuous, the paper explores various suggested meanings: induction into a particular religion, consideration of fundamental questions, a sense of self, certain largely inexpressible states of mind, and pupils' non–material well–being. All of these, with the possible exception of the first in (...) the context of a multicultural public educational system, are shown to have some possible validity, subject to the need for further explication. Sincere concern with any profound notion of spiritual development is, however, held to be difficult to reconcile with current officially sanctioned conceptions of education. (shrink)

Primatologists generally agree that monkeys lack higher-order intentional capacities related to theory of mind. Yet the discovery of the so-called "mirror neurons" in monkeys suggests to many neuroscientists that they have the rudiments of intentional understanding. Given a standard philosophical view about intentional understanding, which requires higher-order intentionahty, a paradox arises. Different ways of resolving the paradox are assessed, using evidence from neural, cognitive, and behavioral studies of humans and monkeys. A decisive resolution to the paradox requires substantial additional empirical (...) work and perhaps a rejection of the standard philosophical view. (shrink)

This note describes Saunders Mac Lane as a philosopher, and indeed as a paragon naturalist philosopher. He approaches philosophy as a mathematician. But, more than that, he learned philosophy from David Hilbert’s lectures on it, and by discussing it with Hermann Weyl, as much as he did by studying it with the mathematically informed Göttingen Philosophy professor Moritz Geiger.

Unraveling the molecular detail of insulin receptor activation has proved challenging, but a major advance is the recent determination of crystallographic structures of insulin in complex with its primary binding site on the receptor. The current model for insulin receptor activation is that two distinct surfaces of insulin monomer engage sequentially with two distinct binding sites on the extracellular surface of the insulin receptor, which is itself a disulfide‐linked (αβ)2 homodimer. In the process, conformational changes occur both within the hormone (...) and the receptor, the latter resulting in the disruption of the intracellular interactions that hold the kinase domains in their basal state and in the initiation of the phosphorylation events that drive insulin signaling. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the extant structural data relating to hormone binding and how it effects receptor activation, as well as to discuss the issues that remain unresolved. (shrink)

In the past decade structures and processes for the ethical review of UK health care research have undergone rapid change. Although this has focused users' attention on the functioning of review committees, it remains rare to read a substantive view from the inside. This article presents details of processes and findings resulting from a novel structured reflective exercise undertaken by a newly formed research ethics review panel in a university school of nursing and midwifery. By adopting and adapting some of (...) the knowledge to be found in the art and science of malt whisky tasting, a framework for critical reflection is presented and applied. This enables analysis of the main contemporary issues for a review panel that is primarily concerned with research into nursing education and practice. In addition to structuring the panel's own literary narrative, the framework also generates useful visual representation for further reflection. Both the analysis of issues and the framework itself are presented as of potential value to all nurses, health care professionals and educationalists with an interest in ethical review. (shrink)

Many traditional arguments in favor of enhancement are consequentialist in nature. Many of the classic arguments against enhancement seem to have loosely Kantian origins. In this paper I offer a different interpretation of what a Kantian should be committed to with respect to enhancement by focusing on Kant's sometimes overlooked imperfect duty to cultivate our talents. I argue that in promoting an end that Kant thinks we have a duty to set, enhancing is more than just permissible, but has morally (...) weighty reasons behind it and would in part constitute a duty we owe to ourselves. This shows that Kantians have a unique position to add to debates about enhancement and positions Kant as pushing a view that is potentially more radical than even most ethicists friendly to enhancement, who might grant that enhancement is permissible in a wide array of cases, but often fall short of judging it part of a duty we owe to ourselves. (shrink)

In this entry, the authors outline the goals of a "dynamic reference work", and explain how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has been designed to achieve those goals.

In this chapter, I taxonomize early modern modes of relating self-interest and the common good. I discuss Protestant natural law theory, republicanism, utilitarianism, and—my main focus—Scottish social thought from Adam Smith and others. My aim is twofold. First, historically, I lay out the conceptual field for the early modern relation of self-interest and the common good while giving special attention to Scottish innovations. Second, from a philosophical point of view, I argue that the Scottish theory of the common good offers (...) some of the best conceptual resources for considering the relation of individual and community in present-day large, industrial nation-states and empires. More specifically, I claim that the Scots develop a concept of the common good that is (1) more social and economic than its alternatives, (2) more systemic and less dependent on the psychology and intentions of individuals, and (3) less tied to thick notions of community (including the state) and more amenable to empire. I conclude by bringing out the significance of these claims for our thinking about self-interest, the common good, and community. (shrink)

Academics and practitioners: nurses as intellectualsIn the author's experience, nurse educators working in universities generally accept that they are ‘academics’, but dismiss suggestions that they are ‘intellectuals’ because they see it as a pretentious description referring to a small number of academics and aesthetes who inhabit a conceptual world beyond the imaginative capacity of most other people. This paper suggests that the concept of the ‘intellectual’, if not the word itself, be admitted into nursing discourse through the adoption of a (...) non‐élitist Gramscian understanding, similar to the more recently formulated conception of the reflective practitioner. According to the Italian Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci, intellectuals are those people who develop ways in which to construct the conditions of their own existence, a possibility he believed was open to all. It is suggested that, from a Gramscian perspective, all nurses are intellectuals to varying degrees, and nurse educators should not only be nurturing their own intellectualism but also the potential for intellectualism as it exists within each individual. The ways in which this project are related to Habermasian critical theory are also briefly outlined. (shrink)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are due to the authors and publishers of the following books for permission to reproduce copyright material : JP Sartre— Words ...

While not underestimating the value of useful knowledge and skills, it is suggested that education should also develop the subjective self of the learner. A distinction is drawn between an ‘additive’ view of education which simply furnishes the individual with knowledge and skills and a ‘transformative’ concept which concerns itself with changes to more central parts of the learner's self. In developing a concept of the subjective self, reference is made to the Enlightenment notion of the autonomous rational self and (...) the interpersonal or cultural self of the Symbolic Interactionists and Communitarians. Particular attention, however, is given to Heidegger's three categories of entities experienced by the phenomenological self: the ‘present at hand’, the ‘ready to hand’ and those entities with whom we share the experience of ‘being with’. An attempt is made to interpret important aspects of education in terms of the development of learners' growing knowledge and deepening understanding of these three kinds of entity and the relation in which they stand to them. (shrink)

Presents the author's ideas on literature, philosophy, religion, and human freedom.

From the 1910s through the 1930s, the American naturalist and photographer Arthur C. Pillsbury made time-lapse and microscopic films documenting what he, in common parlance, called the “miracles of plant life”. While these films are now mostly lost, they were part of Pillsbury’s prolific work as a conservationist and traveling film lecturer who used his cameras everywhere from Yosemite National Park to Samoa to promote both public understanding of plants and a desire to protect the natural world. Guiding this work (...) was Pillsbury’s belief that the nonhuman optics of the film camera, which revealed the animacy of plants, could also incite viewers to sympathize with them. In the context of the early American conservation movement, that sympathy stemmed in complicated ways from longstanding transcendental and pastoral ideas of nature that were entangled with imperialist visions of controlling nature. With an eye to that context, I show that Pillsbury’s filmmaking was not simply about using motion picture technologies to shape attitudes toward plants and nature more broadly; it was also about using nature to think through the techno-scientific possibilities of the cinema in the early part of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Wright’s chapter outlines how Lacan’s early engagement with cybernetics and game theory informed his psychoanalytic theory of causality. At times, Lacan seems close to a posthumanism avant la lettre in his emphasis on the machinic or combinatorial aspects of the psyche. However, through a Lacanian interpretation of Duncan Jones’ Sci-fi film Source Code —in which the main character’s cyborg status allows for an exploration of posthuman themes—Wright argues that Lacan stresses the temporality of desire and the act in human subjectivity, (...) rather than machinic repetition. In this way, Lacan’s theory of causality contributes to a critical posthumanism attuned to the fantasies that animate both celebratory and dystopian transhumanism. (shrink)